“WHAT HAPPENED IN THE JUNGLE.” Tony Parsons speaks of “walking across the park.” For Suzanne Segal it was “the bus stop.” U.G. Krishnamurti refers to an event he calls “the whole calamity.” In Douglas Harding’s case it was “the so-called Himalayan experience.” Here, it is “what happened in the jungle.” Nothing happened in the jungle. What happened is everything, the only thing that has ever happened any‘where’ to any‘one.’ What happened is unspeakable. Nothing happened.

What happened in the jungle would fill many conversations, if the conditioning here was not so allergic to the idea of what that might lead to. So it is being written here instead, coming clean, and it will inevitably lead to the same damn thing.

And ultimately, so what? “Settles forevermore the ponderous equator to its line…” All things find their balance. The shreds and remnants of david’s conditioning, flapping noisily in the wind, fret dire warnings of the ego trap here, wanting to run away, to find the anchorite’s proverbial cave to live in, at least metaphorically.

But it’s silliness. There is no ego, no trap; this too is illusion, thin as a summer morning mist on a hay field. The aversion is there in the conditioning of this mind/body apparatus, like the aversion to certain foods or to loud music. This is seen, but it no longer holds any significance. One Consciousness streams through all these billions of forms and what happens in which, including this one, truly is of no significance. There is no choice here, only the pure and choiceless awareness of Consciousness streaming. Tony DeMello called it, “wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable.” So here goes.

Much of what happened in the jungle was experiential, and so could be thought about, remembered, talked about. Deep, transformative experience. Nice stuff. Transcendent stuff. Beautiful. Major peak experience type stuff. You know well what I mean. Enough to burn the livin’ be’jesus out of the david thing. Preparatory, could be said of it now. This can be talked about, however haltingly and with much abuse of the rules of grammar and the intended meaning of words.

But there then came a time when all that stopped, when the experiencing stopped, and here it gets dicey. Because david also stopped. But of course that’s silly. david never was.

Looking at the journal entries from shortly after, it’s gibberish. Pointing toward the unspeakable and going, “gagaga.” It all goes to show the infinite but from this perspective rather twisted sense of humor possessed by the Brilliance beyond light we call Consciousness. “Hey look, we’ve tried all the other combinations: many years of preparation and then awakening; many years of preparation and then no awakening; many years of preparation and then almost awakening but whoops, sorry, not quite. Here’s one we don’t do so often: how about complete realization, total consciousness, pow, without any preparation at all! Take some schmuck, renegade part-Indian, renegade couldn’t-quite-make-it priest, tortured psyche, carpenter from the hills of Vermont, poor bastard won’t know what the fuck hit him. Great entertainment!”

You have to understand, I knew absolutely zippo about any of this shit. Didn’t know there was any such animal as a ‘seeker,’ let alone the whole seeker subculture. Never heard any of the jargon, didn’t know any of the concepts. Never heard of saddhana or moksha or lila or samadhi and if I had I’d probably have thought they were salad dressings. No categories or thoughts with which to think about this. Absolute, pure, utter, appalling Grace which makes absolutely no sense whatever.

There is some writing slightly less garbled, augmenting those first journal entries, months later, after Consciousness got merciful and set a plate of Advaita ideas in front of what was left of the david thing. These I share with you, in the pages that follow. That snap, that pop, the instantaneous out-of-time in which it is obvious that there is a simple ‘watching’ (not yet knowing that the correct Advaita term is ‘witnessing’) of that david thing, of what I had thought was ‘me;’ not just the body but all of it, the so-called body-mind-soul-personality-spirit; and realizing instantly that there is none such; there is nobody home. Nothing there. Obviously no ‘me,’ no thing to be a ‘me.’ And it is even more obviously not ‘me’ watching, witnessing. The witnessing fills the universe and there is not a thing any where, there is no where and no things, no beings, no entities. There is only this, this thisness, Awareness, and that is what ‘I’ is.

“A shift of perception” is the neat phrase, but… sweet mother! Not seeing differently or seeing different things, but no seer to see. As near as can be said: the perception now is not as from this mind/body thing.

And of course at the same time all of the above is pure bullshit, negated by the equal realization that nothing at all happened. Near as can be said there’s a sort of retroactive sense to the whole calamity. Nothing changes because it is seen that it has always been so: a misconception stops, a misperception ceases. What has happened? Nothing. There has always been nobody home. This thisness is always what ‘I’ is. Funny that there should have been that little misunderstanding, that there at one time were these funny ideas about ‘time’ and ‘things’ and ideas and persons and beings and david and jungle and Source and all…

Nisargadatta Maharaj called it Understanding, but it has nothing to do with comprehension. A knowing, which has nothing to do with knowledge.

Listen, this is important. There are words and concepts being used here descriptively. But whether or not what happened in the jungle corresponds to what various teachers, sages or traditions might have been referring to with their words or concepts, I do not know, and ultimately do not care. Of its essence this nothing that happened is completely self-validating. It relativizes everything and is relativized by nothing.

On the one hand there is everything; everything known, felt, thought, believed, everything that exists or doesn’t exist, everything possible and impossible. Everything that was, is, or ever will be, or never will be. And on the other hand there is this. And everything is not. And this is.

Whether another soul in the known or unknown universe ever recognizes this or not has been forever irrelevant since that out-of-time in the jungle. I cannot explain this, because I am otherwise somewhat rational. Not only is there no doubt. The very concept of doubt does not exist.

The word that comes frequently is that it is ‘obvious,’ but evidently that is an abuse of a good word because when it is used in conversations it usually draws blanks. Nevertheless. What is right in front of you, more than that, what you actually are, what all this is, what cannot be escaped from, what cannot be otherwise, is obvious, even if in most cases apparently there is not seeing.

So anywhat, it could have ended there. Tried to express it to a few people (“gagaga”) but they thought I was crazy, so gave up. Watching of the david thing going back to hammering nails. Bathed in Brilliance, which no one saw. Astonishing, breathtaking gratitude. Tears most of the time, spontaneous and unstoppable. david has lost his marbles, but he seems a happy idiot so what the hey. Always everywhere perfect Brilliant Stillness, and no-thing, which has no name (love and compassion and bliss are pathetic shadows) outpouring constantly seen now always not as from this mind/body thing.