Free To Play

"In the fall of 1975, I attended Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. I dual-majored in philosophy and English. My first two years at Clark were a crucible of Divine Heat in the endless inner transformations of meditative life. During this time of sadhana, sometimes a long and grueling affair filled with the most intense suffering, I lived only for the breakthroughs in Consciousness. I wished wholeheartedly to be ushered into a permanently awakened state of being. I lived guided invisibly by that blind, burning desire, and there was no respite, even during the times of repeated exposure to Transcendental Consciousness.

During this time, death and nothingness were my only friends. I had become oblivious to everything but the utter contradiction and unbearable friction between "I" (individuality) and "That" (Consciousness). Again and again, I surrendered into psychological/emotional/spiritual dissolution, this dying into consciousness. I was madly in love with oblivion, ecstasy and self-transcendence. While others were busily preparing for a conditioned life in the world, I was ceaselessly going beyond it.

I still recall the various forms and flavors of intense spiritual raptures and samadhi (transcendental awakenings) that I experienced in my third year of undergraduate study. The pinnacle of these raptures culminated in the state of nirvikalpa samadhi around March or April of 1980. This state was characterized by total absorption in Pure Consciousness during meditation. In meditation, I exited out of a portal through the top of my head, going beyond the body/mind completely, existing in a state of Absolute Nothingness. During this time, I also experienced other forms of exquisite and exalted transcendental realizations in my active and meditative life, as well as during sleep. In sleep, which was witnessed in the Self, I tasted intoxicating, ambrosial nectars flowing from my heart to my brain in a cosmic circle.

In the winter of 1996-1997 (the actual date remains vague), I was sitting in an ordinary motel room in Palm Springs, California. On this day, meditation went into unfathomable depths, penetrating into and beyond the very core of existence. My thoughts evaporated and my head went from a spherical, physiological casing to an ocean of Divine Light within "seconds” — an ocean still and deeply active. This Light shone from the inside, outside and from the beyond itself. "I" and "the world" dissolved forever into this immensity of warmly translucent, incandescent Light-Oneness. Soon I began to feel the palpable manifestation of the Primordial Energy of the universe, the Shakti. It was brilliant, active, sparking. The Shakti had simultaneously been born in the Being of Pure Light. How strange, though, that "I" could "fit into," and "as," this Immensity.

I was, without question, That, and in the most profound sense, That alone. I had come home. Sharing this Radiant Energy and Divine Light became a natural capability: a radiation without circumference, effort or knowledge. A spiritual magnificence, a superabundance of Being and Transmission of Radiant Awakening, that which has been written about in every religious scripture, was born within that ultimate meditation.

Primordial Bliss was now free to enjoy Its own spontaneous play in the world."

~ David Spero, October 24, 2003, Palm Springs, CA.