(Part 1 & 2 here)
So, as I was saying before getting lost in gonzo journalism, I know, I know, it's always hard to learn that something you don't care about doesn't exist.
So, as I was saying before getting lost in gonzo journalism, I know, I know, it's always hard to learn that something you don't care about doesn't exist.
As it turns out, and because I've traveled extensively to look for them, there are some people who care about this. Apparently, even someone as sharp as Bill Hicks used to actively aim at getting enlightened. And he's not the only one. Most of the people I've encountered in the recent years have some sort of link with the concept, whether they are yogis, monks, intellectuals or therapists.
Since I haven't been asked to clear the subject once and for all, let me rant for free on the subject. Oh and full disclosure, I can't really talk about it because of an official NDA pertaining the uselessness of such an endeavour. Yet, there's something that has been experienced which I think was some sort of dip into the unnamable. There's no pride in this, I would be completely unable to have anything to do with the occurence of this sort of inner thunder that left me - and the life associated with me - completely worn out.
Since I haven't been asked to clear the subject once and for all, let me rant for free on the subject. Oh and full disclosure, I can't really talk about it because of an official NDA pertaining the uselessness of such an endeavour. Yet, there's something that has been experienced which I think was some sort of dip into the unnamable. There's no pride in this, I would be completely unable to have anything to do with the occurence of this sort of inner thunder that left me - and the life associated with me - completely worn out.
1. Why would anyone think about it?
Despite the common nature of light, enlightenment rarely means the inquiry of intelligence. It most often than not is used to incorporate all sorts of hopes and beliefs and sadness and hopelessness. For instance, when PLFI (people looking for it) go to a conference slightly related to the subject (the core teaching of Buddhism), everyone laughs with the guy who says: "you can not get it if you are looking for it, you can not force it, and it's highly unlikely that anyone here, including me, ever gets there". Everyone laughs because no one wants to admit that yes they are somehow hoping that it will happen to them.
Weirdly, no one questions the competence of the guy who says he doesn't know what it is but still talks about it as some real thing. Guys, I've just not come back from Saturn, can I talk to you about it?
So well, everyone has a different motivation. Dissatisfaction with one's life could be a good starting point - is that all there is? It seems that spiritual endeavours often emerge out of utter despair. To me it felt like giving up on the very idea of living whatever life was in front of me. I felt a profound disgust for the requisites of modern life because of my natural arrogance insatisfaction with everything we don't talk about - conformism, never speaking one's mind, the destruction of nature, etc.
2. Why would anyone want to experience something like that?
Just like any strong experience, some people tend to seek The Great Bliss of Truth. They are PLftGBoT. The sad thing about it it that it works like the ultimate craving - the one that you might never fulfill, but might sacrifice everything to get there. The ultimate surrender. Surrender.
After he experienced a complete shock of the brain, and being introduced to an out of time experience - I guess, somehow similar to electroconvulsive therapy, or a form of epileptic seizure, the unfamous Krishamurti, U.G., felt this was a "calamity". For several days, he didn't identify with his body, he had lost a lot of his spatio-temporal abilities. He was like a reset man. He had to ask everything, to learn the most basic things again. His body modified. The name, the appearance of the person was the same, but it just wasn't. What was before had been erased, even though he could remember it, and later continue to live as if there had been continuity in his existence. But there was a bottomless gap, which psychiatrists might find worrying, especially given I'm obviously talking about myself and not him.
The description fits a lot of the traumas some people describe. It leaves them with a feeling of vast emptiness, and whatever their previous lives were, they have a hard time adapting to it. But unlike outward inflicted traumas, so-called spiritual experiences seem self-inflicted, and differ greatly for they operate like a torrent of energy, a form of epileptic seizure.
For a glimpse, and because of a deep-rooted refusal of any form of satisfaction of the self (apart from basic needs) that expresses itself in refusal of all (severing the ties with your surrounding, your job, your family, your tastes, everything that confers a form of solidity to your self, etc.) there is less feeding, and the overused image of the water mill is deprived of flow. Those who have talked about it have excluded themselves from the usual race of life. To some degree, they were obstinate in their demands for truth - being rather radical, to such an extent that they had given up all forms of hope - even that of reaching anything. If one stays calm until the mud falls down, and then a bit more, that thing which PLFI are looking for happens.
In the case of U.G. Krishnamurti, he came from a rather rich family, and studied for most of his life, yoga, philosophy, etc., until one day he was in Switzerland, checking one of the last bank accounts in which he had some money. He sat in Saanen, watching the beauty of the landscape, and nothing was watching, the questions seemed to empty themselves. He then felt a thunderous wave of energy taking his whole body, from nowhere, out of nowhere, and there was no one watching, interpreting, thinking "ah I'm having this experience". It came and went, and after that, several parts of his body begun to get swollen. His whole being transformed from the inside. He had to learn the basic stuff again: what is this? A fork. Why is this like that? Not that he was brainwashed, but everything that had been accumulated had lost its ground and could not be taken for reality. He himself didn't think any of that should be translated in a message to mankind. He believed that his physical transformations could be of interest for some psychiatrists in Geneva, but apparently not. He continued to live with a Swiss woman between Switzerland and India, and would talk about this to anyone who would want to hear some things, but never bothered to feel messianic, unlike other 20th century people like Jiddu Krishnamurti.
For a glimpse, and because of a deep-rooted refusal of any form of satisfaction of the self (apart from basic needs) that expresses itself in refusal of all (severing the ties with your surrounding, your job, your family, your tastes, everything that confers a form of solidity to your self, etc.) there is less feeding, and the overused image of the water mill is deprived of flow. Those who have talked about it have excluded themselves from the usual race of life. To some degree, they were obstinate in their demands for truth - being rather radical, to such an extent that they had given up all forms of hope - even that of reaching anything. If one stays calm until the mud falls down, and then a bit more, that thing which PLFI are looking for happens.
In the case of U.G. Krishnamurti, he came from a rather rich family, and studied for most of his life, yoga, philosophy, etc., until one day he was in Switzerland, checking one of the last bank accounts in which he had some money. He sat in Saanen, watching the beauty of the landscape, and nothing was watching, the questions seemed to empty themselves. He then felt a thunderous wave of energy taking his whole body, from nowhere, out of nowhere, and there was no one watching, interpreting, thinking "ah I'm having this experience". It came and went, and after that, several parts of his body begun to get swollen. His whole being transformed from the inside. He had to learn the basic stuff again: what is this? A fork. Why is this like that? Not that he was brainwashed, but everything that had been accumulated had lost its ground and could not be taken for reality. He himself didn't think any of that should be translated in a message to mankind. He believed that his physical transformations could be of interest for some psychiatrists in Geneva, but apparently not. He continued to live with a Swiss woman between Switzerland and India, and would talk about this to anyone who would want to hear some things, but never bothered to feel messianic, unlike other 20th century people like Jiddu Krishnamurti.
3. What's even the point ?
For a while, I felt like TTPALF (This Thing People Are Looking For) unrooted any form of anxiety because it made the whole adhesion to any product of the mind impossible, the personal and local mind. So things were just passing by. Anxiety would be just one form of physical reaction, but there was no real self to experience it, as if all of a sudden, you could be the skiff in the tempest and the tempest itself, and the ocean, and everything else. You would try to make the skiff survive, but for no real reason - no sacredness of life, no duty, no dependence to other people's feelings. Life didn't have to have a meaning - who could determin what it was, and how could it not be a fleeting thing. Rather, to paraphrase Alan Watts, the point of the dance was the dance itself. You would survive because well, you just would. Nothing was to be dismissed as "not good" or "not enjoyeable". The mere idea that life should be this or that made no sense. So yeah, whatever there was was, in a sense, good, but not morally. So any strong emotion would just occur as a form of chemical reaction to other things: frustration, lies, the nourishment of fake ambitions, anything, really, that mistook reality by putting the self at the center ("I should really be this or that, like this or like that"). Gradually, though, the denial of superfluous needs became a habit - always easier - so that I could turn into an empty ectoplasm.
I recently hugged a PLFI, and the coldness of his/her body made me realize that I too would turn into this if I didn't uproot all the anihilating associations that I built, to make me a good and wise and slightly out of touch person (like the absence of any form of pleasure, the fear of imposing any form of trace upon the world, disguised under humility and altruism). I seemed to be worth it because I had the most sincere, enriching, life affirming discussions and encounters, and I somehow had the feeling that people would allow themselves to be open with me - especially when I was no one. It felt like I had finally settled in this peculiar role of the one who isn't really part of the tribe - excluded, but vital. I thought I finally understood some of mythology's main themes: the dissolution of the self in the greater Self, and the coming back, with all the traps associated with it: the temptation of thinking of oneself as beholding the truth, the narcissistic compensation, the will to remain in Noone's Land, and all the depressing and suicidal dead ends one can go to.
I met many people on this weird time - many happy marginal people, and a lot of people who had the hardest time to adapt, again. Some would go batshit crazy, sorry for that, but I could think of no other word. Others would be unable to get back to normal life, with its constraints, and would fantasise a world of perfection and bliss that remained shut to them as long as they would strive so much. Some would try to annihilate themselves, through punishment, starvation, moralism and bigotry, and I didn't even begun to entertain you with my nail clippers collection!
I met many people on this weird time - many happy marginal people, and a lot of people who had the hardest time to adapt, again. Some would go batshit crazy, sorry for that, but I could think of no other word. Others would be unable to get back to normal life, with its constraints, and would fantasise a world of perfection and bliss that remained shut to them as long as they would strive so much. Some would try to annihilate themselves, through punishment, starvation, moralism and bigotry, and I didn't even begun to entertain you with my nail clippers collection!
And now, I realize the cost to all of this. Not to mention aging and the fact that you feel how you slowly fall into pieces and it will soon be a bit late to change things (no matter how much you've contributed to the assemblage), but there's a risk of idealism that grows - or rather, an ideation, an overinvestment in something that is no longer there, but that one recalls for the sole purpose of masking the sad truth: that my bank account gets almost no input while friends of mine are reaching confortable status. Or, in general, that one is likely to become like these small mountain stream, rarely visited, rarely listened to, and drying up, not because they are worthless, but because no one is there to enjoy their chant.
And since one of the things I got from this experience is that there is no merit involved, no exclusive access negotiable, I don't really know why I should even talk about it. All the more that most religions, especially buddhism, have already tried to narrow down the complex intrications between your different possibilities of awareness and presence, and how these might make you, for a while, the vessel of that earth-shattering experience. And yet, this might be the whole point of Jiddu Krishnamurti's life, conforming to the guidelines can never be a condition strong enough to get you atoned to an experience that I honestly don't think we should strive for.
One last thing: the whole point of religions and prophets has been to point to something that can not be expressed - but something that dismantles the mere possibility of suffering. Yet, when you consider the lives of some of the people who made themselves the continuators of those marginal and vital experiences, you can understand that most of these lives were animated by the need to answer one great question. Like Ivan Karamazov, some people can not live with the world without understanding, ab initio, in the most fundamental way, why the world is the way it is, and if this reflects a form of imperceptible order and cohesion, or if it is all absurd, meaningless, void. Everything lies in the question - and the quest initiated can only end once one is finally understanding and being freed from the supposedly paradoxical nature of the mind, with its creation of seemingly irreconciliable opposites.
And since one of the things I got from this experience is that there is no merit involved, no exclusive access negotiable, I don't really know why I should even talk about it. All the more that most religions, especially buddhism, have already tried to narrow down the complex intrications between your different possibilities of awareness and presence, and how these might make you, for a while, the vessel of that earth-shattering experience. And yet, this might be the whole point of Jiddu Krishnamurti's life, conforming to the guidelines can never be a condition strong enough to get you atoned to an experience that I honestly don't think we should strive for.
One last thing: the whole point of religions and prophets has been to point to something that can not be expressed - but something that dismantles the mere possibility of suffering. Yet, when you consider the lives of some of the people who made themselves the continuators of those marginal and vital experiences, you can understand that most of these lives were animated by the need to answer one great question. Like Ivan Karamazov, some people can not live with the world without understanding, ab initio, in the most fundamental way, why the world is the way it is, and if this reflects a form of imperceptible order and cohesion, or if it is all absurd, meaningless, void. Everything lies in the question - and the quest initiated can only end once one is finally understanding and being freed from the supposedly paradoxical nature of the mind, with its creation of seemingly irreconciliable opposites.
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