Elizabeth Gilbert's Breakthrough Into Enlightenment

Quoted from Elizabeth Gilbert's #1 New York Times Bestseller-- Eat, Pray, Love. Japa Mala 67

"So now I have found out. And I don't want to say that what I
experienced that Thursday afternoon in India was indescribable, even though it
was. I'll try to explain anyway. Simply put, I got pulled through
the worm-hole of the Absolute, and in that rush I suddenly understood the
workings of the universe completely. I left my body, I left the room, I
left the planet, I stepped through time and I entered the void. I was
inside the void, but I also was the void and I was looking at the void, all at
the same time. The void was a place of limitless peace and wisdom.
The void was conscious and it was intelligent. The void was God, which
means that I was inside God. But not in a gross, physical way--not like I
was Liz Gilbert stuck inside a chunk of God's thigh muscle. I just was
part of God. In addition to being God. I was both a tiny piece of
the universe and exactly the same size as the universe. ("All know that
the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the
drop," wrote the sage Kabir--and I can personally attest now that this is
true.)

It wasn't hallucinogenic, what I was feeling. It was the most basic
of events. It was heaven, yes. It was the deepest love I'd ever
experienced, beyond anything I could have previously imagined, but it wasn't
euphoric. It wasn't exciting. There wasn't enough ego or passion
left in me to create euphoria and excitement. It was just obvious.
Like when you've been looking at an optical illusion for a long time, straining
your eyes to decode the trick, and suddenly your cognizance shifts and
there--now you can clearly see it!--the two vases are actually two faces.
And once you've seen through the optical illusion, you can never not see it
again.

"So this is God," I thought. "Congratulations to meet you."

The place in which I was standing can't be described like an earthly
location. It was neither dark nor light, neither big nor small. Nor
was it a place, nor was I technically standing there, nor was I exactly "I"
anymore. I still had my thoughts, but they were so modest, quiet and
observatory. Not only did I feel unhesitating compassion and unity with
everything and everybody, it was vaguely and amusingly strange for me to wonder
how anybody could every feel anything but that. I also felt mildly charmed
by all my old ideas about who I am and what I'm like. I'm a woman, I
come from America, I'm talkative, I'm a writer--all this felt so cute and
obsolete. Imagine cramming yourself into such a puny box of identity when
you could experience you infinitude instead.

I wondered, "Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was
here the entire time?"

I don't know how long I hovered in this magnificent ether of union before I
had a sudden urgent thought: "I want to hold on to this experience
forever!" And that's when I started to tumble out of it. Just those
two little words--I want!---and I began to slide back to earth.
Then my mind started to really protest--No! I don't want to leave
here!--and I slid further still.

I want!
I don't want!
I want!
I don't want!

With each repetition of those desperate thoughts, I could feel myself
falling through layer after layer of illusion, like an action-comedy hero
crashing through a dozen canvas awnings during his fall from a building.
This return of useless longing was bringing me back again into my own small
borders, my own mortal confines, my limited comic-strip world. I watched
my ego return the way you watch a Polaroid photo develop, instant-by-instant
getting clearer--there's the face, there are the lines around the mouth, there
are the eyebrows--yes, now it is finished: there is a picture of regular
old me. I felt a tremor of panic, mildly heartbroken to have lost this
divine experience. But exactly parallel to that panic I could also sense
a witness, a wiser and older me, who just shook her head and smiled, knowing
this: If I believed that this state of bliss was something that could be
taken away from me, then I obviously didn't understand it yet. And
therefore, I was not yet ready to inhabit it completely. I would have to
practice more. At that moment of realization, that's when God let me go,
let me slide through His fingers with this last compassionate, unspoken
message:

You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are
always here.