That Other Place, This Place, and Primordial Stillness

Mark Shaw - 23-08-2025

Almost straight way after my initial awakening, I began to see the interconnection of all things. They presented as elongated moments of cause & effect, beyond that of my immediate locality, where the boundaries of my current understanding of the physical and mental world blurred to include causality on a wider scale. Buddhism calls this dependant origination, which simply means nothing exists entirely of its own accord. There are whole books written on that simple definition - usually by people who are mentally entertaining the concept.

Regardless, this allowed me to see cause & effect from a broader perspective. For example, A table was not simply confined to the word ‘table’ - it had undergone a journey involving many interventions from many sources: water, soil, sun, humans. It became so much more than the word ‘table’. Objects became very rich, vibrant and alive. I remember watching the traffic on the road, and it was clear that the cars (and the people driving them) were simply the animated earth driving over itself.

Although this was a profound shift, I had just scratched the very surface. It was indeed very facinating, but little did I know how deep this was going to go.

About a year later, these interconnected insights become mediocre; I was bored by them - my passion had faded. They offered no real answer to my identity quandary, which appeared to keep spinning like a maddening vortex. One moment I’m identified, and the next I’m not. And on it went, back and forth like this for what seemed like an eternity.

Deeper

After the boredom of these insights settled, a very surprising thing happened on the bus. It marked a new shift into a totally unfamiliar territory that was completely unexpected. I was on the bus going into town. The bus pulled into the bus stop, and everyone began to stand up to prepare themselves for getting off the bus. As I stood up, I looked directly ahead of me, and a man was stood there. In the blink of a moment, I became the physical manifestation of this man. I could sense very strongly what it was like to ‘be’ him, both somatically and psychologically. I recall saying to myself, “ah fuck - what's going on now!”

I put my head down, and walked off the bus. Now, considering I’m in the town centre, where there are many people, I decided to keep my head down until I could figure out what was going on. It took me a short time to realise needed to be looking at people so that I could navigate the streets. Lifting my head up I was presented with the rich depth of what I could now describe as the collective unconcious. The undercurrents of what appeared to ‘drive and motivate’ people were exposed and in full view. Sitting down in a café to gather myself, I began to play around with this newfound vision. Sometimes it was absolutely shocking, and other times very amusing.

Later that week, I descovered that inanimate objects were not excluded, as I once found myself as the wall finds itself. Becoming the foliage was quite fascinating. I also quite enjoyed being a pebble for what seemed like a disproportionate amount of time. I would accidentally find myself falling into an unusual place, like a person's nasal cavity, which was a similar to being in a cave with foliage (nasal hair).

When I became comfortable with this new thing, there were a couple of times when I became a little too egocentric with it, as if I was wielding a certain power. I once disclosed – private – things about people to them. This clearly left them feeling exposed and violated. Suffice to say, they never spoke to me again. I don't blame them - what an unusual thing.

The Acausal Unison & The Threshold of the Mind

There are many such events I could write about regarding these very interesting phenomena (clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, recollection of past lives and so on) Perhaps we could refer to it as an extra sensory perception of another mode of reality not directly connected to the physical, sensory world.

As things went deeper, I recall spending time in whole other parallel realities. In one of those realities, the beings lived as what appeared to be a spinal cord, and they moved through the world by thinking about a new location. In another reality, I saw very intersting beings, and spoke to one of them. I later discovered pictures of these being in Buddhsit cosmology material: pretas and ogras. So, it’s possible to become aware of whole other parallel realities, speak to other beings, and even obtain new knowledge, as all was the case for me - there were many moments where my minds eye was filled with huge walls of spiritual text.

It’s a reality that seems to transcend all those imaginary borders we find in the physical world, including time, space and causality, but interestingly finds itself in some kind of acausal unison with the physical world. As these energitc patterns unwind into the physcial reality, they begin to follow the contours of the physical world and it parameters. They are then translated into a linear, time-bound persepcive.

The threshold between that reality and the physical reality lies inside the mind, and it's the egocentric construct that protects you from that – hidden – reality, which is sometimes called the deep, collective unconscious. It is indeed vast, and full of rich unfathamoble content. This is an area of mind that many Buddhists are trying to overcome. It is a thick, glutinous region populated by treacle-like energy, and many of its regions captivate even the most ardent and present-minded wayfarers.

Just to be clear, I’m not questioning here whether the content of this reality is a real thing out there somewhere — I couldn’t care in the slightest. They are simply figments of the mind; the particuaar way the mind tries to interpet raw, undefined energy. In that sense, they are only real up until the point they manifest as thought structures, sensation or images & symbols. This is more about contextualizing in a helpful way an area of awakening that can be extremely difficult to navigate.

For some people, the unconsoius collective content of this inner reality can bleed out into their worldly life in distructive ways, and can take on many forms, including mental illness. Depression, psychosis and schizophrenia are, in most cases, all manifestations emanating directly from this other reality.

I remember having a very sinister archetype totally engulf my perception. I had never felt anything so dark and sinister before - such incredible power. On the flip side, I was captured by the most majestic, and heavenly states you could possibly imagine, and some of these states had me writing and saying the most interesting things. Some people can write whole books from these states (Helen Schucman’s A Course in Miracles comes to mind and Neale Donald Walsch who wrote Conversations With God) and it’s my understanding that David Icke is currently working through his own collective material, but projecting (mistaking) his inner psychogocal world for the outer, physcial reality, as so often is the case. One does not assume these states as if that is what one is.

Interestingly, there is an excellent, real-world example of this other reality suddenly and forcefully breaking through into the large collective, (and is still happening now) which began during the lockdown period, where millions of people were forced to stop doing their normal, everyday things — thier sense of stabilty (identity) is intrinsically connected to their social routines which gave them a false sense of saftey. With that routine identity structure suddenly removed, this other inner world of strange energetic forces broke through.

For many, it was too quick and too soon, which led to a mass, global psychotic break. Although the mainstream news didn’t document this very much, this psychotic break happened on a very large scale. Interestingly, for those that didn’t fall into psychosis, they were charmed with very intense projections fueled by a collective fear, where all kinds of public figures, corporations and governemnts are being called to account. This is still prevelant to this day. It has spawned an age of judgment, which comes pre-packaged with various conspiracy theories. This all comes from pretending that this other relaity doesn’t exist; whether you like what I write or not, it does indeed exist. If you continue to ignore that reality, the gap will increase and with it the tension. This will inevitably be followed by behavoiural dysfunction, usually an increase in fear-based behaviour.

Integrating & Going Deeper

In any case, although was a very fascinating area of my awakening, I quickly became very tired with the never-ending content of this reality, as I was still stuck in my thoughts, cycling around like an aimless wanderer - to put an end to that was my primary objective. It did, however, occur to me on many occasions that any of these states could bowl me over into a further delusion, and at times this did happen, and sometimes in shocking ways. After all, I had opened the trapdoor to my inner mind, and I was acutely aware that the potential for anything to occur was a real and present possibility. I had to face my own insanity and my own survial instincts head on.

I recall one time in 2019 visiting a freind, and we we’re chatting about awakening. As we were speaking, a sublte feeling tone engulfed my body, then became very intense; my perception changed, I felt incredibly special and deserving. It felt majestic, powerful, charismatic and influential. The allure was extremely potent. I called forth an image to bring the state into clearer view, and an image of christ filled my minds eye. At that moment, I simply said, ‘ah, I see you!’. With that, the state slowly vanished, and I made a mental note for future reference, which went somehting like, “thanks, but no thanks’!.

Later that day, I recalled that event, and it was clear to me that I was simply offered a powerful missiah complex on a plate, to which I quickily flip the plate over. I came to understand how some teachers have been accosted by these powerful forces. If you’re not firmly routed in the phsycial reality, these powerful states can toally take over you ego mind. It’s a tradgedy, because on one hand, they can speak fluantly about these things and capture the minds of other people, yet on the other hand, they have becocme possessed by a power greater than their small self.

In another instance, I was overcome by a sinister and distrubing energy. My only option was to turn directly towards it and place my attention square on its various qualities. I recall that this took a great deal of courage and gumption, pulling in all of my resource form all four corners of my spiritual resume. Although not quite full-blown psychosis, it was indeed touching the very edges. Whilst having this collective reality open up, I was also presented with my own historical content; all the stuff from my life I had supressed, and some of this raw, energetic stuff was mingled within my own personal content, which made it seem like a thicket of thorns. The task ahead of me seemed insumountable.

If you are on the road to awakening, it might be so that you will encounter this terrain, where you seem to be able to do magical things, and speak to other beings, or intuit whole other worlds, see and hear people that are many miles away, or see another person's thoughts. Or you find yourself experiencing psychiatric-like states, feeling very special or very evil. If that’s you, and you recognise yourself here, control your inflated ego, or else things can take a terrible turn. You will almost certainly be faced wiith your own inadequacies and your own shadow material, and if you mix the two together, (the collective & the personal) it can get pretty messy.

Everything about you (all the hidden parts) will be painully revealed. Conversally, as your small self dwindles into obscurity, it should be obvious by now that the sheer power of the collective can capture your mind, and you might find yourself taking about lizzard people, aliens, or adopting a guru position and amassing a huge following, but with a hidden, and often sinister agenda - yes, that can happen, even thought you’ll speak in wise ways and capture the attention of many people, there’s parts of yourself that havn’t yet been integrated.

One moment you’re speaking about boundless conscnoisness, the next your getting angry at men becouse your hidden — father — parts have been distrubed, or you might find yourself fucking your women students, because your mother parts havn’t yet integrted. Or you might fall into the anti-authoritarian groups, or become a fundamentalist in your specialist chosen subject, which is now commonplace.

Whatever you do, as your ego begins to collpapse, root yourself back in normal, mundane reality. That is the best advice. Wash the dishes, mow the lawn, sweep the floors, spend quiality time with your family. The mundane physical world is the most realible cantilever for awakening.

The Materialistic World

So, isn't this a curious thing? What’s going on here? It had taken me some time to give this a language, but quite simply, this is a part of reality that is largely dismissed by the conventional world - even when the shit hits the fan, (covid and lockdown) people genrally won’t look inwards, and instead chose to project thier inner fears back out into the world. This is such a travesty. That is because most people are materialistically driven (even the spiritual seeker). They primarily operate using only the six sense organs, and their sense objects. That is all they know, and that’s completely fine. I like sausages, too.

Some of you will notice that I’ve labelled ‘six’ sense organs. Traditional psychology recognises only 5 senses, because they assume they (the observer observing the other senses) occupy the sixth sense, so the brain becomes overlooked. It’s similar to the eye not being able to see itself. Thoughts cannot look at themsleves without adding more thoughts (another observer) and that is because they (the self-driven thoughts) innocently identify as the continuity of their thought stream.

In any case, this isn't traditional psychology, and the brain is a sensing organ. It works using a similar mechanism to the eye: the eye detects visual forms, but the brain detects thought forms.

So that is the world of the sense organs - eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body (somatic/feeling) and mind and their sense objects: sights, noises, smells, tastes, feeling and thought objects. It’s a materialistic, egocentric place where we identify with the thought stream and adopt various worldviews, and try to – haphazardly – cobble together some sort of meaningful experience. Humans then find themselves at loggerheads with a reality that cannot fullfil that unltimate need for wholeness.

And yes, it’s important to have some sort of experience, and obviously satisfy the basic needs in the sensory world. This is not about excluding that reality; absolutely not! These worldly relations help protect you from this inner reality, because its content is just too vast, frightening and will shatter your egoistic laws and principles. For most people, it’s safer to remain ignorant to this larger reality. As I’ve written about above, a small glimpse could send you crazy.

So, for ease of comprehension, it should be quite obvious that I’ve broken this down into two parts (slightly ironic for a website that points to non-dual principles - and a surprising third part is added soon!) it’s as if I’m saying that there is one reality, the physical, sensory plane where we do human stuff, and another reality made up of, hmm… dare I say, ‘energy’ (there… I said it!)

At this phase, it’s hard for me to see that these two planes of reality both work in unison, at least in any causal sense: one reality has strict physical laws, boundaries and all those things, and the other reality is totally unpredictable and irratic. It’s fair to say, I'm often perpelxed, but I can see whats hapening: In its raw, energetic state, this other reality is simply undefined energy, until it enters the mind. At this stage, it is given form: personifications, symbols, feelings, perceptions, perspectives and meaning is attached along with causailty, but the meaning becomes the contaminate of sensory experience. Just look at two people having an arguement - their inner worlds are arguing with themselves.

Totally Gone… Totally Gone Beyond…

Now, what's fascinating is that there is a third component I’m going to throw into the mix here, and interestingly, without this third component, I would not be able to see these two seemingly contradictory realities described above. That third component is a rather anticlimactic ‘nothing’, which is, strangely, as obvious and often much louder than all the changing phenomena from the physical reality and its counterpart.

However, I’m aware that the word ‘nothing’ can be problematic, so for all those who want something more subastantial, this ‘nothing’ is simply primordial stillness or peace. Thich Nhat Hanh might refer to it as ‘the safe island of mindfulness’. It’s a remarkable signless equipoise that trancends changing phenomena.

This peace is without dimensions and has always been so since time immemorial; it does not succumb to the ravages of time, and causality, and there is absolutely no personal essence about it. It’s the integrator or unifier of everything I speak about, so it is fundamental to all physical and formless manifestations. Therefore, it is not exclusive of itself for it is inclusive of all – and the perplexity of this position (it’s not a position, but let's package it that way for ease of comprehension) is confounded by standing consciously at the intersection of both the materialistic, physical reality, and that strange energetic reality. 

Therefore, this ’nothingness’ affords an ariel view of a very fascinating spectacle: the inner — and collective — psychological landscape that transcends basic logic and reasoning. From this ariel view, human cosnciousness is seen as a maddening tapestry of oblivion little of which makes any causal sense, (samsara for the Buddhists).

This ‘signless equanimity’ is really quite important, because it unifies the tension of that perplexity around these two fundamental realities: the physical reality and the energetic reality. It smooths out the paradox such that everything is bound together into a seamless whole — and there’s no single word that can explain what that is like. In the fetter scheme, this is the 10th fetter, where ignorance is done away with. The word ‘consciousness’ does not fit here, nor awareness, nor spirit. While they may have helped in the begining, all of those spiritually nebulous, ambiguous terms are discarded. There is no qualifier whatsoever.

In the initial phases of awakening, however, this ‘signless equinimity’ gap helps unify the tensions of your immediate life circumstances, your relationships, your worldly dramas, your feelings, and, of course, perhaps the greatest struggle: your families and society at large. That’s where, if you do the fetter inquiry, fetter 4 & 5 shows you how to use this remarkable no-thing, and to become aware of this powerful and fundamental unifying element. But you won’t get access to that type of equipose until you have broken through the identity layer - the first fetters. I know some Buddhists who still trying capture that initial shift and have been trying for decades.

As you advance in your awakening, this non-dimensional gap, this sanctuary of stability opens wider to include more stuff, because, well, when you’ve stopped grumbling about your parents, or the state of the world, or greedy cooperations; when you’ve stopped trying to become a righteous, morally driven individual, or a prolific sharer of dharma, — known as the ‘wisdom trap’ in some circles - clinging to insights — then you can start to see other universally-driven principles and perspectives. Your inner eye becomes wider than wide, and wiser than wise. 

When you can hold more of the world's tensions, — and I don’t mean in a stressful way; absolutely not! — when you can be when all around you in chaos, this is a wondeful thing, because a natural transmission can occur, and if someone is in your presence, they will see you, listen to you, and might even get where you point. But you’ll also encounter people who are afriad or even terrified of you, and that’s ok, too.

Interesting, as things clarify, this nothingness, this signless equipoise becomes very grey, drab, baron and featureless. It’s served a purpose and now its becoming defunct.

This is the defining paragraph, so pay close attention: if you navigate this correctly, this third aspect (promrdial stillness, peace, signless equipoise or whatever you want to call it) is essentailly the penultmate stage to freedom, but it has to be all-inclusive the othe two realities, or else you’ve fallen into an extreme - often called lost in emptiness, nihilism, or the formless awareness trap. When all the dualistic tensions from these three realities subside, they implode into a natural and ordered state, which reminds me of a mandala. It’s a very simple and ordinary state, and no special knowledge or insight is given to you. There’s no circus or firworks; no crowd to clap your arrival. To quote a portion of Zen: the mountains become mountains, and the rivers becomes rivers. To get here is a tremendous feat; a true hero’s journey, but without the celebratory flairs and whistles. No one will care — it’s your own personal and humble accomplishment.

Affter reading this, you might have developed the assumption that I have somehow perfected myself, and this is simply not the case. I still have unintergrate parts that I’m discovering all the time. I’m just a regular human living a regular life like everyone else. I experience similar things to everyone else. I can get grumpy and frustrated, and happy and elated, just like you. The going beyond isn’t a removal of anything or another place different from the world. Very simply, it is an integration of my fragmented parts. That is all awakening really is.

As for the magic stuff, other worlds, and befreinding other beings - well, tread carefully, and if you notice you're wielding that stuff like a crazed, hubris intoxicated mortal, then get someone to slap you across the face… real hard! (or come and book a visit to see me.)