Editor’s Introduction:
This anonymous scientist has an M.S. and Ph.D. in Psychology, with a specialization in psychophysiology and post doctoral training in sleep research. He is an Associate Professor at an American university. He has published more than 35 articles in various professional journals
This experience occurred in March of 2000, when he was 49 years old.
Pure Simplicity
Anonymous
Walking to the place where I meditate one evening, I thought: “What is my relationship with the environment?” I saw crisp colors; healthy growing grass, flowers and trees all around me.
After meditation that night, as I walked home, the same question came to mind.
I saw a car. I knew it was a car, but saw it composed of threads of intelligence from the car’s designer, and the men on the assembly line. I looked at the trees around me, and knew they were trees, but saw them as the expressions of the vitality of Nature. Then all objects were appreciated as rays of one underlying wholeness, rising up to become the grass, and flowers and trees. It was like many waves on a silent ocean.
Seeing is usually confined to the registration of the qualities of objects–color, movement, relative position in space. In this experience, there were many levels of seeing simultaneously. You can look at a single leaf blowing in the wind, or you can look at the whole tree and see waves moving through the foliage. This experience was like that, except I was seeing all objects as part of a “vertical” flow. The grass, the trees, the flowers were registered as sensory objects. Simultaneously, however, there was the experience that these objects were standing nodes of an underlying reality which was rising up in each blade of grass, each tree, each flower. In addition, there was the experience that I was that fullness, moving through each grain of Nature. It was as if my frame of reference expanded both outward and inward.
This was a direct experience, rather than an inference or reflection. It preceded the later cognitive evaluation of the experience.
Then, I too was that underlying field of wholeness, rising up as grass and trees and cars. I knew my body was my body, and I was walking home. But it was wholeness moving through wholeness, and giving different views of Life. It was pure and utter simplicity. I knew then that I was connected at the most fundamental level of life with everything and everyone.
Contributor’s Comments on the Experience
This experience has changed what it means to do science. My scientific curiosity continues to take me to the lab each day. Each datum, however, is no longer an isolated point. It is now part of a very whole, complete and perfect network of action and reaction. The wholeness is known– that experience of pure simplicity. The data point thrills that wholeness.
