W H A T I S E N L I G H T E N M E N T ?

    Man is a divine Being who has fallen into a state of forgetfulness and thus identifies with the temporary mind and body, which will die. His purpose while in the form, is to re-awaken to his Supreme Identity which is eternal, changeless, formless Consciousness, and again to be re-united with the All.

     In Aldous Huxley’s classic book, “The Perennial Philosophy,” there is a collection of recorded experiences by those who had glimpses of the Unitary State of Being transcending one’s ordinary ego-state of consciousness. This transcendental realm is the underlying Reality which is unconscious for most human beings on the planet, and which many refer to as “God.”

     Throughout history, however, emerging from ancient and modern cultures, and out of many races and religions, have come those who were destined to actualize this higher state of Consciousness, beyond the identification with name and form. This actualization we call Enlightenment. It has also been called Moksha, Liberation, Nirvana, Cosmic Consciousness, Satori, Realization, Kensho, Samhadi, and even “The Kingdom of Heaven” in the terminology of Jesus.

     Although there are countless persons who have had a temporary glimpse of the Unitary State of Ultimate Bliss, there have been relatively few who have broken through all limitations to become fully conscious of their Supreme Identity – the formless, eternal Self of the universe which is all & everything – Consciousness itself!

     When one follows a dualistic religion such as Judaism, Christianity or Islam, it is extremely difficult to realize this non-dual State, because of the belief that God and man are separate. However, the unitary religions of Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism provide a more advanced understanding and have therefore produced many Enlightened Masters.

     It is these Masters who point to the Way of Liberation from the ego, for all who are ready to go beyond the suffering of the human condition. It is an evolutionary process and part of one’s growth that determines who is ready for the Path. There are no shortcuts to it, for everyone passes through all the preliminary stages before embarking on this greatest of journeys.

     The beginner’s stage in traditional religion is involved with beliefs, rules, discipline, morality, myths, symbols, and a divided state of consciousness. The Ultimate is known only as something “other” and the Master is worshipped as a God. One feels that his religion is “right” and other religions are “wrong.” However, when one becomes a “Seeker,” one realizes that the teaching given by the Masters is meant not to be a “one-upmanship,” but a sharing of the state of Oneness, which is readily available to all, for there is only ONE SELF of the universe, which everyone shares in common. The Masters simply point the Way to discovering that SELF which is within. As it says in the scriptures: “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you”. . . and also, “Look within, thou art the Buddha.”

     Even though we say that there are “Enlightened Masters,” the truth is that there are no enlightened individuals. There is only a state of Enlightened Consciousness, which is always HERE-NOW and available to anyone who becomes fully conscious of that state. The false belief that one is an individual must be seen through and dropped before the “I AM that I AM” is discovered. As an ancient Zen poem says, “Make even a split-hair’s difference, and Heaven & earth are set apart.”

T H E G O O S E I S O U T

    So, what is the “nitty-gritty” that makes the difference between one who is ignorant (or unconscious) of their eternal Reality, and one who is Enlightened or fully conscious? Or in other words, between one who is in the problem of life and one who is out of it? There is only one difference, and that is the “I-thought.” As long as there is an “I am the body” belief, the I-thought will arise mechanically, pretending to be the “doer” who is constantly making choices.

     Meditation is the process of Self-inquiry that reveals the illusion of the separate ego, for if one follows the “I-thought” back to its Source, it will merge into the Absolute, from whence it came. As it says in the Hsin-Hsin-Ming: “When the thought disappears, so does the thinker.” Then, when the thinker and thought disappear, who is left? Awareness only, the Eternal Witness who is found in the still-point of the turning world.

     There is a Zen story, which exemplifies this bottleneck of life in which people are caught. A military man went to the master Nansen with the following problem: “A man once kept a goose in a bottle, feeding it until it grew too large to get through the bottleneck. Now, how did he get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?” The master said to him, “Oh Officer?” to which he replied, “Yes, Master?” and the master exclaimed: “There! The goose is out of the bottle!”

S A T O R I E X P E R I E N C E S

When there is a final breakthrough or shift of identity from the player in the dream, to the One who is AWAKE, it is more than just a temporary experience which wears off. However, satori experiences are quite significant for one on the Path, because they keep one centered in the right direction, and continue to deepen until the Understanding is Total.

THE MAN WHO WOKE UP

The most well-known enlightenment experience happened under a Bodhi tree, when Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who had gone through many austerities and practices to no avail, finally sat down vowing not to get up until Enlightenment was attained. He sat in deep meditation for days and nights, without food or sleep, until the Source was reached. When others discovered what had happened, he was given a new name. They called him “Buddha,” the Awakened One. Ever since then that title has been passed on to others who have also Awakened from the dream of thought, discovering their own Buddha-nature.

ZZT - I ENTERED

“One day I wiped out all the notions from my mind. I gave up all desire. I discarded all the words with which I thought and stayed in quietude. I felt a little queer – as if I were being carried into something, or as if I were touching some power unknown to me. . . and Ztt! I entered. I lost the boundary of my physical body. I had my skin, of course, but I felt I was standing in the center of the cosmos. I spoke, but my words had lost their meaning. I saw people coming toward me, but all were the same man. All were myself! I had never known this world. I had believed that I was created, but now I must change my opinion: I was never created; I was the cosmos; no individual Mr. Sasaki existed.”

I AM I

Akihisa Kondo, a Japanese psychotherapist, had many interviews with a patient who was suffering much anguish from the fact that she had been an illegitimate child. Following his instructions, she began the regular practice of meditation, sitting quietly with no thoughts in the mind. One day when the time was right, he asked her: “Who were you before you were an illegitimate child?” She looked puzzled for an instant, then suddenly burst into tears, crying out, “I am I! Oh, I am I!”

WHO AM I?

The great event, which became the turning point in the life of Ramana Maharshi took place when he was only 17 years old. One day he was sitting alone in his uncle’s house. He was in good health and yet suddenly felt that he was about to die. This fear of death turned his mind inward while he asked, “Now I am dying, what does this death mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.” Then, he pretended to be dying, extending his limbs to make them rigid, and holding his breath with his mouth closed. He then continued the silent enquiry: “Well then, the body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But am I dead? Is the body I? The body is silent and inert, but I feel the full force of the personality and even hear the voice of the ‘I’ within. Hence I am awareness transcending the body. I am the immortal spirit.”

This entire enquiry was not an intellectual exercise but a living experience of the pure “I AM” awareness which he went through viscerally without words. Absorption in the Self continued uninterrupted from that moment. The whole vision of death occupied less than half an hour, but brought about a radical and permanent transformation that never wore off.

ON HAVING NO HEAD

“The best day of my life-– my rebirthday, so to speak—was when I found I had no head. . . I had for several months been absorbed in the question: what am I? The fact that I happened to be walking in the Himalayas at the time probably had little to do with it; though in that country unusual states of mind are said to come more easily. . . What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking. . . Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it.

“. . . It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been, was no ordinary vacancy. . . it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snow peaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.”
--D. E. Harding

For Masters & Methods, click here.