Suzanne Segal - Collision with Infinite : A Life Beyond the Personal Self

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A Life Beyond the Personal Self

SUZANNE SEGAL

Blue Dove Press

San Diego California 1998

There is only one reality, one truth, one consciousness that peers out through your eyes and my eyes right now. It is the ultimate subject of all objects, the ground of being in which all manifestation arises and passes away and of which all apparently objective existence consists. As Meister Eckhart puts it, "The eyes with which I see God are the eyes with which God sees me. Call it Buddha nature or spirit, emptiness or Selfall religions point to it and provide various methods to approach it. Yet, as the esoteric traditions make clear, it is an indescribable mystery that cannot be known through the mind.

The separate self that yearns to realize the truth must first be seen for what it isa compelling construct with no abiding existencebefore we can awaken to the recognition that we are nothing other than this mystery. As the great sages repeatedly remind us, The seeker is the sought; the looker is what he is looking for. There is no other, just this! At this point, of course, words fail us, and we are left with awe in the face of the ungraspable.

In every era. a few rare individuals have appeared to remind us, through their unshakable conviction and clarity, that who we really are is the ungraspable itself. Because they are beyond all limited identities and do not see others as separate or endarkened in any way. such beings have characteristically declined to accept the role of teacher or guru. Ramana Maharshi, for example, the great sage of South India, received all who came to him as the one sacred and indivisible Sell. This book introduces yet another who points us directly to our identity with the mystery Suzanne Segal.

Like Ramanas, Segal's realization occurred abruptly, unexpectedly, and without preparation. One moment she was waiting for a bus. the next moment she was no one. Her personal identity as Suzanne Segal dropped away in an instant, never to return. The autobiography you hold in your hands is the extraordinary story of how a young Jewish woman from the Midwest came to terms with this powerful transformation despite the minds relentless attempts to pathologize it, and how the experience ultimately blossomed into full Self-realization.

I first met Suzanne Segal when she appeared in my psychotherapy office in 1992 seeking help with the fear that had plagued her for 10 years. Ever since her personal identity had disappeared, her mind had been either struggling to reconstruct it (to no avail) or generating the terrifying belief that something must be horribly wrong with her. Turning to Western psychology for answers, she had even completed her doctoral training and become a clinical psychologist in an attempt to make sense of the experience. Before me, she had consulted nearly a dozen therapists, all of whom had concurred that she had a serious problemthough, of course, none of them had succeeded in curing her.

When I heard Suzanne describe her abiding state of consciousness. I knew immediately that she had experienced a profound spiritual awakening, and I told her so. What I didnt understand, however, was why she was feeling so much fear. I suggested she take her question to my teacher, Jean Klein, who happened to be visiting the area giving dialogues on advaita (non-dualism). After verifying that the absence of a "me was far from a problem, as she had assumed, but rather the "perfect state of being. Jean offered some succinct suggestions for how she might relate to her fear. I did not see her again for nearly three years.

In November of 1994 I received a phone call from Suzanne asking me to help her edit her spiritual autobiography. What she had written was a skeletal account of her "collision with emptiness" and the years that followed. I agreed to help her develop this kernel into a more complete account of her journey and immediately began encouraging her to fill in the details, particularly her childhood and her years of TM practice. Although she had no particular interest in talking about her personal lifeafter all, she no longer identified herself as a personshe took my advice when I argued that a fuller description would engage the reader and make more accessible the story of her awakening and the mind's struggle to come to terms with it. Chapter by chapter, the autobiography assumed its present form.

As we worked together, it became apparent to me that the frightened woman who had come to my office for help three years before had been transformed. The Suzanne I now encountered was a fearless, joyful being who radiated love and whose spiritual wisdom was equal to that of the Zen and advaita adepts I most respected. At the same time, I found her to be thoroughly ordinary, thoroughly accessible, and thoroughly lacking in pretense or ambitionqualities I had learned in my Zen days to recognize as hallmarks of the awakened state.

I asked Suzanne if she would be willing to trade our time, and she agreed. For every hour I worked on the book, she spent an hour helping me to clarify and refine my own spiritual understanding. In particular, I had always believed that the presence of fearwhich I experienced often, and for no apparent reason meant that, despite years of practice and numerous insights into the nature of being. I must be doing something wrong that prevented me from integrating my insights into my moment-to-moment existence. If only I could get rid of the fear, I reasoned, then I would be free. But the more I struggled with it. trying to breathe or cathart or love it away, the more seemingly solid and entrenched it became.

What Suzanne helped me to realize was that fear doesn't mean anything except that fear is present. It does not obscure our true nature unless we believe the story it tells us or take it to mean something it does not. In fact, the infinite awareness that is our true identity contains everything within it, including all mental and emotional states. Fear, anger, jealousy, sadness, and other seemingly "negative" emotions are there too, like seaweed floating in the limitless ocean of ourselves. There just doesnt happen to be a separate self to whom they refer. After all, if the infinite which we all are intrinsicallyis indeed infinite, how could it be otherwise?

After about six months, and some significant breakthroughs on my part, I began suggesting to Suzanne that I introduce her to a few of my friends. As with everything else, she said it would happen when it was obvious," and so it was not until the waning days of 1995 that about a dozen of us met one afternoon at the home of a friend. Other gatherings followed, each one larger than the last, and within a few months several hundred people were crowding a local church to hear her tell her story and respond to questions.

Despite the growing attention, however, Suzanne refuses to refer to herself as a teacher. Instead, she insists that she is a "describer of the naturally occurring state" of every one of us. No matter who we think we are or how misguided we imagine ourselves to be, she reminds us, we are in reality the ground of being itselfwhat she calls the "vastness," the infinite substance of which everything consists and in which everything abides. This vastness does not belong to anyone in particular; in fact, there is no separate self anywhere to whom it could possibly belong.

As editor-in-chief of the magazine Yoga Journal for ten years, I have developed a healthy skepticism for those who take themselves to be spiritual teachers. After spending many hours with Suzanne as editor, advisor, and friend, I can say with complete confidence that this remarkable womanneither teacher, guru, nor sageis precisely who she describes herself to be in these pages. There is truly no one homeand in this absence the infinite is revealed.