THE CREATION EXPERIENCE by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

(This is the Third of Eight Major Spiritual Experiences in my life)

“There was neither non-existence nor existence. There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. There was neither death nor immortality. There was no distinguishing sign of day or night. That One breathed by its own impulse. Other than that, there was nothing beyond.” - Veda Hymn of Creation

August 1973, at age 36, I experienced what is now popularly termed "Cosmic Consciousness." The "Experience" was such that I didn't know whether I was dying, hallucinating, poisoned, or what or why this was happening. My experiential reality ("Maya") was suddenly stripped away and I was confronted with "God only knows what." I was infinitely small, a singularity, a point of view looking out through the eyes of a tremendous being of infinite dimensions, i.e., if, oxymoronically, dimensions were possible. Looking down at my legs and body, I was amazed that I was inside of, controlling, such a huge Being, a Kabbalistic Adam Kadmon, as it were. It was like looking out from the eyes of the Statue of Liberty in a way; "a Rockefeller Plaza Prometheus," alone in the Void. This "Body," this "Universe," was all there was. There was nothing else. No light. No darkness. Nothing!

Suddenly, the Nothingness began to separate into shapes and forms. I was witnessing Creation. What was assembling before me was a scene separated from me by a Great Abyss. Across that Abyss was a Mountain and a Sea off in the distance. On that Mountain, seated on a Rock, in the nearly identical pose of Rodin's "The Thinker," was a God-like Bearded Man of unimaginable anatomical perfection in Left Profile. Nothing seemed real; the perfectly round Disc (Moon) in the sky appeared stage-like as well (no radiance) (♫"It's only a Paper Moon sailing over a Cardboard Sea"♪).

I was observing all this as a Being of Pure Consciousness; the Life observing the Clay, as it were. The thoughts of the Man on the Mountain were my thoughts. He ("I") was asking him ("My") self the Eternal Questions. "I" the Observer, the Man the Observed, yet One and the same.

He never looked toward me. It was "I" who was aware of him, he unaware of me. He stood up, walked toward the Peak of the Mountain, his back towards me. He walked around, then down, the right side of the Mountain and disappeared from my view.

I next became aware that "I" was separate from my body. I thought, "What's happening? I'm so afraid." Then, "There's nothing to be afraid of; I'm all there is." Looking down from the right, out of my seated body, "I" suddenly had great compassion and love for this Beast, this Primate, who had harbored me for all my life. "I" was the god to whom he prayed for all these years. "I" was his immortal.

If not for me, he would have been the King of the Beasts in the Natural Order of Things. "I" thought, "When Buddy (body) dies, he hits the ground and rots. What happens to me? Where do "I" go?" This, of course, is a very brief, very superficial recollection of a much greater "Experience" that could fill volumes. It is what has been driving me to seek answers for 33 years to the Eternal Questions.

I have lived a Mystical Life in a Quest that has rewarded me with a wealth of "a posteriori" knowledge that corresponds exactly to my "a priori" experiences; yet, Absolute Knowledge was still not in my grasp until my 8th major spiritual experience which occurred December 8, 1976 ("I" am not here).

Of the 1,000's of books that looked for me, were read by me, a select few have given names to, and are in agreement with, the elements of the "Experience." The Bhrihadaranyaka Upanishad and Proverbs 8:22-27 exactly describe my experience.

My Weltanschauung changed after the Experience of August 1973. Ignorance is truly Bliss. It beats Infinite Insanity. Why do I know what I know? I keep trying to pull the wool over my own eyes but it's of no use. If you are someone who is truly spiritually advanced, on the Path, and not some quack quoting another quack, post a comment.
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"WHO AM I?" "WHAT AM I?" "WHY AM I HERE?" by Steve Savage

"Proverbs 8:22-27" is exactly my Experience of 1973, as is "Chapter IV of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - Creation and Its Cause." Both are reproduced below from the original texts in which I first excitingly discovered them. It is this about which I have been writing for more than 34 years, seeking answers as to what it was that I saw take place before there was an "Existence." I saw it all begin exactly this way, then posed the first of the Eternal Questions: "Who am I?" It's kind of like that song: "I wonder. I wonder. I wonder. But do I really want to know?"


This painting, The Ancient of Days (1794) by William Blake (1757-1827), is his illustration of Proverbs 8:22-27. It represents "the first emanation of the true but hidden and nameless God."

PROVERBS 8:22-27 (New American Standard Bible)

22"The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
23"From everlasting I was established,
From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.
24"When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no springs abounding with water.
25"Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills I was brought forth;
26"While He had not yet made the earth and the fields,
Nor the first dust of the world.
27"When He established the heavens, I was there. . .


The Mighty Living One, Alone in the Void Before it Had All Begun



BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD

Chapter IV—The Creation and Its Cause
1

In the beginning, this universe was the self (Viraj) alone, in the shape of a person. He reflected and saw nothing else but His self. He first said: "I am He." Therefore He came to be known by the name I (Aham). Hence, even now, when a person is addressed, he first says: "It is I," and then says whatever other name he may have. And because He, before (purva) the whole group of aspirants, burnt (aushat) all evils, therefore He is called Purusha. He who knows this verily burns up him who wishes to be Viraj in advance of him.

2

He was afraid. Therefore people still are afraid when alone. He thought: "Since there is nothing else but Myself, what am I afraid of?" Thereupon His fears were gone; for what was there to fear? Assuredly, it is from a second entity that fear arises.

GENESIS by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"


I looked out from within the eyes of the Mighty Living One
Who stood alone in the Formless Void before it had all begun.
Silent Nothingness was everywhere; there was total Non-Existence;
I, the imprisoned Witness by some Unknown’s insistence.
Suddenly, the neither Dark nor Light quickly began to tear apart;
From out of the tabula rasa of Nothing, Creation had its start.
Who was performing this magical production before my very eyes?
It could only be an Ens perfectissimum, someone infinitely wise.
Across the way of the Great Abyss and upon a Mountain Peak,
Sat a godlike Man in Le Penseur pose who did not need to speak.
As He asked Himself the Eternal Questions, mostly “Who” and “What,”
I realized His thoughts were my thoughts although He saw me not.
What if He had chanced to turn about and look in my direction?
Would He have seen that He was, in fact, the Mighty One’s reflection?
“Who am I?” was the question asked, observing that I am He.
And “Who is He?” was not asked because I knew that He is Me.
Because I know that He is Me and I am He, then I am Me is true;
The answer now I need to know is “Who in this Hell are You?”
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ALTERED PERCEPTION "NEAR-DEATH" EXPERIENCE by Steve Savage


August 1973. Two years after a career-ending divorce, which cost me my wife and family, my home, automobiles, savings, investments, servants, social status, etc., I foolishly married, for the second time, for all the wrong reasons, to a schoolteacher, a member of a prominent, affluent political family.

Relocating to a South Jersey suburb of Philadelphia, I stumbled upon a commission-only School Enrollment sales job where I was able to earn several thousand dollars per week, when several thousand dollars per week really meant something. After only one month on the job, I was appointed Director of Admissions of the Franklin School of Science and Arts of Philadelphia, a Medical-Technical School that was a Division of the publishing company of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, a then wholly owned subsidiary of CBS.

Blinded by my new prosperity, I bought a new car, new wardrobe, ate at only the best restaurants, and feeling a sense of familial responsibility, took out a Million Dollar Insurance Policy on my life; the beneficiary of which was my new bride.

One evening, late in August, I returned home from work and was greeted by my schoolteacher wife.

“Jimmy dropped by and left us a present,” she said. She was referring to one of her High School students, her lover as it turns out, and the “present” was a bit of cocaine which was, then, rapidly becoming the recreational drug du jour.

“I already did it before you got home, but I saved you some in the tinfoil on the shelf.”

Never having done cocaine, I was hesitant to try it because I was not sure of the effects. After reassurances that “It’s nothing; everybody does it,” I snorted what I thought was cocaine up my nose.

I WAS POISONED!

At first, I thought, “What the heck is this? This is nothing!” But I soon began to feel very strange, as though I were dying. Though I wasn’t losing my consciousness, I was frightened and kept repeating over and over again, “What’s happening?”

Suddenly, all about me, all that I perceived as Reality, dissolved into a Tabula Rasa, a blank nothingness. It was as if I were first standing, encircled, in the midst of an illusory curtain of objected matter that blinded me, blocked my view, to whatever was behind it. When the Curtain, the “Veil of the Temple,” was rended, there was Nothing behind it!

I am not entirely sure that I did not die that day, nor if I have slid into another dimension than the one I had occupied before this one.

The World changed quickly after this Death Experience. It was the same World, but Different.

One day, soon after, the Jews cut up their Gas Credit Cards because the oil companies were supporting the Arab Oil Producers against Israel. Almost immediately long gas lines were formed. Chaos was entering, disturbing the Equilibrium. People whose names I did not recognize were prominent in this Dimension, e.g., Gerald Ford, among other adoptees, who appeared to exist but could not be documented with certainty. Books were beginning to contain information that was not there before the Experience. I was stumbling across, perhaps bringing into Existence, so many texts, in such a way as to defy coincidence; a posteriori documentation of my a priori experience. They were exactly describing my Experience. It was as if I had assumed the consciousness of All and upset the Universal Balance, a new element added to an already full complement; the straw that broke the camel's back.

Most of my Blog, particularly the September 2006 Archive, is dedicated to my efforts to finding others like myself. I believe I have found two others.