And so I look down and see this headless aging body and feel the accumulating aches, and even marvel at how wobbly and forgetful I’ve become these past few months. And I notice the thoughts swirling around these daily infirmities that arise: the twinge in the knee, the pain in the chest that is probably indigestion, the worry about a hip replacement that twice has dislocated, the neuropathy in my legs, emphysema, skin cancer, and all the other signs of advancing decrepitude.
And yet, looking back and seeing this Infinite Void that I am that welcomes these ills, I see the rightness of things going wrong. And I see this inside Who I Am, at once the Creator and Experiencer of Myself. And I know beyond a doubt that I am unborn and undying and timelessly healthy as No-thing, prior to space and time and the stories I have fashioned, including this one about a mortal body and mind.
How can I not be grateful for such a gift? Not just for the body and this long life but for the story as well— and I make no excuses for the darkness I perpetrated or the laws I broke for so long. It is a case of dying to the sins of the past and being reborn to the purity of the present. It is the only true meaning of “forgiveness,” and no one else can do it for me. Dying happens every moment, instantly, as does rebirth, and all it takes is one look in the right direction. The absolute perfection of it is mind-blowing, exploding whatever “mind” I thought I had, and the result is love, blossoming as joy. To think I once called something a problem. To think I actually bought into the idea that “Life is difficult, and then you die,” a belief I held so close to my heart for so long, and all the drinking and carousing and crimes I committed during those years, especially after my LSD blowouts in the ‘60s, perhaps to keep from disappearing. Were they problems created unbeknownst to me, that I might back myself into a corner so tight I had no choice but to find the truth? Who, or What, created this story, only to discover Itself? Who else is there?
“Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive.”
―Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
TRIKE
“God is alive, and magic is afoot!”
―Buffy Saint Marie
A friend offered me his bike to ride. Since I hadn’t been on a bike in over 40 years, he suggested I first try it out on the lawn in his back yard. Because of arthritis and double hip replacements, I couldn’t get my leg over the seat or the crossbar, so I mounted from a porch step. The ride lasted no more than 30 feet, most of it while tilting precariously out of control and bound for the rocks surrounding the garden. I’d say the first thing that hit the ground was my head, but from my perspective I don’t have one, although at that moment I had to wonder. There was no pain, only surprise, along with a ringing sensation as if a bell had been struck.
So with the help of a monetary gift, I bought a trike, an adult three-wheeler with a large basket between the rear wheels. Rather than walk with a cane, I could now ride. Everything became mobile, and no longer was there a need to depend on friends or local buses for markets, doctors’ offices, book stores, the library and town hall—everything arrived with the breeze as these upside-down, truncated legs pedaled, right here in this No-thing.
This now has become a meditation. Riding, I am still, watching the trees and bushes and lawns clip by and disappear into this vast Aware Space. There are dozens of bike paths in this city, paved trails winding through wonderlands of greenery, many of them following streams that meander eastward past ponds and lakes populated with ducks and geese. Motorized traffic is forbidden on these trails, and that includes the increasingly popular (and expensive) electric bikes. “Why would anyone buy a motorized bike?” I recently asked a friend. “Why simply coast and miss out on all that good exercise?”
But I must admit there are times I wish I had one, especially when my legs scream with exhaustion climbing the hills at the far end of the countless underpasses built strictly for these trails, underpasses sometimes quickly followed by an overpass. One path follows a freeway some 40 miles, a marathon ride for old geezers like me, but it’s on my bucket list anyway, and someday, I swear, I’ll watch every mile of it pass this way into the One Space of Experience, right here in this stillness that cannot tire.
And of course, while riding my trike I am acutely aware that magic is “afoot.” I’ve no doubt that God is alive because I see what He sees through this great Eye of His and feel his presence in my own presence. And oh, the magic! Total stillness here―forever still―while the world rushes past and disappears. I watch the scenery shuffle by, the near objects passing quickly and far objects more slowly. Buildings grow and turn and pass, while the ribbon-like path on which the bicycle rides, while appearing narrow at a distance, perfectly widens to accommodate me before vanishing into God’s Infinite Eye. And everything happens here, inside. And here’s the kicker—everything that happens here IS this Infinite Eye, manifesting as a world of endless and varied movement. Truly, “magic is afoot,” and anyone can plainly see the same if only they will look in the right direction and drop the beliefs they learned from others, even if only for a moment, and experience the world as it is presented. No wonder Douglas Harding so often said: Come to your senses! Take what you see on present evidence only.
Doing so, seeing Who I Really Am as the One Awareness or the Eye of God, I realize that distance is learned. As a baby, everything was presented in this Space of Awareness, such as my hand or a toy or my mother’s face, along with sounds and tastes and feelings. As I grew older I learned from others the concepts of space and time, and distance became the explanation for separation, not only between two objects but between the acquired concept of who I was in relation to “others,” or “me” and who was “not me.” These concepts became ingrained over a period of time, thanks to my parents and friends and society (according to what they saw from “over there”, which to them was a separate person with a particular name and appearance). So by the time I was ten or eleven years old, I had absorbed an elaborate lie, albeit one that is necessary for socialization, but still a lie. This is the Original Sin, the sin of separation from Who You Really Are, and the cause of countless confrontations and emotional pain. And all the while there is a radical but simple solution: Point at where you thought you had a head and notice that in its place there is nothing but space, space so vast and capacious that anything and everything will easily fit inside, a space that is wide awake and unquestionably lit with a sense of presence, of I-am-ness. The directive is to look, actually drop what you are doing and drop the thoughts and beliefs you have learned from others―and take what you SEE, take exactly what is presented, and in performing that one act, simple and childish though it may seem, there is the return to Truth, the union, or reunion, with God—as God.
Indeed, magic is afoot. Try it. Look back at what you are looking out of while walking or jogging.
Or ride a bike. There’s magic everywhere!
THE MAN IN THE OTHER BATHROOM
Oh! There you are! Jeez, you just wake up? You look awful!
Thanks. I just said the same about you.
Yes, I suppose you did. From over there, that is.
Here or there, what’s the difference? You’re looking in a mirror!
Yes, but you see, you’re over there. You, as the mirror image, are not here. You’re there, in that other bathroom.
Wait a minute! If I’m a reflection, how can I be different than you?
You’re not only different, you’re the opposite! From here, when I look back at where I once thought I had a face, I see that I am perfectly clear. In fact, so clear that there’s nothing here but empty space, lit with awareness—and I’m not saying that awareness is a thing…. Put it this way, what I see here in place of a face is a sort of awake nothing, an awake capacity for the scene, and right now the scene includes this wall and sink and mirror, and of course, the sink and wall and you in that other bathroom over there.
Well I don’t see anything of the kind.
Of course not
, you’re an image, a thing, an object in this awareness that I am. You have no separate existence. Your “life” is this appearance here in awareness.
You could say that about everything, and everyone as well! That sounds like a bad case of solipsism, if you ask me.
On the contrary. It’s a good case of solipsism, the kind that envelopes everything and everyone in the love of pure awareness. It’s the all-inclusive solipsism of God, as opposed to the radical self-centered and exclusionary solipsism of one who believes he or she is a separate individual and all others are objects to be used for self-aggrandizement.
Say what you will, it’s blasphemous to compare yourself to God, or worse, to call yourself God.
What else could God be but this open, capacious, undying awareness? The real blasphemy is the belief that one is a separate person, and one who happens to be very much in charge. One who thinks he or she calls all the shots.
So how else am I different?
For one thing, I noticed that you never blink. And of course, you’re facing the opposite way, not to mention that you have a face and I don’t. You’re also turned inside-out, and you’re considerably smaller. If I measure you with a ruler at arms’ length, you’re less than a foot tall! I, on the other hand, have no borders or boundaries, and am so vast that absolutely everything fits within me, within awareness. I am infinite, and can say with confidence that I am capacity for the universe.
What about other people’s awareness? How do you juggle that? I want to hear this!
I’ve never seen another awareness, especially another awareness in another place, as if that were even possible. Search the world over, another awareness will never be found. Remember, awareness is not a thing. It doesn’t conform to space/time parameters. It’s what space/time happens in. It’s infinite because there isn’t another awareness to compare it to. It’s singular for the same reason. And even “infinite” and “singular” are conditional descriptions in that they cannot apply to that which is prior to conditions and descriptions. Conditions and descriptions apply to things, and again, awareness is not a thing. It’s empty and formless, but awake. That’s the best I can describe it. Or leave the “I” out of it, and let’s say that that’s the best it can describe itself.
For me, that’s no description at all. It’s gobbledygook.
Yes, well, welcome to the world. You and all but a very few have no desire to lose your beliefs. If you did, you’d lose the very world you think you’re in. In fact, forgetting Who you really are and what you’re really like is the only way to have a world to begin with. It’s the Great Game, totally necessary in order to have a “personal history,” a “life,” even though Who you really are—pure awareness—has no personal history, was never born and can never die.
How do you figure? Countless people are born and countless die every day. You have to be blind not to see that!
I see that there. You, for instance, were born nearly 80 years ago, and will likely die in the near future. But what I see here is entirely different. Here, I see absolutely nothing, no-thing at all. Here, exactly where I am, there is nothing that can die. Only things—objects in space/time, and no doubt space time itself—arise and pass away, some in nanoseconds, others in billions of years. And as I’ve said, awareness—“awakeness”―is not a thing. Neither is “presence.” These terms cannot be objectively defined, but they are obvious when subjectively seen.
So look back at what you are looking out of. Do any of the pointing exercises (see my book The Light That I Am, or any of Richard Lang’s wonderful books, or visit The Headless Way website), and have a look, not a think.
But what about these other people you mention? What about all the objects, the things of this world? Or the world itself? You’re saying that you’re the only one who isn’t like this? The only one who isn’t material, who isn’t mortal?
That’s what I’m saying.
Okay. So basically, all beings—humans to amoeba—are like me, and all things, every scene that passes through your awareness, is like me, an object.
Not my awareness. Just awareness. There’s no one here, so there’s no one to claim it. It’s not a personal quality that I or anyone else was born with or somehow magically began to radiate from the brain when a certain neuronal complexity arrived during fetal development or after birth. It has no qualities, comes from nowhere, and never ends because everywhere and everywhen is within it. It’s spaceless and timeless. It has always been and always will be, always HERE/NOW. And yes, all objects are like you, an object, passing through. It’s why I love you.
You love me? Me, the object that you once said “follows you around a lot”—how could you love an object, even if I’m so familiar?
For two reasons: First, you, like all objects in the empty awareness that I am, are inside me. In other words, you are so profoundly a part of me that you and all objects and the world itself are all I can say I am in manifestation. You are what awareness is in manifestation. I manifest as the scene—and right now it happens to be you standing in that other bathroom staring at me. So how could I not love you? You’re inside me! I am you, all I can be at this moment, and this moment is all there is!
The other reason is the opposite, and just as important. I love you because you show me what I’m not! I am not a thing, an object. I am not what I look like over there. I am what I look like to myself, right here, when I actually look. You are what I was told I was by others, beginning with my parents, my close relatives, my friends, my school, and just about everyone else right up to this day. You are what for so many years I believed I was, which was a lie. Like practically everyone else, I was hoodwinked as a child. But now I see—actually see—that I’m not like that, not like you. Not here where I am. Thus, you are more than valuable to me. You do me the great service of pointing out Who I really am by displaying who I’m not. Oddly, you are the bearer of truth, my salvation, the gift I can never do without. For this, I love you.
Wow! You made me smile!
Yes, I feel that here.
So then I’m okay. All the things I’ve done in this world, good and bad, and surely the bad outweighs the good, have been for this. To show you Who you are and who you’re not, which when you come down to it, are essentially the same.
Yes.
So I’m saved also, along with you?
Yes, absolutely. You become me. You are my teacher, as is everyone and everything else, and at the instant of recognition as to Who I really am, you also become what I am. Actually, you were always that. You were never an object, a separate entity in a vast and implacable universe. You just thought you were. I am you. You are what I am, and you were never anything else.
Jesus the savior, dying to self and thus saving all from sin.
Exactly. Dying to ego-self and becoming Who he really was, thus saving the world. It’s the same in Buddhism. When the Buddha became enlightened, all beings were said to be enlightened. The reason, of course, is that there are no other beings, no separate selves, nothing that intrinsically exists outside of empty awareness. Jesus and Buddha and many others recognized this. It’s all within, all internal. The universe is an appearance in awareness. Some therefore say it’s not real. But it is. Everything that appears in awareness is the only “reality” there is. It’s just not where we think it is, nor what we think it is. It’s not “out there,” as in “I’m here inside my body and the universe is “out there,” and I exist as an individual in it.” On the contrary, the universe is a manifestation of awareness, always appearing right here, in awareness. The two are never separate because they are the same—awareness, and that which it is aware of. And since you mentioned Jesus, it might be helpful to remember that the real meaning of “sin” is “separation from God.” Or as I would say, existing apart from empty awareness, from Who I really am.
Okay. But soon I need to get ready for my day. Disguised as you, of course. Maybe I should brush my teeth. I’d say that you should brush yours too, but I know what you’ll sa
y.
Like, “What teeth?” Yes, I see you and others cleaning their teeth, but from my point of view, I bring the brush forward and it disappears into this aware space, and suddenly there is the taste of mint.
Sounds nutty, even childish, doesn’t it?
Yes, to anyone relying on their intellect. But awakening has nothing to do with intellect. Relying on one’s senses is the way in. Remember, it was Jesus who said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:2-6). The point is, you are already awake, you have simply forgotten. So yes, it sounds childish, but children, particularly babies, haven’t yet been told that they are what they look like from someone else’s perspective, someone like their mother. But mother is not where baby is. Mother is where she is, and because she believes she is a separate self-existing entity and she sees her baby as “over there,” she conveys to her baby that this is what her baby is also, a separate entity. Babies know nothing of the sort. All there is from a babies’ perspective is pure openness, filled with all manner of fleeting objects—rattles, nipples, the ceiling, mother’s face, and so on. Babies are already awake, the natural state, though they don’t know it. So yes, as you said, it sounds childish, and for good reason.
Coming to Nothing and Finding Everything Page 9
