Prologue

About five months later, I was driving home on a warm July evening after sitting for hours around a campfire with friends from a twelve-step fellowship, roasting marshmallows and discussing politics and religion. I felt what can only be described as little sparks firing all through my body—little explosions, one after the other, from head to toe. Thought slowed down. A sense of clarity seemed to arise from the slowing of thought. I was becoming more and more alert and attentive to my surroundings, to the space in my inner body, to the road, to everything.

When I got home, I jumped up on my bed. I was lying on my back, with one hand on each of my dogs, Josie and Mai-Ling. As I petted the dogs, a thought arose: “Consciousness just wants to see itself.” The sparks started firing again. I suddenly knew that I was not petting my dogs. I realized they were not separate from me.

I stood up, and walked around my apartment, completely stunned at what I was seeing. I was seeing the nature of reality beyond thought. I was seeing that there was no me separate from any “thing” I was looking at. It feels strange now to use subject/object language to describe the complete absence of separation. All thought stopped—completely. I saw myself as the floor, the wall, the desk, the window, the streetlight outside, and in everything else upon which these eyes fell. I found myself on the floor, grabbing at the carpet, and laughing my head off. I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. I kept saying fervently, “None of this matters, none of this matters!” You may ask, “What didn’t matter?” My only answer is that it was clear that “nothing mattered,” at least not in the way I had always thought. The search, the lack, the dissatisfaction, the fear, the anger, the resentment did not matter. It was all seen as a dream of self-centeredness.

I realized that I cannot find myself because there is no self. I saw that I am what I had been seeking. But when I say “I am,” I mean the One, whatever that means. There was no Scott experiencing any of this. There was only the experiencing. ‘This’ was seeing itself. It was clear that whatever this word God is pointing to, it is right here, now. It is, and always was, right under my nose, as my nose, and everything on each side of it, behind it, inside it, and over it. The notion of seeking God was seen as pointless. It was realized that there is only ‘This’ and that nothing is separate from it.

The only thing that remained as the laughter released the dream of “Scott” was brilliant, loving space. This space was alive, fully alive and radiant. The miracle and mystery of life was seen for the first time, yet it had always been here. I had just been too busy looking for it, looking for some dream of future that thought had created. It was clear that nothing was separate from anything else, and that only thought created separateness. I remember saying, “All this time, I thought I was a person named ‘Scott’ living on the second floor of this apartment. What a joke!”

I remember staring at a digital clock by the bed and laughing hysterically at the notion that this One—whatever it is—would even bother with the concept of time. There is only ever ‘This,’ outside of time. I noticed that wherever I moved, whatever area of the apartment I moved into, I was still only ever in ‘This.’ I was ‘This.’ I could not leave. Where was I going to go? I saw clearly that we do not die, not in the way we think we do. We simply move into a different energy form. I remember uttering the words, “We don’t die, we don’t die” over and over. This was not a belief that was being formed. It was not a memory of something said by some guru in a book. It was a realization beyond belief. Literally. I saw that it could only have been realized in the absence of thought and belief. I saw that reality can only be seen in the absence of thought and belief. My fear of death left in that moment, as did my fear of life. “Scott” as a thought-based self simply vanished. The search was over. Nothing to seek. Nothing, nothing. ‘This’ is all there is, and it is so perfectly enough.