Ant - What an interesting post. Strangely I just posted something about BEING on Facebook. Here it is to save you looking.
“While in this state I sat opposite a large man with glasses. While he was talking I felt I could see on his body all the pain and tension he was carrying yet not admitting. He was saying he was fine yet his whole body was tight, his face lined with tension, and even the words he was using were telling me of his condition, yet he was not aware/admitting it, even to himself. I felt I wanted to bathe him in the peace and joy I felt but somehow he didn’t seem to notice. At this point Jan - the leader of the Enlightenment Intensive - said it was time to have a break, and this was a wonderful joke. A break from what? From existing? From life? From oneself? Where was there to go? Why did one even need to move? It was such a pleasure to just be. Of course there was no problem about moving, but one could do it out of this state of existing. Why did people need to move away from themselves and try to avoid themselves by running into by drinking, smoking, seeking otherness?”
But you are asking so many questions. Yes it has all manner of names - God; Atman; Being Consciousness Bliss; Advaita; THAT; the Big Bang; Ain Soph the unknown God and many more. There is an old Roman stone inscribe as an alter to an unknown god.
Here is another experience of the same thing: “I see this great giant of a man, I feel I mustn’t look at him in case I offend him, but he has such beautiful eyes. It is Life. I look away because I’m so uncertain. They are looking at me, those eyes. Look, isn’t it beautiful. A different sort of a human being, can I come and look at you? It’s like something everyone always dreamed about; the love you always wanted but never dared ask for. I love you. I love you. It’s the eyes of my dog as it loves me, elephants, dolphins and people who have poured out to me - life itself.”
There are so many ways people tried to attain this - but the simplest way is to BE it. Not meditation or struggling because you are it when you stop trying. but there are many ways see
http://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/methods-of-awakening/ --
http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/what-is-the-experience-of-enlightenment-like/ -
http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/what-is-the-experience-of-enlightenment-like/But do not confuse the nameless with the name - or the name with the nameless. “I became lucid in my sleep and was witnessing all the processes in my body, not as dream images, which I had passed through in another lucid experience. I held the question is there another level beyond what I am experiencing? Immediately I was in a state where I was nothing and yet everywhere, the ultimate state. Then suddenly it became known that there was a level beyond this condition. Then I was in the new level, where I was at the same moment myself in everyday life and in a body, and in a state without any sense of self and without shape or form. Everything, all opposites transcended.”
Tony