The Trap of Spiritual Experience
Today’s topic is very relevant, and something which I experienced a lot when I was walking the path. So today, we will be talking about the trap of spiritual experience.
Years ago, in 2005, I was walking through a lake in the Himalayas and suddenly something that I had been waiting for a long time happened: the boundary between me and the universe dissolved. Everything became a vast sea of consciousness. There was no more Rajiv. I had read about this state, this experience, in hundreds of books, and now it was happening to me. I felt that my long search had finally reached its end.
But within a few weeks, the state faded and the whole universe again became an ordinary universe, and I became an ordinary person inside it. What happened next is what I have watched happen to most seekers, and it generally takes the same shape. What I wanted now was a return of that vast sea of consciousness—that boundless state where there was no ego, no “I,” where I was one with the universe.
Searching for Truth vs. Searching for Experience
I saw years later that I had set out in search of truth, but I ended up in search of an experience. After this experience, I ended up in search of an experience, not truth. And this trap of seeking experiences means either you are seeking a particular experience which you have not experienced yet, or you are seeking an experience which you have already had.
Most of the seekers I sit with in the Satsang carry a version of it. Someone had an experience of boundless love that has not come again in the past few years, and he grieves it the way you would grieve a lover. We remember the souvenirs. I call these experiences souvenirs because we remember the souvenirs we carry back from these places, which we visit briefly. All these experiences are brief and transient, but we carry back the souvenirs.
A Practical Test: Letting Go of the Past and Future
Before we go ahead, let’s do a small practical test. Let’s give one minute to remember the most cherished or spiritual experience that you’ve had in your journey—the most intense or beautiful, something which made you feel one with the universe or feel boundless love.
Now, let’s spend some time to think of the experience that you crave. What are you craving on your journey? What kind of a state and experience are you looking forward to? What are you wanting?
Now, is it possible to throw both of these away? Discard them entirely? The experience you had in the past is dead, it’s gone; and the future experience that you want has not arrived. You’ll see the resistance when you want to let go because the whole identity of seeking is built around these experiences. It doesn’t matter what the experience is or was. It might be a beautiful, soft experience, or it might shake the foundation of your very being. But the moment thought says, “I need that,” the what is is being replaced by a pursuit, by a want, by a desire. You’re pursuing something which is not here.
The Commercialization of Spiritual States
In most of the spiritual communities, experience gets romanticized, and intensity gets mistaken for depth. Different states get confused with truth. The market loves this. Teachers can package it, students can chase it, and social media can popularize it. This is why the path becomes frustrating for sincere seekers. In the end, if they read all the different teachers, books, and different accounts of Buddha, Christ, or any of these teachers, they’re drawing a mental map of a state of an experience.
But teachers like Nisargadatta and Ramana pointed not to the experience, but to something which underlies all experiences. It doesn’t matter what that experience is. That experience can be spiritual, but it can also be mundane and ordinary, or it can be full of suffering. All experiences are different categories of experiences, but they are experiences nevertheless.
Shifting Focus from the Experience to the Experiencer
What is the basis of all these experiences? If you see, the experience on its own has no value unless it has an owner. Once I own an experience, then it becomes valuable for me. This owning of the experience is done by the mind, the ego. But what happens if we don’t own any of these? Is it possible to live in a state where we can let these experiences arise and let go? If we can do that, then something more incredible, something more subtle, something more amazing comes into focus, and that is the experiencer.
You might have a thousand experiences, but the experiencer is just one: you. I am the experiencer. I am the experiencer of the suffering. I am the experiencer of this vastness. I am the experiencer of pain. I am the experiencer of joy, of this longing, of this wanting to break free of all these different things which arise every morning and night. Can I move the focus from experiences to the experiencer? Because what is aware of these experiences, what is aware of this bliss, is not bliss. Consciousness is a screen on which all these different experiences arise, and therefore some are very beautiful.
The Sage of Varanasi and the Movie Theatre
I’ll tell you a very interesting story of a sage. It’s not a very well-known story; it was told to me by one of the roaming monks in the Himalayas. There was this not very well-known sage in Varanasi in India, and he was a very direct, abrupt guy. One day, one of his disciples had an amazing experience. He came down to the sage and said, “You know, I had this amazing experience where I could see the complete cosmic reality. I saw the cosmos being dissolved and opened up, and there was light everywhere.”
The sage listened to that experience for a while. When the disciple finished recounting the experience, do you know what the sage said? It was a very, very weird story when I heard it for the first time. The sage said to him, “Here is some money. Go out in the evening to the picture hall and you can watch another movie instead.”
Of course, it took me a while to understand what the sage was trying to tell the disciple. He was trying to tell him that what he had watched—this incredible experience—is like watching a movie. You can go out in the evening and watch another movie. That is also an experience, maybe a fabulous movie. And this is also an experience; though it is incredible, it still falls under that category. From that level of truth, it’s not very different. He was trying to get the disciple off the bandwagon of experiences and into the heart of awareness itself.
The Reality Underneath All States
The experience you are waiting for is not waiting for you. It came once to show you something true, and it dissolved itself. What remained behind is you, who started feeling the absence of it, and you created stories around it—or maybe created stories around a future “me” which will have this experience of enlightenment.
The real is not hiding in all these rare states. It is present as the condition of every state. I think it’s very important to understand this, so I’ll repeat it again: the real is not hiding in beautiful states, rare states, or amazing states. It is present as the very basis of every state.
Once you understand this thoroughly, not just intellectually, the whole orientation of your path will change. Then the question is no longer, “How do I get back to that experience?” or “How do I experience that state?” It becomes, “What is here before, during, and after every experience? What remains?”
This is where your path becomes more mature. You stop being addicted to states and experiences. There is a willingness to accept the ordinary as sacred as well, and this is what Ramana, J. Krishnamurti, or Nisargadatta tried to point back to again and again in different ways.
Applying the Lesson to Your Life
All of you might be listening to so many talks throughout the week—podcasts, other teachers, other groups, books, YouTube videos, and endless philosophies. But you need to take away something from each talk and apply it in your life. Otherwise, they are just words which will not have any impact on your transformation. If you want to take away something from this talk, try to develop the capacity of letting go of both experiences: the past ones that you want back, and the future ones that you have not had but still crave.