I have little use for the past and rarely think about it; however, I
would briefly like to tell you how I came to be a spiritual teacher and
how this book came into existence.
Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety
interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am
talking about some past lifetime or somebody else’s life.
One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the
early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such
a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it
had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the
furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train —
everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it
created in me a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing
of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in
continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this
continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation,
for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the
instinctive desire to continue to live.
“I cannot live with myself any longer.” This was the thought that kept
repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a
peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself,
there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.”
“Maybe,” I thought, “only one of them is real.”
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I
was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt
drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow
movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense
fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words “resist
nothing,” as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being
sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than
outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into
that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.
I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had
never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw
the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a
sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light
of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought, I felt,
I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft
luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came
into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the
room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything
was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked
up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and
aliveness of it all.
That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle
of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.
For the next five months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep
peace and bliss. After that, it diminished somewhat in intensity, or
perhaps it just seemed to because it became my natural state. I could
still function in the world, although I realized that nothing I ever did
could possibly add anything to what I already had.
I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had happened
to me, but I didn’t understand it at all. It wasn’t until several years
later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual
teachers, that I realized that what everybody was looking for had
already happened to me. I understood that the intense pressure of
suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw
from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which
is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so
complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed, just as if
a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What was left then
was my true nature as the ever-present I am: consciousness in its
pure state prior to identification with form. Later I also learned to go
into that inner timeless and deathless realm that I had originally
perceived as a void and remain fully conscious. I dwelt in states of
such indescribable bliss and sacredness that even the original
experience I just described pales in comparison. A time came when,
for a while, I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no
relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent
almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most
intense joy.
But even the most beautiful experiences come and go. More
fundamental, perhaps, than any experience is the undercurrent of
peace that has never left me since then. Sometimes it is very strong,
almost palpable, and others can feel it too. At other times, it is
somewhere in the background, like a distant melody.
Later, people would occasionally come up to me and say: “I want
what you have. Can you give it to me, or show me how to get it?” And
I would say: “You have it already. You just can’t feel it because your
mind is making too much noise.” That answer later grew into the book
that you are holding in your hands.
Before I knew it, I had an external identity again. I had become a
spiritual teacher.