Here is how Corey W. deVos describes these three perspectives on Integral Life:
• God in 1st-person refers to the actual phenomenological experience of God, in the form of satori, kensho, ecstatic reverie, and other sorts of “peak experiences” of the divine.
– from The Three Faces of God
Reality can and does of course “break through” the curtain of beliefs to reveal itself more clearly, giving a glimpse of what’s really here. And that may be described and interpreted as a “peak experience” in a conventional sense.
And yet, is it really a peak experience and is that the whole picture?
The label “peak experience”
It may be described as a “peak”, and yet it’s not really a “peak”. Peak is just the label thoughts may give it afterwards. And it can equally well be seen as a “bottom” since it may become something to chase. Or as neutral, since it’s just part of the play of life, it’s what’s here revealing itself to itself.
Nor is reality noticing itself more clearly really an “experience”, it’s more a shift of identification. And yet, when/if beliefs come in again, it may be interpreted as an experience within time and space, happening to an “I”.
Peak & mundane
To me, it seems equally or more interesting with the completely mundane and everyday recognition of reality as first or zero person. Reality can notice itself more free of the filters of beliefs within any experience, and independent of the particulars of experience. And it can do so through one of the many forms of inquiry inquiry, whether it’s headless experiments, the Big Mind process, sense field explorations, The Work, or simply just noticing what’s here.
The “peak” may be good bait at the beginning, and then gives way for reality noticing itself in the mundane and everyday, independent of particulars of experience.
Note: Reality = life, Buddha Mind, Big Mind/Heart, God. First person = oneness (God). Zero person = capacity for what’s here, the world (Godhead).