Nirvana Is Not Enough

I admit to having felt some ambivalence towards Paul Levy. 

The man is extremely intelligent, eloquent and articulate in his story-telling, and astonishingly generous in sharing intimate details of his personal experiences.  However, at times I find his narratives heavily suffused with a victim mentality and this has tainted my appreciation of some of his writings.  In particular he presents himself as a victim of the psychiatric establishment, and indeed his story would, at least on the surface, support that interpretation of his experience.  Misperceptions and over-reactions do happen in psychiatry - it's not like fixing a broken leg - but having read a lot of Levy's stuff I came away with a feeling that there must have been another aspect to his experiences that he would not, perhaps could not, accept or articulate.

Then An Eye-Opening Synchronicity arrived in my Inbox.  As I began reading it was clear that something had shifted.  Levy writes:

It feels like the right time to share this, as it feels like it’s not just my story. On the one hand, this synchronistic experience was tailor-made just for me, while on the other hand, it wasn’t just my experience, a circumstance meant solely for my personal consumption. It feels like it is a revelatory experience that contains gifts for all of us. It feels more right to share it now because it has taken me this many years to digest it, and to integrate the meaning of what was being shown to me so that I’d be able to share the story without identifying with the role. It also feels like the time is right to share this miraculous-seeming event because I’ve developed the psychological fluency so that I can now describe what my experience was in a way that I imagine will be received and taken in, instead of judged. Being archetypal, my synchronistic encounter is a self-reflection for all of us, revealing a process that exists deep within each one of us.

This article is heavy going (no surprise to Levy fans). Reading the full piece is highly recommended - there's a link above and another at the end of this post.

Levy recounts how while sitting in meditation he experienced what he describes as "a flash of lightning", after which his behaviour became so uncharacteristic that a concerned friend had him taken by ambulance to the hospital.

I had become unself-conscious, at one with myself, as if I had stepped out of all restraints. It was as if I was released from any social conditioning, in that my actions were no longer a reaction to what I thought others thought. As if snapping out of a double-bind, I wasn’t limiting myself anymore. I wasn’t contracting against myself but simply getting out of my own way to let my light shine, as if I went from being a 75 watt light-bulb to being a million watt bulb.

Sounds wonderful.  Every meditator's dream in fact.  Here's the bit that really grabbed my attention:

This was a dangerous situation, however, as at the time I certainly hadn’t yet developed the container within myself to channel this energy in a way that was socially acceptable. I had so surrendered to what was happening, which was the only thing that made sense to do, and the only thing that I could do, that I had stopped trying to control the situation.

At this point Levy's spiritual awakening no longer moved along a linear path but kind of exploded.  The narrative continues with an amazing story of his encounter with a blind woman at the hospital, then proceeds to a most remarkable analysis and interpretation of that meeting in the chapter entitled "Dreamwork".  It's a fascinating segment, and I will leave it to you to read and absorb what you will.  Sufficient for me right now is to share my own thoughts on the two quotes above, the first describing his initial spontaneous opening, the second his realization (some time later) that he had had no way to channel the enormous energy that was released at that moment.

From that moment on, I was inhabiting a world of expanded possibilities, where even the seemingly impossible now seemed possible. It was as if I had fallen through a rabbit hole, stepped through the looking glass, or passed through a portal, and found myself playing a role in a cosmic, visionary drama that certainly had my highest attention. 

This world Levy describes so well could variously be called enlightenment, liberation, absolute reality or nirvana.  Most serious meditators, like Levy, have experienced flashes of this openness and expansion, and it's wonderful and amazing and it's tempting to try to hang out there.  It also perfectly describes a classic hypermanic state, which is highly enjoyable at the time, full of possibilities and potential and enormous, boundless energy (ever try cocaine?). Others would call it a psychotic episode or a break with reality, which in effect it is.  It's a break with one side of reality - the relative - what Levy calls "consensus reality" - the reality that we all share and that enables us to relate with each other as individuals, as a society and as a species. 

The intention of this post is not to debate what is real or not real, or which reality is better.  In my opinion the experience of transcendence Levy describes was as real as the fact that I am typing these words and as palpable as the pain I feel when I hit my thumb with a hammer.  I believe that when Levy realized in retrospect that at the time he  "hadn't yet developed the container within myself to channel this energy in a way that was socially acceptable",  he was describing his loss of connection to relative reality, to earth.  He was both literally and metaphorically lost in space, the absolute.  And to a lot of people, that looks like crazy.

Without Earth (the relative world), Heaven (the absolute) has no container; without Heaven, Earth has no energy.  We humans are the lightning rods between them - we are the conduits through which the energy of Heaven and the solidity of Earth communicate and find expression.  If we become over-attached to one or the other - whether deliberately or, as in Levy's case, "like a bolt of lightning" - then we lose touch with a part of ourselves, as Heaven and Earth are not "out there"; they are within us; they are our nature. These forces are meant to be balanced and flowing, like yin and yang, and when they are not, we experience all manner of dis-ease.

Nirvana is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

I am grateful that Paul Levy had the courage to look deeply into an experience that a lot of people would just as soon have forgotten.  I think his being able to share it now marks a giant leap both in his personal journey and in his ability to communicate his insights to the world; to, in his words, "... share the story without identifying with the role."  Good on you, Paul - keep it coming.

That's all I have to say for now.  If you're still reading this, thank you for your patience. There is a lot more to this article, and there may be further posts in the near future.  Check out the full monty, entitled "An Eye-Opening Synchronicity" HERE.

With your kind indulgence, let me share with you the last few sentences of his concluding paragraph, which I find particularly poignant:

All we have to do to see is open our eyes and look. We teach what we need to learn. I am in essence talking to myself. In finding the words I am helping myself heal my own blindness.

Thanks Paul.
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