Day 2

A Hole in the Soul and the Discovery of a New Rational Mysticism

Only the second day and the atmosphere is very serious and focused and it is obvious that all of us retreatants are undertaking their own investigation between formal sessions. The meal times are almost silent, although anyone can talk if they choose. It’s not an oppressive silence but rather an active one as a result of individuals choosing to give their attention to the subject, to consciousness.
The morning begins with Andrew asking to hear more from people about their experience of consciousness. More qualities get highlighted:
As someone says, “It’s primary and yet it’s unrelated to anything at all. The more you see of it, the more you want to see; it’s compelling.”
Andrew follows up on why consciousness is so infinitely compelling. It’s becomes clear that it is because there is a sense of knowing something. There is an absolute nature to this knowing. This is not a ‘knowing’ in the conventional sense of knowing about something, because it is a deep awareness of knowing nothing and at the same time paradoxically knowing everything. Consciousness is empty of any ‘thing’ and yet it’s also fullness. On further probing of people’s experience, what comes out is very significant:

There is an absolute nature to the knowing.

It is this that can change everything. At the deepest level of the soul we all experience existential doubt – an alienation from ourselves and from life itself as well as a fundamental sense of being somehow ill at ease. This is much deeper than any neurotic problem. We are all products of our secular materialistic culture and as such we lack a sense of being deeply connected with life. And when this is lacking in a deep way, we will inevitably be haunted by alienation and insecurity. This existential doubt can only be remedied and dissolved by a knowing of that which is absolute.
Otherwise we will suffer from what Andrew graphically described as a hole in the soul. By simply exploring our own experience here and now, we can know that which is absolute, that which answers all questions. And this can remove the existential doubt.

The afternoon continues with questions and answers on peoples’ experience of consciousness and this sense of knowing that is so core. In the hall, there is a heightened atmosphere, where consciousness has become much more apparent to us all. What is usually so intangible is very much in the fore of my experience quite naturally and forcefully.
I wrote down in my diary my own experience of this:

“On one hand there is a sense of knowing nothing in particular and yet there is an undeniable knowing. A primordial knowing that is prior to mind or intellect and that is full and complete, lacking nothing and absolute in its nature. And it has meaning beyond any logic. The knowing is pregnant with inherent meaning and utter positivity. Consciousness is Life with a capital L. And I just know that Life is inconceivably positive.
How do I know? All I can say is that it is the doubtless experience of pure consciousness. It’s just experienced as absolutely true. It’s not a belief, it’s the experience of the nature of consciousness itself. Prior to everything, prior to the Universe coming into existence, Consciousness is”.

Andrew talks of how this approach is a post-metaphysical spirituality, which sounds a bit of a mouthful – or as he puts it more simply – a new rational form of mysticism. You don’t presume anything exists beforehand; no mythical God who will save us. No one is asked to believe anything. You explore and find out. There is a science to consciousness.
What is happening in the hall after such a short time seems almost miraculous to me.