More About "Instant Enlightenment" ...
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; It is virtually inevitable, if you
read to the end of this article. And although purists may object, you
will receive this precious 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.
But be
warned: The treasure you will acquire comes with a price -- it marks
the start of a profound change of mind ... a paradigm shift (thank you,
Marilyn Ferguson), you could say. For enlightenment is not the final
goal of life, but more like a new beginning. And it starts immediately,
if you accept as truth the information presented in these paragraphs.
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. So let us define our terms.
In yoga,
we are taught that we are each Divine beings ... Divinity Incarnate,
you could say. We could 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.)
The word
"Self" (with a capital "S," please) 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: "Self-realization" -- an
expression made popular by numerous, well-known yogis and Swamis, such
as Vivekananda, Nikhilananda, Yogananda and my primary teacher, Sathya
Sai Baba.
"Enlightenment"
could be seen, then, as "the experiencing of our own Divinity or Self
... and knowing we have experienced It." If you will accept that definition,
you can easily become enlightened within the next few minutes.
For many
years, I have taught our students of Neti Yoga -- a "westernized" version
of jnana yoga ("The Way of Ultimate Wisdom") -- that enlightenment has
two vital parts: Knowledge and experience. The experience of "being
Divine," and knowing what it means to have been so.
Like love
and marriage, these, two elements 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 equation, which is
what makes immediate illumination possible. All that is then required
is a brief explanation of the peculiar -- and to many people, frightening
-- experience; then, eh voila!, instant enlightenment!
To instantaneously
"get it," you must have first experienced what we, in Neti Yoga, call
"the No-Mind State." This is an occasion when time, itself, is somehow
... lost. There are a number of occasions when this happens more or
less "naturally," and at least one where there is no explanation, at
all (see below).
In yoga,
this perplexing State-beyond-mind is known by several names -- the one
I like best is "Pure Consciousness" -- depending upon the time or reason
it occurs. For example, Pure Consciousness is also known as turiya,
or "the Fourth" -- that state which underlies the three stages of normal
consciousness: Waking, dreaming and deep sleep.
Seasoned
meditators can sometimes reach this mind-free state, albeit briefly,
during deep meditation. Then, it is usually called samadhi or nirvana.
And it comes as no great surprise to such meditators. It is, in fact,
the goal of meditation.
But that
same, No-Mind state also occurs within people who haven't the slightest
intention of meditating. Yet it almost always passes completely unnoticed,
since it normally lasts only for moments during, say, the grey area
between waking and sleeping, or while "day-dreaming."
In non-meditators,
the No-Mind experience might then be called "involuntary samadhi" or
"accidental nirvana," and is sometimes described as "the space between
thoughts."
(As an
aside, accidental samadhi occurs not only in people, but in every living
being, and sometimes for amazing lengths of time. For example, the broody
hen, sitting upon her clutch of eggs for weeks on end, virtually without
moving or even blinking, is an unintentional meditator of the highest
order!)
Pure Consciousness
is also sometimes described as being "the blank screen" upon which the
flickering lights of "the movie of life" -- known in yoga-Vedanta as
"maya" (Divine illusion) -- dance and play. When the "movie" (the mind)
stops playing, the blank screen of Pure Consciousness is revealed.
In deep
sleep, of course, we are also mostly free from the mind, though it is
still somewhat active. But then, we generally know we have been asleep
and that state of consciousness -- while not exactly Pure -- is quite
natural and, indeed, desirable.
And infants,
it would seem, experience this natural state beyond the mind even for
hours on end, until dirty diapers or hungry bellies bring them back
to "reality."
This perplexing,
No-Mind state also occurs for longer periods of time under the conditions
of hypnosis, or sometimes during alcohol- or drug-induced intoxication.
Comatose victims (whether from brain tumors, injuries or other causes)
and sleepwalkers are also in this No-Mind state, as are people suffering
the grand mal seizure of epilepsy. But during those times, there is
a medical rationale for that mind-free phenomenon.
And, yes,
many UFO abductees report "lost time" experiences, too.
However,
other than infancy, day-dreaming and the "bridge state" between waking
and sleeping, only relatively few people have ever had those other beyond-the-mind
experiences. And while each of these mind-free phenomena could, in theory,
lead one to enlightenment (at least from Neti Yoga's standpoint), they
seldom do; for there is always a dismissing explanation for each of
the above incidents, however strange it may be.
Please
understand: It is my contention that Pure Consciousness, samadhi or
nirvana, the Self, turiya, lost time and the comatose state are one
and the same critter: The being of God-That-I-Am. And for true enlightenment
to occur, it is vital to both have this experience of "being God" and
to realize in your heart you have been so.
Thus, these
"natural" instances of accidental samadhi or Self-experiencing tend
not to cause us deeper introspection about "where did my mind go?".
And without that crucial self-analysis, no Self-realization -- no enlightenment
-- is possible.
Fortunately
for our investigations, not all such lost-time episodes are so easily
explained away. Some have no rationale, whatsoever, yet occur to virtually
everyone, at one time or other during life. 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.
And it
is this inexplicable No-Mind incident which can lead anyone to enlightenment.
The No-Mind
experience of which I speak -- the potentially traumatic type -- typically
occurs during wakefulness, at any place and for no reason, at all ...
often under bizarre conditions.
Consider
the plight of one Neti yogi who had this No-Mind experience during a
"bathroom break" at his office. He then discovered himself back at his
desk, working once more, with no recall as to how long he had been there,
or even how he had returned to his seat from the lavatory, some time
earlier.
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 worried him
for years. And it was only after he learned (during one of our Neti
Yoga classes) that he had touched Pure Consciousness -- a perfectly
natural event -- that he felt truly relieved by his new-found knowledge.
For him,
this knowledge was more than illuminating; it was therapeutic. For until
he received this enlightening news, he had quietly feared the experience
was a precursor to increasing mental instability as he grew older.
However,
for the majority of our students, their times of involuntary samadhi
arose while driving -- generally, while driving long distances. In fact,
this is actually a common condition sometimes known as "White line fever."
A kind of hypnosis which occurs from staring too long at continuous,
repetitive movement. (This is also one of the favored methods for inducing
clinical hypnosis: Having the inductee stare at a swinging pendulum,
the tip of a metronome or similarly-moving object.)
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, too, seems to have
a rational explanation.
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, to her alarm, that she had no recall of most of the trip!
I, myself,
have had several memorable No-Mind experiences; and these, too, involved
driving. One, in particular, occurred in 1986, not far from my home.
I had just stopped at a traffic light, waiting for it to turn green.
But almost immediately, it seemed, the car behind me beeped its horn
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. At that time, I had been studying Vedanta
for many years. And as I drove away from the stoplight, it suddenly
hit me like a bolt from the blue: Hey, I realized, I've just experienced
Pure Consciousness -- I've had that special encounter with my Self 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'd 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, if and 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. Nor did I know where this
intuitively-gained insight (prescribed by such great classics of Vedanta
as Yoga Vasistha as being necessary for true enlightenment to occur)
might lead me. Nonetheless, I felt clear that I had "gotten it"!
Even accidental
samadhi -- the No-Mind experience -- qualifies as being the fabled condition
of Pure Consciousness, 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. If there had been,
it would mean there was 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 was
surely the same as the No-Mind state experienced by any other being.
There couldn't be a difference -- no mind is no mind.
At first,
however, I wondered if this kind of accidental 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 unexpected experience ... and often several times.
Indeed,
over the years of our classes in Neti Yoga, not a single student has
not remembered experiencing an incident of 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 unintentional slip into Pure
Consciousness 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 intended! She
had no recall of how she had gotten there.
The experience
had shaken her to the core ... and that was after she had been fully
trained to understand this perplexing, No-Mind phenomenon. She had even
had several prior No-Mind experiences, although they were of a much
shorter duration.
As promised
in a variety of The Bhagavad-Gita's shlokas or verses (e.g., 4:39; 9:1;
13:28-30; 14:19, etc.), I have no doubt that this illumination inevitably
leads the Enlightened One to the equally-mysterious state often called
"liberation." However, enlightenment and liberation are not the same,
according to Neti Yoga. And like enlightenment, I believe liberation,
too, is considerably different from what most people I've encountered
seem to believe. But that's another topic for another time.
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