I worked very hard as a phone support tech for an Internet company in the early days of the Internet. I was meditating and had gotten to the first stage where your mind gets quiet and the world seems to open out. Then I became aware of a vast openness and power, as if I was a powerful locomotive on a track; rather, as if I was a locomotive on a track that was also a magnetic accelerator. That is, the power came from without. Then it was as if I was “there,” not moving toward anything, but the “there-ishness” had no destination or center, it was all over.

At this point, I was not consciously aware of anything. I could tell that a part of my being which was not my usual mind was interacting with the ground of being. I compared this to vacuum-welding, in which metal parts fuse together, or to a tree’s taproot hitting the water table, without actually feeling it. This was beyond feeling and thought.

I envisioned it as falling into vast darkness below all our conscious and even subconscious experiences. Another analogy I like to use is a black hole, the cosmic object, around which is a ring of light, but the center is so dark that there is not even light in there – and yet that is the ground of love and being. I call it You. My dearest Nothing. Silence and peace lead to it and then drop away.

Then there is the loss of illusions. Illusions coat our perceptions. When you lose them, the world looks bleak at first, and then a truer beauty fades in, much truer than the superficial attractiveness of illusion.

By, Unknown