The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (20 page)

Just as no sound can exist without silence, nothing can exist without no-thing, without the empty space that enables it to be. Every physical object or body has come out of nothing, is surrounded by nothing, and will eventually return to nothing. Not only that, but even inside every physical body there is far more
“nothing” than “something.” Physicists tell us that the solidity of matter is an illusion. Even seemingly solid matter, including your physical body, is nearly 100 percent empty space — so vast are the distances between the atoms compared to their size. What is more, even inside every atom there is mostly empty space. What is left is more like a vibrational frequency than particles of solid matter, more like a musical note. Buddhists have known that for over 2,500 years. “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” states the
Heart Sutra
, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.

The Unmanifested is not only present in this world as silence; it also pervades the entire physical universe as space — from within and without. This is just as easy to miss as silence. Everybody pays attention to the things in space, but who pays attention to space itself?

You seem to be implying that “emptiness” or “nothing” is not just nothing, that there is some mysterious quality to it. What is this nothing?

You cannot ask such a question. Your mind is trying to make nothing into something. The moment you make it into something, you have missed it. Nothing — space — is the appearance of the Unmanifested as an externalized phenomenon in a sense-perceived world. That’s about as much as one can say about it, and even that is a kind of paradox. It cannot become an object of knowledge. You can’t do a Ph.D. on “nothing.” When scientists study space, they usually make it into something and thereby miss its essence entirely. Not surprisingly, the latest theory is that space isn’t empty at all, that it is filled with some substance. Once you have a theory, it’s
not too hard to find evidence to substantiate it, at least until some other theory comes along.

“Nothing” can only become a portal into the Unmanifested for you if you don’t try to grasp or understand it.

Isn’t that what we are doing here?

Not at all. I am giving you pointers to show you how you can bring the dimension of the Unmanifested into your life. We are not trying to understand it. There is nothing to understand.

Space has no “existence.” “To exist” literally means “to stand out.” You cannot understand space because it doesn’t stand out. Although in itself it has no existence, it enables everything else to exist. Silence has no existence either, nor does the Un-manifested.

So what happens if you withdraw attention from the objects in space and become aware of space itself? What is the essence of this room? The furniture, pictures, and so on are
in
the room, but they are not the room. The floor, walls, and ceiling define the boundary of the room, but they are not the room either. So what is the essence of the room? Space, of course, empty space. There would be no “room” without it. Since space is “nothing,” we can say that what is
not
there is more important than what is there. So become aware of the space that is all around you. Don’t think about it. Feel it, as it were. Pay attention to “nothing.”

As you do that, a shift in consciousness takes place inside you. Here is why. The inner equivalent to objects in space such as furniture, walls, and so on are your mind objects:
thoughts, emotions, and the objects of the senses. And the inner equivalent of space is the consciousness that enables your mind objects to be, just as space allows all things to be. So if you withdraw attention from
things
— objects in space — you automatically withdraw attention from your mind objects as well. In other words: You cannot think
and
be aware of space — or of silence, for that matter. By becoming aware of the empty space around you, you simultaneously become aware of the space of no-mind, of pure consciousness: the Unmanifested. This is how the contemplation of space can become a portal for you.

Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing, the same no-thing. They are an externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness: the infinitely creative womb of all existence. Most humans are completely unconscious of this dimension. There is no inner space, no stillness. They are out of balance. In other words, they know the world, or think they do, but they don’t know God. They identify exclusively with their own physical and psychological form, unconscious of essence. And because every form is highly unstable, they live in fear. This fear causes a deep misperception of themselves and of other humans, a distortion in their vision of the world.

If some cosmic convulsion brought about the end of our world, the Unmanifested would remain totally unaffected by this.
A Course in Miracles
expresses this truth poignantly: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”

If you remain in conscious connection with the Unmanifested, you value, love, and deeply respect the manifested and every life form in it as an expression of the One Life
beyond form. You also know that every form is destined to dissolve again and that ultimately nothing out here matters all that much. You have “overcome the world,” in the words of Jesus, or, as the Buddha put it, you have “crossed over to the other shore.”

Now consider this: If there were nothing but silence, it wouldn’t exist for you; you wouldn’t know what it is. Only when sound appears does silence come into being. Similarly, if there were only space without any objects in space, it wouldn’t exist for you. Imagine yourself as a point of consciousness floating in the vastness of space — no stars, no galaxies, just emptiness. Suddenly, space wouldn’t be vast anymore; it would not be there at all. There would be no speed, no movement from here to there. At least two points of reference are needed for distance and space to come into being. Space comes into being the moment the One becomes two, and as “two” become the “ten thousand things,” as Lao Tse calls the manifested world, space becomes more and more vast. So world and space arise simultaneously.

Nothing could
be
without space, yet space is nothing. Before the universe came into being, before the “big bang,” if you like, there wasn’t a vast empty space waiting to be filled. There was no space, as there was no thing. There was only the Unmanifested — the One. When the One became “the ten thousand things,” suddenly space seemed to be there and enabled the many to be. Where did it come from? Was it created by God to accommodate the universe? Of course not. Space is no-thing, so it was never created.

Go out on a clear night and look up at the sky. The thousands of stars you can see with the naked eye are no more than an infinitesimal fraction of what is there. Over 100 billion galaxies can already be detected with the most powerful telescopes, each galaxy an “island universe” with billions of stars. Yet what is even more awe-inspiring is the infinity of space itself, the depth and stillness that allows all of that magnificence to be. Nothing could be more awe-inspiring and majestic than the inconceivable vastness and stillness of space, and yet what is it? Emptiness, vast emptiness.

What appears to us as space in our universe perceived through the mind and the senses is the Unmanifested itself, externalized. It is the “body” of God. And the greatest miracle is this: That stillness and vastness that enables the universe to
be
is not just out there in space — it is also within you. When you are utterly and totally
present
, you encounter it as the still inner space of no-mind. Within you, it is vast in depth, not in extension. Spacial extension is ultimately a misperception of infinite depth — an attribute of the one transcendental reality.

According to Einstein, space and time are not separate. I don’t really understand it, but I think he is saying that time is the fourth dimension of space. He calls it the “space-time continuum.”

Yes. What you perceive externally as space and time are ultimately illusory, but they contain a core of truth. They are the two essential attributes of God, infinity and eternity, perceived as if they had an external existence outside you. Within you, both space and time have an inner equivalent that reveals their true nature, as well as your own. Whereas space is the still, infinitely deep realm of no-mind, the inner equivalent of
time is presence, awareness of the eternal Now. Remember that there is no distinction between them. When space and time are realized within as the Unmanifested — no-mind and presence — external space and time continue to exist for you, but they become much less important. The world, too, continues to exist for you, but it will not bind you anymore.

Hence, the ultimate purpose of the world lies not within the world but in transcendence of the world. Just as you would not be conscious of space if there were no objects in space, the world is needed for the Unmanifested to be realized. You may have heard the Buddhist saying: “If there were no illusion, there would be no enlightenment.” It is through the world and ultimately through
you
that the Unmanifested knows itself. You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold.
That is how important you are!

Apart from dreamless sleep, which I mentioned already, there is one other involuntary portal. It opens up briefly at the time of physical death. Even if you have missed all the other opportunities for spiritual realization during your lifetime, one last portal will open up for you immediately after the body has died.

There are countless accounts by people who had a visual impression of this portal as radiant light and then returned from what is commonly known as a near-death experience. Many of them also spoke of a sense of blissful serenity and deep peace. In the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
, it is described as “the luminous splendor of the colorless light of Emptiness,”
which it says is “your own true self.” This portal opens up only very briefly, and unless you have already encountered the dimension of the Unmanifested in your lifetime, you will likely miss it. Most people carry too much residual resistance, too much fear, too much attachment to sensory experience, too much identification with the manifested world. So they see the portal, turn away in fear, and then lose consciousness. Most of what happens after that is involuntary and automatic. Eventually, there will be another round of birth and death. Their presence wasn’t strong enough yet for conscious immortality.

So going through this portal does not mean annihilation?

As with all the other portals, your radiant true nature remains, but not the personality. In any case, whatever is real or of true value in your personality is your true nature shining through. This is never lost. Nothing that is of value, nothing that is
real
, is ever lost.

Approaching death and death itself, the dissolution of the physical form, is always a great opportunity for spiritual realization. This opportunity is tragically missed most of the time, since we live in a culture that is almost totally ignorant of death, as it is almost totally ignorant of anything that truly matters.

Every portal is a portal of death, the death of the false self. When you go through it, you cease to derive your identity from your psychological, mind-made form. You then realize that death is an illusion, just as your identification with form was an illusion. The end of illusion — that’s all that death is. It is painful only as long as you cling to illusion.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ENLIGHTENED
RELATIONSHIPS

I always thought that true enlightenment is not possible except through love in a relationship between a man and a woman. Isn’t this what makes us whole again? How can one’s life be fulfilled until that happens?

Is that true in your experience? Has this happened to you?

Not yet, but how could it be otherwise? I know that it
will
happen
.

In other words, you are waiting for an event
in time
to save you. Is this not the core error that we have been talking about? Salvation is not elsewhere in place or time. It is here and now.

What does that statement mean, “salvation is here and now”? I don’t understand it. I don’t even know what salvation means
.

Most people pursue physical pleasures or various forms of psychological gratification because they believe that those
things will make them happy or free them from a feeling of fear or lack. Happiness may be perceived as a heightened sense of aliveness attained through physical pleasure, or a more secure and more complete sense of self attained through some form of psychological gratification. This is the search for salvation from a state of unsatisfactoriness or insufficiency. Invariably, any satisfaction that they obtain is short-lived, so the condition of satisfaction or fulfillment is usually projected once again onto an imaginary point away from the here and now. “When I obtain
this
or am free of
that
— then I will be okay.” This is the unconscious mind-set that creates the illusion of salvation in the future.

True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness. It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has no opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself. It is felt not as a passing experience but as an abiding presence. In theistic language, it is to “know God” — not as something outside you but as your own innermost essence. True salvation is to know yourself as an inseparable part of the timeless and formless One Life from which all that exists derives its being.