What does enlightenment feel like?

I was hiking with my dogs this morning and thinking about how to answer this question.

Enlightenment looks like different things to different persons and traditions, Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, gnostic, whatever.

The devilish little debater in me would really like to tackle the big issues of this question–why there’s so many interpretations, what can truthfully ever be said about anything claiming to be as profound and elemental as enlightenment, etc.  But I won’t.  I won’t even attempt to accomplish such a lofty purpose in one post.

Here goes.

Mental content of any kind ceases to be the dominant presence of your consciousness.  Self referential content virtually ceases.  Sensations, thoughts, feelings and the like continue, but much abated.  “Self” consciousness becomes far less involved with a self, and more aware of consciousness as a whole–that is, there’s no sense of an “inside” or “outside.”  Rather, the dominant characteristic of one’s conscious reality is silent stillness.

I mean that whatever thoughts and perceptions occur within the frame of one’s awareness, whether in the form of mental words or images or perceptions of trees or aromas or musical sounds, these activities are enframed within silent stillness.  Silent stillness becomes the stage upon which all activities play.

As your experiences deepens, you may move beyond even the perception that this extraordinary ground of your being is but a stage upon which activities occur.  You will begin to recognize that every thing in the world is composed of this Absolute Ground.  The world that you daily experience will become the divine dance of Shiva, the marvelous, indescribable divine Being that is both source and substance of all.  The venerable Kashmiri philosopher and sage wrote in his Spandanirnaya, (commentary on the Spandakarikas):

This is what is meant to be said–that the world has not come out from him, (Siva), as does

a walnut from a bag.  Rather the self-same Lord through His absolute Freedom manifesting,

on his own background like a city in a mirror, the world as if different from Him though

non-different, abides in Himself. (Spandakarikas, Jaidevah Singh, pg. 29.)

When your mind and body cease all fluctuations and experience full and profound meditative quiescence, and this on a regular basis, it becomes only a matter of time before one walks in a world where time has ceased, where all places are but one place.  Certainly the set changes and the activities flow from scene to scene.  Yet the stage remains still and the lighting luminous but silent.

In time, for me at least, the experience of the world becomes a feast for the senses.  Here’s a poem I hope expresses something of what I’m describing:

 

The Light Under The Bushel

 

Feel the consciousness of each person as

your own consciousness.

Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, vs. 106

 

This morning, between the

front door and my

old white Toyota,

I discovered the

brown smoggy sky

was a endless meadow of

lavender and sage-

I reached out my arm,

which telescoped to

macroscopic proportion,

and drew a clutch

of blossoms to my nose–

Ah, how sweet a scent!

 

Do you ever notice

how the afterburn of

gasoline on a busy

street can carry away

your heart to a sun-

drenched scene

where you and your

lover dance on a

gazebo while musicians

play waltzes and polkas

on shiny brass horns

and puffing accordions?

 

What is this world,

where each step into

a shopping mall or

grocery feels like

floating in a living

sea of Chanel,

swimming in an

ocean of love’s

potion #9?

 

How came I to be

so helplessly enraptured?

Has my ecstasy a

name to match her

blissful scent?

 

Beloved friends,

(and I am laughing now),

it is Me–

only Me,

all Me,

How could

there be any

other?

 

You there,

woman with strawberry

hair and cherry lips–

We are Me!

And Mister–

yes, you with that

little paunch and

crooked smile–

Me are We!

 

Oh, and how do YOU know?

I hear you doubtful say.

Such boldness,

so forthright.

What presumption.

 

Thus, we shall share

our secret,

a very simple one,

not so secret, really–

You see that man?

Yes, him.

And, those two women?

Look at their eyes…

Do you see?

Can you see?

The light in those eyes–

all of them?

 

Yes, a light,

and in all

our eyes.

 

Beloved friends,

I have seen this light,

recognized the light,

worshiped this light

for what feels like

an eternity,

and have realized

a small, important thing:

 

There is only One Light.

 

I’ve come to think of this new ground of ‘personhood’, of conscious reality, as something suggested by the latin phrase, “sub specie aeternitatus.”  Under the aspect of eternity.

The human being will always experience everything by virtue of the temple of the body/mind.  All experience of the Absolute, of Nibbana, of God, of Brahmin, Jesus or Shiva, is exactly just that: an experience.  If we didn’t have a body or a brain, etc., etc., then there wouldn’t be experience at all.  Period.

There may be some absolute ontological-metaphysical structure of Being, but a human being will never accomplish anything but talk about it.  You may experience the absolute, God, Sunya, etc., but this is a singularly human event and the human involved can only describe and interpret her experience.  She cannot absolutize the experience.  This is to say that he cannot say anything more than, “I know, because I experienced.”  The day the world admits of a single metaphysical version of ultimate reality is the day that life ceases to exist.

The point is, you can experience absolute silent stillness–call it the abiding presence of God or Grace, if you like. (I often do.) Your experience of your life can then emanate from this marvelous abiding Ground rather than from that confused maelstrom of thoughts, opinions, feelings, memories that you once thought comprised your identity. What you can’t do is claim that your experience is universally, absolutely true and that everyone must have the same experience.  Or suffer the consequences.  Of not being enlightened.  Or saved.  Or whatever.

Imperialism is alive and well in the 21st century.  

It exists wherever hugely powerful institutions vie for the right to colonialize the consciousness of the human being.

Political systems, institutional religions and multinational capitalist entities all compete to dominate the bodies, minds and activities of every human being on our planet.

Our minds are structured from birth to respond to the appetites of the so-called “free market.”  Our bodies are being appended by devices created by the marketplace that demand our attention, our compliance, our obeisance.

Technology no longer exists simply to improve the quality of human life.  Science almost exclusively serves its profit beholden masters.  Lacking expectation of profit, the institutions of science and indeed, the institutionalized support of knowledge & culture for its own sake, fade into memory.

The human being alone must reclaim the sovereign terrain of personal consciousness.  We must not allow the oligarchs of capitalism, the tyrants of religious extremism and the political agendas of nation-states to colonize away all hope of a personal consciousness that embodies the human being’s constant search to freely learn, grow, consecrate and perpetuate minds and bodies that are capable of exploring the entire topography of human potentiality.

 Enlightenment exists as an extraordinary gift for persons to explore, cultivate and develop the art of human being.  Enlightenment can be both a pursuit and an accomplishment that allows an individual to act in the world with the greatest possible freedom and independence.

Certainly, the word “enlightenment” can indicate differing expectations and outcomes for particular traditions.

In several ensuing posts, I will explain how I am using the term enlightenment, and what it means for the project of reclaiming the sovereignty of personal and transpersonal human consciousness.

For me, enlightenment is nothing less than a fundamental reversal of the foundation for personal consciousness. Typically, we believe that the content of our minds and the events of our lives constitute the nature of personal identity and provides the ground for human behavior.  We believe that the content of our minds, emotions, feelings, sense of personal history, beliefs, opinions–even our awareness of time as a chronological phenomenon, establish the foundation for our “personalities.”  We believe that our sense of well being, how we feel about ourselves and the world, is the effect caused by our mental self-perceptions, our personal feelings about the events of our lives, our successes, failures and everything else that dominates the space of our personal consciousness.

Meditation and the various disciplines of tantric and yogic science can be instrumental in developing and establishing a quality of consciousness that is grounded not in activity, but in silence, not in temporal chronology, but in absolute stillness.  It is possible to establish silent stillness as the predominant character of personal consciousness.  

This new ground of dynamic emptiness initiates within the space of the mind a profound quality of unconditional contentedness.  We begin to realize that all personal and social activity play on the stage of this perfect ground of tranquility.  When our personal consciousness plays upon the stage of absolute silent stillness, no longer are the events of our lives, our relationships, our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, the determiners of our personal satisfaction.  When our minds and bodies are grounded in profound relaxation and stillness, we are free to act with a quality of freedom unequaled by any previous experience of personal being.

And this is only the beginning…