On Jan 29, 2008, at 9:38 PM, Vaj wrote:
Author Ken Wilber claims to have been in continuous witnessing for
years, but in one of his books (a spiritual diary of a years time)
he claimed the witness was not experienced after drinking fair
amounts of wine with his new girlfriend. On vacation--South Beach.
:-)
Actually he's able to even dissolve Witness after "vino" sessions:
"Each day we hit the beach around eleven A.M. and stay until around
four P.M. This is truly one of the nicest beaches I've ever seen.
Besides being pure sand--you can wade out forever and never hit a rock
or shell--the water temperature is perfect, somewhere around eighty
degrees so you never get chilled, no matter how long you stay in. And,
as a matter of fact, I spend about three hours in the water each day,
exactly up to my neck, gently bobbing up and down, tiptoes barely
touching the bottom to hold me up. Marci, a champion swimmer, swims
circles around me, literally. Where does that woman hide all her
muscles? She's too curvaceous to be this athletic. Don't triathlon
women have, like, 0% body fat? Actually, aren't they in negative fat
space? Don't they like owe the world some fat?
I had fully expected to lose all access to the Witness, given our vino
schcdule. And for the first night and day this happened. But floating
in the water has not only brought back the Witness, it seems to have
facilitated the disappearance of the Witness into nondual One Taste,
at least on occasion. (The Witness, or pure witnessing awareness,
tends to be of the causal, since there is usually a primitive trace of
subject/object duality you equanimously Witness the world as
transparent and shimmering object But with further development, the
Witness itself disappears into everything that is witnessed, subject
and object become One Taste, or simple Suchness, and this is the
nondual estate. In short: ego to soul to pure Witness to One Taste.)
So I am utterly, pleasantly surprised, floating here in nature's
blood, to be dipped Into One Taste which in Case, is nicely salty.
There is no time in this estate, though time passes through it.
thoughts float by in the sky, thoughts float by in the mind, waves
float by in the ocean, and I am all of that. I am looking at none of
it, for there is no center around which perception is organized. It is
simply that everything is arising, moment to moment, and I am all of
that. I do not see the sky, I am the sky, which sees itself. I do not
feel the ocean, I am the ocean, which feels itself. I do not hear the
birds, I am the birds, which hear themselves. There is nothing outside
of me, there is nothing inside of me, because there is no me--there is
simply all of this, and it has always been so. Nothing pushes me,
nothing pulls me, because there is no me there is simply all of this,
and it has always been so."
Ken Wilber, One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality;
Shambhala [Sunday, May 18th, South Beach]
