Formlessness as Freedom and Awakening Oneness

When asked to describe our childhoods, or simply in trying to remember, most of us do not answer that brilliant luminosity has always been our experience of Self and myself. I'd imagine that awareness of being brilliant luminosity incarnate is also a rare response to when someone greets us on the street with, "How's it going?" or finishes a conversation with, "...and have a nice day." Ha, ha, ha! But openness is open nonetheless. Even if you let your "mind" roll through these thoughts, you get a hint; I get a hint from doing nothing more than remembering or allowing.

That hint may be dressed in--covered by--all sorts of emotional garb, some trash and some beauty. And we might be distracted from that mind-state by almost anything: plans, sensations, someone clearing their throat...

Soul does not need to be defined as soul to be felt. Before, without, and within the conscious sense of whatever that "soul" may be, there is a feeling that there is something even more free than that (more free than an idea or memory or some particular feeling or way of being). We often feel freedom dressed in the desire to be more free than "this"--this day, this responsibility, this body, this relationship, etc. The hint of freedom is genuine, and the desire may be genuine too, but the desire (in some sense) is extra. The freedom simply exists.

Even if that may be, all the forms that might draw our attention from that indescribable openness still exist too, and they often do draw our attention from that openness. Ramana Maharshi said that the intellect is useful only so as to direct the ego into the Self. But it seems that there is something more. It seems that there is also some protest against this simple injunction even from those who agree that they would like to simply direct mind back to ego back to Self. The protest could be phrased as the egoic response, "But what about the world?" Maharshi's answers tended to run along a very clear line. He tended to answer that it was not the world asking about the world--it is you (whoever was questioning him at the time). He'd say something like, "For now, let the world ask its own question. You are questioning, so look to the questioner. Who are you? Find that and you may find that the world is not a problem at all." Clear, deep, simple. For most of us, too simple.

About twenty years back, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote a book about flow states called, not surprisingly, FLOW. Rather than turning questioners back to themselves as Maharshi often did, Csikszentmihalyi compared experiences from around the world in which people reported being so involved with whatever activity they were doing that they lost a sense of time and self. Athletes talk about being in "the zone" and recognize this type of focus and involvement as representing peak performance rather than distraction or daydreaming. When folks are asked how they feel after these states, they feel great, transcendent even.

For a long time, I wondered how Maharshi related with FLOW. Although he had said that, "Peace is the state of utmost activity," it seemed that Maharshi was suggesting a contemplative non-action while the studies on flow states suggested intense focus to the point of becoming one with the moment or the activity. Throughout this time, I also kept running into the comment from spiritual leaders that people often thought they had a taste of enlightenment without even coming close to being enlightened. So I wondered what a genuine taste would be, how one could know from the inside (experiencing it oneself) or the outside (watching someone else).

Maharshi seemed to say that we all experienced oneness in deep sleep. The thinking goes: when you wake up, you feel like the same person, you recognize a continuum of something from night to dawn; you are also able to say whether you slept well; now, the ego was not aware during deep sleep, so what is aware of self continuing? what is aware of sleeping deeply or not? Since the ego does not exist in deep sleep, but awareness remains, there is some deeper or more continuous self. Since that remains while you pay attention to it (or AS it, as in deep sleep) or not (like during normal waking consciousness), you are more accurately THAT than what you normally experience as yourself (the individual ego). That Self is more completely you and you are more accurately that than you are the ego which you normally think of as yourself. Maharshi affirmed that we all experience peace during deep sleep, that we all are that Self which is peace, that no one is trapped by life regardless of whether we create an egoic drama around feeling trapped within this lifetime or not. Is that a taste of enlightenment?

And in comparison, Michael Jordan talked about playing basketball on nights when the basket seemed as big as the ocean, when he felt he couldn't fail or miss if he tried to. Is MJ enlightened?