Rumi was a Sufi saint (islamic mystic) who wrote many beautiful pieces such as this one. I can see the allusion to egoless-ness throughout, but especially in this line:
This is not grief or joy.
Not a judging state,
or an elation,
or sadness.
Those come
and go.
This is the presence
that doesn’t.
---------
these lines remind me very much of Siddartha Gautama's eventual rejection of both ecstasy and mortification for his "Middle Path", which is supposed to lead to Nirvana, eternal egoless union with the absolute. This is also the goal of the Sufis, except they use the metaphor of a moth's desire to fly into a flame. That to really experience God and True Reality one must be "consumed in the flame" to become the flame. The flame being God and the moth of course the practitioner. That is why Hallaj al-Mansur said that He IS Truth - he was talking about his Union with the divine, because of course he was a Muslim and I don't think he was a egomaniacal false prophet either; therefore his being "Truth" reflected not self-aggrandizement, but his egoless state of rapturous union with the Absolute. This also applies greatly to the DMT experiences... one is "caught up" in it, there is even sometimes that physical feeling of dissolution into eternity... it is an amazing experience. But of course this is fleeting, it only lasts as long as the rendezvous in the 5HT-2a receptors. This is what Siddartha Gautama ran into on his path, he met an ecstatic saint who could teach his disciples to enter into what sound like psychedelic trance states... Siddhartha was very good at it, saw all his past lives in a vision this way. But it was fleeting, like the DMT experience. So he rejected the path of ecstatic union. Well I for one don't , but it must be understood that these experienes are not the TRUTH. They can only point towards it... or if they do actually show some modicrum of the TRUTH, then again it can only be viewed as compass needle towards where you need to go.
I think THIS would be a fitting name for the state if one were thoroughly versed in Islamic, Christian, or Jewish mysticism, or at least have some knowledge of it... but to people outside of these traditions or without that frame of reference THIS becomes sort of shibboleth or at least a rather opaque phrase (as anrchy pointed out by example). Sadly, I don't think this will catch on to the general Lexicon - but I personally love this piece. Thank you, CatholicPsychonaut, for bringing this back to my attention! It set off all sorts of nice associations in my mind and actually helped me gain some more understanding as regards the DMT experience and what my attitude towards it should be. I go from ambivilant, to almost love-affair status, to fear, to awe and finally to some personal breakthrough which at first seems to only have to do with how I go about tripping, but eventually it becomes clear that it is as much of a life-lesson as a DMT-lesson. Funny how that works.
But I am beginning to feel that my use of DMT is more-or-less recreational, which I don't want it to be (all the time, at least). It's not that I don't get anything out of it, because I get so much out of it... but there's still something in the back of my head that tells me that I need to have a more reverential relationship to the Spice. The only spiritual tradition that I really identify with heart mind and soul is Sufism and I have been using that as a base to ground DMT a bit, to give me some direction so that I am not just tromping about hyperspace for no particular reason. I think going into that place for no particular reason is actually dangerous.
I started doing conscious intentions with changa about a month ago, and found that if I had no real intention and gave a bullshit one, the changa would "know" and it would be weird. Of course the problem with these traditions is that they have a tendency to "calcify", to turn dusty and authoritarian, to declare themselves "Orthodox" and everyone else "heretical". So, as with all human organizations, there must be constant vigilance against "commandism". I can't think of the real word, so commandism is originally something the Maoists during the Cultural Revolution railed against, but now lots of smart Socialist groupings use it. It basically is what it sounds like, those in authority thinking they have all the answers and ordering things done by decree without any popular discussion or debate.
Oh my lord I have thoroughly derailed this thread... sorry! Thanks again for this beautiful piece!
