Actionless Still Moments

[Guest guest]

It's interesting how much can be read from one type of experience. In

the negative sense, if a condition of floating anomie continues

across time, Native Peoples call it "loss of soul". In it's

instantaneous occurance, like Jan and others are citing here, it

certainly shares many characteristics with shock, but I'm not sure

that in these particular instances shock is really an accurate

indicator of what's happening. In "old soul" talk, I think it's an

instantaneous and preparatory memory of the Non-Harm of Death. This

notion, of course, includes other complementary ideas, like the

obvious one that many, if not most, people who dedicate themselves to

a spiritual course of development are not doing it for the 1st time.

Here are my two near death stories:

When I was just 17 and had finally gotten my driver"s license, My best

friend and I drove into NY City for a night of listening to jazz at

Birdland.

Driving down 11th Ave. to the Lincoln Tunnel in a little 2 seat sports

car we heard the honk of an air horn, and turned our heads to see an

enormous 18 wheeler towering over the car, only about 20 feet back,

and screaming towards us. My mind had time enough to think the words

"Uh-oh" in preparation for the death that was immanent, and in a

silent void with no anxiety at all, I awaited our annihilation.

All of a sudden the truck was directly in front of us rushing away at

high speed. I pulled over and Mike and I wondered what had just

happened. We didn't figure it out then, and we have no rational

explanation for it now. We both agreed, however, that we felt no real

fear at all, just a kind of suspension. Being young men, this lack of

fear was a tonic, and we were soon back on the road to NJ.

The 2nd, was when a couple of years older, I was touring Europe for a

summer, alone on a Triumph 650cc. motorcycle. Talk about a nerve

racking memory. I learned to drive it in London traffic, cabbies and

lorry drivers screaming in rage at me as I stalled in front of them

or cut them off.

Later, when I'd become an old hand, I drove with a German friend I'd

met in Cannes on the back all the way to Denmark. In Copenhagen we

hooked up with another new friend from Cannes who'd flown back to

Denmark. Saying goodby to our German friend, who was traveling on, we

got on my bike to go into town to meet some dates that my Danish

friend had arranged at the last minute. We were late, so I was

speeding. Further more, as Danish law didn't require it, I wasn't

wearing my helmet with it's attached touring goggles. Instead I put

on my dark glasses and navigated down this wide 2 lane highway by

using the overhead lights. Approaching a section where apparently one

of the lights had burned out, my friend on the back began pounding me

on the back and yelling unintelligibly. Much too close I realized

that we were coming into a roundabout intersection in the dark. I

layed the bike over trying to turn at the last minute but couldn't

hold it. As it dropped away underneath us my mind said "Here we go.",

much as it had said "Uh-oh" before. Like before I was then completely

calm and watched as the bike and both of us went horizontal and then

up again as the bike bucked when it slid into the curb of the

roundabout. We pitched up onto the grass of the inner circle, and I

remember being completely calm as I reacted to my friend's frantic

wailing by getting up, going over to him, and punching him repeatedly

on the arm while demanding that he shut up, as he was actually

alright.

He promply shut up and, behold, he was alright...just still very

frightened. I was more concerned about the shape of my bike than my

own injuries. My friend was concerned, vainly enough, about his silk

pants that he'd brought back from Cannes. The bike, mirabili dictu,

would still start although it was badly torn up. Anxious that we

would lose our dates, we continued on into town, only to find that

we'd been abandoned. A true story.

In both cases, time and the movements of my mind completely stopped

for the first two times in my life. I enjoyed it. Both times their

was a magical quality, although with the first, the greater magic is

whatever kept us from being crushed beneath the wheels of that

mastodon of a truck.

Much later in life, I thought of those two incidents when I read

Vignana Bhairava as part of my studies in Kashmir Shaivism. Verse 93

in the translation of Paul Reps from his classic Zen Flesh,Zen Bones

states:"At the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety, above a

chasm, flying in battle, in extreme curiosity, at the beginning of

hunger, at the end of hunger, be uninterruptedly aware".

I don't know about the beginning and end of hunger, but the rest of

it, the impact of an emptiness like shock, seems to be refering to

the same thing we're talking about on this forum. In his commentary,

the great Saivite realizer, Kshemaraja says about the same sutra,

"Such abrupt introversion puts the aspirant in contact with the

infinite spiritual energy surging within known as Spanda and then he

is filled with the bliss of devine consciousness(Cidananda)".

I hope we can all have as much stillness as we want without having to

run such adolescent risks as my stunts provoked.

yours in the bonds,

eric