Shiva sent me this email on July 14, 2009. I hope you enjoy it. Namaste –jen
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Jnana Yoga contends that anything that can be defined is not the Truth… Hence they continually say, “Not This!.. Not This!”
In advanced spiritual practice, there is a state of consciousness that is devoid of multiplicity and thought. There are some words that try to express this state of consciousness such as, Nirvana and Samadhi.
In this experience of complete dissolution, the ego is dissolved and all references to reality are gone. Any attempt to speak or in some way communicate this state of consciousness is like describing a beautiful sunset to someone who has been blind from birth…
Still that does not stop us from trying… It is one of those ego things that we indulge in while occupying this body…
When the Soul is absorbed in the Clear Light of Reality, there is no one and nothing to talk about… However, as the individual consciousness is steadily drawn back into the body awareness by the Root Charka, the various levels and dimensions of creative consciousness start to form.
The first cognitive awareness, in my experience, is of a white florescent light that starts turning gold.
This gold light soon starts to coalesce into denser forms that continue devolving into lighter and darker shades of gold. The consciousness continues to descend into vague forms that soon begin to take on other densities, colors and shapes. There is also this sensation of energy and the ebb and flow of the currents of creation, which also defy any attempt to clearly define.
A long way down this descent of the consciousness, from the interface with Eternity, back into the mundane human awareness, there arises the formation of a thought. Thoughts then start to filter through the structure of language. Language then begins the process of association, categorization, and further filtering. The filtering of this indescribable experience drags the awareness through all of our current incarnation experiences.
The ego, in its attempt to define and communicate to others, defines this encounter through its filters of religion, philosophy, social structures, as well as the direct personal experiences that the individual has had in their life. The ego franticly picks the best analogies and stories that it has at its disposal to reconcile and express what it just experienced.
Obviously, all the categorizing, filtering and the limitations of language, as well as the limiting factors of human perception, makes the description or the conveyance of the amazing experience so inaccurate that one could truthfully say that any description is so far removed from the experience that it is a fabrication… It is the best fabrication a person can come up with, but it does not come close to the experience itself.
To complicate the issue, a person who is listening to this explanation and trying to understand what is being conveyed, is also filtering the explanation through their own ego filters. They try to apprehend this through their own bias, fear, prejudice, mistrust, ego rebellion, self esteem issues and their very personal experience of life.
So it seems to me that any thing that what I or anyone else says about God and is in turn perceived by another person, will be so far removed from the Truth that it ends up a fabrication of the Truth…
Religions try to codify, control and explain the unexplainable and the result falls far short of the Truth. Society, Philosophy and even Art, tries to express this notion of God. Some come closer than others… Art, because of its intuitive nature, is probably the best attempt.
When I studied with my Teacher, he did is best to draw from religions, art and philosophy… As a former English professor, he had great command of the language. He was most articulate and intellectually advanced… Still, no matter how wonderful his explanations were, they were not the full Truth. I know this because, as he was doing his best to explain the nature of existence and Eternity, the underlying Truth came through in a most amazing and powerful way.
While we sat with him, the world and all of the Universes fell away and we would sit for a while in that Clear Light of Reality. He showed us this profound Truth through a transmission that came between the words. He taught us the Truth as together we were absorbed in Eternity.
Later, we all tried to reconcile this experience of Eternity with our regular awareness the best way we could.
When we meditated alone, sometimes we would actually visit that Truth by ourselves. Still we could not fully comprehend the depth and colossal experience of actually touching Eternity.
This seems to be the trouble in communicating things of spirit using the tools of human perception. How can we really tell the blind person what that beautiful sunset looks like?
Still we continue trying to define the indefinable and somewhere down deep inside there is this voice that says firmly, “Not This!.. Not This!”
Shiva