Adyashanti Interview

[Guest guest]

Question: How did awakening and liberation occur for you?

 

Adyashanti: I had my first what traditionally would be called

awakening experience when I was 25 years old. This was very powerful

and full of emotion and release and joy and bliss and all that it is

supposed to be full of. But, because there was so much emotion

involved, it obscured the simplicity of awakeness itself. Like so

many others, I continued to chase certain ideas and concepts of what

awakeness was supposed to be. That caused years of misery. Gradually

over time I had the same experience reoccur, but each time with less

and less emotion. I could see more and more clearly over time what

was the actual essential element. Then finally an awakening occurred

where at the moment of awakening, there was no emotion in it. It was

just the pure seeing of what is. When there was the pure seeing of

what is, unclouded by emotional content, it was obvious. It was very

obvious that consciousness recognized itself for what it really is

– aware space before any emotion or thought or manifestation.

 

Question: Would you say that this is the point at which the

distinction between awakening and liberation occurred?

 

Adyashanti: No. Even though there was a freedom and incredible sense

of fearlessness and release from not being confined to the dream of a

separate "I", I started to feel somewhat discontented with that. I

didn't know why I felt discontented, and it didn't bother me in any

way. The discontent didn't touch that freedom, so it didn't bother

me, but I was interested in it.

 

Then one day I was sitting reading a book, and I folded the book to

put it away and realized that somewhere in some magic time, something

had dropped away, and I didn't know what it was. There was just a big

absence of something. I went through the rest of the day as usual but

noticing some big absence. Then when I sat down on the bed that

night, it suddenly hit me that what had fallen away was all identity.

All identity had collapsed, as both the self in the ego sense of a

separate me, and as the slightest twinge of identity with the

Absolute Self, with the Oneness of consciousness. There had still

been some unconscious, identity or "me-ness" which was the cause of

the discontent. And it all collapsed. Identity itself collapsed, and

from that point on there was no grasping whatsoever for little me or

for the unified consciousness me. Identity just fell away and blew

away with the wind.

 

Question: When you noticed that the identity had collapsed and was

gone, what remained?

 

Adyashanti: Everything just as it always had been. There was just the

lack of any "I", personal or universal, or the fundamental

unconscious belief in any identity or of fixating self in any place.

The mind can continue to fixate a subtle identity of self even in

universal consciousness. It can be so incredibly easy to miss. To

say "I am That" can be a very subtle fixation of consciousness.

 

Question: It's still a landing, a form of identity.

 

Adyashanti: it's a slight landing, a slight grasping. It's very

subtle. But when it collapses, you are even beyond "I am That". You

are in a place that cannot be described.

 

Question: And that is what you call liberation?

 

Adyashanti: That is what I call liberation. Really, in the end, what

you end up with is that you don't know who you are. You end up in the

same place you started out. You truly don't know who you are because

it's impossible to fixate the self anywhere.

 

Question: But this not knowing is not the same as ignorance.

 

Adyashanti: It's not the same not knowing of ignorance. It's the not

knowing that comes from recognizing that the whole issue of a self,

personal or absolute, is fantasy. Both the self and the Self are

interpretations upon perception, and nothing more. And when the

interpretation ends, thought ends. When all identity collapses, you

abide in the unknown. There is no tendency left to fixate identity

anywhere - even in a universal somewhere. So, you are left resting in

the mystery as the mystery. It is only then that you can be truly and

absolutely free of all concerns. There is nothing to say. What can

you say? There is nothing to say.

 

 

 

LoveAlways,

 

Mazie & b