The day I achieved actual enlightenment is a day that is hard to remember for me. Partly because it all happened so fast, but mostly because I’m still not sure if it even really happened at all. Most people believe that enlightenment is simply the spiritual path to inner peace, to forget everything there is to this world so that a resolute silence can resonate throughout your body, calming you for eternity…This only a mere side effect of the actual events that occur when a person achieves full enlightenment.
It was in the winter of 2009, I was on winter leave from school and I was bored out my mind. My father and I were living in an apartment; he was gone most of the time as he would visit his girlfriend and leave me with the place to myself. The snow on the ground and the chill in the air prevented me from going anywhere, not to mention my lack of a vehicle. My apartment was small and my room smaller still. Outside my room was a tiny bathroom to the right and my dad’s room across from mine. To the left was the rest of the abode, a kitchen next to a living room with a couch, a high definition television, and a computer sitting on a desk. My room was equipped with nothing but a bed, a rocking chair, and a dresser with a T.V. resting on top; it wasn’t much but it was home.
Around the third day I thought I was developing cabin fever and with nothing to do I did the only thing that made sense; I began to develop my body. I worked out for another three days straight, pushing my body to the limits and turning my fat into cold, hard muscle. I pushed my body to the limits of my will, till all my limbs and my torso ached. After three days of strenuous exercise I rested, my face buried in my pillow. I let the darkness of winter envelope me and I let the cold embrace me as I felt my muscles constrict. As I began to get colder and colder I thought I should check the thermostat. It was at a nice eighty degrees, but I was still cold so I wrapped myself within my blankets, closing out all light and creating warmth for my body. Hours passed, then a day. I thought of nothing…nothing filled my mind. There was no sound, nor was there silence; there was simply nothing. I did not run from this vast emptiness, but rather concentrated upon it as a monk would a thought or problem. I felt time lapse into a meaningless existence, I forgot about it entirely…I forgot everything.
My name, who I was, where I came from, my purpose in life, who my parents were, my friends; I didn’t know any of it. All I knew was the big black emptiness and a fear soon grabbed hold of me like the cold grasp of death. I opened my eyes and panic set in, as I was greeted by nothing but darkness. I wasn’t in my apartment anymore, I wasn’t anywhere. I couldn’t see anything, not my hands, not my feet, not even my body. I couldn’t feel myself, I tried to move my extremities but I couldn’t feel anything anymore, I felt completely paralyzed. I shut my eyes and tried to think, to think of anything other than the infinite nothingness. My head was swirling and my thoughts raced to fast for me to concentrate. The emptiness was my whole world; I didn’t know anything other than the vast nothing.
I wanted there to be something else, anything else. I wished for there to be something, I wanted change and I wanted it then at that instant. Then everything changed…I was blinded as I opened my eyes, a great light penetrated my eyelids and gave me pause for thought; I never regretted opening them, not for one second. I beheld the birth of a star, most likely the first for there were no other lights within the vast emptiness. It was a magnificent spectacle not easy to describe, for there were more colors than I ever knew existed. First there were deep purple clouds of dust that blended in to the illustrious black. There were lightning bolts so large they could destroy planets and then it started to swirl into greens and blues, uncountable hues. Soon oranges and deep reds appeared, it all shined so brightly and brilliantly that I could feel it burning itself into my eyes.
I blinked, thinking to disengage from the event. It was only for a second but when I opened my eyes more than a million years had gone by, judging from the colors and shapes of the various gases. They were swirling about into a hazardous vortex of endless energy. The star had begun to take its true shape. “Why a sphere?” I wondered in my mind. The star was a constantly exploding ball of gases, illuminating the darkness for millions of miles in every possible direction. That’s when I began to understand it all, what everything really means as far as dimensions and shapes. Gravity pulls in until all the gasses and small particles begin to bump and collide, resulting in a glorious chaotic eruption of light, heat, and infinitesimal power. The flames from the star whirled about wildly in space; they were massive enough to wipe even the largest planets from existence.
The star cooled over time, becoming a pale orange and yellowish color. As I saw the star condense before me I began to think back on all I once knew, not just understanding what everything meant but figuring out their respected purposes and overall places in the vast, empty universe. I reflected back on all my past experiences and realized that life was everything but I didn’t just guess, I knew. I knew that life was everything; it exists from the smallest microbial life form to the largest star, it is the galaxy we swirl around in and wherever light may shine. But life doesn’t just happen, it had to have come from somewhere and I resolved to discover this. Little did I know that my enlightenment had only just begun…
Light came from somewhere not part of the enormous emptiness, it came from a place where things don’t just happen; they are made to happen. I didn’t know where this place was but I could feel it slowly closing in on me, drawing me closer to a great actualization. I turned my attention from the development of the life before me and once again concentrated upon the infinite nothing, but this time gazing deeper than I ever dared. The darkness consumed me once more but this time I wasn’t afraid, no, instead I pursued the darkness; chasing it until it could go no further. It wasn’t until I stopped gazing that something finally happened, and my world, my entire existence was changed forever.
The days passed in the darkness with no regard of the life surrounding me. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and so on and on and on until I was left broken with no answers. I began to think that there was nothing else, that there was no great mystery to life, the universe, and everything. I began to believe that the big empty black was all there ever was to our existence…I couldn’t have been more wrong. I continued to stare into the darkness, not knowing where to go, not knowing what to do. I needed to pierce the darkness somehow, to find its exact center and penetrate its core, but I didn’t have anything, I was nothing. I was literally nothing, there was nothing to me; I had no form or purpose in this place and I didn’t even know why I was there in the first place.
Finally, I stopped gazing into the deep cold black and focused my attention back towards life. It had progressed far beyond what I thought possible, mammals and bipedal organisms were walking about, building whole civilizations and creating new forms of life. It was a beautiful sight to see life thrive and evolve over the years but even more so to see it happen from afar. Then I noticed a being that wasn’t thriving, it was wasting away inside its home, sheltered from the great, expansive universe. Then the creature looked at me and I remembered my face and all that there was to me. I blinked and the next thing I knew I was sitting back on my bed in my apartment, but not for long. My experience was not yet over and the universe wasn’t through with me or my head. As soon as my mind reconnected with Earth I was instantly snatched from its surface once again to behold the ultimate spectacle, something so rare and magnificent that mankind may never know its wonders. I beheld the existence outside of this cosmos.
Before I even knew what was happening the walls of my apartment began to shift and bend, taking on the properties of water and rippling from the mysterious forces acting upon them; but it wasn’t the walls that were bending, it was existence. My reality was changing before my eyes and all I could think of was lowering my jaw another six inches. I began to realize that reality was folding right on top of me and that I was to be at the center of the fold. The world folded unto itself, overlapping and revealing an enormous white space. The white blinded me even worse than the impenetrable darkness, it made me want to close my eyes and forget everything I ever knew…again. But I held on, onto nothing as I was becoming the origin for the infinite axis. The crease in reality I had become ceased to be a crease and instead flattened into a plane in the exact center of my body, expanding for infinite in every possible direction. It pierced my body in my exact center, expanding both upwards and downwards at the same time and forwards and backwards at the same time.
The white was not like the cold blackness of space, it was warm here, warmer than anything I had ever felt. It soothed my body and warmed my soul, creating a sensation of peace and contentment. It didn’t matter which direction I looked, the white was everywhere reality wasn’t. I looked at my hands to find them disintegrating slowly into the white space. White flame burned my flesh and sent the particles out into the white space, glistening like small shards of glass. I began to scream but I heard nothing, my lungs burned from the lack of oxygen but still didn’t stop screaming, I couldn’t stop. The space began to pull at my body and mind, wrenching them from my control until I thought I would disappear entirely. That’s when I remembered the universe upon the invisible plane in front of me; it had folded so perfectly that I almost didn’t see it. I stared down the plane, hoping to find my place in the universe. It was then that I saw it all; what did happen, what will happen, what could happen, but most importantly; what should happen.
I saw every time and every place coexisting peacefully in one tiny little dot stretched in its dimensions to resemble a plane that carried on for infinite. As the white pulled me apart I focused in on myself in the universe, going back to my body before I dissipated from existence completely. When I opened my eyes again I was back in apartment, safe, sound, and hungry. The clock on my nightstand read 11:59 and it had just turned to 12:00 midnight. By the account of time and relativity I had only been gone for ten to fifteen minutes, but I knew better. I knew that there are things in and outside of this world we can never understand and I was lucky enough to experience the greatest of them all.
My face was wet, I had been crying and I didn’t remember any of it. My eyes were burning from the tears and they were red and swollen. If I had to explain the events I saw take place before me I’m not sure I can come up with an answer that makes the slightest bit of sense, but I know what I saw and I know what it all means. The void I saw as reality folded back was the place after this one, not heaven nor hell, but something altogether different. It was a place of unfathomable possibilities and endless destinies. My enlightenment had come full circle and the only thing that I am one hundred percent certain of is that I know something most can only dare to dream; I know that ALL of this will never end.
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