The Vanishing of Doubt

Q: I have moments of doubt, in which I wonder if this isn't all just one big rabbit hole we dive into. So much seeking, so little finding.

A: That's the primal doubt in seeking, isn't it; the doubt of all doubts. We start out wondering if the whole affair isn't just a fairy tale. Then, as we have our own direct experiences, we become clarified in some ways, but perhaps even more confounded, overall. Each seeming revelation brings with it a legion of further questions. This is the nature of “knowledge”. That was certainly my experience.

Union-Samadhi,
and the Advent of Intoxication (Dissolution and Bliss)
in the Ongoing Experience of Being

I experienced Union – what Hinduism calls nirvikalpa samadhi – only a week after seeing my first teacher, back in 1981. Heaven. I truly believe it's what Jesus meant when he said that the Kingdom of Heaven is within. And thereafter, my heart was imbued always with a touch of Union's Unalloyed Ecstasy. This is what I mean when I write of “Bliss”; the Ananda of SatChitAnanda, of Formless, Unmanifest Pure Awareness.

Bliss is not “shakti”, which is a subtle-physical “spiritual” energy that arises in manifestation, and then moves from the lowest chakra to the highest as we “progress” through our spiritual blossoming. Bliss shines from Formless Pure Awareness into manifestation, and in my experience, did not move, but took up residence in the locus of the Heart and remained there, ever available. Through all that has unfolded since it first began shining in the Heart, it has never moved. It has ebbed and flowed… becoming the soft, ambient background of Being when Attention moves “outward”, then welling up powerfully to greet Attention when it returns from its outer movement, and rests in its source. But it has never left the Experience of Being.

Bliss was unmistakably a touch of formless Union's Unalloyed Ecstasy, shining into this Dream of manifestation. All I had to do was “remember”, or relax Attention, and Bliss would well up in my Heart, like a sun suddenly shining more brightly, or The Beloved running to embrace her prodigal Lover. And in that welling up of Bliss, the felt sense of “i“ would dissolve, along with the sense of space, time, and objects; never completely, as it had in Union, but to some extent, more or less so, each time. The welling up of Bliss and the dissolving of the world of manifestation (including “i” as the experiencer) were each an aspect of the other, like heat to fire or wetness to water. Inherent in the experience of Bliss was the dissolving of the “experiencer”.

Bliss' Ecstasy shone ever more brightly as “i”, and the world, dissolved. And so, it would seem logical that if I had continued to relax Attention ever more deeply upon Bliss's welling up, manifestation would have eventually dissolved completely, back into nirvikalpa samadhi. But here's a very odd thing, a Catch 22; Bliss filled the Experience of Being with such Fullness and Completion that there never arose a desire to “push further” or “try” to enter Heaven. Heaven shone here, in this Dream of Manifestation, in the Locus of The Heart. It's as if the tiniest drop of Bliss somehow, impossibly… contained the Whole Ocean of Pure, Formless Being.

If Brahman is formless Pure Being, and Atman is Brahman paradoxically individuated in our manifest form, then somehow the Atman had become, to some extent, at least, unobscured, and shown in the Heart; Atmananda… the Bliss of the Atman.

Sounds pretty wonderful, doesn't it?

But…

The Lingering “i”

When space, time, and form reappeared that day in ’81, from nirvikalpa's formless Pure Being… so did the terrible contraction of the felt sense of “i”. Nirvikalpa hadn't dissolved the unbearable suffering of selfhood, and I found myself in an impossible conundrum. For 22 years following nirvikalpa and the advent of Bliss, “i” persisted.

Nirvikalpa had removed all doubt concerning the reality of Existence prior to manifestation., and there was no doubt about the reality of experiencing, always, the Bliss of Pure Being. What remained was doubt about "Liberation", the vanishing from the Experience of Being of the felt sense of “i”; doubt that such a thing was truly possible, and even more doubt (stemming from the very existence of “i”) that it could or would ever come about here.

And over the course of those 22 years, ever-increasing doubt was joined by its cousins, Hopelessness and Despair, which became, after a time… near Absolute. I remained a "person", confounded beyond all reckoning by the shining presence of Bliss in my Heart, and the memory of Heaven, of Pure Being. I remained a wave upon the Ocean, which, it seemed, would never break and resolve itself back into its source.

Some unstoppable momentum carried “i” forward, perpetuating that contraction. Samskaras? Vasanas? Past karma?

In the deepest Experience of Being there was the Shining Heart of Bliss' Fullness and Completion. And yet, impossibly, concurrently, on the “periphery” of Being… was bondage to the felt sense of “i”. If you're having trouble understanding how both of these experiences could co-exist, it's because the nature of this condition of Being simply cannot be explained properly, short of experience.

As those 22 years progressed, the situation did not get progressively “better”. Rather than feeling a gradual diminishing of “i”, it seemed to coalesce into an ever-intensifying knot of psychic nausea that I could actually locate, somewhere near the navel center. And even as Bliss shone across the whole of Experience, so did this “virus” spread a dark light, concurrently, across the whole of Experience. I felt I was going insane. I reached a point where continued existence as “i” was unbearable, regardless of Bliss' concurrent shining. I simply wanted to stop existing. I mourned that the body breathed in again after having breathed out. All hope had vanished, and I lived, impossibly, in a concurrent condition of Bliss and Bondage.

Near the end, Bliss became so vast and Oceanic in my experience, so overwhelmingly intoxicating that I could barely function, could barely do my work. And also, near the end, the ever more intensely sickening knot of “i” was felt as a piece of flotsam, adrift deep in the depths of that Ocean of Bliss. Forgive me for using a metaphor from the 60s, but it was as if “i”, which had once existed as a field of marijuana, had been distilled down to a small, but unimaginably powerful piece of hashish; small, locatable, but more painful than it had ever been as a broad, loosely-defined field.

This ever-increasing intensification of polarities increased for a year or so, until… one day in June of 2003, 22 years after nirvikalpa… the felt sense of “i” vanished.

Liberation

In the vanishing of “i”, the experience of Oceanic Bliss across the whole of the Experience of Being seemed to… to disperse into everything, everywhere. Although it remained a glimmering Light in the locus of the Heart, it was no longer as acute and powerful in its shining there. It was, instead… a soft, gentle ambience. What remained was what I came to call “Serene Emptiness”.

Where “i” had formerly been felt, there was… nothing. I felt as if I'd lost an immeasurable weight, and the warm air from the open window moved… right through me; for there was no felt sense of an object there to obstruct it. I now use the term Unlocatable Aliveness. For Experience-Existence-Aliveness was, but without the ancient pain of the intercessor “experiencer”. This is where the use of the word “I” becomes confusing, if not properly understood.

The Corpse Decomposes

During the first year following this “Liberation” from “i” – a grandiose sounding, but wholly appropriate term that may or may not be what the sanskrit term “moksha” refers to – intense samskaras and vasanas came up; moments of sorrow, anger, horror, despair, so intense I felt I couldn't bear them. They would arise in a flash, without apparent “outer” cause, with uncommon intensity, only to vanish utterly and completely, leaving no residue whatsoever, in a matter of minutes or even seconds.

But… they arose to no one. They qualified no one. They were experienced as simply the movement of energy, a non-personal, natural occurrence in the nature of things, like a rock breaking apart from eons of sun, wind, and rain, and the pieces rolling down a hill; like wind blowing through the trees and producing a sound; like water flowing, carrying leaves and twigs along; or heat rising off of the pavement on a summer day. They were the effects of endless unremembered causes, in an endless stream of causes and effects; each effect, in turn, a cause. They weren't always “pleasurable”, to be sure, but whatever their nature, they had nothing to do with “me”, with anything being “wrong” with “me”, or anything needing to be “fixed” in “me”. My only concern was that no one suffer as a result of those arisings. Fortunately, they only arose when I was alone.

In the second year following Liberation these arisings diminished, and eventually vanished, except for the rarest of instances. Perhaps “purification” or “integration” or whatever you'd like to call this continues. If so, it's generally “under the hood”, and unnoticed. My guru tells me that some of the uncommonly intense arisings I experience now are also the results of samskaras and vasanas. In any case, I've no idea about such things. I only know that whatever arises, however powerfully… I no longer feel “i”.

Emptiness Deepens

The felt sense of Emptiness deepened over those two years, to the point that it even lost its quality of being “Serene”. It became ever more Absolutely… Empty. Concerned, I spoke to my guru about it, and he said, “Emptiness will increase, and then will come power.” (oddly, I never asked him what he meant by “power”). Just as he said, Emptiness continued to increase; so deeply that it seemed to push Bliss ever more into the background of experience, an ever softer ambience; not gone, but softened.

As the maelstroms of arising samskaras and vasanas decreased over those first two years, and Emptiness increased, and Bliss moved further into the background of experience… a strange thing happened. The sorrow of the world began to pour into the Emptiness of the Experience of Being.

The Sorrow of the World

The pouring in of the Sorrows of the World started slowly, with uncommonly intense reactions to seeing suffering in the news, or anywhere. And over those two years it grew, until I would find myself bursting into tears in a flash – just as I had felt the samskaras and vasanas during the first year – for no specific reason. But this Great Sorrow, as I came to call it, did not vanish completely after arising, but lingered, and slowly grew, like water slowly filling the Emptiness of Experience.

I began to have a recurring image in my mind of a woman with a shawl over her head, holding a tiny baby close to her chest, looking backward at some unthinkable horror, fleeing with her child into the wilderness, running from desolation into desolation, into possible death from exposure or starvation. This image was the archetype of Suffering, and it was not simply an image… for the feeling of it filled my Being.

Throughout the day I would see the weary expressions on the faces of so many, and have to fight to hold back the Heartache and tears. I saw the functioning of the "human condition", the movement of desire and fear… everywhere.

One day, at the end of those two years, it all reached a crescendo, and I sat wondering at the nature of my Experience of Being. The Great Suffering of “i“ was gone and I could not feel “myself” anymore. But… this ever-deepening Emptiness had pushed Bliss out to the frontiers of experience, had pushed everything out… everything… out.

In a moment of simple clarity, the obvious became apparent… I was not Happy. The Emptiness of Being had not filled with Bliss, as I had expected. Rather, it had grown ever more unbearably Empty, and had filled with the Sorrows of Manifestation.

I was… not… Happy.

And so… a new doubt arose; the final doubt. What good was the Unalloyed Ecstasy of Union, of Heaven, and all that it had taught me; what good was Liberation, the vanishing of the Great Suffering of “i“ from the Experience of Being; what good was Illumination with Bliss, the Bliss of Pure Awareness shining into manifestation… if there was not Happiness?

And that, of course, begged the question, “What is Happiness?”

The Reason to Live

I sat on my knees and prayed, to no one, to the air, to a Divine Mother I did not believe existed. This Experience of Being, this ever-deepening Emptiness, now filling with Unbearable Sorrow… however Blessed it was compared to the bondage of selfhood, was not my Heart's Desire, was not what I had Longed for all of my life. I was inexpressibly Grateful for Liberation, and for Illumination. It wasn't a lack of gratitude. But this ever deepening Emptiness…and this Sorrow… this Great Sorrow… pushing out even Bliss. In an irreconcilable confusion of immeasurable Gratitude and Crushing Emptiness… I actually wondered at a reason to keep living. For whatever one might call this Experience of Being, it was not my Heart's Desire.

I sat there, and tried to think of a reason to go on. I found nothing. I burst into tears so powerfully that I bent over and sobbed, and sobbed, breathlessly.

And then, in my mind… I saw her. Just a mouth. A smiling mouth. A smile of… Happiness. It was no one's mouth that I knew. Just a woman's mouth, smiling in Happiness. Somewhere… here… in this World of Sorrows… she was smiling in Happiness. And without thinking, forgetting in a timeless flash all that had consumed my Attention, such Love welled up, an uncontainable desire for her Happiness. “Yes, dear,” I said out loud, between sobs, “You be Happy. Be Happy, sweetheart. You be Happy!” My Heart Exploded in Compassion and Love… for everyone… everywhere… now… and forever.

Breathless with Love's Shining Sun exploding in my Heart, as I'd never felt it before, I realized that my prayer had been answered. The reason to be alive? It had nothing to do with my Experience of Being, whatever it may have been. Love… the Happiness of Others, was the reason to continue existing. Now I understood the words my guru had spoken, years earlier, as I sobbed to him about the intensity of my sadhana; “You were not born for yourself, Charles.” None of us are.

And in that moment the floodgates of Heaven opened, and the Sorrow of the World was pushed out of the Experience of Being by a veritable tsunami of Bliss, of Love, and there began a great filling up of Emptiness… with Fullness, with Completion, with Bliss. And I became, in the deepest Heart of Being… Happy. For Happiness is not a thing in itself. Happiness is a quality, an aspect of Love, like wetness to water, or glistening to gold. And Love is a quality, an aspect of Bliss, which is the nature, in experience, of our own Formless Pure Being embracing Itself in and as manifestation. The Embrace of Shiva and Shakti.

And Now?

What of doubts, now?

Now, as before, there is no doubt about our existence as Pure Being, prior to our arising in and as form-manifestation. Now, as before, there is no doubt about the possibility of living with the effortlessly ever-present Bliss of formlessness shining into form.

Do I have doubts that "Consciousness", as the advaitans say, is the Ground of Being, that it's the "same Self in all", or that it's "limitless"? I have no doubts because I don't care. Believing one way or the other is irrelevant to Liberation, to Illumination.

Do I have doubts that what remains when "i" vanishes is what the Buddhists call "Emptiness"? I have no doubts because I don't care. Believing one way or the other is irrelevant to Liberation, to Illumination.

I have no doubt – experientially, not conceptually – that all that appears, appears both within what I am, and as what I am. What am I? I… have… no… “idea”. I call it Unlocatable Aliveness, because “I” cannot be located anywhere, and yet, “I” am Alive; not as something that is alive… but as Aliveness itself. Of that, there is no doubt. All the rest is concept… theory… and conjecture.

I don't feel myself expanded as all that is,
A part of everything, and everything a part of me.

Nor do I feel myself as “That” within which all arises,
The Absolute, everything arising within me.

I don't feel “myself”…
At all.

There is only… This.
Sat · Chit · Ananda.

Existence · Conscousness · Bliss