Ungrasp From Realization, October 27, 2009

David: You’re realizing that you’re in maya. That’s why it’s beginning to look dreamy because you’re in a dream.

Participant 1: Hmm.

David: So, the first thing that happens is you come into the recognition that you’re dreaming, which is what you are, which is what this is. Not dreamy in the sense of unreal as maya is traditionally understood but in the sense that it cannot be measured, and therefore, one of the symptoms of that taste is dreaminess, in other words the dissolution of boundaries where everything starts to fade into one, bleed into one. So, as you’re going through this transition of dissolving boundaries created by the mind, there comes the recognition that you are in a dreamlike situation as long as you’re in individuality. It’s very interesting.

David: (acknowledging a participant) Very nice. You can feel yourself getting lost in it. Your separateness actually dissolves like salt in water. Like stirring sugar in water, there’s no more sugar granules. It all becomes water. So, it’s bless-ed to feel this transition into impersonal Bliss, impersonal Self-realization. It’s a glorious gift. It’s always the transition that is most glorious. Once you’re there, there’s nothing. It’s just flat, empty, vast, quiet, nothing in it. Everything’s in it, but it’s not in anything. So, a kind of duality is naturally present within the unmanifest. Not that the duality is within the unmanifest, but the unmanifest buffers itself off from the changing world by virtue of its non-dual quality. In the world you have the elements, the arising of prakriti, the sprouting of energies and movements of coagulation that cause matter to congeal and to become visible.

So, here we just reverse all that process, the process of prakriti, of nature, of the three gunas, the process of sattva, ragas and tamas that gives rise to nature, what we call nature. By reversing it we go toward atman. It’s just a trip to enjoy, not to get fixated on one part of the journey. When you get to the atman you don’t say I find the truth, I found the truth. You can never find the truth. The truth is not a fixed or static object. It’s not a state. It’s not even in the extreme aspect of impersonality that is called the atman, the Self. The truth is the whole movement of change within the changeless, that’s the whole truth, which is not anything you can fix on. So, here we learn how to ungrasp from everything even from realization itself. You become that unique kind of crazy being that functions liberated but fully immersed in change. It’s great stuff.