Please take a minute or two to reflect on all the times in your life when you felt really happy. For example, those that you can term as ecstatic experiences (hope you had a few of them). Recollect two or three of them.听
If you think carefully about them, those so-called happy moments would have been completely 鈥榠mmersive experiences鈥� when you forgot all about 鈥榶ou鈥�, whatever your idea of 鈥榶ou鈥� is. In other words, you were so absorbed in the experience that 鈥榶ou鈥� were no longer there but there was just the pure experience. It is only later that you can talk about it and say that 鈥榶ou鈥� had such-and-such a wonderful experience. While describing it, you would say, 鈥淚 was totally lost. I did not even feel the passage of time鈥�. Many of us go through such an experience almost every day when we sleep well and describe 鈥榙eep sleep鈥� using similar words. There are a lot of people who seek adventure sports like bungee jumping, river rafting, rock climbing etc. They are so completely absorbed in the activity when they are going through them that they are completely lost as individual selves and can only recollect their experiences post-facto. It is the same when we play any sport intensely or get absorbed in entertainment.
Interestingly, when you also think about what you typically call agonizing experiences, they are also quite similar in character! During the moments of severe pain, you are simply totally absorbed in your pain, and you label them as painful only afterwards when you recollect those times. What you label post-facto as painful or pleasure-some is often a result of your past conditioning and is something that you can only do later on, after the actual experience is over.听
Therefore, if it is possible to experience everything as if 鈥榶ou鈥� are not there but there is only just the experience, then all experience would be the same. There would be no experience that you can label either as ecstatic or painful because you are fully absorbed in whatever experience life presents you with from time to time. There are no dull or boring moments ever, just as there would be no need ever to seek and chase after moments of pleasure. There are just a series of immersive experiences though there is no one seeking to immerse in. Every moment is spent completely absorbed in it, whether it is spent with people, with thinking, with a feeling, with doing a task, or just plain 鈥榠dling鈥�, doing nothing in particular. The only difference and the fascinating irony is that there would be nobody to recollect and tell later that she/he had those experiences! 鈥榊ou鈥� are just what you experience but with nobody specifically there to experience. There would be nothing 鈥榩ersonal鈥� about an experience anymore and hence no 鈥榖ad鈥� experience ever!
Ravee Chittoor听is an associate professor at the University of Victoria.
You can read more articles on out interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking. HERE
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