Guides (monks) from the Oneness
University "Man
cannot make it (Awaken to Oneness) on his
own, it has to be given to him." - Sri Bhagavan
What is Enlightenment?
Bhagavan defines it differently in
different contexts. For a neurologist it
is the shutting down of certain parts of
the parietal lobe. For a biologist it is
a heightening of the senses. For a
psychologist, it is the loss of the ego.
For the philosopher it is becoming a
witness to life. For someone on a
spiritual path, it is about opening your
heart to life, and developing the
capacity to love.
When asked to define love, Bhagavan
says that he can only tell you what love
is not. It is not about neurotically
possessing another person. It is not
based in neediness or attachment or fear
of loss. It is not a justification to
control somebody's life. What most
people call love is not love, he
emphasizes. To experience love you
require a mutation in your physical
brain. Only then can you experience the
love of a Buddha or a Christ. No amount
of spiritual or psychological effort can
take you there.
Enlightenment is to be free from the
sense of separate existence, he
emphasizes. The sense of a fixed
identity disappears. Once you become
enlightened, what exists is only the
other. You experience oneness with all
creation, and eventually oneness with
God. You experience the gift of being
human. You experience what it means to
give and receive love.
In the realization of this oneness,
there is joy. As long as the self
exists, it can experience pleasure, but
not joy. When things are going your way,
you experience pleasure; when things are
not, you experience pain. But this is
very different from the causeless joy of
pure being where you are no longer
separate from any aspect of creation or
creator, no matter what the
circumstances of life.
Bhagavan says that the next best
thing to enlightenment is knowing that
you are not enlightened. This is not a
frivolous statement. 'Don't pretend to
be enlightened if you are not', he
affirms. Many of us on a spiritual path
have built up a spiritual persona around
ourselves that is as difficult to break
through as any of the darker expressions
of the mind, and perhaps more so.
The main obstacle to enlightenment is
not in the particular quality of the
self-identity that we create, whether it
is coarse or refined, material or
spiritual, but in our degree of
attachment to that identity. We assume
that our journey towards enlightenment
is a linear progression, and that we can
become better and better people until
someday we cross the finish line and
we're there.
It is perhaps easier for a simple
person to get enlightened whose head is
empty of concepts than someone who has
walked for years on a spiritual path and
has all kinds of concepts and
expectations about what enlightenment is
or should be, or what she is or should
be. Ironically, the more attached we
become to a spiritual persona, the more
we develop a spiritual ego, and the
further we get from the enlightened
state. The mind delights in creating an
'as if' image of the enlightened self.
Now it can continue its game of
comparison and judgment, except on a
more sophisticated level.
Being good does not threaten its
survival, as long as we are
simultaneously disowning the bad; being
spiritual is fine as long as we continue
judging ourselves or others for not
matching up to our neurotic
expectations. We take the dim radiance
of our divinity that still manages to
shine through the thick layers of the
mind, and enshrine it with religiosity,
stifle it with morality, distort it with
self-righteousness, and destroy it with
spiritual egoism.
I am not implying that it isn't
desirable to strive towards morality,
goodness, and love. There is a reason
that religions exist, and many people
have been enabled by being on the
spiritual or psychological path to
refine or even transform their ego. As a
spiritual teacher and psychotherapist, I
have seen the power of meditation, and
of techniques such as holotropic
breathwork, psychosynthesis, regression
therapies, and bodywork, to begin to
heal the traumas of the past and polish
the rough edges of our personality.
If refining and clearing the mind is
our quest, then by all means we must
continue doing everything that we can in
this direction. However, if
enlightenment is our quest, we cannot
get there by trying to develop
enlightened qualities. We need to come
to an understanding of the very nature
of the mind.
In the courses offered at Oneness
University, the first few days are about
becoming aware of the prison of our
mind. It isn't about trying to change
any of it, because you cannot. You are
simply witnessing the reality of your
mind as it is, the emotional charge, the
habit patterns, the assumptions, the
traumas, the conditioning, and the masks
that we build up in order to survive. As
you witness, you begin to strip down the
social and spiritual personas, and you
begin to understand the nature of mind.
You become aware that enlightenment
is simply about 'de-clutching' from the
mind.
We need to be clear that
enlightenment does not mean changing the
contents of the mind or getting rid of
the mind. To become de-clutched from the
mind means that you recognize the mind
for what it is, which then no longer has
power to make your decisions for you. It
is not about becoming mindless, but
rather about becoming what the Buddhists
call 'mindful', being present with
reality as it is.
Most of us feel identified with the
mind, but we are not the mind. The mind
can be a very useful tool. However,
enlightenment isn't about escaping from
the mind, as many people believe, but
simply 'de-clutching' from it. After
enlightenment, you find that you are no
longer controlled by the mind, and can
de-clutch from it when it is not needed.
When the mind is needed, however,
consciousness comes through and uses the
mind with a sharpness, clarity, and
versatility not possible before.
To be de-clutched from the mind is to
lose the sense of 'self' as a fixed,
separate, continuous entity which we
refer to as 'I'.
Enlightenment is the realization that
there is no self to get enlightened. We
cannot change the nature of the mind.
The mind is simply the mind, but after
enlightenment, our relationship with the
mind changes. We no longer become
enslaved by the content and conditioning
of the mind. Thoughts may still come and
go, emotions may still come and go, but
we recognize that they are not 'our'
thoughts or emotions any more. In this
recognition we experience freedom.
Bhagavan teaches that there is no
such thing as a personal mind. Yes, we
have individual thoughts, but they are
simply emanations from what he calls the
Ancient Mind, a collective
'thoughtsphere' of humanity that has
existed from the beginnings of our
current civilization, perhaps 11 or 12
thousand years ago. All our fears,
inadequacies, turmoil and pain, all our
lusts, addictions, insecurities and
greed, all our hatred, rage, jealousies
and judgments, belong to this
thoughtsphere. Additionally, many of our
impulses for kindness, beauty, pleasure,
happiness and courage also exist within
this thoughtsphere.
Our brain can be visualized as a
radio receiving station that picks up
these frequencies at random, depending
on our state of mind or health, physical
environment, or various astrological
factors. Our own individual traumas or
conditioning from the past also
contribute to the band of frequencies
that we select.
However, our thoughts are not our own
thoughts. Because our brain is
programmed for separation, we receive
these thoughts, feelings, impressions,
and emotions as if they were our own,
thereby separating us even more
effectively from the rest of humanity,
which we perceive to be better than,
less than, or somehow different from us.
We watch a movie on the screen and
very quickly get lost in the illusion
that it is real. However, if we slow it
down so that we can see it frame by
frame, we realize that it is only a
movie. In exactly the same manner, we
are conditioned by the self to perceive
our own life as a living movie.
Enlightenment creates a fine-tuning
of the senses where we realize that the
sense of a fixed continuous self is an
illusion generated by the neurological
circuitry of our brain. There is a
continual dance of personalities, but no
fixed or continuous self that somehow
remains the same from birth to death.
Consciousness flows through your body
moment by moment, but it is the same
consciousness that flows through all
creation.
When there is no self, there is no
craving or attachment. Cravings and
attachments are based on a sense of
separate existence, or self-importance,
where you continually desire things you
do not have, or have what you do not
desire. When there is no separate self,
attachments and cravings cease. When
cravings and attachments cease, there is
no suffering.
We are not talking about physical or
psychological suffering here, but
existential suffering. Existential
suffering is the incessant desire to be
experiencing something other than what
is. It is not our pain that causes us
suffering, but our resistance to that
pain. It is our attempts to escape from
suffering that cause us suffering!
Enlightenment means to experience the
reality of each moment as it comes your
way, without needing to resist it or
change it in any way. Once you are
willing to fully experience what is
there, you are no longer separate from
reality. You experience the truth of
each moment directly as it is. You
become freed from the interference and
conditioning imposed by the mind. You
experience the causeless joy of being!
You still have mental pathways of old
habits, memory and personality, but you
are no longer a solid thing. The self
becomes porous, and the winds of
eternity become capable of blowing
through freshly in every moment. You are
no longer a fixed 'person' but a dance
of 'personalities' blowing in and out of
awareness. You are not even a witness
separate from yourself, watching things
blowing in the wind. You are the wind.
You may still have likes and
dislikes, emotions may still come up,
but there is no charge left, and as soon
as they come up they will likewise go
away, just like an infant throwing a
tantrum one moment, and staring in
wonderment at a little tiny caterpillar
the next. There may still be emotional
habit patterns imprinted in the body,
but these too subside over time.
Another realization that comes after
enlightenment is that your body is not
your body. Most of the functions of the
body are involuntary, but you realize
that even the functions that you think
were voluntary are not really yours to
control. During an enlightenment
experience, many people report that
their body goes through all sorts of
involuntary postures and movements,
tears and laughter, completely
independent of personal will. It may
also become totally immobile, and you
realize that there is nothing you can do
to make it move, unless it chooses to.
Your relationship with your body
changes. You no longer identify with it
as yours; rather it simply becomes a
beautiful vehicle for consciousness to
use. You understand how privileged you
are to have this lovely, living body as
a means to express the Divine in the
world. Each taste, each smell, each
sound, each vision, each touch is
exquisite, and is as if you are
experiencing it for the first time. Each
thought, likewise, comes with its own
living freshness directly from the
consciousness of each moment, an
experience that the Zen Buddhists refer
to as 'beginner's mind'!
Enlightenment begins with the ability
to witness all these things. As you move
into deeper states of Unity and
God-realization, you discover that you
have become one with all creation, and
that indeed the sense of your own body
embraces all of creation. Eventually you
discover that you have become one with
the Creator as well as creation. You
realize, in the words of Jesus two
thousand years ago, that 'I and the
Father are One'.
In a nutshell, Sri Bhagavan
teaches that:
-
There is only one
Mind - the Ancient Mind. It is
conditioned by separation and
duality.
-
Your mind is not your
mind , but an extension of this
Ancient Mind.
-
Similarly, your
thoughts are not your own thoughts,
but downloaded from the 'thoughtsphere'
associated with this Ancient Mind.
-
The sense of a
separate self is generated by the
neurobiological structure of the
human brain.
-
This 'self', in
experiencing itself as separate,
generates cravings, aversions,
comparisons and judgments, which are
the core of suffering.
-
When the self
disappears, suffering ends. When
cravings drop away, including the
craving for enlightenment, you are
enlightened.
-
When the 'deeksha' is
given, a neurobiological process
begins, which leads to the
dissolution of the sense of a
separate, or fixed, self.
-
When the fixed self
disappears, you experience yourself
as simply a dance of personalities
continually arising and passing
away.
-
Your body is not your
body. When the self disappears, your
sense of ownership of the body
disappears, and you experience it as
a vehicle for the divine dance of
consciousness. Eventually, all
creation becomes your body.
-
The mind, based in
duality, cannot be enlightened.
-
The self, which is an
illusion, cannot be enlightened. The
self is only a concept.
-
Enlightenment is the
realization that there is no self to
become enlightened!
To
learn more about Oneness Blessing (Oneness
Deeksha),
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