Open Enlightenment

What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment is the sudden and irrevocable knowledge of the absolute truth.

Enlightenment is not an idea or a belief; enlightenment is a personal, direct experience.

Enlightenment is the root of all genuine spirituality. Although the experience itself is often described in many diverse and unique ways by those spiritual traditions that teach personal experience over dogma or faith– such as Taoism, Buddhism, Sufism, Platonism, Vedanta, Christian Mysticism, Jewish Mysticism, and Magick (to name but a few) – all of these traditions share a number of key deep features or characteristics that indicate the modeling of the same experience. Enlightenment is therefore also known as realisation, liberation, awakening, union with the divine, and anamnesia.

Enlightenment is a natural, human development that has been misunderstood and persecuted throughout our short history. Enlightenment is what happened to Lao Tzu, Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed. These enlightened men expressed their experience and presented their teachings in an appropriate means for their culture and times in order to lead others to the absolute truth. Sadly, most of their original work is now either lost, misrepresented or degenerated to such an extent that it is no longer accessible, relevant or reasonable to a human living in the 21^st Century.

Both in the East and West, enlightenment has been reduced to blind faith in God, with horrific consequences. However, there have been people experiencing enlightenment for as long as the human race has graced the earth, and there are many enlightened people walking on this planet right now.

The time has come for us to address enlightenment with the honesty, respect and reason that the absolute truth deserves.

Welcome to Open Enlightenment.

How do I become enlightened?

The experience of enlightenment can be expected to happen after performing certain practices and undergoing a specific process over a number of years – the exact duration differing with each individual – that includes becoming familiar with a whole range of mystical experiences, from trance states to visions to synchronicities to spiritual depression to blissful equanimity, with the experience of the absolute progressing from a peak to a plateau to a permanent knowledge. However, although there are most certainly key features to the experience and process of enlightenment that allow us to recognise the experience for what it is, these do not necessarily include the duration of time it takes and the specific surface or relative features of the experience. Determining where you might be in the process or whether or not you’ve had a genuine experience of enlightenment takes careful observation, study, familiarity with various mystical phenomena and patience. It helps to have access to a group of experienced peers.

Although any new experience may befall someone by accident, it is the people who search for such an experience that have the greatest success in finding it. It may be claimed that enlightenment has and will occur for some people by chance, but the abundant available evidence for enlightenment depending upon a certain level of investigation of reality (even with those who have performed no formal practice), and the experience of a very specific and recognisable process beforehand, renders such considerations negligible.

Enlightenment is sudden because it is a discontinuous experience from what has gone before: the knowledge gained is of an absolutely different order to anything that has been experienced previously, or will be experienced thereafter. As a discontinuity, we can say that enlightenment is not determined by practice or tradition; however, practice and tradition are necessary to reaching enlightenment, just as scaffolding is necessary to erecting a building but is not the building itself, or a crutch is necessary before one can walk.

Enlightenment is irrevocable because it is nothing less than a transformation in identity. Even the first glimpse of enlightenment is enough to change the individual in a profound sense, and each progressive stage of enlightenment is equally transformative, up until the occurrence of knowledge of the absolute truth as a permanent trait with enlightenment proper.

Enlightenment is always sudden, but as a discontinuity from a very specific type of practice and process.

What does it mean to be enlightened?

Before enlightenment, one is distinct and separate; after enlightenment, one is distinct and whole.

Before enlightenment, one lives in search of completion and wholeness; after enlightenment, one lives life for its own sake.

Enlightenment is the knowledge of completion at a fundamental level – the search for the answer to the nature of reality is over, and the quest is finished in an absolute sense. Everything else at a relative level remains however, and so life continues exactly as it did before with all the same relative problems. Although the enlightened person is no longer separate, he or she is still distinct. There is no loss of identity or personality, and money, food and sex are just as much a pleasure and a pain as beforehand. It is here that Enlightened Ethics make all the difference.

There are also a number of relative effects that enlightenment brings: rest, certainty, bliss, comfort, and the ultimate perspective on everything, from small issues such as your own peculiar attachments and desires, to the big Issues such as death. These effects most certainly come and go, and are therefore not absolute; but they are still nevertheless wonderful, and the transformation of one’s behaviour is most certainly easier once enlightened, as is the ability to enter various forms of mystical states and exercise various magical skills.

What is the criteria for identifying an enlightened person?

Because enlightenment is knowledge of the absolute, it cannot be defined or limited by specific behaviours, characteristics, ethics, magical powers or physical attributes.

However, enlightenment is the acquisition of a certain and specialised knowledge; it follows that the sole test for identifying an enlightened person is their ability to impart such knowledge. In other words, the facilitation of the experience of enlightenment for others. ‘By their fruits you shall know them.’

Beyond this, there is the inherent ability in every human being to recognise knowledge of the absolute in another just as we can recognise someone in grief or love. The more experience of enlightenment you have, the better equipped you are in determining the real from the fake.

But isn’t enlightenment wholly subjective? How can we possibly know someone is enlightened just on their claiming such an attainment?

All knowledge is subjective. And like all knowledge, whether it be knowledge of engineering, plumbing or gymnastics, enlightenment can be accurately described, the technicalities demonstrated and the acquisition of the knowledge replicated by the student.

Is it not silly to believe knowledge is something that can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled or heard? And yet this is the argument made by those who deny the reality of the absolute on the grounds it is not physical.

The sole validation of any knowledge is its replicability. Can enlightenment be replicated? Absolutely – it has been for thousands of years. I have replicated the experience for myself, as have many friends. But can you replicate it? Certainly, and I hope what is written here will help you do just that.

But how do I spot the frauds? Where should I begin?

The classical attributes of the enlightened person are detachment, equanimity, peacefulness, blissfulness, and compassion; yet these are all relative phenomena. Although enlightenment may very well engender these qualities in an individual, we cannot define enlightenment by these terms, because the absolute transcends any relative phenomena whatsoever. The frauds can be spotted by their insistence on defining enlightenment in relative terms – such as certain physical attributes, miraculous abilities, or some kind of permanent emotional state – that are most certainly unobtainable by any decent and able human being, and usually for a large fee.

The biggest pointer to identifying the genuine enlightened person is to begin the experiment yourself as best you can by finding those teachers or books that speak directly about practice and enlightenment in useful and practical terms. Practice with only a moderate amount of success will furnish you with enough knowledge to help identify the wheat from the chaff, and you will begin to cultivate the ability to recognise the truth in others.

There are as many unique traditions and schools of enlightenment as there are unique individuals who have become enlightened. Perhaps the biggest step towards enlightenment is discovering those traditions and teachings that work for you most.

Open Enlightenment will endeavour to provide just those teachings, teachers, talks and retreats that will lead to enlightenment, should this be your direction in life.

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