The Importance

of Being Nobody

by: Nobody (a.k.a. Jon Mundy)

Behave as though the self does not exist.

 Buddha

A Senior Minister walks into the chapel of his church, kneels down before the altar, and says, “Oh God, I am nothing, I am so nothing.”

The Associate Pastor walks by and, seeing the Senior Minister, goes into the chapel, kneels beside him, and he too says, “Oh Lord I am nothing, I am so nothing!”

The custodian is passing by and, seeing the two ministers on their knees, goes in and also kneels. He too says, “Oh Lord, I am nothing, I am so nothing!” Seeing the custodian next to him, the Associate Minister pokes the Senior Minister in the side and whispers into his ear, “Look who thinks he’s nothing!”

I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there’s a pair of us, don’t tell.

They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog.

To tell your name the livelong day

   To an admiring bog!

                                                                                              Emily Dickinson

You are not special. If you think you are, and would defend your specialness against the truth of what you really are,

how can you know the truth?

A Course in Miracles

In my 1976 death experience, Jon Mundy disappeared. This world, all of it also disappeared. I no longer existed as a separate individual in the universe. Not only was the body gone so was the personality. And yet there was seeing; otherwise, I could not talk about the experience. I took a quick brief look at Jon Mundy and then let the story go. I really had no any choice. That story ended a long time ago in a land far far away.

What was it then that was having this experience? There was still conscious awareness. In fact there was more awareness than ever – much more. Sometimes when people describe the death experience, they talk about meeting their deceased loved ones or talking to someone on the “other side.” Those experiences may very well happen. It was not like that for me. There was no embodied being for me to see or be. There was no “personality” or “individual” to talk to, and yet there was tremendous conscious awareness. This awareness was in me and outside of me and all around me. I was it. It was me. It is difficult to talk about what was having this experience – and yet there was experiencing.

Specialness, the story, the drama, keeps us from seeing. It keeps us from being awake by perpetuating “the dreaming of the world.” In the extreme, there are two ways of being special. Some people have “big” egos. We are special because we are important, we make money, we look good, we’re youthful, we have “good” sex lives, and so forth. There is nothing “wrong” in any of these experiences unless “we think” they make us special.

On the other extreme, we may see ourselves as special because of our sorrowful “victim” condition. “Woe is me. Look at what the world has done to me.” However, if we “really get” Lesson 31 from A Course in Miracles, “I am not a victim of the world I see,” we progress to understanding the mystic’s perspective. We are “responsible,” totally and absolutely, responsible for “everything” that seems to come our way. Once we accept responsibility, we cannot project. We cannot blame someone else or the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

No one is special, different or better than anyone else. We are all at our own unique level of development. No one is better or worse than we are. The more "nothing" we are, the better. Thinking that we are “something” can get us into trouble. Yet, many people think that truth is different for everyone and believe that it’s possible to create hierarchies of illusions.

Right-mindedness and Wrong-mindedness

Thinking there is something to “acquire” can gets us into trouble. What is the wanting creature? What is it that ‘needs’ anything?

He is not accompanied by thingness, nor do we ascribe it to Him.

The negation of thingness from Him is one of His essential attributes.

Ibn Arabi

O let me not exist! For Non-Existence proclaims in organ tones,

 to him we shall return.

Rumi

When the mirror of my mind became clear…
 I saw that God is not other than me, and this non-dual knowledge 

completely destroyed all thought of “you” and “I.” I came to know that this entire world is not different from God.

Lalleshwari

God whose love is everywhere

can’t come to visit unless you aren’t there.

Angelus Silesius

See yourself as nothing. Only one who is nothing can contain the 

 fullness of the Presence. 

Menahem Nahum

When friend and correspondent Harrison Blake asked Henry David Thoreau if his adventure by Walden Pond had not left him feeling a longing for society, Thoreau said “No, I am nothing.” Thoreau went on a retreat from the world in order to find himself – to find God within. He could not understand all the “incessant business” going on over in Concord. He wrote that during the 1840’s. How much busier and “seemingly” important is the world today? “I would know of that soul which can say “I am nothing.” Blake told Thoreau, “I would be roused by its words to a truer and purer life.”

In the mystical experience, there is no making-up the world; there is just immediacy in all its pristine purity. We perceive what is happening without any need of changing the moment. We are not projectors, and we don't want to be. As Aldous Huxley expressed it, our task is not to be thinking. Our task is to be “thought.”

It is actually easier to speak of what we are not. Then what are we? We are not our bodies, we are not our occupations, we are not our families, our city, state or nation. We are not our race. We are not our clan. We are not even, in this world, our thoughts or that which thinks them. We are not our feelings or that which feels them. Beyond, above, and outside of all of the illusions of the world, there is a Self that we are in truth, a holy child of God, made not in our image but God’s.

The gross body which is composed of the seven humors, I am not;

the five sense organs which apprehend their respective objects, I am not;

even the mind which think, I am not.

Sri Raman Maharshi

So long as the sense of "me" and "mine" remains,

there is bound to be sorrow and want in the life of the individual.

Anandamayi Ma

Anandamayi describes a great void and a deep peaceful emptiness. We might think of the void as a farewell to all that is human. It is the cessation of the ego self – a total absence of self. Helen Schucman, scribe of A Course in Miracles, could go into the void. She could “disappear” so sufficiently that she could hear only the Voice for God.

Wei Wu Wei, (Terence Gray 1895–1986, England), and early 20th century Taoist philosopher and writer once said,

Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 per cent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself

— and there isn't one.

You live in illusion and the appearance of things.
There is a reality, but you do not know this.
When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing.

And being nothing, you are everything. That is all.
Kalu Rinpoche (1905-1989 Tibet)

The One Reality

Once at a public dialogue, a man said to the mystic Jean Klein (1916-1998, Czechoslovakia), "Every time I come to hear you, I notice that you seem so clear and relaxed. You radiate peaceful, loving warmth. You seem happy. Yet, I am always discontent, often stressed out. There are times when I feel quite miserable. What is the difference between us?" Jean looked at the man and said:

“You think that you are somebody and I know that I’m not.”

At seventeen, Jean Klein had an experience of what he called his own inner silence. A student of yoga and a vegetarian, Jean was a medical doctor who spent World War II in France helping people escape from Germany. In 1950, he went to India where he worked with the Vedanta Nondualistic teacher, Pandiji. Klein said that one day his individual identity disappeared and was replaced by an all-pervading light, which he recognized as "the one reality." Dr. Klein’s teaching is called "impersonal." There is no such thing as an individual. Life is simply awareness without fixation on one’s identity.

When I lost awareness of my body in 1976, I was surprised to see (as is anyone who dies) that consciousness continued without a body. Is the mind a “thing?” Is “love” a thing? The brain is a computer, but who runs the computer? Everyone attests to the reality of love, yet love is beyond definition and description – even poetry doesn’t do it justice.

Dropping Personal History

One day, I discovered I didn't need

 a personal history, so, like drinking, I dropped it.

 Carlos Castaneda in Tales of Power

We gain the moment of great awareness “in the now” by dropping personal history. “If we could erase personal history,” says Don Juan, “we would be free from the encumbering thoughts of others.” How much time is spent worrying about what other people think? Don Juan points out to Castaneda that Castaneda doesn’t know anything about him beyond what he himself had told him. He could be someone else for all Castaneda knew. Castaneda, on the other hand, had to renew his personal history daily by telling his relatives and friends everything he did.

If you have no personal history, no explanations are needed.

When people know our personal history, know exactly who we are, what we believe, and what we stand for, it's as if they have control over us. They expect us to behave in a certain way, and if we don't, they become surprised or disillusioned. To express it simply,

If you don't have a story, you don't have to fit it.

Only someone with an excessive sense of self-importance could think that his or her problems are more important or distinctive than those of others. When we lose the sense of self-importance, we realize that everyone has the same kind of problems. In describing his mystical experience, A.H. Almaas said, “I learn a great deal of what I truly am when I am not trapped in the particulars of personal life and history. I am then the unchanging background witnessing.”

 I am not bound by the story of me.

Gangaji

Don Juan says he know all kinds of things because:

1. I don’t have a personal history.

2. I don’t feel more important than anything else.

3. My death is sitting right here beside me.

A Rare Spontaneous Awakening

One of the best descriptions of a sudden mystical awakening which was not stimulated by crash and burn experience comes from Suzanne Segal (1945-1997, USA), author of the book Collision with the Infinite. At the time, she was a 27-year-old pregnant American woman about to board a bus in Paris when. . . .

I lifted my right foot to step into the bus and collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently

 exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges. What I had previously called ‘me’ was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. ‘I’ was now behind my body looking out at the world without using the body’s eyes.”

Although she was a seasoned meditator, Segal could not figure out what had happened. It was as though she no longer had a personality. She no longer had any wants or needs, no cravings or desires. She found herself being an observer rather than a projector of her internal assumptions and prejudices. While she continued to live a normal life, she knew that everything had changed for her.

Segal started going to psychologists to find out what had happened to her, but no one could figure it out. She was eventually diagnosed with a “dissociative personality disorder.” To psychologists, not having wants or needs meant she no longer had a personality. Finally, one of her therapists figured out that she had experienced the complete disintegration of the ego, which some might equate with insanity. Egolessness actually means that one is saner than most people.

What is absent in enlightenment is duality, “me”

as a separate entity and “you” as another separate entity.

Consciousness is all there is.

 Ramesh Belsekar

We rely on our belief systems and “stories” for our identity. Being caught in stories or dramas is to be in conflict with or divided from other human beings whose identities are based on a set of beliefs different from our own. We get frustrated when life puts us in a box that pins us down as a specific person. I never cared for "Reverend,” and only use the title at weddings and funerals. Even then it is not needed. People put a label on you when you are a Reverend. I’ve had people say to me, “You probably don’t think this is right but . . .” Then they tell me something, assuming I had a prejudice against what was being said. Ministers are apparently supposed to be judgmental.

When I was a young minister back in the late 60’s, I (like many of my colleagues) wore a clerical collar. I stopped wearing it as I realized it was a way of making myself “special.” The catholic folks in Brooklyn, near where I lived, practically tripped over themselves when they saw me and everyone stared at my neck. It was quite disconcerting. I even had an Irish Catholic policeman apologize once for stopping me when he saw the collar. He said, “I know you didn’t see that sign Father.”

Thoreau says we should watch out for any profession which requires that we wear special clothes. I was watching a motorcycle policeman while stopped at a stop light. He was dressed in all black with the leather boots that came almost up to his knees, the gun, and the badge the whole nine yards. The more well-defined our position, the harder it is to be free. A woman friend once told me that her husband, who was a doctor, could not be in a social situation for more than ten minutes without letting people know that he was a “doctor.” The more defined the position, the harder it is to be free. Be glad not to be famous. Famous people (Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Freddie Prince, Princess Diana, and Anna Nicole Smith) have a very difficult time living in this world which becomes for them, increasingly artificial.

Routinely, people discover that the life of a celebrity is onerous and

burdensome once the novelty has worn off.
Dr. David Hawkins

One month before she died, Marilyn Monroe did a recording for Life magazine called “Marilyn on Marilyn.” She talked very frankly about her feelings about herself and the image that had been made of her by Hollywood. She saw it as a kind of cardboard cartoon character. She was clear that it was all an empty fantasy. Hollywood had created an image of a sex goddess and it wasn’t her – it was like she was some sort of artificial cartoon character. And, she says, in the most poignant way, “And, I let them do it.” It was not, however, who she was. She was just Norma Jean.

It stirs up envy, fame does. People feel fame gives them some kind of
privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you and it won't hurt your feelings like it's happening to your clothing.
 Marilyn Monroe

Everything we perceive as the outside world is an attempt to maintain ego identification. Almost everyone believes that identification is salvation. Yet dropping personal history – learning to die to oneself, stopping the world, and stepping outside of time — gives us a taste of eternity, freedom, and happiness. The goal of the mystic is the reabsorption of the soul into the infinite.

Aldous Huxley standing watching his house burn down, the Bellaire fires of 1961, said it was a marvelous clean feeling.

If you are distressed by anything external,

 the pain is not due to the thing itself.

 It is due to your own estimation of it;

 and this you have the power to change at any moment.

Marcus Aurelius

The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real.  It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not need and does not even want.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Humility is a lesson for the ego, not for the spirit. Spirit is beyond humility, because it recognizes its radiance

and gladly sheds its light everywhere.

A Course in Miracles

Through Love, I have reached a place where no trace of Love remains, where “I” and “we” and the painting of existence have all been forgotten and left behind. As long as you are ‘you’,

you will be miserable and impoverished.
Javad Nurbakhsh

To truly ‘know’ is to ‘be’,

 at which point one does not know; instead one is.’
Dr. David Hawkins

No one is special, different or better than anyone else. Our bodies have come through different terrains of biology, time, geography, and social circumstances. From the mystic’s point of view, the more "nothing" we are the better for sanity. Gaining sanity, we find that what happens to our personal self, our hopes and dreams, our hurts and pains is not a matter of life and death seriousness. We discover a Self beyond selfishness, a place which is formless, spaceless, timeless, infinite and empty.

It is as it is

The Soul is tied to no individual, no culture, no tradition,

but rises fresh in every person, beyond every person,

and grounds itself in a truth and glory that bows to nothing

 in the world of time and place and history.

We all must be, and can only be, “a light unto ourselves.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who are we beneath, below, or prior to this pseudo-self? If we succeed in finding release from the prison of individuality what then? There follows in time another second, and yet another second. What do we find in that second? We find Supreme Identity with the All, with Universal Spirit. What we find is the Soul, the Self, unhampered by the ego. This Self is pure witness. It exists prior to time – prior to the big bang. It is not born. It does not die.

Meister Eckhart used words like desert and barren to describe his experience of illumination. St. Theresa speaks of the still wilderness or the lonely desert of the Deity. Yet this is the true country of the soul, a space free from desiring, where the ego does not reign. While Ultimate Reality constitutes the true nature of everything, in itself it is nothing.

You can call it the void. It wasn’t just a void.

It was this pure awareness I always talk about.

 I was aware that I AM THAT I AM.

I was aware of the whole universe.

 Robert Adams

Emptiness is the ultimate nature of everything that exists.
Lama Yeshe (1935-1984, Tibet)

There are neither good nor bad qualities in the Self.
The Self is free from all qualities. Qualities pertain to the mind only.
It is beyond qualities. If there is unity, there will also be duality.

The numerical one gives rise to other numbers. There truth is neither one nor two. It is as it is.

Ramana Maharshi

To be nothing is to discover peace, expansion, and freedom from boundaries. You are nothing and nothing is full, whole, infinite. It is everything and it is everywhere. Being nobody is wonderfully refreshing. It takes away worry.

The self you made is not the Son of God.
Therefore, this self does not exist at all.
And anything it seems to do and think means nothing.
It is neither bad nor good.
It is unreal, and nothing more than that.
A Course in Miracles

So who are we, if we are not this neurotic body thing, which seems trapped in a story, in time. We are soul, we are spirit. We are eternity. We are love. We are all the wonderful things we can name and more. I have a friend who regularly participates in a spiritual practice where you work in dyads with other people. You sit facing your partner and the partner asks, “Who are you?” People then respond in the usual way by identifying themselves with their name and there occupation. They start talking about their family and where they live. After they stop, the partner asks again, “Who are you?” Other material may appear. “I’m so and so’s wife or husband,” etc. Eventually the person comes to realize that none of the definitions will do. None of it explains who they are in truth. Who they are in truth then must be something that transcends all of these limitations.

Peace,