Open Enlightenment

Life After Enlightenment

Life After Enlightenment from Alan Chapman on Vimeo.

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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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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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Permission to Satsang

Over the holidays my mum asked me how my writing was going. I shrugged my shoulders because progress had been slow (as it always is in the publishing world). But then I remembered there was a new development, and proudly announced that I had held my first satsang recently. I’m not quite sure she fully understood the concept of a satsang, but she nevertheless looked puzzled and asked me that if I was teaching surely I would need some type of qualification from someone. Without going into too many details, I told her my experience spoke for itself, and left it at that.

But experience alone doesn’t make a good teacher, does it?

I’ve said it on this site before, and I’ll say it again: just because you’ve experienced awakening, it doesn’t mean you fully understand it, have an accurate and healthy approach to it or that you are teacher material (not to mention that some awakened people don’t want to teach at all!).

Top Secret

A few commentators on this site are students of Shinzen Young, who advocates maintaining a relationship with a teacher – or someone more advanced along the path – regardless of whether you’ve experienced enlightenment or not. I reached enlightenment without a teacher, and I was lucky enough to do so without making too many big mistakes; but I’m not naive enough to think I won’t make mistakes in the future, and so taking Shinzen’s advice, a few months ago I decided to see if I could find a teacher before taking up the mantle myself.

Of course, Shinzen would be the obvious choice (as recommended by his students), but after reviewing what he offered I decided I really needed someone closer to home who I could talk to face to face. After a bit of a search, I came across Mr. X (I’m not giving his name because I’m not sure he wants any attention), a dharma heir to Master Gudo Nishijima of the Soto Zen lineage. Being a big Dogen fan, I hoped we might have a common ground on which to discuss enlightenment. I prayed he wasn’t going to be one of those strange breed of Zen types who refuse to talk about awakening.

I need not have worried; Mr X was open about enlightenment and versed in many traditions (even my own). His enlightenment had been a gradual falling away affair after his life took a difficult turn, as opposed to my three stage awakening, but he recognised that the process unfolds in a variety of ways (although he seemed to take some time probing me before he seemed sure I was enlightened). I was convinced that his awakening was authentic due to my experience of intersubjective enlightenment upon first meeting him, and because he spoke to my experience.

At the end of the discussion, I was quite thrown when Mr. X asked me what I actually wanted. Why had I come to see him? Was I looking for confirmation of my experience, for permission to teach? I certainly wasn’t looking for anyone’s confirmation or permission (God forbid!), and although I arrived at his doorstep with no clear reason to be there, what I did get was an interesting insight into Mr. X’s experience as a teacher.

Mr. X had begun teaching Zazen and the dharma as per his lineage, and although at one point he had a modest Sangha, he eventually decided to stop teaching a group, to close down his popular website, and to carefully vet any prospective students.  He had met too many ‘damaged people’ he said, and his lineage, no doubt thanks to the popularity of Brad Warner, tended to attract for the most part people who were only interested in having a Zen teacher or belonging to a Zen lineage for the kudos. Mr. X was pretty sure he could make a lot of money if wanted to by publishing the couple of books he had written, shaving his head and by giving talks wearing the special Zen robe he had received at dharma transmission. But this to him has nothing to do awakening or helping others get there.

This gave me a lot to think about. Exactly why did I want to teach? To make money? To be a famous teacher? Was I prepared to take on the responsibility of dealing with ‘damaged people’ or insincere seekers?

Mr. X’s advice was to think about teaching very carefully, and to write a book. That way, people would have something of substance.

The Satsang Has Landed

After thinking about it for a long time, I decided that teaching was a natural progression for me (I am of course already writing a few books!). I think there is much more to be gained by sharing my knowledge and experience than there is from hiding away for fear of having to deal with difficult people or their issues (which I already have some experience with after running a popular occult website for a few years). And of course, I can always visit Mr. X should I need advice.

Whether or not I will make a good teacher remains to be seen. And here’s hoping I don’t become an ego-maniac…(I can hear Duncan now: ‘What do you mean, ‘become’?!’)

My first satsang happened on 17^th December 2009 at the Bonnington Centre in Vauxhall, London. 5 people turned up (7 including me and my wife) which isn’t bad for an inaugural meeting on a cold, wintery night in London. I very much enjoyed myself, although I must confess I found the experience a little bizarre, sitting in an armchair in the middle of the room dispensing off the cuff ‘wisdom’ (ha!), but I was surprised at how relaxed and easy the night went, and at how great the people were who came that night (thankfully no ‘damaged’ people!). I hope everyone else got as much out of it as I did.

I look forward to making the satsang a weekly occurrence (possibly starting mid January), and I hope to record the results and maybe post them here for those who might benefit from them.

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Micro-patronage is a macro-flop

Spurred on by the success of other sites employing the micro-patronage business model, I had hoped to finance the Open Enlightenment project with recurring low monthly donations by generous readers. However, this approach has always sat uncomfortably with Dunc, and so after a good deal of debate and deliberation, I have relented and cancelled the forthcoming micro-patronage drive.

This does mean that certain objectives have been put on the back burner, but we are still open to donations and – as Duncan has been fond of telling me recently – we are still going to be doing everything we have planned anyway!

Onwards and upwards…

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The #1 Secret to Achieving Enlightenment Here and Now, in This Lifetime

Authoritarian gurus will try and take it from you; enlightenment doubters and cynics will try to undermine it.

When we choose to ignore the advice of a guide or teacher we dishonour it; when we fail to believe in ourselves and each other we lose it.

The number one secret to enlightenment is not a technique, a special mantra or a bizarre diet. It’s much more human than that.

The number one secret to achieving enlightenment here and now in this lifetime – as I have done and many, many others walking this planet right now have done – is integrity.

Is that all?

Perhaps you were hoping for something along the lines of a pseudo-mystical notion of interconnectedness and an instruction in positive thinking, but then there’s no accounting for taste.

We can all exercise integrity; I just think many people don’t know how. So here it is:

Integrity means that we are honest with ourselves and each other, on the basis that we are all capable, trustworthy and good.

No, honestly.

Do you really believe there is such a thing as enlightenment? Integrity means you consider on what basis you do or do not believe such a phenomenon exists. Who or what is your source for what you believe enlightenment is?

If you doubt such a phenomenon exists, be honest with yourself: do you have an accurate and believable description of what enlightenment is, and do you really have sufficient grounds for believing it isn’t real?

If you believe enlightenment exists, be honest with yourself: on what grounds is the description of enlightenment you believe in accurate and believable? What are your grounds for accepting the reality of such a description?

It takes integrity to understand that just because you have read a few New Age paperbacks you are not qualified to identify the ‘Big Special Event’ you have just experienced as enlightenment; or that reading a few philosophy texts qualifies you to dismiss all ‘Big Special Events’ as nothing but overactive imagination, delirium, insanity, or lies.

We show a lack of integrity when we doubt ourselves, others and the countless millennia old spiritual traditions for claiming that not only does enlightenment exist, but that anyone can experience it should they be willing to investigate the field of spirituality, identify the good teachers from the bad, discover and apply the good maps and models of the territory leading up to and beyond enlightenment, practice a time tested daily meditation for life, and find others – especially those with more experience under their belts – with whom to learn with and from.

Integrity means that you would form your expectations of enlightenment on the teachings of people – both alive and dead – who have displayed integrity themselves. A teacher displays integrity when she is honest about what she does and does not understand, what she has and has not experienced, how someone can experience what she has experienced and openly encourages the discussion of doubts, confusion and difficulties that a student might be facing.

A student exercises integrity when he reports experiences that he thinks might be significant to the teacher, but openly accepts what advice or opinion his teacher gives. It takes courage to admit the inescapable truth that we make mistakes about a lot of things a lot of the time. It’s not a sign of weakness to be helped or guided by others.

It shows a spectacular lack of integrity when a teacher refuses to discuss enlightenment or anything else that a student might encounter, refuses to address or is unable to welcome doubts, confusion or difficulties raised by a student, or instructs a student to perform any action that brings harm – whether mental, emotional, physical or financial – to himself or anyone else.

It shows a lack of integrity when a student is unwilling to address or welcome any doubts, fears or concerns over his teacher’s conduct as a result of it harming himself or others.

Ultimately, if we want to experience enlightenment then we must be true to what we think may have happened, both internally as our practice progresses and externally as we observe our behaviour and the actions of our teachers. Internally, this means not being afraid to try and accurately assess our experience in the light of the many models we have for describing what type of ‘Big Special Event’ might have occurred, but also admitting the limit to which our experience and knowledge can help in such an assessment. Externally, this means not being afraid to openly discuss any doubts or difficulties we might be having with our teachers, or to admit where our own behaviour is falling short of our practice.

Entertaining fantasy about enlightenment or absolute doubt in the reality of spiritual experience are both symptoms of a lost belief in the inherent virtue of humanity. Integrity is faith in ourselves and each other, and without it we are lost.

I have every faith that we are capable, despite what authoritarian gurus might preach, or the arguments made by those patronising teachers who refuse to talk about enlightenment on the grounds that we will only harm ourselves with such knowledge.

If you can exercise integrity when it comes to spirituality, then you don’t have very far to go.

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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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Technical Morality

It’s common amongst Gen-Yers to have an inherent intolerance for authority or moralising of any kind; we want clear, honest information fast, and how we use it is no one’s business but our own. I think this is admirable to a degree, and I sympathise with the anti-guru approach that results from applying this view to spirituality.

This attitude is prevalent in the emerging ‘practical dharma’ movement, exemplified in forums/wikis such as the Dharma Overground, Kenneth Folk Dharma and our very own Baptist’s Head Discussion Forum (for those coming at enlightenment from a magical perspective). Methods and technicalities are distributed, discussed and implemented, and the users enjoy the empowerment that comes with ultimately relying on their own dedication and judgement.

But is it possible we might be making a fundamental error in reducing spirituality and enlightenment to simply a matter of technique and a model of possible territory?

Should ethics have a more central role in ‘practical dharma’ beyond its usual sidelining as something that is solely a matter of personal choice?

For a couple of years I was only concerned with methods and maps because I believed they referred to something discoverable and verifiable; morality could not offer such objectivity, being primarily concerned with value judgements.

Time and again I see this approach demonstrated on the forums mentioned above. Technical discussions are generally fruitful, but if someone’s behaviour is called in to question, the discussion quickly degenerates in to a tedious name-calling impasse. At this point, morality might skulk out of its dark hiding place and suggest we all just try to get along; deep down, no one involved in the discussion really respects such a suggestion.

And time and again I see arrogance, egotism, envy and a lack of respect displayed in these forums. Lord knows, I’ve contributed enough of that myself over the years.

Hang on

But what if morality does have the same gold standard as methods and maps?

What if, rather than being a mechanism as is usually assumed, the method is actually a moral act?

What if meditation isn’t just something that happens once a day on a cushion for half an hour, but is in fact a specific morality – based on an experientially verifiable practice, not supposition – that informs how we treat ourselves and each other?

The overwhelming evidence, both personal and scientific, shows that meditation mitigates anger, hate, greed, and self-interest, and gives rise to a conscious expression of our original nature (whether we call that nirvana, God or the Tao), whose characteristics are acceptance, interest, openness and love.

It might come as a surprise, but THESE CHARACTERISTICS ARE THE METHOD.

When we apply these characteristics to our experience, we engage with authentic spirituality. This is meditation. There is not one single bone fide approach to enlightenment that doesn’t work in this way. Whether actual recognition of our original nature has occurred – known as enlightenment – makes no difference to the validity of the practice, beyond increasing the depth and potential of the expression; furthermore, enlightenment does not guarantee its conscious expression in our behaviour: practice is an end in itself, not just a means, and if practice is abandoned after enlightenment, then of what value is enlightenment to anyone, including ourselves?

With all of the above in mind, how ethical is it to ‘evaluate’ someone’s progress without addressing the potential (and the all too common) conceit and arrogance that arises as a result of having verification from an ‘expert’ – who only deals in the ‘real world’ technicalities of enlightenment – that yes, you really are an accomplished meditator, you’ve mastered the formless realms and you very well maybe enlightened.

Where is the integrity and mindfulness here? Should this advice always be given to anyone who asks, regardless of their mental state or psychological predisposition? And what if the ‘expert’ is wrong?

The student in this example is not even in the position to accurately judge at what stage he or she may be at, let alone have the forethought and insight to be mindful of any possible unique but unhealthy reactions to this information, or the probable egotistical and conceited emotions and beliefs that may result from being informed of such a position.

In an online environment where autonomy is promoted, and when dealing with conceit so close to the heart that we cannot recognise it ourselves, it is virtually impossible to highlight these shortcomings and prescribe a particular approach without causing offense.

But if everything I have written has a solid basis in reality, then the degree to which we indulge anger, hate, egotism, greed and ignorance is the degree to which we are TECHNICALLY failing. Hate isn’t bad simply because we don’t like it; hate is an indication of a lack of awareness, openness, interest, love and acceptance. Hate is an indication of a lack of application of our method, and a lack of how much we understand our original nature.

To dish out judgements on other people’s progress and attainments without also addressing their morality shows a practical shortcoming on the ‘expert’s’ part; to ask for a judgement of our progress without being willing to accept a similar evaluation of our morality is a practical failure on ours.

I’ve recently been asking myself how often do I bring the ‘practical dharma’ to my daily life, and I can tell you, it’s very rarely as much as I would like.

How about you?

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Rapid Versus Gradual Awakening

Vipassana plus magick is perhaps the quickest, driest route to enlightenment there is. It was the path I followed, and although I’m not necessarily an evangelist for this route I think there are problems with the criticism that it makes sense to ‘hold back’ on awakening and develop concentration and morality instead.

The first problem is the simple question of time. How much do you suppose you have to plan your ideal realisation? The longer we ‘delay’ enlightenment the greater the risk of dying before we get there. The Great Work is no less subject to impermanence than any other goal.

Secondly, how much mastery of concentration and morality is enough? If you can sit in samadhi for a whole day, should you aim for a week? Similarly, morality: how easily should selfless acts come before you’re a worthy candidate for enlightenment? Should you wait until you’ve landed a Nobel Peace Prize?

Concentration and morality are attainments based in the relative world. There’s always more work you could do on them. This leads to the third problem: because they’re relative attainments they can stand in the way of the Absolute.

If you can remain in samadhi for a whole day, then great, but there will always be situations in which you can’t. You might be ill, or problems may arise in your life that distract you, or the people next door are too noisy, or an earthquake strikes. No matter how good you get, something can always trash the mastery. The same goes for morality: similar sorts of factors can disturb the purity of our intentions and – of course – there’s never any guarantee that even the most refined of intentions will produce its appropriate result in the real world.

In short, the assumption that concentration and morality can be ‘mastered’ sometimes arises from a belief in a masterful self, whereas mastery of concentration and morality actually consists in realising that they can’t be done – not in the way we might imagine they can.

Fourthly, the idea that fast awakening in itself is somehow morally slack or retrograde is presumptuous. What specific harm can a rapid awakening be supposed to have done? Any answer that points to something that may happen in the future rather than to what is supposed to have occurred already I propose to disregard, on the basis that people are innocent until they actually commit a crime.

Doubtless, there are gurus with psychopathic personalities. Their moral failures generally involve financial or sexual exploitation of their followers. Treating students in this way will hold them back rather than awaken them. I’m not aware of any guru who could be accused of awakening too many people too quickly. Quite the opposite, sadly. And let’s face it: concentration and morality were never going to fix people like these. Someone with the moral world-view of a three year-old was never going to sit down and think ‘I really must get myself sorted before I go too deep’, so why pretend there’s any solution to enlightened fuck-ups other than cutting off the supply of fragile personalities who unfortunately flock to them?

The world is full of nut-jobs who will do you over, given the chance. There are probably more plumbers, builders and bankers among them than gurus. If a banker made your investment grow ‘too quickly’, or a builder put up your house ‘too fast’, you’d have every right to be suspicious. But it wouldn’t be correct to assume automatically that they’d committed a crime, or that you were necessarily their victim.

If someone has awakened and discovers that this makes them happier or more free, then choosing to help others follow the same path is surely more morally developed than vanishing into silence. The fact remains that some people have a harder time with dry insight practice than others. If the issue lies with the person rather than the path, then an alternative route may indeed be a good tactic. It’s understandable that someone fortunate enough to enjoy a swifter ride may attract suspicion, but genuine psychopaths behave in the same way regardless of whether they set themselves up as gurus: they intimidate, dominate and exploit.

I strongly doubt that dry insight practice is a common factor among psychopaths.

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