The Luminous Nature of Reality
La Naturaleza Luminosa de la Realidad
A question about a sudden experience of seeing another person as pure light, and how such moments relate to the deeper process of awakening.
The Luminous Nature of Reality
A question about a sudden experience of seeing another person as pure light, and how such moments relate to the deeper process of awakening.
Can you say something about experiencing luminous essence?
I'm not familiar with that expression specifically, but I can use my own creative imagination about what "luminous essence" might mean.
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 phenomenally emotional, as if a plunger had come through and everything came out again, but I didn't do anything. It just happened.
Then it was over. My partner came up with the car to pick me up. I sat in the car, and we greeted and hugged. Then I took a look at him, and all of a sudden he wasn't like a regular being. It was light. I could still see the form, but it was light. And then there was this sense of bliss.
I know you mentioned samadhi, and I don't think it was samadhi, but I was wondering what that was. It was a sudden experience of something full of light, and it just descended on me. Then I said something, and he 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.
The shift from form to substance
How I relate to what you're describing is a switching from the mental, from the mind, from form, into the substantive nature.
When we are really attached to form, that attachment can shift gradually, so it goes 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, "Oh, this is God." That's how it was for me in the past, during 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, still experience everything that was manifested. The underlying luminous nature simply became visible and present.
There was also a sense that the "me" would disappear. The sense of a self would disappear, 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 sudden oscillation, until it stabilized into something much more gentle. You could say that formlessness and form became one thing.
I'm trying to validate your experience as a shift into seeing the substantive nature of reality.
What you say makes sense. It resonates. It was so intense, and there were things that shifted. I haven't been the same since. There was a very sudden, sharp shift. So it makes sense that the ability to perceive it was greater because it was so sudden, like the contrast.
Yes, exactly.
Not chasing the state
That's helpful.
Ultimately, 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 actually more real than normal perception.
It's amazing. 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 some resistance and fear. The reality of it gets denied, the call gets ignored. Jesus spoke about many who are called, but only few who respond and listen.
What I noticed about it 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.
Exactly. We want to own it, make it about the self. That's not going to work. It's about the shifting outside of the mind.
The role of emotional work
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: a sense of powerlessness and insecurity, shame, anger. That's the work that helps us stabilize.
It's amazing that I was in these circles for quite a long time before the two were brought together. I could have stayed in just one half of that realm forever and would have been frustrated without the emotional element. It's quite a discovery.
Yes, and without that element, things keep getting pushed into the future. In a sense, the real fulfillment comes when that luminous nature can be experienced in the middle of difficult feelings and emotions. Once that luminous nature is known, seen, and experienced in the middle of what we find to be 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, in a way, and how we resist dying?
Yes, it's all the same thing.
The teacher's prediction
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 and it will totally take over. 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'm a diver, and I have moments of having no air, pushing my body, and I can imagine drowning. I can see it being equivalently difficult: that same sense of, "This is the end, I am now dying." In a sense, today I feel like drowning would actually be easier.
The perfection of it doesn't escape me, that you had this teacher, the perfect teacher to guide you. That's remarkable.
The wild thing is that he said, "Give or take twenty years." And he was right, probably to the day.
It reminds me of a scene in The Matrix when Neo goes to talk to the Oracle. She's in her kitchen, and she says, "Be careful with that vase." He says, "What vase?" He turns around and knocks it over. He says, "I'm sorry." She says, "I knew you were going to break it. That's why I told you." And then she says, "Now, what's going to bake your noodle is: would you have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"
I feel very much related to that scene, because the question is the same. My teacher said it would take about twenty years, and something in my psyche absorbed that. "Okay, about twenty years. I'm going in." But would it have happened at all if he hadn't said so? Would it have happened at all?
He was no longer alive when it happened, unfortunately. But then again: would it have happened if he had been?