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Nothing Existed Except the Eyes of the Maharshi
by N.R. Krishnamurti Aiyer. Oct. 29, 2001
Who Are You? An Interview With Papaji by
Jeff Greenwald. Oct. 24, 2001
An Interview with Byron Katie by Sunny
Massad. Oct. 23, 2001
An Interview with Douglas Harding by Kriben
Pillay. Oct. 21, 2001
The Nectar of Immortality by Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj. Oct. 18, 2001
The Power of the Presence Part Two by David
Godman. Oct. 15, 2001
The Quintessence of My Teaching by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Oct. 3, 2001
Interview With David Godman. Sept. 28, 2001
The Power of the Presence Part One by David
Godman. Sept. 28, 2001
Nothing Ever Happened Volume 1 by
David Godman. Sept. 23, 2001
Collision with the Infinite by Suzanne
Segal. Sept. 22, 2001
Lilly of the Valley, the Bright and Morning
Star by Charlie Hopkins. August 9, 2001
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Our
email address is editor
@realization.org.
Copyright
2002 Realization.org.
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Collision
with the Infinite
As
she stepped into a bus on a street in Paris, an
unexpected mental cataclysm split her consciousness
in two. A few months later, her sense of personal
self disappeared forever.
By
SUZANNE SEGAL
IT
WAS IN THE SPRINGTIME that it happened. I was
returning home to my apartment on the Left Bank
after attending a class for pregnant women at
the clinic across town where I would be having
my baby six months from then. It was the first
week of my fourth month of pregnancy, and I had
just begun to feel the faintest stirring of my
daughter's tiny movements, like being brushed
by a feather from the inside. The month was May,
and the sun felt warm on my head and face as I
stood at the bus stop on the Avenue de la Grande
Armee. I was in no hurry and had decided to take
a bus instead of the metro in order to enjoy the
lovely weather.
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Several
buses came and went before I finally saw the number
37 approaching down the wide avenue. Six or seven
of us were waiting together at the stop, exchanging
pleasantries about the weather and comments about
the new advertising campaign that had been appearing
on all the billboards. As the bus approached,
we congregated expectantly near the curb. The
bus lumbered to a halt, expelling the acrid odor
of exhaust fumes and hot rubber into the warm
spring air.
As
I took my place in line, I suddenly felt my ears
stop up like they do when the pressure changes
inside an airplane as it makes its descent. I
felt cut off from the scene before me, as if I
were enclosed in a bubble, unable to act in any
but the most mechanical manner. 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.
From
a non-localized position somewhere behind and
to the left, I could see my body in front and
very far away. All the body's signals seemed to
take a long time to be picked up in this non-localized
place, as if they were light coming from a distant
star. Terrified, I looked around, wondering if
anyone else had noticed something. All the other
passengers were calmly taking their seats, and
the bus driver was motioning me to put my yellow
ticket into the machine so we could be off.
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Reprinted
with permission from
Collision with the Infinite: A Life
Beyond the Personal Self
By Suzanne Segal |
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| ORDER
IT FROM THE PUBLISHER |
Paperback.
177 pages.
Published by Blue Dove Press (1996).
ISBN 1884997279 |
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| Suzanne
Segal |
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| "Instead
of experiencing through the physical senses, I was
now bobbing behind the body like a buoy on the sea."
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I
shook my head a few times, hoping to rattle my
consciousness back into place, but nothing changed.
I felt from afar as my fingers fumbled to insert
the ticket into the slot and I walked down the
aisle to find a seat. I sat down next to an older
woman I had been chatting with at the bus stop,
and I tried to continue our conversation. My mind
had completely ground to a halt in the shock of
the abrupt collision with whatever had dislodged
my previous reality.
Although
my voice continued speaking coherently, I felt
completely disconnected from it. The face of the
woman next to me seemed far away, and the air
between us seemed foggy, as if filled with a thick,
luminous soup. She turned to gaze out the window
for a moment, then reached up to pull the cord
to signal the driver to let her off at the next
stop. When she rose, I slid over into her seat
by the window and bid her goodbye with a smile.
I could feel sweat rolling down my arms and beading
up on my face. I was terrified.
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bus arrived at my stop on the rue Lecourbe, and
I got off. As I walked the three blocks home, I
attempted to pull myself back into one piece by
focusing on my body and willing myself back into
it where I thought I belonged in order to regain
the previously normal sensation of seeing through
the body's eyes, speaking through the body's mouth,
and hearing through the body's ears. The force of
will failed miserably. Instead of experiencing through
the physical senses, I was now bobbing behind the
body like a buoy on the sea. Cut loose from sensory
solidity, separated from and witnessing the body
from a vast distance, I moved down the street like
a cloud of awareness following a body that seemed
simultaneously familiar and foreign. There was an
incomprehensible attachment to that body, although
it no longer felt like "mine." It continued to send
out signals of its sensory perceptions, yet how
or where those signals were being received was beyond
comprehension. |
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| "There
was no conceivable way to explain any of this to
him, so I didn't even try." |
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Incapable
of making sense of this state, the mind alternated
between racing wildly in an attempt to put "me"
back together and shutting down completely, leaving
only the empty humming of space reverberating
in the ears. The witness was absolutely distinct
from the mind, the body, and the emotions, and
the position it held, behind and to the left of
the head, remained constant. The profound distance
between the witness and the mind, body, and emotions
seemed to elicit panic in and of itself, due to
the sensation of being so tenuously tethered to
physical existence. In this witnessing state,
physical existence was experienced to be on the
verge of dissolution, and it (the physical) responded
by summoning an annihilation fear of monumental
proportions.
As
I walked into my apartment, Claude looked up from
his book to greet me and ask how my day had been.
The terror was not immediately apparent to him,
which seemed oddly reassuring. I greeted him calmly
as if nothing were wrong, telling him about the
class at the clinic and showing him the new book
I had purchased at the American bookstore on my
way home. There was no conceivable way to explain
any of this to him, so I didn't even try. The
terror was escalating rapidly, and the body was
panic stricken, sweat pouring in rivulets down
its sides, hands cold and trembling, heart pumping
furiously. The mind clicked into survival mode
and started looking for distractions. Maybe if
I took a bath or a nap, or ate some food, or read
a book, or called someone on the phone.
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| Copyright
1996 Suzanne Segal. All rights reserved. Photo
of Suzanne Segal by Sherry Burkart.
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This
page was published on September 22, 2001 and
last revised on October 18, 2001. |
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