cessation...into awareness (part 2)

Previously, I offered some thoughts about cessation and some notes from my own experiences. That post addressed a classical experience that is known from Eastern traditions. One term for it is "nirvikalpa samadhi."

After learning of an Irish spiritual teacher named Gareth Duignan, I decided to watch some of his YouTube videos. I noticed he had a video on nirvikalpa samadhi and was curious. I sat with the video and something unusual happened.

After a bit, I became aware of an abundance of clear light. My awareness was flooded with this light, so bright. It was compelling and mesmerizing. The next thing I knew, I was hearing Gareth's voice ending the meditation. I thought, "Wait. What just happened?" I knew I hadn't been asleep, and the last thing I remembered was this light.

It was confusing because the experience felt like cessation. There was the same sense of having been drawn in and the same post-emergence feeling of having been cleansed. But there had been no blackness, only light. It made no sense to me.

I spoke with several teachers about the experience, and no one quite knew what it was. Then, on a sort of whim, I listened to the recordings from a retreat I had attended a few years earlier. I heard the teacher, Hameed Ali (aka A. H. Almaas), describe exactly what I had experienced! And I was elated! Finally, I knew what the experience had been: non-conceptual witnessing. Essentially, there perception without knowing. Because there's no knowing, there's no mind. When there's no mind and no recognition of what it perceived, there is no memory. You only recognize it when you come out of that state.

Hameed says it can happen during meditation (he says it's "a rare advanced condition" but I don't think of myself as either rare or advanced, so I cannot affirm that), but also it can happen while walking or driving. He continues...

It shows you that there's an intelligence of being that knows what to do regardless of the engagement of the mind.

I like to call it a cessation into light, because that is how it felt to me. Rather than being pulled into the black void, I was pulled into the bright light.

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Note on the image: It would be impossible to photograph the light I experienced, but something about this photograph captures a certain feeling about the experience. Perhaps it will spark something in you!