The next day, l got up early because I was going to see my teacher, and I usually got up early
to do a little meditation before I went to see her.
I wasn't thinking anything in particular and I just
sat down and within thirty seconds I heard a
bird. Just a chirp. And a question that I'd never
heard, that I'd never used in practice, came from
my guts rather than from my head. A question spontaneously arose, and it said,
"Who hears this sound?" And as soon as that
question happened, everything turned upside
down, or right side up. And in that moment, the
bird, the sound, and the hearing were all one
thing.
Literally, they were experienced as exactly the same... the hearing was no more me than the sound and the bird and anything. And it was very quick, very sudden, and it was just one. And then the next thing that was noticed was some thought. It was so distant I didn't even know what the thought was about. But there was thought, and then there was the recognition that that's not me. That's thought.
And this that woke up, this that was awake, had nothing to do with that thought whatsoever. It was just happening. The two were completely separate. There was zero identity in the thought.
And so after a few minutes, I got up. And I literally had these five-year-old ideas in my head. Very curious. I thought, I wonder if I'm the stove. And so I trotted out to the little living-room area and kitchen area and sure enough, this was the stove. And I trotted into the bathroom and looked at the toilet, because I was trying to look for something that was really unspiritual and I thought, I'll be damned, this was the toilet. And I opened the bedroom door and looked in and Annie, my wife, was sleeping, and I went: it's her. This is her, and it's the same.
And I walked around our little 450-square-foot cottage that we lived in for six-and-a-half years, and I looked around this cottage and everything was this, everything was the same.
So I'm just standing there in the cottage and interestingly there was no emotion. There was no yippee or oh my god. That was totally absent. Everything was seen totally clearly and not mistake with any state of experience, because there wasn't any state happening. And then walked a few steps in the living room, because the living room was only a few steps long. And in those few steps, consciousness completely woke up. This is a hard thing to describe but it was completely, completely separate from the body.
And at that point, that's when I saw this string of images and immediately I knew, this that was awake knew immediately that I had been trapped in those images, what we might call incarnations. I thought those were me. I was asleep in those images, and it was so clear that this was not those. It wasn't trapped in those anymore. It wasn't confined to any of those forms including the current form. And I could see the current form was no more significant or real than a form fifty life-times ago. And there it was, just this awakeness, completely only itself. No form, no shape, no color, no nothing. No location but everywhere.
And at that moment there was a knowing that even though this awakeness was everything, this awakeness was also beyond being everything. That if this thing totally disappeared, all the forms and everything that I saw, if it all disappeared this would not diminish any, not even a teeny bit. It couldn't diminish. So that was pretty much the awakening.
With this also came a sense of being bigger and outside the body, that the body was happening within that awakeness or spirit. The body was in it rather than I was in the body. And then in the midst of that, this awakeness or consciousness also came back into the body. It was still outside, but now it was both outside and inside. It didn't just stay outside, it took occupancy again, but it took occupancy without confusion this time, without any identification. It was like putting on clothes in the morning; you just put on clothes. You don't think that you are your clothes; they're just something you wear. And it was just so clear that this form, that this particular personality, this guy formally known as Stephen Gray, that this was clothing.
This is his current incarnation, this thing that he is going to wear and function through. And the nice thing was the joy that came with it. Such a joy with the clothing, with the incarnation. With the personality there was such an intimacy and such absolute childlike joy. Almost like a young girl who puts on a Cinderella dress and looks in the mirror and feels, "Wow, this is so cool!" And there was just that sense of the amazement of form.
And then the last thing was I took another step, and it was like the first step I’d ever taken in my life. It felt like I'd just come out of the womb. It felt like being a baby who had just put his foot on the ground for the first time in his whole life.
And I literally looked down at my feet and just walked in circles because it was like a miracle - the feeling of the foot on the floor and walking and it was the feeling that to put my feet on the floor is a miracle, an absolute miracle. And every step was the first step. Everything was new and everything had this sense of intimacy and wonder and appreciation.
So for me, all of these things happened in quick succession to each other. The waking up out of the form and occupying form and the oneness with the form and the appreciation and realizing I'm not form. It was like everything was good. I didn't have to be outside the body; I didn't have to be beyond anything because everything was this.
I just knew at that time that this is a miracle: this life, this body. This is heaven, as messy as it is, as silly as it is, as wonderful and terrible as it is. This is, you know, the great joke. Walking in god’s hand looking for god.
That was it. It was actually very simple. Very, very simple. And what also came out of this was an enjoyment of the ordinary. There was no longer anything extraordinary that needed to happen-extraordinary experiences didn't need to happen, just an enjoyment of the ordinary. I could be talking about so-called truth or spiritual stuff or I could be talking to someone about football or groceries... all of a sudden it just didn't matter anymore.
And still to this day, I often tell people-they often don't believe me-but I say, "To me doing satsang and talking about just about anything are about equal."
The ordinary became totally satisfying. Of course it's very satisfying to see someone awaken or even to see him or her transform a bit. That is a kind of highlight, but there's just a love of the ordinary and to me that's one of the most beautiful things-that nothing extraordinary needs to happen in my life anymore. Just existing is a sort of a miracle.
TS: Adya. you call this : "final awakening," but what if you have additional awakenings in the decades to come that reveal an ever-deeper dimension of realization? Do you think this is possible?
Adya: I'm glad you brought that up. I call it final for a particular reason. When I say "final," I don't mean necessarily that another awakening can't happen. Of course it can. Who knows? Right? We never know. This is infinite after all.
But what I mean when I say final is that with this awakening;
I realized what I am in a totally clear way. It was realized without any emotion in a totally pure state.There was no energy to it. There was no elation.
And when I say final, I mean I saw it clearly. There wasn't anything that was being sought anymore; there wasn't another question left to be answered spiritually.
So I call it final because it felt like a line of demarcation where a certain life and a certain journey took me to that point, and once I stepped beyond that place, it wasn't at all like it had been before. That journey in the way I had engaged it was very obviously and very cleanly finished. It was done. And it never was going to come back. And to me that's what I mean by final. Does that mean that there is not something else to see? There's always something else to see.
TS: You said that at twenty-five with you first awakening you realized that what you were seeking was you, but that you still had a question, " What is this?"
Adya: What is this? Yeah.
TS: So what did you discover in your final awakening?
Adya: That's a good question (laughs). I'll do my best, but it's an impossible question to answer.
TS: But you're not asking the question anymore.
Adya: No, the Funny thing is the answer to the question is that the question disappears. That's the answer to the question. It's not like you get a nice answer that you can put in your pocket.
TS: You can't say love and wisdom or something like that?
Adya: No, no. It's way before love and wisdom. It's the place love and wisdom come from. It's paradoxical but the more we know ourselves, the more we know what we are, the more we know that what we are is something that by its very nature can never be known. So you and I, we are the unknown, and since the unknown is the unknown it can't be known, not because there's any deficiency, but because the unknown by its very definition is the unknown.
So in Buddhism they might call it emptiness or the void or shunyata. In some sects of Judaism, it was traditionally thought of as a heresy to even mention the word of god in any form. And I think these kinds of directives come from this experience that is paradoxical-you know what you are but you know that you are a mystery.
You see we can't call it anything.
We can't say anything about pure potential. There's nothing to know. We can only know something when potential has manifest and become something. But before that, it's pure potential. It's pure emptiness or pure intelligence or whatever you want to call it.
To me that's the paradox-l've come to know what I am, but now I know that I am that which can never be known, because that's its nature. And so the funny thing is that you in a way almost end up where you started. You start out not knowing who you are or what the ultimate reality is. The difference is you end up knowing that you are what you can never know.
So the mystery becomes conscious, it wakes up to itself. It knows itself, it's the "l AM" as it says in the bible. But there's no definition you notice; it's just "I AM." That's the mystery declaring itself. That's it.
TS: One of the interesting stories I've heard is that you didn't tell your Zen teacher about your second awakening until three months after it happened. That seems odd to me.
Adya: There just didn't seem to be any reason. It had such a sense of completeness. In one sense, it was extraordinary, but it also felt very ordinary. It didn't feel like something I needed to run off and tell someone. I didn't feel like I needed it confirmed. I didn't need for it to be heard. I didn't need someone to understand. It was the dropping away of all of those psychological needs.
And the only reason I actually told my teacher is that after about three months I reflected and I thought, oh, this is what she's been talking to me about for fifteen years and why she's putting so much of her heart and compassion into my process. I thought it might be nice for her to know. That's where the impetus to tell her came from.
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