Posts Tagged ‘enlightenment’
Toward the Light that is Myself?
Enlightenment Part 8
Tony Crisp
After his initial years of meditation, Gopi Krishna came to see that ‘Contrary to the belief which attributes spiritual growth to purely psychic causes, to extreme self denial and renunciation or to an extraordinary degree of religious fervour, I found that a man can rise from the normal to a higher level or consciousness by a continuous biological process as regular as any other activity of the body.’ (See his book)
The energies of this higher consciousness in man and woman is a natural process. It is as natural as the arrival of teeth in the child, or sexuality in adolescence. In fact it is a continuation of the same process. But it seems as if this natural process of growth that extrudes the body, brings about human consciousness and personality, does not take us to enlightenment without our conscious cooperation. For this further growth, it appears that we must agree to go along with life – must decide that this is what we want. We must co-operate with the process or else be stranded. See Life
The first step is to recognise that your personality did not arise out of your own efforts. Then you offer yourself to be acted upon by whatever underlies your existence. And this offering means some measure of becoming empty, of becoming receptive or surrendered to an action other than that of your own mind, your own emotions, anxieties and habits.
What acts upon you when you do this has been given unccountable names. Sri Aurobindo says: ‘One commences in a method, but the work is taken up by a Grace from above, from that to which one aspires. It was in this last way that I myself came by the mind’s absolute silence, unimaginable to me before I had its actual experience’.
How do we do this? First recognise clearly that some process, some force, causes you to exist. You can call this what you wish, it does not matter. It remains what it is. Next recognise that this process that you are, causes changes in your life, and its action is apparent as growth. Next, decide to go along with this process. Offer yourself as you are to it. Let things happen – allow changes to take place. You will be shown the way. This path does not attempt to crush the ego, the appetites, the instincts. Rather, you hand them over living so that they can be transformed to higher levels of expression, and reach towards fuller self-realisation in everyday life.
Rudyard Kipling, in his book Kim, describes one of the simplest and effective meditations we can use toward enlightenment. He says:
“Who is Kim- Kim- Kim?” He squatted in a corner of the clanging waiting-room, rapt from all other thoughts; hands folded in lap, and pupils contracted to pin-points. In a minute- in another half second- he felt he would arrive at the solution of the tremendous puzzle; but here, as always happens, his mind dropped away from those heights with the rush of a wounded bird, and passing his hand before his eyes, he shook his head. A long-haired Hindu bairagi (holy man), who had just bought a ticket, halted before him at that moment and stared intently. “I also have lost it,” he said sadly. “It is one of the Gates to the Way, but for me it has been shut many years.”
The technique is to daily sit and ask that question for at least twenty minutes – Who am I? You can use your name like a mantra, repeating it over and over. Use it as a focal point, not to think about but to take awareness away from everything else to the quietness beyond thinking and feeling. Look silently into that darkness and silence. Drop all effort. Let go of desire to get anywhere or find anything.
An Experience of Enlightenment
Many years ago I had an experience that assured me the wrongness of believing the scientific view of human life. At the time I had an unforgettable experience of lucidity that after all these years remains a fount of inspiration and guidance. I also began to realise that enlightenment was a process of growth – not a one time experience.
I had let go of any other motives and deeply entered a state of lucidity in which I felt like I was falling down a very deep hole. This wasn’t frightening, but reminded me of Alice in the rabbit hole. As I fell I passed through memories of things that had hurt me during my life, like the time I broke my nose.
Then I hit the bottom, experiencing a womblike feeling of great peace. I realised as I observed, that it wasn’t the womb, but the very basic level of my personal awareness. But there was still a current carrying me back further, and I resisted, fearing I would lose my identity. Then I suddenly realised there was nothing to fear. After all, I did this every time I went to sleep – trusting myself to the bosom of the deep. So I slipped into what I have called the ocean of consciousness, and it caught me and started growing me as if from a tiny seed. This is what we experience when we go to sleep. The difference is that I maintained awareness during the descent into sleep. It felt as if I had no body, and that I had spread out, like a drop of water in the ocean. I knew as this happened that at the core of me was this power that had grown me in the first place, and that there was so much more of me to discover than I presently knew. Then the immense Life spoke to me. “Come to me each day like this (with an open heart to the power that had grown me) and I will know myself in you”. See Life’s Little Secrets
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Teachings of Yogi Trime Lodro
Enlightenment Part 9
Tony Crisp
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You who enjoy the union of bliss and emptiness seated motionless on the lunar disc Above a beautiful hundred petalled flower Radiant with white light, I pay homage to you the Divine Guru, Vajrasattva. Listen Abushri You miserable, daydreaming fool, You remember how delusions confused you in the past? Watch out for delusion in the present, And don’t lead a hypocritical life. Stop unnecessary speculations. You’ve made hundreds of plans Which never came off And only led to disappointment. Unfinished acts are like The overlapping action of the waves. Stay alone and stop Making your own head spin. You’ve studied hundreds of philosophies Without grasping any of them. What’s the point of further study? You’ve studied without remembering Anything when you needed it. What’s the point of contemplation? Forget about your ‘meditation’ It doesn’t seem to be The Cure for conflicting emotions. You may have recited the set number of mantras But you still haven’t mastered the concrete visualisations. You may have mastered the concrete visualisations But you still haven’t loosened the grip of duality. You may have subdued apparent evils But you still haven’t tamed your ego. Forget your set periods of meditation And following an obsessive schedule. High and clear but not letting go, Low and steady but lacking clarity, Penetrating insight but only stabbing – That’s your meditation! Forget the stare of concentration And the tethered mind. Lectures sound interesting But they don’t help the mind. The logical mind seems sharp But it’s really the seed of confusion. Oral instruction sounds very profound But it doesn’t help if it isn’t practised. Forget about browsing through books Which cause distraction and eye strain. You bang your antique prayer drum But, just for the novelty of playing with it. You offer up your body, But in fact you’re still attached to it. You play clear sounding cymbals But your mind is heavy and dull. Forget about these tricks, Attractive though they are. Your disciples seem to be studying But they never follow through; One day there’s a glimmer of understanding, But the next day it has gone. They learn one thing out of a hundred But they don’t retain even that. Forget these apparently fervent disciples. Ones closest friend is full of love Today and indifferent tomorrow. He is humble one minute and proud the next. The more one loves him the more distant he becomes. Forget the dear friend who smiles Because the friendship is still a novelty. Your girlfriend puts on a smiling face But who knows what she really feels? For one night of pleasure it’s nine months of heartache. You can spend a month trying to bed her and still not succeed. It’s really not worth all the scandal and gossip, So forget her. Never ending shatter stirs up likes and dislikes. It may be amusing, and enjoyable But it’s merely imitating the faults of others. The listeners seem receptive But they may be critical at heart. It only gives you a dry throat So forget about idle talk! Preaching without first hand experience Of the subject is like dancing on books. The audience may seem willing to listen But they’re not really interested at all. If you do not practise what you preach You’ll be ashamed of it sooner or later, So forget about hollow rhetoric! When you haven’t any books You feel the need for them; When you have them you don’t. It’s only a few pages But to copy them is endless. All the books in the world Would give you no satisfaction, So forget about copying – Unless you get a fee for it! One day you’re relaxed, The next you are tense. You will never be happy If you are swayed by peoples moods. Sometimes they are pleasant But maybe not when you need them And you might be disappointed. So forget about politeness and flattery! Political and religious activities Are only for gentlemen. That’s not for you, my dear boy. Remember the examples of an old cow: She’s content to sleep in a barn. You have to eat, sleep and shit – That’s unavoidable – anything Beyond that is none of your business. So what you have to do And keep yourself to yourself. You’re as low as the lowest So you ought to be humble. There’s a whole hierarchy above you So stop being proud. You shouldn’t have too many close associates Because differences would surely arise. Since you’re not involved In religious and political activities Don’t make demands on yourself. Give up everything, that’s the point! |
This Teaching is given by Yogi Trime Lodro from his own experience to his dear friend Abushri. Although there is nothing to practise, give up all the motives and ambitions to achieve that usually hold you prisoner.
Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 10
Some Teachings of Zen Master Dogen
Enlightenment Part 10
Tony Crisp
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The Way is in essence perfect and pervades everywhere. How could its realization be dependent upon practices? The Dharma-vehicle does not need us to give it a push. Do I need to say that it is free from delusion? Who could believe that such a bright mirror needs their polishing? It is never separate from where you are, so why scramble around in search of it? A quiet room is good for zazen. Eat and drink moderately, don’t tangle yourself in delusive relationships. Just leave such things to themselves. Don’t think about good or bad, right or wrong. Don’t give rise to the mind’s common concepts, the judging of thoughts and observations. Don’t sit to become Buddha because you can’t fabricate a Buddha with sitting or lying down. What I call zazen is not developing concentration by stages and so on. It is simply the Buddha’s own easy and joyful practice, realized-practice within already manifest enlightenment. It is “things as they are” presenting itself. Traps and cages spring open. Grasping the heart of this, you are the dragon who has reached his waters, the tiger resting in his mountains. Understand that the true Dharma displays itself here and then dullness and mental wandering have no place to arise. You might hear about ten thousand ways to practice but just be complete and sit. If a bird or fish ever even tried to escape its own element it would be without its own place. Realizing your life as your life you realize the arising of things as they are. Realizing this, everything you do is actually done as the Way itself. There is no big or small, self or other, beginning, ending – and so this Way exists now. The place is here, the Way everywhere. |
Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 11
Suzanne Segal on the One Life
Enlightenment Part 11
Tony Crisp
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I had always believed that the presence of fear—which I experienced often, and for no apparent reason— meant that, despite years of practice and numerous insights into the nature of being, I must be doing something wrong that prevented me from integrating my insights into my moment-to-moment existence. If only I could get rid of the fear, I reasoned, then I would be free. But the more I struggled with it, trying to breathe or cathart or love it away, the more seemingly solid and entrenched it became. What Suzanne helped me to realize was that fear doesn’t mean anything except that fear is present. It does not obscure our true nature unless we believe the story it tells us or take it to mean something it does not. In fact, the infinite awareness that is our true identity contains everything within it, including all mental and emotional states. Fear, anger, jealousy, sadness, and other seemingly “negative” emotions are there too, like seaweed floating in the limitless ocean of ourselves. There just doesn’t happen to be a separate self to whom they refer. After all, if the infinite— which we all are intrinsically—is indeed infinite, how could it be otherwise? In the wintertime of relationships, there was a constant attempt to look like I was someone in relation to a person who took me to be that someone, even though I always knew I was no one. The memory of what it was like to be someone lingered, and the mind’s fear about being no one inspired so much anxiety that relationships evoked a fear-constructed outline of somebodyness. Once it became clear that the presence of fear and anxiety meant only one thing—that they and everything else were present simultaneously in the vastness—then the relational season changed. The springtime of relationships was awesome. To see with the eyes of the infinite—which is the substance of everything and perceives itself from within every particle of itself using its own sense organ—that relationships had also never involved a personal doer was so radical a vision that the mind “rolled over” and admitted that it simply could not grasp this inconceivable truth. Once the mind admitted to the parameters of its own sphere and stopped pathologizing what lay outside it, the non-personal, indescribably joyful flavor of the vastness experiencing itself moved radically to the foreground forever. With the realization that everything was made of the same substance, relationships ceased to exist, since there was no longer any experience of an other. Without an other, there was simply nothing separate to be related to. Of course, the relational function continued as before, and it always looked like relationships were proceeding unimpaired. Quoted from Collision With the Infinite, by Suzanne Segal Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 12
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A Dream Points the Way
Enlightenment Part 12
Tony Crisp
In my dream I was in a prison cell with two other men. We ate, slept and defecated in the cell. I was standing at the bars of the cell, and had the impression of having been in the prison for years. I was shouting and cursing the people who had put me in the prison, full of hate and self-pity. I had done this day after day while in the prison. Suddenly I realised that my years of shouting had availed nothing. The only person who was upset by it was myself. I was the victim of my own anger and turmoil. So I dropped the attitudes behind the anger and shouting and was free of them. Years went by, and one by one I dropped other habits of emotion and thought with which I had trapped and tortured myself. I realised I could be totally free within myself. One morning I woke and sat up on the mattress on the floor that was my bed. The last ghost of inner entrapment fell away. A fountain of joy opened in my body, pouring upwards through me. So intense was it I cried out. The cellmates called a warden. They stood looking at me as I experienced a radiance so strong I felt as if I must be shining. I was aware my joy poured into them, although they thought I was mad. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Commentary
We are all prisoners of our emotions, of our thoughts, and of our sense impressions. Mostly we live in these as if they are reality. This is a form of confusion, but also of imprisonment. The bars of this prison are often invisible to the person they enslave. Or else the person calls them ‘Me’. We say, ‘That is how I feel. I don’t like this. I am afraid. I am in love.’ Or else we depend entirely upon events and others to stimulate pleasure or pain in us.
The identification between the thoughts, the emotions, and the sense of self is so immense, that no life outside this imprisoning identification is even suspected. Yet here is the source of most human misery.
Drop the identification, as the dream suggests, and immediately a degree of liberation arises. Drop the multitude of other identifications and gradually the bliss of liberation opens.
Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 13
What is it Like to be Enlightened?
Enlightenment – Part 13
Tony Crisp
Many people have had an experience of enlightenment. It simply means they transcend the limitations of thought and conditioning for perhaps a moment in time. These moments or periods of enlightenment usually leave a marked impression or leave deep insights into the nature of oneself or of life.
There are stages in the process however, and the very beginnings are in an extension of intuition, or the transcendence of the senses and physical boundaries created by your body. One of the stages for many people is a sort of cleansing, a discharge of what has been called in the East as Karma – influences from the past we still cling to or are held by. In todays terms this would be thought of as clearing out old traumas and cultural conditioning.
A next step might be a growth of intuitive knowing and for some a wonderful experience that is like a continuing synchronicity. This gradually extends into a sense their personal awareness expanding and so they know, as through an intuition, so much more about their place in the universe and what it means.
Often this brings crises of change and of massive ‘spiritual’ experiences. Maybe their body vibrates as the inner changes are occurring. And in a way it is all only an extension of what is normal; for being self aware is a form or enlightenment. So any so called enlightening experience are footsteps on an endless path of discovery.
But to be enlightened in a grand sense will mean that you have moved beyond time and space in a demonstrable way. The limitations of the physical senses and the body will no longer hold you to the same degree. Your ego will have melted its boundaries and incorporate more awareness of all living things. The ability to place your awareness at any point on the globe or universe, or to tap into a cosmic fount of knowledge, to be able to heal or have profound insight into the body and mind of others will be available. This does not mean you will be ‘famous’ or widely known. The enlightened person may live simply and be the person you know down the road. This was demonstrated in the life of Edgar Cayce.
But the above description does not mean an enlighten person will have all the things listed. More likely they will have a greater sense of transcending the five senses and will live a life with certainty there is no death. They will obviously be seen as different by those close to them. As one person said, you are not like other people, and I love you.
In the end, the physical body will be transformed, so there will be nothing of it left to die.
But the spirit of Life, The Tao as it is called in the East, is infinitely creative, so there can be no end defnition to enlightenment. No beginning – no end. Not this. Not that. Action in non action. See Peoples Experience of Enlightenment.
This life – of enlightenment – is just a describer, and one of the things it sees is that this state does not belong to anyone. It’s not something you can get from someone. It’s who everyone is. From here, the highest volume is the sound of the infinite ocean that we all are. Suzanne Sega.
Since there is nothing to meditate on, there is no meditation.
Since there is nowhere to go astray, there is no going astray.
Although there is an innumerable variety of profound practices, they do not exist for your mind in its true state.
Since there are no two such things as practice and practitioner, if, by those who practice or do not practice, the practitioner of practice is seen to not exist, thereupon the goal of practice is reached and also the end of practice itself.
-Padmasambhava
Liberation is achieved by the practice of non-activity, say the Masters of the Secret Teachings.
What is, according to them, non-activity?—Let us first of all notice that it has nothing in common with the quietism of certain Christian or oriental mystics. Ought one to believe that it consists in inertia and that the disciples of the Masters who honour it are exhorted to abstain from doing anything whatever?—Certainly not.
In the first place, it is impossible for a living being to do nothing. To exist is, in itself, a kind of activity. The doctrine of non-action does not in any way aim at those actions which are habitual in life: eating, sleeping, walking, speaking, reading, studying, etc. In contradistinction to the Taoist mystics who, in general, consider that the practice of non-activity requires complete isolation in a hermitage, the Masters of the Secret Teachings, although prone to appreciate “the joys of solitude”, do not consider them in any way indispensable. As for the practice of non-activity itself, they judge it absolutely necessary for the production of the state of deliverance (tharpa).
They never tire of repeating the classic simile of the two chains. Whether one is bound by an iron chain or by a golden chain means, in both cases, to be bound. The activity used in the practice of virtue is the chain of gold while that utilized in evil deeds is the iron chain. Both imprison the doer.
What then is this activity from which one ought to abstain?—It is the disordered activity of the mind which, unceasingly, devotes itself to the work of a builder erecting ideas, creating an imaginary world in which it shuts itself like a chrysalis in its cocoon. (Quoted from The Secret Oral Teachings of Tibetan Buddhist Sects – ByAlexandra David Neal and Lama Yongden).
A man’s experience:
“Now a most extraordinary thing happened. I experience feelings of being made love to, but not through the genitals, but through my head right the way through my being down into my genitals. For a long time it felt as if I didn’t need to breathe, and in fact I seemed to exist without breathing for quite a long time. There was a feeling of tremendous quietness. Inside something gently moving through the openness in my head down my being, flowing to my genitals. Once there it was like it opened something. It changed something. Then, gradually, that influence of change started moving up my being. I could feel it particularly touch and change things in places like my solar plexus and my heart. When it reached my throat I could feel it tickling and opening something there. It really felt painful as it went through these places, particularly as it reached into my head. It wasn’t a physical pain, but it felt as if something deep inside me was being stretched and opened, and that stretching was painful at a subtle level. I cried out in the pain. I wept. I cried out in pleasure – the mixture of pleasure and pain, just as if I were being made love to in a wonderful and delicate and yet painful way. As it touched and passed through my head I cried out, “Why? Why?”
“It is finished. I love you.”
Enlightenment Being or Becoming?
Enlightenment part 14
Tony Crisp
Having walked in the High Pasture of awareness and known something beyond the opposites, beyond division, beyond thinking, I look around and still use the word I. I and not I are both real and I live with them.
From this perspective a response arises in me about the way enlightenment is sometimes presented. It is sometimes said there is nothing to be achieved, nothing to struggle for, nothing that we havent already got. On the High Pasture of consciousness this is certainly true. But in that awareness there are no opposites and all opposite are true. So we can equally say there is everything to be achieved. There is everything to struggle for.
This is a strange paradox, but it is what we live in the middle of. It is what we are. Complacency is not a part of that paradox. Complacency is a form of duality, a one-sidedness that has no real part of enlightenment. Enlightenment is constantly everything. Peace and strife, action and non-action, being and becoming. The philosopher Erwin Goodenough said that “A book on love, loyalty or justice would gain little but pedantry by starting out with a concise definition of the term. Only as we describe the various conflicting elements associated with such words can we finally arrive at a meaning that includes these complexities; for important matters we understand, not as we simplify, but as we tolerate the paradoxical.” 1
If you look at the illustration at the top of this page you will see it can be two things at once.
When I meet this I am reminded of Sri Aurobindo who spent the last forty years of his life exploring consciousness and its possibilities. An Indian by birth but a genius educated in the West, he was active in the world before his inner explorations. Aurobindo pointed out that we are a creature in transition. There is work to be done, the work of transformation. The journey that began with inanimate matter and has come so far cannot stop at the imperfection and the mediocrity that is man. It must go on.
This takes work, the work of uniting personal will and effort t with the downflow of spiritual force and awareness possible to us all at this time. There is an accelerated evolution going on. That cannot happen without a choice a choice to be part of it, or to remain as the human creature we are today. It cannot happen without the pains of change and the experience of death as the old falls away.
Tempting as it is, I cannot say from all my being that there is nothing to achieve, and nothing to reach for. Yes, I have everything inwardly, at my core. But I want to give birth to that core in the world, and that means birth pangs. See Jesse Watkins Experience of Enlightenment.
See the Aurobindo Site
Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 15
A New Look at Enlightenment
Enlightenment Part 15
Tony Crisp
What follows is part of a long interview with Tony Crisp led by Chris Campbell
Chris: So what do you think of people who are considered very enlightened or who have special healing powers that have proved to be valid?
Tony: I think they have simply grown a bit more than we have. We have very definitely grown from seeds — the sperm and ovum — and from what I have seen, general human life is expressing only a tiny fraction of what our potential is. We can see this as we witness the growth from conception, where we see the process of evolution in a speeded up form. So some people have managed to extend their growth much further than the rest of us, expressing more of what is latent in their seed.
I do believe though, that the word enlightenment is deeply misunderstood. I very much go along with the description given by Richard Maurice Bucke in his book Cosmic Consciousness. He says that at one period of time early in the development of the human being there was no self-awareness. The early human beings, or the prototypes of human beings, did not have self-awareness. This view is not one simply stated by Bucke, it is fairly general among people who tried to define the history of consciousness, or the evolution of self awareness. So Bucke says that early human beings had what he called animal consciousness. In other words they lacked self-awareness and the critical faculties that come from language and being able to use language to reason. So they existed purely out of their instincts and thereby had a spontaneous relationship with their environment. They could not ask such questions as, “Who am I? What am I? What is the meaning of life?” This means that they could not look back on themselves, or analyse their own behaviour, as we have the possibility of doing.
Bucke goes on to speculate about what it must have been like for the very first of the human beings who achieved self-awareness. Of course he is not alone in such speculations. Carl Jung has written about this also. What Bucke says is that the first human beings to achieved self-awareness probably did so in their prime, not in their childhood as we do. Also, to wake up to itself in that way must have been an extraordinary experience. It may even have been felt as a sort of possession by some spiritual being. Perhaps it was like a taking over of what had existed, what they had experienced, by this new impulse and awareness. It is interesting that the word identity has in it the word entity, because prior to self awareness there would have been an absence of a clear sense of identity.
We have some ability to grasp what this must have been like from the life of Helen Keller who did not attain self-awareness until she was 11. This because she lived in the untutored world of the deaf and blind. So when she attained self-awareness through learning language, she says that she was born on that day; that previously she did not exist as a person.
But the point I am moving toward is that Bucke says we now achieve self-awareness fairly early in our life. It is commonplace, and we can see the condition has huge variety. Because we are self-aware it does not make us Saints. It does not make us particularly wise, despite the attainment of this extraordinary type of awareness, there is still an immense variety in human nature.
Bucke goes on to say he believes that when we achieve cosmic consciousness, or as we more frequently call it now, enlightenment, there will be just as much variety as there is in the attainment of self-awareness.
So the attainment of self-awareness was probably just as extraordinary an experience, a religious experience perhaps, as enlightenment is for someone today. What Bucke points out, and is one of the major themes of his book, is that just as self-awareness arose out of an evolutionary process, and was at first rare, and has gradually become commonplace, so enlightenment was at one time very rare, and is gradually becoming more common in our times. Nevertheless, it is, dare we say, simply a process of further growth, of another level of human maturity. It is to be doubted that it is the final step in human evolution, the final attainment of all that a human is capable of. It is also fairly obvious that the people we acknowledge as having attained enlightenment, are, as Bucke suggests, incredibly varied in the ways they express or live it.
The attainment of self-awareness brought extraordinary new powers and new abilities. In its wake arose all the arts and sciences, the self-examination, the philosophers, the religious beliefs, and the variety of human societies. With it came the ability to question, to explore, to imagine in a way that may have been impossible previously. Because of it the wonderful arts arose. Music came from the stress and awareness of individual existence, along with architecture and the written word. Those are extraordinary abilities that we perhaps take for granted today, but were certainly not open to our very early forebears.
So, enlightenment will also bring extraordinary changes in the way we see and relate to the world. It will bring abilities and powers and new forms of creativity and exploration. It must be remembered however that no one person has achieved any fullness of the human potential. In fact some enlightened beings such as Aurobindo, and also Edgar Cayce in his writings, suggest that we remain under development until we can completely transform the human body and the world around us. Christ’s Ascension, according to this view, is a map of the way forward. When we can transform the body into cosmic existence, then we can begin to feel we have achieved some level of mastery in the physical world.
Therefore, if we see enlightenment as the extension of self-awareness through a further maturing of our individual self, just as adolescence arises through maturing of the child self, we will look to those around us who have achieved some degree of enlightenment as our older brothers and sisters. We will move toward our own enlightenment by working with our own processes of growth and maturing.
There is a wonderful description in Ronnie Laing’s book Politics of Experience of Jesse Watkins experience of enlightenment. In the chapter ‘A Ten Day Voyage,’ Dr Laing quotes Jesse Watkins’s own description of his inner experiences. The barriers between Jesse’s known self, and wider self had been broken down by overwork, fatigue, a dog bite, and a visit to hospital. Below is quoted some of his description of what he saw of himself.
“But I had a feeling at times of an enormous journey in front, quite, er, a fantastic journey, and it seemed that I had got an understanding of things which I’d been trying to understand for a long time, problems of good and evil and so on, and that I had solved it inasmuch that I had come to the conclusion, with all the feelings that I had at the time, that I was more—more than I had always imagined myself, not just existing now, but I had existed since the very beginning, from the lowest form of life to the present time, and that that was the sum of my real experiences, and that what I was doing was experiencing them again. And that then, occasionally I had this sort of vista ahead of me … ahead of me was lying the most horrific journey, the only way I can describe it is a journey to the final sort of business of being aware of all—everything. It was such a horrifying experience to suddenly feel, that I immediately shut myself off from it because I couldn’t contemplate it, because it sort of shivered me up—I was unable to take it…”
He goes on to say, “I had feelings of gods, not only God but gods as it were, of beings which are far above us capable of, er, dealing with the situation that I was incapable of dealing with, that were in charge and running things and, urn, at the end of it, everybody had to take on the job at the top. And it was this business that made it such a devastating thing to contemplate, that at some period in the existence of oneself, one had to take on this job, even for only a momentary period, because you had arrived then at an awareness of everything. What was beyond that I don’t know. At the time I felt that God himself was a madman… because he’s got this enormous load of having to be aware and governing and running things—and that all of us had to come up and finally get to the point where we had to experience that ourselves.., the journey is there and every single one of us has got to go through it, and everything— you can’t dodge it… the purpose of everything and the whole of existence is, er, to equip you to take another step, and another step, and another step, and so on.
As Jesse says at the end, “I was suddenly confronted with something so much greater than oneself, with so many more experiences, with so much awareness, so much that you couldn’t take it.” As I pointed out in another part of this series, those who think they have reached enlightenment in one experience need to think again.
As a further note, I experienced feelings and images leading me to the sense that enlightenment in our times is still about evolution. It is about touching that core of potential to find an adaptation to the present circumstances and situation. The present situation is not simply an economic, a political, or a social one. It is also a biologic one. It is also an individual, and a psycho sexual one. It is a matter of finding one’s way in these situations. We need to make use of whatever is at hand. Past approaches do not necessarily fit our need. We are in different times, a different cultural setting. We cannot depend, as some of the great Indian gurus did, on the support of our culture and individuals within that culture. It is not there in our own culture to support us in that way. We are not allowed to go defiantly mad in the same way that India allowed its gurus. Today the total withdrawal that Ramana Maharshi exhibited prior to his own enlightenment, would be rewarded in our culture with hospitalisation and drug therapy. To explore, to have that freedom, we have to find a way of doing it in the here and now without that cultural support. We need to find the people and the situation in which quite powerful psychological experiences can take place. I do not mean by this that we can simply advertise to find such people, or such a situation. I doubt very much that approach would work. Usually, when we are ready to undertake the confrontation with what might be quite extraordinary experiences, the right people and circumstances often present themselves.
Enlightenment had a place in the structure of some other cultures. It doesn’t yet have such a part in the structure of social life, in business life, or in the concept of what maturity means, in the West. It is beginning to, as businesses recognise that individuals must touch that raw potential in order to innovate, in order to reach into the new and the unknown. Part of the experience of enlightenment for many people, is that they feel in contact with something that frees them from old forms, from habitual approaches. They feel in contact with the power to make choices, the power to change. In fact one of the words describing enlightenment is Liberation.
Another part of the experience of enlightenment is that of being at one with the naked core of life, of consciousness. One of the most pronounced features of life is its ability to evolve – its ability to fail and learn from failure, and of course to build on success. To be out of touch with that incredible possibility within us, to be out of touch with that process of life that can meet change and disaster, is to be out of touch with one of the most amazing resources open to human beings. Exposure to the lessons learned from millions of years of adaptation, of change, of survival, is part of a prolonged experience of enlightenment. If we lose that resource, if we fail to use it, we lose something very precious. No wonder past cultures have seen this as the highest goal in human life.
For full account see http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/jesse-watkins-experience-of-enlightenment/
The Trackless Way and Growth
Any serious and prolonged exploration of your inner world, yourself or dreams will lead to pronounced changes. Carl Jung called this psychic growth. He used the word psychic to refer to the psyche, meaning the whole realm of personal awareness and experience. Such psychic growth is natural and in most areas occurs spontaneously, how it does when we move from babyhood to childhood, childhood to adolescence. And of course, such changes are seldom purely psychic or psychological. They usually run parallel to physical change as well.
Many of these changes from one level of maturity to another are quite difficult. As with adolescence, the emerging trends often make it feel as if all that one is at the time is dying or being lost. What is emerging is unknown. It has never been experience before and so can even be felt as threatening. Such shifts through the levels of possible maturity are at the very core of human experience. Although our attention may largely be claimed by exterior factors such as relationships, education, the struggle toward achievement for success in one form or another, in many ways these are far less important than the processes of psychic growth that underlie any exterior event or participation in it. I believe that the great myths and religions of the world are in great part dramatisations, often in deeply symbolic form, of these huge transformations we face or are capable of. This may explain why religions and myths claim so much attention over such long periods of time. After all, the heroes and heroines of such myths are confronting, and giving examples of, meeting and dealing with the great dramas and trials of human experience.
Somehow I stood upon the Mount,
Standing upon the edge,
Looking into the abyss.
Turning, I gazed back
Upon the way I had come.
I could see
The ruined churches and mosques,
The libraries and schools,
Where people forever searched
Through the river of books,
Or the spoken word.
I called to them
As loudly as I could,
“Why are you searching
For the Real
In all these frozen words?
Why wander through
The never-ending labyrinth
Of emotions, thoughts and beliefs?
For they are like
Photographs of the Real,
Capturing only moments,
Fragments of it?”
And I could see
The people in those labyrinths,
Setting up the photographs
Those words engraved
Like holy icons.
They fought over them,
As if their photograph
Held in its fragment
More of the Real
Than any other –
Or sold them,
Like treasures,
One to another.
And I, turning to the abyss,
Emerged from my chrysalis,
Broke open the cocoon
Of words and beliefs
I had formed about me,
Spread my wings and flew,
Melting into the abyss.
Although, as already said, much of this psychic change is spontaneous, some of it has to be faced consciously, decisively and with personal cooperation and effort. The possibility is that of the stages of growth that the race has already met and successfully dealt with en masse, is now passed through largely without personal effort. But the frontiers of human maturity still call upon us in a different way. Two of these challenges are particularly relevant in present times, and comparatively few of us have successfully passed through them. This means that they are new ground, and although we have the literary and artistic records from other individuals who have faced these challenges already, they are still difficult.
The two that I have in mind are what might be called in mythological terms, the cleansing of the Aegean stables, and the entrance upon the Trackless Way — or what is sometimes called the Mountain Path.
The cleansing of the stables refers to consciously meeting and transforming the many influences, such as childhood traumas and inherited behavioural patterns, that block, twist and pervert the expression of our true potential. This is an area, often associated with psychotherapy in its various forms, which has a huge amount of literature dealing with it, along with countless practitioners. But any individual can undertake this journey without recourse to such professionals.
Example: Dreamt I was living in a mountain village in France or Switzerland. A group of us, like a yoga class group, were together doing something. I remember Margaret Strange in particular. Now I was cycling through steep hills; a bit like a cycle race, but not any road or track. It was hard going sometimes. I had to descend to gain speed to cycle over the crest of some hills.
Next, I was in a room with other people. They were the cyclists. One of my wheels had broken, apparently a new wheel was supposed to be in the room, which was like a spares store. I looked in a cupboard on the left of the room, but although other people’s wheels were there, I couldn’t find mine.
“This dream gives an excellent example of how wheels represent so much. The dreamer Roberto explored his dream and says, “This dream showed me what is now happening within the group I am involved in. It shows the things occurring at the heights of my awareness – in the mountain village. These things are not apparent at the everyday, valley, level of awareness.
The dream shows me aiding the group, but the last part of the dream shows my difficult journey along the trackless way – shown by cycling along a way without road or track. Remember that way was trodden by you long ago in other lives, I received that from a life I lived in France as a past existence. This next part of your life journey will be the remembering of what was already accomplished. But there comes even within this dream the meeting with difficulties.”
The second area, the entrance upon the Trackless Way, is much less represented in our times. This is strange, because the psychic growth that often comes about from transforming the traumas and behavioural patterns mentioned, leads to a meeting with the trackless way, or what in Christian literature is known as The Cloud of Unknowing or in Buddhist literature is often called, the Void.
In brief, meeting this new level of possible maturity involves the dropping away of the rigid self-images, personal defences, and unbending belief systems that are such a large part of earlier levels of maturity. For instance, for many of us our sense of self is almost entirely to do with our physical appearance, gender, and social standing. Perhaps it also relates strongly to the amount of money we have been able to command or accumulate. A self-image based on such factors is incredibly vulnerable. In the New Testament we are told not to build our house upon the sands. A foundation of sand does not resist change. Neither does a self-image based upon our physical appearance, changing so radically as it does with the ageing process.
The meeting with the Trackless Way is an introduction to the core of self. It is a meeting with a self that is formless, that is essentially without gender, that is not limited by concepts of time and space, that knows itself as an integral part of what lies behind the cosmos. In meeting such enormity, such freedom, a freedom that is or maybe at first disturbing. It may feel as if everything is being taken, or might be taken, away from us. For some the entrance is marked by an experience of death, this is either a deeply psychological experience, or for some an actual near death experience. For this is how it feels for many of us, that our ego, our self, is dying. See Core Self
Archetype of the Nun and Monk
In some ways this is similar to the ascetic archetype, but it more directly deals with the impulse in human beings to either seek meaning, to find what is at their core, the ground of being, or what is culturally called God, or perhaps to avoid or live away from everyday human activities.
The nun or monk can depict the focussing of ones energies toward self searching, toward a wider awareness, what is generally called the spiritual path. But it sometimes reveals a drive in oneself toward flight from the pain in dealing with the normal sexual drives, relationship and survival in the economic and social whirlpool of life. See: archetype of the ascetic above.
What happens if I ask important questions of my mentor – can I get answers?
Useful Questions and Hints:
How do I relate to this archetypal influence?
Do I seek refuge from everyday life and relationships, or am I asking the grand question – Who am I?
Have I grown beyond sexual and worldly needs in some degree, or am I avoiding them because I am afraid or hurt by them?
Can I identify with the monk?
See Being the Person or Thing – Questions – Questions Put to Tony