I find you in the silence of the ‘I’ that is never there, and I know myself in the certainty of your undeniable presence.
I hear you in the encounter. I encounter you in the silence, when the ‘I’ no longer speaks and no longer acts.
There, in the midst of action and word without the separated self; there, in the union of the one who acts and the one who observes; there we are silence, act, and naught.
My mother ocean, maybe she’s hoping one day to have swelled so much that one tip of her womb would breach the infinite ocean above and become one.
One with what? It does not know. It only knows that one day long, long ago it must have come down from that big, big, big heaven. One day it, the ocean, was only a drop that came down from that roaring, infinite vastness of which the sun and the moon are just two tiny creatures that play with her, that penetrate and pull her, making her give birth over and over again.
One day––and this is for sure to happen one day––she will also die and become one once again with the oceans whence she came. Then she will forget herself as the waters above swallow her whole, and her consciousness and vision become stretched way beyond her capacity to know, to think, to remember, and to be.
And so, every star, and every galaxy, and every God one day too will dissolve into the vast, vast ocean-void whence they came.
That part I know. That part I remember.
What I don’t know and cannot know is why that vast ocean of mother Binah swells once again and sets me forth into this harsh and vast light. Why again am I down here where I forget, where all I know is to yearn, and to love, and to desire?
Not even having the memory of what it was, I only have the pain of the yearning; and out of my soul, the depth of my being that has no name, no memory, no ego, nothing… but out of the depth of this pain, the memory of my origin pulls me, and the presence of God penetrates me day and night. In thought and in silence it pulls me. And out of me comes, now as a thought, then as a whisper, this little impulse to go back.
Go back… Go back… This impulse… This thing in my heart of hearts that wants to swell up, flutter up, and become and know what is there outside myself.
I do not have a name for myself. I simply exist without tag or form, moving without comparing any one moment with any other moment.
There is just a presence in the liquid movement all around, the flowing of the fields of light, the forgetting the words and their meanings. There is just the peaceful communion with the reality that extinguishes all illusions.
Abiding in this state I forget that there was such a thing as the world. I forget the mere possibility of existence, of sound, of light, of movement, of time. I forget, living in this eternal space, that there is a word for that space. I forget the opposite of what is. I forget the distinction between self and it.
In that forgetfulness, a slight vibration surprisingly comes. It happened, and it went. I almost missed it, almost feel that it did not happen at all. Maybe it did not happen. Maybe that slight stirring comes only from within to put a tiny mark on the perfection of that infinite silence. Maybe it’s just a habit that I have accumulated over countless dreams of existence––a slight distortion of the darkness.
It comes. It goes. It’s a whisper of silence.
I let go, slowly but surely, all ideas of God, of eternal peace, of definitive knowledge. I let go of the idea that this person will love me forever. I let go of my name. I let go of my title. I let go of the ideas that I held on to. The more I see the emptiness––the expansive presence of the ocean covering and holding the light of every star––the bigger this nothingness becomes, and the more I fail to grasp on the stream of self-important thoughts.
Ordinary life, then, becomes the dream that vanishes upon the awakening of the soul. It no longer matters what happens to me in this life, in my previous life, and in all the chains of incarnations. I am no longer concerned with what will happen to me today, tomorrow, next year, after rebirth, after that life, in other incarnations. That stream of movement and happenings, I know it to be nothing but the subtle vibrations of a mind that moves, of a life that stirs, of the fire of existence.
In this emptiness I forget myself. In this emptiness, the entire drama of existence becomes as nothing but the flickering lights, the little shadows that come across the eyes when sleeping. It no longer becomes important, that life. There no longer seems to be a difference between being human or animal, rock, tree. It no longer seems different to be word or breath, to be flower or bee. I can no longer put my finger on the difference between being mountain or poem, between being the fluttering butterfly in the heart of a young girl or being the industrious burrowing of an anthill.
There is no longer an important difference between the radiant light flowing from the heart of the sun and the lightning strike flowing through a path of emptiness, emanating, spreading light and death. There is no longer any difference between any one thing and any other thing.
I abide in this state of not being; at union with the eternal presence; at-one-ment through the floating, deeply refreshing sensation of being a simple center in the womb of the mother; growing in eternal peace and sleep. I revel in this sweet dissolution in the forgetfulness of life and death.
I hear the empty spaces in between the words,
like empty spaces between cars of a moving train,
like the sound of rain that falls
on the rooftop of my grandmother’s house.
It falls.
I hear.
Drops of rain carry no meaning;
a drop no more important than any other drop.
I hear my thoughts.
They come and go.
River of movement, river of life.
I do not grab one to follow.
No importance to it all.
All concerns about this body,
of karmic debt, of life before,
are no more.
They grab nothing.
They move and carry nothing.
They appear and nothing contain.
I live, I go;
and when in between thoughts, I die.
And nothing stays.
It is pertinent to say that we are sitting in a room, surrounded by four walls. Outside the walls there’s a world of people, and lights, and darkness. We receive the subtle vibrations, the sounds that come from the world. And as we move together this world outside begins to fade away slowly, like the remnants of a dream just before beginning to awake.
Above us there is a ceiling, beyond which the vast space and the infinite stars thereof continue into an endless expanse, seemingly unmoving, serene, peaceful; giving a hint, to the eyes that see, of an ocean of infinity.
Below us there seems to be a floor of solid mass; made, of course, mostly of empty space and small particles of vibrating energy–below which lies another ocean of fire and magma.
We seem to be in a room of four walls, divided and separated above and below from oceans of rock, and mud,, and fire and space. We sit in this room where the darkness and the light, the shadows and subtle currents of air, circulate between us. We sit in this room, sensing the presence of one another–the polite quiet attention of an observer. We sit in this room in a brief moment of time, sharing a space, sharing a moment.
Think of a dream you are having. You project yourself into that dream. That projection is a double of you, an avatar that is native to the dream environment. You are creating both the dream and the dream self that inhabit that realm.
If you identify with that double, you act and feel as if that is your only reality.
To be aware of both the dream and the one who is outside the dream allows you to loose your form, and to exist beyond the limits of your dream.
To withdraw your identification from the dream double is to wake up, and to find yourself in the wake world–which itself as a dream to the eternal void beyond all dreaming and experience.
The being who says “I am”, implied in every sentence, the being that observes, that hears, that sees color and light, sits in the shadows between the worlds.
If I look within the source of attention, trying to find the I Am, the I Am retreats even further. When I think I’ve grappled it, when I think I have surrounded the I Am in a web craftily and carefully constructed with meaning and concerns, when I say “Ah! Here I Am!,” the I Am becomes smaller, more remote, more in shadow.
I look for the I Am, realizing that the one who searches is also the I Am, forever retreating yet always at the center of the experience.
The endeavor of philosophy is to come to the end of thought, to be able to burst through the fogginess of mind into the silence–the nothingness. If you understand this, you would know that out of this silence no question comes. The question is the result of a confrontation with the silence, with death. The question can be the result of fear, the mind attempting to cover the silence with chatter, or it can be an attempt to become awake in the silence. And if one knows this difference, truly, one can perhaps come to a liberation from the trap of the mind.
The way most of us ask questions comes from the emptiness of not having an answer. The way the Philosophus asks questions comes from the answer. The way the uninitiated speaks comes from division. Yet, the question of the Philosophus comes from the unity of opposites. The answer is contained in the question as the speech in the silence.
It is there. At one point, if we manage to continue this Philosophical Inquiry, one will come to understand not only the end of thought and not only the use of language, one would also perhaps come to understand and know that the Philosophus is to utilize language as the mathematician utilizes numerical formulas–in that a mathematical problem contains its own solution. In that same manner a philosophical question contains its own answer.
To engage in a true philosophical question is to extract from it its own resolution, which means its own death. For in engaging with the question there is the death of the question. In that sense, philosophy becomes magick. Because inevitably we come to see ourselves as the most important question that this mind is posing. Out of this question, its solution emerges–solution in the mathematical sense and in the chemical sense.
This process puts false ego to the side and in the center something truer. It implies a more mature engagement of language. For the language of the Philosophus is not about validating oneself, about fears or identity. The game became wider. Now you’re dealing with the archetypal language of the human race.
When we engage with a philosophical inquiry, What is that which wants to know? Is it not the mind? Who asks the question? Who is asking this question? Is there an expectation for an answer when this question is asked? What would satisfy this question?
The mind who is thinking creates the I who thinks. I think.
This I who says “I think” wants to be a real entity. A real thing. But the I who says “I think”, “I want to know”, “I wonder”, “I want”, is the result of thought. “I am Mexican”, “I am Peruvian”, “I am Argentinian”, “I am American”, “I am White”, “I am Black”, “I am male, female”. This I who speaks, this I who asks questions, the I who wants to know, is that I not the result of thought? Is that I not the one that keeps talking and asking?
The mind is aware of itself. And the mind continues to negotiate its existence. It wants validation from others. It wants confirmation of its own existence. It creates anything to feel that it exists. It creates depression. It creates confusion. It creates anger. Just to prove that it exists. But it is the product of thought. And this mind which creates thought, which creates ego, wants to argue. It wants to prove itself. It wants to be heard. It wants to be validated. It wants to ask questions. It wants to understand the answers. But is this ego, this I, not the result of thought? Does it exist beyond thought? Does it exist without thoughts?
