“[B]e ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Matthew 10:16 KJV
It was the day of, or before, my 33rd birthday, October 14th, after having returned to my hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, from a near six month-long journey in the United States, England, and Iceland, but it was my 33rd birthday.
Often around that time, I would close my eyes, gaze into that absence of the exterior world inside of me and see, when my eyes where closed, a winged figure raising and lowering its wings, like a dove, or a phoenix.
I was inside Z’s Divine Espresso at a table, automatically writing my name out on a sheet of paper with the digits of π.
3E.r1i4c1 3B.o1c4k1 3H.y1d4e1
Only the “i” in Eric was drawn with a vertical squiggly line, like a serpent or wave, with a dot above it, a lot like “i”. To me, at the time, the “i” was light, a wave and particle. Please, set the arguments aside, it’s what I thought.
I looked over each symbol deliberately with awe, each in a meta-symbolic way, much to my own seeming free-flowing definitions, and then it suddenly dawned on me that a Great Light was in the darkness within me; not darkness as in evil, but darkness as in the actual darkness within one sees with their eyes closed.
I became paranoid actually that I had discovered this ability to visualize this logic and light via symbolic thinking, there were people in the coffee house, and I didn’t want people to think me mad, so I went outside to get some fresh air on the bench right outside the main entrance.
It was a bright, glorious summer-like day, and I felt myself exuding profound love. While there, my cellphone rang, I answered, and put the phone to my right ear. The call sounded muffled at first, even though I could see before answering, on the caller ID, that it was my friend on the other end.
To briefly summarize what happened next, the call sounds, after a quick distorted feedback, sounded like a fax machine or MRI.
Pause.
Then long and lowly sustained deliberate tones.
Pause.
More long, sequential tones of differing pitches.
Pause.
Then quicker ascending notes, and even more fantastic tones rising and falling in sequence, which then became so grand, orchestral, high and loud that I could actually feel the sounds resonating inside of me in the essence of my being; in retrospect, like hearing the musical process of ascension.
Coinciding with this grandness of metamusic—it felt like it was all leading up to this—I let go of the combined sheer curiosity, fright, and awe in what I felt and thought while listening, and then my exterior vision faded, like a video crossfade, to nothing but White; no sound. It was pure White, and an utter, tranquil state of silence, where I could feel myself conscious and my body alive at the same time.
It felt like it lasted only one, two, or three moments, and then my vision faded back to this density of reality that humans commonly live in. I’ll stop my Enlightenment story there for sake of reading time.
What I experienced was one of the many instances of how enlightenment can happen to people. Buddha is said to have experienced it while in nature in solitude, as well as Paul in the Holy Bible. There are many.
Some yogis experience The Light through meditation. They sometimes suddenly see a lamp in their minds and it illumines their interior vision. A yogic student will achieve this from time to time, and then excitingly go to his master, as if a great discovery has been made, and his master will basically respond compassionately and tell the student to calm down.
The Essenes, or “those with the light within”, or “initiates of the light”, call enlightenment, being born of the First Light, or being born again. They also speak of it as the Baptism of Fire, which is God’s divine fire; White Light.
En-light-en-ment. “En” means “cause to be”, or “put into” or “put onto”, “light” is obviously “light”, and “ment” means “mind” or “state of mind”. So “enlightenment” means a “cause to be light put into a state of mind”. That’s one way of looking at it, and that’s what happened after inserting my name into the digits of Pi.
Simply put, when one finds the center of who they are, when they begin to know (experience) it as light, their eyes will soon open to it like a lid that is being lifted with or without their physical eyelids closed. You can only know it when you find out how to know it for yourself.
In 2018, I also had been fasting, or eating very little each day for months. When I travel, food becomes less important to me. For a few or more weeks, I bathed in mountain streams up until not many days before the phenomenal enlightenment experience. I also, so to say, confidently went about much of each moment with God in my daily doings, like reading the codes of reality all around me, and unlocking, more and more, hidden or secret truths: a codex for living.
My journey wasn’t all roses either, but the pursuit of happiness was happiness amongst the thorns, or conflicts that come to us in the various hardships on the journey of faith. I did not embark on the journey with no faith, though. I knew it would be a success, because I would make it that way.
Whether a forgery or not, The Essene Gospel of Peace, which I read many months after my enlightenment, accurately describes a variety of methods for achieving enlightenment; however, not all of them are literally necessary.
I do not consider myself a religious fanatic, or even a Christian. And going to church bothers me sometimes, while other times it is a Godly coincidence.
G. I. Gurdjieff stated in P. D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous that anyone who calls themselves a Christian is not a Christian. Unfortunately, this is true; however, one can always strive to be a Christian.
At any rate, enlightenment is a natural phenomenon sometimes experienced after long devoted fasts and prayer. Affirmations qualify but they must be completely sincere. You gotta start somewhere.
My seemingly mad journey qualified, and I often referred to the 13:20 sync app, which is based off of the Mayan calendar dream spells, during the last weeks of that long journey in 2018.
Why do we fast? Why do we pray?
To wake up and see the White Light.
More news ahead.
Hyde, out.
© 2022 Eric Bock Hyde
I don’t know if it was ‘the’ real meaning, but it was ‘a’ real meaning for each symbol that I somehow realized. I’ve forgotten. I had also been mostly fasting, eating very little, as I could get my fill from very little, was very powerful in all my chakras in a way I did not believe was possible. But, so quickly did I fall. I was not prepared.
It’s more like a lid being lifted to the divine after finding the true center, is how I see it. It’s like seeing the divine within and without, above and below, all around, visible when seen.
I haven’t experienced that, but I think I understand it to some extent. You found the real meaning of those symbols and then it seems like by doing that you were able to manifest a realisation of your experience. That’s what I can intuitively gather.
Would you say you were beyond your mind’s interior vision? in the same way that it is beyond the dense external world?
I look forward to hearing how it goes for you in getting back to that light.