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(4)
What I begin to notice first, as I put a sensorial as opposed to a
conceptual mode of perception at the forefront of my awareness, is an
increase in libido. During those times when I'm able to
successfully sustain an interaction with my surrounding environs on a
primarily sensorial basis – becoming, so to speak, that which I see
and hear – I notice a stimulation of the nerve endings at the base of
my spine occurring: it is this which I describe as representing an
increase in libido; the sensation has a strongly erotic component
to it. It is, I suppose, what is spoken of in certain
Eastern schools of mysticism as the awakening of the kundalini
power. The challenge then becomes one of learning how to handle this
power. In dreams occurring while asleep, the surpassing of
sexual arousal can lead one into a state of hyper-dreaming – a
state of lucidity. And so, one assumes, it must also be
possible to learn how to surpass the desire to satiate this sense of
rising libido, felt as a stimulation at the base of the spine, while
in the waking state. I have tried handling this sexual energy
by simply containing it, holding it in; once the reservoir of
energy became large enough, I assumed, variant usages for it would
formulate themselves more or less spontaneously. But in
practice this process constituted little more than mere suppression,
followed by a frenetic outburst of sexual energy's common form of
expression (physical orgasm). I eventually did come to
understand that one could learn to ride desire, as one might
be said to ride a wave of the ocean, letting it lift one up and then
drop one down again as it passed: this led to the
experiencing of bodily orgasms – orgasms as experienced by the whole
of the physical self, unaccompanied by the more brute form of
release. To accomplish this one must learn to let the sexual
energy play, sensually, upon and throughout the whole of the physical
organism, neither fighting against it nor succumbing to it. But
such bodily orgasms, while intensely pleasurable, turned out in the
end to yield nothing more worthwhile than pleasure, merely. And
so I have come now to think that one must view the rising of sexual
energy along the spine as a manifestation of being as becoming,
and thus representative of a sense of one's own "point of
particularity" as it begins to formulate an energetic connection
to the larger "ground-of-all-being." In order to
experience this properly, one must be careful not to fall prey to
egoism, using the increase in energy as an excuse for enlarging
the egoistic self, but rather, understand it to be a quickening of awareness
with regard to the subjective/objective nexus that exists between
"self" and "other" (i.e. between one "point
of particularity" and another). The energetic flow between
"self" and "other" is then recognized to run both
ways: that which stimulates by its impact upon one's senses
also exists – in part (though not wholly) – because
one is sensorially (and thus sensually) aware of it. I suppose I might
simplify this by saying that it's not that I believe the world exists
only insofar as I am aware of it via my bodily senses, but that the world
speaks to me only insofar as I am aware of it via my senses; and
speaks to me intelligibly only insofar as I myself am able to
communicate intelligibly with it, which I do by realizing the sensorially
and sensually apprehended state of interconnectivity that exists between us.
But beyond all this, what I seem of late to have come into a fuller
experiential understanding of is that place of absence, of
no-self, which exists at the center of the panorama
of my many selves – physical, emotional, and mental.
That is to say, what I've come into a fuller experiential understanding
of is the void that exists within me. Indeed, as I've said before,
it is precisely this "void," this place of "nonexistence,"
which gives any specific "something" which has existence its
original generative power. Experiential knowledge of the inner void
as I currently understand it is achieved indirectly, via the fluidity of "I"
as it manifests now in physical sensation, now in emotional awareness, now
in the abstractions of thought: "I," residing
in each of these manifestations in turn, but residing in none of them
with finality, must eventually yield to the perception of a "not-I"
existing at the center of them all. That is to say, my own sense
of individuated selfness, my "I," operating fluidly, can no
longer be said to have a central location or a single identity; it
becomes a kind of chimera, no more. Curiously, I find that my
apprehension of the inner void no longer frightens, but rather,
yields me a sense of genuine freedom: I no longer feel so closely
bound, for example, by the cause-and-effect relationship one generally presupposes
to exist between "self" and "other." This
is not, obviously, to claim that such a relationship has ceased to
exist; in rationalistic terms, it goes on as ever. But as I
begin, slowly, to become more conversant with regard the subjective/objective
nexus that connects the various "points of particularity"
which are arising (through being as becoming) from
"the ground-of-all-being," I come to realize how poorly the
cause-and-effect modality of thinking is in its descriptive
power. Reality is better realized as a textural experience, an
ebbing and flowing of energy. But the first prerequisite to a
fuller realization of this ebb and flow is to recognize the ways in
which it occurs between the various manifestations of those selves
which are, collectively, referred to as "I." A VISION
void
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