Open Enlightenment

The Folk Theory of Enlightenment: An Interview with Jody Radzik

Jody Radzik is the infamous webmaster of Guruphiliac, a site that sheds light on the scams, crimes and abuses perpetrated by the mad, bad and sad hucksters and would-be gurus of the enlightenment scene. Jody recently gave a talk on the Folk Theory of Enlightenment (FToE) at the Science and Non-duality Conference 2009, details of which can be found at his new blog, Shimmering Dead End.

As a fan of his work, I was delighted when Jody agreed to the following interview, where we discuss his spiritual career, the negativity he frequently receives from telling the truth, working with Kali, and the FToE.

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The Joy of Existence

‘Only Original Nature is’ does not mean that the manifest world is an illusion.

It means that all of existence is Original Nature, from the universe to the galaxies to the planets to single celled organisms to fish to plants to insects to birds to animals to humans.

However, Original Nature is not any of these things.

You are Original Nature.

But Original Nature is not you.

Ignorance is Original Nature; but Original Nature is not ignorance.

Sorrow is Original Nature; but Original Nature is not sorrow.

Change is Original Nature; but Original Nature is not change.

The self is Original Nature; but Original Nature is not self.

The opposite is also true:

Enlightenment, joy, peace and selflessness are all Original Nature; but Original Nature is not enlightenment, joy, peace and selflessness.

However, with the recognition of Original Nature, enlightenment, joy, peace and selflessness all arise spontaneously as expressions of that recognition, because Original Nature is, has and always will be free from ignorance, sorrow, change and self, all of which afflict the conscious human being.

(The first tastes of enlightenment are always the most blissful or awe-inspiring, but ultimately enlightenment has nothing to do with bliss or awe.)

It is ignorance that is the cause of the horrors of existence, being the root of all sorrow, loss and isolation.

It is awareness or wakefulness that is the cause of the bliss of existence, being the root of all joy, completion, and wholeness.

Evolution is the diminishing of ignorance and the growth of awareness; with this growth comes the recognition that change is rest, creation is peace, development is complete and life is meaning itself.

Evolution is Original Nature; but Original Nature is not evolution.

This is the joy of existence.

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The Gesture

What is ‘understanding’?

Forget those theories of the brain making a picture to itself of the world, and that picture playing the role of truth, and its manufacture constituting the act of understanding. Forget that tedious dualist crap, because it’s clueless and will make you miserable.

We don’t learn a foreign language by learning correspondences between words, but by immersion in the culture where it is spoken. We learn Chinese only by becoming, to the extent we can, Chinese ourselves.

Understanding is not a representation in the mind or brain but a penetration of consciousness by the thing understood. There’s a French proverb, tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, which translates as ‘to understand all is to forgive all’. Understanding is a surrender of self, indistinguishable in many respects from compassion and love.

The world of spirit opens when we recognise our perception of the rose is a part of the rose, not a part of or a picture in our mind. No great artist ever painted a picture of anything. Instead they let the thing into themselves, accommodated it, aligned themselves with it, were penetrated by it. This is seeing.

So how do we learn to see?

Vipassana meditation is one method. Boiling it down to a single mental gesture, I’d sum it up as this: include.

Next time you’re in the meditation hall, listen out for people getting it wrong. Fidgeting is the sound of failure. We go wrong when we react to discomfort; instead include the experience of discomfort into awareness.

Snoring is another sign. Deal with sleepiness by including the experience of sleepiness into awareness. This may involve actually falling asleep – as long as you include the experience of that too, which you can, once you get good at it.

Sighing is a common but subtle sign. The person who sighs has noticed their attention has wandered. They rouse themselves from this ‘break’ and the sigh is a token of steeling themselves for setting off again. But steeling the self is just another word for ego contraction. The vital thing is not to oppose the break with fresh resolve, but to include the break and the lack of resolve into awareness.

If we include the break then we won’t feel the need to sigh, because the constriction of the ego will not have been consolidated, only noted.

When distracting thoughts or strong emotions arise, include them. Do not react, but include them. Or if you react, include into awareness your reaction. Include, include, include.

Make a special effort to include particularly anything that pretends it can’t be included: such as moments of complete unconsciousness, or that sense of a detached, watching self. These are only what they seem to be. Just include that seeming. Any impression or part-impression of them that you can grasp, just include that, and you will have done more than enough. Sooner than you think, understanding will come.

This gesture leads to understanding because this gesture is understanding. Understanding is this letting in, this surrender of self. There is not a picture of reality in your mind, and no need for one. Your mind is in reality. So open it up now please – for Fuck’s sake – and awaken!

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What is enlightenment?

Enlightenment is the recognition of original nature.

It is called original nature only because it has been forgotten. It was never lost, because it is the nature of even our forgetting.

Original nature is recognised as whole, complete, satisfied, peaceful, free, unbounded, unified, perfect, over-abundant, clear, divine, good, just, loving, compassionate, beautiful, untainted, unconditioned and true. Original nature – being Whole – is its own self-negation, manifest as the phenomenal world; and so only original nature is.

Enlightenment is the recognition that you are not this self, in a world of others, and never were. You were never born, and will never die; original nature is both birth and death, because only original nature is.

Enlightenment is the recognition of complete and absolute non-relation between any one thing and any other thing, because where there is no separation, no relationship can exist. How can original nature be reached, and by who, when only original nature is? Original nature is the subject that searches for original nature.

Enlightenment means there are no such things as ignorance and enlightenment, and the path and the purpose are one. Because there is no such thing as time, everything has always been this way and always will be. Only original nature is.

Enlightenment means all things have no beginning, no end, and are a non-issue. Enlightenment is not the beginning of anything or the end of anything, nor was ignorance ever a problem. Enlightenment is not an escape but an intimacy with all things, because only original nature is.

Enlightenment neither means life is not worth participating in, nor that life continues as it always has unchanged; recognition of original nature manifests as the expression of the good, and the actions of the person who has experienced enlightenment reflect this, because only original nature is. A person that has no beginning, no end and has no issues is a perfect expression of original nature: boundlessly compassionate and peaceful.

Enlightenment creates a better world for everyone through an open mind and an open heart, even though there is no world to improve, no one to improve it or anyone to help, because only original nature is.

However, none of this is recognised unless recognition has occurred.

Enlightenment is and always will be an event that happens to people, because only original nature is.

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Lost in Translation

I’m only five satsangs in to my teaching career, but I think it’s time for a course correction.

In the past I‘ve always considered the irreverence for authority prevalent in the West to be a good thing. Authority is prone to abuse, and is often faked; respect should only be forthcoming when genuine authority is demonstrated.

In the past I’ve found the offense Eastern teachers take from the Westerner’s failure to acknowledge position and status a quant example of culture shock. I’ve also considered Westerner teachers who bemoan our irreverence to be suffering from their own power trips.

But then I had never tried to teach before; I had never encountered how easily people’s issues can co-opt a session (to their complete ignorance); how the failure to honour a teaching hierarchy (especially on my part) can allow others to sabotage the time with their own lack of integrity by holding forth with their opinions; how a student first needs to recognise the teacher’s function and their own reason for being there before any real teaching can commence.

I’ve experienced all of these things (and more) in my very short time as a teacher. And all of this is due to my own naivety!

My plan was simple: I would adapt a traditional Eastern method of teaching by holding a weekly satsang, where those wishing to explore enlightenment could come and ask me questions as a means of facilitating their own enlightenment. It would be relaxed, open and informal. As I was just starting out, I thought adopting a donation model would work best: the room was cheap, and maybe if everyone gave a couple of pounds, I could cover the room hire and perhaps save a bit of cash that could eventually go towards hiring a bigger and better venue, or perhaps allow me to buy a few cushions for our sits, or even organise a weekend retreat.

But the sad fact is very few people are interested in enlightenment, many cannot and do not recognise the function of a teacher, and some couldn’t care less if the cost of the room is covered if they don’t really have to pay.

I’ve come to the conclusion that we Westerner’s only really respect one thing: what we have paid for.

About turn

I like to think of myself as a quick study rather than a failure, but the truth is I have come realise that I am doing my students or the attendees to my teaching sessions an incredible disservice by not honouring the fact they are Western, thereby failing to offer them:

a). a structured, easy to digest teaching (perhaps in modules or stages).

b). a structured, formal teaching environment.

c). the facility to pay a set price for a given service. Let’s face it: you’re only going to pay for something you actually want, and if you’ve paid for it, you’ll definitely try and get all you can out of it!

So I’ve cancelled my forthcoming satsangs, and I hope in a short while to return with a series of talks/workshops that will cover my teaching in a structured, easy to understand manner, and with a set ticket price.  I hope this will naturally follow on to weekend and week long retreats.

I have gained a few formal students in this period (and I will continue to accept prospective students) with whom I maintain frequent, personal contact on a 1-2-1 basis (which is a bonus as no money is involved). If you were intending to come to one of the cancelled satsangs, and you are genuinely interested in enlightenment, feel free to e-mail me: alan at (replace with @) openenlightenment.org (no spaces) and we’ll see where we go from there.

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Everything I’ve Discovered (So Far) About Chakras

At the beginning I considered ‘chakras’ flaky New Age nonsense. Then I began spiritual practice and the sarcastic grin was wiped off my face, as I experienced intense sensations that corresponded to the positions where the chakras are supposed to reside. What’s more, these episodes seemed to coincide, albeit roughly, with milestones in my practice.

Yet at the same time I noticed these experiences deviated from the traditional chakra model. This decrees that the chakras are activated in a sequence starting at the base of the spine, and culminating with the final chakra above the crown of the head that lights up at the moment of enlightenment.

The Chakras: their Sanskrit names, corresponding colours and yantras, and their positions in the body.

But my first experiences were of white light entering the crown. This happened only a few times near the beginning of practice and has not occurred noticeably since.

Granted, in those early stages, I did experience at least one episode of energy moving upwards from the base chakra, but halting at the heart. Yet not long after there were episodes of far more intense sensations in the brow chakra; and quickly after the focus switched at a similarly intense level to the throat chakra. Since then, the chakras have continued to ‘open’ in a downward sequence. It now seems clear (supposing I achieve this, although I don’t presume I will) that the base chakra will be the one that opens last.

Part of the reason why my experience deviates from the traditional model is, I suspect, that at the time the throat chakra became active, I began to take notice of Rudolf Steiner’s writings on the chakras.

Steiner’s view is that the traditional model dates to a time when humans were striving to attain clear consciousness, and thus the sequence of opening proceeded from base to crown. These days, consciousness is old hat and everyone (just about) has it. What Steiner calls ‘new spiritual organs’ now need to be developed. The process of opening the chakras in the modern age therefore involves consciousness coming down from the spiritual world and entering the physical body in order to activate and open it to a fuller perception of spirit [1].

Although this is a model that makes much sense to me, and which I have consciously worked with, I should point out that I was drawn to it because I’d already had experiences of the crown, brow and throat chakras that had overshadowed anything coming from lower down. According to the traditional model, this shouldn’t have been the case.

Steiner states that modern human beings shouldn’t necessarily expect to open the chakras beneath the heart – namely, the solar plexus, sex organs and base (Steiner, 1947). However, I experienced the opening of the solar plexus on March 16th, 2009. I remember the date because this was also when I experienced enlightenment [2]. So my experience has now challenged both models: the traditional, which says that enlightenment coincides with the opening of the crown chakra; and Steiner’s, which states that the culmination of the process in modern earthly life is the development of a new spiritual organ at the heart centre.

I’d like to be able to offer a new and better model – but I can’t. All I have are my experiences and surmises. I think perhaps we’re too quick to rush toward models in this field and sometimes less inclined to examine what these experiences for what they actually are. We’re too keen to ascribe a sequence of opening, to look for a correspondence between that sequence and the process of enlightenment, and to ascribe functions to each chakra, whereas I suspect that what underpins these experiences is nothing as simple.

If we look to experience rather than to a model, what can we say the ‘opening’ of a chakra enables us to do that we couldn’t before? What is it that we suppose we ‘feel’ during these episodes? And what has changed in us when we claim a chakra has ‘opened’?

Body

I’ve read cases of people having such intense physical experiences during the opening of a chakra that calling an ambulance begins to seem appropriate [3]. However, if a person has an unusual experience and become anxious about it, a vicious circle easily sets in and it can become impossible to separate the body’s panic-response from the underlying experience that triggered it.

Panic attacks are not primarily a ‘physical’ episode, but a secondary physical response of the body to internal sensations, ideas or fantasies. An internal experience can therefore become physical, but it would be misleading to regard it as bodily from the outset. My experience so far suggests that chakra episodes belong to precisely this category of experiences: they are psychosomatic; or we might say they lie ‘on the boundary’ between mind and body. The paradoxical significance of chakra episodes, however, is that they enable us to experience directly how there is in fact no such boundary.

Another factor that leads me to rule out primarily bodily episodes is how sensations emanating from the chakra tend to dissipate as we move on and go about everyday life. Meditating on the cushion or performing yogic exercises, the sensations can become so strong it’s impossible to pay attention to anything else. But if we break off practice and go to make food, or chat with someone, the sensation may fade entirely, or pass into the background of our experience and become unnoticeable, unless we take a conscious moment to check for its presence.

Bodily sensations do not act in the same way. If there are sensations emanating from the prostate or thyroid, for example – which are organs that correspond to the positions of the base and throat chakras – then these will insist and nag at our awareness. Sensations from the chakras do not ‘nag’ but are more like states of consciousness themselves. For instance, if I want to intensify the sensations from a chakra during a sitting, or if I want to check whether the sensations are still there after they’ve gone into the background, I have to orient my mind in a particular way; I have to ‘find’ the state of consciousness that accesses the sensations. This is different from a bodily stimulus, which will follow me around and nag at my awareness.

That said, I’ve had circumstances in which chakra sensations have ‘nagged’ and ‘followed’. These involved particularly intense or prolonged periods of practice. During my last retreat, after a period of ten days or so, the activation of the brow chakra became so intense I had a physical sensation of something stuck to my forehead, which I could feel throughout the day and night, no matter what I was doing, whether I wanted to or not. But of course, the fact that I was spending all my time meditating was responsible for this. During the retreat my mind had entrained itself to a particular state of consciousness. So, even though a chakra sensation had taken on a bodily guise, there was still a non-bodily determinant in play – that is, a particular state of consciousness.

Once again, it’s important to re-state that there is of course no rigid boundary between physical and mental. Chakra experiences are a direct experience of this fact, but I think it’s important to examine how they are not as bodily as they seem and rely on the presence of certain states of consciousness in order to enter awareness.

Feeling

When a chakra sensation arises, what is being felt? Commonly some kind of ‘energy’ is evoked to answer this. Personally, I’m never happy with explanations of subjective experiences that lean on this idea.

‘Energy’ is defined in the physical sciences as ‘the amount of work that can be performed by a force’ (Wikipedia). The work of this ‘energy’, then, is presumably to create a more or less intense feeling. So in other words, the ‘energy’ that activates the chakra works to produce a feeling of the chakra being activated.

This is useless, circular nonsense. The reason for the absurdity is that ‘energy’ is a quantitative concept and becomes problematic when applied to subjective experience. What matters about chakra experiences is not their quantitative aspect but what the hell they mean. Chakra experiences are qualitative – until, perhaps, the day arrives when we have an accurate means of measuring them. A chakra experience is a feeling.

For me, an open chakra feels as if the body were open to the outside world at its physical location. Sometimes – if the experience is intense – it feels like the opposite, as if there were a hard object (such as a pebble) embedded in the body.

There is also a sensation of flow between the perceived opening or object in the body and the outside world. This sensation is probably where the temptation to use the word ‘energy’ comes from. The idea that energy somehow ‘flows’ is so prevalent that we’re hardly aware it’s only a metaphor.

It’s also tempting to conclude that what is flowing in or out is ‘consciousness’ or some kind of ‘life-force’. If we limit ourselves purely to observation of the experience itself, the sensation of flow is extremely blissful – sometimes paradoxically so, to the point of agitation. ‘Bliss’ is the unhindered investment of awareness into the immediate reality of being alive. In other words, bliss is simply the absence of the other stupid crap (worries, attachments, distractions, etc.) that is usually bothering us. Small wonder, then, if we have the experience of some kind of ‘consciousness’ or ‘essence’ streaming in or out. But I’d suggest that this seeming ‘life-force’ is actually not a thing at all, but merely the absence of everyday crap.

I don’t mean to reduce the value of these experiences by describing them as ‘feelings’, because feelings are fine and mysterious things.

All feelings arise in the body, yet not all are of the body. Those associated with pain or pleasure arise from bodily stimuli and are indeed clearly of the body. But others, such as common emotions like ’shame’ or ‘jealousy’, or more exotic feelings, such as ‘the feeling of having been taken advantage of’, cannot be induced by doing anything physical to the body, yet they induce bodily sensations and are instantly recognisable because they have a unique quality all their own.

As I’ve argued above, chakra sensations are not simple bodily feelings because they depend upon a state of consciousness. Bodily feelings work in an opposite direction: they attract our awareness to them, rather than depending on awareness to be there in the first instance in order to make themselves known. Furthermore, the bliss that radiates from or into the apparent opening or object in the body during a chakra experience contrasts with the pain that would emanate if the wound or foreign object were truly bodily.

Chakra sensations are, then, more like emotions that physical sensations. They are in the body but not of it. They depend on a certain state of consciousness in order to become apparent. Yet at the same time, they do indeed arise at a specific physical point. Like a complex emotion, there is a sense during these experiences that the effect of something non-bodily is being expressed bodily. In the case of an emotion, it is usually fairly easy to trace that ‘non-bodily’ something to an idea, thought or fantasy. If we feel shame, for instance, we don’t have to search hard or far within our thoughts to discover where it is coming from. What is so remarkable about chakra sensations, however, is that nothing lies behind them.

An open chakra feels like an emotion with nothing as its cause.

Organs

I don’t mean to rule out entirely the bodily or the physical from our approach, but I do want to cast doubt on those explanations framed largely in physical terms.

Major endocrine glands. (Male on the left, female on the right.) 1. Pineal gland 2. Pituitary gland 3. Thyroid gland 4. Thymus 5. Adrenal gland 6. Pancreas 7. Ovary 8. Testis.

We can’t rule out the physical because the sine qua non of a chakra experience is that it occurs at a particular location in the body. It has long been noted that the locations of the chakras correspond with the organs of the endocrine system. The chakras at the sex-organs, solar plexus, heart, throat and brow correspond with the position in the body of the ovaries / testes, pancreas / adrenal glands, thymus, thyroid and pituitary / pineal gland.

I recently came across a passage in a memoir by writer Hilary Mantel that describes her struggle with serious illness, including a failure of the thyroid gland. This organ maps onto the ‘throat’ chakra, which is traditionally associated with powers of communication. During the time her thyroid problem went undiagnosed, Mantel describes how she was no longer able to think clearly and had lost her capacity for ’snappy summation’. In her writing she experienced difficulty getting to the point and couldn’t avoid dwelling on minor details. She expresses surprise that an organic illness could have such a specific psychological effect, and draws the following conclusion:

The hormonal profile of an individual determines much of the manifest personality. If you skew the endocrine system, you lose the pathways to self. When endocrine patterns change it alters the way you think and feel. One shift in the pattern tends to trip another. (Mantel 2004: 221)

I’m not qualified to pronounce on the endocrine system, so I’ll limit my observations. But as we turn to the theme of what the chakras ‘do’ or what they’re ‘for’, I’d be reluctant to rule the endocrine system out of account. The correspondence between the organs of this system and the positions of the chakras is just too exact.

However, I don’t think it’s necessary to assume that the endocrine organs are the ’seat’ of particular capacities, in the way that popular summaries of the traditional chakra model suggest. For instance: that the solar plexus (pancreas / adrenal glands) is the seat of ‘will power’; or the chest (thymus) is the seat of ‘compassion’ [4].

What are these ‘capacities’ anyway? They’re certainly not functions of the physical body that depend upon organs in the same way as respiration, digestion and reproduction.

We couldn’t speak without a tongue, but it would be wrong to assume the tongue is the organ of language. Without a tongue we could still communicate (through writing, for instance) because language itself is not a bodily function and has a reach beyond the body. Compassion, I’d argue, is similar in its scope. In most adults the thymus gland, which sits in the location of the heart chakra (‘compassion’) is hardly active and often disintegrates over time (Wikipedia), but that does not prevent adults from manifesting compassion in many different ways. Neither does the fact that a person may never in their lives have had an experience of the heart chakra. Yet, as Hilary Mantel’s experience suggests, it’s conceivable that bodily organs may yet perform some role in capacities like these that is more immediately helpful than we imagine. It is unlikely to be a specific or exclusive role, however.

Function

If I were asked what my discovery and activation of chakras has enabled me to do that I couldn’t before, my first response would be to question what ‘activation’ really means. I’ve had experiences of five chakras in total, but I’d say that only two of them have become habitual and require none or only a little effort to tune into. I’d conclude from this that only two of the chakras are worth describing as ‘opened’ in my case; and two are ‘partially opened’.

The crown chakra I experienced at the start of my practice, but never since. I suspect its appearance signifies an initiation into spiritual awareness, and that once a person has experienced this it fades into the background forever. The experience it provided of bodily sensations somehow above and outside the body certainly seems to suit it to this purpose, but this is only my surmise.

The brow and throat chakras also opened spontaneously as a result of meditation practice. The brow chakra seems particularly closely related to meditation practice, and is so much a part of my daily experience that when I meditate I only need to turn awareness to this part of the body to feel the chakra doing its thing. I suspect there is a close association between the state of consciousness required to become aware of the brow chakra and those states of mind known within the Buddhist tradition as the first four concentration jhanas [5].

Activation of the brow chakra feels like the sense of self melting into reality and the two becoming one. It feels like having a new eye that enables us to apprehend non-duality directly, which I suspect is why it has been dubbed ‘the third eye’.

The throat chakra spontaneously kicks off during meditation from time to time. I’ve also noticed it activating outside formal practice, sometimes during social situations. When I’ve attended classes with enlightened teachers, it has seemed especially prone to start working.

The sensations from this chakra are like moments of intimacy with another when the heart seems to rise with tenderness into the mouth; or that feeling of excited release when the perfect words to express an idea or situation have arisen, and – although they haven’t declared themselves to consciousness yet – we know they’ll be there when we open up and speak. There is also a sense of exquisite vulnerability to the other, but without any taint of anxiety or fear.

Sensations from the heart chakra started to arise after I performed a kundalini yoga kriya for forty consecutive days that promised to accomplish precisely this (Rattan 1988: ‘Heart Opener’). I’d reached the conclusion that it wasn’t going to open by itself without a little push. The sensations began before the forty days were up, and at first were weak compared to how they seem now. I’m still not convinced this chakra is fully ‘open’. However, it has since become the usual limit of my practice in this field; it’s the one ‘I’m currently working on’, and it requires some effort on my part to tune into it.

When I feel it clearly, the sensation from this chakra takes the form of a very hard object in the centre of my chest, which sometimes pulsates. To intensify the sensation requires a degree of surrender that feels uncomfortable the more it’s applied. The bliss is not as detached from everyday reality as the throat and brow chakras; it’s the type of bliss that comes from acceptance of failings and sufferings, from throwing ourselves into the middle of our crap, not from relishing our current freedom from it. The heart chakra strikes me as the first ‘grown-up’ chakra, and I suspect subsequent chakras may get more and more challenging as I work my way down.

The solar plexus chakra was another I ‘forced’ with a kundalini kriya (Rattan 1988: ‘The Navel Center & Elimination’). I practised the kriya for a few weeks until my entry into fourth path (which seemed purely a result of the meditation I was doing in parallel) cracked it open perhaps earlier than it might have opened otherwise. Indeed, my entry into fourth path was accompanied by powerful sensations from this chakra that I mistook for physical vibrations from a neighbour’s washing-machine! The sensations faded after a few days and have now become the ‘wild frontier’ of my practice, which I experience only occasionally.

The sensations from this chakra are more inclusive, embracing the entire bodymind. They include an impression of rapid vibration or flickering, as if both mind and body were an image being projected from the solar plexus. Between the flickers is nothingness, provoking a vivid awareness that my existence depends on the continued willingness of nothingness to project me. The awareness that ’something’ is causing my existence highlights issues of will, assertion and strength. When this chakra is active these issues are suddenly far more contingent. It is clear that my vitality lies not in me, but in the thing by whose grace my bodymind continues to appear.

I’ve recently started work on the next chakra down, the sex organ chakra, but there have been no results so far – and I don’t presume that there necessarily ever will be!

Capability

It would be wrong if I claimed that experience of the heart chakra had given me greater compassion; or the third-eye had given me the ability to see non-duality. Viewing a chakra experience as the acquisition of a capacity does not do justice to the subtlety of what’s going on.

The penny dropped during a meditation retreat, when I described to the teacher the uncomfortable sensations I was feeling in the heart chakra. ‘What would help unblock those feelings and move them through?’ she asked. I went away and examined the experience for a few days, and the answer surprised me: More of the same!

Chakra experiences are not a signal that we have arrived at some kind of attainment or crisis; they are that attainment or crisis. Consider: the condition on which there can be compassion is the existence of suffering. So to practice compassion we require nothing other than suffering. What certainly isn’t necessary (or possible) is ‘to become a compassionate person’; all we need do is wade out into the shit and get stuck in.

The heart chakra experience delivered me into the shit. In the same way, the brow chakra experience was not ‘giving’ me the ability to see non-dualistically, it is that way of seeing. Likewise, the solar plexus chakra is the experience that my strength belongs to something not-me; and the throat chakra shows the way to communicate with another is surrender to the other entirely. These chakra experiences have never given me anything; indeed, from the perspective of the everyday mind, they have taken things away.

Earlier I described these experiences as like an emotion with nothing as its cause. Perhaps we’re in a position now to appreciate how such a thing is not as redundant as it sounds.

The everyday mind finds the origin of its feelings in the self. There would not be anger, shame, happiness or excitement without a self telling itself stories that cause these feelings to arise. But chakra experiences, I’d suggest, belong to an order of experience that might be described as ‘transpersonal emotions’. They are not ‘our’ feelings; they are feelings with nothing as their cause.

Rudolf Steiner referred to human evolution as involving the growth of ‘new spiritual organs’:

[O]ut of our state of being enclosed within ourselves we can develop spiritual eyes and spiritual ears if we work at this ever and ever again. (Steiner 2004: 10)

The chakras would seem to be ’spiritual organs’ of this type, because they enable us to feel emotions that arise not from our engagement with the story of self, but from a transpersonal source. They seem to offer an opportunity for seeing and engaging with the world in a different way, but not by offering ‘extra’ capacities. Instead, they take away different aspects of the capacity for self.

At the beginning of life our physical sense organs offer the opportunity to rise from unconsciousness and perceive the world in terms of self and other. Chakra experiences are the possibility of a second wave of development. Whereas practices such as vipassana meditation allow us to extend our understanding beyond dualistic perception, the chakras offer a similar route for the emotions.

We are free to understand these experiences how we please. This article represents my understanding so far, but I imagine there are many possible directions through this territory, which accounts for the wide discrepancies between the experiences of practitioners in this field, and why it’s so hard to offer a model for the sequence and function of the chakras that fits them all.

My conclusions are these: that there is no necessary order to the chakras and they do not correspond rigidly to the attainment of enlightenment. These experiences are an emotional expression of non-duality. They make their appearance on the boundary between body and mind, which affords us a direct experience of the paradoxical nature of this boundary. They also have a strong transpersonal and non-causal aspect, which I have described as being ‘like emotions with nothing as their cause’.

In the everyday mind the closest thing to ‘a feeling that does not arise from the self’ would be a perception – that is, something which enters the senses from the outside world. Another way of describing chakra experiences, then, might be to say they are feelings that are true.

This causes me to wonder whether neglect of this field of practice might result in an understanding of enlightenment that lacks an emotional or bodily basis, and is somewhat ‘autistic’ as a result.

Notes

[1] See Steiner (1947) and Lowndes (2001).

[2] ‘Enlightenment’ will be defined here as the capacity to perceive in real time the non-dualistic nature of reality. The experience I mention is defined more technically within the tradition of Theravada Buddhism as awakening into ‘fourth path’.

[3] Consider, for instance, the intense experiences described in Hine (1987).

[4] The full list of chakra capacities usually looks something like this: Base chakra = ’stability’; sex organs = ‘creativity’; solar plexus = ‘power’; chest = ‘compassion’; throat = ‘communication’; brow = ‘intuition’; crown = ‘divine knowledge’. This list was summarised from Dharam & O’Keefe (2002).

[5] See Ingram (2008: 167f) for a helpfully clear description of these.

References

Guru Dharam Singh Kalsa & Darryl O’Keefe (2002). Kundalini: The Essence of Yoga. London: Gaia Books.

Phil Hine (1987). Kundalini: A Personal Approach.

Daniel M. Ingram (2008). Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book. London: Aeon.

Florin Lowndes (2001). Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart: The Fundamental Spiritual Exercises of Rudolf Steiner. Forest Row, East Sussex: Sophia Books / Rudolf Steiner Press.

Hilary Mantel (2004). Giving Up The Ghost. London: Harper Perennial.

Guru Rattan Kaur Khalsa (1988). Transitions to a Heart Centered World Through the Kundalini Yoga and Meditations of Yogi Bhajan. Yoga Technology.

Rudolf Steiner (1947). Knowledge of the Higher Worlds And Its Attainment. Translated by George Metaxa. The Anthroposophic Press.

Rudolf Steiner (2004). Secret Brotherhoods and the Mystery of the Human Double. Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press.

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The Dirty Little Secret of Awakening

There is something wrong with the Dharma.

A sickness is festering, unchecked, in the shadows of the great Saints, Sages and Prophets. Its symptoms include the countless examples of psychological, physical, and sexual abuses visited upon students and devotees by gurus, the financial exploitation, corruption, fraud, murder and drug abuse perpetrated by teachers from both the East and West, the political infighting evident in every major lineage and school, the outright failure of many traditions in producing awakened practitioners, the reluctance of genuinely awakened individuals in coming forward and openly discussing enlightenment, and the casual racism, sexism, fascism and homophobia still found in ‘spiritual culture’.

Ironically, all of this is the result of an endeavour to uphold the highest standards of morality.

Gestation

It’s been just over nine months since my final awakening, and I’ve recently become aware of how easily I became infected with the sickness, and since beginning to teach, the potential for just how severe the symptoms could become.

Since beginning this blog last year, we’ve been visited by a number of individuals who are so badly infected by the sickness that their only chance of recovery – if any – is a Dharma lobotomy. I expect that what I’m going to write here is probably going to attract more of this type, and probably with further accusations of my awakening being anything but genuine or full (see how many times you can spot something that can’t possibly mean I’m enlightened). But if the Dharma is ever going to recover, someone has to bite the bullet and expose the Dirty Little Secret no one wishes to address.

Early detection

Post-awakening is just as much a learning curve as pre-awakening. For a couple of months after my awakening, I felt like I had been emptied out. I was effortlessly present, blissed out, calm and contented. I had of course experienced something similar with my peak and partial awakenings, and so I knew that this state wouldn’t last forever.

So what had permanently changed?

Although many gurus speak about the eradication of the ego or the self, I already knew pre-awakening that many genuine teachers found this model inaccurate and misleading; and my experience confirmed this. I still had an ego, a self or personality; but it did seem as if the subject/object divide had disappeared for good, and had been replaced by wholeness or completion at a fundamental level. So that must be it: I was no longer a subject!

And the sickness had slipped in by simply changing its name.

Diagnosis

We can readily identify the sickness by considering perhaps the most essential (no pun intended) concept of Buddhism: No-Self.

According to Buddhism, No-Self is one of the three characteristics evident in all phenomena, including human beings. If we observe a sensation close enough, we can see that it has no ‘essence’, despite the fact we readily assume all subjects and objects to possess such a quality.

What this has come to mean, however, is the idea that if we believe or act as though we possess a self, say by performing any actions that can be considered ‘selfish’ or ‘egotistical’, then we are acting from a place of ignorance.

Ergo, the enlightened person must be completely selfless.

In my own case, if I am no longer a subject, that means I must act as if I no longer have the concerns that a subject possesses, no? Which, for all intents and purposes, is exactly the same thing as believing I am selfless.

Furthermore, as I am awakened, I cannot possibly act with selfish, egotistical or ‘ignorant’ intent.  My motivations must always be pure then!

Now stick me in a room, surround me by devotees who also behave as if I am infallibly selfless and pure, and watch as I play out every whim unburdened by conscience (‘My devotees bitch and moan when I force them to practice for 48hrs straight/give me their inheritance for my Open Enlightenment centre/play out my sexual fantasies. Of course, they wouldn’t complain if they were awakened like me; I need to make them work harder/give me more money/perform more interesting sexual feats, more often!’).

The abusive guru and the gullible devotee is but one of the many symptoms of the Ignorant Bliss of Selflessness (IBS).

The Dirty Little Secret

The awful truth about awakening (and this has taken me a while to really understand with a degree of clarity) is that the self, ego, personality and even the subject don’t go anywhere, which means that selfish, egotistical, personal and subjective behaviour all remain. If you are greedy, angry and homophobic before awakening, chances are you’ll still be greedy, angry and homophobic afterwards.

If we define awakening as the recognition of our original nature, we can say that the awakened person is simply aware that all phenomenon is original nature; this includes all of the neuroses, issues, and prejudices that come with being a human being. This does not mean the self, ego, personality or subject are eradicated; they are simply seen as perfect, whole and complete. (Get over it.)

Or, to speak in Buddhist terms, No Self does not mean there is no self, but that the self is empty, along with everything else (including your ego, personality, issues, psychosis, facial ticks…and even emptiness itself!).

Perhaps if the concept of Empty Self replaced that of No Self we might go some way to inhibiting the spread of the Ignorant Bliss of Selflessness.

Further Symptoms

With selflessness as the yard stick for awakening, it should come as no surprise that:

• Many Dharma practitioners deny and suppress their angry, greedy, lustful, attached, ignorant, anxious, weird, disturbed, restless, unhappy, sad, mad, bad and selfish emotions, thoughts and behaviours, only to have these unwanted and unloved aspects of themselves play out while the practitioner remains oblivious and ignorant to the fact, and usually within a Sangha or group of similarly deluded hypocrites, where everyone pretends they’re the most ‘enlightened’ people on the planet!
• Many awakened practitioners mistakenly believe they are not awakened because they are evidently not selfless.
• Many schools and lineages of enlightenment will not tolerate discussion of awakening for fear of being accused of displaying pride or attachment, resulting in many genuinely awakened practitioners remaining silent about the phenomenon for fear of expulsion/exclusion.
• By denying their prejudices even exist, the racism, sexism, fascism and homophobia (and even heterophobia!) of many practitioners are left unchecked and unaddressed within the ‘spiritual’ community.
• By investing in a poor model of awakening based on the ideal of selflessness, the mainstay of the Dharma community is catastrophically failing in facilitating awakening in themselves and others. The vows of many traditions and lineages have become nothing but a joke.

Treatment

Thankfully, treatment is free and available to everyone, and recovery is fast and virtually guaranteed.

The treatment is three fold:

1). Be honest with yourself and everyone else, even if you’ve invested a lot of time and energy in a certain worldview, tradition or identity that encourages the Ignorant Bliss of Selflessness. If you really care about awakening, show some integrity.

2). Now that you can consciously accept the existence of your ego and issues, you should address them. Sociopath? Have some therapy! Full of hate? Explore the nature and possible root cause of your anger! Proud? Make your competitiveness work for the cause by becoming the best awakened teacher the world has ever seen!

3).Take a sitting session for a minimum of half an hour once a day. While it is true that just before and after awakening selflessness and compassion (amongst other wonderful attributes) spontaneously arise, which positively transform the world like nothing else can, this kind of ‘perfect meditation’ passes; it is therefore down to a daily practice to foster the natural expression of openness, compassion, freedom, wholeness, peace, generosity and selflessness that demonstrates our original nature. Whether awakened or not, enlightenment must be practiced in order that we transform the world; sitting is one such method.

It should be noted that despite everything I’ve said, enlightenment does have a profound effect on a person, and it can change his or her behaviour in a very profound sense; but exactly how and to what degree appears to vary with each individual. I like to think that enlightenment doesn’t produce the perfect human being, but it does produce a better one.

Right, let’s have it

Come on then: just how unenlightened am I?

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The Last of Your Days

Jennifer Agnew profiles spiritual guru David Todd, author of The Last of Your Days and originator of its surprise-hit television franchise.

Celebrities live at a faster pace than normal people. Dave Todd certainly gives that impression, but perhaps with more reason than anyone I’ve interviewed.

He arrives ten minutes late and is finishing a call as I greet him, but turns off the phone before he zips it into his pocket. He isn’t overdressed. In fact, he seems to be striving hard to create the opposite impression: casual jeans, sweatshirt, and a very lived-in bomber jacket. His tousled hair and five o’clock shadow (it’s only 11:10 am) scream at me someone who refuses to be bothered by what doesn’t matter. Then he takes my hand in a firm, slow shake, and a pair of humorous brown eyes meet mine with a friendly and unwavering smile.

Immediately – of course – my cynical side is on alert to the possibility that this is only calculated charm, but I’m surprised to catch myself actually granting him the benefit of the doubt. A starstruck mental voice reminds me this is David Todd, the man famous for having only a year left to live, and yet here he is, giving up some of that precious time to speak with me.

I scan my notes and collect myself as we take our seats. But something tells me this could well be one of those interviews when the notes go straight out the window.

If someone told you ten months ago where you’d be today, would you have believed them?

‘No way,’ he laughs. (I’m surprised by how unrestrained his laughter sounds, almost like a small boy.) ‘There’s such incredible hunger from people seeking for meaning that responses to ideas these days can be more extreme than anyone would predict.

‘Ten months ago I was just a wannabe blogger, like a million others. Luckily the blog caught on, so a book seemed a natural progression. But the popularity of the DVDs and then the sale of the TV format admittedly took me by surprise. Until now our culture has been completely phobic of the idea of dying – of ourselves dying, that is – so I don’t think anyone would’ve guessed you could succeed at marketing death.’

And yet that’s precisely what you’ve done. Were you always obsessed with the idea of dying?

‘Not at all. I was obsessed like everyone else with not thinking about it, but then I reached a spiritual crossroads. At the time I had a well-paid job, a great relationship and everything, yet I felt truth was missing, you know? I looked around and thought, “What is this? What’s it all for?”‘

A look transforms David’s face at this point. Such a penetrating, contemplative look that it reminds me of the expression on religious statues or in paintings of saints. I have to force myself to remember that this man has made more money in the past few months than I’m likely ever to earn, yet there’s still a strong sense of what I can only call inner peace radiating from him.

Soon I’m going to have to ask him about the criticisms that have been thrown in his direction, but it’s impossible to reconcile them at the moment with the intensely spiritual man who is sitting before me.

‘That’s where the idea came from,’ he continues. (I wonder if the sparkle in his eye means that somehow he senses what I’ve been thinking, and this thought disturbs me.) ‘But then I realised what a powerful exercise it would be to imagine if I were dying – actually dying – and had only a year left. Wouldn’t thinking like that reveal what was truly essential in my life and what wasn’t?’

What did you discover?

(He gives that boyish laugh again.) ‘I saw my life wasn’t anything like it ought to have been if I was actually dying. In fact, it was a total mess.’

That must have been tough…

‘”Tough” doesn’t come close. When I saw how little really mattered and how much was only clutter I began to realise I deeply needed to change. “If I have only a year,” I asked myself, “is this the woman I want to be with; is this the job I want to spend time doing; are these the friends who will give me the support I’m going to need?”‘

‘The answer in every case was, “No.”‘

He seems to catch an unintentional flicker in my expression. ‘I realise that sounds harsh,’ he says.

You’ve attracted criticism for the way you’ve treated people in your life…

He nods. ‘If you do the exercise properly you’ve got to take it all the way. When you practise spirituality you open doors that can’t be closed. Once they’ve been opened then the only way out is through.’

So living as if you were going to die completely changed your life?

‘Yes, forever. I broke up with my partner – which was very sad at the time. I reigned my job and haven’t spoken since to many of my so-called “friends”. For a time I was all alone with no income and no home, yet I still knew my life wasn’t in the shape I needed it to be in, and until it was I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to it with integrity.’

Some of your critics have said that because you aren’t really dying the exercise is pointless and imaginary. How do you respond to that?

He nods slowly and his face fills with pity. ‘I understand where they’re coming from – or trying to – but they’re not grasping it seriously enough. This is not about occasionally thinking to yourself, “What would I do if I wasn’t going to be here next year?” You have to take it beyond thinking into action for it to become real. Okay, true, I’m not actually terminally ill, but if I choose my actions as if I were then will someone please show me the difference? There isn’t any. But there is a difference between people who think this is about imagination and those who grasp what it’s really about: action.

‘I explain this to my students over and over. Whenever they say, “But it’s not actually real” I tell them, “That’s because you’re not making it real!”‘

What tips would you give people who are trying to make it real?

‘Whatever’s not right, make it right to the maximum extent within your means. For example, if you’re not living in the kind of home you would expect to be in at the end of your life, then move to a better one. If you can’t, there’s always something you can do – from building an extension, to renovation, right down to something as basic as changing the furniture.’

Your television show and DVDs cover a wide range of ideas, such as interior design, health and fitness, and personal finance, don’t they?

‘Yes. The DVDs provide basic ideas, but of course it’s up to the student to recognise what they should change and how. It would be wrong to tell people how to go about that.’

What if they decide nothing needs changing?

He gives a wide shrug and smiles. ‘Fine. Nobody says they’ve got to. But if you’re not making the most of what you have now then you’re sleepwalking towards death. It’s hard to look death in the eye, but unless we wake up and do it we’re not making our lives the best they can be.’

The most difficult part of the interview rears its head and I’m burning to see how he deals with it. So far he hasn’t wavered; I’m still enjoying the ease he placed me in at the beginning. I check our body language: we’re both sitting in an open posture with full and friendly eye contact, and I still seem to have his full attention. Part of me hopes neither of us screws up this next bit, because it would be sad to ruin the impression so far. Nevertheless, I clear my throat and go for it…

You can’t have avoided the media debate over certain tragic individuals who, unlike those who don’t take your ideas seriously enough, have perhaps taken them too far?

‘You mean the McKenny case?’

I was thinking of Michael McKenny, among others, yes…

‘It’s always tragic when someone with a mental illness takes their own life.’

His expression turns serious and I’m reassured by his instant change of mood. It suggests someone so in control that he can flick his ego on or off as easily as a light-switch. Yet the way he sneaked ‘mental illness’ into his answer makes me wonder for the first time if he’ll try to side-step the question.

Some have suggested that Michael McKenny and others like him wouldn’t have killed themselves if it weren’t for your insistence on ‘making it real’. Isn’t that a dangerous suggestion for vulnerable people?

He looks away for a second, and I wonder if I’ve finally uncovered a flaw.

‘There’s a story about the Buddha from way back,’ he says, ‘when it was common for monks to meditate in the places in India where dead bodies were left out to rot.’

His eyes glint mischievously. It’s as if he can’t resist adding: ‘I suppose the Buddha was the David Todd of his day… But anyway, this story goes that the Buddha took some novice monks to meditate in a charnel ground whilst he popped off on other business. When he got back he was horrified to find that the monks had grown so depressed meditating on death that they’d all slit their wrists.’

You’re claiming this story is relevant to the McKenny case?

‘Well, it might be, because I think it shows us two things: firstly that any spiritual practice – even a genuine one taught by a master – can be tragically misunderstood by students. Secondly, it’s a graphic depiction of what our attitude to death ought to be.’

Which is?

‘We shouldn’t surrender to death but must meet it with life. To meet dying with acceptance is no better than sleepwalking. Instead, use death to improve your life, over and over, until it’s the most successful it can be.’

I’m smiling again – and David’s smiling too, because he can see he’s won me over. I realise how his sincerity, above all else, has earned him his success.

You’ve also had negative comments from groups representing the terminally ill, and yet the contestants on your TV show always say the practice changed them for the better.

‘Yes. Because what I teach is using death for personal growth. In a deep sense, people with terminal illness are no different from contestants on my show; there’s always something anyone can do to make their lives better. Thinking about dying of course can make you depressed. If that happens, step away from the depression and change your outlook and circumstances. The person responsible for your unhappiness is you. Death is a gift from the universe; the most wonderful challenge to make your life perfect.’

David says goodbye and leaves me with another peal of boyish laughter echoing in my ears, and it’s odd but for the rest of the day I’m walking on air. Everything is fine. The thought that one day me and all I know will cease to be only makes everything even more great.

It seems that David’s system really works. Whether I’d describe him as a ’saint’ or ‘enlightened’ is something I’d have to think about long and hard, but no doubt he has something; some kind of spiritual gift that these days is rare, but – thanks to his honesty and acumen – is now very much in demand.

To those critics who carp and cavil I’d suggest they don’t understand David until they’ve met him face to face, because his presence is equally as persuasive as his reputation. Who’d have dreamt that a culture as phobic of death as ours would grant him the exposure he’s won from it? But then again – and this is the hallmark of David’s genius – who would suppose that death itself could have such a sincere and friendly face?

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Satsang Dates

Just a quick note to say my upcoming satsang details can be found on the Satsang Dates page. Dates for January are up at present. Feel free to drop by!

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Your Ideal Teacher

A man turned up at the meditation group I lead – because occasionally someone does show, although mostly it’s only me. The advertised intention of sitting and talking about how to meditate doesn’t seem to appeal to many people. However, this guy turned up, and so we sat for forty minutes and then we talked about technique.

Two people were in the room. One of them had come to practise and learn, and the other one was supposedly in a position to teach. I asked the guy what he had experienced during the sitting and he mentioned something about his mind wandering and a pain in his leg.

I’d have been open to hearing how he’d felt when his mind wandered; or what kind of things it wandered into; or the type of pain afflicting his leg; or how the pain made him feel. Instead, I was puzzled by how he wouldn’t or couldn’t respond to my prompts. It didn’t feel that he was avoiding an answer; it felt instead as if it seemed to him that he’d said all it was possible to say.

He hasn’t been back since, so I’m left with the puzzle of how someone sits for forty minutes and notices only that his leg hurts and his concentration is poor. That isn’t much of a return on forty minutes. Casting back to how things were when I started doing this stuff myself, I think I’ve arrived at an answer: the guy assumed there was nothing more to say because what he experienced was just him.

You know how people say, ‘Is it warm in here, or is it just me?‘ [1] That’s a polite thing to say in social situation. But in meditation it’s deadly. The point of meditation is to realise how there’s never any ‘just me’.

If a sensation arises of heat or leg-pain or concentrating poorly, then the point is to be see that. I suspect that when I asked the guy what happened during those forty minutes, what went through his mind was something like this: ‘Well, my leg hurt and my mind wandered, but that’s just me.’

We begin practice with an unenlightened mind, which entertains this weird notion that experience is ‘transparent’. Experience arises, but the unenlightened mind looks straight through it; or it kind of looks at it, but without seeing – like that type of blindness where the eyes are working perfectly, but neurologically something is screwed.

This way of seeing is the trick we use to create a self. Instead of ‘heat is arising’ we understand ‘I am hot’; the heat is turned into the property of something and now appears to be ‘just me’.

Enlightenment is the lived realisation of how this is only a trick.

So that guy who came to the group isn’t stupid; he’s just unenlightened. My problem is how do I teach him something different?

Puppetji. Some see in him their ideal teacher, whereas others see just a bundle of colourful rags.

In most teaching situations we have the luxury of assuming there’s something to learn, someone to learn it, and someone to learn it from. In the enlightenment game, however, the object of the lesson involves realising how not one of these assumptions holds. The enlightenment game is not a typical teaching situation, like the type we’re accustomed to from school or college.

It’s said that when the student is ready the teacher will appear. But this doesn’t mean that after we’ve read some Ken Wilber a wise old turbaned geezer will show up on our doorstep. It doesn’t even mean that we need to scour the phonebook and find a turbaned geezer. This old truism is pointing instead to how students and teachers are dependently co-arising. Our education system justifies itself by designating certain individuals as teachers and paying them a salary for what they do. But cast your mind back over your life, and you’ll probably find that the people who taught you the most important lessons probably weren’t even conscious of doing so, let alone drawing a paycheque for their service.

A teacher is a teacher only in the mind of a student. There is nothing inherent in a person’s words or actions that can cause others to learn from him or her. If teachers really did exist outside of students’ minds, then teaching would be a very easy job instead of an impossible one.

It was Sigmund Freud who famously declared there were three ‘impossible’ professions: teaching, government and psychoanalysis (Freud 1937: 248). The reason they are impossible is because they seek to change people. Freud learnt the hard way that changing people is pretty much the hardest thing when he discovered how the human personality is built upon a bedrock of narcissism. The ego, by definition, cannot bear the prospect of becoming what it’s not. This obstinacy is exactly what the ego was designed for.

‘Does everyone find change difficult,’ the ego wonders, ‘or is it just me?’

But there is a way around the ego: the arrival at a lived understanding of how the ego is based upon illusion. Freud didn’t admit this ‘mystical’ possibility within his system, and even if he had the problem of the ego’s narcissism remains; he would simply have added a fourth profession to his list: the enlightenment game. Indeed, the teaching of enlightenment is perhaps the most impossible profession of all, because it involves not only teaching, but also an understanding of the human personality (‘psychoanalysis’) and the instilment of self-regulation and self-discipline into the learner (‘government’).

Sigmund Freud. Some see in him a pioneer of human psychology, whereas others see just a sexist, racist, dirty old man.

I don’t mean that we shouldn’t try to teach this stuff, or that teachers shouldn’t bend over backwards to make themselves clear and take responsibility for their teaching. But it’s important to recognise that the learning of enlightenment cannot take place within the standard model of a teaching relationship, because the teacher cannot take responsibility for the factor that ensures success: the learner’s recognition of their own lack of truth [2].

The recognition of the lack of truth is the route around the bedrock of narcissism. Without recognising the fundamental lack of truth in our perception, we’re doomed to the standard assumption of, ‘well, that’s just me.’ The bedrock of narcissism that Freud uncovered (Freud 1937: 252) is this very habit of assuming there’s a ‘me’ that cannot be seen beyond.

Perhaps one of the reasons the guy hasn’t been back to the group is that he thought I was a poor teacher, or perhaps he found my manner condescending, or something else pissed him off. In a standard teaching situation, these might indeed get in the way of success and he would be well advised to look elsewhere. In the enlightenment game, however, it’s more complicated, because it’s clear the student is making a demand on the teacher for truth, instead of focusing on the lack of truth within himself.

By assuming that a teacher must fulfil certain criteria or behaviours, the student is trying to satisfy his or her own narcissistic desires in a projected form. Think about it: if the ego is an illusion then that’s true now, already. If we suppose that something has to be fulfilled before we can see this, we are merely adding a new desire to our experience.

There’s nothing wrong with this in a standard teaching situation. The aim of the enlightenment game, however, is to make our demands the object of enquiry, not to allow them to form the basis of our motivation.

Of course, institutions that teach enlightenment have recognised this problem and have devised different models of teaching for circumventing it.

In the east we have the guru system. The guru looks superficially like a standard teacher idealised to an absurd degree. Sadly, many students fall into the trap of regarding their guru as precisely this – their ideal teacher. (And so, unfortunately, do many gurus.) However, by surrendering our will, judgement and probably a hefty proportion of our income to the guru, the authentic goal of this system is to confront us with our own narcissistic demands, because once we have genuinely allowed the guru complete dominance over our lives, we’re left staring those demands right in the face.

The western approach to the problem is more radical. The western occult tradition throws out altogether the standard model of the teacher and urges upon us a bizarre array of daimons, Holy Guardian Angels, invisible colleges and ascended masters. Although communication with ‘imaginary’ beings is greeted with scorn by most people, it’s a model that has much to recommend it, when practised correctly. It’s a major milestone in magical practice, the first time we receive from a non-human intelligence a message that completely contradicts our conscious assumptions and as a result leads us toward new understanding.

The western model, by advocating surrender to a teacher who doesn’t even exist (in the human sense), can steer us quickly around the ‘it’s just me’ of ordinary perception into a stark confrontation with the radical otherness of our own experience, far more quickly than the guru method. The reason is that it demonstrates more graphically our lack of truth, because there’s nothing like a chat with a discarnate being for forcing us to concentrate and interrogate very closely indeed our experience, motives and demands. In contrast, dependence on the idea that a human person can grant us what we desire will tend to work in the opposite direction. Yet it must be noted that neither of these models guarantees against the mispractice of projecting our narcissistic demands onto the other, whether that other is human or astral [3].

Some people assume that anyone who claims to have played out the enlightenment game is therefore obliged to teach, or automatically assumes the position of a teacher, and that this obliges them to say certain kinds of things or act in particular ways or adopt certain models of teaching.

To this I’d respond with a big smile and a loud and hearty ‘Fuck off!’

I’m a teacher of enlightenment to the degree that anyone regards me as such. If anyone decides to do this, but then discovers that what I write seems condescending, negative or spurious, then I hope they’ll confront the doubt and the need for self-affirmation that underlies their projection. I’m not arguing that I don’t manifest those qualities, but no one will get enlightened by trying to fix my faults rather than examining the experience provoked in themselves by those faults.

Someone might take my advice to recognise their lack of truth as a boastful claim that I possess a truth that they don’t. I remember reading Daniel Ingram for the first time, and feeling sick with envy and resentment for weeks on end at the access to truth that he (the lucky, arrogant, smug bastard) evidently had. But sitting with that unbearable envy and resentment, and using it to explore my relationship with my own lack of truth taught me more than I could ever have imagined.

The experience of the lack of truth is enlightenment. When our lack of truth is fully realised there is no longer any ground to experience, and then a whole new order of truth is able to enter our being, risen from falsity.

When the student is ready, anyone and anything is a teacher. One day, I hope that players of the enlightenment game will do away altogether with the notion of teachers, and we’ll wake up to a new aeon in which everyone is recognised as a messiah.

Notes

[1] This expression has at least two meanings. Firstly it can mean, ‘Am I the only one who is hot?’ But secondly it can mean, ‘Is it only due to my peculiarities that I come to possess this sensation of heat?’ It’s the second meaning that I’m focusing on here. The first meaning concerns the sensations, but the second is focused on the self that is supposedly feeling them or generating them.

[2] In a standard teaching relationship it is the transfer of a skill or body of knowledge which is the factor that ensures success, and a good teacher should most definitely be willing to accept responsibility for this!

[3] For example ‘prayer’, when understood as the practice of making petitions to God, is a depressingly common example of this error.

References

Freud, Sigmund (1937). Analysis Terminable and Interminable. In: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume 23. Translated by James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1968.

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