review of One Taste part 1

People say that you can't learn anything about enlightenment from books. It has to be personal experience. Books, however, are records of personal experiences. Also, how do you know that your enlightenment is the same as other people's enlightenment? How do you know that it is enlightenment at all?

Are we not all familiar with the idea that someone can think they are enlightened and yet there is another level beyond what they have reached? John Yarr used to say that Buddha had only got to the level of 'going beyond form'. I don't believe that. I don't believe John Yarr got as far as Buddha.

Ken Wilber has a lot of theory that I have found meaningless and pretentious. He is interesting however when writing about his own spiritual experiences.

I have said that I think the Lifewave enlightenment is the same as what Ken Wilber calls 'One Taste'. I am reading one of his books now that goes into greater detail. Both Suzanne Segal and Malcolm seemed to be saying that you get enlightenment suddenly and in one go then it's a permanent state of consciousness. Perhaps it was for them but Wilber says that he does not maintain this state for long periods of time.

In this passage from 'One Taste' by Wilber he is on holiday and spending a lot of time in the sea.

"I had fully expected to lose all access to the Witness, given our vino schedule. And for the first night and day this happened. But floating in the water has not only brought back the Witness, it seems to have facilitated the disappearance of the Witness into the nondual One Taste, at least on occasion. (The Witness, or pure witnessing awareness, tends to be of the causal, since there is usually a primitive trace of subject/object duality: you equanimously Witness the world as transparent and shimmering object. But with further development, the Witness itself disappears into everything that is witnessed, subject and object become One Taste, or simple Suchness, and this is the nondual estate. In short: ego to soul to pure Witness to One Taste.) So I am utterly, pleasantly surprised, floating here in nature's blood, to be dipped into One Taste, which in this case, is nicely salty.

There is no time in this estate, although time passes through it. Clouds float by in the sky, thoughts float by in the mind, waves float by in the ocean, and I am all of that. I am looking at none of it, for there is no center around which perception is organized. It is simply that everything is arising, moment to moment, and I am all of that. I do not see the sky, I am the sky, which sees itself. I do not feel the ocean, I am the ocean, which feels itself. I do not hear the birds, I am the birds, which hear themselves. There is nothing outside of me, there is nothing inside of me, because there is no me - there is simply all of this, and it has always been so.

My ankle hurts from dancing last night, so there is pain, but the pain doesn't hurt me, for there is no me. There is simply pain, and it is arising just like everything else - birds, waves, clouds, thoughts. I am none of them, I am all of them, it's all the same One Taste. This in not a trance, or a lessening of consciousness, but rather an intensification of it - not subconcious but superconscious, not infra-rational but super-rational. There is a crystal-clear awareness of everything that is arising, moment to moment, it's just not happening to anybody. This is not an out-of-the-body experience; I am not looking down; I am not looking at all; and I am not above or below anything - I am everything. There is simply all of this, and I am that.

Most of all, One Taste is utter simplicity. With mystical experiences in the subtle and causal, there is often a sense of grandeur, of ominous awesomeness, of numinous overwhelmingness, of light and bliss and beatitude, of gratefulness and tears of joy. But not with One Taste, which is extraordinarily ordinary, and perfectly simple: just this.

I stay here, neck deep in water, for three hours. How much of it I spend as ego, as Witness, or as One Taste, I don't know. There is always the sense, with One Taste, that you have never left it, no matter how confused you get, and therefore there is never really the sense that you are entering or leaving it. It is just so, always and forever, even now, and even unto the ends of the world."

Wilber writes that this isn't a permanent state for him. It can last for 24 - 36 hours, and once it lasted for eleven days. He says he believes that for some people it is permanent, including several teachers that he has met.

The other surprising thing to me about this passage is that he seems to have moved from what some people call One Mind or One Taste to what some people call No Mind. When he writes "I do not see the sky, I am the sky, which sees itself" etc what does this mean?

I don't believe that it literally means that the sky sees itself. This is his perception. It's as if consciousness has become fragmented. Differerent parts of the brain are processing sensory information, with no centre, no self. One Mind (or One Taste) means that everything seems to be part of you. No Mind means that there is no you. What is it that perceives sensory information when there is no you? It's as if they perceive themselves: sensations appear to be what some people call 'self-knowing knowns'.

There is seeing be no see-er. There is hearing but no hearer. There is thinking but no thinker.
Some people will say that One Mind and No Mind are the same. If you are everything then you are nothing. I don't think so. They have different characteristics. Is it possible for One Mind to shift into No Mind all by itself? I don't know. It's possible that it only happened to Wilber because one of the many forms of meditation he practiced was vipassana. Or it might just require a shift of perspective.