A man
and his brother drive home from the beach. They are in high spirits and
enjoying a lovely day off. When the man turns into the driveway of his
house, he suddenly sees an ambulance blocking the entrance of the
garage. In the garden a tray broken in pieces. Parts of melon scattered
all around. Ambulance personal in the act of draping a white blanket
over a lifeless body, which he identifies as his wife´s. His
little girl runs into his arms, sobbing: ´Where were you, daddy?
I have tried to phone you! Something is wrong with mammy!´
It doesn´t take an
exceptional imagination to picture ourselves the psychological state of
this man in the days to come. His life is completely devastated. All he
has ever lived and worked for has suddenly fallen into pieces, in the
blink of an eye, like the scattered tray and the melon parts in the
garden so aptly symbolize. The fruit of his life is no more. From this
day onward there will not be sweetness in his life anymore. His wife
was the one he loved most dearly. He needed her to raise their little
daughter. Now he has to face all of life´s hardships alone.
In the movie this scene was
taken from, the man goes through all the phases of mourning, from
denial to aggression, from guilt to bargaining of conscience, from
grief to acceptance. In the end he finds the love he had for his wife
in the love he cherishes for his daughter. The guilt for loving his
wife not enough is atoned and compensated for by the deep love of his
daughter in whom he finds his wife again, but now transformed into a
new life. So there is a catharsis here, but it is taken at a high cost
and not without some rescheduling of former plans. The man has gained
something from this devastating event: he now enjoys more the little
and simple things in life, like caring for other people and playing
little games, just for the fun of it.
But from a mystical
perspective there is something of a failure here also. For here was a
great opportunity to come to complete and utter blissfulness, but like in
so many similar cases, the challenge was not met, the hardest road to
travel by was shunned. For the man in the story was suddenly knocked
down by the Great Nothing. This is for every mortal the greatest blow
to suffer. It drags you down. You are swallowed up by It´s
engulfing torrents. In cases like these it is natural -human, all too
human- to resist drowning. Instantly plans and devices are made up to
safe oneself from such a psychological death.
For a traditionally religious
man would immediately say to himself: ´I have to have faith in
the Lord. He will get me out of this misery. Let´s get help from
the church, visit some priests, let them figure out what to do. I will
pray. I will do anything the bible and the sacraments will tell me to
do, just to get some relief from this mourning and depression. For
there must be some answer to the meaningless of my wife´s death.
I have to figure it out in a religious way.´
Or if the man was a man of
affairs, he would say to himself: ´Let´s get back to work
as soon as possible. Work has always been meaningful to me. Work will
help me to forget. In my work I will honor the remembrance of my wife.
I will place my work as an offering and a dedication at the tomb of my
wife, to offer her something meaningful, instead of this misery and
this senseless grief, which is no good to her either. She too would not
want me to remain idle, mourning over something irreversible.
It´s no good thing to remain a prisoner of my own morose
feelings. There is salvation in stepping outside of one´s
self.´
A more intelligent person
would visit a psychiatrist of the spirit of a Erich Fromm, who would
help him to re-contact his deepest humanistic ethical character; who
would point out what is really valuable in life and who would help him
to find his own potentials for becoming a creative person again. This
may take some rescheduling on the rational level of his psyche. The man
might come to the conclusion that his basic presumptions about life
were wrong from the very beginning. This may help him in reaching a
state of greater self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
But only a very few would
dare to take the path of the mysticism of Nothing. These are the ones
to have learned and gained the most from the experience. Their grief,
mourning and depression would be just as great as with the other
aforesaid persons. But the difference lies in their amount of faith and
trust. And courage also. For it takes a lot of courage to embrace the
mysticism of Nothing. These very few I would dare to call the
experimenters of blissfulness. They have to have a great amount of
faith and trust in the workings of Life.
For the experiment is this:
when I am faced with great hardship and suffering, I might say to
myself: ´Ok, so there is no use in trying to avoid these things.
When you have a sweet, lovable wife, she might one day drop dead in the
garden. Or one, yeah, maybe all of my children might one day die in a
car accident. They are young and reckless. Who will tell? Death waits
around every corner. Or I might be sacked this very afternoon. Maybe
they have found a better one. Or the younger ones at the office will
want to have me out. Life is full of suffering. And the fool is he who
thinks it will go pass his door. No, let´s once and for all get
this straight: life and suffering are no antonyms, they are synonyms.
To be alive, to will, to strife, to covet, it all entails, in greater
or lesser degree, suffering. I see this intellectually and I feel this
emotionally to the very marrow of my bones. So, what will happen if,
from this moment onwards, I will do nothing, instead of something? For
all acting -´living´- seems only to bring me more and more
suffering.´
Most people would say that
this is succumbing to pessimism; that it would eventually lead to more
depression; that such words are instances of Freudian Thanatos; that
such an attitude would eventually result in suicidal death. But these
people have never dared to experience the Great Nothing.
They have never closed their eyes when in the depth of depression or
mourning. They have never ´sat it out´. Mysticism is such
an experiment. It is the spirit of non-moving, as a means to
contact higher sources of energy when in the midst of adversity.
This is how historically speaking meditation developed. It was the
body-mind´s original response to calamity and adversity. It was
already given in our biology: the body has a natural tendency to become
catatonic when in depression. In such a state the best regeneration
becomes possible.
For the most easiest, and
therefore the most common, thing to do is to resort to, what George
Bataille called, ´the escape´. The escape is finding a
solution to suffering, be it by acting, like with our man-of-affairs,
or by thinking, like the persons trying to find religious solutions. A
new psychology or a new philosophy might also be a form of escape. A
new world of words might be created to sooth the bitterness of our
suffering. But these are all new stories devised to cover up the
reality of our status quo in the hinc
et nunc. For the hard fact is that suffering in life cannot be
prevented.
The mystical experiment is to
see suffering as an opportunity. Not as a test of our strength of
character, like the book Job seems to suggest. But as an opportunity to
sink down into our Self, far beyond the trivialities of our ordinary
life. This experiment is already, besides the already mentioned
spontaneous catatony, suggested by our biology, as our first reaction
to bad news is to close our eyes. This closing of the eyes is
pre-conscious. It is our body´s own answer to suffering. So the
body already of its own accord wants to sink into itself to find means
for regeneration. The mystic responds to these pre-conscious biological
urges. He responds by not moving - the catatony- and by closing his
eyes. He does not oppose the workings of nature. But he quietly gives
in to them.
At first glance such a
reaction might seem absurd. For the immediate effect is worse, not
better. Sinking into the self initially redoubles our suffering,
instead of annihilating it. This is because the self becomes more aware
of all of our suffering, once we start closing our eyes, not just of
this our contemporary suffering. When we stay at rational level, all
our ego functions remain intact and operative, especially the rational
functions of suppression and subliminalization. They are the means our ratio naturaliter has for dealing with
adversity and suffering. Our ratio reacts by sweeping them under the
carpet. This is a natural response. It can be life saving in severe
moments of shock. Rational suppression may serve as a natural means to
assuage the fierceness of the blow.
But meditation -sinking into
the Self- lifts this safety valve. To heal the wounds the suffering has
caused at limbic level, neo-cortical suppression has to be suspended.
This can only be done by remaining fully aware and conscious of our
mental and emotional state. This awareness is the only healer as our
psyche is concerned. This is why it is also important to keep on
talking about our suffering with others. To heal ourselves we have to
remain aware of ourselves. And this is precisely what meditation
effects: it stimulates, by its internal onlooking, neo-cortical
awareness, the very opposite of suppression. Mediation has the same
effect as talking about our problems with a friend. It makes us aware
of what is going on in our self.
But, though this awareness
will eventually be the one and only healer of all of our suffering,
initially it aggravates our depression, instead of reducing it. For
once the safety valve is lifted, awareness has a hard time in
separating new suffering from old suffering. So we do not only become
aware of contemporary hardships, but also of those from the past, if
they still reside in our limbic system as a result of suppression and
sublimenalization. So the initial physical response to meditation is
limbic-emotional flooding, as so many first time -and also the more
advanced- meditators report. Instead of becoming calm and peaceful -the
great promise of mysticism- meditation may make things worse: we may
become agitated, sad, enraged or exhausted from all the accumulated
sufferings we had to deal with in our lifetime.
This is the hell and the dark
night of the purgative phase, so many mystics spoke about. This is the
´Father, Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?´ It is the
coming to naught of all hopes and desires. This is the entering into
the Great Nothing, the place of utter desolation and despair, where the
soul finds her self completely alone and isolated. Here it is
understandable and all too human, when the soul reaches out to
something in the material or mental world, like a friend, a teacher, an
idol or finds consolation in the words and teachings of spirituality
and religion. For there are many times the suffering becomes almost
unbearable and the soul must at times find new nourishment to go on.
But from the perspective of
the mysticism of Nothing -the greatest bliss ever to be obtained- there
is great danger in these consolations also. For the soul in utter
despair may reach out to these words, cling to them, find solace in
them, start to believe in them. This is the sharpest edge the mystic is
walking on. In the end it may even ruin the whole experiment. For these
images and forms of the mental and psychic level -these spiritual
consolations- are very tempting because of their great beauty and their
spell. The meditator runs the risk of not being able to transcend them,
of becoming addicted to them. Then instead of becoming completely
absorbed in blissfulness, his soul halts and lingers in the regions of
form, without ever finding its base in formless nothingness, where her
one and only Ground is to be found.
Formless, content
free awareness
The greatest power and
energy, the highest joy, the deepest bliss and rapture are to be found
in the extra-spatial and extra-temporal levels of existence, before all
the material, biological and mental worlds come into being. Such a
´moment´ or such a ´place´ cannot be found in
the external world of our senses, at least not in Its pureness. In this
world It is also there but always disguised in some form. In the world
of our senses primordial non-duality has separated Itself into duality,
and joy has become mixed with grief and blissfulness has become tinged
with sadness. In the world of our thinking and feeling there is always
suffering, even when our outward life is blessed by the gods with
success and prosperity, even when there is very little to complain
about.
Every time I have a thought, an image, an opinion, a
feeling, a judgement in my mind-every time awareness takes on a
definite form- I become the one and only hindrance to my own
blissfulness. For thus the infiniteness and omnipotentiality of my
awareness become finite and unipotential. With the
´something´ in my thought I block the well of my creativity
and bliss. It obstructs the gentle flow of perfectness that is a priori
given to all life. It is not simply the ego that obstructs the source
of life. It is a fortiori all thought, all forms of consciousness. For
every form is born into duality. Its joy is at the same time also its
grief.
So no philosophy, no
religion, no therapy or methodology can bring us happiness, for they
all depend on thoughts and forms. They are translations and not
transformations of being. They can be of some use in the beginning, to
direct our thought to more subtle levels of being. But they can not
take us to Being in its unamalgamate pureness. Only the Nothing of our
awareness can. At this level all dualities cease to be. Here life
becomes whole and one again. Once we let the Nothingness of life be our
one and only guide in life, great rushes of blissfulness and exubilant
joy begin to stir from the deepest bottom of our soul. By then we have
reached in our practice the level of pure awareness.
Objections against
the mysticism of Nothing
First
objection: ´All phenomena exist not
before, but after
creation. It is impossible for man to return to a phase or level where
she was not, or is not. If she would succeed in doing so, her existence
would thus terminate, like with death. Because consciousness is
dependent upon existence, consciousness is never in a state of total
formlessness. For existence is always in a definite form, and never
formless´.
Refutation: in deep sleep, in
a swoon or at the deepest levels of meditation, consciousness has no
definite form, but still is found, afterwards, to have existed. Though
reduced to a level of Nothing, it remained intact, with all of its
functions operative, though in a seemingly unconscious and potential
state. In deep sleep, did I, as psychological entity, exist? Yes, for
here I am now awake. Though in the night my soul was reduced to a mere
Nothingness, still here I am, as the body and person I am. So my form
seems to merge into formlessness, and from formlessness my form again
emerges. From the Nothing comes my All and into the Nothing my All
again vanishes. This is the cyclic movement of my -of all- nature.
Furthermore -and equally
important as the topic of blissfulness is concerned-, I find myself
refreshed and full of energy when I wake up from the Nothing I was
submerged in. The more of Nothing in my sleep, the more joyous and
energetic I´ll be. Too many dreams -too many forms in my
consciousness- exhaust my sleep. Dreamlessness gives an indication of
the level of blissfulness I will experience during the day. So the more
of Nothing in my consciousness the greater the amount of blissfulness
and happiness. Even apart from meditation and the practices of
mysticism this truth holds for everyone with a healthy sleep.
Second
objection: ´a philosophy and a practice of Nothing would render
life meaningless. Man differentiates from the beasts in her quest for
meaning and value. Our mind and soul cannot live on nothing. Only a
definite and circumscribed philosophy or a particular religion can
offer us value in life. Rationality and rational structures are what
defines man.´
Refutation: value and meaning
are not a posteriori to our essence, but they are a priori given to it.
Value is not a rational structure of our mind -at least not
essentially- but it is something that is already given and only
afterwards intuited by our mind. We do not invent value in our selves,
we discover it. Value is, besides love and blissfulness, one of the
essential qualities of the Self. When we are, ie. when we have quality of
Being in a mystical, spiritual sense, we cannot fail to have meaning
and value at the same time. Our whole existence will then be the
expression of the meaning and value we essentially are. To express this
value no words or deeds will then be necessary. Just the mere fact of
living - of our So-sein- will make it plain.
When rational structures
develop -when philosophies or religions are constructed- , the mind
resorts to a kind of remembering, an anamnesis, to reformulate these a
priori values into a logical framework. An intuitive Schauung takes place, where the
Self becomes self-referentially aware of Its own qualities. There is
both a positive and a negative side to this process: the pro is that
these values (like eg. deeper ethics) are made logically understandable
and therefore operative to the mind; but the negative side is that the
full operative force of the deeper essential values becomes hemmed,
pruned, weakened, because of the logical circumscriptions taking place,
which takes the value from the level of perfection, the level of
Nothing, to the level of duality and imperfection.
Part of this objection is
related to the next objection: value is taken as part of a dyad, in
opposition to a dual nothing, quod
erit refutandum.
Third
objection: ´your term 'nothing' is in itself dual, as it opposes
and complements the dual term ´something´. Therefore
Nothing is also part of the world of creation, intra-spatial and
intra-temporal. It does therefore not belong to another level of
existence. It is simply the negation of a positivum. It does not exist
apart from the existing phenomena.´
Refutation: spiritual
Nothingness (Emptiness, the Void) is not in itself part of any dyad,
but it is the transcendence of all dyads. It is not the dual opposite
of a ´something´, of an object, but it is the nothing and
the something taken together, as a whole. It is their coincidentia,
their mutual togetherness. This is not the negation of something
positive, like the minus in mathematics. It is rather like the zero in
maths, the point of departure of all numbers to come. It stands on is
own. Like the zero, all numbers, all ´somethings´, cannot
do without this Nothingness. The zero is indispensable.
Therefore it would not be apt
to call the mysticism of Nothing a nihilism, because it is just as well
an affirmation -on all levels of being- as it is a negation. A
spiritual nihilism would rule out affirmations, like love, bliss,
strength, health etc. and such a denial would go against the most
profound mystical and phenomenological experience. For the experience
of the deepest Nothingness entails these affirmations also. So it would
be better to call mysticism a nihilism/plenism, since it is the dyad
taken together. But since it is foremost the transcendence of this dyad
at the essential level of Being, we prefer to call it a Nothing, since
it transcends in its most essential aspects the level of Form.
That this is somewhat
bewildering to our logic, is not the fault of mysticism. It is because
of the limitations of our everyday rationality, where the one thing
always rules out the other. But we are here dealing with a
transcendence of rationality, so a different kind of logic, like
Brouwer´s intuitive logic, is required here. The deepest
religious truth is expressed here in translogical terms, as summed up
in the words of the Buddha: ´All Form is Emptiness and Emptiness
is Form´.
Fourth
objection: `Ok, since it not a nihilism, but a nihilism and a plenism
taken together, why still call it a Nothing? On your terms it would
perhaps be better to call it an Everything. This would be a better
description of the facts, for consciousness cannot experience a
nothing, but it is always a consciousness of a something. The
phenomenology of mysticism does not describe mere nothings. Love,
bliss, contentment, fulfillment, oneness etc. are all positive emotions
and concepts. They are somethings and not nothings.´
Refutation: Yes, but the
phenomenology of mysticism still operates on the level of Form.
Mysticism itself goes beyond such a phenomenology. The positive
qualities here mentioned are mere attributes of Nothingness. They are
not It. It in itself transcends all affirmations and negations. Resting
and sinking into this transcendent level of existence may yield more
positive than negative emotions, but this does not mean that negations
-like eg. what we call Evil- are ruled out from the dyads. Negations
always exist and will always exist. They are part of the dyadic
structure of all life. Life lived in mystical Nothingness will not
suddenly be devoid of all suffering -for life is suffering also- but in
mystical Nothingness the dyad suffering/joy is transcended, is
experienced as One, as a complete Whole. And it is this experience of
oneness, this experience of completeness, of merging that is felt to be
gratifying to our emotions. But this is because of our emotions. It is
not intrinsic to the It itself, which is a mere Nothingness.
Fifth
objection: ´a mysticism of Nothing seems to rule out all lower
levels of being. Our materia, our biology, our mind and thinking, even
our soul and our psychological life, are all something. But there is no
room for them in a Nothing.´
Refutation: mysticism does
not deny the existence of these other levels of being. But as a science
of the Spirit she transcends all lower levels. Mysticism is in this
regard the prima or summa scientia. She deals with the
level of the highest abstraction, a higher abstraction than our mind
and even our soul is ever able to fathom. She can only express herself
in negations, or in the language of symbols and parables. She is an
intuitive science. Mysticism discloses herself to the self that sinks
back unto itself. From this self-referentiality stems her phenomenology.
The body, mind and soul that
are somehow, after long perseverance and many ordeals, able to climb up
to this highest level of being, are from the top down infused with the
tremendous power, energy and blissfulness of this heaven like abode. It
is from here that the Nothing infuses the All. The result of this can
be described by describing the mystic.
The existential
results of the mysticism of Nothing
The one emptied of all
thought, purged from the past, now virgin like before all existence,
feels completely at home in the body he occupies. Wherever the body
walks, sits or lies, there is always this inner core of sweet
contentment, of joy, of exhilarating ecstasy. Nothing now obstruct the
gentle flow of the divine melody that sings within. The one has
realized the One. This means his body, his mind and his soul now have
merged into everything that exists. He has become the sky, the waters,
the mountains, the forests. He now is the little cat walking along with
him through the village he passes. He now has become that cozy little
restaurant where he takes his diner afterwards. He is no more separate.
This one is a living paradox.
Though (because!) he is nothing, confesses to know nothing, believes in
nothing and humiliates himself as a nothing before all existence,
overawed by the sheer magnificence of everything there is, he suddenly
feels and intuits that he is the all and everything. Overwhelmed by
this thought he is struck down to the ground, as by lightning, in the
spell of this great wonder that is life and existence, closes his
hands, his eyes, utters a foolish little prayer of gratefulness and is
perfectly happy to be this ....
utter blissfulness, but like in
so many similar cases, the challenge was not met, the hardest road to
travel by was shunned. For the man in the story was suddenly knocked
down by the Great Nothing. This is for every mortal the greatest blow
to suffer. It drags you down. You are swallowed up by It´s
engulfing torrents. In cases like these it is natural -human, all too
human- to resist drowning. Instantly plans and devices are made up to
safe oneself from such a psychological death.
experience the Great Nothing.
They have never closed their eyes when in the depth of depression or
mourning. They have never ´sat it out´. Mysticism is such
an experiment. It is the spirit of non-moving, as a means to
contact higher sources of energy when in the midst of adversity.
This is how historically speaking meditation developed. It was the
body-mind´s original response to calamity and adversity. It was
already given in our biology: the body has a natural tendency to become
catatonic when in depression. In such a state the best regeneration
becomes possible.
Every time I have a thought, an image, an opinion, a
feeling, a judgement in my mind-every time awareness takes on a
definite form- I become the one and only hindrance to my own
blissfulness. For thus the infiniteness and omnipotentiality of my
awareness become finite and unipotential. With the
´something´ in my thought I block the well of my creativity
and bliss. It obstructs the gentle flow of perfectness that is a priori
given to all life. It is not simply the ego that obstructs the source
of life. It is a fortiori all thought, all forms of consciousness. For
every form is born into duality. Its joy is at the same time also its
grief. 
being- as it is a negation. A
spiritual nihilism would rule out affirmations, like love, bliss,
strength, health etc. and such a denial would go against the most
profound mystical and phenomenological experience. For the experience
of the deepest Nothingness entails these affirmations also. So it would
be better to call mysticism a nihilism/plenism, since it is the dyad
taken together. But since it is foremost the transcendence of this dyad
at the essential level of Being, we prefer to call it a Nothing, since
it transcends in its most essential aspects the level of Form. 
