What is Nirvana?

When starting this blog years ago my original intention was to use it as a sort of an internal soapbox to put my own answers. It's pretty obvious from the blog title what sort of answers I'm referring to. Even the design of the site is meant to give the impression of a guide who's design was inspired from an amalgamation of devises to create my ideal of what would be a useful handbook. Well it's time to get back to my roots and start throwing in those experiences that helped shape my life.

Long time ago I was a very sick child. Shoot, I was sickly that I was skinny as a toothpick. Then my parents had a moment of inspiration and had my tonsils, and something else I can never remember the name of, removed. Now instead of getting sick every other month it was about once or twice a year. I was so use to being sick as a child though that I adapted and learned to function normally sick or not. Some time around the age of 11 I got sick once again but this time it was a pretty serious fever. Taking my usual precautions I took an adult dose of NyQuil. I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful that stuff was back in the day. The difference this time was some inspiration from some of the books I had been reading.

That inspiration took the form of trying to meditate instead of sleep. Brilliant! Well if I had any idea at the time how effective my head was at controlling my body I would never have done such a thing. Let me explain the entire situation. I was with a high fever, under the influence of powerful drugs, sleep deprived from the sickness, and pretty good at controlling my body. Having no idea what the hell i was doing I sat in the budda position and began to slow down both my breathing and my heart. Here's the thing, I never actually fell asleep. What did happen could be considered a very deep hallucination but the effect on my life was profound.

Before saying what happened there is one more piece of information. When I was even younger I had a nightmare where I was being chased by some zombie looking monster. Being all five years old and stuff I woke up screaming and ran into my parents bedroom. They told me everything was fine and it was just a nightmare, nothing was real. The next night I had the same dream but that time I stopped running and turned around to discover there was no monster. The whole thing had been in my head but what was most important was I discovered the talent of completely controlling my dreams.

Back to the hallucination. Time passed and without ever falling asleep my mind opened up to a dream. Well, there is no other way for an 11 year to describe something that is occurring in the head when not awake. I found myself bereft in an empty place. This is not to say an empty room but a place devoid of existence. The crazy thing about being nowhere is that there is nothing to fear, just a sensation of there being nothing else and when one has that feeling there is nothing for you to fear. I must have simply accepted the situation, but then decided to change it.

With a thought the world changed. I can't say whether I poured reality into existence or moved myself to outside the void. However it was done I was now in my room sitting in my bed watching TV. It was a new episode of Star Trek that I had wanted to wake up for. Anyways I lost interest because the world refused to stand still. When using any human language there is never the right words to portray an event not commonly felt. By the world not standing still I mean to imply it was rotating, moving around the sun, moving across the galaxy, and out from the center of the universe. Awareness seemed to be a new state of being and this is when I realized I was definitely not awake and could now take control of the situation. (Bare with me as I use words that don't make sense)

The world was rotated until I was positioned outside the window. Standing at window level I absorbed my surroundings and perceived the presence of all the animals. There was a slight hum that may have been the insects but the number of insects around you at any given moment is more then a person can comprehend so I didn't. There were chipmunks and squirrels running around trying to stay away from my cat. The birds were chirping and there was a ball of blinding light just searing my away. The sun felt like an inferno from hell ready to incinerate me. Considering it was a dream I brought forth clouds. Well that's not fair. I lowered the pressure around me which caused clouds to fall into the sky above me, giving me enough shade to see what I had been missing.

The plants were alive and teeming with activity. Even better was the wind and vapor in the air. Here was my first inclination of the intrusion of reality. When you dream you do not experience either smell or touch. They are perceived but don't actually occur. In this dream all five senses were present and this realization pushed upon me something different. I hate to say sixth sense as that implies something that can be experienced where as here there was sensation of awareness. I became aware of a dis-pattern to the world that linked everything together. It could be called nature or even the force but whatever I noticed it allowed me to trace events in a sort of butterfly manner.

My cat chased a squirrel up a tree which made it safely to a branch causing it to shake. That shook loose a piece of bark that flowed with the wind to higher branch and hit a leaf just right causing it to be knocked off. That leaf then was caught up in the same wind upwards and out until it swished behind a tree where it jumped off the wind and floated steadily down. Right before touching ever so slightly on the grass a bolt of lightning seared through and connected up through the tree where it met with a downward bolt. The connecting point at the top of the try split it open and rebounded with a crash the threw me off the bed and rattled the front of my house.

Slowing down my rapidly going out of control heart was the last thing I had mind. I was still stunned by the appearance of an identical storm to the one in my dream. The news had said rain was unlikely. It would take me days to calm down and years more to understand and control the events that would spawn from this one intersection in time. Leaving those for another day there is still the question of what exactly happened. Don't get all in a huf and tell me that was not Nirvana. Unless you experience Nirvana yourself you have no ability to dictate to others.

In some ways you would be right though. The dream was not Nirvana and no dream or meditation can ever bring you to Nirvana, EVER. Those who think this are suffering delusions from the human condition. One can never achieve peace and understanding by simply undergoing an out of body experience. It is not something reached by simply following instructions or being the perfect person. Nirvana is a state reached through random thoughts occurring as a result of a series of completed unrelated events triggering the proper enlightened understanding of yourself. This dream was merely my culmination but from this my entire life took shape.

Once you reach Nirvana you are no different then the moment before. Stop thinking of it as an end goal for your life. Once I recovered from that moment I became aware of the world around me as if someone was reading a description of it instead of being there. People, places, things, animals, plants, nature, etc. were all more vivid and connected in a way that had always been there but was finally able to perceive. Therefore the best way to explain Nirvana is to tell you that it is a new perception of the world you area already aware of.