Monday, September 22, 2008

Levels of Enlightenment and Advice for Doing The Enlightenment Technique

The text below is from the Energy Mastery Course work that Charles Berner taught. The printed text is transcribed from a talk that he gave during one of his Enlightenment Intensives in the 1970's.

Just because you have reached one depth of enlightenment doesn’t mean that there aren’t more. You can go deeper and deeper to more and purer levels of consciousness. A direct consciousness of the Truth is itself. There’s nothing more to be done with it than that. It’s an absolute state and there’s no maybe about it. However, there are deeper levels where there is greater consciousness of other aspects of the Absolute. It is not that the deeper levels are any more absolute. They just include more of the Absolute itself. For example, even though you may have had a direct experience of who you are, well then what are you? Were you created by something? How long do you last? How old are you? What colour are you? How much do you weigh? Do you shine? Do you have a structure, form, pattern, shape? It is one thing to come up with intellectual answers to those questions and another thing to actually experience directly what it is that you are.

Normally a thorough “What am I?” enlightenment that is completely stable is what is normally accepted by a Zen master. But I feel that inasmuch as the direct experience of the Truth is enlightenment then it should be so acknowledged. A who-enlightenment is subjectively very important to a person because he finally has got just himself. But in terms of living, a what-enlightenment is more important because that is when you get to the de-identification of all other whats so that your actions in life are markedly changed. That is a very important stage. That is when you have got sorted out all the things you are not and you have a constant consciousness of what it is that you are.

The next stage beyond that consists of having the direct consciousness of what it is that you are with respect to others. An Enlightenment Master might ask you, “What are you with respect to me?” Depending on how deep your enlightenment has gone you may say, “Well, um, let’s see. I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it,” or you might say, “Pow. That is what I am.” When you are directly conscious of what you are with respect to others this is the next level.

The next stage consists of a consciousness that is independent of any thought processes whatsoever. You even arrive at this consciousness independent of any thought processes, to the point where you are not even holding the question in terms of thoughts. It is just “What am I?” without any thought involved. People then really get up against their own whatness. It is indescribable, but you can express it. It doesn’t come up verbally so much but it comes up in your very life, instantly, because it is independent of time. This is different from what is often called samadhi, which is simply direct experience of Truth. The consciousness is the same with this, but the state of action is different. It is more like what is called Kensho in Zen; you have the direct consciousness of what you are and.. you can act from it in life and it is full. This is the deepest state of self-enlightenment. However, it is almost impossible to maintain a self-enlightenment of any depth and not get interested in life. This happened to Buddha. He wanted to know who and what he was, but he also wanted to know what all this life is. He wanted to know what was going on, what happened. “What is life?” is the way we phrase the question as a tool to guide you into that realm of contemplation and direct experience of what life is. In experiencing life directly one then has a life-enlightenment. The first thing one becomes conscious of is the life is, … then of its purpose, what life is for. The net stage of life-enlightenment consists of becoming conscious that all others also have that purpose. One is the purpose of life and the other is the contacting of others and noticing that they are all there. It does not mean that you have fulfilled your relationship with them. It just means that you have become conscious of them. The next stage is where one becomes conscious in a timeless sense of the entirety of life, and at this point the path to the fulfilment of life is all evident to you. It doesn’t mean tomorrow you know what fork you’re going to pick up off the table. But when you come to that fork you know whether to pick it up or not because you know where life is going. You know now the answer to the question, “Well, what should I do now?” I had this enlightenment myself in the late 1965, and wrote it up in a book called The Ultimate Formula of Life. All that book is is an expression of that path to the fulfilment of life.

The next stage of the increased consciousness of others (and others are what is behind all of life) is what is called darshan, which is Sanskrit for “holy vision”. Just due to your presence people feel better, and they understand more. That state of affairs grows all through this sixth stage of life-enlightenment. It gets greater and greater and greater. Darshan is usually related to distance. If you get within a certain distance of such a conscious person, then you feel better and you just kind of know what to do and you are inspired and you can do it even though they don’t say anything to you. But you have to get within maybe 20 feet or 40 feet or 300 feet.

The next stage is where things are independent of distance, independent of state, where people just simply understand better because you exist in the universe. Beyond this I only can speculate. But my standard is that if you haven’t straightened out the entire planet in fifteen minutes, there’s room for improvement. There is greater consciousness that you are capable of. People come to me sometimes saying, “Well, I have got this and I have got that.” Well, all right. But there is a difference between knowing something and being conscious of something. You have the capacity to know anything by yourself. But by yourself it is not possible to be conscious of anything. The consciousness is what we are talking about here in enlightenment; the direct conscious experience of the Truth, not just knowing the Truth. This differentiates between consciousness and knowing. Knowing is a private affair. Consciousness takes place between individuals. It is not possible for you to be totally enlightened and not have a total consciousness of you. Therefore, no one in the universe is totally enlightened. They do reach the Absolute. Don’t get me wrong. Anybody who’s had a who enlightenment has reached an Absolute. That is it. There is nothing more to go for about who are you. But there is further consciousness about all the rest of life. There is you but then what about all the rest of it? So there is room for improvement. After you reach a certain level you can’t get more self-enlightened without being more life-enlightened. And you can’t get more life-enlightened without getting more self-enlightened. They are inextricable with each other. They actually are all the time, but initially it doesn’t appear that way.

Consciousness is due to the interaction between yourself and others and is proportional to that interaction. Therefore, you must not hold onto yourself saying, “I can’t talk because it may make me look bad. They would think that I’m something I’m not.” This is a constant fear that people have. If you are.. who and what you are, which you are, then you don’t want to be misunderstood in any other way than who and what you are. So you worry about getting misinterpreted and this forms the ego. You may try giving an impression that you are being very careful trying to give the right impression, because you don’t want to say all the Truth because others might get the wrong impression. But it never works out right that Truth is the Truth. This is me. So, if you’re going to get conscious of what it is that you are, you’re going to have to present what it is that you are. And if in advance you are not conscious of what it is that you are, you are going to be taking a chance, aren’t you? You are not conscious, so you are going to say whatever there is to say, and that which is not true will vanish and that which is true will remain. But maybe you are evil, maybe you are a bad manipulator of people, only looking out for your own selfish interests. If that is true, let it be out. I said there is a risk. Maybe all others will reject you as the only evil entity, the one bad one in all the universe. How many people worry about that? “Others are o.k. and they are just making mistakes, but me, I don’t know. I’m familiar with me and what I’m up to. I am truly bad.” That is the chance you have got to take. But how can you be conscious of yourself unless you present it? According to our discoveries, it is impossible. And this is why people get so joyous when they find out what it is that they actually are. It is much greater than anything anybody ever taught you, or you ever suspected yourself.

Presentation is the secret to greater consciousness, and consciousness is proportional to the degree of interchange between you and others. That is why, of course, we set you up in an interchange situation, a dyad. But you must interchange in it. Take your chance. Maybe they will hate you. Maybe your reputation will be reined forever. So what? Your passion for the Truth should be more valuable to you than your reputation, your ego. Presentation is the test of the ego, and presentation is the secret to greater consciousness. Consciousness is not the Truth. Consciousness has an existence to it. You can be conscious and later on unconscious. You can be not conscious and later on conscious. It is temporal. It has a time span to it. It has a factor to it. Consciousness is right next to the Truth but it is not the Truth itself. So if you are trying to experience consciousness directly, you will have a lot of trouble. I have had people, along with myself, work for years on trying to become enlightened on what consciousness is. We get insights but never enlightenment, because there is nothing there to experience. If you follow consciousness all the way to the end, you will find God. And this experience of God is the experience of another.

When you take your Enlightenment Intensive, you will be working on a key question such as “Who am I?” or “What am I?” I’ll give you some important tips here on how you can make the best progress in the contemplation phase of the Enlightenment Technique. I have already told you the importance of presenting yourself as you are. When contemplating, you are trying to directly experience the Truth. To experience it directly you just set out to experience it directly. Truth has nothing to do with existence, so ignore anything that is… You see pictures in your mind, you see hallucinations in your brain, you have feelings in your body, ignore them. You are far enough along now that you can do that. At first you’ll just describe everything, but later on you just want the closest leap you can make to the Truth. If you are working on self-enlightenment it is pointless to reach. If you reach out, you are away from yourself. So only work on that which is that.., you. You intend to directly experience that and ignore everything else. So when your partner says, “Tell me who you are” or “Tell me what you are,” set out to directly experience who or what it is that you are, as the case may be.

Your thoughts will probably come up. “Well, what if I am not doing it right?” “Am I going to get it this time?” That is not doing it. Ignore that. It is not going to help. Just ignore it. It is just another existence. Just experience you. Get as close as you can to that experience and express that… to your partner. You can leave everything else out now. Just experience that. You may say, “I tried and all I got was a black void.” Describe that black void. You might say, “Why do you want me to do that? It is nothing..! There is nothing there.” Experience that nothing and you will find out something about it and what it is that you are. There is a difference between a nothing nothing and a something nothing. Or if you find evil, black, slimy you and that’s you, well, what’s that? But set out to experience you, the one who is setting out to experience you and what it is that you are. Don’t put your attention on your body. Don’t put your attention on your mind. Don’t put your attention on your thoughts. Don’t put your attention on hallucinations. Don’t put your attention on your brain. Don’t put your attention on your partner or on the environment. Put it on you.

People have often translated contemplation as “looking within.” Nonsense. That’s a misnomer. It is good advice except it is misstated. There is no within. I asked someone once, “What are you dong?” He said, “I’m looking within.” I said, “Within what?” He said, “Within my head.” He was looking around in his head. People also look around inside their minds, trying to find themselves. There’s no within, so you can’t look within. Looking within is a well-intended piece of advice but slightly misdirected. I don’t tell you ever to look within. I say, “Intend to directly experience yourself.” Don’t try to go from anywhere or go to anywhere.

Now in life, when you are trying to hold the question “What is life?” or “What is another?” if you could approach it from a good solid self-enlightenment in which you have the realisation that you are not located anywhere or any when, then you will find it easy to approach life because you just set out to be conscious of it. You don’t look out. There you are: “What is another.” But you are doing it from somewhere. You say, “Well, I have to have some.. platform!” Don’t invalidate yourself, just be open to life, beyond just the thought of openness. Be involved with the fact of openness and you will become conscious of life. It’s very simple, and that’s the problem. It is so simple there is absolutely nothing to do. Absolutely nothing to do. And yet it is different than not doing it. In other words, it is the pure intent without any thoughts. Intend to be conscious, intend to be open to what life is, what another is. And then you sit there by the hour and you say, “Well, I’m open, I’m open, I’m open, I’m open. There is nothing happening.” I have seen a person come to me after a day of this and say, “Nothing’s happened.” He is about thirty times more conscious than he was the day before, but he has not had a big breakthrough so he says. “Nothing’s happening.” My job is to tell you when you are going in the right direction. When you are wandering around and there is nothing going on and you are going nowhere from nothing, I can tell you whether or not you are making any progress.

I need to remind you of one other thing: preconceived ideas. What happens is you not only get a preconceived idea of what Truth is, but also of what enlightenment is like, and you then try to have that happen. You try to reach that state. You try to become enlightened, which means you try to fulfil this image that you have, this concept that you have in your head of what enlightenment is like. That presupposes that you are already conscious of what enlightenment is like. How are you so wise? Are you conscious of enlightenment before you are conscious of enlightenment? Nonsense. About the best you can do is know that people have told you that enlightenment is a positive state, an improvement, and it is the Truth. But to become conscious of that you have to be open. If you have any… preconceived ideas that you are trying to fit yourself into, forget it. Set it aside. But now, just be open. Don’t try to fulfil any one teaching, including mine and even your own. If you turn out to be all wrong, then you are all wrong. So what? At least you now know the Truth. Do you want to be wrong forever? You will be unless you choose to open up. On the other hand, many of you have studied very wise teachings which are correct. But set them aside also because a teaching, even if it is correct, is not the Truth in itself. What I am telling you right now is not the Truth. It is about… the Truth. What I am saying is true, but is not the Truth. The Truth is itself is available to you only if you will set aside your preconceived ideas. Preconceived ideas and ego go hand-in-hand. They’re partners, and ego-death does not occur unless one has let go of his own preconceived ideas and just laid himself bare and become exposed to whatever the Truth may be. I know you are a little bit scared of the Truth, and afraid of the unknown. And yet when you get there you will experience for yourself the indescribable fulfilment, which accompanies a direct experience of Truth.

KEY DATA

• There are deeper and deeper levels of enlightenment which include more and more of the Absolute itself.

• When doing the Enlightenment technique, be open only to that which you are intending to directly experience: yourself, life, or another. Ignore everything else.

• When doing the Enlightenment technique, always present yourself as you are, as fully as you can.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks, Yoah. I am following what you are sharing. Great memories of EIs in St. Helena and renewed interest now in my life. Jai Bhagawan, Seva