“The sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes, looking out at a world that is separate from yourself—can be altered or entirely extinguished. Although such experiences of ‘self-transcendence’ are generally thought about in religious terms, there is nothing, in principle, irrational about them. From both a scientific and a philosophical point of view, they represent a clearer understanding of the way things are. Deepening that understanding, and repeatedly cutting through the illusion of the self, is what is meant by ‘spirituality’ in the context of this book.” Sam Harris in Waking Up: Searching for Spirituality Without Religion

I read these words from Sam Harris’ book in 2017 though I had no understanding what he meant, until 7 years later. I had spent nearly a decade dabbling around with meditation, trying to extract the clinical benefits: lower stress, better sleep, reducing my suffering. I couldn’t develop a stable routine. Glimpses of relief here and there but ultimately frustration would get the better of me.

Losing “Myself” for the First Time

I am now in the Mayan jungle in Quintana Roo, MX, not to far from the border of Belize. I am lying on a mattress in the middle of circular thatch roof structure, a Maloka. A skylight is centered directly above me. I can see birds in the rafters. I’ve been here for nearly a week for several ayahuasca ceremonies. I am hardly eating and am ripped open emotionally, it feels like I am bleeding. I am exhausted and terrified of what’s about to happen.

I was told that this would be a quick journey. Two points of advice were given to me: “You are going to feel like you are dying. Just accept death. And.. don’t forget to breathe”. Poison extracted from the Sonoran Desert Toad, 45 milligrams of dark red powder, was presented to me in some fancy glassware sealed with an aluminum foil top. Also a metal straw. Kyle brought a torch to the bottom of the glass. I was to pierce the foil with the straw and breathe in the smoke of the vaporized powder and hold as long until given a signal.

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The last thing in my visual field was smoke exiting my mouth. My heartbeat is getting louder exponentially. Fear beyond fear. Something is coming and it’s overwhelming. I took what seemed to be my last breaths. “I am going to die here and nobody knows exactly where I am.” And then nothing. I fell to stillness at the bottom of my last breath. I died. There is absolutely nothing, complete peace. There is a visual field of the skylight. But there is no skylight. This is an image, but there is no image. There is no time. Words completely fail here. The cosmic background radiation of the universe is this image of a skylight. It’s always been here. There is no before nor after. Everything has been reduced to a point, and then nothing. Eternity is now.

A rogue thought pops into existence “don’t forget to breathe!”. Back in duality now. The body seems to automatically inhale. With the inhale, a hot blast of energy follows. WHAT IS THIS? The saturation and brightness in the visual field have been turned up past 11. With this breath, a wave of life force. Each cell of my body opens up in full orgasm. A second breath, another wave. Brilliant white light. All of the energy of the universe is dumping into me like a cosmic waterfall. With each breath, pure overwhelm. This is perfection. Pure God Perfection. Unity. Everything I’ve wanted is right here. A sense of familiarity. It’s always been here. Full satisfaction. “Is this what new life feels like?”

20 minutes later. Breathing returning to normal. Deep love. I have just been born. Concept of self slowly returning. It’s as I have previously been living through the lens of concepts. Like how in a first person video game there is a HUD (heads up display) that shows your location, stats, health points, rank, ammo. All of that information that was overlayed on my screen is now gone. There is just the appearance of world in all of it’s absolute beauty. There is just bliss. Concept of self slowly returning. “There isn’t any suffering. There is nothing to desire. Everything is perfect”.

1 hour later I am eating dinner with my facilitators. Back to normal now, but I feel completely free. I am still in awe.

Nonduality

Nonduality is the knowing that there are not two separate things, a self and the world. You are one with everything and everyone. This oneness has the qualities of bliss, love, peace, freedom. You are not a separate self district from the world. That felt separateness is an illusion. The experience I mention above with 5-meo-DMT (the active component in the secretions of the Bufo Alvarius Toad) was my first glimpse at what nonduality (self-realization) can “feel like” although in a very rapid and somewhat forced way. Both certain forms of meditation and psychedelics can induce this type of experience.

The fascinating thing is that when the “knowledge” of myself goes away, there is still something here, something familiar. Even perhaps more familiar than what I used to call “myself”. What’s really falling away is the ego: our personal identity, the inner narrator, the system that keeps track of who I am by associating a made up concept “me” with identities that are made up “engineer”, “musician”, “sad”, “angry”, “American”. If I lose my job, do “I” change? What is the “me-ness” underneath these identifications. Even the identification with the body and mind seem to be illusory when investigated closely.

I find value in eastern spiritual traditions (Advaita Vedanta, Zen, Dzogchen) not for their creation stories or cultural trappings but for the highlighting of the investigation of subjectivity. After all, all we have is subjectivity. Everything we know about the “external world” is known within consciousness. Even these thoughts you are having reading this sentence are appearing in consciousness. It’s something we can’t “escape”. This used to bring up existential terror for me. Terror because it feels as “I” am “trapped”.

When one has this realization and allows it to stabilize, relief eventually comes. You find you are not a thing moving through a world. In fact the world is moving through you, subjective awareness. This invites deep rest no matter what is going on.

I am specifically drawn to Vedantic philosophy in which the core of our being is known to be pure awareness. A better description of the nature of myself is “Sat Chit Ananda”, translated “truth, consciousness, bliss”.

“I am loving awareness” - Ram Dass

Once self realization is glimpsed, the path forward then is to not forget what we truly are at our core, when our associations and identifications are stripped away. Easier said than done as most of us don’t spend our days meditating in caves and having all of our basic needs met.

Post Realization

So we discover who we are and we find that “we” don’t really exist, “we” are an illusory concept. Okay so now what? We still have to deal with this ego thing on a daily basis because we have to survive and relate in this complicated world. But the ego tells itself all of these difficult stories and is troubled by complicated emotions, usually of negative valence. No wonder it’s the source of suffering.

It turns out that “self”-realization fits lock and key with the therapy modality Internal Family Systems (IFS). Unlike traditional “gold-standard” approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (which are actually train our protector parts!), IFS claims that the mind is not a single entity but a system of interconnected “parts”. Each part is a persona complete with its own beliefs and emotions. These parts are created when trauma is experienced.

“Trauma is not what happens to you…it is what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you” - Gabor Maté

Rumination for instance is not about living in the past, its closer to the past living inside of you!

In IFS, the Self is not a part. It’s a presence that has qualities of Calmness, Clarity, Compassion, Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, Creativity, and Connectedness. It turns out that this presence is quite compatible with nature of the Self, specifically in Vedanta. In IFS work, we remain in Self (closer to non-dual awareness) and literally talk to our parts. And as if by spooky magic, they respond. It turns out that we have the capacity to unburden parts of ourselves that feel traumatized and re-assign the controlling or reactive parts to serve better roles.

IFS is just one tool among several for working with our samskaras (a term from Yogic philosophy meaning our mental conditioning left behind by a past event). Others include Svadhyaya which is a self-observation practice of noticing and questioning why thoughts emotions and reactions happen. It is said that when all samskaras dissolve, what remains is pure awareness.

Model of Self

So who are you?

I think of the Self as an iceberg most of which is under water (excuse my artistic impression of what an iceberg looks like) The portion of self that is above water is what exists in conscious space. What we are aware of. Below the water live our samskaras, or “parts”. These are parts of our Self, perhaps a packet of consciousness that had to split off of our Self to serve a purpose. Even though these are drawn in red, note that these aren’t all troublesome. If you investigate your thoughts you’ll find that they just pop into conscious space. It’s our parts that are generating most of these thoughts. I believe that certain thoughts do come from a deeper place (creative impulses and intuition for example).

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The water level can be lowered with spiritual practice or psychedelics, exposing more of our Self and more of our parts into conscious space. My experience with 5-meo-DMT was like a brief tsunami, one moment of no water, leaving full access to Self. This is what I mean by a glimpse of self realization.

How Deep Does Being Go?

A final question, a deeply philosophical and almost religious one is, how deep does the Self go? In nonduality, everything is connected. There is only one being, no separateness. To quote some self-realized beings:

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” – Rumi

“No one and nothing outside yourself can give you enlightenment.” – The Buddha

“There is no seeker, no search, and no separate self. Just this.” – Ramana Maharshi

“God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.” – Meister Eckhart

“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” – Jesus

Perhaps at the core of our selves there really is something greater and boundless.

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