One moonlit night

One day I was driving from my home in Hawi to my work in Kealakekua. The issue of death suddenly entered my mind and I remembered something Ramesh had mentioned. He had said that death was a natural occurrence and really nothing other than an expression of nature. The concern about death arises from the perspective of the personal or egoic consciousness, which has an investment in its continued existence. Enlightenment, he said, was the complete dissolution of that separate individualized consciousness and the return to the underlying impersonal consciousness. In fact, he went on to point out, the whole idea of re-incarnation and even life after death, is conceived from the perspective of that individualized personal consciousness, the ego, which attempts to project its existence into the future. In that moment something slipped, it was as though I had suddenly gone over a precipice; the sensation was like riding a roller coaster. In that moment I became directly aware that the personal consciousness has a terrible fear of death, of not existing, and the amazing and laughable thing is that it really doesn’t exist in the first place.

A couple of years later I’d returned from India. I’d been home just a few days. Our home was on the northern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii at about five hundred feet above sea level. Our house was situated in the middle of some cattle fields on the edge of an eroded grass covered volcanic vent, completely isolated from any other habitation and with ocean on three sides. On the particular night in question we had a full moon and the trade winds stopped blowing, the night was calm. I had fallen into a deep sleep.

Several hours later I woke up and from my bed I could see the moon reflecting off the water between Hawaii, and the volcano, Haleakela forty miles across the strait. As I lay there I became aware of a great deal of tension in my body. It was as though it was vibrating with a kind of restrained or defined energy. It dawned on me that what was being experienced was the subtle vibrational energies that comprise the body itself.

Shortly afterwards I became aware that everything around me also vibrated, wood, stone, the grass in the surrounding fields, and, flesh all with characteristic vibrations peculiar to each of them. My wife was sleeping beside me and I could feel her vibrations as well. As I observed I found myself looking down at the bed, the house and the island, it was as though they were in me. —I must add that I had many years before experienced leaving my body, but this seemed quite different—I found myself wondering, who is this “me” that was observing. Immediately I became aware that the me was an intense circumscribed, strongly vibrating noise, that was somehow an unnecessary constriction of consciousness itself. It was clear to me that the underlying consciousness was restricted by the structure of the personal self, the personal consciousness.

As I watched, the "me" dissolved and as it did I sensed, became aware that is, that all I am, and all I have ever been and all I will ever be is awareness, consciousness itself. As this awareness took hold I witnessed with a deep love and compassion all the people on the planet. They were like ants that crawled and scraped across this beautiful blue spinning place we call home. Each one exhibited the noisy cacophony that was the egoic consciousness, each one bent on fulfilling the intentions of this sense of personal identity. From this it became obvious that God's “Lila” came into existence.

In this realization was the awareness of the rise of conflict and war and its counter balancing force. As I looked down at the planet I could feel the tension, the collective vibrational forces of the life of the planet and around it and above it was the discordant and natural energy of the collective egoic consciousness.

As I continued to observe, the planet receded and I saw the moon, other planets and spiraling galaxies being born out of me, out of the totality of consciousness that I am, and then I witnessed them dissolving into me again. This happened, over and over again. It was as if they were being born out of my belly and returning to it. Here, I was both the potential and actual consciousness. From the void that I am, the universes were being born and the world of form was taking place, deep within me.

The awareness that all there is is consciousness, all there has ever been is consciousness, all there will ever be is consciousness and I am not separate from that was unshakable. It was a fact, and I had always known this; it was written in the very heart of my being, and then somehow forgotten, obscured by the personal consciousness I had mistaken for myself. Thus it can be said that nothing new is attained, nothing new is learned when enlightenment happens.

The humor of it struck me deeply and I found myself laughing quietly. It was so simple I had missed it all those years and now the magnificent and wonderful nature of reality was revealed in its utter simplicity. It was what I am and what I have always been. This of course is true for all human beings, all life forms, without exception whether realized or not. The sense of “I” is not personal but universal. The experience, if that is what it could be called, was one of profound compassion, of an unshakeable immovable love that has never not existed.

Death had become irrelevant, simply an illusion, all there had ever been and all there ever would be was life, consciousness itself and within it all, the ego would make its billions of appearances like winking lights over the vast expanses of space and time.

A deep and abiding peacefulness had appeared with the dissolution of the egoic consciousness and, despite the outer turmoil’s that occur from time to time, has never left. I fell into a deep sleep and when I woke in the morning the awareness remained.

I would suggest that it is this that all seekers are seeking. Those who experience this awakening will all describe it differently but beneath the difference of words it is the same unshakeable reality.