Freedom from Nihilism and Hierarchy

When I was seeking, I asked Ramana Maharshi to provide me a teaching (he was already deceased at this time). As a vision, I immediately saw myself fall deep into the earth, and then I became the dirt. A cow walked on top of me, urinating as it went. That soaked down into me and became a part of me. I saw that my essential importance as the dirt was equal to that of the cow, the urine, and the delicate layer of grass softly covering me. The air around us, the sunlight just managing to break through the trees... We all had an essential role, with equal importance, and were dependent on each other.

This vision taught me about hierarchy and nihilism. The illusory self, with all its automatic ways of operating, unknowingly creates a hierarchy. It separates the objects “out there” into levels of importance. With survival, pleasure, and success as its driving motivations, it’s interested in what it can obtain from these “outside objects” to support its mission of getting more of what it wants. In that quest, oneness and the simplicity of just existing are overlooked. We no longer value the dirt that we stand on, the sun shining down on us, keeping us alive, or the ability that we can even be having this human experience on this spinning rock. We have unknowingly separated ourselves from life and the planet.

When we suffer from what could be labeled as nihilism, we take a pessimistic viewpoint and believe there is no meaning to life. This is a natural phase we go through during awakening if we are prone to depression. When the separate self starts to see some of the truths of reality, it can have an inclination towards pessimism, seeing it as a bad thing that there’s no great mission or purpose for everyone to achieve. This is just conditioning and will be a passing phase. The truth is deeper and more subtle, and subtlety is not the illusory self’s expertise.

On a human level, we are born to live a life until death and be part of the ecosystem of the world, with equal value to any other animal. It’s about survival, procreation, and experiencing life. We have a role to play, and our existence as a human is an essential part to the whole - we are a part of the web. However, we suffer because we believe we deserve more than this. We deserve to get what we want, even if that’s an arbitrary moving target. We feel jaded if life doesn’t work out for us the way we wanted, then we simmer in nihilism, both knowing the truth of reality but also being in resistance to that realization.

There is a meaning to life, but it’s often not enough for the separate self. Awakening reveals that the meaning of life is to live, to experience being in form. So why isn’t that enough for us? I remember it not being a sufficient answer when I had this realization as a seeker. The illusory self wants to get something, as it thinks that’s what will make it feel whole, feel satiated. Living life, I’m already doing that, where are my awards and validation? It’s because we overlook the value of being alive; we take it for granted. Ask a person who is dying what their values are, and it might give you an interesting perspective.

Nihilism is a phase we may go through during awakening, where we begin to see that the separate self isn’t going to get all that they desire in life. Yet great pleasure and peace can be obtained by seeing our equal importance to the dirt, to the flower. However, to see this, we have to relinquish our own desires and wants. There’s no nihilism when we have complete acceptance of the Truth. As you sip your cup of tea, you drink the Universe. What could be more precious?