Substantiality and the Fear of Dissolution
La sustancialidad y el miedo a la disolución
A question about whether we are also emptiness leads into an exploration of substance, ponderability, and the ego's resistance to its own dissolution.
Substantiality and the Fear of Dissolution
A question about whether we are also emptiness leads into an exploration of substance, ponderability, and the ego's resistance to its own dissolution.
So does that mean that we are also emptiness?
Yes, empty and full, but just not objects. You could say that, but it is subject. If everything is a subject. Not subjects, because then those are separate objects that you call subject. But if you say everything is one subject, then that approximates something more correct. If you follow that through, the sense of a subject makes no sense if everything is subject.
Yeah.
And so I prefer the word "being," because "subject" has a really strong implication of object, whereas "being" implies non-being, something that is more intuitively impossible.
It's the difference between a verb and a noun. The noun is unchanging and stationary, like a concept set in stone, with boundaries. So in the beginning, it's boundless.
Yes. Words like consciousness, awareness, reality, being: they point to something closer, more intuitively aligned.
Emptiness as corrective, not as belief
We are emptiness. But when you believe you are form and only form, the realization of emptiness is needed to contrast form as a belief, because the belief in form supports the belief in separation, in objects, in absolute reality. In Buddhism, they talk about the recognition of emptiness, but it is only in the service of removing the belief in form. So if somebody is going around believing they are empty, that everything is empty, and that there is no form, then they need to remove the belief in emptiness. But that is more unusual. A lot of the teachings point to emptiness because people in general believe in form and separation.
More and more today in non-dual circles, though, there is a belief in emptiness, a belief in non-separation, and people walk around carrying this belief. It is very easy to spot when somebody has a belief in non-separation.
How do you spot it?
It is just seeing. It is pretty obvious. There is no formula for it.
Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about.
So that emptiness, when you are saying "then we are also empty," it is an emptiness that is full. It is empty of boundaries but full of substance.
Sorry, full of what?
Substance. There is an expression I love, and I loved it decades before I even had any grasp of its meaning: "Substantiality is inversely proportional to ponderability."
Say it again, please. I need a repeat.
Substantiality is inversely proportional to ponderability.
Could you talk more about what you mean by "ponderable"?
Ponderability and substance
It is anything you can turn into an object, anything you can talk about, anything you can separate from something else. It can still be abstract, like having control or not having control. But to your question: yes, we are empty, but substantial.
For me, it took quite a bit of time, because I was talking about a substance and experiencing it, and the best word I could use was "substance." It took me months to connect it with that statement, because I had forgotten about it. Then I realized: that is the word. That is right there. Nobody was talking about the substance. I actually got on a call with a well-known teacher and asked him, "But it is all a substance, right? It is just this substance, because I don't hear anybody talking about it." And he said, "Yes, yes, this is something." And I thought, okay, thank you. Nobody is talking about the substance.
Can you say anything more about substance? I know you are making it into something ponderable, darn it.
You make it into a ponderable thing. Well, your experience right now of being: it is substantive. The knowing of that can be experienced so directly, like how you had this experience of your hand. That is going from ponderable to more substantive. From "my hand," with a story, an object, a history, to this large blob of sensation that has a more substantive quality: a presence, an energy, sensations. Versus the image of a hand that is there, that has a function, that is part of me, that does things, that feels this way. That is more ponderable. The direct, raw experience of those sensations is more substantive.
You can think of the inverse equation as going toward infinity. Something can be infinitely closer to ponderable and less substantive, or vice versa: infinitely closer to substantive and further from ponderable. What is being defined is a mathematical aspect of reality. When we are experiencing and functioning from the perspective that things are very ponderable, we are further from substantiality. When we are operating from the mind, we are further from what is real.
When I hear you use the word "substance," this is the sense I get. The ponderability, or mind, or whatever you want to call it, comes and goes. But substance feels like this big, thick liquid of what everything is, and it is always there, constantly dancing or whatever the word is. When I think of substance, you cannot see it, you cannot put your finger on it, and yet it is the most solid thing and the most constant thing. There is something about the word "substance" that feels like a much more direct experience than "presence" or something like that, if that makes sense.
The ocean metaphor
Yes, "presence" is another word, but if "substance" resonates more for you, I have experienced it as presence. Substance is more like an ocean, which is why the ocean is such a common metaphor. Something that is more ponderable would be a wave. Waves are referred to as something more ponderable: there is the boundary of that wave, then there is that other wave, then there are little waves and bigger waves. But if the universe is an infinite ocean, then there is a substantive quality to it, and you cannot define any border. That is a good metaphor, but it can also be experienced directly, known directly.
Did that experience of substance hit you all at once, or was it gradual?
The substance coming through
It started hitting me as a teenager, and it would knock me out literally. I was having what seemed like blackouts. But it was not a blackout. I would be sitting, and then I would have this experience of that substance coming up, and I would faint while still sitting. I would not fall, and I would have visions. I went to the doctor because I thought something strange was happening.
Not much later, when I had more of a direct sense of it and after I had met my teacher, I recognized that those visions were basically my mind switching off and going into the dream world to preserve a sense of identity, rather than dissolving into that substance. I was too uninformed, too young, too weak of mind to survive it.
Over time, it started becoming more and more present and more intense. I had conversations with my teacher about it, and he was simply asking me to go toward whatever invited that direct experience. But the more that became my experience, the more I felt it was overwhelming, because the more that form of experiencing or being became present, the more the sense of self was threatened. That is what, a few years ago, basically took over. After that, the foundation of reality is that substantive nature, and then form, the ponderable, is just floating around.
From your story, I go straight to this: here you were, and it was very difficult, and you were blacking out, and it was overwhelming, and there was a certain resistance there. Yet another example of "that is where the treasure is, go for it." It is incredible.
Yes. My teacher told me, "It has been chasing you all your life. Your destiny has been chasing you all your life, and it finally got you. You have been escaping."
It was basically like being caught between a rock and a hard place. The more I followed my desires to live, the more that substantive nature of reality started to bubble up and become present. So it was this back and forth. The more that bubbling up of substance became present, the more I tried to pull away from terror. It was twenty, twenty-five years or more of that back and forth.
That sounds pretty general, though. What they say about the ego having to be strong enough to face it. It seems there is no way of not resisting.
The ego cannot not resist
It is that way. The ego cannot not resist, because that is the definition of what the ego is. But what can happen is that it can be surrendered too early. For me, there was some kind of intuitive or deep intelligence where whenever it was too close too soon, the pulling away was strong enough to work on being more prepared.
At some point, what happens is that you feel completely unprepared, completely not ready, completely trying to resist, and none of it matters. You have no control, no power over it. It is like a fruit on a tree trying not to fall, but it is growing, growing, and then the little twig starts getting weak, and the fruit is saying, "No, no, I am staying here," and then it just cannot hold on. There is nothing that can be done. Down it goes.
Samadhi and the trust to face death
What was interesting for me, which I do not fully understand, is that in anything I can describe as a sequence, there was first the recognition of nirvana, or samadhi. At the egoic level, that calmed the fear of death enough so that when that substance came on really strong, I think at a deep level there was a trust that was new.
That was because of my teacher. The first time I went to see him in person, on the second or third day, I entered samadhi. I do not know exactly what to call it, but I can describe it, and I am fairly confident that is the right name. Over time, at the level of ego or identity, that experience created a trust where death could be faced more fully. Because what we are talking about is basically like dying. The mind cannot distinguish between the body dying and the ego stopping for a moment. It is still experienced as going toward death. There is no way the mind can distinguish between them. It is the same thing. It is going to be experienced as, "I am dying."