I alone am. And there is nothing besides me for me to like or dislike, to please or displease me. Like a child fearing what his own imagination has projected into the darkness, it seems as though there’s fear of my own self-disclosure, the endless possibilities of being. My own face is concealed and yet constantly presented to me as a hole through which a reality seems to show itself, a reality as if it were outside that hole and pouring in. And this reality shows itself precisely as though it were extended beyond that possessed halo we call the world, its periphery coinciding with the outline of the hole I deem to be my face. It is not that the world is outside of me but rather that the world manifests itself in the very mode outside-of-me. The peculiar sense of being that it has is the sense being-outside or being transcendent. This is the essential being-sense of all things worldly.
The I in the centrifugal essence of its manner of Being, discloses itself to itself as though it were apart from itself and as though it were the other. It indicates itself in the absolute otherness of the other, just as antithetic determinations where the opposites determine each other in their very opposition. The extended, durable, transcendent, and determinate other signals the dimensionless, timeless, immanent, and indeterminate center of all projections. And you tell me, is there any depth in the experience of depth? Is there any duration in the experience of time? Is the experience of space itself something situated in space? Is a wave anything but water? The I permeates all things, and all things are but the smearing of the I.
Remember when Being hadn’t yet slipped out from the sight of our gentle recognition, before it dawned into its apparent concealment so that the moon could brag of its existence for a minute! And now you see the slur and not the ink, beings and not the ground, and yet nothing has changed, for there never was anything to change into. Now you are disposed, and toward what? If you can’t break the shackles of this enchantment, it’s because there is nothing to break. One cannot escape an imagined reality except by returning to himself. And even that is misleading. Has one ever left himself in order to return to himself? That which shows itself hides in plain sight, and if it’s not seen it’s because it’s the only thing that is seen. Thinghood is beneath us, the playground of the mind, of discursive knowledge, sheer blindness.
I retreated to the center, and there I found myself welcoming myself with abundant warmth. The host and the guest I was, and upon my arrival I found that all things were done for me, even my very arrival. No work could penetrate where I was. And what is work but the movement of the will to close up the gap between the seed and the fruit? Work cannot enter where no separation is permitted.
And yet dwelling at the center, I saw my shadow dancing in the periphery. I had to become the other in relation to myself in order for the other, God, to become me. And when you become a stranger to yourself, when you know yourself not, when nothing familiar is familiar anymore, it’s only when your true nature, the absolute stranger, becomes familiar; it is recognized in a flash of spiritual intuition. When the world is seen through in its shadowness, the animator is found.
Why be bothered by yourself so much? Why so much seeking? Why are you hammering enlightenment in the ears of the deaf ego? What are you trying to escape? Why are you trying to awaken the dead? Can the shadow ever find its way back to its source? Don’t you see that a shadow a nothing? Don’t pick at this human appearance so much. There is nothing to fix and control; there is nothing but appearance. Behold the appearing itself, for when you do you are not bothered by anything, for thinghood is beneath you.
NOEMAYA 
“If you can’t break the shackles of this enchantment, it’s because there is nothing to break.” That’s a standout line. “Maya, thus, is a phantom that is and is not” (S. Radhakrishnan).
“That which shows itself hides in plain sight, and if it’s not seen it’s because it’s the only thing that is seen.” That one is worth deep consideration.
“The host and the guest I was, and upon my arrival I found that all things were done for me, even my very arrival.” Mind-breakingly beautiful.
“Don’t pick at this human appearance so much. There is nothing to fix and control; there is nothing but appearance. Behold the appearing itself, for when you do you are not bothered by anything, for thinghood is beneath you.”
Your piece is called “The Absolute Stranger.” Twain wrote “The Mysterious Stranger” (“Satan” is the title character). No doubt Twain could have used your advice about not picking at this human appearance so much. He was much bothered. I cite the ending:
For as much as a year Satan continued these visits, but at last he came less often, and then for a long time he did not come at all. This always made me lonely and melancholy. I felt that he was losing interest in our tiny world and might at any time abandon his visits entirely. When one day he finally came to me I was overjoyed, but only for a little while. He had come to say good-by, he told me, and for the last time. He had investigations and undertakings in other corners of the universe, he said, that would keep him busy for a longer period than I could wait for his return.
“And you are going away, and will not come back any more?”
“Yes,” he said. “We have comraded long together, and it has been pleasant—pleasant for both; but I must go now, and we shall not see each other any more.”
“In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?”
Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, “There is no other.”
A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words might be true—even must be true.
“Have you never suspected this, Theodor?”
“No. How could I? But if it can only be true—”
“It is true.”
A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before it could issue in words, and I said, “But—but—we have seen that future life—seen it in its actuality, and so—”
“It was a vision—it had no existence.”
I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me. “A vision?—a vi—”
“Life itself is only a vision, a dream.”
It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times in my musings!
“Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!”
“I!”
“And you are not you—you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream—your dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me….
“I am perishing already—I am failing—I am passing away. In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever—for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!
“Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago—centuries, ages, eons, ago!—for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane—like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell—mouths mercy and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!…
“You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks—in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.
“It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!”
He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.”
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Thank you for your comment; it is an interesting story and several commonalities!
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Narayana Narayana Narayana Pranam Narayana as usual no word can match from UN realised but the same as you are. you have been enchanting through your words from day one.
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