TWO ACCOUNTS OF NONDUAL AWAKENING: WHICH IS MORE AUTHENTIC -- AND WHY?

 First Account:

    "I have no descriptive talent, I don't know the words to paint a picture; I can't tell you, so as to make you see it, how grand the sight was that was displayed before me as the day broke in its splendor. Those mountains with their deep jungle, the mist still entangled in the treetops, and the bottomless lake far below me. The sun caught the lake through a cleft in the heights and it shone like burnished steel. I was ravished with the beauty of the world. I'd never known such exaltation and such a transcendent joy. I had a strange sensation, a tingling that arose in my feet and traveled up to my head, and I felt as though I were suddenly released from my body and as pure spirit partook of a loveliness I had never conceived. I had a sense that a knowledge more than human possessed me, so that everything that had been confused was clear and everything that had perplexed me was explained. I was so happy that it was pain and I struggled to release myself from it, for I felt that if it lasted a moment longer I should die; and yet it was such rapture that I was ready to die rather than forgo it. How can I tell you what I felt? No words can tell the ecstacy of my bliss. When I cam to myself I was exhausted and trembling."

Second Account:

    [The teacher concludes his statement, during satsang, "Just for a moment, allow yourself to directly experience, who are you?"]

    "When he said these last words, the whole world stopped. It was just complete stillness. Then suddenly, the first sound I heard was the ocean crashing against the beach, and I knew immediately, 'I am this ocean out there! I am the ocean.' I looked at the room which was me as well. 'I am the people. I am the chairs. I am the microphone. I am this body.' I wanted to say, 'I'm everything.' As soon as I wanted to utter this, it sort of popped and gave way to limitless transparency, a transparent nothingness that could not be located specifically. Yet everything was made out of that. I couldn't speak anymore."

See the following post for the answer!

Barbara Ehrenreich a Mystic?

This is from Ehrenreich's interview with Terry Gross on April 8, 2014:

"I was just staring at the woods ... [when] something happened. It's like a layer peeled off the world, the layer that contains all the meanings, the words, the language, the associations we have. Yeah, I was looking at trees, but I no longer could say I knew exactly what a tree was, with all the knowledge and experience that goes into our notion of a tree. . . .

"What if there is a world underneath what we perceive? We're usually in a world of shared "reality." You and I agree on what we see if we're together, we have similar explanations for it, and so on. To leave that behind and just see things without any of those human attributions, well, that's very, very strange, but I wanted to know more. ... I couldn't tell anybody. I had enough sense to think that this would be seen as crazy."

I suspect a lot of people reading this have had awakenings -- and if you have, you know that this was one.  This is the world with language stripped away -- the world of "That Which Is."

Most people know Ehrenreich as a lifelong socialist and social activist.  Her new book, Living with a Wild God, is a real departure for her.  She kept the mystical experiences of her teenage years secret for more than half a century!

Ehrenreich is just a bit older than I am -- culturally we are contemporaries. I didn't have any teenage mystical experiences, but I know that if I had, I would have kept them a secret.  The 1950s and early 1960s were not a time to tell people things like this.  You would be thought crazy, or you would simply be dismissed.  I'm not sure which would be worse.  When the most important thing in your life happens to you and you can't find anyone who can validate it, you must keep it secret.  You must keep it secret or it will be destroyed by those who cannot understand what it is to know what is actually real.

I feel sad that Ehrenreich didn't have the support that people can find now when they have these types of encounters.  If you listen to the whole interview, you'll see that she hasn't gotten to the bottom of it at all.  She doesn't know yet that this is just the tip of the iceberg -- that without language as a barrier, we do not actually exist separately.  If things had been different when she was young, she could be fully enlightened now.  Think of that, and think of how important it is for us to nurture these spontaneous realizations in those we know.