In my upcoming book, Love and Suffering, I make two bold claims about mystical awakening.
The first claim is that the mystical experience is universal. We are put in touch with a Greater Truth that transcends religious dogma and touches something at the core and heart of every human being.
There is strong evidence that the mystical experiences point us to the fundamental nature of reality, as writings across different periods, cultures, and languages are all strikingly similar. Unfortunately, because the experience is fundamentally ineffable, whenever the human subject comes back down to ordinary consciousness, they use whatever religious symbols they have on hand to describe the experience. This can cause much conflict amongst those who end up disagreeing on their concrete beliefs, rather than unite in an appreciation of the Great Mystery.
I am reminded of the story of the fight that broke out after Kabir’s death. While Kabir’s clear teachings crossed the artificial boundaries of all religions, upon his death, there was conflict amongst his Hindu and Muslim followers. The Hindus wanted to cremate the body, while the Muslims wished to bury the great master. As they tussled and fought, one person grabbed the shroud covering Kabir’s body and pulled it away. In shock, the onlookers did not see a body, but instead a pile of fresh flowers.
The second claim I make about mystical awakening I make in Love and Suffering is that it can happen at any time, at any moment, to anybody. It’s totally random. You could awaken to the divinity in all things after 30 years of intense study and contemplation as a cloistered monk, or on a Tuesday afternoon working the cash register at the grocery store.
Science likes to tell us that this world we experience is stable, measurable, and clear. But this is simply not true. The veils of illusion that separate us from reality-as-it-is are strikingly thin.
The infamous doors of perception are like the house made of hay built by one of the little piggies. With the slightest breeze, the walls can fall away, the doors our flung open, and our egoic identity dissolves into a union with the universe.
In Love and Suffering, I cite the poem The Worm’s Waking, by Rumi, as an example:
There is a worm
addicted to eating grape leaves.
Suddenly, he wakes up,
call it grace, whatever, something
wakes him, and he is no longer a worm.
He is the entire vineyard,
and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks,
a growing wisdom and joy
that does not need to devour.
And write this analysis in the book:
That short poem eloquently describes the experience of mystical awakening. We find ourselves meandering about our lives: going to work, driving home, eating dinner, and kissing our children good night. We seek material pleasures, social connections, daily comfort, a few hobbies, and a bit of entertainment, without much more to think about. But then something happens, we are pulled out of our experience, and the veils of illusion dissolve. Th
is might be random or might occur by the grace of God. Our sense of separateness disappears, and a connection with all beings naturally arises. This ultimate experience puts our entire life in a new context, and afterwards, there is no turning back. The dirt covering the windshield has been cleaned off, and there is a bright world of possibility in front of us.
We see an almost exact experience, simply told in a different way, by the Christian Mystic Thomas Merton’s infamous awakening at 4th and Walnut in Louiseville, Kentucky:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . .
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”
The above passage is so inspirational, I find myself reading it many times over. I also wish we could see each other as God sees us: good. Words will never be able to express the beautiful miracle of this life and the universe seen in another person’s eyes.
As another example of the uncontrolled spontaneity of mystical awakening, consider this passage from the Quaker Mystic Rufus M. Jones, who describes “the walls between the visible and invisible growing thin”:
Another experience came… when I was spending a year abroad after graduation from college. It was at Dieu-le-Fit in France near the foothills of the Alps. I was walking alone in a forest, trying to map out my plan of life. . . . Suddenly I felt the walls between the visible and the invisible grow thin and the eternal seemed to break through into the world where I was.
I saw no flood of light, I heard no voice, but I felt as though I were face to face with a higher order of reality than that of the trees or mountains. . . . A sense of mission broke in on me and I felt I was being called to a well-defined task of life to which I then and there dedicated myself. . . . I was brought to a new level of life and have never quite lost the transforming effect of the experience.
Eckhart Tolle describes his awakening experience in a similar way. He writes in The Power of Now that he woke up in the middle of the night with a deep sense of dread. This had happened to him many times before, as the first 3 decades of his life were full of anxiety and periods of suicidal depression.
Then Tolle had the realization that his pain was from his conditioned self, while he was truly the unconditioned consciousness, and as he writes,
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words “resist nothing,” as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.
I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all.
That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.
For the next five months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss.
You wouldn’t think that a 13th-century Sufi, a 20th-century Trappist Monk, a 19th-century Quaker, and a Modern Depressed man would all write of the same experience coming upon them, but they do. This points to the Universal Truth that we are one with the divine, that everything is right here, and bliss is never more than a breath away, if we are able to touch the breath within the breath.
