Adam Blatner

We all get our god-realization in different ways. For me as I fell asleep on the edge of the Autumnal Equinox or thereabouts, 9/21/11, something like a minor god-realization happened through a gentle extension of a slight talent I have—i.e., when at the edge of sleep I begin to remember thousands of dream images as I free-associate traveling around following one theme as it moves into another: hill, path, into forest, turn right, over coastal area, sea or lake?—doesn’t matter, etc. These are accompanied by a sense of deep familiarity—the oh, yeah—even if my sense is that I haven’t visited that scene in particular for many years—and these are all dream vistas—nothing in ordinary waking.

Last night while noticing that and commenting to my wife Allee about it I noticed a whole ‘nother set of dreams operating-unfolding at another level below, and also a level of awakened sensibility of ordinary feeling my fingers touching each other “above,” and darned if there wasn’t a third “level” of yet further and non-related dream images still “deeper.”

“What means this?” I asked Allee, and she said, “Beyond the content is the idea that this is God. Brahman is Atman. The essential consciousness of the cosmos is not different from the consciousness of the individual—other than for the latter, the “awakened” part just is far more shallow—i.e., the illusion,  “Hey, “I” am here. And I’m different from you.”

But I glimpsed that this sentence is a mixture of two elements: First, the I is a retinal cell, just one of millions, and it does indeed see. In this case the retinal cell connected with the brain cell that registered the vision and felt the presence of the “I-see.” What it didn’t do—that silly lil’ retinal cell—, is directly perceive all the other retinal cells who were also perceiving. And further there were innumerable other types of sense cells, and integrating cells that made sense cells workable, and an organism-full of cells that generated the platform on which sense cells arise.

The kick of course is that we’re very, very multidimensional, so we live lives in which we play the role of thousands of different cell types, and that’s all good. But the important thing—something I realize (gulp) I’ve been preparing for all my 74.1 years of life—with a great deal of inter-disciplinary scholarship—is that this tiny dream phenomenon plus all I’ve ever learned led me to realize: We (the collective we) are at the edge of waking up, so to speak. The collective “We” as a species awareness on this planet—is it another way of speaking about the “Christ” function? And this awakening—perhaps it is part of the emergence of more complex forms of sentient life in this sector of the big-bang-great-radiance-generated 13.7 billion year old universe. What an honor!

I really like the metaphor of awakening, being filled with a new experience of consciousness, one that includes many intangible dimensions—memory of the past greater than any animal does; and capacity to anticipate the future; capacity to imagine alternative futures and even alternative realities in the here and now; ability to wonder about consciousness itself, and the many sub-types of dream, intoxication, inspiration, excitement, boredom, depression, etc.; and to wonder more about madness, various neuro-genic distortions and diseases, temperamental differences, ability differences, etc. Lots of etc.—and all of this relates to the peculiarities of what we call waking consciousness—reflective consciousness—that has reached a tipping point of knowing about all of the aforementioned varieties of consciousness.

Okay, now you all are different, because you all have different specific experiences, so maybe I see god and you don’t… no, that’s not right… Wait! I get it, you all experience the various elements of consciousness as well as I do! Some of you even “get it” better than I do in this or that way. I can’t play the “I’m more sensitive than you” one-up game because I know that even though I’m smart in some ways, others of you are smart in ways I hardly even know exist! Whoa!

With the right attitude—delight, surrender, wonder, and realizing that we’re all sensory units within the unfolding, becoming, awakening whole (i.e. god, Brahman)—then any need to cling to my being “better” becomes ridiculous. It’s so clear that we all must help each other to operate as a “we” because we really, really are a “we-ness.” And Jesus preached about this. Indeed, some say this is the essential message of Yeshua ben Yusuf, rather than the complex Fall and Damnation and Need for Salvation complex that got layered upon that preaching.

The excitement at being present at this point in the history of the universe cannot be underestimated. Oh, sure, maybe the Gloxorians on some planet a billion light years away came to this point a billion years go. I mean, “time” seems so puny when viewed from the point of the general idea that God is Awakening in some new ways.

In this fantasy, I can communicate with the Gloxorians and a wise one says to me, “Yeah, we know we’re god—and that everything is, but more reflective or complex types of sentience adds certain flavors of consciousness-awareness to the experience. We also believe that God as the Greater Wholeness has never experiences awakening as humanity-awakening, imbued with the many flavors of consciousness unique to humanity, and that is a great gift. Every sentient species offers a special gift to God, an experience unique to that species.

And, get this (my Gloxorian Guru went on), there are certain experiences, subtle flavors, that are unique not only to each species, but also to each individual sentient being! Every Earth person—or Gloxorian, or any sentient being in the whole cosmos—is so complex that it experiences—that’s the key—experience—it experiences (for God, as part of God, just as your receptor cells experience anew every unique occasion)—again, totally uniquely.

God not only has no problem experiencing what it’s like to be this or that of any of hundreds of billions of galaxies, or of a similarly inconceivable number of stars within each galaxy, or of all the whatevers we don’t know about between and among the galaxies (dark matter? Ha!) , or the planets and asteroids and grains of dust and molecules of gas, or atoms and sub-atomic particles, or neutrinos and complexes that make up life at any level, and on and on—size is no barrier from God’s experiencing, nor time—events that take billions of years, the birth and death of stars and solar systems—or events that take billionths of a second, forceful and subtle events—all the spectrums possible—this is not a problem for a truly curious, excited, delighted God-Becoming.

And we get to be part of humanity awakening into this myth, part of the process, part of the experience! Thrilling indeed! It’s gospel, good news, we’re all part of the awakening. That sentence has several implications: The phrase, “we are all part,” has all the ethics of all the religious traditions—that Golden Rule theme. “Part of” implies immanence: No God of otherness, but rather we are inseparable from each other and from Source-Purpose (another term for God). And what it’s all about? Awakening as experience, with consciousness as the key.

Wanna hear a joke? Some of our most clever people thought that consciousness was a side effect, sort of brain-sweat, an incidental product, nice for some, unpleasant for others. That’s reductionistic materialism for you! But what if we reverse this and make consciousness the key, the core, the fount out of which our little drops shoot and by means of surface-tension like ego, we all think we’re separate.  (Oh, I like that image: Drops tend to forget they’re part of the flow of a fountain as it spurts into the air or flies off the wave and forms “droplets” who for a moment, suspended in a semi-gravity-free transition state, form into drops, globules, and think they’re whole and separate from the sea or fountain.)

Well, this shift in perspective, this awakening to the idea of awakening, is way cool:
– it’s as if we get reminded of this every day!
– it opens up the multi-level nature of experience, dreamless sleep, dreaming sleep, waking up slightly confused, bright awake but non-focused, focused and excited, inspired, in flow and ecstasy—and there are different kinds of pleasure experienced in “flow”—bored, habituated, drowsy, needing companionship, sharing an experience, enjoying friendship and romance, communion in a group, and so forth. Indeed, the more we learn about individual and social psychology and alterned states of consciousness, the more variety in types of experience we learn is going on among and about us—and with animals, too!
– evolution as awakening
– history as awakening, and the history of every branch and sub-branch of every type of collective—genealogy, medicine, technology, art, music, dance, the technology of every specific item—cardboard boxes, toys, chairs, awnings, the breeding of plants and animals, and lots of etc.—all have amazing histories that include general themes superimposed on the life stories of each person who struggled for or against or to the side of every emergent idea.
– we need to add humor, paradox, groping, discovery, tragedy and comedy, occasional mystical breakthroughs as to how this or that event partakes of the great cosmic whole essence of everything, but when it gets expressed seems so silly and trivial…. those paradoxes, too…
– and lots of other items that I can’t think of right now.

Of course, this also illustrates at another level everything happening in my life right now:
– a forthcoming lecture series on visionaries in our own time, ones who are speaking to evolution, education, interspirituality, creativity, play, the emergence of psychology and myth as more discreet fields, inter-disciplinary integrations, etc.
– a lecture next month on demystifying mysticism that I’m giving at a spirituality in pediatrics conference.
– a workshop on how action methods can inform spirituality as an activity of deepening the relationship with the Greater Wholeness of Existence
– and my own growing awakening process, discussions with friends, and the ongoing spiritual   journey / quest for understanding / deepening love with Allee and family
– and so forth… art, music, dance, exercise, etc.

So it’s pretty great—or it feels that way—lots of reason for gratitude and savoring of pleasure. Oh, and I get fairly clearly that all this is not by any means the end of the story, the final formulation. As exciting as it is, I have no doubt that further realizations and revelations and learnings will add to it and perhaps require some revision. That’s fun, too.

Sigh. Acquaintances ask me what’s new. Shall I tell them? (Laughs).