by Ken Wilber (from One Taste)
Friday, October
31
People make two common mistakes
on the way to One Taste. The first occurs in contacting the
Witness, the second occurs in moving from the Witness to One Taste
itself.
The first mistake: In trying to
contact the Witness (or I-I), people imagine that they will see
something. But you don't see
anything, you simply rest as the Witness of all that arises—you are
the pure and empty Seer, not
anything that can be seen. Attempting to see the Seer as a special light,
a great bliss, a sudden vision—those are all objects, they are not the Witness that you
are. Eventually, of course, with One Taste, you will be everything that
you see, but you cannotstart trying to do that—trying to see the
Truth—because that is what blocks it. You have to start with "neti,
neti": I am not this, I am not that.
So the first mistake is that
people sabotage the Witness by trying to make it an object that can
be grasped, whereas it is simply the Seer of all objects that
arise, and it is "felt" only as a great background sense of Freedom
and Release fromall
objects.
Resting in that Freedom and
Emptiness—and impartially witnessing all that arises—you will
notice that the separate-self (or ego) simply arises in
consciousness like everything
else. You can actually feel the
self-contraction, just like you can feel your legs, or feel a
table, or feel a rock, or feel your feet. The self-contraction is a
feeling of interior tension, often localized behind the eyes, and
anchored in a slight muscle tension throughout the bodymind. It is
an effort and a sensation of contracting in the face of the world.
It is a subtle whole-body tension. Simply notice this
tension.
Once people have become
comfortable resting as the empty Witness, and once they notice the
tension that is the self-contraction, they imagine that to finally
move from the Witness to One Taste, they have to get rid of the
self-contraction (or get rid of the ego). Just that is the second
mistake, because it actually locks the self-contraction firmly into
place.
We assume that the
self-contraction hides or obstructs Spirit, whereas in fact it is
simply a radiant manifestation of Spirit itself, like absolutely
every other Form in the universe. All Forms are not other than
Emptiness, including the form of the ego. Moreover, the only thing
that wants to get rid of the ego is the ego. Spirit loves
everything that arises, just as it is. The Witness loves everything
that arises, just as it is. The Witness loves the ego, because the
Witness is the impartial mirror-mind that equally reflects and perfectly
embraces everything that arises.
But the ego, convinced that it
can become even more entrenched, decides to play the game of
getting rid of itself—simply because, as long as it is playing that game, it
obviously continues to exist (who else is playing the game?). As
Chuang Tzu pointed out long ago, "Is not the desire to get rid of
the ego itself a manifestation of ego?"
The ego is not a thing but a
subtle effort, and you cannot
use effort to get rid of effort—you end up with two efforts instead
of one. The ego itself is a perfect manifestation of the Divine,
and it is best handled by resting in Freedom, not by trying to get
rid of ego, which simply increases the effort of ego
itself.
And so, the practice? When you
rest in the Witness, or rest in I-I, or rest in Emptiness, simply
notice the self-contraction. Rest in the Witness, and feel the
self-contraction. When you feel the
self-contraction, you are already free of
it—you are already looking at
it, instead of identifying with it. You are looking at it from
the position of the Witness, which is always already free of all
objects in any case.
So rest as the Witness, and feel
the self-contraction—just as you can feel the chair under you, and
feel the earth, and feel the clouds floating by in the sky.
Thoughts float by in the mind, sensations float by in the body, the
self-contraction hovers in awareness—and you effortlessly and
spontaneously witness them all, equally and impartially.
In that simple, easy, effortless
state—while you are not trying to get rid of the self-contraction but
simply feeling it—and while you are therefore resting as the great
Witness or Emptiness that you are—One Taste might more easily flash
forth. There is nothing that you can do to bring about (or cause)
One Taste—it is always already fully present, it is not the result
of temporal actions, and you have never lost it anyway.
The most you can do, by way of
temporal effort, is to avoid these two major mistakes (don't try to
see the Witness as an object, just rest in the Witness as Seer;
don't try to get rid of the ego, just feel it), and that will bring
you to the edge, to the very precipice, of your own Original Face.
At that point it is, in every way, out of your hands.
Rest as the Witness, feel the
self-contraction: that is exactly the space in which One Taste can
most easily flash forth. Don't do this as a strategic effort, but
randomly and spontaneously throughout the day and into the night,
standing thus always on the edge of your own shocking
recognition.
So here are the
steps:
Rest as the Witness, feel the
self-contraction. As you do so, notice that the Witness
is not the self-contraction—it is aware of it. The
Witness is free of the self-contraction—and you are the Witness.
As the Witness, you are free of
the self-contraction. Rest
in that Freedom, Openness, Emptiness, Release. Feel the
self-contraction, and let it
be, just as you let all other sensations be. You don't try to
get rid of the clouds, the trees, or the ego—just let them all be,
and relax in the space of Freedom that you are.
From that space of Freedom—and
at some unbidden point—you may notice that the feeling of
Freedom has no inside and no outside, no center and no surround.
Thoughts are floating in this Freedom, the sky is floating in this
Freedom, the world is arising in this Freedom, and you are That.
The sky is your head, the air is your breath, the earth is your
body—it is all that close, and closer. You are the world, as long
as you rest in this Freedom, which is infinite Fullness.
This is the world of One Taste,
with no inside and no outside, no subject and no object, no in here
versus out there—without beginning and without end, without ways
and without means, without path and without goal. And this, as
Ramana said, is the final truth.
That is what might be called a
"capping exercise." Do it, not instead of, but in addition to, whatever other
practice you are doing—centering prayer, vipassana, prayer of the
heart, zikr, zazen, yoga, etc. All of these other practices train
you to enter a specific state of consciousness, but One Taste is not a specific state—it
is compatible with any and all states, just as wetness is fully
present in each and every wave of the ocean. One wave may be bigger
than another wave, but it is not wetter. One Taste is the wetness
of the water, not any particular wave, and therefore specific
practices, such as prayer or vipassana or yoga, are powerless to
introduce you to One Taste. All specific practices are designed to
get you to a particular wave—usually a Really Big Wave—and that is
fine. But One Taste is the wetness of even the smallest wave, so
any wave of awareness you have right now is fine. Rest with that
wave, feel the self-contraction, and stand Free.
But continue your other
practices, first, because they will introduce you to specific and
important waves of your own awareness (psychic, subtle, and
causal), which are all important vehicles of your full
manifestation as Spirit. Second, precisely because One Taste is too
simple to believe and too easy to reach by effort, most people will
never notice that the wave they are now on is wet. They will never
notice the Suchness of their own present state. They will instead
dedicate their lives to wave hopping, always looking for a Bigger
and Better wave to ride—and frankly, that is fine.
Those typical spiritual
practices, precisely by introducing you to subtler and
subtler experiences, will
inadvertently help you tire of
experience altogether. When you
tire of wave jumping, you will stand open to the wetness or
Suchness of whatever wave you are on. The pure Witness itself
is not an experience, but the
opening or clearing in which all experiences come and go, and as
long as you are chasing experiences, including spiritual
experiences, you will never rest as the Witness, let alone fall
into the ever-present ocean of One Taste. But tiring of
experiences, you will rest as the Witness, and it is as the Witness
that you can notice Wetness (One Taste).
And then the wind will be your
breath, the stars the neurons in your brain, the sun the taste of
the morning, the earth the way your body feels. The Heart will open
to the All, the Kosmos will rush into your soul, you will arise as
countless galaxies and swirl for all eternity. There is only
self-existing Fullness left in all the world, there is only
self-seen Radiance here in Emptiness—etched on the wall of
infinity, preserved for all eternity, the one and only truth: there
is just this, snap your
fingers, nothing more.