Flying to America

It starts in the bathroom.

The smoke. The deep breath. The one that drops all the way to the bottom of the ribs and doesn't come back up right away. I hold it. The body knows something is starting. I get dressed to run. The gestures are the same every time. Same shorts, same shirt, same shoes. The ritual doesn't like surprises.

I step out. The walk to the treadmill takes a few minutes and the disconnection starts there. Not on the treadmill. Before. Each step strips a layer off the day. Emails. Conversations. Things to do. They fall like wet clothes. By the time I arrive I'm already lighter.

I step on. The belt is cold. The first strides are mechanical. Then the back of the skull releases.

It always starts there. Not the forehead. Not the temples. The back. Like a knot letting go at the base of the head. Something that was holding gives way. And the body switches mode.

My eyes find a point in the room. Anything. A corner of wall, a reflection, a button on a machine. I lock onto it and everything else disappears. The point becomes the last link to the room. Then the eyes close. And the point no longer exists.

The music does the rest. It's not the journey. It's the key. The lock turns and I go home.

I wanted to understand what was happening.

Not to explain it. To find out if others had words for what I couldn't name. I looked in neuroscience. I looked in tradition. And I found maps.

Neuroscientists call it ego dissolution. When the back of my skull releases, it's the default mode network losing its coherence. The network that builds the story of who I am. The one that says I, that remembers, that anticipates, that judges. It doesn't shut off. It disorganizes. Like an orchestra that stops following the conductor and starts to improvise.

The prefrontal cortex goes quiet. The brain that calculates, that plans, that evaluates. It goes quiet. And the insula, the region that senses the body from the inside, takes the lead. The zones light up. It's not a metaphor. It's literally what the scanners show.

The Hindus had a map. Three thousand years old. Five layers, like the skins of an onion. They called them Koshas.

The first layer is the body. Annamaya. Meat and bone. The treadmill under the feet, the legs moving, the breath coming in and going out. The layer everyone knows.

The second is energy. Pranamaya. The breath that's no longer air but current. The zones lighting up. The hands tingling. The back of the skull releasing. This is where the mudras appeared. My fingers forming signs I had never learned. Gestures from Indian statues performed by a guy from Mandelieu on a treadmill. The body knows things the mind has never heard of.

The third is the mind. Manomaya. The layer where the ego lives. The I. The me. The story we tell ourselves about who we are. It's the shell. It's the one that cracks when I run. It's the one I fracture every session.

The fourth is direct wisdom. Vijnanamaya. The brain that doesn't calculate. The one that knows without knowing how it knows. That sees things whole, without cutting them into pieces to understand them. I touch it. Not for long. Long enough to know it's there.

The fifth is bliss. Anandamaya. The pure calm of the caldera. The rock in the middle of the meadow. The little one beside me asking if I'm okay. I pass through it. A few seconds. Maybe a few minutes. Then I come back up.

The Buddhists had another map. Eight jhanas. Eight absorptions, each deeper than the last. The first four keep their form. Joy, then calm, then equanimity, then pure clarity. The next four lose their form. Infinite space. Infinite consciousness. Nothingness. Neither-perception-nor-non-perception.

I don't know where I am on their map. Somewhere in the first ones. Deep enough for the outside world to disappear. Not deep enough for the inside world to disappear too.

Because lately I sense there's something else underneath.

For a long time I thought my world, the island, the stairs, the meadow, the lake, was the bottom. That I'd built the deepest place I could reach. But I feel a layer beneath the layer. A stratum I haven't pierced yet. Like a floor that sounds hollow.

The traditions call it turiya. The fourth state. Beyond waking, dreaming, deep sleep. A state of pure consciousness that is not created and cannot be destroyed. That is always there, beneath everything else. That you don't reach. That you realize.

I'm not at the bottom. The map says I'm not even in the middle.

And that's the most beautiful thing anyone has ever told me. Because it means there's still road ahead. That the layers don't stop. That the hollow floor beneath my feet isn't a void. It's a door.

And the key, I already have it.