Encounters with the absolute...so someone has a spiritual experience and in this spiritual experience, they encounter the "no self."  It's fantastic! And they feel that the shackles that have chained them seem to drop away, and they feel free,  and they laugh at the fact they thought they were somebody when clearly they're everything. That's a very important experience to have. The fiction is that there's nobody there having this experience. Is it true? Well, yes and no. They're having an experience of no self, and who's having that experience? The self. But it's set aside for a moment in the powerfulness of the experience. And people say I'm enlightened, I'm awakened, and I now see, and the silence is with me, and there are many teachers who stop right there and teach that that's it. Now the spiritual, the correct spiritual response to a moment like that. If another teacher says, Hello. However, that's not the correct spiritual response to a student who's having that experience, because that's an important and valid experience. It's a very important and valid experience.

But unless somebody is guiding someone who has gone further than the student ends up trying to recreate that "no self" for the rest of their life. Now, maybe they stayed in that particular thing for a long time, but it's not the fully awakened position.  But it's a thrilling experience, isn't it? I want the experience of "no self" after carrying the burden of the self for so many years. It's so fantastic. So that's where our attention is because that's where our desire is, and that's where our hope is and that's where, so you can't crush that and go to student and say, that's not it. You have to have the joy at that point in having had that person experience the no self state. And then you say, Great, fantastic. Have you pooped today? No, I haven't pooped today. Make sure you poop today.