Why we shouldn´t seek spiritual experiences as a way to Reality

Painting by Gleb Goloubetsk

We are all seeking spiritual experiences, and we are bragging about spiritual experiences and abilities.

But experience is not a measure, is not the way to Reality because, after all, we experience according to our belief, according to our conditioning, and that belief is obviously an escape from ourselves.

To know myself, I need not have any belief; I only have to watch myself clearly and neutral—watch myself in relationship, watch myself in escape, watch myself in attachment.

One has to watch oneself without any prejudice, without any conclusion, without any determination.

In that passive listening presence, one discovers this extraordinary sense of Aloneness. I am sure most of you have felt this—the sense of complete emptiness that nothing can fill. It is only in abiding in that state when all images and ideas have utterly ceased, only when we are capable of being alone and facing that Aloneness without any sense of escape, only then that Reality comes into being.

Because images and ideas are merely the result of our conditioning; like experience, they are based on a belief, and are a hindrance to the understanding of Reality.

But that is an arduous task that most of us are unwilling to go through. So we cling to experiences, mystical, superstitious, psychedelic, trance techniques, the experiences of relationship, of so-called love, the experiences of entertainment, and the experiences of possession. These become very significant, because it is of these that we are made.

We are made of beliefs, of conditionings, of environmental influences. That is our background, and from that background, we judge, we value. But when one goes through, understands, the whole process of this background, then one comes to a point where one is utterly alone.

This doesn´t mean that you can´t receive help from belief. Because you can still find the Keepers of Our Stories. I have talked about the value of having a religion in a spiritual practice, a frame of reference, but nothing more than that. There is, for example, an altogether legitimate tradition inside Islam, of the so-called Uwaisîs: Sufis who happen to have no outer teacher, because they have been initiated, all alone with their teacher alone, by an invisible sheikh.

Also dreams become an important teacher in this Aloneness, since dreams are the bridge between the divine and the human.

Then there are the teachings coming from Mother Nature herself. Rold Forest has been my teacher since childhood, and when I have been away, she whispers in my dreams. In his book, The Island Within, Richard Nelson writes:

"I’ve often thought of the forest as a living cathedral, but this might diminish what it truly is. If I have understood Koyukon teachings, the forest is not merely an expression or representation of sacredness, nor a place to invoke the sacred; the forest is sacredness itself. Nature is not merely created by God; nature is God. Whoever moves within the forest can partake directly of sacredness, experience sacredness with his entire body, breathe sacredness and contain it within himself, drink the sacred water as a living communion, bury his feet in sacredness, touch the living branch and feel the sacredness, open his eyes and witness the burning beauty of sacredness.”   

There is a saying in ancient Greek, which says: monos pros monos, “alone to alone”. It means that only those who are alone can co-operate with that which is without cause, the Immense. In the one who is alone, life is timeless; in the one who is alone, there is no death. The one who is alone can never cease with being, because Aloneness is life itself, the eternal flowing aloneness of life.

In her poem, How I Go to the Woods, Mary Oliver writes:

Ordinarily I go to the woods alone,
with not a single friend,
for they are all smilers and talkers
and therefore unsuitable.
I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree.
I have my ways of praying,
as you no doubt have yours.
Besides, when I am alone
I can become invisible.
I can sit on the top of a dune
as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned.
I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.
If you have ever gone to the woods with me,
I must love you very much.

When you are doing your part of the preparatory work, which consists in an utterly simplification of your life, you will receive divine providence. Your progressive karma will be activated. An ancient, invisible script will be made visible.

So, one must be alone to find Reality—which does not mean escape, withdrawal from life. On the contrary it is the complete intensification of life because then there is freedom from the background, from the memory of the experiences of escape. In that Aloneness, in that loneliness, there is no evaluation, there is no fear of what you are. Fear arises only when you are unwilling to acknowledge or see what you are.

Therefore, it is essential, for Reality to come into being, to strip oneself of the innumerable escapes that one has established, in which one is caught up. It is only when we recognize that these things are an escape, and therefore see their true value, that there is a possibility of remaining quiet, still, in that emptiness, in that loneliness.

And when the mind is very quiet, neither accepting nor rejecting, being passively aware of what you are, and everything that is, then there is a possibility for that immeasurable Reality to be.