In the traditional orientation as found in the scriptures, the point of no return is not that of experience but rather that which lies between two experiences. In this interstice, without thought, without reference to “me-living-an-experience”, the practitioner accesses the space that the mystic seeks. Several stanzas of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra tend towards this impersonal experience which appears in a non-dual mind and will be resorbed(?) in itself. The experience is, therefore, that of the non-experience; the subject is eliminated.

Sloka 46 | If we mention, for a moment, the absence of duality at any point of the body; here is the very voidness. Freed from all dualistic thinking, one will reach the non-dualistic essence.
Sloka 62 | May the spirit that has just left one thing be blocked and not move to another thing. Then, thanks to the thing that is between them, the realization blossoms in all its intensity.

What we call the “traditional” experience is, therefore, an impersonal experience. In other words, the experience is eminently important and central to the individual who is constructed and validated according to it. But for the mystic who seeks to reach the divine ocean, it is, on the contrary, a form of hindrance. In the pratyabhijna cosmogony, it is the ego, ahamkara, that makes the experience “personal”: “[its function] is to appropriate and personalize the experience – to perceive it as ‘being mine’. “(Dyczkowski, 1989: 133). This identification of the experience as being related to the person is perceived as a lure (a lack of perspective) and only the recognition of Reality (what things really are) can lift this veil caused by of ignorance ou or lack of discernment.

By ceasing to identify with the body and the mind, the ego becomes an empty form. Due to their orientation towards something non-objective and unknown, the affective, intellectual and spiritual energies are gathered and orchestrated. (Klein 1968: 65)

In this perspective, the experience is made to disappear. As the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra suggests, it must be resorbed. The object always becomes secondary compared to the principle of perception:

“To experience this emptiness, the yogi must penetrate into the initial moment of perception (prathamikalocana) when he directly perceives the object and no dichotomyzing thoughts have yet arisen in his mind” (Dyczkowski, 1989: 119).

The emphasis is not on the experience itself, but on the appearance, followed by the resorption of the state that presents and manifests itself in the perception. Expressed in another way, we can say that listening and seeing are more important than what is seen or listened to.

Accentuating the resorption more than on what is experienced is a rather singular approach in the current spiritual landscape where there is a tendency to emphasize what is lived. Joseph Alter notes that:

« the term ‘ecstasy’ conveys the nature of experience, [Mircéa] Eliade points out that samadhi is an ‘enstatic’ experience. The greek root focuses on an external experience, whereas the orientation of sanskrit term is internal, though by no means personal, egocentric, or individualized » (Alter, 2004; 247, n.3).

In the “ecstatic” experience, the individual is present and the experience becomes a means for him to be something: a guru, a realized person, a spiritual person, etc. The experience is thus a way to attribute oneself a form, it becomes an end in itself; there is the construction of an image of myself. In the case of the “enstatic” experience, as Eliade uses the term and Alter takes over, the individuality is on the contrary deconstructed. The definition of tradition (in the sense of perspective) does not rest on form (a yoga pose, a particular experience), but on the way of seeing, of apprehending the phenomenon. In this perspective the experience is incidental. It is the way of integrating it that will connect the practitioner or not to the tradition; this is called “orientation”.

Experience does not bring anything in itself. It’s the way to apprehend that makes a difference. The clearer and more integrated this orientation are, the more the experiences will be able to unfold and return to their essential state of resorption. They always remain secondary as long as they fit into the traditional context of the orientation which explains that the experiment brings nothing on the phenomenological level, but that unavoidably will disappear in the non-individual perception, non-identified, non-egoic.

Finally, there is no break, because the problem is not in the form. From time immemorial, the being seeks what is essential in him such an echo that attracts him. Sometimes you have to get lost to better find yourself. In this quest, he takes the reflection of the essential for the truth. Life is a path through “épuration”, it is by experiencing what I am not that I approach the essential principle. Being human, incarnated, this quest is intrinsic to my being and oscillations are not a mistake, only allowing me to better investigate life and approach the intensity it holds in the simplicity of every moment, where the no experience exists.