„If we really must have a mental image to symbolise the Spirit, we should represent it as something heavier than matter“ – Clive Staples Lewis, Miracles, C.S.Lewis Pte Ltd, 1947.
Bucharest, Romania, April 15th
Dear Rakendra,
How do you do? I want to tell you about an experience I had one week ago. It was the first evening of a Vipassana series, organised by Veet. Being Monday, only four of us could reach the place – a very nice and quiet place, a round room with big windows.
There we sat, witnessing our breath, and I don’t know how much time passed. And then, suddenly, I felt that parts of my body start to dissapear. First my arms, than my knees, my temples, my chest with the shoulders. I panicked – I was almost terrified!
You prevented me that there is „nothing“, but you didn’t tell me what kind of a nothing. I imagined that I will feel a huge emptiness inside me, my mind was still working with an „inside“ and an „outside“ – it held the presumption of a shape, contour, boundary representing „me“. Of course I read that there is no such thing as „me“, and I was innocently supposing that my need of identity would dissapear – not the signals of my body!
But that! Feeling nothing, like I was becoming an abyss! I dream sometimes that I step in the air and fall, but now... fall where, when there is no space? What falling, when there is no body? I try to find more words to express what I experienced and the only proper one is „nothing“. Nothing inside me and nothing around to support me. Yet a real, concrete nothing, if someone can accept this illogical concept – but how else to describe a non-sensation?
I felt the need to imperceptibly contract my muscles, just to make sure that I still have a body. In a way I succeeded, but yet I could not perceive the movement. Then, after a short time, the state just ended, as naturally as it appeard.
I still remember the great fear I passed through, but I want to be there again. Because there where the nothingness is, the endlesness is also, and now I long for its touch. But I am aware that, to reach it indeed, I have to trust the unknown, and here comes my work and my trials.
I am grateful to Veet for creating the place and time, but somehow I know it is you whom I follow in this weird journey since I first met you, one year ago.
I hope to have you as a guide again.
Thank you!
Luciana
Bucharest, Romania, April 15th
Dear Rakendra,
How do you do? I want to tell you about an experience I had one week ago. It was the first evening of a Vipassana series, organised by Veet. Being Monday, only four of us could reach the place – a very nice and quiet place, a round room with big windows.
There we sat, witnessing our breath, and I don’t know how much time passed. And then, suddenly, I felt that parts of my body start to dissapear. First my arms, than my knees, my temples, my chest with the shoulders. I panicked – I was almost terrified!
You prevented me that there is „nothing“, but you didn’t tell me what kind of a nothing. I imagined that I will feel a huge emptiness inside me, my mind was still working with an „inside“ and an „outside“ – it held the presumption of a shape, contour, boundary representing „me“. Of course I read that there is no such thing as „me“, and I was innocently supposing that my need of identity would dissapear – not the signals of my body!
But that! Feeling nothing, like I was becoming an abyss! I dream sometimes that I step in the air and fall, but now... fall where, when there is no space? What falling, when there is no body? I try to find more words to express what I experienced and the only proper one is „nothing“. Nothing inside me and nothing around to support me. Yet a real, concrete nothing, if someone can accept this illogical concept – but how else to describe a non-sensation?
I felt the need to imperceptibly contract my muscles, just to make sure that I still have a body. In a way I succeeded, but yet I could not perceive the movement. Then, after a short time, the state just ended, as naturally as it appeard.
I still remember the great fear I passed through, but I want to be there again. Because there where the nothingness is, the endlesness is also, and now I long for its touch. But I am aware that, to reach it indeed, I have to trust the unknown, and here comes my work and my trials.
I am grateful to Veet for creating the place and time, but somehow I know it is you whom I follow in this weird journey since I first met you, one year ago.
I hope to have you as a guide again.
Thank you!
Luciana
P.S. A friend of mine says that I probably shut down some perception centers in the brain. So I wonder: what would happen if somebody were touching my „missing parts“ in those moments? Could I feel it? Could I know it without feeling it?
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