WORDS ARE TRAPS

A koan is a paradoxical anecdote or riddle used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.

A vision of a cloud appeared before me. OH MY GOD! Pictured within this cloud were the heads of what I determined later to be spiritual masters. There was an Islamic man wearing a turban, a side view of a man, probably Hindu, who resembled Rabindranath Tagore, a side view of a man, probably Hebrew, who reminded me of Yassar Arafat, a Mongolian or Tibetan man, an African man, an Oriental man, a Native American chief with a full headdress, and a Carmelite nun. I was undergoing a mystical experience of profound expansiveness. WOW! I gazed at the cloud, huh? WOW! I sprung out of my chair and the cloud disappeared. I noticed an effulgent golden flaming light radiating off my body, especially my arms. It was a color more brilliantly golden and luminous than I had ever seen before. It was a firelight. AWESOME! Vibrating out of the ether came an external locution of my Psychology of Consciousness professor Dr. Som Gay voicing the Zen koan he gave us in class Words Are Traps. I am intuitively realizing that everyone is bombarded by language and this confuses our innocence while holding us back from our natural state or true Self. I became open to the fact that we are all part of the exact Soul or Spirit that is just in different bodies under different conditions. Eureka everybody is like this, I am entering the universal consciousness of us all, I thought to myself. Goosebumps covered my entire body and all the hairs of my body stood on end as I realized this primal truth. I found God or Holy Spirit or Great Universal Spirit or Cosmic Spirit inside myself and everybody else at the same time. This has been called Perfect Knowledge (vijnana) in the East where a yogi sees and knows “God” in all people. I achieved superconsciousness or Samadhi and this was a transfiguring experience. Members of religions and people from all cultures have realized themselves with transfiguration experiences throughout history. Jesus is a model of this for us. Self-Realization or Enlightenment has always been the ultimate goal of all religions and traditions. I broke through the cultural conditioning or worldly conditioning that obstructs our Spirit and contributes to our suffering. A reason that we suffer is that we think we are separate from each other. We feel we are in an interpersonal fog. The clarity that comes with Self-Realization lets us psychologically and emotionally see and feel each other. We truly get to know each other. The knowledge became clear to me that we all have the same model of the inner Self. You can call it what you want Words Are Traps. Our intuition is beyond words (intellect) and tells us the truth by knowing when we are centered.

A vision, bathed in golden light, a locution, goosebumps, hair standing on end, this is ecstasy, this is bliss consciousness. This was spontaneous kundalini arousal – research kundalini. Kundalini is the burning bush of Moses and the light that knocked Paul off his horse. Paul saw the light. Paul, Moses, and many saints around the world from all traditions became Enlightened.

Compare my major vision to the major visions of Black Elk and Arjuna.

This is my story. I achieved unity with Spirit inside myself. A person’s ego unifies with Spirit. This integrated state is called union in the study of Mystical Theology. I reached a permanently higher level of peacefulness while becoming much more settled. One undergoes a great feeling of permanent relief when one realizes that we all have the same Self in our different bodies. We become interpersonally aware of our shared psychology. We then understand what is going on with each other psychophysically. This is why getting to the root of our nature is called Self-Realization. Self Realization is really Self-Other-Realization because we eventually realize that we are the same inside ourselves.

Holy Mystical Experience! After doing research, I realized that the heads that I saw were spiritual masters. I was never exposed to anything like that before but I later found similar paintings and pictures. Our Universal or Collective Soul became clear to me. We are all ONE. The mystics of all traditions have tried to get this simple understanding across. I did more research and found out that God or Spirit will talk to you in a language and in a way that you will understand. This has happened to many people and is found in scripture, i.e., Paul, Moses, and others. I experienced the external locution of hearing Dr. Gay’s voice saying, “Words are Traps” and I intuitively realized the rest. I highly respected Dr. Gay and learned much from him.