Is
"Instant Enlightenment" Possible? Yes, But ...
It's Not What You Expected!
Enlightenment.
The promise of it brings a rush of excitement to any true student of
the ancient, yet timeless, spiritual science of yoga, or of its underlying
philosophy, Vedanta. And when you add "instant" to that promise, it
should make a Serious Aspirant feel ... well, all goose-pimply.
Not only
is instant enlightenment possible; I propose to fully enlighten you
by the end of these, few paragraphs. Interestingly, you will attain
that treasure, even if this is the first time you've heard the term
"enlightenment." No long years of study, tapas (sacrifices), sadhana
(selfless service) or other such noble yogic practices are needed.
First things
first. Enlightenment is at once both mysterious and cherished ... yet,
when asked, most people haven't the slightest clue of what it actually
means to be enlightened. Or if they do, it's only a partial understanding
-- or a complete misunderstanding.
To some,
enlightenment is identical to the also-cherished (and equally misunderstood)
state known as "liberation." To others, it is a blissed-out mental condition
which is said to have no equal. And to still others, it means going
to heaven and never being reborn into a human body. Or for some, it
is simply an intellectual concept which is based upon the teachings
of one or the other of the two, major Vedic religions, Hinduism and
Buddhism.
However,
most people deeply involved in the arcane, but increasingly popular
field of yoga, agree that enlightenment -- whatever "it" may be -- is
well worth pursuing.
So let
us define our terms. In yoga-Vedanta, we are taught that we are each
Divine beings ... Divinity Incarnate, you could say. The word "Self"
is often used to specify that eternal state defined by Krishna in The
Bhagavad-Gita as " ... never born and never dying" (BG 2:11-13). Hence,
the term made popular by various yogis, such as Vivekananda, Nikhilananda,
Yogananda and my own guru, Sathya Sai Baba: "Self-realization." Discovering
what it actually means to be the Divinity That I Am.
But we
could as easily call that Divinity Brahman, Atman, Purusha, or any of
the other number of Names assigned to this little-understood condition
of Eternal Unchangingness ... including "God." (Typically, though, we
in yoga tend not to use the term, "God," since it has so many religious,
and easily misleading, overtones.)
"Enlightenment"
could be seen, then, as that of "experiencing our own Divinity ... and
knowing we have experienced It." And if you will accept that definition,
you can easily become enlightened by the end of this article.
For many
years, I have taught our students of Neti Yoga -- a "westernized" version
of jnana yoga ("The Way of Knowledge and Wisdom") -- that enlightenment
is both instantly possible, and is a vital prerequisite for reaching
the goal of life. Still, enlightenment is not the goal, itself; only
an essential mile-marker along the pathway.
To Neti
yogis and yoginis, enlightenment has two indispensable components: Knowledge
and experience. The experience of "being Divine." Like love and marriage,
they go hand in hand. Indeed, knowledge-plus-experience is even more
intimate, since one without the other can cause enormous distress, whereas
love without marriage can still be a lot of fun.
Fortunately,
everyone has had the "experience" portion of this formula, which is
what makes instant illumination possible. All that is then required
is a brief explanation of the peculiar -- and to many people, frightening
-- experience; then, eh voila!, immediate enlightenment!
To instantly
"get it," you must have first experienced what we, in Neti Yoga, call
"the No-Mind State." This is an experience when time, itself, is somehow
... lost. You are doing one thing; then, curiously, perhaps shockingly,
you find yourself doing something else. A block of time has simply ...
disappeared -- and with it, your knowledge of anything you may have
done during that period of lost time.
Seasoned
meditators, of course, can sometimes reach this mind-free state of time
erasure, albeit briefly, during deep meditation. Then, however, it is
called samadhi or nirvana, depending upon your pathway. And it is well-understood
by such meditators ... and is, in fact, the penultimate goal of meditation.
But that
same phenomenon can arise within beings who haven't the slightest intention
of meditating. And this No-Mind state usually occurs unexpectedly --
not only in people, but in every living being -- at some point or other
in their lives. In non-meditators, this No-Mind experience might then
be called "involuntary samadhi" or "accidental nirvana."
Typically,
this perplexing phenomenon occurs during the conditions of, say, deep
hypnosis, drunkenness or inebriation, profound relaxation or intense
concentration ... or simply while "day-dreaming." Infants, it would
seem, experience this state for long periods at a time, until dirty
diapers or hungry bellies bring them back to "reality."
In that
light, broody hens, sitting upon their clutch of eggs for weeks on end,
virtually without moving or even blinking, are unintentional meditators
of the highest order!
And, yes,
most UFO abductees, as well as comatose victims and sleepwalkers are
having the No-Mind experience, too, as are people suffering the grand
mal seizure of epilepsy. Perhaps that is why, in old Russia (or what
now passes as Russia), those sufferers experiencing an epileptic seizure
were sometimes considered to be "communing with God."
And we
each experience this involuntary samadhi regularly during the day, although
usually only for moments at a time. At least twice each day -- between
wakefulness and dropping off to sleep, then between sleeping and awakening
-- we are briefly in the No-Mind state.
This State-beyond-mind
is also known as "Pure Consciousness," as well as turiya, or "the Fourth"
-- that state which underlies the three mental phenomena of waking,
dreaming and deep sleep. It is like the blank screen upon which the
flickering lights of "the movie of life" dance and play.
In deep
sleep, of course, we are also mostly free from the mind, except for
the occasional dream. But, then, it is expected and we generally know
we have been asleep.
But the
No-Mind experience of which I speak -- the potentially traumatic type
-- typically occurs during wakefulness and can actually occur anytime,
for no reason, at all ... often under bizarre conditions. Consider the
plight of one Neti yogi who had this "lost time" experience while urinating
in his office's bathroom. He then discovered himself back at his desk,
sometime later, with no recall as to how long he had been there, or
even how he had returned to his seat from the lavatory.
The poor
chap was so distressed he immediately went to the company doctor, fearing
he had a mental condition or perhaps even a brain tumor. Though nothing
organically wrong could be discovered, the experience had bothered him
for years. And it was only after he learned what had actually happened,
during one of our Neti Yoga classes, that he felt truly relieved by
his new-found knowledge.
For him,
this knowledge was more than enlightening; it was profoundly therapeutic.
For some years, until he received this enlightening information, he
had quietly feared the experience was a precursor to increasing mental
instability as he grew older.
Curiously,
however, in the majority of our students, this involuntary samadhi arose
while driving -- generally, while driving long distances. In fact, this
is such a common condition, it even has an official name: "White line
fever." A kind of hypnosis which occurs from staring too long at boring,
incessant movement. (Not surprisingly, this is one of the favored methods
for inducing hypnosis, too: Staring at repetitive motion, such as a
swinging pendulum or the tip of a metronome.)
At some
point, the mesmerized driver is snapped back to alertness and may scold
him- or herself for lapsing into that state (if s/he even realized that
it occurred), but seldom thinks more about it. It seems to have its
own reason and rationale.
However,
this is not always the case. For example, one time during her college
years, my wife, Barbara Gail, drove several hundred miles between Pennsylvania
and Washington, DC, beginning the trip in a state of agitation. She
arrived at the outskirts of Washington, some hours later, and suddenly
realized that she had no recall of most of the trip ... and she had
been driving the car!
I, myself,
have had several memorable No-Mind experiences; and these, too, involved
driving. The first occurred after I had hastily downed a pint of scotch
at a party to celebrate the end of my sophomore year in college. I was
in a rush to get back home, some 30 miles away, and see my then-girlfriend.
I still
recall leaving the campus, driving remarkably well for one in my intoxicated
condition. But within moments, I lost all memory of driving, and only
"returned," nearly an hour later, to find myself lying on my girlfriend's
lawn, grinning boozily up at the concerned, though spinning, face of
the woman who would shortly become my mother-in-law. No enlightenment
there.
Alcohol-induced
blackouts are common enough and -- for most of their experiencers --
are explained away as being merely due to the intoxicant's effects,
usually without further introspection. I, college boy, simply chalked
it up to one of life's more interesting occurrences and put it on the
back-shelf of my mind.
But the
second occasion I "lost time" was markedly different and occurred not
far from my home, in 1986. I was stopped at a traffic light, waiting
for it to turn green. My mind was apparently elsewhere or I was in a
kind of stupor induced by deep relaxation; but almost as soon as I stopped,
the car behind me beeped and I realized the light had changed ... and
apparently some time back, even though I had been staring at it all
along!
More confusingly,
the light had just turned red when I pulled up to it. And as I knew
this light to be particularly long, there was no question in my mind
that ... something had happened.
Not only
was I not drunk, on that occasion; I had also been studying Vedanta
for many years. As I drove away from the stoplight, it suddenly hit
me like a bolt from the blue: Hey, I realized, I've just been the
Self -- I've had that crucial and profound experience which great
masters of yoga-Vedanta claim is so vital! I had, by our earlier
definition, just attained enlightenment!
I had
no idea what to do with this newfound Self-knowledge, for it hadn't
been at all what I expected "enlightenment" to be. At least in the West,
we have made enlightenment a "spiritual" thing, and so most of us would
expect nothing less than a religious epiphany when it happens.
But what
I had just experienced was hardly what I considered to be spiritual,
in any sense of the word. An outrageous joke seemed more like it --
one which caused me to howl with laughter ... so much so, that I had
to pull the car off the road until the humor of it passed.
Yet there
was no doubt in my heart that I was now a Self-realized being, however
confused about the experience I might feel, and also where this intuitively-gained
insight -- as prescribed for true enlightenment to occur, in such great
classics of Vedanta as Yoga Vasistha -- might lead me.
I have
taught that the No-Mind State qualifies as being the fabled condition
of Self-realization since it meets all the necessary, yogic criteria,
as defined by Vedanta's mahavakyas (Great Aphorisms). It is One without
a second; This state is non-dualistic -- there is no memory or recall
of what actually occurred during the experience, for if there had been,
it would mean there had been an observer somehow watching the phenomenon
(which would, of course, be "dualistic").
And while
I never expected "God" to be a block of lost time, I instantly understood
that Brahman (God) and I are One (BG 2:30) and that My Self, and the
Self of all, are identical (BG 5-7, 18, 19). My No-Mind experience must
be exactly the same as the No-Mind phenomenon experienced by every other
being. There can't be a difference -- no mind is no mind.
At first,
however, I wondered if this No-Mind experience was unusual and perhaps
even unique to me. But then I began sharing my surprising insights in
small groups, and quickly discovered that everyone seemed to have had
this experience ... and often several times.
Indeed,
over the years of our classes in Neti (Jnana) Yoga, not a single student
has not remembered experiencing this accidental samadhi. But many of
these students were hesitant to admit to, or discuss, the phenomenon
... at least until they realized they were not peculiar for having had
that experience.
Even to
one who knows and understands what this No-Mind experience is, that
completely natural event can still be shocking and disorienting. A young
woman who lived with our family and had studied with us for a number
of years came rushing into the house, one evening, literally as white
as a sheet.
It seems
she had been driving home; then, somehow -- perhaps half an hour later
-- "found" herself driving past a library, completely across town and
in the opposite direction from which she had originally been driving!
The experience
had shaken her to the core ... and that was after she had been fully
trained to understand this perplexing, No-Mind phenomenon. And she had
even had several No-Mind experiences, although they were of much shorter
duration.
Perhaps
there are others who are also well established in yoga that will argue
against this admittedly-unusual interpretation of one of life's greatest
mysteries. However, I'm of the school that believes if it looks like
a duck, and walks like a duck, and acts and flies like a duck, one should
not be surprised to hear the critter say "quack."
The No-Mind
experience appears to be one such "duck" and, as promised in a variety
of The Bhagavad-Gita's verses (e.g., 4:39; 9:1; 13:28-30; 14:19, etc.),
I have no doubt that it inevitably leads the Enlightened One to the
equally-mysterious state commonly known as "liberation," of which such
enlightenment forms an integral aspect. But that's another story for
another time.
A Yogi
Explains The Bhagavad-Gita: Enlightenment for the New Millennium, is
now available from The G-Jo Institute at www.g-jo.com/.
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