Light

“O nobly born, the time has now come for thee to seek the Path. Thy breathing is about to cease. In the past thy teacher hath set thee face to face with the Clear Light; and now thou art about to experience it in its Reality in the Bardo state.” – The Tibetan Book of the Dead

“In Tantric Buddhism there is a notion that every dying individual experiences awakening and contemplates the infinite clear light of dharmakāya identical with his true nature. The consolidation (which almost no one can achieve) of this experience means the attainment of buddhahood and the liberation from saṃsāra.” — Eugene Torchinov

“As the self nature [of the Ground] is spontaneously present it transcends the [ontic] limit of a nihilistic non-existence, being the completely pure being-as-such of the empty luminous light.” — Klong chen pa

“There was no body or anything inside or outside. I was devoid of self, of thought, of time, of space, of a sense of separateness or ego, or of anything but the white Light. There are no symbols in my language that can begin to describe that sense of pure being, oneness, and ecstasy.” — Rick Strassman’s DMT experiments anonymous volunteer

“[S]itting with my physical eyes closed, my inner eye moved through a beautiful spiralic tunnel. The walls of the tunnel seemed like a living iridescent mother-of-pearl, and it felt like a spiritual rebirth canal. I was in the darkness, spiraling toward the light. The Light was God, infinite love and wisdom at the core of all being and reality. I had met the Ultimate Mystery and it gave me a reason to live.” — Alex Grey

“I saw how the white Light is all there is, and that this world is just shadows and plays of Light.” — Rick Strassman’s DMT experiments anonymous volunteer

“How can one describe, as other than oneself, that which, when one saw it, seemed to be one with oneself? This is no doubt why in the [Eleusinian] Mysteries we are forbidden to reveal them to the uninitiated.” — Plotinus

“That Mind is not [dualistic] mind. Mind’s nature is luminous.” — Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā

One night, a few months after my NDE, I had a dream:

I am sitting on the couch in my apartment, my belly is ripped open, everything hurts and burns there, I am bleeding, acute torment completely takes hold of me, I am doused with cold sweat, breath heavily and realize that this is the end. Somewhere far away, as if a thousand miles away, someone is calling 911 and in a terrible voice screaming that I am dying. My gaze settles on the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, its lamps glow brightly, the light is refracted in the faceted pieces of crystal, and the shining, idle and mundane, seems to be completely disproportionate to what is happening to me. Suddenly, when my suffering reaches an unbearable limit, through the electric light I begin to see a completely different — alive — light that seems as if it was always there behind a veil and now it breaks through to me, into me. The bright, quiet, and pure white Light of absolute truth, freedom, love, and beauty. Perfection. And the brighter the Light shines through the shroud of electric light, the more clearly I realize that the Light is shining from my heart, that it is my Ultimate Self. My suffering is fading away while the Light is growing brighter and brighter, everything around is dissolving in it, everything that I know about myself, what I consider to be my self is dissolving in it. And at the very last line, on the edge of dissolving in the Light completely, I suddenly realize that this is not a dream, I become terrified of losing my individual self forever, and the next moment I wake up.

“At a distance you only see my Light. Come closer and know that I am You.” — Rumi