Highest Truth
Why Ever Let Up?
If we can know the highest truth Why would we Ever… let up?
In 1968, the door to Nirvana cracked open ever so slightly. Not too much light seeped through, but enough of it to utterly change my life.
Nineteen at the time, I had dabbled in the mystical-poetic side of things for a while. I had read some Tagore, I had read some Spinoza, I had read some Bertrand Russel. And then the door cracked open.
Looking back (at this Light Experience), I must confess that I believe it was more a lucky break than anything else. In retrospect, it even feels like I did not deserve such a gift. Just incredibly lucky, I guess (I must have had a sizable Karma credit balance, is all I can figure — hope I’m still in the black in that department).
But it happened. That is the amazing and undeniable thing. It happened. And whereas prior to that event I had intuitively decided that poetry was the “way out” so to speak, now I knew that religion (Buddhism, Mysticism, the Vedas, the Upanishads et al.) pointed the way out.
Yes, the main thing I took away from the event is that it happened. It truly, totally, undeniably did happen. It was wild and wonderful and light and light and then some more light and then I surfaced (back into the world) with the words, “Now I know.”
No, I didn’t really know. Not the way I said it. All I knew — and this I truly and fully really knew — is that what had happened had indeed happened. That’s all.
The wonderful is real.
The beyond-normal is real.
The above-thought is real.
The so-much-more is real.
The whatever-you-think-it’s-more-than-that is real.
That is what I knew, and now my burning task and desire was to re-experience this light — which meant, of course, to find out what it was, what had triggered it, and what would cause it to return.
For the next year, wherever I went, I carried around a set of four books on what was advertised as mysticism, all in Swedish: the Upanishads, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, and Plotinus, and of these I got the most out of Plotinus at the time, for when he described experiences very similar to mine I knew that he knew what I knew: I knew that he had also tasted (personally, experientially) the Truth.
Fifty odd years later, I’m still looking for that specific experience to return (for it has yet to), but not as urgently as in the past. If it does it does, if it does not it does not. I have gained greater, more encompassing certainties since, and the return of the Light Experience is not such a must anymore.
But here’s the real point. I have spent my life, from age 19 to my current 71 (and it’s an ongoing project, not an arahant yet) searching for the highest truth. For once you gain even a glimpse of it, what else could possibly be worth doing? The highest truth exists, I know that. And can be known, I know that, too (that was one lasting message of the Light Experience). Given that, what else could you possibly want to spend your time doing?
As for the distractions that you will run up against, many of them strong enough to deter you or to deflect you from your path (should you be unwary), facing them and overcoming them is part of the path.
Yes, this world is replete with distractions and temptations, but in the final analysis, none, none, absolutely none, will prove strong enough to stop you or divert you if you have ever tasted Truth.
© Wolfstuff
