The void can exist only if there was something there before. We have a sense of emptiness when nothing is left to replace that something. Usually this is seen as negative. Whereas in the West we have no conception of this dimension, in Eastern philosophy it is the subject of much study. In other words, if during meditation I am aware of a void it may be because it has replaced my ego; but perhaps these two realities cannot exist one without the other; who knows? I have discovered this dimension only since I started meditating. It is a feeling of flying in a space as warm as my own body, as dark as sleep, and as quiet as a baby a few months old in the arms of its mother. Via this quiet space, this new dimension relying on the thread of one word, which in such moments is not 'maranatha' for me. Indeed it has no meaning in such moments: it is merely a container without semantic meaning. An empty word without dimension that accompanies me: I am in the company of my inane, vacuous mantra, and with it I enter a new parallel dimension, as close as close can be.
When I first meditated, I could not understand what it meant; I was just fascinated by the calmness and a feeling that I had only just woken up; it was as if I had reached the state of REM while still awake. This is certainly fascinating, even for a beginner. Then I slowly began to reflect on these sensations – there is no other word for them – that are wordless and thoughtless: a strange feeling of well-being, as if I were about to fall asleep forever, happy in the life I had led so far. It was as if I were crossing a space made for me, empty of any presence, even my own; as if that space and I were all one, as if the container and its contents were one and the same.
This is all I can say for the time being, and I feel it is quite something. Our group
leader says we reach our centre, and that it is movable and can change in time.
And in time I shall surely know more about this centre that I call the void. But whether
we call it void, centre or some other thing, these are merely linguistic impostures,
since the place we reach has neither words nor images. We could even say it is a
foretaste of paradise. His holiness, Pope Benedict XVIth, once said
that an orgasm is like a second paradise. A strange statement, but he really said it.
Obviously the word must be treated with care and understood in the mystical sense
in which he meant it, but I feel that meditation is a foretaste of what we can expect
in paradise. I hope I am not wrong, that this is not blasphemous. I think not. In any
case this is my report, my experience so far with meditation.
-A. S.