PART I
In the Spring of 1982, Suzanne Segal, pregnant and 27, was living in Paris and waiting for a bus to take her home from a birthing class. As the bus approached, she took a place in line with other commuters. Suddenly she felt her ears pop, and was at once enclosed in a kind of bubble which cut her off from the rest of the scene, and left her acting and moving in the most mechanical way. She says:
"I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two. In the gaping space that appeared, what I had previously called 'me' was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. 'I' was now behind my body looking out at the world without using the body's eyes."
Walking home from that bus ride, she felt like a "cloud of awareness" following the body. The cloud was a witness located behind and to the left of the body and completely separate from body, mind and emotions. The witness was constant and so was FEAR, the fear of complete physical dissolution. The witnessing continued for several months, even during sleep, and Segal had to endure the fear and the accompanying stress, finding relief in long and frequent sleeps.
The 'benefit' of the presence of the witness was that it retained some sense of the personal self, the 'me'. But after a few months the witness disappeared, and with it all traces of a personal self,of the 'me'.
"When the personal self disappears, there is no one inside who can be located as being you. The body is only an outline, empty of everything of which it had previously felt so full."
Now there was no one who thought, felt or perceived, yet these functions continued smoothly and nobody noticed anything strange. Yet she struggled to understand who was living and why her body carried on its functions.
"Life became one long, unbroken koan, forever unsolvable, forever mysterious, completely out of reach of the mind's capacity to comprehend."
With the witness gone and, also gone, all vestiges of a familiar 'me', a heightened level of fear arose. She called it terror. She knew a continuous shaking of the extremities and constant and copious perspiration. Now sleep was not a blessed drug, for there was no one to sleep. It brought no relief. She could not identify anyone who gained rest by sleeping, just as there was no one who was awake.
"What had vanished was the reference point of a personal self that felt the feelings personally. Emptiness was consistently co-present with all emotional or mental states, and this co-presence precluded any personal quality from existing. No thoughts, feelings, or actions arose for any personal purpose anymore."
"The mind's hypervigilance was exhausting. Because it was constantly engaged in rejecting the experience of emptiness, there was very little attention available for anything else. My life was filled with seeing no-self, and raising questions about no-self. Even in sleep the emptiness of personal identity continued unperturbed. No mental activity ever changed the experience of no-self in any manner, and none of the attempts to figure out, organize, or evaluate it ever brought back a sense of an individual indentity."
PART II
After ten years she began to explore the spiritual perspective on the emptiness of the no-self. She found volumes of material in Buddhism on Anatta (no-self) and Sunyata (emptiness). Now she learned that not only was her experience understood, it was sought by those on the spiritual path.
Perhaps Segal's greatest the challenge the past ten years was day-to-day functioning without a 'me'. "(personality) functions floated in a vastness that referred to no one," she wrote. Buddhism, she found, explained this by describing the skandhas or "aggregates" as personality functions which remain when one is empty of the person or the 'me'. The five skandhas include form, feelings, perceptions, thoughts and consciousness. Their interaction creates the illusion of self. They do not actually make up the self. There is not self. When the truth of the skandhas is revealed, as suddenly happened to Segal at the bus stop, it is seen that there is no self, only the skandhas functioning as they function; the truth is that they are empty, they don't constitute a self, but their interaction creates the illusion of self.
Still, Segal could not find literary descriptions of the fear she had been knowing for ten years. She maintains that the language and assumptions that go into creating the notion of what real spiritual experience is, is a closed system, and that one who speaks of experiences beyond that closed system, is seen to be navigating their way to Enlightenment with the use of highly questionable markers, of which one of them is fear.
"We have become convinced that the presence of particular thoughts, feelings, or actions is the only way we can really know if someone is Enlightened. The checklist of Enlightened attributes is both lengthy and complex. Is this really love, we ask, in the presence of a supposedly Enlightened being? Or bliss? Do they still have thoughts, we want to know, since we have heard that a mind empty of thoughts is surely a sign of spiritual advancement? And what is this? Is fear present? Well, the presence of fear proves they couldn't possibly having a true spiritual experience. In fact, however, the presence of fear means only that fear is present, and nothing more."
PART III
In her search she came upon others in books or in person that offered verification:
Of all she had met and read of, the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi she felt was most clear, and she considered Ramana her spiritual father. Segal excerpts a portion of his talks, and states generally that, "He described my experience in such a direct and simple fashion that it left absolutely no room for doubt about what I was encountering." And also Segal says
Reading more and more of Ramana's words led me to an astounding passage. When asked by a disciple if it was necessary to be associated with the wise (sat-sanga) in order for the Self to be realized, Ramana answered:
'association with the unmanifest sat or absolute existence (is required).... The sastras say that one must serve (be associated with) the unmanifest sat for twelve years in order to attain Self-realization...but as very few can do that, they have to take second best, which is association with the manifest sat, that is, the Guru.'
(Ramana's source)
What astounded her, of course, about the passage is that she was closing in on the twelfth year of her experiencing of no-self or the unmanifest sat.
Others besides Sri Ramana included:
Christopher Titmuss, a teacher of Buddhist Vipassana Meditation, assured her that she was not insane, but that insanity is the absence of experiences such as hers, whose absence leaves only the 'me' and the tragic consequences of limitation on personal, societal and global scales. Titmuss told Segal she need to be reassured of the spiritual significance of her experiences, and that a calm acceptance of her experiences would eventually quiet the thoughts and feelings giving rise to fear. And out of that quieting will come the full and deep understanding of the experience. She soon came to realize that her experience was neither insane nor wrong, only ungraspable.
Tenshin Roshi Reb Anderson, of the Green Gulch Zen Center in San Francisco, helped her loosen a rigidity in the way her mind was interpreting the experience. He helped her to see that the experience of emptiness was bliss, but not relative bliss, rather the bliss of emptiness knowing itself. He imparted the knowledge that this absolute bliss cannot be known by the skandhas, thus the loosening of rigidity in her mind.
Poonjaji, the well-known disciple of Ramana, validated Segal's experience, saying, "You have become liberation (moksha) of the realized sages."
Gangaji, another prominent teacher in the Ramana-Poonjaji lineage, said, "This realization of the inherent emptiness -- which is pure consciousness -- of all phenomena is true fulfillment. In the face of conditioned existence, much fear can be intitally felt. Ultimately , the fear is also revealed to be only that same empty consciounsess."
Andrew Cohen and Segal's meeting was fruitful.They spent several hours together talking about the emptiness of personal self, and Cohen imparted to Segal, in that time, the awareness that the emptiness "was full of exquisite infinity." In the month that followed, that awareness deepened and became her root awareness. Andrew Cohen had expressed and conveyed a tremendous excitement toward Segal's 'condition', for she was uncommon not only in having the experience of no-self, but in persisting to see it through to a stable resolution. Cohen said, "Your openness and receptivity is a sign of true humility, which alone makes all things possible."
PART IV
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.
NOTE: In a similar vein, for an interesting comparison, see also the words of the Late Ming Dynasty Buddhist master Han-Shan Te-Ching (1546-1623).
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.
PART V
The remainder of "Collision with the Infinite" is straight nondual confession. The following are selected quotes:
"This life is now lived in a constant, ever-present awareness of the infinite vastness that I am."
"The presence of any thoughts, feelings, or actions is never interpreted to mean anything other than that they are present."
"... no judgment about good or bad or right or wrong ever arises; everything is simply what it is."
"Once the mind admitted to the parameters of its own sphere and stopped pathologizing what lay outside it, the non-personal, indescribably joyful flavor of the vastness experiencing itself moved radically to the foreground forever."
"...life as usual continues to unfold; everything gets done, just as it did before the realization of the vastness occurred. Since there has never been a personal doer in any case, the realization of this truth does nothing to change how functioning occurs."
"To live in the vastness of the naturally occurring state is to bathe in the ocean of non-personal pleasure and joy. This joy and pleasure, which belong to no one, are unlike any joy or pleasure that appear to refer or belong to a someone. The emptiness is so full, so total, so infinitely blissful to itself."
"In no way...am I suggesting that practices should not be done, only that there is no practitioner who is the doer behind them. This is true of every activity. ... Just because there is no practitioner (and never has been)) does not mean that practice will not take place. If it is obvious for a particular spiritual practice to occur, then it will."
"In fact, there is no individual 'I' who can figure out how to find the infinite again. More importantly, where would the infinite go? I mean, we aren't talking about something that could hide under the rug. If you could see things as only and exactly what they are, you would see that the 'you' that is seeing is the vastness itself."
"The 'character work' prescribed by psychotherapy, as well as by some spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, leads to a similar trap created by not seeing things to be simply what they are. A relaxation of being naturally arises if one is not seduced into taking ideas to be truth. This relaxation is antithetical to 'character work', with its clear position about how we would be if our characters were worked on. When we knock on the door of 'character work', we are invited into the labyrinth of futurity. It is inherently impossible to arrive at a goal that is predicated on an 'I' that will get us there. Character work is based on the same erroneous belief that there is an individual doer who runs the show of life and can train itself to be a better 'I'.
"...I can no longer call what I do psychotherapy, since it in no way adheres to any standard principles of psychological theory or intervention. My goal for everyone is freedom -- total freedom. I don't want them to change how they feel, work through childhood trauma, or get symptoms to stop. I want them to be free by seeing that things are just what they are."
"Who distinguishes between the true and the false (self)? And true and false for whom? Thoughts, feelings, sensations, and energetic frequencies do not mean anything about some imaginary someone; they simply are what they are."
"We are the vastness, and we contain everything -- thoughts, emotions, sensations, preferences, fears, ideas, even identifications. Nothing has to go anywhere. In any case, where would it go?"
"The purpose of human life has been revealed. The vastness created these human circuitries in order to have an experience of itself out of itself that it couldn't have without them. "
"The substance of the vastness is so directly perceivable to itself in every moment that the circuitry at times requires another adjustment phase to get used to more infinite awareness. When asked
Who I Am, the only answer possible is: I am the infinite, the vastness that is the substance of all things. I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything -- just as you are."
PART VI
In the spring of 1996, the present book had been completed and Suzanne was offering her teachings to the public through weekly dialogues and a training group for her fellow therapists. In February of 1997 she was diagnosed with a massive brain tumor. She died on April 1, 1997 at the age of 42.
PART VII
In the Afterword to her book, Stephan Bodian, her very close friend and the one who encouraged Suzanne to write it, writes:
When this extraordinary autobiography was completed, in the spring of 1996, Suzanne Segal had begun offering regular public presentations and weekly dialogues and leading a biweekly "training group" for therapists in which she demonstrated her unique way of working with people. She was full of energy and embodied a radiant, unconditional love that drew people to her like a magnet. Yet she never considered herself a teacher, insisting that we are "all in this together"—we are all the vastness that she so immediately experienced and so articulately described. Nevertheless, those of us who were close to her frequently found that our own experience of the vastness became even deeper and clearer in her presence.
In the late spring, Suzanne began having a series of powerful energetic experiences in which, as she put it, "the vastness became even vaster to itself." She laughingly called them "bus hits" (referring to her original awakening at the bus stop). Although they were rapturous at first, she seemed increasingly to be disturbed by them and would often have to stop and rest after a particularly powerful occurrence. At the same time she found it more and more difficult to relate to the notion of "other" at all—and so her therapists' group became another opportunity to share our "descriptions" of the vastness together.
Soon the "bus hits" were happening frequently, and by the end of the summer Suzanne realized that she was physically exhausted and would have to withdrew from public life temporarily to recuperate. The doctors she consulted concurred that her vital energy had been depleted and prescribed hormones and other supplements to help restore her. Around this same time, she also noticed that the fear, which had disappeared several years before, had returned.
Suzanne precipitously ended all of her groups and public appearances, except for the therapists' group, which she struggled to continue for an additional month.
STINSON BEACH, CALIFORNIA
Throughout the fall she spent most of her time at home, alone and with her family, taking regular walks by the ocean and sitting on her patio looking out at the Bolinas Lagoon in Stinson Beach, California, where she lived. During this period she recovered memories of childhood abuse, which seemed to explain some of the fear she had experienced during her 10 lonely years of being no one before realizing that she was everything. When I suggested that perhaps the fear originated from a part of herself that was split off or dissociated from conscious awareness, she immediately agreed.
Aerial photography by Andrew McKinney
BOLINAS LAGOON
By late February Suzanne had difficulty holding a pen, remembering familiar names, or standing on her own without feeling dizzy. At the urging of her chiropractor, she entered the hospital on February 27, and X rays revealed that she had a brain tumor. She elected to have it removed but chose not to undergo radiation or chemotherapy. When the surgeons operated on her one week later, they found that the tumor was too widespread to eliminate completely. On March 8 she returned home, and on March 10 she and her fianceé, Steve Kruszynski, were married at a small ceremony at her home. Shortly thereafter they traveled to Oklahoma to seek out alternative treatment. But when Suzanne relapsed, the trip was cut short, and it became clear that she had come home to die.
Several days after returning from her trip, Suzanne lapsed into a coma. A small group of close friends visited daily to join her family in sitting with her, breathing with her, and saying goodbye. Early on the morning of Tuesday, April 1, Suzanne Segal died. Following a Tibetan custom, the body was wrapped in a cloth, surrounded by flowers, and left untouched for three days. On the third day we sat with her body as a local rabbi performed a traditional Jewish ceremony at her mother's request.
The following Saturday, nearly 100 people—Suzanne's many friends and relatives—gathered to celebrate her life, appreciate her gifts to us, and share our grief. At sunset, her husband, Steve, her fourteen-year-old daughter, Arielle, and her brother Bob waded out into the cold spring surf and scattered her ashes into the sky. Some people say they saw the form of an angel materialize briefly and then disintegrate into the sea.
Those of us who were close to Suzanne never doubted the depth or the authenticity of her realization.
Stephan Bodian
Fairfax, California April 1998
ADDENDUM:
The Wanderling, having crossed paths as a young boy over the years with the likes of Franklin Merrell-Wolff, in his usual forte' in emulation of sorts of others as well he had met along the path such as the mysterious Wei Wu Wei and the even more obscure Alfred Pulyan, remained even from mention, Anonymous. He had, however, made a trek to meet Suzanne, and indeed did so early one morning along the sand of Stinson Beach. See:
WHEN INFINITIES COLLIDE
Even as Segal sought out a variety of those said accomplished in the Enlightenment field in one way or the other, she was as well seeking out a teacher in such a way not only to explain what it was Enlightenment is/was, BUT how to make use of it in her everyday life. It is often said that when you truly need a teacher, one will appear. This may due to some inexplicable serendipity. It may be due to the fact that the seeker has searched deeply within himself or herself and determined what sort of instruction seems to be required. It could be Awakening sweeps over you as in the case of Segal as the First Death Experience swept over Sri Ramana Maharshi. However, unlike Segal where a seeming lack of understanding prevailed, the Bhagavan had a little known Second Death Experience that inturn brought forth clarity. Sometimes once gained the clarity is lost only to return at a later time. See:
SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI: THE LAST AMERICAN DARSHAN
RECOUNTING A YOUNG BOY'S NEARLY INSTANT TRANSFORMATION INTO THE ABSOLUTE DURING HIS ONLY DARSHAN WITH THE MAHARSHI
Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
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AWAKENED TEACHERS FORUM
ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT IN A NUTSHELL
GASSHO
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HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
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THE RAZOR'S EDGE
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THE AWAKENING EXPERIENCE IN THE MODERN ERA
ZEN, WOMEN, AND BUDDHISM
Information and Excerpts taken from
"Collision with the Infinite"
Copyright © 1996 Suzanne Segal.
Published by Blue Dove Press.
ISBN: 1-884997-27-9
Address:
The Estate Of Suzanne Segal
c/o Steven Kruszynski, Executor
P.O. Box 218
Stinson Beach, CA. 94970
