Enlightenment by Trial and Error: Ten Years on the Slippery Slopes of Jewish Spirituality, Postmodern Buddhism, and Other Mystical Heresies (Jewish Arguments)

by Jay Michaelson

How we articulate it—as God, the power of art, Buddha-nature—is up to us. But I can confirm that simply by quieting down the body and mind, the doors of perception do open, and what the mystics of every world tradition say happens—happens. This direct, mystical experience—no faith required—conditions more delight and more certainty than I can put into words.

Every moment, most of us are thinking about the future or the past, chasing something pleasant, or trying to avoid something unpleasant. It’s what animals do. Thus contemplatives seek ways to learn to stop seeking.

I’ve come to a place in my meditation practice where I’m okay with saying that it’s just my preference to do it. And I understand that, for many people, a less-reflective life is simply more enjoyable.

For many years, I was fascinated by these accounts, and determined to see if I could have such experiences myself. And so I did, many times, and in many different mystical contexts. And indeed, from my own experience, I can attest that if you follow the instructions of meditative, contemplative, and spiritual practices, the promised results do indeed occur: a dissolving of the sense of self; rapture in concentrated joy; transient feelings of immense bliss; and, for religious souls like me, a certainty that one is held and loved and engulfed by the Divine. It is worth the effort.

In other words, at a certain point, the mystic moved beyond unitive experience to return to the experience of duality while maintaining the consciousness of unity. This is what David Loy calls the “nonduality of duality and nonduality.” And it is what the Zen masters mean when they say “in the beginning, mountains are mountains. During zazen, mountains are not mountains. Afterward, mountains are once again mountains.” That is to say: in the initial dualistic consciousness, mountains are experienced as mountains. In unitive consciousness, the mountains disappear as separate entities and are only motes on the sunbeam of consciousness. In nondual consciousness, the mountains are both: both everything and nothing, both existent and nonexistent.