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Collision with the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self
A new edition of this spiritual classic with a preface by Stephan Bodian, friend of the late author and the original editor of Collision with the Infinite.
Stephan “Since the book first appeared in 1996, spiritual awakening and the nondual perspective it reveals have become increasingly popular among seekers who realize the limitations of progressive practices and want more immediate access to the limitless openness and freedom of their essential nature. At the same time, a number of teachers have emerged who point directly to this truth and invite their students to inquire into their experience, rest in awareness, and realize the truth for themselves.
Long before these resources were readily available, Suzanne had a powerful awakening that completely obliterated the illusion of a separate self. But in 1982 she could find no one to guide her through the process, and as a result she spent years in fear, wandering from therapist to therapist, desperately trying to cure herself of being no one, because no one in her world knew what to make of her experience. After a dozen years in the wilderness of what she describes as a spiritual wintertime, she emerged into the radiant springtime of full nondual realization. Because she awoke without a teacher or tradition, and her understanding was so complete, her detailed descriptions of how the vastness functions through these body-minds to realize itself in form are original, and fresh from their source.
I’m thrilled to have this spiritual classic back in print, after years of languishing in obscurity. Now I can begin recommending it to my students once again and share with them the clarity of her vision. As I say in the afterword, Suzanne never pretended to be a teacher, preferring instead to call herself a describer of what it’s like to live as the vastness. In this profound and articulate memoir, she chronicles her journey, and in the process transmits the wisdom that revealed itself to her.�
Editorial reviews
“Collision with the Infinite is like a diamond on fire with living spirit, and a testament to the strange and wonderful ways that spiritual awakening can unpredictably burst forth in any one of us at any time. Read this book as what it has always been, a modern-day revelation of how spiritual presence came alive in one extraordinarily ordinary woman, and how she embodied it like the sky embodies a shooting star.�
—AⲹԳپ
“A fascinating, deeply moving account of a powerful spiritual opening and the ensuing process of understanding and integration. The book dispels some of our most cherished myths about spiritual awakening—especially that it is a blissful and easy process. Awakening is not the end of the path, but the beginning of a sometimes difficult journey.�
—Steve Taylor Ph.D., author of The The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening
Stephan “Since the book first appeared in 1996, spiritual awakening and the nondual perspective it reveals have become increasingly popular among seekers who realize the limitations of progressive practices and want more immediate access to the limitless openness and freedom of their essential nature. At the same time, a number of teachers have emerged who point directly to this truth and invite their students to inquire into their experience, rest in awareness, and realize the truth for themselves.
Long before these resources were readily available, Suzanne had a powerful awakening that completely obliterated the illusion of a separate self. But in 1982 she could find no one to guide her through the process, and as a result she spent years in fear, wandering from therapist to therapist, desperately trying to cure herself of being no one, because no one in her world knew what to make of her experience. After a dozen years in the wilderness of what she describes as a spiritual wintertime, she emerged into the radiant springtime of full nondual realization. Because she awoke without a teacher or tradition, and her understanding was so complete, her detailed descriptions of how the vastness functions through these body-minds to realize itself in form are original, and fresh from their source.
I’m thrilled to have this spiritual classic back in print, after years of languishing in obscurity. Now I can begin recommending it to my students once again and share with them the clarity of her vision. As I say in the afterword, Suzanne never pretended to be a teacher, preferring instead to call herself a describer of what it’s like to live as the vastness. In this profound and articulate memoir, she chronicles her journey, and in the process transmits the wisdom that revealed itself to her.�
Editorial reviews
“Collision with the Infinite is like a diamond on fire with living spirit, and a testament to the strange and wonderful ways that spiritual awakening can unpredictably burst forth in any one of us at any time. Read this book as what it has always been, a modern-day revelation of how spiritual presence came alive in one extraordinarily ordinary woman, and how she embodied it like the sky embodies a shooting star.�
—AⲹԳپ
“A fascinating, deeply moving account of a powerful spiritual opening and the ensuing process of understanding and integration. The book dispels some of our most cherished myths about spiritual awakening—especially that it is a blissful and easy process. Awakening is not the end of the path, but the beginning of a sometimes difficult journey.�
—Steve Taylor Ph.D., author of The The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening
126 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 1996
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February 1, 2014
This is a unique account of the experience of a young woman who suddenly one day while getting on a bus lost her feeling of personal identity.
When learning the details of her life, however, we see that this did not really happen out of the blue. Suzanne experienced the “emptiness� when meditating on her name at the age of seven or eight, and she later studied Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He taught that enlightenment came in three stages � Cosmic Consciousness, the stage characterized by the witness, God Consciousness, the realization of being no one, where the witness disappears, and, finally, Unity Consciousness, in which “separation of any kind was obliterated as consciousness expanded to encompass all of creation�.
However, when Suzanne had her experience, there was a great fear, even terror, and she thought that she might have become insane. She did have a witness following her body, but since she felt that she was experiencing hell she did not believe that this could have anything to do with Cosmic Consciousness.
Suzanne was pregnant when her experience “hit� her, all went well with the pregnancy, and she was able to perform the mothering function competently, though there was no-one there to do the mothering.
She separated from her boyfriend, who did not understand what had happened to her � no-one did. She consulted various psychiatrists and the like, one of whom diagnosed her as suffering from “depersonalization disorder�, which he said was a common ailment. Depersonalization disorder could apparently come and go, but what Suzanne was experiencing was a constant “absence of personal ‘I-ness� accompanied by unimpaired � functioning in the world�. All those twelve therapists she consulted (apart from one spiritually-oriented person) regarded her condition as pathological.
Not until she begins to consult Buddhist experts does she find comprehension and is told that she has experienced a “profound spiritual awakening� and complimented on her state.
The self apparently never did exist, and what Suzanne had experienced was “the goal of every person who embarked on the Buddhist path�.
Suzanne progressed from Cosmic Consciousness with the “witness� to God Consciousness, where the witness disappears, and, finally, to Unity Consciousness. Although she herself did not receive much guidance from the Maharishi and his adherents, it turned out that he had in fact previously indicated to another person that Cosmic Consciousness was “a horrible experience� and the guru was necessary to verify for the person in question that it actually was Cosmic Consciousness he or she was experiencing, otherwise he/she could “be lost indefinitely in confusion and fear�.
Suzanne informs us that we can’t work on achieving Unity Consciousness, since there is no “I� to do inner work and no “inner� to work on.
Finally, she lost the fear and experienced the joy she sought. The emptiness was nothing but “the very substance of everything�. She renames the “emptiness� the “vastness�.
There is a wonderful penultimate chapter entitled “Living the Vastness� and a final chapter in which Suzanne answers questions posed by the public at her talks.
I found this book to be exquisitely written. It answered many questions for me that I hadn’t even consciously formulated. (In part she writes in the same impersonal style as the late, enlightened master David R. Hawkins.) Being on a spiritual quest myself, I feel that this is one of the most “enlightening� (no pun intended) books I’ve read. I absolutely recommend that you read this book too if you have any interest in spirituality and any wish for enlightenment.
When learning the details of her life, however, we see that this did not really happen out of the blue. Suzanne experienced the “emptiness� when meditating on her name at the age of seven or eight, and she later studied Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He taught that enlightenment came in three stages � Cosmic Consciousness, the stage characterized by the witness, God Consciousness, the realization of being no one, where the witness disappears, and, finally, Unity Consciousness, in which “separation of any kind was obliterated as consciousness expanded to encompass all of creation�.
However, when Suzanne had her experience, there was a great fear, even terror, and she thought that she might have become insane. She did have a witness following her body, but since she felt that she was experiencing hell she did not believe that this could have anything to do with Cosmic Consciousness.
Suzanne was pregnant when her experience “hit� her, all went well with the pregnancy, and she was able to perform the mothering function competently, though there was no-one there to do the mothering.
She separated from her boyfriend, who did not understand what had happened to her � no-one did. She consulted various psychiatrists and the like, one of whom diagnosed her as suffering from “depersonalization disorder�, which he said was a common ailment. Depersonalization disorder could apparently come and go, but what Suzanne was experiencing was a constant “absence of personal ‘I-ness� accompanied by unimpaired � functioning in the world�. All those twelve therapists she consulted (apart from one spiritually-oriented person) regarded her condition as pathological.
Not until she begins to consult Buddhist experts does she find comprehension and is told that she has experienced a “profound spiritual awakening� and complimented on her state.
The self apparently never did exist, and what Suzanne had experienced was “the goal of every person who embarked on the Buddhist path�.
Suzanne progressed from Cosmic Consciousness with the “witness� to God Consciousness, where the witness disappears, and, finally, to Unity Consciousness. Although she herself did not receive much guidance from the Maharishi and his adherents, it turned out that he had in fact previously indicated to another person that Cosmic Consciousness was “a horrible experience� and the guru was necessary to verify for the person in question that it actually was Cosmic Consciousness he or she was experiencing, otherwise he/she could “be lost indefinitely in confusion and fear�.
Suzanne informs us that we can’t work on achieving Unity Consciousness, since there is no “I� to do inner work and no “inner� to work on.
Finally, she lost the fear and experienced the joy she sought. The emptiness was nothing but “the very substance of everything�. She renames the “emptiness� the “vastness�.
There is a wonderful penultimate chapter entitled “Living the Vastness� and a final chapter in which Suzanne answers questions posed by the public at her talks.
I found this book to be exquisitely written. It answered many questions for me that I hadn’t even consciously formulated. (In part she writes in the same impersonal style as the late, enlightened master David R. Hawkins.) Being on a spiritual quest myself, I feel that this is one of the most “enlightening� (no pun intended) books I’ve read. I absolutely recommend that you read this book too if you have any interest in spirituality and any wish for enlightenment.
March 19, 2024
Collision with the Infinite is the autobiographical account of someone whose personal self, their subjective “I�, disappeared—and never returned. Her name was Suzanne Segal, twenty-seven years old, originally from Chicago but, by 1982 when all this began, now married and living in Paris.
In fact it happened in stages: queuing for a bus one sunny Spring day, “I suddenly felt my ears stop up like they do when the pressure changes inside an airplane as it makes its descent. I felt cut off from the scene before me…� Then, a moment later: “What I had previously called ‘me� was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head…I could see my body in front…� This peculiar (and terrifying) out-of-body experience lasted for months; worse, her self remained locked in this wonky position even at night while sleeping—as if also sort of jammed in “ON� mode so to speak—something she finds incredibly difficult to describe. Then finally, after several months of this, her self abruptly disappeared altogether—to leave, well what exactly? She goes to great lengths to describe this too: “…a complete lack of reference point…with everything carrying on as before (cooking meals, answering the phone, reading a book), but all without a personal self� The mind, body and emotions no longer referred to anyone—there was no one who thought, no one who felt, no one who perceived. Yet the mind, body and emotions continued to function unimpaired; apparently they did not need an ‘I� to keep doing what they always did.� It never returned; this is how the remaining fifteen years of her short life were destined to be.
It sounds appalling; she suffered from intense anxiety and would wake mornings with the bedsheets drenched in sweat. I’m not going to say how Segal herself strikes me (after all, how do I know how ’d have dealt with something like this if it had been me? Far worse probably), but what did impress me is the way she does her level best to describe, as precisely as she can manage, what her condition was like, how it actually felt. And, every now and then, lost in the oceans of half-baked nonsense both she and her hangers-on are also prone to, there are tiny clues, insights into what the brain is doing, normally I mean, and how it does it. That, for me, was what made this worth reading.
There is a lot of nonsense too though, unfortunately, and no shortage of hangers-on: individuals, groups, professions, sects, movements and more general know-it-alls who latched on to and “explained� her condition (“I spent an hour on the phone with her explaining the difference between having no self and not existing�) during the decade and a half which followed. There were the ghastly spiritual “gurus�, who turned out to be either con-artists, outright nutters, or both. There was a near-endless series of psychiatrists and therapists of all descriptions who insisted, for example, that her condition was “a defense mechanism�. And finally (inevitably I suppose) there were the Buddhists who informed her that she hadn’t lost her “I� at all because it had never existed in the first place, that the personal self is an illusion. In the end I found myself thinking (and I apologise for this because I know full well just how much of a cynic I am about this sort of thing): why her? If this experience had to happen to someone, why couldn’t it have been somebody a tad more sceptical, or with a more inquiring mind?
This book was originally published in 1996, but an Afterword was added after Segal’s death and which, to me, contains some revealing extra details. During her final year a further series of mental slippages occurred—and also doubts, second thoughts, about her condition. Then in early 1997 some genuinely worrying medical symptoms finally prompted an X-ray (why not years earlier?) which revealed a well-developed, and widely metastasised, brain tumour. It was way too late by then of course; a month later she went into a coma and died, aged just forty-two.
I was left with very mixed feelings about this book. For one thing, I can’t help thinking “if only”—if only her tumour had been caught early enough, not only might she have survived, but it would have been interesting to know, as accurately as possible, precisely which miniscule region of the brain it had destroyed first. On the other hand, though, Collision with the Infinite is well-written and Segal herself does a good job of getting across her state of mind in plain language.
But what I was appalled by, frankly, was pretty much everyone else. In the end, when it was already too late, it was her chiropractor (her chiropractor?) who suggested she check into a hospital for the head X-ray. Not her father or mother, not her husband or lovers, none of her friends, acquaintances, gurus or therapists—not one of those vacuous self-appointed “experts�, all seeing in Suzanne Segal’s condition what they wanted to see. That, too, left a big impression (a week later I’m still angry) and made this book worth reading.
In fact it happened in stages: queuing for a bus one sunny Spring day, “I suddenly felt my ears stop up like they do when the pressure changes inside an airplane as it makes its descent. I felt cut off from the scene before me…� Then, a moment later: “What I had previously called ‘me� was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head…I could see my body in front…� This peculiar (and terrifying) out-of-body experience lasted for months; worse, her self remained locked in this wonky position even at night while sleeping—as if also sort of jammed in “ON� mode so to speak—something she finds incredibly difficult to describe. Then finally, after several months of this, her self abruptly disappeared altogether—to leave, well what exactly? She goes to great lengths to describe this too: “…a complete lack of reference point…with everything carrying on as before (cooking meals, answering the phone, reading a book), but all without a personal self� The mind, body and emotions no longer referred to anyone—there was no one who thought, no one who felt, no one who perceived. Yet the mind, body and emotions continued to function unimpaired; apparently they did not need an ‘I� to keep doing what they always did.� It never returned; this is how the remaining fifteen years of her short life were destined to be.
It sounds appalling; she suffered from intense anxiety and would wake mornings with the bedsheets drenched in sweat. I’m not going to say how Segal herself strikes me (after all, how do I know how ’d have dealt with something like this if it had been me? Far worse probably), but what did impress me is the way she does her level best to describe, as precisely as she can manage, what her condition was like, how it actually felt. And, every now and then, lost in the oceans of half-baked nonsense both she and her hangers-on are also prone to, there are tiny clues, insights into what the brain is doing, normally I mean, and how it does it. That, for me, was what made this worth reading.
There is a lot of nonsense too though, unfortunately, and no shortage of hangers-on: individuals, groups, professions, sects, movements and more general know-it-alls who latched on to and “explained� her condition (“I spent an hour on the phone with her explaining the difference between having no self and not existing�) during the decade and a half which followed. There were the ghastly spiritual “gurus�, who turned out to be either con-artists, outright nutters, or both. There was a near-endless series of psychiatrists and therapists of all descriptions who insisted, for example, that her condition was “a defense mechanism�. And finally (inevitably I suppose) there were the Buddhists who informed her that she hadn’t lost her “I� at all because it had never existed in the first place, that the personal self is an illusion. In the end I found myself thinking (and I apologise for this because I know full well just how much of a cynic I am about this sort of thing): why her? If this experience had to happen to someone, why couldn’t it have been somebody a tad more sceptical, or with a more inquiring mind?
This book was originally published in 1996, but an Afterword was added after Segal’s death and which, to me, contains some revealing extra details. During her final year a further series of mental slippages occurred—and also doubts, second thoughts, about her condition. Then in early 1997 some genuinely worrying medical symptoms finally prompted an X-ray (why not years earlier?) which revealed a well-developed, and widely metastasised, brain tumour. It was way too late by then of course; a month later she went into a coma and died, aged just forty-two.
I was left with very mixed feelings about this book. For one thing, I can’t help thinking “if only”—if only her tumour had been caught early enough, not only might she have survived, but it would have been interesting to know, as accurately as possible, precisely which miniscule region of the brain it had destroyed first. On the other hand, though, Collision with the Infinite is well-written and Segal herself does a good job of getting across her state of mind in plain language.
But what I was appalled by, frankly, was pretty much everyone else. In the end, when it was already too late, it was her chiropractor (her chiropractor?) who suggested she check into a hospital for the head X-ray. Not her father or mother, not her husband or lovers, none of her friends, acquaintances, gurus or therapists—not one of those vacuous self-appointed “experts�, all seeing in Suzanne Segal’s condition what they wanted to see. That, too, left a big impression (a week later I’m still angry) and made this book worth reading.
December 2, 2013
Suzanne Segal was living a secular life in France when she experienced an abrupt shift out of ordinary consciousness and into a state of no-self. Though six years prior to this event she had studied extensively with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, she did not understand what had happened to her until she found her experience described in a Buddhist text well over a decade later.
Segal’s book is fascinating both as an intimate description of what it feels like to live without identification with a sense of “I,� and also as a compelling example of just how profoundly our beliefs affect our experience and interpretation of that experience. According to the modern psychiatry Segal sought help from for years, she was experiencing a serious personality disorder. But according to long-standing Advaita and Buddhist traditions, she had achieved a state that people struggle towards for lifetimes. Being able to view her experience from both perspectives is enlightening in more ways than one.
Segal’s book is fascinating both as an intimate description of what it feels like to live without identification with a sense of “I,� and also as a compelling example of just how profoundly our beliefs affect our experience and interpretation of that experience. According to the modern psychiatry Segal sought help from for years, she was experiencing a serious personality disorder. But according to long-standing Advaita and Buddhist traditions, she had achieved a state that people struggle towards for lifetimes. Being able to view her experience from both perspectives is enlightening in more ways than one.
October 9, 2011
I think this is one of the most interesting stories I have read of a non dual experience/awakening. Which in Suzanne's case was very protracted and distressing (- for a long time she thought she had a psychological disorder) but ultimately blissful. Reading the book creates some experience of shifting into that space.
April 17, 2013
Waiting at a Paris bus stop, four months pregnant, Suzanne Segal was about to take a step that would change her life forever. It occurred as she boarded the number 37 line.
"I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges . . . All the body's signals seemed to take a long time to be picked up in this non-localized place, as if they were light coming from a distant star. Terrified, I looked around . . . All the other passengers were calmly taking their seats . . . I shook my head a few times, hoping to rattle my consciousness back into place, but nothing changed. I felt from afar as my fingers fumbled to insert the ticket into the slot and I walked down the aisle to find a seat. I sat down next to an older woman I had been chatting with at the bus stop, and I tried to continue our conversation. My mind had completely ground to a halt in the shock of the abrupt collision with whatever had dislodged my previous reality."
Her personal identity disappeared and she began to live in terror. Of her body she said it was "an outline empty of everything of which it had previously felt so full. " She also said, "Everything seemed to be dissolving right in front of my eyes, constantly. Emptiness was everywhere, seeping through the pores of every face I gazed upon, flowing through the crevices of seemingly solid objects. The body, mind, speech, thoughts, and emotions are all empty; they had no ownership, no person behind them. I was utterly bereft of all my previous notions of reality."
Although others acknowledged a change in her, she was puzzled that nobody else noticed what she saw so clearly: "as if there were an unseen doer who acted perfectly."
Later in her narrative: "The first response that the mind had to this completely ungraspable experience was absolute terror; but that terror never changed the experience for a moment. In other words that terror never got the reference point back again. There was no personal self, but nothing stopped; the functions continued to function just as before. In fact, better than before. Speaking was still speaking and walking was still walking. I even went to graduate school and got a Ph.D."
"I experienced this fear for ten years. During this time, I consulted a lot of psychotherapists because it seemed like something I needed to be cured of. Every single one of these therapists considered this to be a problem. And they all had a diagnosis for it. They couldn't quite understand how it could be that there was such great functioning occurring, but they took the fact that there was a lot of fear to be a sign that this was a problem. "
This, on sex: "Sexuality still functions, but without the lust or longing that are self-referencing aspects. Sex serves no personal desire and has no deeper meaning that makes it anything but what it is at the moment. Like all other functions, the sexual function is engaged when the vastness deems obvious, for a mysterious, non-personal purpose. When lovemaking occurs, there is no one making love to no one. How could this possibly be comprehensible to the mind?"
Segal eventually stopped asking therapists for help and turned to spiritual teachers. "Towards the end of the ten years, there was a clear awareness that this was not something that was going to go away. It was time to start investigating other possible descriptions of what this was. It was time to investigate it with people who maybe knew more about it than Western psychotherapists. I started reading spiritual books. . . ."
American Buddhist teachers assured her that her absence of self was not pathological, which helped her understand it in a different light, whereupon her fear subsided. "I realized that the mind had been clinging tenaciously to the erroneous notion that the presence of fear meant something about the validity of the experience of no-self. Fear had tricked the mind into taking its presence to mean something it did not. Fear was present, yes, but that was all it was! The presence of fear in no way invalidated the experience that no personal self existed. It meant only that fear was present. Everything occurs simultaneously--form and emptiness, pain and enlightenment, fear and awakening. Fear's grip broke, and joy arose at once."
After this understanding a further shift occurred: "I was driving north to meet some friends when I suddenly became aware that I was driving through myself. For years there had been no-self at all, yet here on this road , everything was myself, and I was driving through me to arrive where I already was. In essence, I was going nowhere because I was everywhere already. The infinite emptiness I knew myself to be was now apparent as the infinite substance of everything I saw."
She had referred to her bus stop experience as a "bus hit." In summer 1996 a series of powerful hits occurred, which at first were pleasant, rapturous, then increasingly disturbed her, causing her to rest after especially strong ones.
In early 1997 X-rays revealed a brain tumor. She had surgery and died on 1 April 1997, age 42. Her book is titled Collision with the Infinite.
Post script. The skeptic might argue that her disease provides evidence for the materialist position-- that she merely hallucinated.
As a response to the materialist, consider this in William James' classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience: "Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. . . . And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined. . . . "
"According to the general postulate of psychology just referred to . . . scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see "the liver" determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. . . ."
"To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one has already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our DIS-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of its possessor's body at the time."
"I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges . . . All the body's signals seemed to take a long time to be picked up in this non-localized place, as if they were light coming from a distant star. Terrified, I looked around . . . All the other passengers were calmly taking their seats . . . I shook my head a few times, hoping to rattle my consciousness back into place, but nothing changed. I felt from afar as my fingers fumbled to insert the ticket into the slot and I walked down the aisle to find a seat. I sat down next to an older woman I had been chatting with at the bus stop, and I tried to continue our conversation. My mind had completely ground to a halt in the shock of the abrupt collision with whatever had dislodged my previous reality."
Her personal identity disappeared and she began to live in terror. Of her body she said it was "an outline empty of everything of which it had previously felt so full. " She also said, "Everything seemed to be dissolving right in front of my eyes, constantly. Emptiness was everywhere, seeping through the pores of every face I gazed upon, flowing through the crevices of seemingly solid objects. The body, mind, speech, thoughts, and emotions are all empty; they had no ownership, no person behind them. I was utterly bereft of all my previous notions of reality."
Although others acknowledged a change in her, she was puzzled that nobody else noticed what she saw so clearly: "as if there were an unseen doer who acted perfectly."
Later in her narrative: "The first response that the mind had to this completely ungraspable experience was absolute terror; but that terror never changed the experience for a moment. In other words that terror never got the reference point back again. There was no personal self, but nothing stopped; the functions continued to function just as before. In fact, better than before. Speaking was still speaking and walking was still walking. I even went to graduate school and got a Ph.D."
"I experienced this fear for ten years. During this time, I consulted a lot of psychotherapists because it seemed like something I needed to be cured of. Every single one of these therapists considered this to be a problem. And they all had a diagnosis for it. They couldn't quite understand how it could be that there was such great functioning occurring, but they took the fact that there was a lot of fear to be a sign that this was a problem. "
This, on sex: "Sexuality still functions, but without the lust or longing that are self-referencing aspects. Sex serves no personal desire and has no deeper meaning that makes it anything but what it is at the moment. Like all other functions, the sexual function is engaged when the vastness deems obvious, for a mysterious, non-personal purpose. When lovemaking occurs, there is no one making love to no one. How could this possibly be comprehensible to the mind?"
Segal eventually stopped asking therapists for help and turned to spiritual teachers. "Towards the end of the ten years, there was a clear awareness that this was not something that was going to go away. It was time to start investigating other possible descriptions of what this was. It was time to investigate it with people who maybe knew more about it than Western psychotherapists. I started reading spiritual books. . . ."
American Buddhist teachers assured her that her absence of self was not pathological, which helped her understand it in a different light, whereupon her fear subsided. "I realized that the mind had been clinging tenaciously to the erroneous notion that the presence of fear meant something about the validity of the experience of no-self. Fear had tricked the mind into taking its presence to mean something it did not. Fear was present, yes, but that was all it was! The presence of fear in no way invalidated the experience that no personal self existed. It meant only that fear was present. Everything occurs simultaneously--form and emptiness, pain and enlightenment, fear and awakening. Fear's grip broke, and joy arose at once."
After this understanding a further shift occurred: "I was driving north to meet some friends when I suddenly became aware that I was driving through myself. For years there had been no-self at all, yet here on this road , everything was myself, and I was driving through me to arrive where I already was. In essence, I was going nowhere because I was everywhere already. The infinite emptiness I knew myself to be was now apparent as the infinite substance of everything I saw."
She had referred to her bus stop experience as a "bus hit." In summer 1996 a series of powerful hits occurred, which at first were pleasant, rapturous, then increasingly disturbed her, causing her to rest after especially strong ones.
In early 1997 X-rays revealed a brain tumor. She had surgery and died on 1 April 1997, age 42. Her book is titled Collision with the Infinite.
Post script. The skeptic might argue that her disease provides evidence for the materialist position-- that she merely hallucinated.
As a response to the materialist, consider this in William James' classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience: "Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. . . . And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined. . . . "
"According to the general postulate of psychology just referred to . . . scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see "the liver" determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. . . ."
"To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one has already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our DIS-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of its possessor's body at the time."
March 8, 2010
I have read this book time and time again, and the story never fails to inspire me to go beyond my limits of love, acceptance, transcendence and ego.
How can one not be inspired by the readings of someone how studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi? Susan Segal started the forms of meditation at the young age of seven, by inwardly repeating her name over and over; clearly developed spiritually beyond her years. Her spirituality developed on an up and down spiral for many years, until she was able to solidify her feelings of "absolute".
The book, well written in layman's verse, ties together the [silent:] definitions of Eternity, Nothingness and the Infinite. She describes her loss of self as a challenge, only to arrive back on the top, in absolute disappearance and appearance. Ms. Segal spelled out with grace that life is a meeting; for which (in my opinion, I gathered from her writing) space and time are relative and the meeting of the two emerges up into the future of 'colliding' with the entity of who we are.
This book, I will admit, ends sadly but still uplifting the message. (No matter how many times we try to get it right, we will one day succeed!)
Quotes from book:
"Although it is always present, the mind cannot recognize it because the infinite is not perceived through the mind. The infinite perceives itself." - Susan Segal; Collision with the Infinite
"In fact, however, the presence of fear means only that fear is present, and nothing more." - Susan Segal; Collision With the Infinite
"No self, no other, everything is made up of the same substance of vastness". - Susan Segal; Collision With the Infinite
How can one not be inspired by the readings of someone how studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi? Susan Segal started the forms of meditation at the young age of seven, by inwardly repeating her name over and over; clearly developed spiritually beyond her years. Her spirituality developed on an up and down spiral for many years, until she was able to solidify her feelings of "absolute".
The book, well written in layman's verse, ties together the [silent:] definitions of Eternity, Nothingness and the Infinite. She describes her loss of self as a challenge, only to arrive back on the top, in absolute disappearance and appearance. Ms. Segal spelled out with grace that life is a meeting; for which (in my opinion, I gathered from her writing) space and time are relative and the meeting of the two emerges up into the future of 'colliding' with the entity of who we are.
This book, I will admit, ends sadly but still uplifting the message. (No matter how many times we try to get it right, we will one day succeed!)
Quotes from book:
"Although it is always present, the mind cannot recognize it because the infinite is not perceived through the mind. The infinite perceives itself." - Susan Segal; Collision with the Infinite
"In fact, however, the presence of fear means only that fear is present, and nothing more." - Susan Segal; Collision With the Infinite
"No self, no other, everything is made up of the same substance of vastness". - Susan Segal; Collision With the Infinite
Read
July 4, 2014This book is terrifying.
May 1, 2024
This book is a bit of a classic and frequently mentioned in spiritual circles as the chronicle of an awakening. I finally read it and I confess it left me with some perplexity. I highly respect the assessment possibly made by a teacher of the caliber of Jean Klein, that what Segal described here was an authentic experience of awakening. And yet something very central doesn't compute, for me.
There are as many ways as people that an awakening can unfold, I don't obviously expect Segal to have had my same experiences, and discounting other people's openings is a dangerous direction to go, I'm aware of that. Throughout the book she's constantly freaking out because she's lost the ego, that's all the book is about, her scrambling to make sense of a life without ego. Now, what but the ego would be the one scrambling and freaking out, I wonder? finding anything wrong about anything with more juice to it than simple discernment is the trademark footprint of an ego still fully running the show and distorting the view. One may argue that it usually takes time for the entirety of the psyche to register an awakening, and for all or most pockets of separation to be liberated, in a process that's usually referred to as embodiment, and before that goes sufficiently deep there is still some surface movement of resistance to what's happening, even if the awakening is authentic. And it's true but first of all, she is the one saying that her ego has dropped in its entirety, and that is in any case an incorrect statement. And secondly, if some authentic opening had been there, there would be some description of being happy with just being, being almost pulled to the joy of just being, and of the deep knowing, emerging more and more, that at the core everything is already very ok. I saw none of that in the book. Well no, to be more precise towards the end she seems to have moved in that direction, but the core of the story is full-on drama.
So there you go. I dispute Jean Klein's assessment and think it may have been disassociation after all and that her ego seems still right in place to me. The entire thing may have evolved in time towards something deeper, but the fundamental story being told is not, to my own understanding, the story of an awakening. Now why does it matter, given that Segal is long gone to new realms and adventures? well I do think it could be misguiding for a spiritual aspirant to read this book and think it is what it's not. Once re-defined what kind of story it actually is, it's a sufficiently pleasant read I suppose but not enough well-written to make it terribly worth one's time, in my opinion.
There are as many ways as people that an awakening can unfold, I don't obviously expect Segal to have had my same experiences, and discounting other people's openings is a dangerous direction to go, I'm aware of that. Throughout the book she's constantly freaking out because she's lost the ego, that's all the book is about, her scrambling to make sense of a life without ego. Now, what but the ego would be the one scrambling and freaking out, I wonder? finding anything wrong about anything with more juice to it than simple discernment is the trademark footprint of an ego still fully running the show and distorting the view. One may argue that it usually takes time for the entirety of the psyche to register an awakening, and for all or most pockets of separation to be liberated, in a process that's usually referred to as embodiment, and before that goes sufficiently deep there is still some surface movement of resistance to what's happening, even if the awakening is authentic. And it's true but first of all, she is the one saying that her ego has dropped in its entirety, and that is in any case an incorrect statement. And secondly, if some authentic opening had been there, there would be some description of being happy with just being, being almost pulled to the joy of just being, and of the deep knowing, emerging more and more, that at the core everything is already very ok. I saw none of that in the book. Well no, to be more precise towards the end she seems to have moved in that direction, but the core of the story is full-on drama.
So there you go. I dispute Jean Klein's assessment and think it may have been disassociation after all and that her ego seems still right in place to me. The entire thing may have evolved in time towards something deeper, but the fundamental story being told is not, to my own understanding, the story of an awakening. Now why does it matter, given that Segal is long gone to new realms and adventures? well I do think it could be misguiding for a spiritual aspirant to read this book and think it is what it's not. Once re-defined what kind of story it actually is, it's a sufficiently pleasant read I suppose but not enough well-written to make it terribly worth one's time, in my opinion.
September 9, 2018
This is a fascinating autobiography of a woman who experienced the disappearance of a personal identity while getting on a bus. Only after a decade, she discovered what had really happened.
She tells us her story, full of struggle and confusion, that had lasted for more than a decade, a period that was full of terror, misunderstanding, and searching for the answers everywhere she could. But apparently, no one was able to give her the proper context of what was happening to her, until nearly a decade had passed.
At the bus station in Paris, she became enlightened. She achieved something that people are struggling to achieve for decades through intense meditation or any other means. Suzanne had some spiritual background. She became a TM teacher in her early twenties and had spent many hours in meditation, but the sudden realization was not anything that she was prepared for, or even heard of as possible. She thought that she had gone mad.
After numerous therapists, she nearly concluded that what had happened to her was a depersonalization disorder or insanity. But after hearing the conclusions of those therapists and psychologists, who clearly didn't understand what she was experiencing, decided to turn into spirituality again and find her answers there, which she did.
Her descriptions of what she calls the Vastness are very interesting to me, as I draw parallels and connect the dots with other teachers' descriptions, though she didn't think of herself as a teacher. Also, her point of view of living without a self, makes me wonder how the hell is that even possible.
The one thing I kind of disagree is the importance of a spiritual practice. She says that it's not as important as people like to think, because there is not a person inside a body who works towards enlightenment and does those practices. But if you ask me, that's misleading, because, if people think that they are already awoken, they will die without experiencing their true nature, because most of us are not lucky to have a sudden awakening at a bus station, like Suzanne had.
She tells us her story, full of struggle and confusion, that had lasted for more than a decade, a period that was full of terror, misunderstanding, and searching for the answers everywhere she could. But apparently, no one was able to give her the proper context of what was happening to her, until nearly a decade had passed.
At the bus station in Paris, she became enlightened. She achieved something that people are struggling to achieve for decades through intense meditation or any other means. Suzanne had some spiritual background. She became a TM teacher in her early twenties and had spent many hours in meditation, but the sudden realization was not anything that she was prepared for, or even heard of as possible. She thought that she had gone mad.
After numerous therapists, she nearly concluded that what had happened to her was a depersonalization disorder or insanity. But after hearing the conclusions of those therapists and psychologists, who clearly didn't understand what she was experiencing, decided to turn into spirituality again and find her answers there, which she did.
Her descriptions of what she calls the Vastness are very interesting to me, as I draw parallels and connect the dots with other teachers' descriptions, though she didn't think of herself as a teacher. Also, her point of view of living without a self, makes me wonder how the hell is that even possible.
The one thing I kind of disagree is the importance of a spiritual practice. She says that it's not as important as people like to think, because there is not a person inside a body who works towards enlightenment and does those practices. But if you ask me, that's misleading, because, if people think that they are already awoken, they will die without experiencing their true nature, because most of us are not lucky to have a sudden awakening at a bus station, like Suzanne had.
September 25, 2020
"Collision with the Infinite" is compelling story of the author's sudden awakening to the experience of "No Self". This was a traumatic event where by the author experienced the sudden vanishing of a "personal self". As a result of the foregoing, the author felt that she had a psychological disorder and went to several therapists to no avail. The author ended up separating and divorcing her husband and found it difficult forming and sustaining relationships as the sense of personal self was eradicated. It should be noted that the author had spent several years as an official with the TM Organization and had a history of meditation as a child. It was not until many years later that the author discovered that the theory of No Self was the hallmark of Buddhist philosophy which helped her understand her experience. This book is hopeful but yet a sad commentary on the author's life in that the author finally came to an understanding of her experience but died young of a brain tumor. There was a review on amazon that stated that on the author's death bed she renounced her collision with the infinite and attributed her experience as a result of her abuse as a child. I don't believe this has been corroborated. Nevertheless her experience mirrors that of many others and I would highly recommend this book.
July 10, 2010
I'm a bit torn with this book - I liked the last part, where she talks about her life in the infinite, a little too much psycho therapy fail stories before that, too my taste. She comes across as having acted as a depressed, but also angsty and whiny person, and in fact really more like her condition is a fixed idea, not a transforming experience (I think one doctor diagnosed her thus too) -- I hope this is only my impression.
In the last part there is much what I expected, but then also a bit repetitive -- the same phrases recur, I didn't get too much insight -- other than there is actually no way to get more insight than to have the same experience, by way of miracle or grace.
I appreciate and admire her way through suffering to acceptance and joy but her account of it leaves me unconvinced, though I couldn't tell, of what exactly.
In the last part there is much what I expected, but then also a bit repetitive -- the same phrases recur, I didn't get too much insight -- other than there is actually no way to get more insight than to have the same experience, by way of miracle or grace.
I appreciate and admire her way through suffering to acceptance and joy but her account of it leaves me unconvinced, though I couldn't tell, of what exactly.
December 31, 2020
A Masterpiece on so many levels...
This was exactly the life story needed at this moment ... Timeless wisdom, served up unapologetically and deliciously real. Couldn't put it down. Heartfelt gratitude to Suzanne Segal, for the courage to speak up and question humanity's current take on awakening and enlightenment. Yes, it is what it is. And maybe, just maybe, it is what it isn't. All contradictions exist within the infinite vastness ... All things are possible with grace and with unconditional love. Thank you for this beautiful experience.
This was exactly the life story needed at this moment ... Timeless wisdom, served up unapologetically and deliciously real. Couldn't put it down. Heartfelt gratitude to Suzanne Segal, for the courage to speak up and question humanity's current take on awakening and enlightenment. Yes, it is what it is. And maybe, just maybe, it is what it isn't. All contradictions exist within the infinite vastness ... All things are possible with grace and with unconditional love. Thank you for this beautiful experience.
October 3, 2008
This book is amazing! Suzanne Segal is no longer alive, but her book is and it is incredible the way she is able to describe her process around her own spiritual awakening. I found this to be very eye opening.
March 18, 2015
very readable and an interesting account of her inner experience. Fortunately, there was an afterword that fleshed out what might have accounted for her depersonalization and would help the reader to better contextualize the author's experience
November 8, 2023
What a brilliant melangé of psychology and spirituality. Duality often causes dichotomous thinking and this book will help you transcend beyond that state. For anyone who’s had a depersonalisation / derealisation moment do read this book, can’t believe this state is what most buddhists aspire to be in . Duality is an interesting plane of existence but good implies that there’s bad , there’s better planes to be in. Incidentally Ram dass also spoke about the same experience in Be here now. Meditation really does really transform a person ; it’s like a muscle that keeps growing the more you flex it
July 15, 2023
THE STORY OF A WOMAN’S EXPLORATION OF TM, BUDDHISM, AND MORE
Author Suzanne Segal wrote in the Introduction to this 1996 book, “As Westerners seeking spiritual transformation, we need to help each other out by sharing our stories. Since we encounter spiritual experiences in ways that Easterners do not, we need to gather our accounts of transformation in order to create new ‘ancient texts� that provide Western-style maps of the spiritual territory� The story that follows is my contribution to the modern version of the ancient texts. It is an account of the fourteen-year aftermath of a complete and irrevocable shattering of personal identity, a permanent switching off and falling away of everything I had called my individual self. This profound transformation has been described in many of the classic spiritual texts of the East. However, because of my cultural beliefs, upbringing, values and fears, I encountered it in a particularly Western fashion. The experience was so different from anything I had previously imagined or conceived that its impact took more than a full decade to assimilate. During that time I searched for written accounts of similar experiences that might help me through the most challenging and terrifying times of the mind’s response to the totally ungraspable emptiness of ‘me-ness,� but I found none. This book was born of the desire to provide a context and a companion for those whose destiny it is to experience the emptiness of personal self thrusting itself to the foreground in unimaginable ways.� (Pg. xiii-xiv)
She continues, “The experience of no-self brings with it a cessation of personal history, removing forever the ‘person� to whom those events relate. The history remains a story only, a narrative without an author, events without personal meaning; it no longer belongs or refers to a ‘me.� There is a notion in the West that one must have a personal self in order to function adequately in the world� As Westerners we cannot help but be terrified at the prospect of the individual self revealing itself to be empty� This story’s description of the state of living every moment without a personal reference point makes it clear that it is no manner a non-functional condition� It was at the suggestion of my editor that I include the story of who ‘I� was before the ‘I� was no more� Also, please remember as you read that the formalities of language oblige one to use personal pronouns in conveying an experience that is no longer personal. The ‘’I� that you read on the paper refers to no one, but it is impossible to tell the story without using words like ‘I,� ‘me,� and ‘mine.� The mystery in which all abides is infinitely vast.� (Pg. xiv-xvi)
She recalls, “During Christmas break � I signed up for a meditation retreat at a college just down the road� By this time I had been meditating for about eight months, and between the profound experiences I was having n meditation and the influence of my friend Dan, I had developed an affinity for the spiritual realm� During the retreat I encountered my first powerful experiences of the transcendent field, which failed to fit any category of description and introduced me to the soon-to-be familiar frustration of attempting to describe something that defied all my enthusiastic, well-intentioned attempts at explication …� (Pg. 11)
She continues, “in August of 1974, Rick, Dan, and I, along with about one hundred other � American meditators, traveled to the mountains of northern Italy to train as teachers of Transcendental Meditation�. The training in Maharishi’s tradition was a rigorous one. He demanded that we memorize everything word for word� The long hours of meditation wreaked havoc with some people’s memories, but we were for the most part a young and resilient group capable of withstanding the multileveled assault on our mental faculties.� (Pg. 14-15)
She goes on, “Once I had returned to the United States, California seemed like the obvious destination� I registered at Sonoma State College� and thew myself into the academic life with a previously unknown fierceness, born surely of the loneliness of life outside a close spiritual community� After years of cloistered living, I explored the life of a free, single woman with enthusiasm and joy…� (Pg. 35-36)
She recounts, “the mystery was about to deepen a thousandfold� It was in the springtime that it happened� I stood at the bus stop� I suddenly felt my ears stop up like they do when the pressure changes inside an airplane. I felt� as if I were enclosed in a bubble� [I] collided had-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two� From a non-localized position somewhere behind and to the left, I could see my body in front and very far away…� (Pg. 48-49)
She reports, “In the spring of 1984, nearly two years after the experience of no-self began, we � returned to the Chicago area because I hoped that living in familiar surroundings might be helpful in calming the fear. But it was not to be so. Being around� my mother, was distressing� it was harder to avoid the look of hopelessness and sadness in my mother’s eyes each time we met� She symbolized the Western world’s inclination to accept only reasonable, understandable experiences as valid� I resolved not to speak to anyone else about my experience� It was an absurd resolution, of course, since having no self is not something one can just put out of one’s mind…� (Pg. 73-74)
She goes on, "My daughter and I set out for San Francisco in January 1986� Her [daughter’s] presence was soothing to the fear that continued to hold my experience in its grip now three years after that fateful encounter with emptiness� The mind’s hypervigilance was exhausting� it was constantly engaged in rejecting the experience of emptiness� No mental activity ever changed the experience of no-self in any manner…� (Pg. 85-86)
She observes, “The worst fear we encounter as human beings is the fear of annihilation. What happens, then, when annihilation occurs and still something remains?... I still have not found any written descriptions of the transition of adjustment that occurs when the self-consciousness abruptly disappears� The reality of the infinite must inevitably be terrifying to the flimsy illusion of the finite self. How could it not be?� (Pg. 109-110)
She notes, “Maharishi’s description of the three stages of awakening---Cosmic Consciousness, God Consciousness, and Unity Consciousness---now appeared to be incredibly relevant� The dramatic shift to Unity Consciousness was also self-evident. When the substance of all creation is perceived first and distinctions second, there is no doubt what state of consciousness is prevailing. However, I still found myself wondering what Maharishi had meant by God Consciousness� Nothing I had ever experienced fit that particular description. Nor had I ever heard Maharishi describe anything resembling the experience, so clearly delineated by the Buddhists, that one is not an individual self.� (Pg. 133)
She says, “With the realization that everything was made of the substance, relationships ceased to exist, since there was no longer an experience of an other. Without an other, there was simply nothing separate to be related to. Of course, the relational function continues as before, and it always looked like relationships were proceeding unimpaired.� (Pg. 141)
She concludes, “We are all in this together. We are all made of the same infinite substance� This life is now lived in a state wherein the infinite is perceived as residing within an infinity. This is truly a non-experience that defies description, yet it seems to be how the infinite naturally shows itself to itself�. When asked who I am, the only answer possible is: I am the infinite, the vastness that is the substance of all things. I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything---just as you are.� (Pg. 156)
This book may appeal to other Westerners engaged in such a spiritual quest.
Author Suzanne Segal wrote in the Introduction to this 1996 book, “As Westerners seeking spiritual transformation, we need to help each other out by sharing our stories. Since we encounter spiritual experiences in ways that Easterners do not, we need to gather our accounts of transformation in order to create new ‘ancient texts� that provide Western-style maps of the spiritual territory� The story that follows is my contribution to the modern version of the ancient texts. It is an account of the fourteen-year aftermath of a complete and irrevocable shattering of personal identity, a permanent switching off and falling away of everything I had called my individual self. This profound transformation has been described in many of the classic spiritual texts of the East. However, because of my cultural beliefs, upbringing, values and fears, I encountered it in a particularly Western fashion. The experience was so different from anything I had previously imagined or conceived that its impact took more than a full decade to assimilate. During that time I searched for written accounts of similar experiences that might help me through the most challenging and terrifying times of the mind’s response to the totally ungraspable emptiness of ‘me-ness,� but I found none. This book was born of the desire to provide a context and a companion for those whose destiny it is to experience the emptiness of personal self thrusting itself to the foreground in unimaginable ways.� (Pg. xiii-xiv)
She continues, “The experience of no-self brings with it a cessation of personal history, removing forever the ‘person� to whom those events relate. The history remains a story only, a narrative without an author, events without personal meaning; it no longer belongs or refers to a ‘me.� There is a notion in the West that one must have a personal self in order to function adequately in the world� As Westerners we cannot help but be terrified at the prospect of the individual self revealing itself to be empty� This story’s description of the state of living every moment without a personal reference point makes it clear that it is no manner a non-functional condition� It was at the suggestion of my editor that I include the story of who ‘I� was before the ‘I� was no more� Also, please remember as you read that the formalities of language oblige one to use personal pronouns in conveying an experience that is no longer personal. The ‘’I� that you read on the paper refers to no one, but it is impossible to tell the story without using words like ‘I,� ‘me,� and ‘mine.� The mystery in which all abides is infinitely vast.� (Pg. xiv-xvi)
She recalls, “During Christmas break � I signed up for a meditation retreat at a college just down the road� By this time I had been meditating for about eight months, and between the profound experiences I was having n meditation and the influence of my friend Dan, I had developed an affinity for the spiritual realm� During the retreat I encountered my first powerful experiences of the transcendent field, which failed to fit any category of description and introduced me to the soon-to-be familiar frustration of attempting to describe something that defied all my enthusiastic, well-intentioned attempts at explication …� (Pg. 11)
She continues, “in August of 1974, Rick, Dan, and I, along with about one hundred other � American meditators, traveled to the mountains of northern Italy to train as teachers of Transcendental Meditation�. The training in Maharishi’s tradition was a rigorous one. He demanded that we memorize everything word for word� The long hours of meditation wreaked havoc with some people’s memories, but we were for the most part a young and resilient group capable of withstanding the multileveled assault on our mental faculties.� (Pg. 14-15)
She goes on, “Once I had returned to the United States, California seemed like the obvious destination� I registered at Sonoma State College� and thew myself into the academic life with a previously unknown fierceness, born surely of the loneliness of life outside a close spiritual community� After years of cloistered living, I explored the life of a free, single woman with enthusiasm and joy…� (Pg. 35-36)
She recounts, “the mystery was about to deepen a thousandfold� It was in the springtime that it happened� I stood at the bus stop� I suddenly felt my ears stop up like they do when the pressure changes inside an airplane. I felt� as if I were enclosed in a bubble� [I] collided had-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two� From a non-localized position somewhere behind and to the left, I could see my body in front and very far away…� (Pg. 48-49)
She reports, “In the spring of 1984, nearly two years after the experience of no-self began, we � returned to the Chicago area because I hoped that living in familiar surroundings might be helpful in calming the fear. But it was not to be so. Being around� my mother, was distressing� it was harder to avoid the look of hopelessness and sadness in my mother’s eyes each time we met� She symbolized the Western world’s inclination to accept only reasonable, understandable experiences as valid� I resolved not to speak to anyone else about my experience� It was an absurd resolution, of course, since having no self is not something one can just put out of one’s mind…� (Pg. 73-74)
She goes on, "My daughter and I set out for San Francisco in January 1986� Her [daughter’s] presence was soothing to the fear that continued to hold my experience in its grip now three years after that fateful encounter with emptiness� The mind’s hypervigilance was exhausting� it was constantly engaged in rejecting the experience of emptiness� No mental activity ever changed the experience of no-self in any manner…� (Pg. 85-86)
She observes, “The worst fear we encounter as human beings is the fear of annihilation. What happens, then, when annihilation occurs and still something remains?... I still have not found any written descriptions of the transition of adjustment that occurs when the self-consciousness abruptly disappears� The reality of the infinite must inevitably be terrifying to the flimsy illusion of the finite self. How could it not be?� (Pg. 109-110)
She notes, “Maharishi’s description of the three stages of awakening---Cosmic Consciousness, God Consciousness, and Unity Consciousness---now appeared to be incredibly relevant� The dramatic shift to Unity Consciousness was also self-evident. When the substance of all creation is perceived first and distinctions second, there is no doubt what state of consciousness is prevailing. However, I still found myself wondering what Maharishi had meant by God Consciousness� Nothing I had ever experienced fit that particular description. Nor had I ever heard Maharishi describe anything resembling the experience, so clearly delineated by the Buddhists, that one is not an individual self.� (Pg. 133)
She says, “With the realization that everything was made of the substance, relationships ceased to exist, since there was no longer an experience of an other. Without an other, there was simply nothing separate to be related to. Of course, the relational function continues as before, and it always looked like relationships were proceeding unimpaired.� (Pg. 141)
She concludes, “We are all in this together. We are all made of the same infinite substance� This life is now lived in a state wherein the infinite is perceived as residing within an infinity. This is truly a non-experience that defies description, yet it seems to be how the infinite naturally shows itself to itself�. When asked who I am, the only answer possible is: I am the infinite, the vastness that is the substance of all things. I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything---just as you are.� (Pg. 156)
This book may appeal to other Westerners engaged in such a spiritual quest.
April 16, 2020
I don't know what to think, still.
For me, all the book is demolished in the few paragraphs of the epilogue written in 1998.
Then you can review all the story in a new (and disturbing way). All was there, the resistance and the hiding away. A huge spiritual bypass.
besides that (¿?) there's is a compelling voice in this book, full of inspiration until... you get to that epilogue.
The final lesson seems that, in the end, you have to lost all the acquired (even awakening) to win humanity (facing your own truth)
Very interesting if you are curious about depersonalization and in the patologization of the mystic experience.
For me, all the book is demolished in the few paragraphs of the epilogue written in 1998.
Then you can review all the story in a new (and disturbing way). All was there, the resistance and the hiding away. A huge spiritual bypass.
besides that (¿?) there's is a compelling voice in this book, full of inspiration until... you get to that epilogue.
The final lesson seems that, in the end, you have to lost all the acquired (even awakening) to win humanity (facing your own truth)
Very interesting if you are curious about depersonalization and in the patologization of the mystic experience.
May 20, 2024
I am so often reminded that the reminder that I need in the moment in order to remember comes when I need it. Needless to say, I am grateful to have read this book when I have. The description is accurate, and is a wonderful addition to sacred texts. I feel western readers are able to learn of the process (of the human experiencing the vastness as the vastness, while not getting stuck behind the confusion that ideas are reality) from a seemingly more intimate, and in my experience relatable, explanation. Wonderful book.
April 4, 2024
This book gives a relatively good first-person description of awakening into No self.
Suzanne was waiting for the bus when it was hit with an experience that she had no context with. She then spent 12 years in this No self-experience in which there is no Doer, but rather just Vastness experiencing itself. However, her no self-experience was filled with fear which made her unsure of her awakening. She then proceeded to consult psychiatrists and even got a degree in psychology.
The fear was there because she was rejecting the experience of fear rather than surrendering to whatever is happening. That seemed to be her own conclusion. That is the experience of witness consciousness.
The dramatic shift to Unity Consciousness was also self-evident. When the substance of all creation is perceived first and distinctions second, there is no doubt what state of consciousness is prevailing.
When Shakespeare became an actor, the story goes on, he found the perfect profession, where he got to “play at being someone before an audience who played at taking him for that person.� Although he spent his entire life attempting to reconstitute a sense of being someone, he never succeeded, though to everyone around him he certainly appeared to be someone.
The vastness is unimaginable. Although it is always present, the mind cannot recognize it because the infinite is not perceived through the mind. The infinite perceives itself.
Suzanne was waiting for the bus when it was hit with an experience that she had no context with. She then spent 12 years in this No self-experience in which there is no Doer, but rather just Vastness experiencing itself. However, her no self-experience was filled with fear which made her unsure of her awakening. She then proceeded to consult psychiatrists and even got a degree in psychology.
The fear was there because she was rejecting the experience of fear rather than surrendering to whatever is happening. That seemed to be her own conclusion. That is the experience of witness consciousness.
The dramatic shift to Unity Consciousness was also self-evident. When the substance of all creation is perceived first and distinctions second, there is no doubt what state of consciousness is prevailing.
When Shakespeare became an actor, the story goes on, he found the perfect profession, where he got to “play at being someone before an audience who played at taking him for that person.� Although he spent his entire life attempting to reconstitute a sense of being someone, he never succeeded, though to everyone around him he certainly appeared to be someone.
The vastness is unimaginable. Although it is always present, the mind cannot recognize it because the infinite is not perceived through the mind. The infinite perceives itself.
Shelved as 'act47-org'
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January 15, 2025
Extremely interesting, makes me wish there were more accounts of awakening like this available - ones that don't try to focus so much on the non-explainable and more on the tangible interactions with the outside world.
The Afterword summarises the book perfectly:
The Afterword summarises the book perfectly:
Suzanne's example speaks to us of the importance of integration - of the personal and the transpersonal, the psychological and the spiritual-and raises questions about the relationship between dissociation-in which parts of the psyche split off from one another-and genuine, abiding awakening. By dying before this integration had occurred, Suzanne left each of us with the koan of discovering it for ourselves.
May 23, 2020
I really enjoyed reading this book having heard about it for years. It is a really interesting story and makes you question the nature of self,world,enlightenment,mental health etc
I didnt enjoy the last section of the book as much. Maybe its because there is nothing in it for the imaginary I? Maybe because it confuses the ultimate (there is no one and nothing to do etc) with the relative, how do I live my life, treat others, live a good life. But either way its thought provoking stuff and great reading for anyone interested in Insight, Meditation and Awakening.
I didnt enjoy the last section of the book as much. Maybe its because there is nothing in it for the imaginary I? Maybe because it confuses the ultimate (there is no one and nothing to do etc) with the relative, how do I live my life, treat others, live a good life. But either way its thought provoking stuff and great reading for anyone interested in Insight, Meditation and Awakening.
June 18, 2020
Not many books have such a deep personal meaning for me. Segal suffered a deep sense of fear for many years after experiencing a shift in perception. I also have felt that fear and it is deeply encouraging to hear of this.
Segal expounds on the inadequacies and flaws of the modern psychological method and treatments, which are mostly designed to keep you being a good robot. I hope that with the republishing of this book, others will see that alternatives paths are available.
A brilliant book, easy to read and concise. It has to be one of the useful books of the spiritual genre.
Segal expounds on the inadequacies and flaws of the modern psychological method and treatments, which are mostly designed to keep you being a good robot. I hope that with the republishing of this book, others will see that alternatives paths are available.
A brilliant book, easy to read and concise. It has to be one of the useful books of the spiritual genre.
September 20, 2023
Something about the book made me question the authenticity of the experience. Parts of the book makes sense but the ending? How does someone who is enlightened go back into normalcy. The ending was so contradictory of her experience. Also one thing that didn’t resonate with me was the fact she forgot she was meditating from the age of 7-8 and then the whole TB that she was a part of. If she thinks none of those things helped her she is mistaken.
May 21, 2019
This is one of the finest books I have ever read in my life. I am blow away by Suzanne Segal and her unbelievable spiritual experiences. Wow. Wow. Wow.
March 3, 2020
Excellent, very clear description of no-self.
April 20, 2020
Surprising in a negative way but still excellent
You will entirely miss the main thrust of her story unless you read the post script by her friend. Entirely miss it.
You will entirely miss the main thrust of her story unless you read the post script by her friend. Entirely miss it.
June 27, 2020
The first 3/4 of the book dragged and was sooooo repetitive! But I stuck with it and found the end of the book more rewarding. I highlighted some memorable information towards the end of the book.
May 9, 2021
Thankful that this book made it clear what it's like to have no self. Totally changed my perspective. Also thankful for the advice to do what's obvious. Why not.
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