Dr. D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966), who introduced Zen to the West. He was often accused by his Japanese countrymen of over-stressing the intellect in a distinctly western way. Of course, he was writing for the West so found it easier to slip into Western ways. His dialogue with C.G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who was covering the same ground is informative.

Suzuki has this to say on the matter of the Buddhist Enlightenment, “The idea is to express the unconscious working of the mind, but this unconscious is not to be interpreted psychologically, but on the spiritual plane where all ‘traces’ of discursive or analytical understanding vanish.”

Jung’s view, was “One cannot grasp anything metaphysically, but it can be done psychologically. Therefore I strip things of their metaphysical wrappings in order to make them objects of psychology … if finally there should still be an ineffable metaphysical element, it would have the best opportunity of revealing itself.”

The difference here is no-difference. Suzuki uses “psychological” to describe objects of rational thinking — all else, by implication, is metaphysical. Jung, however, takes a western approach and calls anything capable of being experienced, psychological. Of course, anything which cannot be experienced is of no concern to man, since he could not possibly ever know of its existence. This is not the case with the Buddhist “unborn mind” which is clearly experienced from moment to moment by those attuned to it.

Jung uses “psyche” to embrace all experience, normal and trancendental. Suzuki draws a line at the limits of the intellect, thus creating an enormous “spiritual” domain. Here the divisive nature of words manufactures an East/West chasm that does not really exist. Both are constantly aware of the non-dual totality of things — its “suchness”.

Suzuki’s gave us a graphic description of his own enlightenment. After a period of intense concentration and “samadhi”, Suzuki attains satori: “…this Samadhi alone is not enough. You must come out of that state, be awakened from it, and that awakening is Prajna. That moment of coming out of Samadhi, and seeing it for what it is, that is satori. When I came out of that state of Samadhi I said, ‘I see. This is it.’”

The next day, after the enlightenment was approved by his master, he walked home from the monastery and saw the trees in the moonlight. “They looked transparent, and I was transparent too.” From that moment he was able to answer the apparently nonsensical questions of his master out of a profound insight.

He later wrote that at that point he was not fully conscious of his experience. There was still an element of dream clinging to his consciousness. While working in America a greater depth of realization dawned when contemplating the Zen phrase “the elbow does not bend outwards.” He suddenly saw that the restriction itself was the true freedom.

Later still, and back in Japan working on the records of Bankei, he felt a huge mass of stones “that I had piled up through many years fall away in a moment. I found myself in the unconditionally restful state of mind of…as-it-is-ness (suchness).”

Suzuki compares man with a geometrical point where three dimensions intersect: physical-natural, intellectual-moral and spiritual. Very roughly, the outer world, the inner personal world, and the world where concepts like “outer” and “inner” have vanished.

We may be conscious of all these lines, but usually not to the same extent. Normally, the intellectual-moral is given emphasis over the spiritual. This results in an inability fully to grasp the spiritual side of life — “Doubting” Thomas arises here, as does the “God is dead” tendency of 19th Century materialism.

The intellectual-moral line delivers a dualistic view of life. It carves its way into the soft substance of existence, setting up categories and divisions in the way a sharp stone shatters a car windscreen — the whole view disappears and one is only aware of a spidery network of frosty fragments. However, despite this, there is a “persistent urge impelling the intellect to transcend itself.”

For the intellect to leave its own line and transfer to the spiritual is a kind of suicide, a “losing of life in order to gain it.” Suzuki stresses that there is no gradation here. It is a leap, a letting go as Jung discovered — for the moment one gives up the intellectual, one finds oneself on the spiritual.

This is the point at which one becomes aware that, “what is before you is it!” For western man, the jump has to be made from his intellect instantly to the spiritual; that is the moment of enlightenment. From then on the spiritual world lights up the physical-natural with a numinous glow that transforms everything, as Jung himself found when he let himself go on the 12th of December 1913. However, there is only one world, and when the faculties lose their distinctiveness they are seen to be illusory.

I’ve told this story before on other sites, but it always bears repeating.

Here is an ancient Taoist story which emphasizes that this world is Nirvana if we could only see it with the eye of Nirvanoception. The tale also illustrates the view of Shunryu Suzuki that, “Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity. What we are speaking about is moment-to-moment enlightenment, one enlightenment after another.”

The Truth in the White Mist concerns a scholar called Fan who, despite an excess of worldly honours, finds the evils of the society he lives in hard to bear. On the death of his father, he decides to retreat to the solitude of the mountains and become an Immortal. He finds himself a small hermitage and furnishes it as best he can with the few possessions he has brought with him and whatever he can gather from the forest. Day after day, year after year, he spends his time studying his books, meditating and, as befits a Taoist, communing with nature. He quickly becomes attuned to the pace and rhythm of the natural world and acquires a sort of peace. One thing eludes him however: Nirvana itself, the enlightenment he yearns for as the crowning glory of his life and efforts. Had he left the world of dust in vain? Were all his accomplishments as scholar and healer to no avail on the most important journey of all?

One day Fan had a visitor. He was a man of sagely bearing, but with a youthfulness that betrayed a successful cultivation of the Way. The man enquired generally after Fan’s health and well-being, then broached the topic that was always on his host’s mind. How was it that a scholar of such high attainments had not even found the entrance to the Path of the Immortals which, he added mischievously, was staring him right in the face? Noting Fan’s embarrassment, he warned him against looking for it in the beauties of nature: dawns and sunsets, the brilliance of fast-moving mountain streams, the high banks of snowy-white cloud formations. No, he insisted, look for it in the mists which creep and spread through the valleys like a shroud. And then he left.

Fan spent the next three years staring down the mountain sides at the swirling mists below. But of enlightenment there was none. Passing foresters thought him a true sage because of his stillness and complete absorption. Fan knew better.

Then one day he saw it. Racing down the mountain to the stream where his visitor lived, he burst in upon him, his face shining with delight.

“You have found the Way”, cried his friend, “I always knew you would!”

Fan explained: “I suddenly saw it : these clouds, the sun and moon, the passing seasons, the daily grind ~ they are all in the Way! Why should my thoughts separate me from what has always been mine. Just to live is to follow the Way, to be born as an Immortal! Not to resist life, to be part of it, swept along by it, that is the Way. To have faith in your own destiny, to trust life itself to deliver you where you are meant to be and want to go, that is Immortality!”

Ha ha ha! laughed Fan’s friend, “At last I have found my true master!”

The experiments of Dr Rupert Sheldrake, whose concept of “extended mind” is one of the more interesting developments in biological research this century, seem to have touched off a number of other scientists to follow suit.

The scientific journal Science is reporting the findings of neuroscientist Dr Henrik Ehrsson who has succeeded in simulating out of body experiences under laboratory conditions.

The findings seem to reveal that the mind relies on the senses of sight and touch to locate itself inside the human body. When the connection is disrupted, whether by illness, drugs or experiment, strange things begin to happen. The sensation arises that the mind has left the body.

Ehrsson used goggles, a video camera and rods to confuse the brain and create the effect. A sitting volunteer wore goggles linked to a video camera pointing to his back. Looking through the goggles, he saw an image of his back, from the perspective of someone sitting around six feet behind him. Touching his chest with a rod, which was unsighted to the camera, the split effect took hold.

Dr Ehrsson tried the experiment out on himself, “You really feel that you are sitting in a different place in the room, and you’re looking at this thing in front of you that looks like yourself, and you know it’s yourself, but it doesn’t feel like yourself. This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. In other words, we feel our self is located where our eyes are.”

Mystics have been reporting out of body states since time began. They are usually dismissed by science as hallucinations or neurological disturbances. The state really has to be experienced to be understood, however.

Until now science has failed to reproduce it experimentally. This study appears to have simulated the effect in the laboratory, while also validating Sheldrake’s hypothesis of extended mind.