Satori: "It Was Just Obvious,"- Elizabeth Gilbert

An account of satori by Elizabeth Gilbert, in Eat, Pray, Love: "As a reader and a seeker, I always get frustrated at this moment in somebody else's spiritual memoirs -- that moment in which the soul excuses itself from time and space and merges with the infinite. From the Buddha to Saint Teresa to the Sufi mystics to my own Guru -- so many great souls over the centuries have tried to express in so many words what it feels like to become one with the divine [1], but I'm never quite satisfied by these descriptions. Often you will see the maddening adjective indescribable used to describe the event. [2] But even the most eloquent reporters of the devotional experience -- like Rumi, who wrote about having abandoned all effort and tied himself to God's sleeve, or Hafiz, who said that he and God had become like two fat men living in a small boat--"we keep bumping into each other and laughing" -- even those poets leave me behind. I don't want to read about it; I want to feel it, too. Sri Ramana Maharshi, a beloved Indian Guru, used to give long talks on the transcendental experience to his pupils and then always wrap it up with this instruction: "Now go find out."

So now I have found out. And I don't want to say that what I experienced that Thursday afternoon in India was indescribable, even though it was. I'll try to explain anyway. Simply put, I got pulled through the wormhole of the Absolute, and in that rush I suddenly understood the workings of the universe completely. I left my body, I left the room, I left the planet, I stepped through time and I entered the void. I was inside the void, but I also WAS the void and I was looking at the void, all at the same time. The void was a place of limitless peace and wisdom. The void was conscious and it was intelligent. The void was God, which means that I was inside God. But not in a gross, physical way -- not like I was Liz Gilbert stuck inside a chuck of God's thigh muscle. I just was part of God. In addition to being God. I was both a tiny piece of the universe and exactly the same size as the universe. ("All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop," wrote the sage Kabir -- and I can personally attest now that this is true.)

It wasn't hallucinogenic, what I was feeling. It was the most basic of events. It was heaven, yes. It was the deepest love I'd ever experienced, beyond anything I could have previously imagined, but it wasn't euphoric. It wasn't exciting. There wasn't enough ego or passion left in me to create euphoria or excitement. It was just obvious. Like when you've been looking at an optical illusion for a long time, straining your eyes to decode the trick, and suddenly your cognizance shifts and there -- now you can clearly see it! -- the two vases are actually two faces. And once you've seen through the optical illusion, you can never not see it again.

"So this is God," I thought. "Congratulations to meet you." [My note: As author was traveling in India, many people would greet her in English this way.]

The place in which I was standing can't be described like an earthly location. It was neither dark nor light, neither big nor small. Nor was it a place, nor was I technically standing there, nor was I exactly "I" anymore. I still had my thoughts, but they were so modest, quiet and observatory. Not only did I feel unhesitating compassion and unity with everything and everybody, it was vaguely and amusingly strange for me to wonder how anybody could feel anything but that. I also felt mildly charmed by all my old ideas about who I am and what I'm like. I'm a woman, I come from America, I'm talkative, I'm a writer -- all this felt so cute and obsolete. Imagine cramming yourself into such a puny box of identity when you could experience your infinitude instead.

I wondered, "Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time?" 

I don't know how long I hovered in this magnificent ether of union before I had a sudden urgent thought: "I want to hold on to this experience forever!" And that's when I started to tumble out of it. Just those two little words -- I want! -- and I began to slide back to earth. Then my mind started to really protest -- No! I don't want to leave here! -- and I slid further still.

I want!
I don't want!
I want!
I don't want!

With each repetition of those desperate thoughts, I could feel myself falling through layer after layer of illusion, like an action-comedy hero crashing through a dozen canvas awnings during his fall from a building. This return of useless longing was bringing me back again into my own small borders, my own mortal confines, my limited comic-strip world. I watched my ego return the way you watch a Polaroid photo develop, instant-by-instant getting clearer -- there's the face, there are the lines around the mouth, there are the eyebrows - yes, now it is finished: there is a picture of regular old me. I felt a tremor of panic, mildly heartbroken to have lost this divine experience. But exactly parallel to that panic I could also sense a witness, a wiser and older me, who just shook her head and smiled, knowing this: If I believed that this state of bliss was something that could be taken away from me, then I obviously didn't understand it yet. And therefore, I was not yet ready to inhabit it completely. I would have to practice more.[3] At that moment of realization, that's when God let me go, let me slide through His fingers with this last compassionate, unspoken message:

You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here."

[Note 1: "...become one with the divine" connotes an event, seems rather a dawning realizing that always have been one]
[Note 2: Satori may seem like an event, a happening or an experience, yet it points more to identity. No gap between experience and experiencer.]
[Note 3: So is there a "practice" for not grasping and clutching after your reflection in a mirror? ;)]

Comments

[zenman]

YOU HAVE SEEN THE SECRET OF THE GODS. I CAN SAY NO MORE. WRITE ME IF YOU WISH TO.

[Lion Kimbro]

I always appreciated Douglas Harding's way of pointing to the ultimate. If you have some time, please look up "The Headless Way."

When people understand (excuse me, "experience," because the absolute is not a concept or a frame of ideas,) they have two options: To talk about it, or to not to talk about it.

The dilemma is that if you talk about it, it's like, "Wow! You're enlightened? You made it through the quest that monks spend lifetimes working on? The summit of all religions?" (The social dynamic changes. One route is Guru-ism (whether calling it that or not) and book sales, the other route is less well explored and documented.) And if you don't talk about it, you contribute to the mystification as well, because: Who knows someone who's enlightened?

There are a few main points of consideration I have about enlightenment:

• Can we reclaim use of the term "understanding?" (In preference to the highly mysticalized "enlightenment.")
• And: What about the divine heart?

As for "understanding": Enlightenment is not a thought, it is not a particular idea, or a particular frame of ideas.

Or is it?

I've come to doubt the non-structuredness of enlightenment.

To be clear, I am talking about the observation of the sphere the universe plays in, the "single eye of God," the origin of light and sound, etc., etc.,. This is [a] classical enlightenment. Not a thought, not a memory, not a thing, not a feeling, etc., etc., etc.,. It merely "is," and it couldn't ever be anything else.

My hypothesis is that this is not just a truth, but also an understanding. 2+2 is always 4, but we don't always understand that. Understanding doesn't cause it to cease to be true, and it's not true because it's understood. Similarly, to me, especially when the realization is sudden and fierce, when people are more likely to get emotionally wrapped up in it, -- I think that betrays its nature as an understanding. Sudden realizations are usually fierce, rather than slow realizations or slow dawning, which people also do. There's usually a clincher moment, but it can be a small step or a sudden chink-chink-chink-chink-chink as the pieces all fall into place at once.

And all of this leads to believe: This actually is a built construction in the mind. That is, the term "understanding" is fair.

I have come to believe that one day, most everybody will be "enlightened." But the word "enlightened" is too strong, too emotional, too charged: I suspect it will be on the order of taking a class in school, and, "Oh, I learned about the nature of Consciousness and the Soul." A lot of people have no interest, and I don't know if it can be instilled, but there it is: it's a possibility I consider.

The second point is about the Heart.

In Eckankar, which is a frame I was gifted with to develop realization, they/we say that there are two steps: Self-Realization, and God-Realization. I compared cosmologies with a practicing monastic Vajrayana Yogi, and we correlated these steps as well. It is possible for someone to recognize "enlightenment" as I described above, and still not have located the cosmic Heart. In fact, many practices for enlightenment lead one against recognizing the heart. (Because the practice of removal of all things often times intentionally involves a removal of all desires, whatsoever.)

The cosmic heart is that heart which "emanates" (if you will) from the center of being, the universal locust of desire.

The problem is not so much desire itself, as it is the lower consuming the higher. This is where we get into judgment (a minor character in the saga of enlightenment itself,) and the ultimate judge: the Heart.

No matter how you judge this post, for example, it will ultimately be based in your heart. This is where form is reintroduced, because where Beingness, "as a persona," is isolated from form, a wholeness in the midst of the whirling carousel, the Heart has a very different character. It too is formless (like Beingness,) but it is pointed in the direction of form. It cares, it loves, it sacrifices, it generates, it desires, it discriminates -- towards what is often called "the Divine."

It is this second gate, variously called "God Realization" or "Co-creatorship" or "the Quest for the Divine" or "The Great Work" that I think is neglected (often times directed against) in the sagas that identify traditional enlightenment.

Personally, I've come to refer to what is traditionally understand by "enlightenment" as the "Silver Gate of Consciousness," and the realization of the divine Heart as the "Golden Gate of Consciousness." I like these terms. And there is no end: Recognizing the Golden Gate of Consciousness is just a recognition of the heart; To begin to discriminate the architectures of the Soul, and to strive to act on its natures, is a vast territory.

[Jordan Flipsyde]

When the love letter, do you still remember? The plot of the story is me!!!!!