Suzanne Segal Part 4 (Nonduality)

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This continues the outline/summary of Suzanne Segal's Collision with the

Infinite. The preceding three parts are available at

http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/umbada/suzanne.htm

 

Part 4

 

Still, all the reassurance was yielding no joy, until an abrupt

transition saw a change in knowledge from 'There is no personal self',

to 'There is no other'. This occurred while Segal was driving to see

some friends when

 

"I suddenly became aware that I was driving through myself. For years

there had been no self at all, yet here on this road, everything was

myself, and I was driving through me to arrive where I already was. In

essence, I was going nowhere because I was everywhere already. The

infinite emptiness I new myself to be was now apparent as the infinite

substance of everything I saw."

 

So the emptiness she had known as a state of consciousness now became

the vastness of all existence.

 

Soon afterward, while spending a weekend at a Buddhist retreat center in

northern California, a new awareness arose. It was a fluidity of

perception in which entities were perceived as the vastness itself, and

all was pervaded by calm. Also she now came to know that she was the

substance of the vastness. She knew this not through the sense organs,

but through the substance that 'she was'. She describes this as a finger

drawing in the sand, where the substance of vastness is the finger, the

drawing and the sand.

 

And now she saw the fear for what it was. Previously she had assigned

meaning to the fear, viewing it as an indication of the invalidity of

the experience of no-self. Now she saw fear as fear without meaning.

Fear was no different than form, emptiness, pain, enlightenment.

Everything is made of the same substance as vastness. Seeing this,

knowing this, the grip of fear broke and joy finally arose.

____

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