The Luminous Nature Behind Form
La Naturaleza Luminosa Detrás de la Forma
A question about a sudden experience of seeing another person as pure light, and how such moments relate to the deeper work of emotional integration and lasting freedom.
The Luminous Nature Behind Form
A question about a sudden experience of seeing another person as pure light, and how such moments relate to the deeper work of emotional integration and lasting freedom.
Can you say something about experiencing luminous essence?
I'm not familiar with that as a specific expression from any particular tradition, but I can use my own creative imagination about luminous essence.
I'll tell you what I'm talking about, because it happened to me and I've been wondering about it. I never really wanted to talk about it because I didn't want to make it into an identity. But I've been curious. It was after a retreat in April. It was a phenomenally emotional retreat. Everything came out again, but I didn't do anything. It just happened.
When it was over, my partner came up with the car to pick me up. I sat in the car, we greeted and hugged, and then I took a look at him. All of a sudden he wasn't like a regular being. It was light. I still saw the form, but it was light. And then there was this sense of bliss.
I asked you about this because you mentioned samadhi. I don't think it was samadhi, but I was wondering what it was. It was a sudden experience of something full of light. It descended on me, and then my partner said, "Come on, I'm hungry, let's go eat," and bang, it was just gone. In an instant.
That's not samadhi. There are many kinds of samadhi and things can get pretty academic, but the one I was describing is the one I've found to be the most perfect match for what I've glimpsed, experienced, and realized. It's called nirvikalpa samadhi. That's different. But let me talk about what you're describing.
Shifting from form to substantive nature
To me, what you're describing is a switching from the mind, from form, into the substantive nature of reality.
When we are really attached to form, that attachment can shift gradually, and so it can go unnoticed. Then over time you might realize: compared to last year or compared to last week, something is a lot more spacious and light and loving, and there's more well-being. Or it can happen suddenly. And then there are all the in-betweens. For some reason, my nature has been more of the sudden kind: really contracted, and then, pow.
So I relate a lot to what you're describing. You can also have a naming or interpretation of something around divinity. If the shift is really sudden and everything is suddenly seen as that luminous nature, it's very easy to name it as, "This is God." That's how it was for me in the past, in the times when it was more sudden. I would just see everything shining. There was a light, and everything was completely one being, connected. But I could still experience form. I could still experience everything that was manifested. The underlying luminous nature simply became visible and present.
The terror of dissolution
There was also a sense that the "me" would disappear. The sense of a self would disappear, the mind would disappear, and there was just experiencing, just divinity. And then there would be a sense of terror. This is why it was so intense for me, this back and forth. A sense of terror of disappearing into that. Too much. Too much bliss, too much light. And then the contraction would come back.
This happened a lot throughout the years, this kind of sudden shifting, more and less, until it stabilized into something much more gentle. You could say that formlessness and form became one thing.
But yes, I'm trying to validate your experience as a shift into seeing the substantive nature of reality.
What you say makes sense. It resonates, because it was so intense, and I haven't been the same since. There was a very sudden, sharp shift. That makes sense: the ability to perceive it was greater because it was so sudden. The contrast, exactly.
Yes.
Not chasing the state
Does the goal become going back to that state?
Ultimately, no. The goal, if any, is not to go back to that state.
That's why I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to even hint to myself that I should go back there. I just wanted to understand it.
It's just important to know that what you experienced is real, and in fact is more real than ordinary perception.
It's amazing. But in that moment, it felt that way.
It does. It's very intuitively, obviously more real. What can happen then is that some people, the unlucky ones, will reframe it as some kind of weird moment, dismiss it. But that's usually resistance and fear. The reality of it gets denied, the call gets ignored. Jesus spoke about the many who are called, but only the few who respond and listen.
What I noticed was that the ego wanted to own it. Like, "This says something about me." That's why I didn't want to talk about it, because it doesn't mean anything about me. I just wanted to understand the phenomenon. It happened, it's over, but I didn't understand it.
Right. We want to own it, make it about ourselves, and that's not going to work. It's about the shifting outside of the mind. And often a lot of emotional work is needed, because we go back to our refuge, our contraction, because we cannot sit with certain feelings that come up. I always say fear and pain, but it's all forms of that: powerlessness, insecurity, shame, anger. That's the work that helps us stabilize.
The necessity of emotional work
It's amazing that I was in these circles for quite a long time before the two were brought together. That amazes me. I could have stayed in just one half of the realm until the cows came home. I don't know what would have happened, but I was certainly frustrated without the emotional element. It's quite a discovery.
Yes, and that's what keeps things getting pushed into the future, into time. In a sense, it continues until that luminous nature can be experienced in the middle of difficult feelings and emotions. Once that luminous nature is known, seen, experienced in the middle of what we find most difficult, that is freedom. That is liberation. Because things are difficult only because we resist them. When that luminous nature is known in the middle of what we find most difficult, that is the end of resistance. The end of resistance is the end of the separate self, and so on.
Does that tie back to what you were saying before about dying, about how we resist dying?
Yes, it's all the same thing. When I described that substance to my teacher, he got super excited. I didn't understand why at the time, but obviously now I know. He said, "Get close to it. Become its friend. Get as close to it as you can. You're going to run away, and you'll stop it and control it. Resist that as much as you can. And then, if you're lucky, you will lose all control over it. It will totally take over, and you won't be able to stop it. If you're lucky. And then you will either go crazy, die, or wake up."
It's like being dropped into the ocean and letting the water come into your lungs.
Yes, exactly. I dive, and I have moments of having no air, pushing my body, and I can imagine drowning. I can see it being equivalently difficult. That similar sense of: this is the end, I am now dying. And in a sense, today I feel like drowning would be easier.
The paradox of prediction
The perfection of it doesn't escape me, that you had this teacher, the perfect guide.
The wild thing is that he said, "Give or take twenty years." And he was right. It was probably to the day.
It reminds me of a scene in The Matrix when Neo goes to talk to the Oracle. She says to him, "Be careful with that vase." He says, "What vase?" turns around, and breaks it. He says, "I'm sorry," and she says, "I knew you were going to break it. That's why I told you." The exact line is: "What's going to bake your noodle is, would you have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"
That's very much how I feel about my teacher's prediction. He said about twenty years, and something in my psyche was like, "Okay, about twenty years. I'm going in." Or would it have happened at all? Would it have happened at all if he hadn't said it? The clock was ticking from the moment he made the prediction. I feel very much related to that scene.
Was he still alive when this happened?
No, unfortunately. But again, would it have happened if he was?