Y2ism.net

All That Is, but Nothing In Particular

I ordered a new book from Amazon this week, You Were Never Born, by John Wheeler. After reading a physics article (that I can’t find now) calling him a “poet physicist,” I began a search for books by theoretical physicist and Einstein collaborator, John Archibald Wheeler at Amazon. Instead, You Were Never Born by a totally different John Wheeler came up. It wasn’t what I was lookin for, but it had all 5-star customer reviews, and the first one, titled, “Probably the purest teaching I’ve come across,” intrigued me. It talked of a technique of spiritual teaching using “pointers” as a method to allow one to see one’s true nature. It is a recent book from a field known as Non-dualism whose principles were familiar to me, but whose name was not. On reflection, my very nickname, Y2, is a kind of non-dualist question/statement. Why two? Since of course, there is only one. This is the central precept of non-dualism in reaching its purpose, self-knowledge.

I’ve only read the introduction and have not yet gotten to the meat of the book, the dialogues, but already the book has affected me. Particularly Wheeler’s contention that there is no effort, special place or time, or work that needs to be done to reach true awareness of the truth of existence - what he and non-dualists call presence-awareness. Since presence-awareness is always what we truly are - it does not fade or change from waking to sleeping or due to changing emotional states or thought processeses - there is nothing that needs to be done to become aware of it. From this perspective, the very idea of enlightenment is a falseness and an impediment to reaching for what need not ever be reached for. So the logic of non-dualism goes, if enlightenment is a state that one must reach that is not currently attained, then a separation is required, which is against the aim of a non-dual state. The non-dual state is described as the consciousness or awareness that every experience, thought, emotion, and object of the world rests on. All of these are illusions of separation while the truth of awareness is infinite, unchanging, and forever.

At least, thats what I can describe it as at this early point in considering the teaching or pointers that John Wheeler has laid out. So far I’ve found the act of simply acknowledging (accepting? appreciating?) the state of being-awareness that is beyond thought and emotion is, as one questioner posed, a bit like a dog chasing its tail. Wheeler writes that the mind cannot process or think this state of being. It is not a concept. It is beyond thought. A fascinating proposition, but as of yet I must admit to difficulty in recognizing this state without cognition.

However, I do believe there was a time in my life that I may have been in acceptance and peace with this state for a moment and perhaps now look back on through the corrupted data of memory yet now understand on a clearer level. It was the morning after a truly mind-bending night on acid that peaked in a hedonistic high of celebration and dance in a Costa Rican gazebo by the sea with dancers from all over the world coming together in a tight, sweaty knot around a perfectly rendered jungle-tinged breaks set that remains perhaps the greatest dancing experience of my life. Everyone was completely connected to the music and each other in an early human tribal state that exists before global culture and differences.

Then, at the very heights of this experience, as we were flexing the wooden floor of the gazebo’s raised, octagonal floor in unison, S came running up to drag me down the stairs off the dance floor and frantically alert me that all our stuff had been stolen from the rental truck. Still fully tripping on the acid I departed the dance scene suddenly and completely to assess the situation. Both I and D were severely traumatized and in opposite states of crippling thoughts and words of blame, which I found myself dissolving in each with all the love and determination my heart and mind could muster in the pre-dawn light of a party that had just ended in an instant. I was somewhat shocked to see it was enough to diffuse the situation and after some fumbling and recognition of the ridiculousness of the situation (and finding that only my bag -with laptop- remained while everyone else’s belongings in the car had been stolen), we were all sitting around the big, polished wooden table in the back laughing at ourselves and feeling like the bemused stars of our own Central-American cinematic adventure story.

But after a time I felt the need to step away from the group and walked out through the stand of palm trees to the beach. Sunrise was approaching and I found a seat atop a log in a position that felt like the perfect center of the crescent shape of the beach which wrapped around me in a visual embrace. I surveyed the twinkling stars, purplish-blue sky, gently crashing waves, and swaying palm trees. Something pure and forever filled the moment and place. After a short while S came out of the trees and sat beside me. A V of Pelicans flew over the sea. Crabs scuttled amongst the pebbles and sand at our feet. I found no words but, “It’s perfect.” S agreed but without the joy and excitement I was feeling. Hers was more of a “yes, its perfect, but so what?”

The perfect duality of our presence on the crescent beach filled me and I felt as if the essence of the yin and the yang had sat upon the beach and the universe was smiling back in a moment that I felt would not so much last forever, as define what forever truly is. In that forever moment the peace and totality of the universe and the earth, of life and the unliving, of existence and non-existence itself was as clear as i’ve ever experienced it to be. The gentle indifference that The Stranger speaks of at the end of the book became clear and was the source of an infinite peace that washed over and into my being as the waves metronomically crashed and receded against the beach in their eternal play.

At the time, I assigned that state of gentle indifference and eternal peace that I experienced to the Universe. The universe had spoken to me and I had received its ultimate message. But I now see how desperately my mind has clung to a dualist perspective in making sense of the experience. Perhaps there is a non-dualist context for better understanding my experience on that beach and bringing it into every moment of my life, my existence. Perhaps it was not the universe speaking to me, in a speaker/audience mode of separate interactions. Perhaps in that moment I touched my true nature and what my mind believed to be the Universe was in fact the truth of my presence-awareness that is all that is, but nothing in particular. The gentle indifference at the base of all experience, all existence, and the truth of the infinite nothing that is not out there, nor in here. It is simply that which is, and I am that.