I’ve had a string of wonderful transcendent experiences, but the most brilliant gem in this necklace was a day when I woke up to find that abstract thought had stopped. It was so startling, I thought the electricity had gone out. really really quiet up there. It lasted one day only. Best day ever! without thought everything naturally falls into place. This was a long time ago & ever since I’ve been feeling bereft & also confused. Jean Klein is the only one who has ever mentioned the cessation of thought. Every other teacher says thought keeps coming, only you are no longer attached to it. But my experience was one of thought not coming anymore. what is thought anyway? I know it’s not personal or original & has no power of its own. We attach it to a sensation & call this emotion. Yet we are unable to stop this endless chatter by our own efforts. Is there truly nothing to be done?
Thank you, Irene
Dear Irene,
Jean Klein and I have spend many months together over the years of our friendship, living in the same house in a family setting and I can assure you that he had all kinds of thoughts, practical, beautiful, loving and intelligent thoughts.
The difference in the case of a sage is the absence of those thoughts that are a result of ignorance, of the belief to be an individual, a separate consciousness.
The absence of thoughts is an exceptional and temporary state of the mind which has a beginning in time and an end in time. External sense perceptions may be present during this state, in which case they seem extremely vivid. Because the manufacturing of a pseudo subject by the thought factory has been temporarily suspended, the sense of separation between a me and the world may seem to be temporarily abolished, and some of the bliss which is inherent to our true nature may be temporarily experienced. However, due to the fact that the melting of ignorance in the Self was not complete, the production of ignorant thoughts resumes when thinking resumes.
This state may be followed in certain cases by an experience in which consciousness, letting go of all the objects to which it was attached, experiences itself in its own glory, beyond the mind, beyond anything created, knowing itself as immortality, perfect intelligence, absolute splendor, and unconditioned love. In such an experience ignorance comes to an end like a river merging with the ocean.
That which can be done is to investigate, to ask questions from others (as you did asking this questions), from texts you are reading and most importantly from yourself, from your own experience. The most important question and the most direct one is “Is consciousness, this presence I know I am, a creation of the body-mind or is the body-mind a creation of consciousness?”
Love,
Francis
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