Rod Rees to Piet Hut
Piet,
Your four examples are
exactly
what I mean by non-dualistic
consciousness, which involves a
non-analytic form of awareness. You became absorbed in the moment while
losing
your self-analytic inner commentary.
I'll add
these two episodes:
a] I'm
watching a movie, perhaps The
Bridges Of Madison County, when suddenly it drops into an
unexpected level of intimacy and meaning. I'm suspended in a moment of
awe. I
can hardly believe what I'm seeing. I stop breathing. I stop doing
anything except
just absorb the event with joy & relish. Then when it's over I turn
to my
wife and we look at each other in disbelief that such a thing could
have
happened. It's a surprise, a shock, an incredible realization that
something
was revealed that I already knew but didn't yet know I knew.
b] I'm
sitting on the beach in San
Diego. I glance up
and see, a few yards from me, an ancient desiccated man in a beach
recliner.
He's peering at me through his intense wet eyes. The distance between
us
disappears, as does everything else except those incredible eyes. His
body,
wrapped in terry cloth, is dead, and whatever life remains in him is
inside his
watery eyes. I know in an instant that I will be able to write this
story, this
vision, in perfect detail. I will be able to say exactly what I am
seeing.
Seeing & saying have come together in a brief moment of perfect
confluence.
In these two
examples, my
consciousness was magnified. The moment was expanded. Reality was
enhanced.
Time disappeared. The invisible was made visible. And the events came
as an
utter surprise, an unexpected shock, arising out of nowhere. "It" was
already there, as if waiting for me, and there was nothing I needed to
do to
have it.
I think that
we can refine the
language of non-dual consciousness by looking for metaphors that
describe our
felt-sense of such episodes. You provided some good ones:
Falling into the event
Carried away by the event
Dropping away of worry &
effort
A sense of timelessness
And I've
just added:
Arising effortlessly
out of nowhere
Consciousness magnified
Reality enhanced
The moment expanded
The invisible made visible
Experiencing surprise,
appreciation, awe, joy, understanding, perfection
Can we take these, and similar
metaphors, and extract the equivalent of "velocity, acceleration,
momentum, & kinetic energy" in order to capture the
underlying dimensions of non-dualistic consciousness? I think we
can.
You could add more examples if you think we need them, or begin the
process of
extraction.
Rod