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Title: Collision With the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self by Suzanne Segal ISBN: 1-884997-27-9 Publisher: Blue Dove Pr Pub. Date: November, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.15 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Enlightenment: Now What?
Comment: I found Ms. Segal's life story very interesting and refreshing. It used to be, that enlightening experiences were rarely ever shared, and certainly not spoken of so openly and honestly, let alone published. However, after reading the reviews herein, I was astonished to realize that no one picked up on several facts so candidly expressed by Ms. Segal.
First of all, it is obvious to this former meditation instructor that Ms. Segal was born into this life with a strong conscious connection to her soul and the dharma of a seasoned yogi. (Anyone who sits in meditation daily at age 7 chanting their name inwardly as a mantra is indeed a person with much spiritual groundwork already covered.)
Second, her fiancé jilted her at a time when she was most vulnerable. This, during the second six-month-long meditation retreat they both attended in Europe under the auspices of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the first Indian Master to bring Transcendental Meditation to the West. I believe being jilted would undo any good woman; but under these extraordinary circumstances, I can tell you from experience, everything in ones' life is magnified during a retreat of this nature.
When in this space one becomes very "soft". Meaning, hyper-sensitive to even the most mundane things and the subtlest thought-forms. This is why it is most important to seclude oneself from the outside world, entirely released from responsibility and be with those of like intent as much as possible. Maharishi's retreats are specifically designed for huge chunks of karma (accumulated stress) to fall away in order to create "emptiness"; a space for the light to fill. Oftentimes, the out-picturing of this is not always pleasant, to say the least. Ms. Segal was quite young at the time this happened and I believe, due to her naiveté, was not prepared for the repercussions which appeared to have left a deep, enduring wound in her psyche.
During retreats, there is always this anticipation on behalf of the meditator to have a great illuminating, epiphany: one specific event that shouts "enlightenment, at last"! More often than not, though, like Ms. Segal, there is a certain amount of disappointment and sense of inadequacy encountered in the wake of this. I used to remind those I was honored to assist that, just because something incredible fails to occur, it does not mean there was not any movement nor ones' goal not met. It all depends on the soul and its own cosmic time-table. None of us can really know the details in this regard; that is, until we put aside all attachment to the outcome of all our endeavors, spiritual or not. In fact, one eventually arrives at the point where there is no difference between the spiritual and the mundane: in short, the spiritualization of matter.
With regard to extraordinary experiences, an Indian guru once told me, "...it comes to whom it comes to" and his comment has proved a great comfort to me and many others to realize there appears to be no rhyme or reason. We may have an inkling, but most likely, the experiences we have take many years to integrate. It is usually in retrospect that one sees the perfection of all experiences and is truly able to "see things just as they are", as the Buddha taught.
After Ms. Segal's "bus stop hit" (which by the way, took place 6 years after the retreats and during which time she had ceased meditating), she had no idea what happened to her. I also find it so astounding that "fear" was her constant companion after this and that she did not simply allow herself to go into it, particularly in light of her intensive meditation training. In fact, it took her 12 years to sort this out after lengthy and varied psychotherapy only to find the answers she sought in Buddhist texts. Then found relief, only to realize that what she had been seeking, she'd possessed all along. Once realized, she was truly free and able to experience real joy for the first time in her life.
Her account brings to mind Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" where Glenda the Good Witch tells her, "...but my dear, you've had the power to go home all along!" Life is like that. Each of us has all we ever need, right now, in this moment. All that is required of us is to realize that there is nowhere to go and nothing to gain: We are It.
All in all, Ms. Segal's biography is a fascinating and riveting; though a bit contradictory with regard to the value she places on spiritual practice. Quite simply, the tale of a contemporary mystic immersed in the challenges of a modern world. Read up for a glimpse of things to come, because I've a feeling this and many more similar experiences are in store for more of us than ever before in our planet's history.....
Rating: 5
Summary: Extraordinary, Beautiful, and Heartbreaking
Comment: Suzanne Segal's extraordinary story of her experience of the instantaneous and total loss of her "self" is simply fascinating, and should be read by anyone blessed or cursed to find themselves wandering the incomprehensible and often bleak terrains of the varieties of spiritual undoing. Her style is beautifully straightforward, lucid, and generous, without affectation. In her matter-of-fact at-homeness with the most extraordinary conditions of consciousness, she is similar to Bernadette Roberts, whose own books on the no-self experience are the best I've ever encountered. This book has distinct weaknesses--Segal's final insistence on the irrelevance of spiritual practices rings a little strange in the light of her own years of intense meditation practice that preceded her catapulting into the land of no-self, and her failure to consider more fully the relationship between her history and the apparently spontaneous dawning of the no-self state strikes me as unsatisfying. And the book's somewhat sketchy epilogue clearly raises more--and fascinating--questions than it answers. The early death of this extraordinary woman is heartbreaking; how marvelous it would have been to see where her further development led her. But as it is, she has left us a precious gift in this memoir, like a note from a previous climber, high up on a frigid mountain, pointing the way ahead.
Rating: 5
Summary: Horrific...
Comment: We are talking here of an event, claimed by the author to be spontaneous, in which she simply CEASED TO EXIST! Her ego dissolved like a sugar cube in a cup of tea. This is said, by those who are supposed to know, to be the much sought after, enlightenment. Are you listening all you seekers? You are aimed at SELF ANIHILATION!
Her story of the total loss of her identity is the most harrowing and frightening thing I have ever read. The state she fell into was one in which there was no perception of herself and no percpetion of the world as separate from herself, therefore. She and the world became identical. She had no self referential emotions. If she was asked to write her name on a form she had the greatest of of difficulty in being able to know what the form was asking for, because, to her, she did not exist!!! and she never had!!! Are you getting this? If you achieve the the spiritual goal, considered by those that have "attained" it, to be the only true religious experience, YOU WILL NOT BE THERE TO EXPERIENCE IT!!! YOU WILL NOT EXIST!!! It is not that you won't have a big ego anymore, it is that there will not be one at all, you will have gone, disappeared, vanished with no trace, dead. Dwell on this, if you can. The only "escape" religion offers is for you to die whilst the organism lives on.
OK, although I have found that most seekers are actually VERY DENSE and have very ingrained ideas about what satori, or salvation, or the enlightenment actually is, I am going to hope that my words above have penetrated and you will not pick up and read this book lightly. It is not interesting, amusing, entertaining, "a jolly good read", funny, intriguing or anything else other than a book that will open your eyes to the potential of the UNREMITTING HORROR, repeat HORROR that spiritual awakening can be. Is that how you saw it when you started your quest? Didn't you hope for deep inner peace and some kind of personal trancendence? Well you are mistaken. The culmination of all your meditation and insight and all the rest is this: NOTHING. Limitless, eternal void.
Although it has different flavours, depending on the author, all of the books that deal with non-dual conciousness tell you the same thing, and when you read them you are left with an intellectual choice. Are they right, and your ego is an illusion, or have they gone insane? There is no middle ground.
Sitting on this side of the "enlightenment" I think that they are insane. The author of this particular book was abused as a child and I think she was damaged, deeply. It left her with a massive longing for the love she never got. She persued peace through tanscendental meditation and romance, trying to stitch over the rip in her soul. Eventually the body found a solution for her: no ego at all, death, the void.
If you read the life stories (not the books my friends, the life stories) of many of those who have had the "realisation" you find that many of them were deeply unhappy before the "realisation" occured and seem to have had childhoods that predispose them to the unhappiness and the search. After their "awakening", "catastrophe" ( they all choose a different name for it) they profess to have suddenly seen the illusion of believing that they ever existed. In the caseof Susan Segal her period of awakening was protracted and scared her deeply. But, to me, all that happened to her and all the others is that a particular form of conciousness, i.e. the one where you actually exist in the world, becomes too painful for them and, after, typically, a few minutes of lost conciousness, they find that they wake up and the circuits have been reorganised. The one that sustained the ego has burnt out; the organism still functions, but there is nobody there to know it.
You choose. Face this life and the damage done to you with courage or seek "peace" in religion.....and die. That's what's before us folks. I know how I've chosen.
Oh, and God, "the almighty", "Jehovah", or whatever we're calling you today, if you're out there, sorry, but if the greatest thing we could ever do for you is to cease to exist you could have saved us all a lot of time AND NEVER MADE US IN THE FIRST PLACE! That one slip past you, did it? Dimwit! It may be just me, but it does seem that your ultimate religious experience is just a little bit silly, what with the fact that I WOULDN'T BE HERE TO KNOW ABOUT IT and all! So, if it's OK with you old bean, I'll pass, if you don't mind. See you on the other side. Oh and make sure you dress properly. Turn up in a T-shirt and jeans like last time and you can stuff your discussion right where the sun doesn't shine!!! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? Nah, thought not.
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Title: The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey by Bernadette Roberts ISBN: 0791416941 Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr Pub. Date: March, 1993 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center by Bernadette Roberts ISBN: 0791411427 Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr Pub. Date: January, 1992 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle ISBN: 157731400X Publisher: New World Library Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Invitation to Awaken: Embracing Our Natural State of Presence by Tony Parsons ISBN: 187801921X Publisher: InnerDirections Publishing Pub. Date: January, 2004 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing by Jed McKenna ISBN: 0971435235 Publisher: Wisefool Press Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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