Knocking at the Door of the Unknown 

T

his morning, I had a brainstorm for a new project:  How about describing the moves the mind makes from the past and taking them all into a timeless horizon?  Much like the Buddhist meditations on the 32 parts of the dead body or cremation ground meditations.  It will be a good way to phase the time-bound thoughts into the timeless, which could also serve as a meditation. 

For example: I was watching a young woman carrying a plastic bag of cans and bottles for recycling and making some money.  Thoughts that occur in this context include:  men and women in different cultures all the time scrambling for a livelihood.  This phenomenon happens in the U.S. as well as anywhere else. 

Here is another example:  I am watching the TV.  I have to focus or pay attention to respond to any scene that’s going on the TV.  When you don’t focus there is no time.  You are in the timeless zone.  Then you can’t make head or tail out of movie that’s playing, nor do you respond by being involved in, identifying with or reacting (by tensing) to the events that happen on the screen.  You are in the timeless zone. 

Take the movement of pleasure, for instance.  In fact, I know by now that every movement of thought is a pleasure-seeking or pain-avoiding (which are one and the same thing) maneuver.  You can say that it is also at the same time a replay of the past.  And that, of course, serves the function of providing a support or ground for the ego, for its continuity, for its expansion, growth and protection.  

There is, however, a constant knocking at the unknown (or shall we say the timeless) at the doors of the self which shows itself in the form of bursts of energy.

I noticed today, for example, when I was listening to a piece of music, vibrations (jerks) surging though the body, which coincide with the moment when I reach the end of my mental activity, because of the notes I was listening to, or just also a prelude to falling asleep. At the same time the mind was also beginning to cease its activity.  In either case, it’s the touching  the unknown (and of course the unknowable) that seems to trigger this response.

This is so in spite of the fact that the center of the self keeps itself sustained. It’s still there, cunningly maneuvering infinite number of details including enlightenment, liberation and the unknown. 

In fact, the whole of this enterprise can fizzle into nothingness.  It has no substance; no inherent validity.  It’s just like any other enterprise of the self.  In the ocean of the timeless where there is no meaning (nor its opposite – meaninglessness, which is just a mode of the meaning), this is just a ripple. 

Successive abstractions make you withdraw from the world of experience.  But the voice which gives the various commands still remains.  But you can withdraw from it too.  Then there is no ‘you’.  You don’t know what moves you.  You are just like a thing, a conscious, living thing.  It’s not just that the energies get united, you bliss out, or the ‘nectar’ pours into you. Life and death don’t mean a thing; but there is ... 

This blank doesn’t get filled any more.  

You have to close your eyes and cut out the external impressions.  The body relaxes totally.  In the total relaxation there is the state of being like in death.  

Detachment, withdrawal, asking who am I (Is that me?), etc. all mean and come down to the same thing.