Open Enlightenment

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 Myth of Lineage

There is a common misperception in the West regarding tradition, especially as it relates to lineage within a school that facilitates enlightenment. The two main elements of this misperception are:

In the East, there are unbroken lineages of enlightened teachers/students that transfer the dharma successfully from generation to generation, evident in many of the schools of Buddhism.

In the West, there is and never have been any awakened lineages to speak of. As a result, no Western ‘tradition’ really has anything to offer comparable to the Eastern schools.

But what exactly is meant by ‘dharma’?

Is the dharma the teachings of Siddartha Gautama (563-483 BCE)?

If this is the case, then dharma transmission is nothing but the teaching of concepts, method and culture that have accumulated over the last 2,500 years since the historical Buddha lived. This is completely divorced from the actual experience of awakening, and transmission of the dharma would not require direct, personal experience of enlightenment in order to become a ‘dharma heir’.

Indeed, we can see such a culture evident in Japanese Buddhism, where certain Zen schools are owned by families who pass down the ‘possession of the dharma’ from father to son. This is dharma transmission as family business.

Furthermore, it is common scholarly knowledge that there exists no authentic record of any lineage dating back to the historical Buddha, none whatsoever. Any lineage claiming such a thing is a result of an attempt at some point in the past to raise the profile of the school in question.

Is the dharma the order or law of the universe?

Again, this is not the experience of enlightenment, but a conceptual model or framework of reality. Does the ‘transmission’ of such a model equate with the direct personal experience of awakening?

Is the dharma the transmission of awakening itself?

The Record of the Transmission of the Light reports:

Once, the World-honoured One (Buddha) held up a flower and blinked his eyes. Kashyapa broke out in a smile. The World-honoured One said, ‘I have the Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma, the ineffable mind of nirvana. I entrust it to Mahakashyapa.’

The moment that Kashyapa smiled is the moment he became awakened in the presence of the Buddha. Regardless of the historical accuracy of this record, the phenomenon of the transmission of enlightenment from one person to another is not just reported by Buddhism; for many Advaita Vedantist’s, it is the only way to achieve enlightenment.

However, although it may appear as if ‘something’ is transmitted from a teacher to a student, the truth of the matter is that what is recognised during enlightenment is not a ‘thing’ locatable in space/time, nor is it something that is ‘missing’, ‘lost’ or ‘lacking’ that the newly awakened student ‘receives’ from outside of him or herself. Similarly, it is not that the Buddha or any awakened individual has ‘gained’ that which is recognised at enlightenment, and so it is not possible for that person to ‘give’ it to anyone either.

This does not mean that awakening cannot and does not occur in the presence of someone already awakened, as my own experience is testament to. But a more fitting understanding of the phenomenon might be the idea of resonance, as if something about the behaviour of the awakened individual can cause another to resonate in a similar fashion to foster a recognition of his or her own, much like a vibration at a particular frequency can cause objects to vibrate in a similar fashion (note that this is just a metaphor; I am not positing ‘enlightenment vibrations’).

It follows then that the dharma as direct, personal awakening is not something that can be possessed, owned or given by any lineage; but a lineage that teaches an understanding of enlightenment – dharma as the teaching of the Buddha and as a model of reality – and helps to facilitate enlightenment in students – which includes the presence of awakened individuals – is certainly something of value.

However, exactly how many lineages match such a description?

Genesis of a tradition

What are the possible origins of a tradition, school or lineage? Here are a number of elements that may play a part in their creation:

• An individual’s experience of awakening
• An individual’s particular understanding and model of reality
• Politics
• Greed for power/money/sex
• Business
• The kudos of being a holy teacher

No doubt there are many more, but this is enough to understand that there is a staggering number of possible combinations of the above that may go in to the creation – and revision – of a tradition.

For instance, someone who has a good model of reality after years of sitting and study might start teaching for the kudos and the access to easy sexual conquests.

Or a genuinely awakened person might decide to make a lot of money out of the fact they are the real deal.

Or someone who really wants to help others experience enlightenment might also enjoy wielding political power.

Even if we leave the question of motivation out of the equation for the moment, and just focus on the authenticity or quality of a teaching or school, we should be aware that:

• Just because an individual has had a genuine awakening, it doesn’t mean he or she can produce an accurate understanding of the experience or a useful model of reality, nor does it mean he or she will or has helped anyone else experience enlightenment, even if a lineage is produced in his or her name, and even if to this day it remains ‘unbroken’.
• Just because an individual has spent many years with awakened teachers, and has a firm understanding of an accurate model of reality and enlightenment, it doesn’t mean he or she has had a genuine awakening, even if he or she decides to set up a school or lineage.
• Just because a lineage teaches a model of enlightenment, it doesn’t mean it is accurate or helpful, that any of the teachers have any direct experience of what they are talking about, or even that the lineage began with an awakened individual.

Given everything considered above, the idea that we should simply look to the East to find ‘unbroken’ lineages of enlightened, ethical and wise individuals is naive at best. A failure to consider the many possible variables involved in a school that promises dharma transmission is no doubt a large enabling factor to the countless abuses perpetrated by guru after guru in the late 20^th century (and which no doubt still occur today).

Next time you come across an ‘unbroken’ lineage, you should ask yourself exactly what is ‘unbroken’: a certain view of the world? A business model? An empty, irrelevant and unaccessible culture? Superstition? Abuse?

Or that rare thing: a group of genuinely awakened individuals, with a good understanding of the phenomenon, whose main concern is helping others to wake up too?

Right on our doorstep

We can now offer a slightly revised definition of the dharma:

The signifier: a model that describes reality based on awakening/enlightenment

And the signified: That which is recognised at awakening/enlightenment, including our relationship to ‘that’, the resulting view of the world, the way we live according to ‘that’ and the beliefs we hold about ourselves, each other and reality.

Although there is much historical evidence to suggest the ‘unbroken’ lineage of a number of occult or secret traditions of enlightenment in the West, we have no way of knowing just how many authentically awakened individuals were a part of these lineages, what was transmitted, what the motivations were behind many of them and their members, or even who the traditions started with. Sound familiar?

However, we do have many surviving Western teachings or models of reality – examples of the signifier – in the works produced by the Greek philosophers, such as Plato, Plotinus and Proclus; the Christian mystics, such as Pseudo-Dionysius and St. Theresa of Avila; the Medieval alchemists, such as Paracelsus and Agrippa; the Renaissance Hermeticists and Christian Cabalists, such as Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno; the Elizabethan magicians and alchemists, Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley; the Rosicrucians and the countless mystery schools; the Freemasons, such as Elias Ashmole; the Traditionalists, such as Julius Evola and Rene Guenon; the Fourth Way and G.I. Gurdjieff; and the traditions of Thelema and the A.’.A.’., founded by Aleister Crowley and continued by Robert Anton Wilson.

(Of course, there have been many ‘pseudo-traditions’ in the West, such as Theosophy and the Typhonian O.T.O., but again, this is just as prevalent in the East.)

I have to agree with Pierre Grimes when he claims that there is not any metaphysic – produced by anyone, anywhere – as profound as the one offered by the Greeks; and I have personally found the models offered by all of the above Western schools helpful, accurate, challenging, insightful and rewarding. And many of them speak in a very profound sense to my experience of enlightenment.

What this means is that there have always been people in the West experiencing enlightenment – albeit underground for a good millennia and a half – creating a spiritual culture as colourful and as rich as any found in the East. If you are interested in awakening, might there be something of value to be found here?

Ultimately, I don’t believe in tradition; unless there is another type of human being on this planet, with a different brain or mind or heart, the answer to the questions ‘Who are we?’ and ‘What is the truth?’ is the same for all of us. It doesn’t matter whether we are born in Burma or Birmingham, whether we are Hindu or Atheist, whether we are a part of a tradition or not, whether we know someone awakened or not; enlightenment is a human phenomenon, it’s everyone’s birthright, it’s possible for anyone to experience it and there are no definite limitations to who might provide a useful, accurate and helpful view of awakening and reality itself, regardless of lineage, culture or geographical location.

So I think it is time we dropped our naive infatuation with the East as somehow more ‘spiritual’ than the West, as well as our naive disregard for the Western pioneers of enlightenment who more often than not taught awakening at great risk of torture and murder. Rather than investing in the silly notion that the Buddha magically appeared in the East as the very first awakened individual and produced a number of unbroken lineages of realised humans right down to the present day (only coming to the West very recently), we should instead consider enlightenment as a human phenomenon that has occurred to many people all across the globe – as it did during the Axial Age, in three other places besides India: Greece (Philosophy), Israel (Monotheism – but not as we know it today!) and China (Daoism) – that is not dependent on adopting any single culture or religion.

Enlightenment is a human phenomenon, not the product of any lineage or school; isn’t it time we approached it as one? What might we be missing if we pigeon hole ourselves as ‘belonging’ to a ‘tradition’?

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New Developments

Things have certainly moved on in the last few weeks. In my last post I mentioned the desire to set up a bone fide Western tradition of enlightenment, and coupled with recently learning how to use the internet properly, I now have a more fleshed out business model for Open Enlightenment and my other projects.

Site #1: Open Enlightenment

This site has always been about discussing enlightenment in an honest and sane manner, with a view to presenting enlightenment to the public as a very real and natural human development. This project is very much a product of the times we live in, and in some sense is also reactionary, and so it is not the ideal basis upon which to build a tradition.

I have therefore separated out the teaching side of the equation (see below), leaving OE to its original aims. This also means that the conversation facilitated by OE can be opened up to many different viewpoints and traditions, without any ideological inconsistencies getting in the way.

I’m currently excited by how the internet and the growing New Marketing is effecting spirituality and what this means for the future of teaching enlightenment, and my work for OE will be dealing with this topic in the near future.

I see OE growing into a digital magazine with many contributors, a repository of resources (written, audio and video), and an events facilitator for many great cutting edge spirituality teachers. And yes, that centre is still a dream.

I would like to fund all of the above on a micro-patron basis. I have it on good authority that approximately 2% of an audience can be expected to take part, but I have every confidence that the audience for OE will grow dramatically over the coming years.

Teachings have been removed from this site, revised and will be presented on a new site shortly.

Site #2: The Baptist’s Head

I originally considered closing down this site after the original aim of the project was fulfilled: the completion of the Great Work by two contemporary magicians. Duncan has painstakingly edited, polished and indexed the best material from the BH into three books (one for each stage of the magical process), with the first two available soon (self-published – and not ‘on demand’ – too!).

But ending this project would be ending a conversation when there are a growing number of people who have only just joined in. The BH is a movement (even if it is small), not a just a website, and so the plan is to scale down the site to a blog, so that the conversation around Advanced Magick for Beginners and the three BH books can continue, as well as having a portal for new articles, videos (Scrying an enochian aethyr is coming soon!) and new titles.

Funding wise, the BH will continue as it always has, as a labour of love.

Site #3: Original Nature

This is the name of my teaching and tradition. I’ll be giving away all of the teachings and practices for free on the website, but I’ll be charging for group sessions, workshops and retreats. I’m currently looking in to setting up an online instruction course that offers a degree of one-on-one tuition, without incurring the usual costs of conference calls, or venue hire in meat space. I’ll also be doing a lot of work in the real world too, as well as having a book in the pipeline.

The pledge bank group mentioned to your right is the beginnings of an Original Nature meditation group in London.

The teaching includes everything I’ve learnt from every practice and tradition I’ve used personally, but presented in an easily understood and contemporary fashion. It will include work with daydreams, dreams, understanding how the mind is always meditating and how best to approach using it, working with Providence and synchronicity, and all within the context of a coherent psychology and philosophy.

But what really excites me is the ethical practice involved, and I would very much like to begin introducing the benefits of enlightenment into the real world, perhaps as a form of activism, working with the poor, prisoners or the sick and dying. I’m currently inspired by the ID project.

Moneywise, Original Nature will work on a membership basis, although on and offline events can be paid for individually. And of course, donations will always be welcome.

Site #4: My personal site

I thought it would be a good idea to have all of this stuff – plus everything I’ve ever done and will do – in one place. I’ll probably blog about anything that interests me that isn’t relevant to any of the above conversations here. No funding necessary.

New Marketing

I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that the internet is not just an online extension or presence for real-world services or products; it’s a completely new way of doing things. I’ll be exploring this a lot in the future on OE, but the general gist is that the internet is about genuine interest and honesty, and communication between everyone. The internet is about conversations, not advertising or products.

This realisation is responsible for everything I’ve outlined here, as well as the revelation that building whizz-bang sites with their own forums and stuff is a symptom of approaching the net as if it were just another advertising channel. All the sites are (or will be) in wordpress, which is free, and I intend on using the already available social media instead of trying to re-invent the wheel (you may have noticed a new social bookmarking function at the bottom of each thread to aid in the conversation).

Design for each site is coming, and thankfully I won’t be doing any of it! Woohoo!

Updates will be coming as soon as each site becomes available.

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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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‘For-Benefit’ Enlightenment

Shortly after describing enlightenment as knowledge of, say, the Absolute Truth or the Non-dual to people who are unfamiliar with the subject, I am invariably asked, ‘What’s the point?’

Indeed, what is the point? Why would anyone in their right mind want to get ‘all non-dual’? Sounds confusing. Why would anyone want to sit every day for years in order to discover emptiness? Sounds nihilistic and quite boring. And what’s with this Absolute Truth? Postmodernism has proved that everything is relative…

Of course, given 20 minutes or so I can elaborate on a particular model in order to demonstrate the benefits of knowing the Absolute, or that we’re really non-dual, or that Emptiness is actually Form, but of course by then I’ve lost them. I’m usually left feeling a little bit self-important and quite irrelevant.

I’ve been considering the language of enlightenment for some time, and it seems that the labels we use have the tendency of leaving the world ‘over here’ and enlightenment ‘over there’. We cannot seem to escape a fundamental division in our thinking. Some examples:

• Relative vs. Absolute
• Form vs. Emptiness
• Profane vs. Divine
• Duality vs. Non-dual
• Ego vs. Impersonal
• Ignorance vs. Truth

Whenever defining enlightenment to someone who has never experienced it, or someone with only a cursory interest, we automatically put them – and everything they hold dear – on the ‘wrong side’ of reality: the relative, profane, dualistic, egotistical, ignorant; and, crucially, for them enlightenment is left in the realm of the purely speculative or conceptual. Irrelevant indeed.

I don’t believe that the only option for engaging with enlightenment is to spend years studying New Age guff, wasting time with dead ends and enjoying one disillusionment after another, all the while not really knowing what you are looking for, until you eventually sift the small amount of good information from the bad. I’ve recently become interested in evolution, genetics and astronomy because I’ve been exposed to each subject in a meaningful and accessible way. I’m pretty sure I would have been similarly interested many years ago if my initial contact with each of these topics had been relevant and interesting; but they weren’t. It follows that if we can demonstrate that enlightenment is relevant and interesting – which it most certainly is – then more people, who would already like to engage with it if they just knew what it was, will have the opportunity to.

So what am I advocating? That we ‘sell’ enlightenment?

Things have moved on since the Buddha. We don’t need to sit on a mud floor and listen to someone read a sutra; we’ve got powerpoint and auditoriums. We don’t have to rely on the Four Noble Truths, esoteric symbolism, and cultural indoctrination; we’ve got copywriting, design, and New Media.

That’s right: we can use the best methods of communication available today to teach enlightenment, and in a language that everyone understands. I know quite a lot about female beauty products despite the fact I’ve never been interested in them nor will I ever use them. This is due to effective copywriting: a tool so powerful it can educate everyone about the latest mascara, not just the intended audience. Why can’t it be put into the service of educating the public about enlightenment? I’m not talking about scamming the public or treating enlightenment as a commodity; I’m talking about presenting the truth about enlightenment in a way that makes sense to humans living in the 21^st century. We can find a few solutions to the problems of introducing enlightenment to a larger audience in the advertisers’ tool kit, such as the first rule of copywriting:

Sell the benefits, not the features.

Sectors

So what are the benefits of enlightenment? Why should anyone take an interest?

There are some teachers – such as Bill Hamilton, Shinzen Young and Daniel Ingram – who are unsure that there ARE any benefits to enlightenment. This view is a bit like a not-for-profit organisation: enlightenment is about working towards an end that promises no personal gain, although everyone is pretty sure it’s for the common good.

Then there are some teachers – particularly the ‘Direct Path’ Advaitists – who are convinced that enlightenment is all happiness, joy, freedom and bliss, and the sooner everyone gets there, the better. This view is a bit like the private sector: the event of enlightenment is all that matters – an end in itself – and the faster it happens, the happier everyone will be. And damn anything that might get in the way: give all your possessions to your guru, sleep with the boss, and abandon any unsympathetic family or friends.

And the public sector? That might be mainstream Buddhism: a huge, lumbering ‘official’ organisation that looks like it’s doing something, but isn’t actually getting the job done.

All of the above generally present enlightenment in terms of features, not benefits (such as – respectively – techniques and maps, Non-duality, Buddhist dogma).

I would like Open Enlightenment to resemble the emerging For-Benefit fourth sector in this analogy (see what I’ve done there?). That means OE will promote enlightenment just like the private sector, but without lying or selling a fantasy, without comprising on ethics, without treating enlightenment as an end in itself, and by focusing on the benefits, not the features, we will refrain from indulging the gung-ho goal mentality, and demonstrate the relevance of enlightenment to not only our personal lives, but to the community (just like the not-for-profits), straight off the bat.

Everybody’s building

Out of all the labels for describing enlightenment, there is only one that is immediately recognisable as a benefit, and it is the label I used when enlightenment occurred for me. I’m talking about Wholeness.

If someone were to ask, ‘What is enlightenment?’, and I were to say, ‘Enlightenment is the sudden and irrevocable knowledge of your Whole Nature’, it is immediately obvious that a). enlightenment is a growth in self knowledge and b). it offers some form of completion. Note however that the beginner and his or her current life are not left on the ‘wrong side’ of reality, and enlightenment is seen as an addition, not a substitute. The beginner is left wondering, ‘Do I want to grow and build on my life?’ instead of feeling that they now need to defend their current position.

With this definition the beginner is already considering the possible benefits, before they’ve had a chance to ask, ‘What is the point?’. Of which there are many (I really am confused by those teachers who can’t see the benefits. Perhaps that’s down to creeping normalcy.). Enlightenment offers the opportunity to:

• understand yourself and the world at a fundamental level.
• discover your direction and purpose in life.
• heal old emotional and psychological wounds.
• develop the ability to face anything that life can throw at you (including death).
• exercise ethics based on your true nature.
• fall in love with the world.
• realise the joy and beauty of simply existing.

I could go on. Of course, the degree to which these benefits are reaped depend upon the quality of the teaching and the methods and models used to mediate the experience, but the good news is we already have these. By focusing on the benefits instead of the features, the practitioner can begin to enjoy all of the above from the very beginning of the journey, instead of getting hung up on the feature of enlightenment that will occur somewhere in the future. And for the person whom enlightenment has already occurred, the growth of these benefits never ends.

We can still be honest about enlightenment; but we should at least do it with some wisdom. Who would have guessed that advertising could be used for good as well as evil?

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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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The Dialogue of Eris and Angelos (Part 2)

ANGELOS: What would you like to drink, Eris? I’d suggest something highly caffeinated, because if we continue to pursue the themes we’ve explored so far I’ve a feeling things might get very deep.

ERIS: In that case, Angelos, mine’s a mocha – with extra chocolate. I’ll need a heavy dose of pleasure if you’re going to get mystical on me. Let’s sit over here, at the back, where there’s less chance anyone who knows me might overhear us discussing your spooky trash.

ANGELOS: ‘Spooky trash’? So I’m guessing you’d reject out of hand the idea that there exists something Absolute?

ERIS: Yes. Because it’s impossible. A thing that I experience is defined in some way, so the fact that it’s not an absolute is what makes each thing itself.

ANGELOS: You’d assert that the Absolute does not exist?

ERIS: Yes. Or if it could be said to exist, it would have no relevance to my experience.

ANGELOS: Therefore the Absolute is that which does not exist?

ERIS: Hey, I don’t like the sound of this. I’m not too happy about that ‘is’…

ANGELOS: But would you agree that all things that exist do so in a manner that is distinct, each from the other, and this is what enables us to tell them apart?

ERIS: Of course.

ANGELOS: And that which does not exist does so in a manner which is identical to all other things that do not exist, and it’s this which enables us to distinguish between things that do exist and all those that don’t?

ERIS: No. Because things can ‘not exist’ differently. For instance: dinosaurs do not currently exist, but they once did. Unicorns, on the other hand, never have.

ANGELOS: Agreed. But I’d like to keep our discussion focused on our experience. I want to talk about things existing and not existing according to how they arise within our awareness. Can you go along with me on this?

ERIS: Fine, because what doesn’t exist can’t arise in my awareness. How could it? This is going to be a very short discussion and I’ve hardly sipped my mocha yet.

ANGELOS: Hang on a moment! Although unicorns and dinosaurs can’t arise in our experience, you were able to talk about them just now.

ERIS: Of course, because we have signs in our language with which to do so.

ANGELOS: So when you talk about things not existing in different ways, what you’re really talking about is a difference among types of signs. You’re referring to a difference among things that do exist – the signs. But as far as our experience is concerned, unicorns and dinsosaurs are both absent from it in an identical fashion.

ERIS: Well, yes, I suppose so. I still don’t see how this helps your argument, because now you’re admitting that our awareness is defined and limited by our language.

ANGELOS: Only if we choose to limit ourselves to the realm of thoughts and ideas, Eris. The point I was hoping to make is simply that all things that don’t exist manifest their non-existence in the same way – by not being available to experience – whereas all things that do exist manifest uniquely.

ERIS: I’m not sure that ‘manifesting non-existence’ makes much sense, but I would provisionally accept that.

ANGELOS: I don’t like putting it that way either. All I mean is that what doesn’t exist isn’t apparent to our mind and senses except as a sign or idea (which is a representative, not the thing itself) and that this goes for all things that don’t exist. Whereas all things that do exist are apparent, and are all apparently different.

ERIS: Okay. So what? All you’ve done is to echo my assertion that no absolute exists, and nothing that does not exist is available to our experience.

ANGELOS: You’re right. But I want to look at it now from the converse. Namely: that which does not exist, because all things are non-existent in the same way, is therefore intrinsically consistent and whole. And also, that which does not exist does so unchangingly and for all time.

ERIS: Unless it comes into existence at some point in the future.

ANGELOS: You mean that a conception of something non-existent that we once had may at a later time become a reality?

ERIS: Why not?

ANGELOS: Granted. But is our conception identical to the thing that later comes into being?

ERIS: No. It’s not the actual thing, but we’re able to identify it as such.

ANGELOS: So, again, we have to be careful to distinguish between our ideas and thoughts, which exist, and the things of which they are the representatives, which may not exist. As far as our personal awareness is concerned, isn’t it the case that something that does not exist for us will continue not to do so uniformly and for all time?

ERIS: I suppose so. But if it doesn’t exist, forgive me if I don’t make much of a fuss about it!

ANGELOS: Even though it is whole, consistent, and eternally unchanging? Even though that which doesn’t exist fits the criteria of something Absolute which, at the beginning, you said you couldn’t conceive?

ERIS: But what’s the point? It still doesn’t exist, so therefore I’m still unable to experience it – except in the sphere of ideas and language, which – God knows why – you’ve ruled out of our discussion. Yet you still seem happy to go on chatting, and if this discussion isn’t an example of a purely linguistic exercise then I don’t know what is!

ANGELOS: Well, firstly you said you couldn’t conceive of an Absolute, and yet by talking about the nature of that which does not exist we’ve arrived at precisely such a concept.

ERIS: Yet the concept is not the thing – as you yourself admitted.

ANGELOS: Agreed. So what we need to do next is to examine whether that which does not exist can nevertheless enter experience.

ERIS: I can’t wait to hear this! Come on, then.

ANGELOS: Have you ever come across the so-called ‘pointing-out instructions’? They’re derived from eastern religions and are traditionally used for demonstrating to people that the self doesn’t exist.

ERIS: Yes, I’ve read about those. The instructions take you through awareness of every part of the body and you ask yourself: ‘Am I this finger? Am I these eyes?’, and so on.

ANGELOS: That’s one form of it. But you can ask the same question of anything that arises in your experience: ‘Am I these perceptions? These thoughts? This mind?’ What soon becomes apparent is that there is nothing corresponding to a ‘self’ anywhere in our experience. If you’re aware of something, that thing can’t be the thing that has the awareness – it cannot be you. Even the mind that you’re aware of having – it can’t be the same mind that has an awareness of ‘you’. So what is this ‘you’?

ERIS: I’ve done this exercise. If you continue with it for long enough it can make you feel really weird. But something is wrong there, obviously, because even though it ‘logically’ proves there’s no self, I can still feel one. The self must be some kind of deep structure or pattern in the brain; something that’s not available to experience but is constantly there nonetheless.

ANGELOS: The self is unconscious, in other words?

ERIS: Yes.

ANGELOS: But you’re conscious, aren’t you?

ERIS: So it seems, although there are philosophers around these days who deny that it’s so simple.

ANGELOS: So if Eris’s ‘self’ is unconscious, but Eris is conscious, then Eris and herself are unalike.

ERIS: Consciousness is the greatest mystery of modern science. If I knew the answer do you think I’d be sitting here with you?

ANGELOS: What if the logic of the pointing-out instructions were correct and ‘modern science’ were asking the wrong questions? What if the self truly doesn’t exist, as seems to be the case when we take the time to investigate?

ERIS: Why does my experience tell me it does, then?

ANGELOS: If we experience a self, yet the investigation of it reveals it cannot exist, then your earlier argument that we cannot experience what does not exist is simply an assumption. Each time we experience the self we are actually experiencing something that cannot exist.

ERIS: Not necessarily. It could be just a misperception.

ANGELOS: Misperception is when one thing that is known is mistaken for another. A rook is mistaken for a crow, perhaps, or a pattern in the bark of a tree is taken for a face. But in our case, what is this self that we have mistaken for some other thing?

ERIS: It’s… – I don’t know! It’s just the self; it’s self-evident!

ANGELOS: My point is that it can’t be said we’re ‘misperceiving’ something if we can’t even state what that thing is we suppose is being misperceived.

ERIS: None of this is new to me, Angelos. I know that if we look deep into the nature of anything we find that our grounds for supposing it to exist are baseless. This is called deconstructionism and, on this point at least, modern philosophy and the Eastern traditions have much in common.

ANGELOS: I know the sort of philosophers you mean, Eris. If they have so much in common with Buddhism – as you suggest – and if they’ve realised that nothing possesses intrinsic being, do these philosophers declare themselves enlightened, like the Buddha did?

ERIS: Certainly not! That would be a claim of absolute truth, whereas our contemporary philosophers have demonstrated there’s no such thing. Instead, it’s our language, our social practices and habits of perception that lend things the appearance of intrinsic existence.

ANGELOS: We considered how the criteria for absolute truth matches the criteria of that which doesn’t exist, in that both are prefectly consistent and eternal. To grasp the groundlessness of everything – I suggested – is therefore to grasp nothingness. The claim of enlightenment therefore arises from a realisation of nothingness. It’s not a pretension to any specific knowledge, since that would be something and would not meet the criteria of absolute truth. Yet our contemporary philosophers imply that the ‘groundlessness’ of all things is grapsed through acquiring specific knowledge of lingustic and cultural conventions. Haven’t they contradicted themselves, then, by asserting that there are ‘grounds’ for this supposed ‘groundlessness’?

ERIS: Surely you’re not going to claim that language and culture are unimportant?

ANGELOS: Certainly not. But the very fact that are so important demonstrates that our philosophers haven’t at all grapsed the ‘groundlessness’ of things. What they have grasped is not nothingness, but on the contrary something very salient.

ERIS: Yet without this understanding of the forces that determine our perception and history we’re at the mercy of prejudice and ignorance. You might not consider postmodernism as an equivalent to ‘enlightenment’, but it’s good enough for me! Anyone who rests smugly on a notion of absolute truth will fall victim to their own prejudice by supposing that what seems true to them applies to everyone. And believing that the truth of all things is ‘nothingness’ is tantamount to nihilism.

ANGELOS: If I said that ‘nothingness’ were the truth of everything, then I’d be making something of my nothing. But it’s more subtle than that, Eris. The absolute can’t merely stand in opposition to the relative; the type of nothingness I’m talking about isn’t simply the ‘opposite’ of something. If it were, it would be defined in relation to something, in which case it would itself be relative and not absolute – nor nothing, for that matter. The truly absolute is the negation of something, but it must also be engaged in negating itself.

ERIS: Sounds like a mouthful of philosophical verbiage to me!

ANGELOS: No. It’s completely practical. Enlightenment is an engagement with this self-negating absolute. Meditation and other spiritual exercises involve the practitioner in the negation of self, therefore bringing the practitioner into line with the nature of the absolute itself, and over time this results in a realisation that the self and the absolute are actually one and the same. Deconstructionism, on the other hand, is completely different. For starters, it never steps from the realm of ideas into experience. And it never obliges us to change ourselves through self-negation in the way that is required to align ourselves with the absolute. Which is probably why you only tend to hear it coming from the mouths of academics.

ERIS: Postmodernism leads us into engagement with cultural forces and institutions. I’d say it engages with the world far more deeply than sitting on a cushion with your eyes shut and pretending you don’t exist.

ANGELOS: I see your point. But ethical consequences certainly arise from a realisation of the absolute. Yet that’s a topic for another time.

ERIS: You’re not trying to side-step the issue, are you Angelos?

ANGELOS: I’d just assumed you’d probably had enough for one day.

ERIS: I’d be fascinated to hear how you suppose that believing in an absolute nothingness makes you a better person.

ANGELOS: You’re such hard work, Eris.

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The Dialogue of Eris and Angelos

ANGELOS: Hello, Eris. I should’ve known I’d find you here. This is a great occult bookshop. They’ve got everything, haven’t they? Are you researching something specific?

ERIS: You know what I’m like, Angelos. I’m looking up some references for the latest paper I’ve written on the history of occultism since Aleister Crowley.

ANGELOS: Sounds interesting.

ERIS: Not as interesting as what I’ve heard about you. Someone told me you’d fallen in with a religious crowd and had turned all mystical.

ANGELOS: Well, kind of. You could say the work I’ve been doing recently has been an exploration of how mysticism sits with contemporary magick. One of the problems with chaos magic, when it appeared in the late seventies, is that it has left out the dimension of spiritual practice and development.

ERIS: Yes. Recently I’ve heard people on the magick scene using the term ‘results mysticism’ – which is quite a striking idea.

ANGELOS: Well, that wasn’t us, but yes. However, one of the ways in which we’ve gained results from mysticism is through the realisation that magical and esoteric traditions (if they are genuinely that, because many of them aren’t) are all pushing towards the same goal – namely, The Great Work, which in the eastern traditions is known as enlightenment.

ERIS: Woah – hang on there, Angelos! This idea that all traditions lead to the same goal is one that I have tremendous difficulties with. Each tradition presents a point of view that is socially determined. You know that, surely? Each is a product of the language used by a social group, and other cultural factors besides.

ANGELOS: Do you have to be anywhere in the next hour, Eris? I’m asking, because it’s probably going to take me a while to explain why we need to move on from ideas like that.

ERIS: Move on? That’s a little presumptuous! You have my full attention, Angelos. I only hope the rumours I’ve heard about you aren’t true.

ANGELOS: I’m touched by your concern. But consider this, Eris: if the esoteric traditions are purely socially determined and therefore incommensurate, then in what do you suppose lies the fundamental difference between ‘The Great Work’ in the western tradition and ‘enlightenment’ in the Eastern?

ERIS: Well, it seems to me quite clear. The Buddhist seeks the annihilation of the self (yes, I accept that that’s simplistically phrased, but this isn’t my main point) whereas, in the western tradition, the magician works through successive states of awareness, with the assistance of the Holy Guardian Angel. The Great Work aims toward the knowledge and conversation of the angel, and then union with it. Clearly these aims are not commensurate at all.

ANGELOS: I appreciate that they may not appear so on the surface. Yet in our explorations and practise we’ve discovered that the higher grades of the A∴A∴, which Crowley represented on the Tree of Life as Magister Templi (Binah), Magus (Chokmah) and Ipsissimus (Kether) are mappable with surprising consistency onto the stages of awakening described in the Theravada Buddhist model: sottapana (‘stream-enterer’), anagami (‘never-returner’) and arahat.

ERIS: But this shouldn’t surprise us, Angelos, because Crowley was influenced by the Buddhist model and incorporated it into his own.

ANGELOS: So couldn’t we say he incorporated the Buddhist model because he found it corresponded with his own experience so well? You’re right that my friends and I may have re-invented the wheel, but it’s not our aim to find new models, simply models that work. Should it trouble us, as long as our re-invented wheel takes us where we want to go?

ERIS: Yes, I think it should, because the idea that there is somewhere to go and that it’s the same place for everyone regardless of tradition is itself an idea that arose at a particular moment in history. It came from Helena Blavatsky, if you’d like to know. Before her, it was not generally supposed at all that different paths led to the same place.

ANGELOS: It still isn’t, as far as I can see. Eris, I wouldn’t impose on anyone that they should follow any path to anything. I’m skeptical of this view that no one had this idea before Blavatsky, but I want to avoid an argument over the historical precedence of ideas. What’s more striking is that it seems to me this is where you situate your notion of truth – in the circumstances of the origin of ideas. You’re talking like a historian! This is very odd to me, because we both practise magick, and surely you would not suggest this historical approach is necessary to practise magick successfully. If any practice yields a useful result, it’s not due to the circumstances of its origin, is it?

ERIS: Angelos, Truth (with a capital ‘T’) is something I would be at pains not to situate anywhere! As I said earlier, that which appears to us as truth is the product of socially-constructed cultural processes. Consider: science does not require a notion of truth in order to arrive at its findings. A neurologist, for instance, demonstrates that certain types of stimulation of the brain result in particular states or experiences without any recourse to their supposed ‘truth’ or ‘validity’ or ‘significance’. These states simply are. How they are interpreted by the person that experiences them – as ‘God’ perhaps, or a vision of an angel – is another question entirely. If you, on the other hand, assert that there is Truth, then you are going to have to explain in more detail what you consider it to be.

ANGELOS: Well, it’s ineffable and absolute.

ERIS: Beyond human experience, then?

ANGELOS: No, because it requires human consciousness in order for us to be aware of it. In fact, it arises only from our experience of it.

ERIS: But do you not see how this leads to awful problems? For instance: if you have no direct experience of the Holocaust, let’s say, then you’re asserting it’s not ‘true’; it didn’t happen.

ANGELOS: Come on, Eris! Give me some credit! The truth of the Holocaust lies in the experience of others, but their experience can enter into mine through my reading (for example) and their testimony. I’m not advocating solipsism here. And besides, a social-constructivist view doesn’t deal with this problem any better. Yet is it really a problem? Consider: where’s the sense in accusing an isolated tribe living in the Peruvian jungle of ‘holocaust denial’ if they should have the temerity to claim they know nothing of it?

ERIS: Yet you’re unable to say anything substantial about this absolute truth of yours, which – on the basis of only subjective evidence – you continue to assert.

ANGELOS: Because talking about it isn’t point. If truth lies in our experience of it, then it lies with experience and not words nor ideas. This is why it doesn’t matter in a wider sense what tradition or means of experiencing truth we chose to follow. For instance, our group has been comparing notes very closely with Buddhist practitioners, and we’re able to talk to each other across our respective traditions very easily, so long as we remain focused on the specific details of our practice and its experiential results.

ERIS: And as I said before, this is completely unsurprising because Crowley’s model was derived from Buddhism. You won’t be taken seriously by any of the authorities in these fields if you insist on a notion of absolute truth (which you still refuse to define) or your view that self-evident differences between the traditions are not significant.

ANGELOS: Eris, I’m astonished at how you can be satisfied by a notion of truth – or in your own terminology perhaps I ought to call it ‘a dominant view’ – that depends entirely on consensus. I look around this bookshop and I can see works by Crowley, Steiner, Blavatsky, etc., and I wonder at your concern that my views might place me ‘beyond the pale’ of academic orthodoxy because surely all of these writers received similar criticism in their life-time for holding similar views on truth to mine? I find it strange that you value these writers only from a historical perspective, rather than for what is to be gained from engaging in the practices they taught.

ERIS: But I do engage in those practices.

ANGELOS: You’ve sought the Knowledge and Communication of the Holy Guardian Angel?

ERIS: Yes.

ANGELOS: And you were successful?

ERIS: Yes. I experienced all kinds of visions, synchronicities and deep states of trance.

ANGELOS: And you experienced these as the actual presence of your angel?

ERIS: Well, yes and no. I experienced them as the angel, because that was what I had chosen to believe in at the time – what I had chosen to interpret these experiences as. But simultaneously I was aware that there were any number of ways in which these experiences could be interpreted, and if I’d chosen to follow a different tradition they would’ve taken on a different significance.

ANGELOS: You were using your belief as a tool, then, as a means of influencing your experiences?

ERIS: Yes – but surely you know this as well as I do. We both practise magick, and so we both accept – I imagine – that this is how magick works. Our reality is determined by our perception, and our perception in turn is shaped by our belief. Most of the time, our belief is unconscious or involuntary, and thus we can become prisoners of our own reality. Magick helps set us free from this.

ANGELOS: You mean, of course, it frees us because it enables us to intervene in the process by which our belief shapes our perception? I’m certainly in agreement with you on that!

ERIS: Yes. I choose a particular way of seeing things, and therefore my so-called ‘reality’ lines-up in that way, determined by my way of seeing. But if you agree with this, why do you insist on there being ‘Truth’, with that ludicrous capital T, when you’ve now admitted that what we call reality is after all a matter of belief?

ANGELOS: You’ve never directly perceived truth, then?

ERIS: No. But, as I’ve said, I’ve sometimes chosen to believe that certain things were true, with the conscious intention of changing my reality. So you’re telling me, now, that you have directly perceived it?

ANGELOS: No, I haven’t. Because truth is apprehended through knowledge, and knowledge is neither belief nor perception. It is outside either of those.

ERIS: That sounds like mystical word-play! If this Truth of yours can’t appear, how do you know it exists?

ANGELOS: Because we can know it. And this is not mystical at all, Eris, but in fact very ordinary. Consider: if we had to perceive something in order to know it, then how would we ever be able to plan for situations that weren’t immediately present to our awareness, or even hold abstract concepts in our minds?

ERIS: Then this truth of yours is simply your belief. Don’t you see? If it can’t be perceived, as you admit it can’t, then how else would you describe your clinging onto something that can’t be seen or spoken about, and which, therefore, has no discernible effect upon anyone, unless – like you – they choose to believe in it?

ANGELOS: Because it lies beyond perception. Up to this point we’re in agreement, it seems to me, and we are both happy to call ourselves magicians. Only it also seems to me that in being a magician it’s necessary to step beyond perception and into knowledge, if one wants to connect with that realm of absolute truth that is the aim of The Great Work.

ERIS: I understand what you’re saying, Angelos. However, that which is supposedly beyond perception cannot be perceived or experienced, and therefore can only be an object of supposition or belief. How can it be otherwise?

ANGELOS: You said a while back that we can become prisoners in our reality, because that reality is made of perceptions and beliefs?

ERIS: Yes. Unless we choose among our beliefs carefully.

ANGELOS: Or we choose to see beyond them altogether. Because isn’t our notion of what perception is merely derived also from our perception?

ERIS: Yes. And our reality is therefore malleable to a degree, because of that.

ANGELOS: Then what if our perception of our perceptions were inaccurate? What if, in actuality, our consciousness were arranged in such a way that what you described as ‘beyond perception’ were not really so, but only appeared as such due to a mistaken and involuntary belief about the nature of ourselves?

ERIS: Then I would ask how you could have possibly arrived at this knowledge, which – according to the circumstances you propose – would be impossible for us to arrive at.

ANGELOS: But it wouldn’t be impossible, not if we adopted as a practice the habit of making our perception the object of itself, and at the same time took care to protect this practice against influence from our mundane beliefs, on the one hand, nor allowed the results of our practice to solidify into anything we mistook for a concrete ‘reality’ on the other.

ERIS: I can see where you’re trying to take this! It sounds like the Buddhist technique of ‘insight’ meditation. But I can’t see how it bears any resemblance to the western magical tradition and the Holy Guardian Angel.

ANGELOS: The basic practice is the same in all traditions and it leads to an identical result. The ‘angel’ is another term for that ‘true self’ which I described as hidden from us by our habitual beliefs. This ‘true self’ is what the Buddhists term ‘no-self’, a deeper, actual level of consciousness that sees ‘beyond perception’ because it’s not limited by the way that our habitual false beliefs shape our everyday idea of what ‘self’ is.

ERIS: This still sounds to me simply a point of view. It’s the regurgitation of the ‘perennial philosophy’; it’s simply Blavatsky all over again.

ANGELOS: Come on, Eris. Let’s get out of this dusty bookshop and go and get a coffee somewhere. Without leaving behind ideas and turning around instead to examine whom you suppose is having them, it’s unlikely things will appear to you any other way.

ERIS: You’ve got a lot of work to do to convince me, Angelos. But if you’re buying, I might be persuaded to listen some more.

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The Three Hares Symbol

The first known example of the symbol of the Three Hares with conjoined ears is dated to 600CE, and it can be found in Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Buddhist sites across the globe in England, Western and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East . Its historical meaning is unclear; although the hare as a spiritual archetype is well documented.

Its spiritual but transcultural nature makes the Three Hares the perfect symbol for Open Enlightenment, and the symbol can be used to demonstrate the one commonality between all the paths that lead to enlightenment, in what I call the Three Hares Teaching.

The Three Hares represent three elements respectively:

Philosophy

An individual’s philosophy is determined by experience.

Philosophy is how an individual understands the world, what they value (ethics), who they believe themselves to be (identity), why they believe they exist (purpose), and when (as an activity) they actually consider any of the Big Questions (contemplation).

The practice of philosophy and the ideas examined will determine the focus or direction of the individual’s actions in life.

Focus or Direction

What an individual decides to do, what their focus and direction in life is, and how they prioritise what actions are most important to them – whether conscious or not – is determined by their philosophy. The focus is the reason for doing anything, the sum total of a person’s experience and philosophy thus far.

Action or Experience

An action is determined by the focus or direction of life. The action is also an experience that in turn informs an individual’s philosophy.

So philosophy informs direction, direction informs action, action informs philosophy, and so on.

The Three Hares represent the endless cycle of human behaviour: each one of the hares always follows on the heels of the other, and each hare only ‘has ears’ for the other two.

The unexamined life

For the most part, people spend a very small fraction of their lifetime examining their lives and beliefs about the world, and so their philosophy remains mostly inherited and unconscious. Their intentions are therefore those of their culture and remain unquestioned (‘I must acquire money, I must please God, I must dress a certain way, etc.’). Actions or experiences follow suit accordingly, and so most people simply work, eat, sleep, entertain themselves and exercise faith in untested beliefs, mostly unconscious of any one of the hares and their interrelationship, until the day they die.

Or do they?

The search for wholeness or completion

If we look at the Three Hares symbol we can see that the hares are circumscribed by a circle. This is a symbolic representation of the fact that philosophy, focus and action revolve solely around completion or wholeness.

The search for completion or wholeness is the driving force of the universe.

Enlightenment is the discovery of wholeness.

The spiritual practice

No one changes until experience forces them to. The repetition of events and experiences that fail to deliver completion or wholeness informs a person’s philosophy. Previously unconsidered notions such as the fact happiness isn’t found in cultural habits or that certain personal beliefs might actually be wrong begin to surface. Gradually the focus of life changes, and the person begins to perform new actions that bring forth new experiences, that in turn further develops their philosophy…

Eventually only one focus will remain, and this is the root of all spiritual teachings, traditions and practices or actions that lead to enlightenment. As diverse as all of these relative paths to awakening might be, in a general sense they have all reached the level of philosophy where the process of growth symbolised by the Three Hares has become a conscious concern, a single focus has been formed and a specific action or set of behaviours is devised and performed for one reason only:

Transcendence.

The specifics of spiritual philosophies may differ, but transcendence is the single unified focus or direction of every genuine practice or action that will lead to enlightenment (and the absence of this focus is the sole reason for a practitioner failing to achieve the goal. They simply do not have the will to enlightenment).

A person’s direction in life is informed by his or her philosophy; and so it follows that not everyone is interested or finds value in enlightenment, and even those that may act as if they are concerned about enlightenment may simply be acting the part for very different reasons, from cultural expectations to matters of personal identity.

The Three Hares Teaching is a philosophy that I hope will be of use to those that are ready for it, and will go some way to facilitating the understanding that genuine spirituality is not a specific tradition or technique, but the essence hidden behind all religion.

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