July 23, 2012
The Infinite Depth of Your Own Self
In order to discover the infinite depth of your own self, you must find a way to enter into a very deep state of meditation—such a deep state that your awareness of thought moves to the background and eventually disappears. When awareness of thought disappears, the awareness of the passing of time disappears along with it, and so does the awareness of the world and all the objects within it. If you keep penetrating into the infinite depths of your own self, eventually your awareness even of your own physical form will disappear.
It is enlightening to discover that when thought, time, world, and even your own body disappears, you haven’t gone anywhere! Even without the movement of memory, you will find that the most intimately felt essence of your own self—who you always are at the deepest level—remains intact. That self that remains when time and form disappear is eternal and unchanging. It has never been born and will never die. That self is the deepest ground of your own being, in each and every moment, whether you are aware of it or not.
Everything that is born, the entire evolving cosmos, arose from that empty ground, and everything that dies will return to it. In that no-place, that zero point, where there is no birth and no death, nothing ever happened and the cosmos never existed. When we discover this dimension of our own self, we find only nothing at all: desirelessness, the fullness of Being, and indescribable peace, without end.
The Guru & Pandit Virtual: Sunday, August 4th
In each issue of EnlightenNext magazine, the dialogues between spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen (the Guru) and integral philosopher Ken Wilber (the Pandit) delivered mind-expanding investigations that consistently broke new ground. Now we’re pleased to announce that the Guru and the Pandit are back: In partnership with Integral Life, we’ll be hosting four new dialogues between Cohen and Wilber in 2012—live and online, as a series of audio conversations broadcast for free to thousands of listeners worldwide. The next broadcast is on Sunday, August 4th at 2pm ET. Register here.
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Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, cultural visionary, founder of EnlightenNext, and the author of 
I used to find myself “disappeared” so that only a tiny spark of awareness remained. It was a wonderful state, but a bit scary in those days, and I would have to be able to move to snap out of it.
Wish I could find it again!
Nice description. The richness that is inherent in a Self with infinite degrees of freedom is certainly a goal of many meditation practices. We do need a new language to describe it.
I have always had easy access to such states of Being and appreciate their trans-formative potential for body, mind and Self.
How do you answer those who ask “We can create such a “state” by meditation, neural pattern induction and otherwise. What makes you believe that this is not simply a state of desynchronization of the various neural networks and not a state or reality beyond a simple production of a default state in the neurons?”
I agree with you, but wonder how you bridge this epistemic versus ontologic gap?
My own practice in the stages of meditation I recently put in the book “The 21 Stages of Meditation” (New Leaf) where I distinguish the crystallized self, expressive self and transcendent self.
Look forward to your reply in this conversation.
Gurucharan Khalsa (Director of training kundalini yoga)
Call me unenlightened, but I don’t get it! If I want to be “enlightened” concerning “The Infinite Depth of Your Own Self” I will find, as the last sentence states,…”we find only nothing at all: desirelessness, the fullness of Being…” Since “Being” is capitalized I assume there is some divinity here in this “nothing at all.” So to find the fullness of Being I take a leap of faith into “nothing at all.” So something is nothing. Go nowhere to get something? Am I too linear? I recently received an email entitled “The Case for Certainty.” This sounds like a case for uncertainty…for nothing that is located nowhere. If it is nothing and nowhere how will I know when I get there if there is nothing to relate it to.
Doug
“The Infinite Depth Of Your Own Self”, written by Andrew, is extremely beautiful and profound. It is an expression of the Truth in words that come as close as possible to explaining REALITY – that which is unexplainable (inexplicable) and beyond concepts or words. Yet we need words to ‘point’ at this REALITY to assist us in formulating an idea that cannot ever be grasped. And here we have an extraordinary exposition that makes the heart tingle knowing that this ‘finger’ points in the right direction. The words strike deep into our being for they resonate with TRUTH which deep inside we have always known and never really doubted at our core. Thich Nat Hahn, the renouned Buddhist, also speaks of ‘No Birth, No Death’ and now, having read this, I know what he was referring to! Read this often and let it permeate deep within so TRUTH becomes ‘experience’ and not just knowledge! IT can never be explained but IT can be known!
Andrew, of what you speak appears to me to be available every instant, without meditation. The Big Bang is still happening every instant. Nothing is occurring as something out of the field of nothing and we are not able to demonstrate that anything is here. We are only and forever in the instant of becoming. The traces of the supposed Higgs Boson have only demonstrated that there is nothing, no evidence, for the passage from nothing to something. It is occurring every instant and there never has been any where else to be other than this moment that is occurring.
Frank Zadlo
what ever happened to “something does not come from nothing?”
Breathtakingly beautiful description, Andrew, opens up the field of awareness so lucidly, everything we hold onto arising from the unmanifest (so briefly!) and then dissolving again. One of my teachers describes this level as “personal awareness without the encumbrance of personal history.”
Gratitude and blessings.
While meditation is the means to discover the inner depth, vast majority of people engaged with activities of the world, this meditation itself may be a frustrating experience as they may not be able to get to the depth. Better way is to engage with work itself as a meditation , with a selfless spirit of service, without any regard to reaping the fruits of such work for selfish ends. This will purify our inner self from our egoistic nature with which we normally undertake the work for name, fame, money , recognition etc, with resultant human emotions of fear, frustration ,greed, zealousy . With such a pure mind alone , one can discover the depth of the inner self and the evolutionary enlightenment potential for larger good , with this instrument of body mind and intellect we are endowed with as human beings. We should develop an attitude to see every work we are doing, as a means for self-purification and for larger good.
It is good teaching sir. Thanks very much.
Beloved Andrew, In my limited knowledgeof the whole subject, this is the second time I find that a spiritual teacher has explained meditation simply and clearly wherein one’s own experience, discovered to whatever depth, is explained and validated to a student’s heart’s content. Incidentally the first time I heard it was also through your own teachings in the late 90′s. This is one reason why I strongly believe that there is no one else who can share the teacher’s platform with you. In two minutes I observe that I experience deep meditation sitting in front of a computer. With infinite gratitude, Anandapadmanaban.
well, u must have been experienced it..