[Drifter]

aka "The Current of Ambrosia", or the Nectar of The Gods.

and That can Be cultivated/inculcated . . .

I Who Speak

Sometimes As I Write, the 'I' becomes "We” and yet remains 'I.'
There is a Consciousness which, while It remains One, is a symphony of harmoniously blended parts.
I write, and I watch myself writing.
I Know, and yet I wonder at the knowing.
I am the student and, at the same time, I am the Teacher.
As Teacher, I stand in Majesty looking upon the world below.
As student, I look up humbly and amazed.
I speak and, presently, there blends with my voice the melodious Voices of Others.
One Meaning in many tones is unfolded.
So the tones of the seven-stringed Lyre are all sounded; one here another there, in groups and, finally, all together.
And before this Melody I sit entranced, filled to the brim and more.
I who Speak none will ever know until, on that final Day he finds Himself, when I appear in all My Glory.




Dr. Franklin Merrell Wolff

Love
Drifter

Originally Posted by Bob Campbell

Hi Pat,

Are you sure that your awareness was being erased of just the normal phenomenal content of awareness that we tend to identify with? There is a sense in which "I" is distinct from "me". We tend to identify me with a physical body that is part of this physical world.

I'm sure that you know that out of body experiences are common in near death experiences and they find confirmation with actual events when the people involved return to their bodies. Dr. Moody was one of the first to report on them in his book "Life after Life.” I have also met a few others who have had them come spontaneously as an intrusion in their normal experience. Have you read the Gopi Krishna's book published in the 1970's "Kundalini: Evolutionary Energy in Man"? He tells a remarkable account of what followed throughout his life as a result of two out of body experiences followed by many other paranormal experiences that eventually permanently transformed his conscious perceptions.

In my case what first happened to me was not an out-of-body experience although it began with seeing myself as other than self in a state of living ecstatic union. Over the following five days or so everything was bathed in an ocean of living light. The infinite complexity of everything I looked at was visually apparent as but seething froth on an ocean of living light in this state of continuous ecstatic union of an organic kind. It was joyous beyond description and yet mundane and perfectly balanced. There was a subjective component of being in union with all living things in intimate appreciation of them. Then it turned around and I saw the other side. This brought me to the Void which was explicitly demonstrated as the empty side of transient forms. I was standing in a room fully conscious and very alert. Everything vanished, including my body. I was one with the Void. This is what is generally interpreted as nirvana, especially in Zen, from what little there is about it in the literature.

I have come into personal contact with a few Zen Roshi's who promote the view that all is illusion. To my mind the way they interpret it is self-contradictory, since the statement itself must be an illusion, and they deny that valid experience transcending the Void is possible. That is easy enough to do if they have had no such experience. All I can do is testify to the fact that such experiences are inherently not deniable. They are not hallucinations. They do not arise organically. Everyone is free to believe or say whatever they want to of course, but to be true there should be some basis of confirmation in phenomenal experience in either the private or public domain or both. The experience of the Void is truly awesome. One is One with all being. But there is nothing in the experience to substantiate the opinion that there is nothing possible that can transcend the Void in phenomenal experience. I know this from many such experiences.

That there is a reality that transcends and subsumes the Void and thus the whole of this physical creation could be interpreted as this life being a kind of illusion but life is certainly relevant as a learning experience. How we come to a sustainable balance with the cosmic order certainly has an influence on our ultimate spiritual destiny in a transcending reality. I do not believe that there are parallel physical universes, but I have seen and been shown that parallel non-physical realms of phenomenal experience are possible. Indeed we are here to make a contribution to one that is associated with the evolution of life on this planet. Many ordinary decent people who have never had spiritual experiences do contribute in positive ways. Organic death need not mean psychic annihilation.

The supreme intelligence that explicitly communicated to me the structural dynamics of the cosmic order employed the energies of Void as a medium of communication. He transcended and subsumed the Void and with it the whole of creation. With this supreme omnipotence he could suspend my normal perceptions of physical creation and show and demonstrate whatever he wanted via the medium of the Void. We shared in common universal consciousness in these experiences and I could generally entertain no independent thoughts from what he willed. No phenomenal experience of any kind was possible apart from Him. These cosmic insights never came through meditation practices and they were clearly distinct from spiritual experiences of an organic kind. They came many times, especially in the early years when I was working continually to develop a way to make rational sense of the revelations. They were always profoundly awesome. They always came in unexpected ways, and they were always relevant in some specific way in response to questions I was deeply focusing on. It is fair to say that God only knows why this happened to me in particular. I am a very ordinary man with my fair share of shortcomings like everyone else. Anyway you can read more on my site at www.cosmic-mindreach.com if you are interested.

Very best wishes,
Bob