Benefits
Journal
…This phenomenon waxes and wanes. It comes forward for a period of hours or a day or two, and then retreats, and the old habits and inclinations resume. I am urged to pick up a pen and record whenever it does come forward and work openly, but I rarely if ever write as it retires (as it always does). The Force’s periodicity in appearance is one of the most puzzling aspects of this event — perhaps our linear minds insist on a linear progression to heaven — but clearly Nature (and Meta-Nature) rarely work in linear terms. And Aurobindo states many times that setbacks, returns, and cyclicity are the rule, for much is to be done.
While the overt experiences wax and wane, it is useful to discriminate between the evidence of the Force’s appearances, and the changes left in its passing. Though the changes are not dramatic, they are notably different and persisting. Examples include — the sense of the “I” being expanded in a spatial sense beyond its past boundaries; the stillness and quietness of the being (even when immersed in or just above the usual train of speeding thoughts) becoming more pronounced and evident; the dropping away of action solely for the sake of action; the two-part division of the being comprised of the doer and the witness; the sense of increased potency of Being inhering in the chest and head, and to a lesser extent the rest of the body; and much of the time, an absolute uninvolved neutral equanimity to all people, circumstances, and events, to the point of spontaneous emotional detachment, even cessation of all emotions.
What is also noteworthy is that when the experience of the day ceases and the Force retires into apparent nothingness and inactivity, I am constantly aware that it has not left. It is still active and working behind the Veil. I know this because I feel it as the high-pitched ringing in my ears that never ceases, and a subtle sort of magnetic tension in my head.
— July 3, 02
The most noteworthy positive change to come out of the opening process has been a new sense of being that intermittently comes forward and radiates, then recedes. This Presence is always silent and still as it blossoms forth, and its arrival invariably evokes feelings of warmth and comfort. Good will and love seem to be natural attributes of the state. When it comes forward, it subsumes my body and personality, like a tide coming in at the beach, and any residual ego-oriented thinking that is negative in nature simply disappears for a few hours.
This Presence has two other notable features. One is its potency and palpable latent power. It is identical with a deepened and “pumped-up” sense of identity. If our normal mental consciousness is analogous to a 60 watt light bulb, the Presence feels like a fluorescent tube, in the sense that the light is very much more intense (though not hard to bear) and illuminating[1], and the consciousness represented by this image of light is more dispersed throughout the body and non-local in nature. At these times, I feel as if I have been released in a larger sense of self, not restricted to two cubic inches in my forehead commanding distant outposts.
The other notable feature of the Presence is its renewal of heightened attention or mindfulness. I had dabbled with meditation in previous years, and had never had much progress with it; my mental talk was so persistent and complete that inner silence and sustained attention, when
they occurred, were only fleeting moments. In short, because of the lack of early success, I had never developed a true meditative or contemplative practice. But one effect of the Presence is to make mindfulness a more or less normal state of mind for me. I still lose the thread of mindfulness when consumed in action and goal-directed behavior, but for most times when these efforts stop, whether at the end of the workday or at the conclusion of some particular project, I naturally and easily move into a realm where a level of detachment, recollection, and dispassionate observation or apprehension is the predominant atmosphere. When the Presence recedes, the witnessing character of my mind sinks, but is still discernible just above the unending flow of the mind stream – the endless banter and self-talk we all engage in. When the Presence actively comes forward, the mind stream disappears, and there is an inner silence and absorption in a timeless stillness. In many ways, it is similar to a proximity to a major river with rapids. Our normal mental ego stances are akin to immersion in the river: the waves and rapids fill our ears and prevent hearing of any other sounds. Our whole existence becomes the river and the noise it makes. The states I am speaking of would be akin to sitting at times on the bank of the river, hearing the water’s voice just a few feet away, but still separated from it, dry, and able to hear and observe other sensory inputs; other times, it is analogous to standing up, and walking away from the bank of the river several hundred feet, where the water’s voice fades to a mere murmur and sometimes far enough that it goes completely silent. In this way, attention has taken on a life of its own: there is a meditative state when I wake in the middle of the night, when I pause for a break during the day, when I am arrested by some image of beauty or innocence. It is not that I meditate; rather that meditation simply happens (or more accurately, meditation is, and I slowly come into awareness that it is already present), and I am the observer of it. It is natural and easy to live in this new world, and much more rewarding than my previous mindset. I have come to regard attention as a form of listening with the being, and this conception has been a useful one to orient myself and deepen the interaction with the unfolding spiritual realms. Prior to arriving at this understanding, it was all too easy to get caught up in inner dialogues with “God” (i.e. a mental conception or representation of a Being separate from this being) that I mistook for prayer; now, I see prayer less as a verbal interaction with the Supreme Being, for this means I am relating from the basis of my mental ego, more as a silent application and attentiveness of my very being to the mystery of the Divine Source and Incarnation beyond me.
Two decades previous to the opening, I went through an event that stressed and broke me mentally. I fell into a state of severe depression. Eventually, the depression passed, but the sense of fragility never did. I passed through another severe depression seven years later, and I was psychically holding the pieces of myself together to function through the period up to the opening itself. Life became a never-ending struggle because of this mental dismemberment; I pulled out of the depressions with medical help, but I never truly recovered. There was always a low-grade dysthymia that stunted and dwarfed any potential for happiness.
One effect of the opening was to fuse the broken parts of myself together again. The effort that I formerly had to invest in holding myself together and making my way through life is no longer necessary. Not only is my being once again singular, but it is also powerful in the sense that outer events, circumstances, or individuals can no longer rush in and impose or imprint themselves on me. Instead, I find a capacity (that still requires moral discrimination and discernment on my part) of radiation to imprint or express on events or individuals in my range of influence. And while my emotional life has flattened out to a sort of neutral equanimity and detachment in almost all respects, this is a far better state than the one I came from. Experiencing depression now seems as foreign and as impossible as seeing the sun at midnight or snow on the beaches of Hawaii. It simply occupies a reality, a frequency that is not part of my orbit any longer. It seems that depression, from this perspective, is an effect of living too much in the head, cut off from the springs of life elsewhere in the body. One thing the opening did accomplish was to blow out those energetic blocks restraining the free passage of energy throughout the body. And one effect of the spiritual energy was to melt, pool, and recrystallize the broken parts of myself.
Additionally, I find that I seem to have acquired a heightened intuitive sense for discerning when I am hearing the truth. Curiously, this was what priest who prayed over me the morning of the opening asked for me – the gift of discernment and the guidance of truth. Formerly, my abilities in this matter were average or worse – in part, because of a naïve wish to think well of all people and the adoption of a generic refusal to believe that I was hearing less than the truth whenever a question of veracity or possible deception arose. I did not wish to judge any individual negatively, and this led to frequent extensions of charity where none was warranted and gullibility when observation and prudence would have been the better choice. I did not understand that it was entirely possible to refrain from judging others and yet still accurately see the truth of their motivations. Now, I seem to hear and discern instantly, sometimes as plainly as the speech itself, where the speaker is coming from, what motivates his or her assertions (it is remarkable how often fear is the motivator), what is not being said, and what the hidden agendas, if any, may be. These new abilities seem more sensitive in discerning when an individual is self-deluded and actually believes a falsehood he is speaking. There is no need to analyze or reflect on these matters; the knowledge arrives instantly, as soon as the words are heard and understood, with no effort on my part. It comes packaged with the dialog. It is as if the Wizard stands transparently exposed, curtain pulled back, even as the phantom image at the head of the hall thunders its pronouncements. Hearing truth has a qualitatively different feel to it. There is an open-endedness to the speaker of truth, an inherent willingness to explore or to questions one’s assumptions, to open, to admit ignorance and vulnerability. In short, a quality of undefendedness is apparent. These characteristics of the speaker are easily discernible by most people. But in addition to the speaker’s traits, the words themselves give away their origins by the quality they are carried on and the spiritual charge they impart. Truth resonates. Untruth merely assaults. Truth resounds; untruths rebound. There is a quality of spaciousness or an aspiration to spaciousness in the words of truth; there is the sense of “bad acoustics” for untruth or deception – that is to say, there is no depth or space to the words; they are flat and solid, meant to hide defend or obscure something, usually the ego, beyond the words. In a word, untruth is opaque.
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[1] For this individual, light is just a metaphor. I do not actively perceive consciousness as light, but rather as presence or weight, depending upon whether I am identified with the state or outside of the state.
Via Perennis 