I'm currently relistening to Adyashanti's program titled
The End of Your World designed for those who are currently experiencing abiding (permanent) or non-abiding awakenings (I got it, I lost it). It's perhaps the most helpful program I've found for those of us who are in this stage of the awakening. He also goes into discussion of what happens post-awakening, something about which there hasn't been all that much written about. According to him, whether the awakening is just a glimpse or it is lasting, the ultimate reality that is seen is the same. If you've seen the truth, you've seen the truth.
Attempting to describe the indescribable is pretty tough, but the best description I could give is that emptiness is Isness, Presence, Beingness, Spaciousness, Formlessness, Undeniable Nothingness that is inextricably full of Everythingness. Everything and Nothing are inseparably One. Many have called it the pregnant void, and this too is a pretty good description. It is emptiness that is full of aliveness.
There is the feeling of losing a sense of center. With a feeling of "me," it's like "I" move through the "world" of space and time. When we're really egotistical, we might say something like "the world revolves around me."
Upon the dissolution of a sense of separate self and the recognition of the emptiness/fullness of our true nature, we lose our experience of existing in a particular location within time and space and find ourselves existing simultaneously nowhere and everywhere.
Yes a world is still seen. Even if you're awake, you still see the world. Jesus still saw people, water and wine, a crucifix. Buddha still saw a Bodhi Tree. Enlightened people still see a chair or a table. The difference is that this recognition is seen to be secondary, more of a surface-level appearance of form that is arising from the singular nameless presence of All That Is. Everything is a manifestation of the I Am that I Am. Some call this Spirit or Brahman or Consciousness or Pure Awareness or whatever else.
It is the second "half" of the nondual Manifest/Unmanifest presence. Both are seen. On the level of form, in the domain of the manifest, individual uniqueness is still seen, certainly. On the level of formlessness, in the domain of the unmanifest, everything is seen to be this same one non-thing. Every experience is seen to be an expression of the same one non-experience.
Even the experience of everything/nothing is seen to be yet another expression of the everything/nothing itself. The experience of IT is not the essence of IT. The so-called experience of awakening is strangely secondary to the presence of awakening itself. Perception and experience are not the ultimate reality itself.
Oh, with respect to the world no longer appearing to exist, this state of abiding in nothingness or the void is actually a transitionary state, a temporary swing as we move from being immersed in the world of everything and form to the world of nothing and formlessness. Like a pendulum, we can experience either the manifest or the unmanifest. Eventually the pendulum may come back closer to the middle and you can experience the two simultaneously as if you are in two worlds at once, but then that duality of "two worlds" later collapses as well. I suppose it's kinda similar as how you can experience your hands being in two separate locations simultaneously. You can experience both "the world" and "not of this world" at the same time. It's not really an either/or thing, but Truth in its paradoxical nature rarely (if ever?) is.
