Accessing SANCTUM

 

 

SANCTUM, that is to say, undifferentiated (i.e. pre-identity, pre-unit) wholeness, completion, holiness and so on (that is to say, wholeness as such), happens the moment (and IT lasts only a moment, though that moment is experienced as timeless) the wall of the sanctuary (i.e. unitised identity) is let go.

 

Entering (in fact, becoming, and thereby experiencing) SANCTUM (and which is, as such, prior to or beyond experience and which is provided by the sanctuary wall) is the goal of the practical (rather than theoretical) mystic.

 

Once the initial entry moment is over, SANCTUM disappears. That’s because entering/becoming SANCTUM (i.e. wholeness, fullness, completion and so on) is dynamic, i.e. a step taken (or not taken). Since SANCTUM is experienced only upon entry (more precisely stated, when she lets go of the sanctuary wall (i.e. her unitised identity) and finds herself free-floating in SANCTUM), the mystic who seeks to experience SANCTUM more than once must enter and leave IT more than once.

 

For the mystic to reach her goal, she must first create a sanctuary, i.e. a perfect (because whole unit of) identity. By so doing she attains (and experiences) identified wholeness, fulfilment and so on, to wit, a relativized slice or cut of SANCTUM.

 

She then attaches a safety rope (better, still an elastic bungee)  - with a timer (the timer is vital) - to her identity, that is to say, to the inside of her sanctuary wall. Then she lets go of her identity (i.e. of the sanctuary wall) and, bingo, floats free (i.e. disappears almost, but for her bungee) in time-less, space-less, form-less wholeness (fulfilment, to wit, nirvana, heaven and so on). That’s very easy to do, if one has the nerve to let go.

 

If the mystic jumps deliberately (or because she is forced to let go of her sanctuary, i.e. at death) without a bungee she never returns (and which Buddhist call entering pari-nibbana).

 

The Chinese method of reaching SANCTUM was to reduce the sanctuary (i.e. the identity or self) to a point, and then step off the point, and which produced the free-float experience of SANCTUM.

 

Dogen, the Japanese Buddhist mystic, bungee jumped (in China) into SANCTUM, then developed a safe slow means of entry, called Zazen. Meister Eckhart appears to have walked himself into IT.

 

Amateur mystics are warned not to try the mystic bungee jump, save under guidance by an experienced mystic, i.e. one who got back.

 

Bu contrast, the saint sits, as it were, on the sanctuary wall facing outwards. She feels the coolness breeze of undifferentiated wholeness, i.e. of universal, i.e. absolute completeness/fulfilment, on her back, most often as the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.

 

The ancient Indian version