During the earlier stages of the process of inner creativity leading to self-realization, a moving away from the world, a renunciation, takes place. During manifestation, there is a reentry into the world, but from no fixed center of self-identity, for this has shifted beyond ego. This reentry problem is alluded to in the Zen saying “Before awakening, mountains are mountains and lakes are lakes. Then mountains are not mountains, lakes are not lakes. After awakening mountains are mountains, lakes are lakes.”
With the realization of a deeper self, our identification with the ego increasingly gives way to the quantum self, and we try to manifest this in our daily living. To describe this phenomenon, East Indian mystic Ramakrishna used the analogy of a salt figurine dipped into the ocean. The figurine dissolves; its saltiness remains, but its separate structure and identity no longer exist. This is the goal of the creative act of self-realization. The challenge is to remain aware of the movements of consciousness as they manifest reality.
All three great East Indian mystics of recent times, Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, and Sri Aurobindo, spent long years in silence after their insight of self-realization. The sixth patriarch of Chan Buddhism, Huineng, was a humble cook for 12 years after his enlightenment before circumstances catapulted him to public life. As the center of the self shifts beyond ego, action increasingly comes from the quantum self, from primary awareness. At the cremation grounds in India, an attendant stands by the burning pyre with a stick to see that no part of the body escapes. When the job is done, the attendant throws the stick on the pyre. This is the destination.
Savikalpa and Nirvikalpa Samadhi
In self-realization, the subject, the object, and the entire field of awareness all tend to become one. In yoga literature this is called savikalpa samadhi; in Sanskrit samadhi means the balance between the two poles of subject and object. Savikalpa means “with separation.” In other words, in this experience we become aware of the dependent co-arising of the universal quantum self and the world, albeit with some sense of separation. We never experience consciousness as undivided from its possibilities. In other words, savikalpa samadhi is as deep as experience can go. Now we see clearly that we are at one with the (unconscious) creative forces of the universe. Very confusingly to the ordinary mind, Eastern literature refers to another kind of samadhi callednirvikalpa samadhi. The Sanskrit word nirvikalpa means “without split”—without subject-object
separation. But we know from quantum mechanics that any experience involves the collapse of possibility into actuality. If there is no experience without a subject-object split, what does this represent?
experience. Yet this is an accepted state of consciousness. So nirvikalpa samadhi can be understood as a deeper sleep in which some special unconscious processing takes place, much like the “experience” of a near-death survivor who sees himself from a distance and remembers this on being revived. Since experience is impossible when you are dead, the near-death survivor ’s memory upon being revived has to be recognized to be the result of “delayed choice,” explained earlier. Similarly, knowledge arises in the mind of the yogi in nirvikalpa samadhi upon waking up. This knowledge is what the East Indian sage Patanjali meant when he said, “Meditate on knowledge that comes during sleep.” Some people call this kind of knowledge the result of imperience, not experience.
What is the special vision that is revealed upon waking up from nirvikalpa? The mystic sage Swami Sivananda describes it this way:
There are two kinds of … nirvikalpa samadhi. In the first the jnani [wise person], by resting in Brahman [Sanskrit word for Godhead], sees [processes] the whole world within himself as a movement of ideas, as a mode of being or a mode of his own existence. … This is the highest state of realization …
In the second variety the world vanishes from view and the jnani rests on pure attributeless Brahman.1
Clearly the first kind of nirvikalpa samadhi is the ultimate state of unconscious processing, in which we process the entire world of quantum possibilities, including the archetypes. Sivananda’s second nirvikalpa state is called turiya. Turiya is a deeper state of non-experience, or imperience. Can any form of consciousness be deeper than the unconscious processor of quantum possibilities of the whole universe? What came before that? Consciousness with all possibilities, no limitations imposed, not even quantum laws. When all possibilities are included, there is no quality, and there is nothing to process, which is the reason Buddhists call this state of consciousness the Great Void; Hindus call it nirguna, or attributeless; and Christians call it Godhead (prior to God). The spiritual literature of India claims that people with nirvikalpa capacity are totally transformed, that their identity completely shifts to the quantum self except when the ego is needed for everyday chores, for ego-functions. So when it comes to enlightenment, self-realization is not the end of the road. You have to manifest the quantum self in everyday living. A vestige of ego-identity remains.
The situation is drastically different for a person who has realized turiya. Now there is no longer any “thing” to manifest. This is nirvana, to use the language of Buddha—the state of no desire. When this state becomes effortless, there is nothing more to be accomplished, there is no need to take rebirth. So if liberation means freedom from a birth-death-rebirth cycle, then liberation arrives with nirvana. But if you have the exalted notion that liberation means total freedom, forget it. As long as we live in this body we cannot be totally free of ego conditioning; we cannot always reside in the quantum self. Hence the wise koan, How does a Zen master go to the bathroom? The same way everyone else does.
So in esoteric Hinduism there is the concept of liberation in the body that then is recognized to have some limitations. Only in death do we find total freedom.
The end of Buddha’s journey is nirvana—cessation of all desires. When all your identity structures give way to a profound fluidity,
Call it enlightenment if you like. This bloom has no name, only fragrance.