Open Enlightenment

Direct vs. Developmental Awakening

In this video response I explore the extreme examples of both direct and developmental views of enlightenment.

Note: I mention some traditions, but not all sub-sets or lineages within those traditions ascribe to the same direct or developmental view that I discuss.

Direct vs. Developmental Awakening from Alan Chapman on Vimeo.

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Being Ordinary Interview: Life, the Universe and Everything

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Being Ordinary‘s Tom Buckley-Houston. Tom has done a wonderful job in editing down our very long discussion into a listenable interview. Although I talk about some of things I already touch on in this video, we end up discussing a diverse range of topics including astronauts, direct vs developmental paths and even the future of the human species. Check it out here!

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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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5 Ways in Which Andrew Cohen’s Teaching is Wrong

I have no doubt that Andrew Cohen experienced enlightenment in 1986, simply because a few years ago I experienced a ‘transmission’ effect, or what I prefer to call intersubjective enlightenment, twice in his presence when attending a couple of his public talks (I’d had numerous partial awakenings before then during my personal practice, which is why I believe the intersubjective enlightenment occurred at all, and both ‘transmissions’ eventually faded. This occurred a year or so before my ‘full’ enlightenment). There is also a great deal of anecdotal evidence to suggest this kind of phenomenon happens a lot around Cohen.

However, I’m convinced Cohen has no real understanding of how he experienced enlightenment, or why some people have a peak or partial awakening in his presence. I believe Cohen’s understanding and teaching of enlightenment have both suffered greatly as a result of the ignorance and lack of integrity of his ex-guru, Poonjaji. At the moment of enlightenment, and the aftermath that follows, a great deal of time and care needs to be taken to ensure that the experience is understood and integrated in the most honest, sane and healthiest way possible; what you don’t need is a supposed ‘master’ telling you that he has been waiting for you his entire life and so can now retire, that you will be bigger than the Buddha, that you will create a ‘revolution amongst the young’, and that you are fit to teach by virtue of the experience alone.

If, at the time, Cohen had access to a good teacher who didn’t feel the need to set him up as some infallible guru, things might have worked out very differently and a good deal of suffering might have been spared Cohen, his family and followers.

This piece is not aimed at Cohen personally, but at his teaching, how it inaccurately describes enlightenment and how that misunderstanding may have come into being; I believe our collective understanding of enlightenment is more important than what we personally think of any man professing ideas about the phenomenon.

My understanding of Cohen’s teaching is taken from andrewcohen.org; his books Living Enlightenment, In Defense of the Guru Principle, and A Story of an Awakening; attending two of his talks on Evolutionary Enlightenment; and Enlightenment Blues and American Guru, written by two ex-students.

Here are five ways in which I believe Andrew Cohen’s teaching is inaccurate, unhelpful and misguided:

1. Impersonal is not the same thing as Kosmocentric

Cohen describes his teaching as Impersonal Enlightenment. By this he means that every single event in a person’s life can be seen from an impersonal perspective, and this is both the view afforded by enlightenment, and the perspective we must adopt if we are to experience enlightenment permanently.

However, enlightenment is not the realisation of impersonality, which is just the other half of the personal (where one is, you will most assuredly find the other). Enlightenment is the inclusive transcendence of everything that has gone before, both the personal and impersonal alike.

And the emphasis I want to make here is that the event is inclusive, not destructive, dismissive or repressive. What is recognised at enlightenment I like to call Original Nature, and the personal viewpoint is just as much Original Nature as the Buddha, George W. Bush or the Number 73 bus to Islington. The realisation of enlightenment is that only Original Nature is; and so the personal is just as much Original Nature as anything else.

Cohen further aligns the Impersonal with his ‘fifth tenet’ of evolutionary enlightenment, which he calls For the Sake of the Whole:

The movement of spiritual awakening is part and parcel of the cosmic process of development, and the purpose of enlightenment is ultimately to bring the light of awakened consciousness to the process itself.

Is the personal not a part of this process too? Is the ‘whole’ not whole enough to include the self and the ego?

Developmental psychologists describe the process of moral growth in three stages: egocentric, when we are concerned only about ourselves; ethnocentric, when our concern grows to include our family/tribe/nation; and worldcentric, when we are concerned with the welfare of all human beings. Ken Wilber, Cohen’s friend and collaborator, adds a further stage called kosmocentric, which is concern for all things manifest and unmanifest, or what we might call the perspective of enlightenment. Usually, spiritual development facilitates this moral development, which is why the Axial Age traditions all profess universal compassion as the bedrock of authentic spirituality.

Just as enlightenment is inclusively transcendent of what went before, so too is each stage of moral development, with ethnocentrism transcending but including egocentrism, and worldcentrism transcending but including ethnocentrism, and so on. Wilber describes pathology as a failure to integrate and honour a preceding stage of development; and so in Wilber’s terms, Cohen’s view of a kosmocentric process that does not integrate and honour the personal, but in fact attempts to suppress or destroy it, is in fact a pathological moral development.

2. Judgement only begets judgement, not transformation

Cohen’s ‘ultimate spiritual practice’ is his third tenet of evolutionary enlightenment, Face Everything and Avoid Nothing.

This almost sounds like genuine spiritual practice, in the sense that compassion, openness and awareness is brought to bear on any phenomena that may be encountered, especially the often buried psychological and emotional material that informs current behaviour. But ‘face’ does not mean ‘accept’, and ‘everything’ only refers to the activity of the ego.

For many years the only ‘spiritual exercise’ that Cohen prescribed was the forming of groups where the apparent egotistical faults of each student would be discussed and the person in question would be berated for failing so miserably, which sometimes lasted for many hours. In order to overcome the ego, the student would have to apologise in earnest, promise to change, and – if the reports of his ex-students (including three former editors of EnlightenNext magazine) are to be believed – donate a large sum of money to make amends. This led to an anxiety-ridden, back-stabbing, paranoid, cold and financially-strapped sangha, where an individual would be terrified of falling out of favour and being ‘sent away’ by Andrew. It’s hard to see how any spiritual development might have occurred.

Ignorant, greedy, and hateful behaviour has its roots in the belief in a subject, and the often unconscious, non-verbal and unquestioned beliefs about the self and reality that have been adopted from very early on in life. It takes a great deal of personal exploration and care to discover these hidden beliefs about the self and reality – even after enlightenment –  and a great deal more patience, time and compassion before our behaviour changes to a personal expression of the perspective of enlightenment: open, free, compassionate and curious.

Judgements about the subject only further enforce the idea of the subject, and do nothing to mitigate the already existing judgements buried deep within the psyche. We only act out of selflessness when we have no reason to chase or avoid anything, and so it is only by bringing compassion to bear on what we are chasing or avoiding that we cease to act ‘egotistically’.

Compassion – first and foremost for the self – is genuine spiritual practice; enforcing judgement upon your students can only be the result of an inability to bring compassion to your own ego first.

3. Romantic relationships are not a hindrance to awakening

Due to Cohen’s confusion of the impersonal with the kosmocentric, he believes that all aspects of life must be engaged without engendering personal attachment. For Cohen, romance is a major obstacle on the road to enlightenment, and his teaching has evolved from enforced celibacy on his students, to enforced sexual relationships where any romantic attachment must be suppressed.

(Of course, celibacy has been a common practice amongst dedicated seekers for millennia, as an aid in reducing distraction from the spiritual life. I think this approach is fundamentally flawed and misguided, which is a topic for a whole other post.)

As I have already touched on above, the personal domain is a healthy and necessary part of the greater kosmocentric vision; and it is completely possible to experience enlightenment and remain habitually attached to all manner of worldy things at a personal level (consider the great number of gurus who certainly appeared fully realised, but who have had affairs with students, abused drugs and alcohol and revelled in messianic fantasy).

My own personal experience is testament to this: I fell head over heels in love with my wife a year before my enlightenment, and our relationship played a major role in my spiritual development. My friend Duncan Barford had been in a ten year relationship at the time of his enlightenment, and I don’t know of one single person who has experienced enlightenment or is making genuine spiritual progress (as outlined by models of the territory from many traditions, including Buddhism) who is not in a committed and loving relationship.

It is again ironic that Ken Wilber also testifies in Grace and Grit to the fundamental role his deeply romantic relationship to his wife played in his spiritual progress. Perhaps Cohen should actually familiarise himself with Wilber’s work sometime?

4. God does not need our help

Cohen firmly believes that ‘God’ – the creative principle that created the universe and drives evolution – needs our help to manifest its greatest desire, which is ‘to emerge’:

http://www.andrewcohen.org/quote/?quote=114

Although I would agree to some extent with the notion that ‘God’ is becoming aware of its self through the manifest universe, it most certainly does not need our help in order to emerge. For 14 billion years the universe has managed to get along just fine without human consciousness; and furthermore, as humans we are part and parcel of the process of the universe, not separate from it, and this includes the desire for enlightenment and our spiritual development.

Everything is Original Nature, from the Big Bang to the dinosaurs to the ignorant ape who has never heard of enlightenment to the actual event of enlightenment and the resulting fully realised human being. At what point is Original Nature not unfolding as Original Nature? At what point is Original Nature missing from the universe, requiring our personal intervention in order to help the universe along?

Isn’t it a little bit narcissistic to believe that the fulfilment of God’s greatest desire rests on our decision to pursue ‘evolutionary enlightenment’?

5. Enlightenment is not the end in personal development

Cohen prescribes the adherence to five tenets in order to experience enlightenment, and he believes the same five tenets describe the state of enlightenment itself. However, whereas it requires great effort and integrity on the part of the seeker in order to reach lasting enlightenment, the person who is already ‘fully enlightened’ expresses the five tenets effortlessly. In other words, Cohen believes that enlightenment spells the end of personal, spiritual practice and development.

What Cohen doesn’t realise is that understanding, wisdom and virtuous action do not come part and parcel with enlightenment, regardless of whether it is permanent or not.

A ‘fully enlightened’ human being is just a human being who has recognised Original Nature. The recognition has absolutely no bearing on the person’s intelligence, teaching ability or integrity. This is why spiritual practice is not just a means to enlightenment, but an end in itself; and how much more important is it for the person post-enlightenment, considering the possible implications of misunderstanding enlightenment for the person’s ego, behaviour and the culture that may grow around him or her?

I’m convinced that it is this belief in the conference of perfection through realisation that has led to Cohen’s pathological brand of enlightenment, and his inability to recognise the workings of his own overblown ego, visible to everyone else but himself and his followers. If you were told that you were perfected, without ego and ready to teach – in the midst of the profound, life-changing event of enlightenment – by someone you believe is also perfect, and then great numbers of the best and the brightest of the spiritual scene begin to treat you as if you were indeed perfected and without ego, hanging on your every word and showering you with gifts, how likely is it that you would attribute any of your thoughts, beliefs or actions to something you and everyone else is certain no longer exists? With a heavy investment in the egoless model, and re-enforced by group behaviour and shared bliss states, it doesn’t seem quite so puzzling how a guru and his followers can spend a lot of time feeding the guru’s ego, only to suffer as a result without ever realising exactly what the problem is.

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Doubt and Faith

The last few weeks have been disappointing.

Website

First of all, people just do not want to do things unless money is involved. Three designers have promised to help, one because he owed a favour, and two on a gift economy basis.  Not one has delivered anything.

Someone promised to build a salesforce back end, with an additional site for an online community with all kinds of whizz-bang features. I learned how to write copy, then wrote all the copy for the new site, and fleshed out the IA, all in time for the deadline….which came and went.

As a result, I’ve given up on the idea of a bespoke site with a bespoke design; we’re going to stick with word press and apply a nice skin. Out of sheer desperation, I downloaded GIMP the other day in the hope that I can learn how to use a graphics package, and knock up a logo myself. How sad.

Then, instead of re-inventing the wheel, we can just use facebook, twitter and other social networking services to aid in the cause.

Detractors

Boy, have they been coming out of the wood work this month! I’m not talking about people who question stuff on this site (and elsewhere) as a genuine inquiry into the subject; I’m talking about ignorant, lazy, and patronising people who in some cases haven’t even bothered to read what they are criticising. Having an inbox full of such e-mails and websites full of such comments can really begin to challenge your faith in humanity. I have wondered a few times if I’ve really wasted the last few years of my life in trying to demonstrate that magick is a genuine enlightenment tradition, and if I’m wasting my time now in trying to demonstrate that enlightenment is a very real, accessible experience for everyone; because so many people seem not only ungrateful, but actually resentful! I’m feeling quite tired of defending my position at the moment, when I’m not quite sure why I have to. Explains why a lot of teachers don’t answer comments or e-mails in person.

Anyway, to alleviate the burden I’ve written a little FAQ for detractors so I don’t have to keep repeating myself.

Online communities

The Dharma Overground is a great idea: an online community for discussing the practicalities of enlightenment, such as what to practice and what to expect in terms of states, events and stages, run by people who have actually experienced enlightenment.

Sadly, anyone can go on there and call themselves an arahat (someone who has experienced enlightenment), and although there are some genuine arahats on there, there are a few who I believe are not, based on how their experience sounds like mine prior to enlightenment, and therefore nothing like my actual experience of enlightenment, or the Buddha’s, or Daniel Ingram’s, or Adyashanti’s, or Ramana Maharshi’s, or Lao Tzu’s, or any other respected teacher’s description of it.

These pseudo-arahats are into a movement called Actual Freedom and (I’ve chosen my words very carefully here) it is absolute dog shit. It is vile, anti-enlightenment, counter-initiatory guff. And it really saddens me to see other members of the Dharma Overground check it out and buy into it. I am absolutely baffled how intelligent people actually think psychosis is desirable (and I’m not just calling it psychosis because I don’t like it; the specific types of psychosis – such as ‘permanent’ depersonalisation – are listed on the site).

Now there is an Actual Freedom forum for people interested in the anti-enlightenment movement on the Dharma Overground, a site dedicated to honest and practical discussion of enlightenment. I’m at a loss for words.

Faith and Tradition

All of this leads very nicely to my new found appreciation for faith and tradition. To practice in order to engage with enlightenment requires faith in both the description of enlightenment offered by those who claim to have experienced it, and their ability to describe it accurately enough as to not be misleading.

There are so many individuals throughout history and alive today who have described a phenomenon called enlightenment in similar ways that mustering up the faith in enlightenment is not very difficult to do. If practice begins in earnest, that faith is vindicated to an extent by even a small degree of progress on the path. But no matter how great an experience might be, if it does not match the deep features of what has been described as enlightenment by this body of peers, then it is not what they are describing. Faith is required right up to the end of ignorance.

The value of an accurate description of enlightenment (that we can have faith in) is its ability to take away the focus from the attainments of the teacher. Either your experience matches the description, or it is not recognised as enlightenment by the body of peers that ascribe to that description. No ifs, buts or maybes. No questioning the teacher’s ability to accurately describe enlightenment, or even the teacher’s own attainments. This doesn’t mean we end up with teachers who have no experience of enlightenment; on the contrary, if the teacher’s experience doesn’t match the description, then they cannot be a teacher.

My primary task at the moment is to create a description of enlightenment that we can have faith in. That is not to say that such descriptions haven’t been provided before (I’m very much enjoying Dogen at the moment), but we need a clear, honest 21^st Century description for Westerners, by a Westerner.

I then want to start a tradition, where people can have faith in the teachings and the teachers, which can then eventually give way to direct, personal knowledge of enlightenment. I’ll be starting my first group soon in London, just as soon as I’ve created these damn banners…

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Great Expectations

OE reader nic asked me to elaborate on my comments regarding the ‘bad time’ I had after enlightenment. So here it is.

A person who has yet to experience enlightenment simply cannot imagine what it is really like. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have good or bad expectations.

Expectations you might have before the event of enlightenment

Here are some of the expectations I came across in books, from teachers and other seekers during my journey to enlightenment, from when I first heard of the idea at about 15, up to the event itself at 29. Some I took very seriously, others less so:

• Enlightenment is the transformation into a God, and it only happens to very special people.
• Enlightenment will confer specific knowledge of everything, ever. The enlightened person knows what happened at the beginning of the universe, everything that is happening now, and everything that will happen right up to the very end. The enlightened person can provide an answer to all the Big Questions, because he/she knows God personally. He/she’s in on the plan.
• Enlightenment is the terrifying knowledge of Absolutely Nothing.
• Enlightenment is the death of the self while still alive.
• Enlightenment can only happen to men.
• Enlightenment is the complete destruction of the universe, right in front of your eyes.
• Enlightenment is a shocking, earth-shattering, cataclysmic, reality-tearing, mind-destroying, adrenalin-fueled mystical explosion.
• Enlightenment is the realisation that the world is an illusion, and so the enlightened person can walk through walls, fly, teleport, and perform all kinds of other miracles.
• Enlightenment is waking up from the dream of reality.
• Enlightenment is knowledge of heaven, hell, past lives, spiritual realms, Gods, Goddesses, dead people, angels, elves, pixies and ascended masters.
• Enlightenment is the end of suffering, pain, depression, despair, anger, hate, revulsion and disgust. It will heal my damaged self, and preserve who I am for ever in eternal bliss. I will never hurt again.
• Enlightenment is perpetual bliss.
• Enlightenment is an incomprehensible non-experience that promises nothing, and it is debatable if it actually has any benefit.

It didn’t take much experience with magick and meditation to learn that most of the expectations of enlightenment I had come across were outright fantasy or delusion. I rejected all of the above, and for a couple of years leading up to enlightenment, I invested mostly in the following:

• Enlightenment is non-dual awareness that happens after going through a process with predictable stages and milestones, including states, mystical experiences and ‘fruitions’ [peak experiences of the non-dual]. It is a result of the right kind of meditation or technique, it is achievable and the sooner I get enlightened the better!
• Enlightenment will radically alter my identity, and I will no longer suffer from fear of death, pain and the loss of my loved ones.
• Enlightenment will not provide answers to questions such as ‘What happens after death?’ and ‘Where do we go when we smoke DMT?’, but will confirm my suspicion that everything is predestined, and that the meaning of life is to get enlightened.
• Describing myself as ‘enlightened’ and talking about the fact that enlightenment actually exists is of benefit to humanity.
• If I could just figure out why I’m not yet enlightened, I can become enlightened.

There was also a secret expectation that I didn’t uncover until towards the end:

• Enlightenment – an event so incredible it cannot even be imagined – could be absolutely terrifying, and once it happens there is no stopping it. Will it feel like dying?

Leading up to enlightenment, sure enough I did experience a process made up of stages with certain milestones as a result of certain practices. I encountered visions, synchronicities, strange dreams, mystical states and experiences (light, vibration, bliss, energetic stuff), encounters with ‘spirits’ and ‘gods’, and other assorted weirdness. So some of my expectations seemed to be grounded in reality, but most of them were not.

What to expect during the event of enlightenment

The unexpected. I don’t mean bizarre things like a unicorn made of cheese riding a unicycle; I mean just don’t have any at all. It’s not worth it.

What to expect after the event of enlightenment

I can only tell you how it has been for me.

Nearly all of my expectations about enlightenment and what it meant were wrong in various different ways. I’ve already explained why believing you can ‘be enlightened’ is a problem, an I’ll explore some others at a later date.

Here’s what I didn’t expect:

After enlightenment, I was Whole; no longer separate, no longer a subject. I had the ability to see the radical truth and conceit was apparent everywhere. But a good deal of my mental activity was based on the ignorance that I was separate and a subject; a lifetime of habitual emotional and mental patterns built on a what was now an obvious lie. Eventually old habits die and new ones emerge; but it takes time, and watching these desperate emotions and thoughts endlessly cycle with no foundation in reality is simply not pleasant. This means I was Whole at a fundamental level, but experiencing bad things at a personal level. Imagine that!

The expectation of ‘getting enlightened’ was based on the same ignorance too; for three and a half years I had chased it, as if it was an object that I – as a subject – could own. So what happens when enlightenment occurs, but it is not an object? The ego continues to try and treat it as one and anxiety over losing enlightenment – supported by the ‘goal mentality’ – becomes inescapable, because it is simply ‘not there’ as an object. Cue alternating smug contentment with desperate recourse to meditative techniques to make sure it is ‘still there’. The goal mentality is a recipe for a vicious circle of imaginary ‘gaining’ and ‘losing’; and all within the context of Wholeness. This is ludicrous behaviour, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Do not think for one second that enlightenment marks a sudden change for every aspect of the self; you simply become aware of the truth, and eventually, over time and with a degree of conscious effort on your part, everything else might follow suit. Immediately after enlightenment, everything exists just as it did before: pain, hate, anger, frustration, fear, attachment, love, desire, want, need, stupidity, restlessness, discontent, and doubt; but again, all within the context of Wholeness.

You should be aware that it is still possible to re-enforce the old habits based on ignorance even after enlightenment, if you simply continue to indulge them. Imagine what the fact of the actual occurrence of enlightenment might do to an ego-maniac? (You don’t have to imagine: check out Andrew Cohen or ‘the Avataric Great Sage’, Adi Da Samraj.)

It is also possible to inaccurately describe or understand enlightenment, much like the millions of humans who believed the sun went around the earth even though they could see the truth right in front of their eyes. Experiencing the truth is not a guarantee of understanding it (as the pseudo-Advaitists demonstrate).

But here is the good news: over time, and with a conscious effort made to understand what is now experienced and what it actually means, the fruits born of a self built on ignorance, such as fear, hate, frustration, attachment, desire and doubt, are less and less produced as the ignorant self dies; and the production of the fruits of a person who abides in Wholeness, such as peace, contentment, bliss, happiness and acceptance, become the norm.

It is very rarely mentioned, but it takes a while – if at all in some cases – to personally reap the full benefits of enlightenment, and to understand it to an accurate degree. There is a good reason Ramana Maharshi spent 20 years on his own after his enlightenment, and a good reason he was so firmly ‘established’ in enlightenment when he began teaching.

Have you noticed how so many people who have experienced enlightenment have such different views on it? How some promote practice, others ban it? Some describe a process, others claim it’s instant? Some say we need to act on enlightenment, some that we can do anything we like? That’s because people – who have experienced enlightenment or not – are simply human. Some humans are stupid, some humans are illiterate, some humans are amateur philosophers, some humans are fantasists, some humans have an agenda (sex, money, power), some humans are confused, some humans are hopelessly indoctrinated, and enlightenment does not change this fact. It simply means that these people are what they have always been, except now it all occurs – you guessed it – in the context of Wholeness.

Enlightenment is the beginning of a new life, not the end of life itself; using the experience of enlightenment as an excuse to do nothing, on the grounds that the event confers absolute virtue, is like refusing to go to school, learn to read and write, make friends, get a job, find a lover, raise a family, use a hospital or see a shrink on the grounds that you were once born.

Enlightenment is the experience of Truth; but without understanding, it confers no virtue; without no virtue, there is no wisdom; and without no wisdom, of what use is enlightenment to humanity?

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The Diamond

Enlightenment is not an idea.

Do you believe Taoism is about Taoism, even when Laozi wrote ‘The Tao-Path is not the All-Tao. The Name is not the Thing named.’?

Do you believe Buddhism is about Buddhism, even when the Buddha taught the emptiness of all things?

Do you believe Philosophy is about Philosophy, even when Proclus reasoned the One that cannot be hypothesized?

Do you believe Sufism is about Sufism, even when Mohammed said ‘Allah, the One, independent and besought of all, He begets not nor is He begotten, and there is none like unto Him.’?

Do you believe Advaita is about Advaita, even when Shankara argued ‘Brahman is the only truth’?

Do you believe Magick is about Magick, even when Crowley proclaimed ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law!’?

To those who cannot see past ideas, all of these teachers and teachings appear contradictory and exclusive, each promoting their own absolute dogma at the expense of the others.

Yet how many teachers of enlightenment have taught that their teaching alone is true?

For those who cannot see past ideas, one facet amongst an infinite number is taken to be the whole diamond; and the discovery of the truth of another facet is taken to mean the existence of two diamonds, not One.

Yet how many teachers of enlightenment have taught the existence of many enlightenments, or that enlightenment can mean many things?

Unable to see past ideas, and conditioned to find the One Correct Answer, the beginner – seeing many facets of the diamond – cannot help but doubt if he has found the right teaching, to the extent he will either endlessly flirt with one tradition after another, or combat his uncertainty by convincing himself of the shortcomings of any method but the one chosen. The reflection of one facet is held superior to the reflections of the others because not only does conditioning demand it, but the practitioner has not yet seen the diamond personally.

But even the enlightened human may be guilty of persisting in the ignorance of trying to find the One Correct Answer, despite possessing the knowledge that the absolute truth is not an idea. When this happens, the enlightened human forgets the diamond all together when concerning himself with but one facet, and yet having knowledge of the diamond, will struggle in vein to raise up an amalgamation of various reflections to the status of the diamond itself. When this happens, the enlightened human may even deny the existence of the diamond by claiming only reflection exists. For such a confused human, enlightenment is not understood as knowledge of the Tao, Emptiness, the One, Allah, ‘not-two’; the illusion that the absolute is differentiated persists, almost as if enlightenment had never occurred. Of what use is enlightenment to such an individual if it is not or cannot be lived?

Can you admire the reflection of one facet without taking it for the whole diamond?

Can you appreciate the existence of many facets without denying the existence of the diamond itself?

Can you appreciate that no facet is the diamond itself, no matter how glorious, comprehensive or reasonably sound its reflection?

Can you hold within your gaze each and every facet, in all their relatively diverse, contradictory and paradoxical beauty, without trying to resolve them in to a single reflection?

Can you see past all reflections to the diamond itself?

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