I have struggled over how to best present the following account to a wider audience. Prior to this, only a handful of people have read this. In part, to make sure that what I wrote was coherent and that I wasn’t simply off the deep end.
Something profound happened to me. It is proof that Richard Rose was right: that any man of average intelligence can attain. I am certainly that average man. The only outstanding feature of my path has been a dogged, plodding persistence. The details of the account are not important. What is important is the message that YOU can attain, there is an end to your search, and there is hope. Following is a copy of the letter I sent two friends on 1/2/00:
I will attempt a description of the realization that occurred five days ago. Bearing in mind that more important than an accurate description, is the significance of the event.
I was reading a paper by Merrell-Wolff entitled The Induction. Unlike most of his work, it was plainspoken. Somewhere in the ninth or tenth page, tears started to pour down my face. A pain gripped my head, like an intense headache. It felt like someone was trying to ram something into my head that wouldn’t fit. I felt on the verge of something, on the verge of Truth and it was agonizing. The pain was so intense that I fell to the floor. I felt I was dying.
Two or three times the pain lessened and I climbed back to my chair, but it came again, and again I fell to the floor. I remember thinking of Rose’s lines, “O eternal spaces, art thou black or white…. Is thy form clothed in light or darkness?” and saying over and over, “No, No, It IS.” I think my mind was wrestling, struggling to contain the end of polarity. Suddenly, the agony culminated. I was no more and It was All.
I cannot convey the overwhelmingness of this. It was not an experience. It was what is Real and what is Real is not anything of this world or anything of the mind. Reality IS. There was Nothing, but yet Everything. Perhaps to describe it as Everything undifferentiated is closer to the Truth. There was no vision, no Light, no Love, no expansion of the consciousness, no me, no bliss, no joy. Nothing. Which may sound horrible, but it was what was Real. And nothing else can compare. It is the final Answer. The Answer to all of our longing.
I remember thinking just before the culmination that I didn’t want to die because I had to tell others about this. I remember my mind saying “no, no, no” over and over as it reeled from the pain. I don’t remember any fear. I don’t think I was even able to think why I was in agony. The agony was all consuming. I remember a voice; I have no idea if it was I, or a thought, or something else, saying “Not this way.” Shortly after that, I came out of the experience.
I think I went to the edge of death. I don’t think I died because I never totally lost my sense of being in the room. It was far away, but I still had a sense of a body lying in a floor, at least until the culmination, then there was Nothing. Yet some part of me remembers, so my mind must have been present in some sense. The memory is not the experience, though. I don’t want to go through this again. It was agony. I have glimpsed Reality and that is enough.
I didn’t have a vision of the universal plan, no cosmic consciousness. I don’t even know if it matters that one seeks and Finds. This experience doesn’t seem to have any purpose for life on this planet. You cannot have one foot in non-duality and one foot in this world. I could not live in that experience and live here. It is death, but death is All.
Apparently, I have not been instantly transformed into a saint. I even think I could walk out of here today, get hit on the head, and have no memory of what happened. I am much less concerned with the world. Except for the desire to communicate this to people. To communicate that there is an End. There is Certainty. You can know something for sure. There is a place, which is no-place, where there is no flip side to the coin.
My personality is still extant. I still like pop-tarts and sunny days. I define self, ego, and I the same. Even in cosmic consciousness there is an ego, there is still an “I”. That “I” may be infinitely expanded, but there is still a sense of self. There must be in order to live in this world. The final reality is not “I am All,” it is “All.” I have little desire to do anything except find some way to communicate this to others. However, I’m sure I would still fight to save my skin.
Try to make logical sense of the paradox of undifferentiated awareness. Perhaps that will lock up the gears of your mind and an accident will happen. Try to feel what I mean by Reality IS. Perhaps your feeling will lock up your mind. Just stopping the mind is not the total answer. Some catalyst must be present to break those gears. I do not know what that is. Still, you must try, and give up, and try again.
Shawn Nevins is a ghost and you are ghosts, too. A wind is blowing through your bones. That wind is Rose’s tiny silver bell. If you could hear it, you would know it as the voice of God.
A final note: I was 31 years old, which according to Richard Bucke is “prime time” for an experience. I also had intense pain in my head, but in the front rather than the top as in Rose’s case. However, I do not believe that a certain age and pain are requirements. I think the pain is relative to how tightly one’s mind is held together. I always had a big ego, so it may have taken more explosive to cure that. I suspect some leave behind their self with less trauma.