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Jainarayan
31 December 2011, 10:35 PM
Let me preface by saying I've had fleeting moments of this feeling over the very recent past, but not to the degree I did today.

Today I was outdoors, beautiful sunny crisp day in New Jersey. I was in a position to have some "me time", even though there was much traffic and distractions in the area.

I was sitting, and my mind cleared. I knew where I was, I heard the sounds and movements around me, but they didn't distract me. I went into a "zone". In this zone, the fleeting feelings I've been experiencing came full force:

I knew I was in my body, but I was more than my body. I felt "connected" to everything and everyone that was around me. I felt like I and they were part of a greater "whole". I knew others were in their bodies, but they were more than their bodies. I think (not sure) it was yajvanji who gave the example of a jar... the jar contains air, yet the jar is in air. My body and the other bodies contained jiva/atma, yet we were all within one. Like that jar containing air and being in air.

For that brief time I seemed to understand, or at least feel, our oneness and how God pervades and resides in every one of us, no matter how pious or evil or brilliant or idiotic I or anyone else may be, to the human emotions. Those attributes are only this fleshy matter. I can even say that about the sister-in-law whom I say I hate, rather, I hate her behaviors, not the jiva she really is. Knowing we are jiva, how can one hate oneself?

What the heck happened here today!? :headscratch:

sm78
01 January 2012, 12:22 AM
Not to be a spoil sport, the last paragraph to me looks like your own long held beliefs super imposed on a momentary experience of the "expansive" mind.

I have had and still have this expansive experience as mind is truly much bigger than we believe. And I don't think it is difficult to attain, rather quite easy - but we generally have no time for it. How it happened is also how it most often happens, on a sunny day overlooking a busy or a crowded street or joint. Being close to the hustle and bustle yet somewhat separated from it at the same time based on one's vantage point, gives an unique opportunity for the mind to relax. The state is nothing more than a relaxed mind, not grasping at objects and ideas for a few seconds - thus expanding itself naturally without obstruction throughout your visible landscape, and naturally also resulting joy.

But human attachment to concepts does not let one to enjoy one's own natural state of the mind and all these unrelated topics (GOD being at the beginning of the queue to budge in, followed by Jiva, relatives and what not) had to be rushed in, and the experience in the true sense ended there I believe. One is now probably left with few days of mental turmoil with God, in return of the few secs or minutes of experiencing a relaxed state.

Of course for many people this superimposition of God on everything also takes them to another natural experience of the antahkarana viz love. If your superimposition of God on the relaxed mind led you to love in your heart, maybe it wasn't a waste after-all. But I believe people will still hang on to God and let go the Love at some point, and it becomes completely pointless after that.

Jainarayan
01 January 2012, 01:28 AM
Namaste.

This may all very well be true what you say.


The state is nothing more than a relaxed mind, not grasping at objects and ideas for a few seconds - thus expanding itself naturally without obstruction throughout your visible landscape, and naturally also resulting joy.

Maybe that's when the mind is receptive to the feelings. My mind has been relaxed and blank many times in my 54 years, but I never had a feeling like this. And as I said, there have been fleeting moments of it recently when I've been otherwise occupied with daily matters.


But human attachment to concepts does not let one to enjoy one's own natural state of the mind and all these unrelated topics (GOD being at the beginning of the queue to budge in, followed by Jiva, relatives and what not) had to be rushed in, and the experience in the true sense ended there I believe. One is now probably left with few days of mental turmoil with God, in return of the few secs or minutes of experiencing a relaxed state.

I don't know why I would feel any mental turmoil with God; I haven't in the past before I let my mind open to have this feeling. When I said "brief", brief is relative... brief in this case was at least a half hour, not a few seconds. I saw that the shadow cast by the sun on a pole moved considerably. If not for that sundial effect, I might have thought it just a momentary endorphin rush.


If your superimposition of God on the relaxed mind led you to love in your heart, maybe it wasn't a waste after-all. But I believe people will still hang on to God and let go the Love at some point, and it becomes completely pointless after that.

I don't believe for a moment I achieved moksha or any kind of enlightenment, or am putting on airs about it; it's a feeling I've never experienced before, cleared mind or not. I'm not saying it's a "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony... apple trees and honey bees and snow white turle doves..." feeling. It wasn't even a moment of "I now love everybody", it was more a realization of our connections, that we are not separate in the universe and are interwoven.