The Charles Berner Enlightenment Archive

Enlightenment: Self and Life: New Technique Shortens Time Factor of 100

2011-12-04T04:01:00.001-08:00

This article was printed in issue 10 of The Abilitist in about 1970. The Abilitist was the newsletter for the Institute of Ability which was the California based non-profit religious organization that Charles Berner founded to support his teachings.

In the forward to his 1967 book, Introduction to Abilitism, Berner wrote: "It was inevitable that a new religion would come forth from the space age. That religion has arrived. It is called ABILITISM. In this religion the individual is viewed as a spiritual, conscious being who has ability, who IS Ability. Abilitism states that the responsibility for Life is squarely on each person as an individual, and Abilitism provides the spiritual knowledge and spiritual help necessary to handle that responsibility."

Enlightenment: Self and Life

New Technique Shortens Time by Factor of 100

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is an interesting word in itself. Literally it means to put light onto, so one can see what it is he has set out to become conscious about. The first important, well documented enlightenment is that of Buddha. He spent many years in his endeavor to understand and become enlightened about his true nature and about the true nature of life. He finally attained a deep enlightenment after actively working on it 18 to 22 hours a day for 6 to 9 years. With his teachings began one of the first effective civilizing influences on this planet.

Definition of Enlightenment

Abilitism defines enlightenment as becoming conscious of, through direct experience, whatever one has set out to be enlightened about. Direct, as used here, means through no vias or no means by which. If self enlightenment is the goal, one directly becomes conscious of oneself. One employs no vias, nor does he figure it out by a series of logical conclusions. Enlightenment is arrived at through direct experience only (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Knowingness is different than Consciousness.
Knowingness (a) is a Self phenomenon. Self can know anything. Consciousness (b) involves something other than Self, with an exchange. Most consciousness is thru vias, (c) thru a body and across space to and from something other than self. Direct Consciousness (d) is without vias.

Self Enlightenment is more easily attained if several concepts are understood. The first to understand is the difference between being conscious of oneself as opposed to knowing oneself. According to Abilitism, consciousness always involves something other than oneself, along with oneself. A person must exist before it is possible for him to be conscious, but there must also be something outside of himself of which he is conscious. An individual can know unto himself, but it is not possible for him to be conscious of himself by himself. Two different phenomenon are involved. One is self-knowingness by which one knows simply because one is oneself and has the ability to know; then there is the phenomenon of consciousness which involves something other than oneself. It is important to separate these two phenomena if Self-enlightenment is to be attained. An individual already knows who and what he is, but it is completely useless to him in Life. In order for something to be useful, one must have a consciousness of it. The difference between these two phenomena is a very critical point which has been overlooked, as far as I know, by every religion and philosophy on this planet.

Self-enlightenment, then consists not of knowing oneself, but of being conscious of oneself without any vias. This statement imparts some intellectual understanding of what enlightenment is. What is needed at this point is an understanding of the role enlightenment plays in self improvement.

Methods of Self Improvement

There are three ways, that I know of, to acquire self improvement. One way is through education. Learning data and information from others results in a better understanding of Life and thus enables one to live life better. Education is a valid method of self improvement. However, currently in this society, it is the only method of any significance used. The sole answer of the so-called advanced nations to the question, “How to improve?”, is education. It is the only method that has ever worked for them. It doesn’t work very well, but it is successful to some degree. Education helps, but it is not enough, if one is truly interested in self-improvement.

Another self-improvement method is that which involves people understanding each other. By understanding each other, they can relate better and get closer to one another. The pathways of communication are more open between them. Working to better people’s understanding of each other is probably the most important self-improvement approach that exists and Abilitism is highly involved in this work. However, Self-enlightenment does not play a significant part in this activity.
The third method of self-improvement is enlightenment itself. (see figure 2)

Figure 2.

The Three Methods of Self Improvement
(a) Education, (b) Understanding and (c) Enlightenment

Enlightenment is not finding out information from others through vias as education is. Neither does it necessarily bring about a better understanding between people. Enlightenment is a separate method of self improvement. In the case of Self-enlightenment, enlightenment is directly experiencing oneself.
Enlightenment was a missing factor in Abilitism until the spring of 1968 when we began our deep experimental research on the subject. It wasn't that I didn’t know anything about Self-enlightenment. I had worked on it in many ways and for many years. I found that the techniques other groups use are drawn out and slow, and that they don’t work very well. I finally became Self-enlightened in 1958, but I didn’t attach much significance to it. Then I realized that certain people’s advancement was being held up because they didn’t know who they were. They didn't know their own nature. They had read about it and heard lectures about it, but they had never had a direct conscious experience of themselves. Therefore, they lacked a state of complete conviction from which to act.

A state of enlightenment is uninvalidatable. An individual experiences himself as a fact, not as a belief, an assumption, or a possibility. He is directly conscious of himself. There are only a few basic facts about life. One of these is the nature of the individual and the experience of this is enlightenment.

Methods of Enlightenment

Many techniques for attaining enlightenment have been used. Perhaps the strongest and best developed technique was that started by Buddha and which has been carried on through Zen Buddhism. They have probably had a higher percentage of success than any other group. However, their techniques are still very long and arduous.

The Yoga approaches are other examples of techniques which have been used. These have often ended in a semi-enlightenment that is usually dependent upon holding the body still. This is a type of somatic state- a samadi. A person first experiences this state through various yoga. His body will get absolutely still. He can retain this state as long as he is not moving, or dealing with his body. It is a true state, but it is not very practical. Enlightenment is more useful if one can walk around and talk with people and be in the depths of dealing in life, and still be in the state of enlightenment. There have been other enlightenment techniques used in the past, and many are still being used today, such as Transcendental Meditation, and Love and Inspiration (see table 1). However, to my knowledge, the techniques of Abilitism are the most rapid and the deepest going enlightenment techniques extant today.

*Table I*. Types of Enlightenment Techniques
Method	Religion or Philosophy	Approximate success among participants	Average Time
Intellectual	Education	.5%	40 – 60 years
Inspiration	Christianity	1%	20 – 30 years
Mind Body Separation	Yoga, Scientology	4%	10 – 20 years
Love	Meher Baba, Christianity	15%	8 – 12 years
Meditation	Zen	20%	1 week – 10 years
Presentation of Self	Abilitism	75%	1 day – 2 weeks

Purity of Thot

Self enlightenment consists of an individual creating a thot in his own universe of himself. Thereby he has consciousness. In his own universe means in his realm of thot which is not connected to, related to, or dependent upon anything else. If his thot is related to or dependent upon something else, then it isn’t in his own universe. A thot that is in an individual’s universe is purely itself.
Purity of thot is the crux of Self-enlightenment. Purity of thot means having one thot and one thot only. In Self-enlightenment, this thot is a pure thot of oneself which is not connected with or related to anything. In order to be a pure thot, the thot of oneself can't be in words such as “I am a spirit”. That thot is connected with sounds and words and symbols of those sounds, and it is also connected with the thot “spirit”. Purity of thot means not connected with or related to other things, not even other thots. To become Self-enlightened, an individual must have a pure thot of himself. It must not be connected to any other thot, especially an intellectual idea of who or what he is (see figure 3).

Figure 3a. Purity of Thot

The thots are knowingly created by self and are not connected to or dependent upon anythikng other than Self.

Figure 3b. Purity of Thot

All the thots are connected with each other, the body & the physical objects.

Methods of Creating Pure Thot

There are several ways to create a pure thot, but to do it in a reasonable period of time, there are two choices. The first is to separate oneself and one’s thots from Life, and thereby create an artificial separation from Life. If a person disconnects from Life until there is nothing else but himself, it is relatively easy for him to get the idea of just himself. This is what many teachings and disciplines of the past have led to. It works, but it has a disadvantage. An individual has the idea of himself, but only when he's by himself and not dealing with Life.

Drugs have the same effect, Drugs create an artificial separation between an individual and his brain, and between his brain and the rest of Life. Therefore it is easy for that person to get the thot of himself. However, when the connections to Life are made again, he can no longer hold the thot of himself. He can remember, but that is a thot of the thot; it is a connected thot, not a pure thot. Abilitism does not use the technique of isolation from Life. In Abilitism, one ends up with a state that one can maintain when involved in Life. (see figure 4b) The path of Self-enlightenment that involves entering into Life through a carefully planned out technique will be covered in detail below.

How to Tell if an Individual is Self-Enlightened

The people who speak with true authority and don't act like fakes or personalities are people who are speaking from themselves. An individual who is enlightened speaks from himself and can be distinguished from one who is just relaying learned information. To be able, to speak with honest authority and certainty, a person must be at least Self-enlightened. He must be conscious of who he is. An individual is the source from which things come. But if he thinks he is a relay, he becomes a relayor; however, that is not his true nature.

It is an interesting phenomenon that every person who has become Self-enlightened tells the same story of who he is. The words may be different, but the story is the same. One might expect them to come to different conclusions, but their conclusions are always the same.

The value of Self enlightenment is that it enables an individual to speak from himself. He is conscious of who he is. He is conscious of himself, so there is no doubt about who or what he is. He has the composure of a person who can consciously create thots, can cause things, and is conscious of his relationships with others.

A Graph on Self-Improvement

If education is chartered on one axis, and understanding on the other, and if more knowledge, and fewer barriers are considered desirable states, the chart would look like the chart in figure 5a.
An individual has “x” amount of ability to live life (the shaded area). However there is a third factor, and that is the factor of enlightenment. Imagine a third line perpendicular to both of the others and forming the three dimensional graph (see figure 5b). This factor represents “clarity of thot” or “degree of enlightenment”. In other words, this thrid line shows to what extent an individual can think a thot without it being connected to anything else.

If a person is well educated and has few barriers to his own communication with others, but no clarity of thot in his own universe, then all his is education and all his relatingness would be meaningless. We would feel as if we were a fake and Life would have no meaning, no certainty, he would have no confidence. He is open with people, and he understands them, but he is not sure of anything. It is currently popular in education circles to' not know anythings for sure. There are people who have fairly good clarity of thot, are reasonable well educated, but can’t talk to anyone. Then there is the person who is open, has fairly clear thot, but who is completely uneducated.

A well rounded person would be one who knows some things about Life, is open in relating with others, and who has a direct conscious expereince of himself. He knows what he is, and beyond that, he knows what Life is, which is Life-enlightenment. He know what Life is, not because anyone has said so, but because he has directly experienced it.

The thing that has been missing in our work for years was, this fact of Self-enlightenment.

Figure 5. A graph of Self Improvement

Those who had someSelf-enlightenment responded well to our techniques. Those who had a little enlightenment respnonded some. Those who had none, didn’t resond at all. They got changes, but, to them, it didn't mean a thing.

The role of enlightenment is not a casual one in self-improvement activities. It would be wise to consider it very seriously, and to have as much knowledge on the subject as possible.

The Nature of Thot

It is easier to obtain Self-enlightenment if one has an intellectual idea and some knowledge of enlightenment. Knowing the nature of thot will help in this aspect. One of the major discoveries of Abilitism concerns what a thot is. For twenty-two years I worked on the question, “What is thot?” and I finally became enlightened on that subject. It is because of this that I think I can relate to others the key factors of enlightenment in a way that is not too foreign to them. Here is a summary definition of thot and even if only the most cursory understanding is drawn from it, it is enough to point the way to Self-enlightenment.

The key to understanding what a thot is lies in the realization that the answer is not to be found in the nature of an individual. it 'is not something that an individual is capable of by himself. He is capable of "knowing" by himself, but even though he has the capacity to communicate, he still needs someone else to communicate with or communication is not possible. (see figure 6a) In a similar manner, thot involves others. A thot is an individual choosing to relate to another. The nature of his choice determines what the thot is. How he chooses to relate - in what way, to what degree, through what means - determines what that particular thot is.

Figure 6. Thot (b) involves others. As in communication (a) thot requires another.
The type of choice determines what thot exits.

Thot and Self-Enlightenment

A thot is the state of having elected to relate to another. Self-enlightenment, then, is the choice to relate oneself. The moment a person has the thot to relate himself to another or others he becomes conscious of himself. That is Self-enlightenment. Let me explain this point further. Consciousness, as I stated earlier, is dependent on an outside something, and in this case, it's another person. Electing to relate oneself to others brings about a consciousness of oneself.

Everyone has a consciousness of himself to some degree. For example if someone has a consciousness of himself as a body, he is presenting his body. In other words, he is electing to relate as a body. That thot of himself as a body is a via, a thot about himself. As long as one chooses to relate to others through vias, he will not become Self-enlightened. However, there are no vias between an individual and his thots. He experiences his thots directly. Therefore, when he has the thot of himself, it is direct experience, not a via, not through a via. This is Self-enlightenment.

Mastery of Attention

The depth and purity of thot that must be attained in order to become Self-enlightened is Self-defined. With the best techniques of Abilitism, it takes between twenty-four and one hundred hours of continuous attention on one subject to get the pure thot of Self. This is continuous attention. One must spend one hundred hours on only oneself without any distractions or extraneous thots. I mean no thots like, "Gee, I'm hungry" or, "I wish 'I could quit,"' or, "I wonder if I'm getting anywhere." In order to do this, an individual must keep his attention on one thing. If I said, “Just consider who you are”, most people would spend forty five seconds out of an hour on the subject. Let's figure this out. If they spend forty-five seconds out of an hour, and they have to get one hundred hours in, it would take 8000 hours, or at four hours a week, fourty years. It's a long task, so being able to keep one's attention on the subject is very important. What we do in Abilitism is to get an individual into an environment in which he has relatively few problems. We get him out where he is not being distracted by his everyday problems. What is desired is a few days away from an individuals usual routine, with its usual problems and distractions.

A Proper Question is Needed

We also need a question upon which to put one’s attention -some target for one’s attention. In Abilitism, we use a specific question that aims directly at an individual. "Who are you?" is one of our key questions. As one works on this question for several hours, one may start to get sleepy. However, it is important for one to be as conscious as possible. So, we have someone walk around and keep people awake. The important thing is that one is awake and conscious. The more conscious one is, the better the chance one has of becoming enlightened. So, we use monitors who help one keep awake and conscious and on the subject. In Abilitism, though, we go even farther than this meditational stage.

Ability Exercise Structure

In Abilitism, we have what we call ability exercises in which two individuals work together and take turns helping one another. Each person works for five minutes at a time. One partner gi0ves the other the instruction, “Tell me who you are” and the other says, I'm Charlie, I'm five feet eight and a half. The person doing the instruction or answering the question sits there for five minutes and alternatly meditates on the question and explains to his partner what thots he is having. In Abilitism, we have a partner sitting there with his attention on his partner. He keeps his partner on the subject that way.
Having a partner is a further advantage because one has someone who will listen and understand when one speaks. An individual can work on many things in his mind, but if he does not relate them to someone, they stay in his mind. In Abilitism, we have a person relate what he is working on to his partner, and this gets it out of his mind and frees his attention. In a meditational discipline, it might take an individual three months to realize that he is not what he thot he was. However, if he has someone to talk to, it might take three minutes to gain the same realization. The two partners take turns listening to and understanding each other. This helping of one another is a very powerful technique for improving one’s opinion of oneself. In increasing one's demonstrable ability in Life in general, and in attaining Life-enlightenment, it is also very important and powerful. So it can be seen that the use of this technique of Abilitism facilitates enlightenment by allowing an individual to complete the thot he is working on, free his attention from that thot, and thus enables him to continue with the next thot. (see figure 7)

The Importance of Treating Others Well

If one has the thot of oneseIf, one will become Self-enlightened. The question now is how does one find out who he is. One answer to this question involves being conscious of other people. This is another thing one needs to understand about enlightenment.

Being considerate of others is important because an individual's opinion of himself is determined by his opinion of other people. If he thinks they are worthless, that is what he really thinks of himself. It works both ways: What a person thinks of himself is what he thinks of others. A person knows that he is equivalent to others, that their basic nature and his basic nature are the same.

As long as a person thinks of others as being worthless, he is going to fail to reach Self-enlightenment. Not until he is considerate of others will he discover his own basic nature. People of other disciplines who have become Self-enlightened always say in one way or another the same thing concerning their basic nature. It always has the attributes of God in one respect or another. Unless an individual is involved with others and treating them as God, he will fail to discover his own divine quality.

Isolation from others brings about a shallow enlightenment. Because the person isn't involved in relating to others, he doesn’t have very much of an opinion of others. Therefore, he doesn't have the problem of being considerate of others in order to become Self enlightened.
Enlightenment, then, a true enlightenment, consists of very much involvement with others, and a very great consideration of them.

The Role of Being a Master

The next thing that is needed for rapid Self-enlightenment is a master. A master is simply a person who has two characteristics: one, he is Self-enlightened, and two, he can recognize this in others. In other words, he is open enough to other people that it becomes self-evident to him when another person is enlightened. Many people come up with the right answers intellectually. They'll say, “Well, I've thot it all out very carefully and I am God.” They go through all the types of connected thot but fail to have one pure thot, a consciousness of themselves, That is all enlightenment involves -they are conscious of, and presenting themselves. Once a person has the consciousness of himself, he has all the right answers and doesn’t have to think about them. He can answer a list of about eighty questions without hesitation even though he has never considered any of them previously.

A master is also needed for inspiration. Enlightenment is not a matter of intellectually grasping a thot. It is a matter of having the courage to delve into the subject of oneself with sufficient intensity to break through the barriers that stand between one and Self-enlightenment. It is part of the master's role to inspire one to do this.

The master also answers key questions. Key questions are those fundamental to a gaining of enlightenment and not those of a long intellectual study. There is nothing wrong with intellectualizing, it has its role in education, and gathering data and ordering it into knowledge. But, the key questions mainly concern how to get enlightened. A person asks the master, "'Am I doing this properly?” or “Should I change my question?”. These are the types of questions the master answers to guide the person seeking enlightenment,

1. Know the Nature of Thot

2. Keep attention on Subjec

3. Ability Exercise Structure

4. Be Considerate of Others

5. A Master

TABLE II. THE ITEMS NECESSARY FOR RAPID ENLIGHTENMENT

Eat Lightly

Another important factor is diet. It is helpful to eat lightly when one is seeking enlightenment. Overeating burdens one’s body and one's brain to such an extent that it is more difficult to become Self-enlightened.

The Stages of Self-Enlightenment

The first stage of Self-enlightenment is intellectualizing. A person is asked the question, "Who are you?", and he goes through all his past teachings trying to figure out the right answer. It's usually necessary to do this, but its just a stage that people go through in becoming Self-enlightened. One inteliectualizes, and finally he goes to the master and gives him his answer, and the master says, "How do you know that is true? There’s more”. A person goes through all the intellectualizing again and again and comes up with the same thing. He consults the master and is told, “There's more to it than that". He returns to his partner; despondent, and gives up trying to figure it out.

A person will then just sit there and finally he'll become inspired. He’ll hear something in the lecture and think that maybe it really is possible to attain enlightenment. He begins to consider the possibility that there is a barrier he hasn't broken through yet. He really starts working on his question and on comes the phenomena stage. He is very determined now and his body starts to shake. The room may appear to move back and forth. He get’s cold. He gets hot. He sees bursting suns and other hallucinations. The effect is the same as if he were on some drug. He is trying to make his brain to think the thot of enlightenment. This stage is the point at which the separation of thot from the brain takes place. The amount of phenomena varies from person to person, but everyone experiences it. A person will see the master at this point, and explain that he has seen himself as a glowing sun. The master will say, “That is a phenomenon. Continue."' Sullenly, the person returns to the others.
The next stage is no man's land. The person doesn't know which way to go. He doesn't know what to think about, or what not to think about.

Then he'll start hitting body barriers. He will discover that he can now keep his attention on the subject better if he keeps his back straight. He will want to sit straight, but he will keep slumping. He will get so interested in enlightenment that he won't want to go to sleep, and yet he wilI get sleepy. He will feel pain in his body, but he is more determined than ever.

Then, he comes to the point where he doesn't care whether it hurts, or whether or not it kills him. At that moment he goes through the barrier and he has what is called the experience. He may laugh, he may cry, he may scream, he may experience thrilling ecstasy. The experience, however, is not Self-enlightenment. It is just the Self-enlightenment experience.

Usually, at the moment of the Self-enlightenment experience, or shortly thereafter, because the person has finally broken the barrier, he becomes Self-enlightened. Once the barrier is broken, Self-enlightenment is a certainty.

The next stage is the glow. The person walks around very conscious of his state of enlightenment. This stage lasts a few hours or a few days.

Then comes the final part of Self-enlightenment, the steady pure state. One of the most distinguishing factors of this deep enlightenment state is that a person no longer has any interest in himself. He answers all questions in terms of other people and Life. He is interested in Life in general, instead of himself.

1. Intellectual

2. Phenomena

3. No Man's Land

4. The Barriers of Emotion and'Pain

5. The Break Through

6. Enlightenment

7. The Glow

8. The Steady Pure State

TABLE III - THE STAGES OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Life Enlightenment

The steady pure state of Self-enlightenment leads to what we call Life- enlightenment. Life-enlightenment differs from Self-enlightenment in that it is a deeper state. One cannot become Life-enlightened unless he is Self-enlightened.

Life-enlightenment consists of being conscious of the potential of complete understanding between individuals. In other words, it is the direct consciousness of the contact potential between all individuals. If one has a direct conscious experience that there is a possibility of contact with every being in the universe (not every being that exists), then it becomes obvious to him what the purpose of Life is and how that purpose is acheived. In some religions this is called the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit. In other religions, it is called Universal Mind. It is what is behind Tao. It is the miracle that it is possible for us to be able to relate with each other at all. It's not a matter of choosing to be committed to others. It is realizing that one already is. We do have the choice to act on that commitment or not. It is just a matter, then, of one doing the things that it is obvious to him need to be done.

Life-enlightenment and Self-enlightenment can now be achieved through the techniques of Abilitism in the Enlightenment Intensive format provided by the Institute of Ability.

What Is and Is Not Enlightenment.

2009-05-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

What is and is not Enlightenment was recorded in 1977 at the Enlightenment Master Training Course facilitated by Charles Berner. This is only the first 10 minutes of a 60 minute lecure. SIt has some vision that I selected to go with the audio lecture. The complete audio original lecture series is available by contacting me: www.selffoundation.com

Meeting Charles

2008-12-23T04:03:00.000-08:00

I first heard about Charles Berner in the fall of 1968. His dyad work and the Enlightenment Intensive was introduced to me and my circle of friends under the blue sunny sky’s and green grass lawns of San Diego State University. We were, you might say, on the cutting radical edge of consciousness expansion and attending San Diego State University. I remember gathering together and doing a ‘who am I’ enlightenment dyad.

In about 1969 or so, one of my best friends studied with Charles Berner at his Institute of Ability in Lucerne Valley. The Institute was in the high desert foothills of the San Bernadino Mountains about 150 miles north east of Los Angeles. He spent three months there and did three Enlightenment Intensives. After he left the Institute he swore he’d never do another one. Forty years later and still best of friends he did another couple of Enlightenment Intensive that I facilitated about a year ago.

I did my first Enlightenment Intensive at the Institute of Ability in 1974. It was very difficult for me. But there was something about the people who were part of the Institute that I liked. I liked that they were all interested in spiritual growth and expanded states of consciousness. I liked that they were open, loving and accepting. And I liked the way Charles Berner could explain metaphysical principles. I remember thinking, “I don’t need to read books. I’ll just listen to him.”

The day after the Enlightenment Intensive completed I asked if I could live at the Institute. “Yes,” was the answer and I moved in.

Origins of the Enlightenment Intensive

2008-12-20T14:53:00.000-08:00

In this short video clip from the documentary, Enlightenment, Charles Berner discusses the origins of the Enlightenment Intensive. The video was recorded in 1993 in a talk he gave on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Enlightenment Intensive.

What Is And Is Not Enlightenment

2008-10-28T15:28:00.000-07:00

The first and only California Enlightenment Master's Training Course conducted by Charles Berner was held July 11-29, 1977. The recorded and transcribed lectures by Charles were edited by Lawrence Noyes and published in a 1977 manual called, The Transmission of Truth: A Manual for Enlightenment Masters.

In 2005, a revised edition was published by Mona Sosna under the title, Consciousness of Truth: A Manual for Enlightenment Intensives. A free copy of that publication can be downloaded from my web site: http://www.selffoundation.com/Downloads/EIManual.pdf

The chapter below is from the original 1977 publication.

Chapter 1
What is and is not Enlightenment

There is no error more common in conducting an Enlightenment Intensive than accepting things for enlightenment which in fact are not enlightenment, This is the most common and most serious error made by Enlightenment Masters.

This Enlightenment Technique has spread all over the world, with varying degrees of accuracy. Some people have varied it quite a bit, usually because they had different goals and did not know it. They were not striving for enlightenment experiences but instead were striving for phenomena, that is, they were trying to get some sort of experience; whether it was enlightenment or not didn't matter. Or they simply didn't know the difference between phenomena and a direct experience of Truth. Or they weren't able to tell the difference between an insight and a direct experience. Some people were only ending up with definitions:

"What is Life?"
"Let's look in the dictionary, 'Life is a growing process.'"
"You satisfied with that?"
"Yes."
"Ok. You're enlightened."

It is very valuable to work with words and ideas and get them squared away, but don't confuse that with enlightenment experiences. Having a very good, clear-cut definition of what a word means, or tagging the right word onto a clear idea, is very often taken mistakenly and innocently by people as enlightenment. It is not enlightenment.

Insights are even more often taken as enlightenment experiences. Someone suddenly sees something he has never seen before and it is quite exciting and he feels benefited by it because of the feeling of "Oh, now I SEE." But that in itself is not necessarily an enlightenment experience.

The difference between an enlightenment experience and an insight is primarily that an insight is had through a process and an enlightenment experience is not. An insight is had through the process of thinking and perception, of going through a mental procedure and arriving at a conclusion through logic and reason. The result is an insight. The very word describes it. It is an in-sight, an internal seeing, a perception, People say, "Ahhhh, I feel it,' I know it,' It's true:" Insights are beneficial to people and they are one of the greatest thrills that they'll have in life but they are not enlightenment. Many people in the therapeutic world, especially the humanities, have accepted insights as enlightenment experiences and they are not. It is a degradation of the word enlightenment and the tradition that was begun famously by Buddha for people to take definitions and insights as equivalent to enlightenment. You should not fall into that error. It is a major error.

There are two ways to deal with this matter of determining what an enlightenment experience is. One is to develop the capacity to determine what an enlightenment experience is and to be able to be conscious of that in someone else. This is accomplished by your own experience. You must first have the subjective experience yourself and that leads to the capacity to detect this in another. We will try to train you in this capacity in this course, although it is not that easy. Secondly, there is another way to solve the problem, and that is to not make the determination. It will make you a weaker master if you can't tell, but you can still master Enlightenment Intensives. The Enlightenment Intensive technique and format are so powerful that people will get enlightened anyway, even if you can't tell. So you have an easy out. It will make you a weaker master because you won't know when to change their question. If someone is trying to directly experience who he is and you can't tell when this has actually occurred, you're liable to say, "All right, that's good enough, go on to "What is Life?", when all he's had is an insight. He accepts the insight as an enlightenment experience and goes on and becomes an Enlightenment Master and the degeneration process has begun already.

You could deal with the situation by saying, "I'm letting you go on to this other question, but that's not saying you've had an enlightenment experience." But what if they did have an enlightenment experience and you couldn't tell? Then you've cast your uncertainty over the whole situation and in any case it won't change their experience one way or the other. Your comment doesn't change whether it was an insight or an enlightenment, but it makes it more difficult for them to communicate, especially if they have any respect for you and your being in the elevated position of mastering the Enlightenment Intensive.

I debated long and hard whether or not to use the term master. I finally settled that it should be used, that these people should be trained well enough so that they know what they're doing. So you need to know what enlightenment is and how to detect that state in another. It is not an easy requirement. In fact, it is the most difficult part of the course, which is why I decided to start with it. The mechanics of the course you can learn, and you can even pick up some skill in the methods and techniques and gain some familiarity with them. But we will have to work very hard on, one, your understanding of the definition of enlightenment, and two, your having an objective certainty of it. Of course the best thing to do is have an enlightenment experience yourself. Once you've had that, half the battle is won. Nevertheless, I'll still do my best to give you a verbal definition of enlightenment.

Enlightenment is impossible to define. It can't be done. But we can take some words and point in that direction. I use direct experience as the definition of enlightenment. One could have a direct experience of anything. It could be of a rock and then you'd be rock-enlightened. If it was of a tree, you'd be tree-enlightened. If it was of yourself, you'd be self-enlightened. So the kind of enlightenment only refers to what was directly experienced.

It is difficult to understand what direct experience is because the word "experience" denies what we're trying to say. If you could have an experience that was not an experience, but nevertheless ended up with what that was, then this would be an enlightenment experience. Enlightenment is not really an experience at all because experience is always a process, something that takes place. When you look at the wall there is the process of seeing. There is light bouncing off the wall which goes into the eye and strikes the retina; the nerve cells in the retina feed the information to the brain and it's passed around to four or five subcenters of the brain and it ends up in the interpretive centre as a visualization of a wall. That is a process. Therefore looking at the wall is not a direct experience; you are only experiencing the wall through the process of seeing. There is also the process of reasoning; "What could a wall be? I've been told it acts as some kind of barrier and I know what barriers are like, so therefore it must be like that. It's a material thing, so it's a barrier that is made out of material." In this way you come to a conclusion of what a wall is. Logical thinking, reasoning, remembering; these are indirect experiences by the way I've defined the term because they occur through a process.

Here is an example that is closer to a no-process situation: you know where the bathroom is in your house. Do you have to go through a process to know? Maybe you went through a process to find out, but now that you've got it, you've got it, You know where the bathroom is. You don't have to think, "Now I remember, I go down the hallway and to the left." You just know where the bathroom is. Also, you don't have to figure it out. And you don't have to ask anybody else, which is another process. That's like saying, "You tell me who I am. OK, now I know who I am." If you accept it that's all right, but you still have to go into the bathroom yourself. When you do, you know where it is and you no longer have to go through a process of working out where the bathroom is, although you went through a process to get there. You are now in this state of processlessness. You just know where the bathroom is, like you know what your name is. You don't have to remember. Direct experience is similar to that kind of thing.

In Sanskrit the word "anu" means "after"; "bhava" means "what it actually is", or "the thing itself experienced", or "consciousness of it." So after you've become directly conscious of what something is and you're in this state, it's called anubhava. There's no word for enlightenment in English which refers to an experience which is without an experience. So what do we mean by the word direct then? It means no process. The experience takes place but there is no experiencing. But right up to this state of no experiencing you could be touching, have emotions, mental concepts, and they may even be correct, but they're not direct. Watch that one closely'.

In the state of enlightenment there is no difference between that which one has directly experienced and the one who is enlightened. There is no difference. They are in union. There is no separation between the experiencer and the thing experienced. They are the same. Nor is there any sense of having come into that experience. The process which one has been going through up to enlightenment is no longer applicable. One has no sense of having arrived at it. It is the absolute itself. And that absolute is the individual himself. There is no difference between him and the Truth. In yoga it is called "samadhi" or "union'. There is no sense of, "Now, I'm in union with it." If there's a series of "I'm in union with it," that's not enlightenment. There is also no time sense of, "Now I know what I didn't know before." It's that "I've always known, I just didn't know I knew." It's just what is. It's not a matter of having found out. It's the eternal Truth itself. When a participant has that, then he has enlightenment.

You can't judge by symptoms. There are symptoms that go along with the enlightenment experience, but you can't go by symptoms to determine whether or not enlightenment has occurred. Sometimes there are all kinds of flashy side effects with an enlightenment experience. Sometimes there aren't any at all. And you can't go by verbal answers because anybody can learn the answers. Answers don't make you enlightened and they don't make you not enlightened. Just because you don't know the words doesn't mean you haven't had an enlightenment experience it just means you can't talk about it very well. Then how can you tell? Through no process at all. In other words, you can tell if someone else has had an enlightenment experience in the same way that you have an enlightenment experience yourself: through no how at all. Having a direct experience of another is the only way to tell whether or not that other is in a state of direct experience. There is no other way to be sure about it. In fact, there is no other way to be sure about anything, anytime, except by enlightenment because anything else has an element of doubt and an element of certainty to it. Doubt and certainty are conditions of the mind and do not exist in enlightenment.

This is a difficult skill to teach. Being an Enlightenment Master involves a lot of contact with other people and this is one form. But as I said, even if you don't fully gain this ability here in this course, you can still give successful Enlightenment Intensives. You will learn in this course how to drill yourself and eventually gain this capacity. In the mean-time you can still give intensives even though you can't always tell what enlightenment is in another person because you don't have to know and you don't have to comment about it. You can say, "Are you satisfied?" and the person can say, "Yes, I'm satisfied," He may say, "Well, am I enlightened?" Then you may say, "I don't know, Are you?" You can always get around it that way.

I tested it extensively to see if you can run an Enlightenment Intensive without ever committing one way or the other about it, and you can. I ran two Enlightenment Intensives that way just to experiment. I would not give any indication as to whether or not someone was enlightened. It slows things down a little bit and they kind of wander around in a fog sometimes but it doesn't make any real difference. After I satisfied myself of this I just did anything I wanted to at the moment.

You should know that there are not different kinds of enlightenment. There is not one kind of enlightenment experience that you get on Enlightenment Intensives, another kind that you get in Zen, another that you get from Yoga, another kind that Buddha had, and another kind that Jesus had. There are not different kinds of enlightenment. There is only one kind of enlightenment. There are different magnitudes of enlightenment and different things you can be enlightened with regard to, but there is only one kind of enlightenment and that is the direct experience of Truth, and that's it, It's not possible that there are two Truths. If you've had a direct experience, you've had a direct experience, that's all there is to it. You can use different words than someone else might use to try to describe it because enlightenment is actually, ultimately, indescribable. However, even if you can't describe it you can still do a rather good job of communicating it. You can communicate the enlightenment experience, but you cannot describe it.

So, there are degrees of enlightenment but only one kind. The enlightenment that people have on your Enlightenment Intensive is the same kind of enlightenment that Buddha had. There is no difference at all. Perhaps Buddha was more deeply enlightened but that is the only difference.

Once you have had an enlightenment experience you can never, ever, lose it. You may or may not be able to apply it very well in life. But an enlightenment experience is never lost under any circumstances. One's ability to apply it in life may get smashed up in the succeeding days and weeks after an Enlightenment Intensive because one is not around friendly and understanding people. But if you've had an enlightenment experience it is never lost, because enlightenment is eternal, independent of time. Therefore the potential to apply it to your life is always there. If a participant loses what he got from an insight, a conclusion or a feeling, it's because it was not an enlightenment experience. Enlightenment experiences are permanent and absolute. Once you are directly conscious of something, you can't be not conscious of it. You can think you were, and find out later that you weren't. But once absolute consciousness is obtained, that is that.

What is and is not Enlightenment
Study Questions

1. What is the most common and most serious error made by an Enlightenment Master?

2. What is the difference between an insight and an enlightenment experience?

3. How can a master determine whether a participant has had an enlightenment experience?

4. Define enlightenment.

5. Can a master determine whether a participant has had an enlightenment experience by observing symptoms?

6. Are there different kinds of enlightenment? What is the difference between the kind of enlightenment experiences one might have on an intensive and the experience of Buddha?

7. What would be the effect of telling someone on an Enlightenment Intensive that they had had an enlightenment experience when they had not?

8. What part do verbal answers play in a master's determination of whether a participant has had an enlightenment experience or not?

9. Explain why it is impossible to lose an enlightenment experience.

10. How would you handle a participant who insists that he has had a direct experience but who, in your estimation, has not?

11. Is it necessary for a master to be able to tell if a participant has had an enlightenment experience? If he cannot tell, what effect will this have on the intensive?

Enlightenment by Alan B. Dow

2008-10-28T13:46:00.000-07:00

By the mid 1970’s Charles Berner moved his ashram and teaching institute from Lucerne Valley in Southern California to Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay area and then to California’s wine country, St Helena, California. The following article entitled, Enlightenment appeared in the ashram newspaper. Charles Berner was the author using the pen name of Alan B. Dow.

Enlightenment
by Alan B. Dow

Yogeshwar Muni, whom I first met in December, 1973, under his former name of Charles Berner, has asked me to describe what I experienced during the first Enlightenment intensive I took from him. The following represents the gist of those experiences. However, I feel that I have not fully conveyed the depth of my appreciation for the personal contact and love shown me by him.

After a two hour drive out of Los Angeles, I think I must be lost as my Cadillac labours up a steep desert road rising into the San Bernardino Mountains. I must be about a mile high; I haven't seen a single light for miles. When I am about to turn back, I see in the distant light of my high beams the words "Sanatana Dharma Foundation" floating over a pink lotus "A little corny I think. I am a feature writer for the L.A. Times and a sometime poet. My girlfriend, Clare, has encouraged me to come to a three day Enlightenment Intensivesive. So partly to please her, but mostly because of an unadmitted de- sire to find out for myself what is responsible for Clare's transformation from a pleasant but somewhat self-effacing girl into a self confident woman who speaks with authority, I have re-arranged my schedule, bought a sleeping bag, mailed in a deposit and dutifully followed the well-prepared map to this isolated retreat called "Crystal Valley."

As I drive the last quarter mile, I see lights of several buildings and Iremind myself to try not to be just a newspaper reporter and observer but, as Clare has reminded me, to participate, to get involved.

I arrive at the parking lot. A figure dressed in white waves his flashlight toward a parking space and I turn in. “At least an efficient beginning," I think. A big smile greets me. The
handsome figure in white says, "Welcome to Crystal Valley. Haveyou come to participate in the Enlightenment Intensive?" There isthat word again, "participate"! He shows me into a Swiss chalet-type building. The room is filled with people sipping cups of tea. Some are chanting quietly. Some are reading a brochure called "Enlightenment." I glance around and see no one I know. I am looking for Yogeshwar Muni but I see no one fitting the description Clare has given me. This mystery man who had originated the Enlightenment Intensive, Clare had told me, had combined the ancient Yogic question of "Who am 1?" with the communication technology of the West. The result is a polished, intense workshop structure that results in 30 to 40% of the participants (that word again!) having a direct experience of who they actually are.

The Registrar offers me one of the cups of tea. It turns out to be herb tea, a desert blend, she says. Then I remember the rule sheet they had sent me in advance: no coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, or cosmetics. Not even shaving is allowed. The Registrar, Tapasvinei notices my hesitation as I taste the tea and alertly comments, "The rules are designed to enable the Enlightenment participant to focus completely on the task of enlightenment. No artificial pain killers allowed." Well, OK I guess we are going to be serious about this, so I will do it according to the rules. When I am signed in and the balance of the money is paid Tapasvini hands me a copy of the Enlightenment Brochure with its Peter Max cover and illustrations. I wonder if they paid Peter for the job or if he donated the rather expensive looking work or if they just stole it. In any case, nice work and a simple clearly written style. It explains the principle of enlightenment: namely, Direct Experience.

Unlike insight, conclusions or even belief, only a different kind of consciousness which is independent of perception, feeling logic, reasoning, memory or decision will succeed in bringing about an enlightenment experience. To achieve that exalted state, the brochure states, we must sit and contemplate the question, "Who am 1?" 1 am familiar with Zen meditation Koans where the attention is focused on riddles about Truth and this seems much the same. Thr surprise comes when I read what the Enlightenment technique consists of: I'll be sitting opposite another contemplating partner and when something occurs in my consciousness as a result of trying to directly experience "Who am I?" I'll verbally try to explain to my partner what has occurred to me. So the Enlightenment technique seems to combine the contemplative method of the East with the communication power of modem Western Psychology. "Interesting, but will it work?" I wonder. To be sure, Clare had changed. But was it due to the Enlightenment Technique or to the power of suggestion? After all, we are to do this method 18 hours a day for 3 days with just 3 light meals and 5 minute breaks every 45 minutes. As I muse over the commitment of 3 days of intense involvement in the attempt to experience my own true nature, someone instructs us (now 30 to 40 strong) to assemble upstairs, as Yogeshwar Muni is going to give us a brief introduction to the Enlightenment Intensive.

Precisely at 10 p.m., he sweeps in with what I have now acknowledged as his professional staff. Clare described him to me as an intelligent, grey-bearded, balding man of 45 with a grasp of the wisdom of both East and West. She was obviously struck by him, but had failed to mention a certain charismatic power which I found both threatening and fascinating. He immediately welcomed us and explained that we were here to work on enlightenment only and not to expect a weekend of rest. He explained that the enlightenment we were striving for was no different in kind from the enlightenment which Buddha and Christ attained, only that we could expect a lesser degree.

"I'll wait and see," I think to myself. Yogeshwar Muni is demanding cooperation and saying we must do the technique the way he says, but in the same breath he tells us to experience for ourselves and not to believe anything, especially what he says. Do it his way but be open to whatever comes, is the way he puts it. He checks to see if there is anyone who is physically or mentally incapable of bearing up under the strain of the heavy 3-day schedule. One person has a history of mental illness, a bad cold and family upsets at home. Yogeshwar instructs his staff to refund the young man's money and sends him home with an invitation to attend Satsang (spiritual discussion) at it later time.

Yogeshwar introduces his staff, cook and "monitors." He. explains that he and they will take care of everything and that our only job is to do the technique exactly as he instructs. At precisely 10:30 p.m., he concludes his remarks with the reminder that we are to rise at 6 AM.

Sleep is fitful. The room is filled with others in sleeping bags tossing and turning. Dawn creeps in and a pleasant voice announces, “This is the first day of your Enlightenment Intensive. You have 15 minutes to get up, get dressed and be ready to go.”

I dress quickly, wash up (no shaving) and then sit opposite another participant in the manner which had been pleasantly but firmly described by a monitor. Yogeshwar is there at 6:15 to explain the Enlightenment Technique. He stresses the importance of intending to directly experience oneself instead of just thinking over who one is. This workshop is not an intellectual think tank but a sincere effort to contact the Truth. Just as I am thinking that perhaps there is no "The Truth," Yogeshwar says that we should settle this question by using the technique to experience for ourselves what "is."

We are ready to begin. My partner says to me, "Tell me who you are." I am tempted to show him my driver's license, but resist. Instead, I try to feel the wholeness of me. In my mind, dozens of ideas about my self begin to pour out. I remember that I am to tell my partner these thoughts. So, with only some editing, I spew forth my inner convictions about myself.

All too soon (after 5 minutes) "Thank your partner!" My partner hesitates for a moment, then says] "Thank you." Another gong. "Change over," says the monitor. My partner is working on another one of the 5 basic questions, this one, "What is life?" So I say to him, "Tell me what Life is!" I am to listen and watch him attentively and say nothing. My partner immediately starts telling me that this is a dumb workshop and he only came here because he was lonely and that last weekend the workshop he had attended on
massage was more fun. A monitor arrives and asks my partner if he is responding to my instruction about what Life is. "No, I am here for companionship," is the curt and honest response of my partner. Monitor: "Is companionship a part of Life?" Partner: "Yes." Monitor: "Then try to directly experience what companionship actually is!" Very Smooth! My partner gets involved. I listen, saying nothing. Five minutes. Gong. Thank your partner. Change over. My turn again. More thoughts. More talk. Five minutes. Gong. Thank your partner. Change over. Back and forth the flow of contemplation and communication goes. I begin to sense the power of the technique. Five gongs, breakfast time, 2 apples, I'm still hungry, find a new partner, Tell me who you are! Eight 5 minute periods of the enlightenment technique, 5 minute break, 40 minutes more of contemplation and communication on “Who am I?

Yogeshwar sits watching the proceedings carefully, occasionally talking to a monitor who goes to a pair of participants and instructs them. The whole scene is smooth and serene on the one hand and full of life and activity on the other. Five minute break. Yogeshwar says we are now to go out of the building to walk and to contemplate alone for one hour: not a nature walk, but one solid hour of just walking slowly and trying to directly experience the object of our Enlightenment , Who or What we are, What Life is, or What Another is …Ourself, Life or Another. I try, but my mind wanders. I try again. I wander off the subject of myself. The warming sunshine in the cool desert air is attracting me away. I feel I will never be able to concentrate, then I remember Yogeshwar's guidance: "If you find yourself distracted, ask yourself, 'Who was distracted?' or 'Who can't experience itself?' It seems I am the one who wants to enjoy the sunshine, but who is that? I still don't know.

A distant conch blast breaks my reflections. An hour already? How did I get so far away? I hurry back just in time to find a new partner. I spill out to him a detailed report on my hour's contemplation. Lunch time. At last, substantial food: brown rice and vegetables. Not my usual fare, but I'm hungry. Even during our meal, a monitor is about, reminding us to continue to contemplate. This is a total submersion approach. After lunch, back to a new partner and more Enlightenment Technique.

Yogeshwar is gone, resting. The "Chief Monitor" takes over the floor: "Thank your partner, change over." The gongs, I discover, are operated off a master tape recording. "Who is distracted?" I pull myself back. Five minute break. Yogeshwar returns and gives us a 45-minute talk mainly on how various mental and emotional blocks occur in the mind and body which make it difficult to directly experience the Truth of our selves Life or Others. He says that if we will just do the technique as exactly as we can that the mind will gradually empty itself through the mouth of all past convictions, pre-conceived ideas, beliefs, hopes, delusions and even logic and reasoning, leaving an open space for us to experience directly what he calls "the most obvious thing in the universe, ourself.

So, I am not a complete failure even though half a day has passed and I haven't gotten enlightened. If Yogeshwar is right, I need only keep cleaning out the blocks by doing the Enlightenment Technique. I plunge into the next exercise period with great enthusiasm. I never imagined how buried I am under seemingly endless ideas and visions of myself. The poet, the sensitive person, the hurt kid, the successful newspaper man, the good lover and, deeper, the confused manic, the lost soul.

Rest period and shower time. Still no shaving. What will Clare think when I get home with a 3 day growth of beard? I will be out of character. Ha, ha! So, who am I? A clean shaven chicken afraid to change his identity… that s who I am. This enlightenment business is not just ideas about myself. It has to do with who I really am! Oh my God! I am getting scared.

Another Enlightenment Exercise period, a salad for dinner, followed by 2 more Enlightenment Exercise periods. I am getting tired. The ready-made answers that flowed out earlier are gone, my brain is worn out. I sit and contemplate, trying to stay awake. It is only 9:30 p.m. I'll never make it. If I could just have one cup of coffee. But no. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Yogeshwar says we don't have to look alert, just keep doing the technique as well as we can. O.K. I am still participating but I'm just barely hanging on.

Clare, what have you gotten me into. I feel like crying. My mind is empty. I am lost.

Yogeshwar sends us out for another walking contemplation period. The cool dark night wakes me up. Who am I? I know, I am one who is lost. But who is that that is lost? Oh God, I am confused. Did Buddha and Jesus go through this? Keep walking. If I sit down I will go to sleep. Maybe I'll find my car and drive home now, but I do want to experience who I really am. The conch calls. The last partner for the night. I tell him my feelings. He has taken many intensives and listens with such an open, loving heart. He's
working on, "What is another?" He seems to see into my soul. Oh God, I am crying, my heart is opening. I feel love, pure love. I try to experience who is having this experience. I am close, but I can't quite reach the Truth. The period ends. Yogeshwar reminds us to continue contemplation even in our sleep and to follow the no-sex rule. Believe me, though my heart is still flowing with love, I want only my sleeping bag. I sleep the soundest sleep of my life. Such sweet bliss.

"This is the second day of' your Enlightenment Intensive. Be aware of what you have been doing in your sleep. You have 15 minutes to get up get dressed and be ready to go." I am up, refreshed and ready, yet my first partner of the day is still half asleep. To my surprise, I have new answers today, fresh areas of confusion and conviction to work through. I enjoy each new partner. Though I have no enlightenment experiences, I am exposing the deep recesses of my inner thoughts and fears about who I hoped I was, but knew I wasn't. Relief follows relief. Then, just after noon, I am blank again, clear pure light blue blank. Not a thought, vision or feeling… nothing. I try and try to see and feel who I am. I just get endless nothing. The monitor tells me to describe the "nothing" to my partner. I try with some success.

Time for Yogeshwar's afternoon talk. Then he calls for questions. I ask about the eternal nothingness I am conscious of. What should I do? Yogeshwar, with love and wisdom in his eyes, responds by saying, "Be happy. Most seekers spend years trying to perceive the Truth. Enlightenment can only be had by direct experience, not by a perceptual act. I get it! A rush of energy pours through my body! Now I see what I
have been doing wrong in the technique: I have been trying to see myself, think myself, feel myself. But only a pure openness to the very one who is trying to be open can bring about a direct experience, Enlightenment.

I pick my favourite partner for the next period. I am determined to make it. I do what Yogeshwar says. More nothing. I get angry; I get tired again; I am failing; I feel like I am (lying; rest period is useless, dinner is useless. I'm dying. Little Alan is dying Where is my mother. Oh God, save me. I am falling into the abyss. I am walking. Who am I? I will not give up. I can't hold out any longer.

Yogeshwar says, "This is your last night. Stay up and contemplate if you wish." I last 2 more hours, collapse in sleep, dream of monsters trying to eat me. They succeed, but I still am. Then who am I? I ask for a private interview with Yogeshwar. He listens patiently to my plight. "This technique depends for its power on the contact between you and your partner. Be open to the Truth of you. But when it is time to be the listener, be open to the Truth of your partner."

So simple. I return to my partner. I listen with an open heart. To my amazement, within 10 minutes, she has an enlightenment experience. Yogeshwar had told us that an enlightenment experience comes in two parts: one, the energy release and two, the change of state of consciousness. My partner, Helene, is showing the energy release. Her face is glowing. She is pouring forth a pure emotion of love and exhilaration. What she has realized is a mystery to me but the outward manifestation is clear.

Yogeshwar is unconcerned. He sits and just watches the group of 34 people, all intently concentrating on enlightenment. I am energized by my partner's state of being. She begins clarifying to me what she has realized. While I can only under- stand her intellectually, it is clear to me that this ordinary housewife is conscious of what the real purpose of Life is. Rather than feeling jealous, I am spurred on to greater efforts, to experience directly the inner core of me. I fail again and again, but I don't give up.

Last day, lunchtime, I am totally involved in the question. Yogeshwar comes in for his last afternoon talk. Six others have had enlightenment experiences. He tells marvellous stories about different levels of enlightenment. His final comment, I see in retrospect, did it for me. “Some aspirants are stopped on the brink of enlightenment by past bad karma (actions). One can allow this Karma to play itself out or uproot it through greater consciousness, by realizing that the world needs more conscious people, now."

The next period starts, 5 minutes, I am open to the core of me, 10 minutes, I am dying again. This time I don't hold back but figuratively throw myself into the abyss of the unknown, 15 minutes, I just want the truth of me, just me. ME! Oh my God, I am conscious of just ME! Not some "new being" I had thought enlightenment would bring, but ME!' Without anything: no thought, no seeing, no discussion or belief. The living fact of Truth, ME! ME! It cannot be denied, not doubted. No certainty or conviction. Just the Truth. ME! Oh God, Oh, Clare, I am directly conscious of the one who is directly conscious of ... It is infinite! Absolute! I am IT! Tears of joy and laughter at past ignorance flow from my eyes. I see my partner and just shine. "ME, ME, ME!"

During the rest of the intensive, I share with my partners this state of direct experience until they, at least intellectually, understand. The ones who have already been enlightened receive me at once.

Clare, it is true. There is Truth. I give thanks to God and Clare and Yogeshwar for the Enlightenment Intensive.

Who Am I

2008-10-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

HOLISTIC Yoga
Well Being for Body, Mind & Spirit

LESSON 1
WHO AM I

WHAT IS IT THAT ONE SETS OUT TO DIRECTLY EXPERIENCE?
One time a participant in an Enlightenment Intensive, on being given the instruction, "Tell me who you are," pulled out his driver's license. Some people think they are their name, or their identification. Identification is not even quite as close as a name. How ever, even thinking you are a label shows some of the beginning problems that you come up against when you try to work out who you are. "If I'm not my driver's license and I'm not Harry, then who am I?" Then he feels his body, his hands, and says, "I'm this body." That may be, but in that case he was doing it by feeling. Maybe he is the body, and maybe he is not. Can you really know absolutely what the truth is through the process of feeling? No. You cannot know anything absolutely through sense perception. You can know probably, you can be pretty sure, but you might be wrong unless you have a absolute, or direct experience of whatever it is.
In this case, it is you that we are talking about.

Close your eyes for a moment or two and imagine a cat, and then open your eyes again. That cat is part of the mind. Wherever that cat was, and what ever the nature of that cat, it was in the space, or the place of the mind. The mind is different than the body. Where you were imagining that cat is the realm of the mind. The body is what you feel with your hand.

Close your eyes and imagine a cat again. This time notice who it is who is looking at the cat. Now you have begun the search for "Who am I?" The "who" that is looking at the cat is not ultimately a part of the mind.

In his book, The Science of Meditation, my spiritual teacher, Swami Krpalvananda, talks about two kinds of states of union with the Absolute. "In sabija (with seed of desire) samadhi (state of union with the Absolute), the body is separated from the mind, and in nirbija (without seed of desire) samadhi (state of union with the Absolute), the mind is separated from the soul."

Union with the Absolute with seed of desire is the lower kind. Union with the Absolute without seed of desire is the higher kind. In the state of union with the Absolute you have direct, or absolute experiences. In the lower kind of union, with seed of desire, the mind and the body come apart, or separate. In the higher kind of union, without seed of desire, the mind and the soul separate. That which was looking at the cat is the soul. That is the whole answer to everything. The trick is, how do we get this separation to occur?

You are not after the mind. If you are trying to directly experience who you are, and you are trying to deal in the realm of the body or the realm of the mind, you will fail. You can only have relative experiences of who you are by feeling, and by thinking. You may think, "If I'm not Harry, and I'm not my body, then who am I? If I were this, then I couldn't do that, and if I could do this, I could do that, but I can do this, so I must be that." This is a mental process. You may even come up with the right answer, but you will not know whether it is true or not. This is the "Catch 22." Even though you may mentally work out who you are correctly, you will never be sure unless you experience it directly. "I am that. I know I am. I have the strength of ten thousand tigers. I do affirmations every day." Affirmations are all right. They are a way of manipulating the mind, but they never settle anything absolutely. To have an absolute truth you must have an absolute experience. If you are dealing with the body or the mind, you are not going to have an absolute experience.

In Japan, in 746 A.D., a monk asked his master in all seriousness, "Has a dog Buddha nature or not?"

The master retorted, "Mu."

Even if this were translated, it would not help one to understand it. What he is essentially saying is, "Nonsense." That is, you can ask questions which do not help. In fact, anything that you form in the mind by way of questions or answers is not going to do any good. The monk had set out to find out whether he was his body or not.

"If a dog has Buddha (enlightened) nature, then my body must have Buddha (enlightened) nature. There fore, that must be its true nature, and therefore, that must be me; that is, Buddha (enlightened) nature."

The master said, "Nonsense. What is this, asking such a stupid question?"

Here is another example, by Ramana Maharshi. Ramana Maharshi was the "Who am I?" guru (spiritual teacher). He died in about 1950. He had a spontaneous enlightenment experience when he was about seventeen years of age and spent the rest of his life teaching people to ask themselves the question "Who am I?" Toward the end of his life, when pressed about what kind of answer we are after his reply was, "There is no answer to the 'Who am I?' question. Suggested replies to the inquiry of 'Who am I?' such as 'I am Shiva (name of God), are not to be given to the mind during meditation. The true answer will come of itself. No answer the ego can give can be right."

IMPORTANCE OF A DIRECT EXPERIENCE
We have a problem. We cannot use our senses; we cannot use our rationale; we cannot use our ego. No matter what the ego thinks, it is never going to come up with the correct thing. What are we to do? This question has been around for a long time. In Greece, not far from Athens, is the temple of Apollo. It is mostly in ruin, but the entry gate is still there. An inscription across the lintel of the gate says, "Know Thyself." This is important. The basis of all religion, of all spirituality, of all personal growth, rests on that one thing. You will be able to progress to the degree that you truly know yourself. Everything else is dependent on it. You can go through philosophy and theology; you can have this experience or that experience; you can use this technique or that technique; you can work hard and be disciplined in your life; but, if you do not know who you are by direct experience ƒ not by knowledge, not by thinking, not by being told ƒ then who is participating? Who is involved in life? Who is it that is doing this?

Did you ever do something and then not feel any fulfillment from it? For example, you finally get your degree and it has no meaning. "At least I can earn some money with it, maybe." Then you are into money, and you go all out for that, too, but in the end it still is not fulfilling. Is there anything in life that is fulfilling? Is there anything that is not just a momentary flash? Is there anything that brings lasting happiness and satisfaction? Yes, there is. Almost anything will do. That is not the problem. The problem is that it is not you who are participating in it. It is some sort of person , or beingness, or false identification that is doing it, and that is what gets the fun out of it. What do you get? Nothing. After awhile you begin to think life is a cheat. Life is a cheat.

However, the Truth is not a cheat. Once you have an absolute direct experience of you, the absolute truth of you, then you can begin to live from you. Every religion has as its base the principle that unless one has an actual direct experience himself, religion is a joke. Well, not entirely a joke. Following a code of behavior is good. However, having followed a code of behavior you will have been a good person, but you will not get any fulfillment out of it unless it was you who were following the code of behavior. This is the point. This is why it is important to have this experience, this direct, absolute experience of who you are. You are not after an answer to the question "Who am I?" You are after the who it is that you are.

FOCUSING ON THE SAME QUESTION IN ANCIENT TIMES
Back in about 3000 B.C. one of the followers of Buddha said, "It's what you were doing just a minute ago, but in a different way." Remember when you were visualizing the cat and then trying to get who it was who was seeing the cat? This is the way the Buddhists put it in ancient times: "Who is the repeater of Buddha's name?" Then they would say Buddha's name, and they would say it over and over again. Finally one of them said, "Who is it that is repeating this name?" You try not to answer that, but to experience that directly. However, if you cannot use your body and its senses, your mind and its reason, and your personality traits, what are you left with? Not very much. It is a real problem.

In China about 200 A.D., about eighteen hundred years ago, there was a chan (meditation) master, the sixth patriarch, who was illiterate. One of the monks asked, "How is it that the sixth patriarch was handed the master's robe? His rival for that post of master taught five hundred monks and was able to expound thirty-two volumes of scripture. How then did this illiterate cook get to be the master over the seemingly more qualified person?" The answer was that the person who seemed to be more qualified still indulged in conceptual thought. "I'll get this concept, this pure concept of my true nature." Then one begins to think, "If getting an absolutely pure concept of the voidness of my own nature doesn't do it, then what can I do that's going to do it?" Nothing. It begins to feel as if nothing is of any use. Anything one can come up with is not what we are looking for. How are we going to have this direct experience?

The following quote is from Guru Nanak. He was the founder of the reform Hindu and Moslem sect called the Sikhs. This was about 1520 A.D. He was a truly inspired person. "How shall the truth be known? How shall the veil of false illusion be torn? Oh Nanak, (God is speaking through him), thus runneth the writ divine. Abide by His will and make it thine." If you want the truth that is His will, if you want the truth of you, of who you really are, if you make that yours, then you will have that direct experience. You will know the Truth absolutely. However, you have to accept it the way it is. What if you are just a lump of mud? Are you prepared for that, to have you come out a lump of mud? Are you prepared for that possibility? Are you willing to take the Truth and make it yours whatever it may be? That hurts the ego because the ego wants you to come out the way it wants you to come out. "I'm glorious." I'm this strong, able, capable, eternal flash. I want to be something and I'm going to work on this until I come out the way that I expect myself to come out." Now we are really up against it. Not only can we not work out anything, but all our preconceived notions are going to have to go. We have to just open up and take what is. This is the route to the Truth.

THE BARRIER OF THE EGO
In China about 400 B.C., the best student of Confucius, Mencius, was an advisor to the king. Mencius said to the king, "Suppose one of your ministers had gone on a journey leaving his wife and children with a friend, and upon returning found his family starving. What do you think he should do?"

The king said without hesitation, "He should cut off all relations with that friend."

Mencius then said, "Suppose now that the leader of the warriors had no control over the warriors, then what should he do?"

The king said without hesitation, "He should dismiss him."

Then Mencius said, "Suppose now that the kingdom is being ill governed, then what should be done?"

The king turned to his courtiers and spoke of other things.

You come up against what you think you are, the ego, or the so called "awareness" of you, or you might call it the "isness" of you. When the ego becomes challenged, it starts thinking of other things. The moment you begin to come up to that absolute truth you will have some sort of reaction, either mentally, physically, or emotionally. At this point the ego is being denied.

For example, you think, "I'll ask myself the question 'Who am I?' and I won't think. I'll just wait. I'll just be open." When it starts to happen you will get a sick stomach and you will think this is the dumbest thing you ever thought of. "Let me out of here. This is stupid. Why should I bother with this kind of thing? Absolute experiences are not possible. This makes me feel like kicking people." All of these and other things will happen to you the moment you start to arrive at the Truth. The Truth denies the ego. When you come to the Absolute Truth the ego cannot be involved. The ego is in involved in the perceptual process. The ego is the seer, the knower, the thinker, the causer, the doer. It is all these things, and it is not any of these things. In the end, the truth of you is not ego. But when you come up against the truth of who you really are, the ego throws a fit and makes the mind, the body, and the emotions react. It is like the king who just turned away. When asked what should be done when the kingdom is not being run properly, he changed the subject, like Alice in Wonderland. We are up against a tough problem here. It is incredibly important that we know and directly experience who we are, and yet it is incredibly difficult. What can we do?

THE PROCESS THAT TAKES ONE TOWARD ENLIGHTENMENT
This quotation is from the Narada Bhakti Sutras about 300 B.C. "Conversing with one another with choking voice, tearful eyes, and thrilled body, they purify not only their families but the land which gave birth to them."

That is to say, if we can open up sincerely to each other, and at the same time not hurt each other, we will create a situation in which that direct absolute experience of our own true nature can occur spontaneously. This is the approach that we take in the Enlightenment Intensive. We take the question, "Who am I?" and turn it into an instruction, "Tell me who you are." We sit one person in front of another, and one says to the other, "Tell me who you are." The other person, responding with choking'. :voice, tearful eyes, and thrilled body, purifies his mind and his ego, and the conditions are set up in which that direct absolute experience can occur. But there are complications.

When people start opening up to each other, they want to run off with each other. So, we have a structure that says, "No, you sit right there. Do not touch that other person. Just open up your heart and soul and stay right there eighteen hours a day for three days, face to face with it." In this way you have a pretty good chance of having a direct experience of who you are.

We have taken this ancient question, combined it with this ancient principle of contacting, and put it in the dyad structure of two people working to . Then, we keep them at it in a schedule that will keep them from running away every time their mind or body says, "This is stupid, let me out of here." It is difficult. It is incredibly difficult to have this absolute experience, only because the mind and the body keep trying to drag you away, and if they do not, the ego will ensure it. You need to be in a structure with people who are helping and supporting you so that you do not run away, you do not believe all those reasons of the mind, and you are not tempted by the contact into some sort of an affair which keeps you from staying with it until you can have that experience. This supportive structure is what an Enlightenment Intensive is.

WHAT IS A DIRECT EXPERIENCE?
Say you have a direct experience. What is the en lightened state like? People have endeavored to experience directly who they are and have known the value of such an experience for a long time. Some people have had the experience of who they really are. A quotation >from the Monadic Upanishad, an ancient yogic text from about 800 B.C., describes the fourth state, the state of enlightenment. The ~ state is the state of being awake. The second state is the dream state. The third state is the dreamless state, and the fourth state is called the state of union with the Absolute. This fourth state is enlightenment. "The fourth state is with out an element with which there can be any dealing. It is without a development. The fourth state is benign, without a second. It is the true self indeed."

The people who were responsible for writing this had this direct experience of the absolute nature of the true self, beyond ego, beyond mind, beyond body. It has nothing to do with anything. It is not something that has been developed. There is a clue for you, and your mind will work on it.

"If my true nature is not something that has been developed or formed, then I'll say that what I am is something that was not developed." This approach does not do it because, even though the enlightened state is described to you, you are missing the absolute direct experience.

Is it easy? No. I do not recommend this for people who say, "Well, I'm not very happy in life, and I'm feeling tired, and just worn out. What should I do?" I do not tell them to go to an Enlighten enlightenment Intensive. People who have their life together and have determination are the people who should take an Enlightenment Intensive. They are gent, healthy, energetic, and they are ready to go. These are the people who should take an Enlighten enlightenment Intensive, because it is rough going. It is not easy.

Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutras of about 200 B.C., said, "It (that is, the state of union with the Absolute) is nearest to those whose desire for it is intensely strong." If your desire to directly experience your absolute nature is strong, you are the person who will have that experience. It will be nearer to you. It is a hard thing for the others. It would be better for them to work on other things. There are thirty-one other squares on this mandala for them to work on. If nothing else, they can rest.

WHAT IS THE FINAL STATE OF ENLIGHTENMENT?
In India, about 420 B.C., while Buddha was still living, he said, "Whoever finds it finds nothing. Whoever finds it finds all things." The mind can not really handle something like this because it contains a contradiction. Whoever finds it finds nothing, and whoever finds it finds everything. That is to say, anything that you expected to find, you will not. You will find complete emptiness and complete voidness, but on the other hand you will find complete and total satisfaction, which is everything. So anything that the mind, or body, or ego wanted, you are not going to get, but you find everything. The Truth is totally and absolutely satisfactory. It is nothing, yet it is everything. Not everybody is ready for this kind of thing. Only those who are ambitious and who are really ready for the Truth should bother themselves with this kind of endeavor.

What is this final state like? "I and my Father are one," Jesus said. That is a nonsense statement. How can you have two things being one? Yet, this paradox, in the realm of the Absolute, is true. "I and my Father are one." The true acknowledge enlightenment of that statement is beyond the realm of the mind.

The following quote is from the Rg Veda, about 1300 B.C. "The red bird he now has entered the womb of the primeval father." If you had that absolute experience, you would feel just like you had joined hearts with the author of this statement. This is the most ancient statement ever written on the sub;, although verbalized, no doubt, thousands of years before it was written.

SUMMARY
1. The best time to work on "Who am I?" is when everything in your life is going well and you have a little spare time.
2. The "who" you are setting out to directly experience is not your body, and not your mind. It is the soul; the one who is looking at the cat.
3. You cannot directly experience who you are by answering the question.
It is important to directly experience who you are. You will be able to progress to the degree that you know yourself.
4. You will not feel satisfaction or fulfillment in life unless it is "you" who are participating.
5. When you come close to the absolute truth of who you are, you will have some kind of reaction. When the ego becomes challenged, it thinks of other things.
6. If we can sincerely open up to each other, and at the same time not hurt each other, we create a situation in which a direct absolute experience of our own true nature can occur spontaneously.
7. A direct experience of the true self, not related to anything else, or arrived at by any via, is enlightenment.
8. The final state of enlightenment is nothing and is all things.

ASSIGNMENT
1. After reading and reflecting on this chapter, record your thoughts and feelings in your spiritual journal.
2. Reflect daily on 'who am I' and record your comments and observations in your spiritual journal.
3. Watch the video: Enlightenment: Accelerating Self Realization by Jack Wexler
4. Read: Lawrence Noyes' book, The Enlightenment Intensive and/or Jake Chapman's book, Who Am I;
5. Visit the web site http://www.selffoundation.com and read about the Enlightenment Intensive Retreat and follow links to other sites.
6. Sign up for an Enlightenment Intensive Retreat.
7. Do the enlightenment dyad with a partner: 'Tell me who you are.'

Levels of Enlightenment and Advice for Doing The Enlightenment Technique

2008-09-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

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.