"Come out of the circle of time
and into the circle of Love."
- Rumi

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WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE TO KNOW, absolutely know beyond any doubt, that everything really is all right, that there is no reason to fear. That there is no need to feel despair or loss or uncertainty. That all the pain and hurt and evil we have seen truly is only an illusion, and that the most beautiful things we have experienced are only a glimpse, a small taste, of what is truly ‘real,’ and truly ours. That everything is all right; that everything is perfect as it is; that all is well. This is what I see, and what I know.

No, none of that says it well at all, none of that is right. The words are slaves to the illusion. It is not “truly ours”, not something we posses, but rather what we are; yet not even that because there is no ‘we.’ Of course, ‘I’ know nothing whatever, and there is no ‘me’ to see anything, nor is there any ‘thing’ to see. What is known, it is all but impossible to express or communicate. And ultimately it is not known or seen by ‘I’, it is what ‘I’ is.

Language, and the concepts on which language is based, fail. By definition this Truth, this Beauty is Beyond. (Beyond in the sense of being inaccessible by human thought and experience, although of course it is obvious that there is no literal ‘beyond,’ no ‘other.‘) In Itself it cannot be experienced; it can only be ‘known.’ And even this knowing is not knowledge, not intellectual; this has nothing to do with mental comprehension.

The mystics and poets, saints and awakened masters who have glimpsed or seen or known all agree that what is seen and known is ineffable, inexpressible. Putting it into words and concepts misses it completely. It is described as that which “eye has not seen nor has ear heard nor has the human heart conceived…” And yet, the human heart cannot contain it and so it spills over in fumbling attempts at expression of what is beyond expression, always qualified by the caveat that any such expression, any description however awesome, cannot encompass it.

At the end of human vision lies the final, ultimate Truth, inasmuch as such can be at all within our vision even at its extreme limit. It cannot be experienced or thought of or spoken of because it cannot be conceptualized. Our language, and the thoughts and concepts which structure our language, are essentially dualistic, based on the relationship of subject and object. There is no way to think or speak of anything without thereby making it the object of the supposed individual self which thinks or speaks as ‘subject.’ Thus as soon as there is linguistically structured thought there is a deviation from Truth, a basic inversion of true subject/object relationship. No individual self exists as subject: apparent individuals exist only as objects. And ultimate Truth exists not as object at all; it is original, pure Subjectivity, and to refer to it as an object, as one must necessarily do to think of it, to refer to it as “it” as this sentence does, is extreme absurdity.

Nevertheless. The knowing cannot be contained, and overflows. That which lies at the end of human vision is spontaneously described by many who have seen, by using three concepts, three words. They are only concepts, only words, and as such miss it completely. Nevertheless. Being; Consciousness; Bliss. Known in Sanskrit as Sat Chit Ananda. As Wei Wu Wei observed, “We can see no further and no path leads beyond;” and Nisargadatta Maharaj, “You can take it that Sat Chit Ananda is the limit which your mind can describe of that state which cannot be described.”

This is the closest that mind and concepts can come to Self, Whole Mind, Pure Subjectivity, Consciousness, All-That-Is, Presence, ultimate Truth, I Am. It is not an entity, a person, a thing, an ‘it.’ It is pure Being; absolute, fully aware Consciousness; overwhelming outpouring Love-Compassion-Bliss.

As it is beyond thought and concepts and language it is also beyond experience. Experience is determined by the illusory concepts, the constructs of space and time; every experience is determined by our sensory perceptions and has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is true of physical, mental, and even of spiritual experiences. All experiences are structured by, and contained within, our conceptual framework of space and time. Self, Presence, ultimate Truth, is Beyond, outside of the structure of space and time, and therefore cannot be experienced. However, it can be known, Understood, in a way that transcends both time and space, transcends experience.

This is why awakening or enlightenment, the occurrence of this knowing or Understanding, is said by masters and teachers to be always instantaneous, not gradual or by degrees. Gradual or by degrees infers duration in time; to think of awakening as happening gradually is to still be thinking of this as happening to an individual who is experiencing in time. Awakening brings with it the awareness that there is no individual, and no time. The Understanding by its nature is outside of time, and occurs outside of time and thus always appears, from the vantage point of timebound consciousness, as occurring instantaneously, that is, not taking any time.

However, the basic functioning of human mind/body organisms is experiencing. That is the basic operational process, what the programming calls for, what naturally happens: experiencing is what occurs in these mind/body organisms. Thus when the Understanding happens in a human mind/body, experiencing will occur; that mind/body will appear to ‘have’ an experience, an experience will be constructed, around that occurrence. Thus there will be what can be called an ‘awakening experience,’ or the experience of understanding or enlightenment.

This awakening experience is not the awakening. The experience of understanding is not the Understanding. It is merely a human experience created in the mind/body around the occurrence of the awakening, of the Understanding.

The Understanding, the knowing of Self, Presence, ultimate Truth, lies outside human experience as it lies outside time and space. The experience of the occurrence of this Understanding, the ‘awakening experience,’ is not the awakening, is not the Truth; it is only an experience created in the mind/body, similar to any other human experience. For this reason the masters and teachers discount even great and wondrous spiritual experiences as being essentially worthless and something to be disregarded; fixation on the experience will only draw the attention away from the true Understanding.

Nevertheless. The knowing cannot be contained, and overflows. In the attempt to express the knowing, language and concepts are used even though they are only words and ideas and miss it completely. In the attempt to express the seeing, aspects of the experience are described even though the experience of the seeing is only an experience, is not the seeing, is not the Truth. As Self, Presence, What Is is described in concepts by using the ideas of Sat Chit Ananda, Being-Consciousness-Bliss; so also it is often described in experiential terms by using the image of light. The experience of light, or something like light, often appears as part of the experience occurring around awakening or Understanding; hence it is called, en-light-enment.

Self, Presence, What Is, is said to be…

"...like the sun shining in the blue sky - clear and bright, unmovable and immutable... illuminating all." (Tsung Kao)

"...the blinding radiance of the great white light which has been called Sat Chit Ananda and which is also not at all..." (Wei Wu Wei)

"Pure it is, the light of lights. This is what the knowers of the Self know. The sun shines not there, nor the moon and stars, there lightning shines not; where then could this fire be? This shining illumines all this world." (Mundaka Upanishad)

"One day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow: I wish to show you the infinite incandescence!" (Hafiz)

"There was this light that became brighter and brighter and brighter, the light of a thousand suns... This brilliant light, of which I was the center and also the circumference, expanded through the universe, and... this light shone so bright, yet it was beautiful, it was bliss, it was ineffable, indescribable." (Robert Adams)

In this case it is understood, seen, known, as all-encompassing Presence, experienced as Light beyond light, clear Brilliance beyond any conceivable light or brilliance, which is every’where’ and fills and suffuses all because simply it is All-That-Is; there is nothing that It is not. It is understood and experienced as Presence because it is the ultimate Aliveness of pure Being, and the ultimate Awareness of pure Consciousness, and it is ‘Here,’ it is what ‘Here’ is, it is What Is Here, What Is Present.

And of its nature it is limitless and uncontained. This ultimate Being and ultimate Consciousness overflows constantly in the Outpouring of its essence, its nature, which is pure absolute love beyond our conceptions of love: complete compassion, total truth, ultimate beauty, Outpouring. This is what is described as ‘bliss;’ not some great orgasmic physiological or psychological pleasure but all-encompassing unconditional unrestricted love, compassion, gratitude, Outpouring.

This overwhelming Beauty-Love-Compassion-Bliss is the very nature, the essence, of the Brilliance that is Sat Chit Ananda; and its constant Outpouring is This; all of this, what is known as the manifestation, the created universe, phenomena. This ultimate Truth at the end of human vision is not something far away, not something ‘beyond’ in the sense of being something other:

"On no account make a distinction between the Absolute and the sentient world. Whatever Consciousness Is, so also are phenomena." (Huang Po)

Consciousness, Presence, All That Is, is not static; it is the infinite field of pure potentiality, the possibility of everything; spilling over, pouring itself out in pure Being, the beingness of everything; in pure Love, the Love which everything is.

Words fail; one must use words and then extrapolate from them, attempt to use them to transcend themselves. ‘Love’ is a word that stands for an idea, a concept, which in this context is inadequate to the extreme. In the culture by which these mind/bodies are conditioned, love is held up as the highest value, but we seldom examine what we mean by it. Like most of our thoughts and values, it is surrounded, protected by fuzzy thinking to avoid the clarity which leads to self-examination which can lead to awakening, to seeing through the mist of this world which has been pulled over our eyes to blind us to the Truth.

In fact, our ideas of love are much more tainted than we care to admit with concepts and feelings of involvement, specialness, ownership, exclusion, need, caring, guilt. We think of caring as something important, something of the heart. But caring is only involvement, anxiety, attachment to outcome. It is a misperception that we need to care about this illusory existence, this dream, or that things need to matter. This only generates worry, anxiety, confusion and feelings of separation and guilt. It does no good to the person we ‘care’ for, only perpetuates their own involvement in the dream. This is not love. Our claim to love only limits ourselves and those we try to love.

Love is not a basis for involvement. Love is neutrality; it is the true absence of judgments, censorship, desires, worry. It is our True Nature, All That Is, Presence. It is a reminder that nothing matters. When there is awareness of being always the Presence of this Perfect, uninvolved, neutral Love, there is “the Peace that passes all understanding.”

Meister Eckhart, the Christian mystic, said that “You may call God love, you may call God goodness; but the best name for God is compassion.”

Even the concept ‘compassion’ can carry meanings of pity, caring. But the Buddhist tradition has used the word to mean uninvolved, unattached openness to the best for ‘all sentient forms’ without any thought of anything in return. When there is no experience of separation, love ‘for another’ disappears along with hate ‘for another.’ There can be only being-in-love: being inside love, the Beloved. And when it is understood that All This unfolds as the perfect dream in Consciousness, the Outpouring of Sat Chit Ananda, there is no need for anything to be other than it is. Love then becomes something like the neutral holding of What Is, in Gratitude, in Compassion, in Presence.

The overwhelming sense is that ‘all this’ just is. What we see as the phenomenal manifestation and life as we know it, with all its ups and downs and pleasure and pain and beauty and craziness; the perfect unfolding of the dream of Consciousness; the constant Outpouring of the Brilliance which is Sat Chit Ananda, Beauty-Love-Compassion-Bliss: it all just is. In Love.

You are not that mind/body, just as I am not this mind/body. What Is, (what You are) is Sat Chit Ananda, Consciousness, in whose dream appear these mind/bodies. When this is seen, there is awakening from identification as one of the mind/bodies in the dream. When there is not this identification, how can there be doubt, fear, despair, loss, uncertainty? The dream is unfolding Perfectly. And the beauty and wonder of the dream are astonishing, dazzling, cannot be contained. What happens to this mind/body in the dream cannot be determined by this mind/body, by the character in the dream. What happens to this mind/body in the dream cannot in any way alter or affect the dreamer, What I Am, Presence, All That Is.

It all just is. All there is, is for life, the dream, to continue to happen while it continues to happen, and for there to be acceptance of what is, in an attitude of overwhelming outpouring Gratitude. To be in Compassionate openness in the Sat Chit Ananda, to the Being-Compassion-Outpouring-Bliss. To rave with Rumi and Hafiz and Eckhart. To be in-love, in the Beloved. There is nothing else. What else can there be?