Which account of awakening in the previous post is more authentic?

OK, so let me identify the passages first. The first is by Somerset Maugham, from this novel, THE RAZOR'S EDGE. The awakening is reported by Larry, the character in the novel who has been seeking all his life and finally finds what he had been looking for with the Advaita gurus in India. 

The second passage is by from an interview with Annette Knopp, from the book ORDINARY WOMEN, EXTRAORDINARY WISDOM, by Rita Marie Robinson (O Books, 2007). The teacher referenced in the passage is Isaac Shapiro.

My own take on it is that the second passage is the most authentic. Although there is a place in the first passage where the self seems to fall away, most of the passage is about what happens TO the self -- rather like what someone might imagine enlightenment to be. I did research just a bit and found out that Maugham went to India in the 1930s (RAZOR was published in 1943), but according to his journal, he evidently fell into a deep sleep precipitated by the energy of the guru and didn't remember what happened to him! So perhaps he just imagined what might have happened if he'd been awake. I want to explore this more,though, and what I say here shouldn't be taken as definitive.

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!

Uses of the Gaze

In nondual spirituality, as well as in some other traditions, an awake person may gaze into the eyes of another person, for various reasons. First of all, it is fun to see the deeper dimension of consciousness in another, beyond the physical appearance. Second, it can be a way of helping another awaken: when that deeper energy is displayed for another, it can help another access it in himself or herself. This is sometimes called transmission, but that is a bit of a misnomer, because really the other person, while s/he may not be conscious of the awake energy, just as surely possesses it as the awake person.

It is a third use of the gaze that I want to speak of here, however. That is to determine to what extent someone else is awake.

A person might say, “I had an awakening,” or “I'm still waiting for my first awakening,” or, “I have no clue what awakening is.” But people can mean different things by these words because the mind has various definitions and stories about awakening. For some, being awake means having reached perfection on all levels of existence. They will see proof of their lack of awakeness in every “selfish” thought they have. For others, of an opposite psychological bent, if they have even had a glimpse of transcendence, they seem themselves as fully awake. Still others may have experienced an awakening but, not having been able to “maintain” it – which generally means staying in the same bliss as occurred when the awakening occurred – will believe that awakeness was in their past but not a current reality.

Thus, because there are so many definitions of awakening held by so many people, it is impossible to know what someone means when s/he says, “I'm awake.” Here is where the gaze comes in – because it removes the mind from the equation. When the awake energy in one being consciously meets the awake energy in another, both are awake; if it fails to meet itself, then one of the two is not.