The Inevitable Ecstasy, Part 11: The Spectrum of Vibrations

We see, don’t we, all that we experience is understandable as a spectrum of vibrations. There are different kinds of spectra. There’s a spectrum of light, there’s the spectrum of sound. We can also think of spectra of smells, of tactile feelings, of emotions, and so on, all down the line. We are, as it were, living in the midst of a woven tapestry of many dimensions, in which the warps of and woofs are all these different spectra of various kinds of vibrations. And as, on the loom, the warp crosses the woof, and if you didn’t have one you wouldn’t have the other, it takes two to reveal the pattern. So see yourselves as patterns in a weaving system. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the interlocking of all these different spectra of dimensions.

So then, here they go, and these things are vibrating. Now, when it reaches a certain point, you say, Oh, that’s too much! When it reaches another point, you say, It’s not enough! Why, there’s nothing here! I don’t feel a thing! You know? I’m going to go to sleep. But on the other end, you say, No, no! No, no, you’re going far enough! If you go any further it is going to tear things apart! I can’t withhold this tension! See? Now, so, some people will say, Alright, now. Now, relax, relax, relax. Take it easy, take it easy. But often, you see, the point is you can’t do that. So then, what I would say to the person who cannot relax—I will stress his tension; go the other way. In other words, go with the line of least resistance. Say, Okay, you’re tense about all this. Now let’s get really tense! Let’s scream! No! No! No! No! No! See, you get violent inside! This is not to happen, see? But so that, one way or the other, you see—it doesn’t matter which you go—you begin to get into this thing, which is what is happening when the boat of life begins really to rock. Get rocking with it by whatever way is open. But you are not going to force the issue here.

Instead of saying to you, You should be doing it in another way that you’re doing it, I will say, Now find out the way you must do it, and go that way. Now, this is a general principle of an art, and we will find there is a kind of a—there are limits to this art, and how it can be used, and so forth. But once the general principles are clear, there aren’t many serious problems left.

That if you begin to look at it in that way, you will begin to realize that ecstasy, by one road or another, is inevitable. That, indeed, ecstasy is, in a way, the nature of existence. There is a universe for the simple reason that it’s ecstatic. What else is all this fireworks about? It is just like music in this ecstatic thing going off. And you have to be, certainly, careful—in a little way here—that any initiation into a deep wisdom is apt, at first, to demotivate you. You think, What the hell am I doing? All these projects, building this up, and that up, and doing something to save the world, and so on and so forth. Why, the whole thing is nonsense! Yes!

If you stick there, that’s what they call, in Mahayana Buddhism, the pratyekabuddha. That means the ‘private Buddha,’ as distinct from Bodhisattva, who comes back into everyday life, as they say, for the liberation of all other sentient beings. Because when you know that all this is alright anyway, and that the situation is inevitable ecstasy—I mean, you’re going to get it one way or another—you say, Well, what was all the fuss about? you know?

The fact remains: there are a lot of people who just don’t know that and are really hating life, not knowing how to handle hate. And if you are at a certain point you know those other people are you. They’re like—you had an extended body, and all these were nerve ends on the end of it, you see? However, you know also that you can’t really show them anything that they don’t already know, and won’t be able to show them anything else until they know it. But then, the question What shall I do? has now disappeared. It should have disappeared in the beginning. Because there wasn’t any real I, there was just the happening. And so that question brings us back again to the experience itself, see? That’s the only way that you can answer the question: is from the experience. You would say, what would happen if? The answer is only: You must feel it. Then you’ll know.

And the people who hear about this and say, Wouldn’t that—wouldn’t everybody become totally callous and impassive? How can you assure me that that wouldn’t happen? I say, I can’t. But you must get into this state, then you’ll find out. There’s just no you to get into it anyway.