THE HIGH INDIFFERENCE..F.Merrell Wolff (Pt .1)

[Guest guest]

How SHALL I EVER DESCRIBE what transpired last night? It is utterly

baffling to language as such. At best, what I say may suggest

something, but can never communicate the Reality. It was neither an

experience, in the proper sense of the word, nor a logical

penetration, for both cognition and perception are hopelessly

inadequate either to represent or contain it. As the Infinite is to

the finite, so was that Consciousness of last night to the relative

consciousness of the subject-object manifold. I penetrated a State

wholly beyond the relative field, and also well beyond that Realized

by me heretofore. Truly, within the Infinite there are Mysteries

within Mysteries, Deeps beyond Deeps, Grandeurs beyond Grandeurs.

Just as in mathematics there are infinitudes of higher orders

infinitely transcending lower infinities, so is it in the

Transcendent " World. Is there no end to possible Awakening? Is there

no end to the progression of infinities? It may be so. I Know that I

have found an Infinite " World, and then another Infinite consuming

the first. I can say these " Worlds are, but I can place no limits

upon the Beyond. Mystery of Mysteries, reaching inward and outward,

but ever Beyond! And from that Beyond ever there come new whisperings

of other imponderable Glories. Ah! How little is this world at the

beginning of the Trail, barely a point in a Space of unlimited

dimensions!

Let us try and see what may be said. After retiring last night I lay

awake for some time. My mind, instead of being calm, as has been its

dominant quality during the last month, was rather agitated. In

general, outer calmness of the mind is one of the prerequisites of

inward penetration; but last night the mode of Consciousness which

was unfolded, or was superimposed, or burst forth—none of these

expressions is quite right—was so strong that the state of the mind

was seemingly quite irrelevant. The agitation of the mind meant no

more than the dance of the atoms in a bar of steel that quickly align

themselves in regular and steady form when introduced into a strong

magnetic field. Last night I was taken up into such an all-

encompassing and potent Field. Enveloped with this greater Power, the

activities of the outer mind were but puny, insignificant, and

irrelevant. They were utterly devoid of any power to interfere. In

fact, it may well be that the mind needed its strength in active and

positive form to be enabled to stand by throughout the stages of the

deepening Transcendent Consciousness. Otherwise, it is likely that

all I could report would be a sort of inchoate Thatness. This

Consciousness had no marked quality that I would call Joy in a

differentiated sense, but, rather, It was a Higher Integration

wherein the Joy was but an incidental moment.

I first became aware of being enveloped in an extraordinary State of

Consciousness when I found myself seemingly surrounded by, and

interpenetrated through and through with, a quality for which there

is no adequate word but which is most nearly represented by calling

it " Satisfaction. " I do not simply mean that the State was

satisfactory. It was Satisfaction. The difference in the significance

of these two modes of expression is of fundamental importance. To say

that a state is satisfactory implies the idea of relationship or

qualification. All this is quite valid in the field of relative

experience, but it radically falsifies the essential nature of these

inward States of Recognition. The mark of these inward States

is 'Identification' and not 'relationship.' Despite the fact that my

personal prejudice, fortified by academic training, would naturally

lead me to employ the relative and qualifying form of expression, yet

I am absolutely forced by the actuality of the Consciousness invoked

by inward Recognition to employ the language expressing Identity.

Further, when I employ the term 'Satisfaction,' I do not mean merely

an abstraction, such as a state of being satisfied, but, rather, a

substantial Actuality. It is not satisfaction considered as a state

derived from a concrete and external experience or object. It must on

the contrary be regarded as a pure self-existence, a somewhat which

could be bestowed like a blessing upon objective and concrete

experiences but that is not a derivative from the latter. He who is

enveloped in this Satisfaction is in need of nothing whatsoever to

satisfy him. The Satisfaction I realized is a real and substantial

Existence prior to all experiencing. I experimented with this

Satisfaction and found that I could even effect the equivalent of

swallowing It, and then felt, specifically as in the stomach, the

state of satisfaction something like a nutritive value without the

use of a material food. I have never experienced any gross or

material food that could even approximate the sense of nutritive well-

being that this pure essence of Satisfaction actually did give me.

But this nutritive phase was only one minor aspect of the full

Satisfaction. It was the essence of aesthetic, emotional, moral, and

intellectual satisfaction at the same time. There was nothing more

required, so far as desire for myself was concerned, for at that time

I had the full value of everything that could possibly be desired. It

might be called the culminating point, the highest to which desire,

individually centered, could reach. Only in one sense did I find a

desire that could take me away from that State, and that was the

desire to convey this new value to others. The memory of the others,

as yet left out, was the one unsatisfactory element. This factor was

enough to awaken the will to withdraw and to remain, as long as

necessary, outside the immediate Realization of the State. I must

confess that I know of no other consideration adequate to awaken the

will to forego it, once an individual has Known the immediate

Presence of the High Satisfaction.

 

Pt. 2 in next post...bob