I'm going to try my best to answer some of this. I'm really ill right now and dealing with another possible death spiral.
In the future, when you reply to me, could you just quote me and nobody else? It makes it easier for me to reply directly to what you're asking me. It's hard to parse out all the right quotes. Thanks.
Are you enlightened?
If so, did you get there with the aide of drugs or through some other method?
No, not yet, but there's an understanding of what it is. It has taken years.
How do you know there are any?
Enlightened people have a presence that is undeniable. Their consciousness, their energy, their words, are 100% crystal clear. Their presence transmits their message with few words. And the words they use, are precise and demonstrate pure direct experience that is free from concepts.
A lot of people in the world have had primary realization but they have not dissolved all of the objects which cloud their consciousness from seeing the truth on a regular basis. As a result, their presence, energy and transmission feels like someone who really knows something but is telling it to you through murky waters.
I find your posts beyond and inside this thread interesting.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
I wonder if being enlightened (and sustaining that) is truly more fulfilling than living a normal flawed human life. I suspect people can know too much. I think we're ignorant for a reason. I'm not super familiar with the world of gurus and enlightenment, but - from what I've seen - it doesn't strike me as something I want.
Drop wonder. Drop theories. Drop thinking. Drop knowing or not knowing. Drop whatever it is you
think enlightenment is, because enlightenment isn't thinking. These are examples of objects that cloud pure experience.
You are pure experience that experiences a person who is having these thoughts. Enlightenment is none of these "things". They are all dream constructs.
I don't know. Being too smart can be pretty miserable. I find it blissful to turn my brain off sometimes.
Yes. Knowing a lot of things doesn't really lead to liberation, if those things don't direct you to pure awareness.
If the goal is enlightenment, then anything that isn't pointing a person to the truth is just making them more confused.
Indeed. I've met many, many psychonauts who claim to be enlightened but if you dig into their claims they haven't really thought any of it through. I've also been in that state - the Jesus complex - and believed that I had the answers to the universe... I certainly gained some knowledge from psychedelics but I also lost some perspective along the way. Everything is a give and take, I think. It's hard to move forwards without moving backwards.
Like anything, psychedelics can only point to something, they can't take you there. Psychedelics create an infinitude of more confusing objects that make this matter more murky. They also "feel good" and people end up pursuing euphoria as evidence of truth of consciousness.
Pure awareness is neutral.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Doesn't that render the term meaningless?
Yes it does. It's why TS and I clash a lot. I know what he's trying to say... he's trying to say that the pure experience is already evident and available. It's already there, right now.
But most people have not dissolved the objects in their awareness sufficiently to see that pure truth.
So I find it most unhelpful to tell people that they are already enlightened. It helps people by making them see they don't need to go out and "get something" to make it happen, it's already in them; but it doesn't give them instruction that points them to the direct experience. So it's an essentially useless statement that no real teacher would convey as a stand-alone thing.
I feel the same about the word enlightenment and the word God.
They're just words. Concepts. Thoughts. Objects. They arise and they dissolve.
The truth is always there. It's not a concept.
You mentioned the world of objects a number of times throughout your posts. Is it possible (do you think) for people to exist in between: to shun materialism and enlightenment? The picture you're painting appears to be somewhat monochromatic.
That's not what I mean by objects.
When you go to sleep and dream, the dream is full of a world of objects. They are very convincing. You think it's real until you wake up. When you wake up, you say, "That was just a dream", but it's not commonly interrogated further.
The only thing in a dream that is not a dream, is the dreamer. The dreamer is the pure awareness, pure existence. Existence is its intrinsic property, just like heat is intrinsic to fire. We would never say fire is cold. When you heat a pot of water with fire, the pot obtains its heat from the fire, but you would not say that the pot is fire. When the pot is removed from fire, it cools down again.
Similarly, in a dream, all of the objects in the dream "borrow" their existence from the dreamer. The world of objects is lit up by the real Self. One of those objects is a person/character (you) in the dream who experiences the world of objects. But we know these objects aren't real because they can dissolve instantly. The only thing real is the awareness having a pure experience.
This is the truth of all of reality. There is only one thing happening, it just looks like many things because the many-things are being lit up by the one-thing. To put it another way, the subject-object relationship isn't real. There is only one subject relating to a multitude of fake objects that are lit up by itself. The one subject is the Self.
Do enlightened people say "I am enlightened"? It doesn't seem like an enlightened thing to say, for some reason. I'm not sure why. Maybe it is just ego I am projecting onto it.
It doesn't really serve disciples to dwell on the word enlightenment or its meanings. Enlightenment is just another object. The only thing a teacher can do is use precise language or methods to point people to direct experience. But the catch is, any tool that is used to point to it, must be let to go of, otherwise direct experiencing becomes clouded by yet another ego.
The pursuit of enlightenment can be an object that hinders enlightenment because if it's not released, it creates another spiritual ego. Most enlightened people speak in language the immediately points people to the real Self, to pure awareness. Everything else dissolves.
This is all to say... that people who walk around claiming they are enlightened all the time, can't possibly be, because there is
no person who becomes enlightened.
I'm not at all convinced that LSD (or any drug) leads to enlightenment. I've certainly had profound spiritual revelations. I claimed to be a prophet when I was abusing psychedelic drugs, but I would never claim to be enlightened.
In general, psychedelics create more confusion. Most wisdom traditions shy away from drug use because they tend to create more spiritual egos.
Something that bothers me about the idea of enlightenment is the idea that there is an ultimate achievement. I mean, where do you go from there?
Like if a monk (yes, I realize I keep going back to monks) was to spend decades meditating and they achieved a fully enlightened state... then what do they do?
Do you suffer?
This part is difficult to explain because it can only lead to more conceptual thinking, but try to remember that it's not a concept, it's a direct experience of pure awareness.
The nature of reality is nondual. Once a person has sublimated all of the objects of the world of appearance into the singular subject of Self, they can then form a new identity which is only that real Self. They can literally speak as "I" but they are speaking as pure awareness, not as "person". For most of us, the person we are arises and dissolves from awareness, it's not permanent or fixed. When we say "I" it could refer to any number of temporary ego constructions. But the Realized "I" is constant, pure, and unchanging.
Enlightenment doesn't stop pain, but it stops suffering. The reason is that suffering can only happen if a person is happening who experiences suffering as a narrative. Pure awareness does not suffer because it can't attach to anything. Only attachment to objects causes suffering.
So when the subject-object relationship ceases and the enlightened person is just pure subject, then the whole reality construct can be summed up as:
I am none of it.
I am all of it.
A lot of people who take psychedelics think they know this, but they don't, because they aren't embodied in their human level experience. They are bypassed into "oneness" and oneness becomes a spiritual ego that is used to negate everything. It's ungrounded and disembodied.
Direct experience of pure awareness is nondual and 100% present. It leads back to right now and there is no transcendence or no person "trying to get it".
We've all had this direct experience from time to time. Most people misattribute it to something else. Or they pursue objects in the world that "make them feel this way" because they don't see that the object is being lit up by them. They think the object is separate from them and giving them an experience. Ignorance is the biggest obstacle. Once you know what is being pointed to and all misattributions are cleared away, liberation and relief are instantly had.
Good question.
I quoted Gormur because I guess the only evidence that would make sense is some kind of consensus among enlightened people. Everybody seems to have a different take on it, which confuses me. Sort of like religion.
I wonder if extremely autistic people or people with late stage dementia can be (or are) enlightened.
If enlightenment is a "shedding" of sorts and you don't have anything to shed, are you already enlightened?
Is a tree enlightened?
Nobody controls anything because
nobody becomes enlightened. Nobody
does anything. That's the irony of it. You spend all these years trying to figure out what enlightenment is, only to discover that the one seeking it is irrelevant to the question. Nobody is making it happen. There's no reason for enlightened people to get together and form an enlightenment people's club because enlightenment is a wrong concept. Only true teachings point to truths. Enlightenment as a concept is mental masturbation that leads nowhere. It's a real term and we talk about it. People become enlightened. It's a thing. But talking about enlightenment is not how people become enlightened. Talking about the nature of consciousness and reality, and doing it with people who really know this stuff, while avoiding fakes and phonies who are themselves so confused, is how you get clear.
Let go of all your endless wondering. It's not a trick. The truth doesn't require you to do anything to get it. The mind can never understand it. The mind is only an obstacle.
I like Vedanta because a really good teacher can word things in such a way that the mind gets pointed to direct experience and then the mind dissolves. I need that type of teaching. The yoga path doesn't work for me because it uses somatics (the body) to bring Samadhi (divine union) down to the earthly level in the day to day. Eventually the mind gently lets go because of all the somatic input. However, the mind remains in ignorance the entire time, until it is dissolved. The yogic path is legit and works for a lot of people but it's not for me.
My mind is too wounded and too tenacious. I need teachings that speak directly to mind and get it to let go. That's what Vedanta does.
