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What is enlightenment?

^Ah, okay, I didn't look for context- I had just replied in your physical jesus thread, so my mind was still there :). FWIW, The Passion the Christ film was one of the most striking movies I've ever watched, incredibly powerful. Not so on Miss Willow who was not raised as a christian and thus had no contextual basis for appreciating the film.

I wonder if, semantically at least, a being born enlightened can even be called so- does the concept of enlightenment require knowledge/experience of the binary 'enshrouded' state?

What23 said:
Or, rather, it can't be held in a static position. What would be the point in staying if we transcended?
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I would hypothesise that some form of stasis is implied in the idea of enlightenment. If one were able to reach such a state, surely one would know how to maintain it...? If they could not, then it is probably not 'true' enlightenment but more a peak experience on the rarefaction/compression portions of a sine-wave-like pulsation of wisdom.
 
I don't know. I had a brief interaction with a guy who I felt gave off a very angelic energy (my intuition about this is getting quite good). I asked him about it and he said he was always aware of an angel being with him at all times to remind him to be humble.

When I asked one Angel Channeler about it, she said he was an angel a very long time ago. She said many feel the saricifces and responsibilities of being an angel on Earth too hard (didn't know you could un-angel yourself in favour for human life). I asked if he was an Archangel, and she said, "Originally, Yes". Doesn't sound too bright.

He still had it after all this time though. He had Archangel Michael (the power angel) as his guardian angel and once mentioned he liked standing up for the weak. And in the same way I think you can probably lose your human enlightenment if you go out of your way about it.
 
psood0nym said:
I was convinced Xorkoth had experienced ego death (rather than the extreme ego dissolution many think is ego death) because he wrote of the same sudden, terror affiliated, radical qualitative shift during a 2C-E experience. But it's this sudden electrical jolt and sound (there are projections from the auditory cortex to the caudate nucleous that could serve as a bridge for a further spill over of electrical activity into aural hallucinations) that I've always held onto as my personal indelible marker of ego death. Of course, no "marker" like this is required because there's no doubt when it's happened.

In fact, the lack of doubt accompanying my first experience of ego death during an IM DPT trip was particularly surreal because after the jolt/sound/shift I heard the voice of my internal monologue exclaim "That was it! .. this is it!" while simultaneously perceiving the sequence of internal vocalizations as a pattern carrying on in a way totally disengaged from the locus of my awareness. The "it" I observed my ego pattern referring to was "enlightenment," which was very strange because I wasn't involved in the recognition and analysis of what was happening despite the whole episode being narrated by my voice! Concluding that I sure as hell wasn't "enlightened" by the experience, it didn't take long for me to realize that true enlightenment must include a permanent physical shift in the foundational architecture of the mind, built up through many years of disciplined work with consciousness, that supports the semi-permanent maintenance of ego death's activity pattern in the brain. In the context of the experience of ego death then, psychedelic drugs might be thought of metaphorically as cinder blocks used to temporarily lay this foundation down for us "squatters" before metabolic processes quickly wash the ground out from under it.

All this strikes me as a fleshing out and further confirmation of the notion that there is a fundamental overlap between true psychedelic ego death and what's referred to as enlightenment in spiritual traditions, bearing in mind a few critical distinctions. Thanks again!
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Hey, late to the party since I was still gone when you posted this... yes, I believe I experienced full ego death in that trip (perhaps the only time, the other times were various levels of ego dissolution, sometimes very powerful and nearly complete, as well as one time I aborted a 4-HO-DMT trip that was about to lead to full ego death via the same process of terror and deconstruction). I was actually just reading about some very advanced Buddhist formless meditation states (arūpajhāna) and I believe I experienced the third one, or the seventh jhāna, that is, lack of experiencing at all (nothingness). I reached a place where there was only a void, it went beyond oneness. At first I experienced the void, though it produced an intense level of animal terror because I was unprepared. Then I lost a good 20 minutes completely as I entered the state completely (perhaps touching on the eighth - but like I said, I was and am totally inexperienced in that discipline so I merely touched upon them, passed through them rather quickly).

This is the report referenced: The End of the Rabbit Hole - Beauty and Terror

At the time it terrified me and confounded me and made me feel apprehensive about reality for a while, though I also felt an intense sense of wonder afterwards.
 
Sometimes I feel like I must be missing something because I cannot relate at all to the idea of enlightenment in this life. I find that experiencing the deep delight of this life--the plants, the animals, my fellow humans, sensations, thoughts, feelings, weather, everything this strange and messy and fantastic short ride HERE and NOWon this planet is enough. It is so delicious and engaging to me that I don't understand wanting or needing anything more. I have no idea what death will bring but imagine that it will bring the delight of folding back into being a part of the "all". I look forward to that adventure, but for now, I cannot heap enough love and praise on the mundane and treasure each and every moment that remains to me to be my silly little human self. I admire those that seek enlightenment the same way I admire those that move science forward but I don't really feel like I understand most of what they are talking about!:\
 
herbavore said:
Sometimes I feel like I must be missing something because I cannot relate at all to the idea of enlightenment in this life. I find that experiencing the deep delight of this life--the plants, the animals, my fellow humans, sensations, thoughts, feelings, weather, everything this strange and messy and fantastic short ride HERE and NOWon this planet is enough. It is so delicious and engaging to me that I don't understand wanting or needing anything more. I have no idea what death will bring but imagine that it will bring the delight of folding back into being a part of the "all". I look forward to that adventure, but for now, I cannot heap enough love and praise on the mundane and treasure each and every moment that remains to me to be my silly little human self. I admire those that seek enlightenment the same way I admire those that move science forward but I don't really feel like I understand most of what they are talking about!:\
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It sounds to me like you are indeed enlightened :)

Ninae said:
What drugs are you on?
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REALLY? :p
 
The paradox in defining and codifying enlightenment is that it's a highly subjective experience that's largely ineffable, yet we look to others' experiences, including the controversial voices of tradition and authority, to validate it. My main hesitation to joining any Buddhist community with a long and traditional pedigree is that putting myself and my innermost subjective experiences at the mercy of a master, to deem them valid or not, has always given me the heebie-jeebies. This is partially my own issues with trust, though.

I've heard religious skeptics say that enlightenment is an example of the Next Village Over Phenomenon, which also explains, among other things the persistence of a lot of urban legends: "Nothing much happens in this sleepy little village. Oh, but what wonders await you in the next village over! Have I seen them? No. I've never left this little village where I was born, never had any reason to. But the few who have have certainly had tales to tell." So then you eagerly go to the next village over, where a different local yokel says basically the same thing, and encourages you to keep up your search for the fantastic one more village over. And so on, in an endless regress. In other words, skeptics say, enlightenment is something that hasn't really happened to anyone (and probably isn't real, or at the very least isn't one singular phenomenon). All the tales of people achieving it ultimately boil down to some egomaniac who talked themselves and their experiences up a bit too much and started a legend.

That said, I'm not a skeptic in the way that label is typically applied today. I am an 'inquirer' in the original sense of the word, but not with the aim of being a contrarian or iconoclast. I'm willing to accept the idea that there are uncommon states of consciousness in which one can get a glimpse of The Greater Plan, stripped of some (maybe not all) the painful encumberments of individuated sentience. I am doubtful that anyone has discovered one sure-fire way to achieve such a state that works for anyone. I am even more doubtful that any other person, regardless of their experience or authority, has the ability to say FOR SURE that what I have experienced matches what they've experienced, or always sought to experience.
 
Ninae said:
What drugs are you on?
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Who are you asking that? If me, none.

herbavore: something inside me has always yearned for something beyond the physical, beyond humanity, and I understand that desire more as I get older. I feel it's part of who I am and perhaps my purpose in this life. However, as I get older I also find greater and greater value in experiencing life as a human. I think I've started to find a good balance. :) My very first psychedelic trip (mushrooms) sent me straight into the oneness and it was intensely enlightening. Psychedelics can provide a temporary enlightenment, I feel, that can lead to permanent changes in belief structures and behaviors, almost like a quick shortcut to a more disciplined approach that fades after the psychedelic ends. These experiences are not to be taken lightly, as many people who haven't been prepared or whose personalities are not called to such things have ended up with long-lasting negative aftershocks from such a paradigm-shifting type of experience.

And I also believe that in death we rejoin the "all". To me, gaining some understanding of that before death has helped me to live a more satisfying and magical-feeling life.
 
I believe the Buddha described enlightenment as "the end of suffering."

But what happens after that? The Buddha is silent on that, implying that it must be experienced to be understood
 
It's the process of unilinealism

Taken int he context of his other writings, Buddha probably means suffering to describe something closer to what we would think of as excessive suffering, as stress can be good for us.
 
Ninae said:
I don't know. I had a brief interaction with a guy who I felt gave off a very angelic energy (my intuition about this is getting quite good). I asked him about it and he said he was always aware of an angel being with him at all times to remind him to be humble.

When I asked one Angel Channeler about it, she said he was an angel a very long time ago. She said many feel the saricifces and responsibilities of being an angel on Earth too hard (didn't know you could un-angel yourself in favour for human life). I asked if he was an Archangel, and she said, "Originally, Yes". Doesn't sound too bright.

He still had it after all this time though. He had Archangel Michael (the power angel) as his guardian angel and once mentioned he liked standing up for the weak. And in the same way I think you can probably lose your human enlightenment if you go out of your way about it.
Click to expand...

Ninae said:
What drugs are you on?
Click to expand...

lol
 
I just had a thought that the universe speaks to those who listen. It wants an audience (not that it will always have something to say, to each at all times, but it wants to be heard when it does... But I dont know). That the universe is itself, possibly, a communication. The emptiness we see might only be spaces between words, or stops between letters, or other spaces. It all might be part of communication. The word of God. I'm babbling, but it was a thought, and has been a thought.

By this, I accept that this figure- this guy might have been an angel, and may have had an angel with him, and the channeler was right that he was an angel "long ago" ... But in my view here, it all sits on a circle. He was right, because the entirety of the universe might itself be an angel, or message. I'm a bit confused about how to put it, if I'm not just confused. But, I've read that the message and the messenger are one.

Apologies if this is a bit off from "what is englightment?".
 
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^An interesting idea, but I don't know how far we could get with proving the universe has intent as such. It seems so anthropocentric to think that purpose must exist.
 
psood0nym said:
Thanks, that was useful! At about 1:05:30, after discussing enlightenment in terms of ego death, professor Murphy theorizes from empirical observations that the moment of "enlightenment" occurs when a surge of activity in the right amygdala, which is often experienced as shock or terror, suddenly shifts to the left amygdala across the anterior commissure and is inhibited from crossing back over to the right. Then at 1:08:30 an audience member asks if there is "humming, buzzing, and vibrating" during this process. Murphy responds that he thinks it's very possible there could be because the sudden chaotic shift in bioelectric activity might plausibly result in a spilling over of charge into a proximal brain structure called the caudate nucleus, which is implicated in our experience of somatic sensations like vibrations.

A response of mine to a post about ego death made by the PD moderator Xorkoth from way back in 2006 included the following consistent observation about each of my four experiences of ego death:

I was convinced Xorkoth had experienced ego death (rather than the extreme ego dissolution many think is ego death) because he wrote of the same sudden, terror affiliated, radical qualitative shift during a 2C-E experience. But it's this sudden electrical jolt and sound (there are projections from the auditory cortex to the caudate nucleous that could serve as a bridge for a further spill over of electrical activity into aural hallucinations) that I've always held onto as my personal indelible marker of ego death. Of course, no "marker" like this is required because there's no doubt when it's happened.

In fact, the lack of doubt accompanying my first experience of ego death during an IM DPT trip was particularly surreal because after the jolt/sound/shift I heard the voice of my internal monologue exclaim "That was it! .. this is it!" while simultaneously perceiving the sequence of internal vocalizations as a pattern carrying on in a way totally disengaged from the locus of my awareness. The "it" I observed my ego pattern referring to was "enlightenment," which was very strange because I wasn't involved in the recognition and analysis of what was happening despite the whole episode being narrated by my voice! Concluding that I sure as hell wasn't "enlightened" by the experience, it didn't take long for me to realize that true enlightenment must include a permanent physical shift in the foundational architecture of the mind, built up through many years of disciplined work with consciousness, that supports the semi-permanent maintenance of ego death's activity pattern in the brain. In the context of the experience of ego death then, psychedelic drugs might be thought of metaphorically as cinder blocks used to temporarily lay this foundation down for us "squatters" before metabolic processes quickly wash the ground out from under it.

All this strikes me as a fleshing out and further confirmation of the notion that there is a fundamental overlap between true psychedelic ego death and what's referred to as enlightenment in spiritual traditions, bearing in mind a few critical distinctions. Thanks again!
Click to expand...

Great post and way interesting corroborating research. This speaks to my one experience with ego death, as mortal terror shifted into elation and awe. I felt my body disintegrate as I was enveloped by vibrations that cut through me. At the point where selfhood properly fell away, I began hallucinating music.

ebola
 
Getting in touch with the God Source, understanding what comes from the God Source, and incorporating it into your being.


That is one way I think you could put it.
 
Maybe we could say that "to enlighten" is to remove the veil of illusion placed over us by the immediate and common-sensical but deceptive ways of perceiving, thinking, judging, etc. that come 'by default' with human experience. So "enlightenment" can manifest in varied domains, to varied degrees. It seems to me that capital-E Enlightenment is removal of all such veils (including selfhood (and in turn, otherness)), and likely something people can only glean a glimpse of.

ebola
 
^ I like that ebola.

I belive enlightenment is:

A. When the conscious mind (PFC) takes over control from the unconscious mind (limbic system).


B. The conscious mind must also have realized some key ideas and have integrated these ideas into the way it perceives the world and how it thinks. Here are a few I think are important.

1. no longer judges anything as good and bad.
2. See's the worthlessness of material goods, social status, wealth.
3. Is humbled into freedom by recognizing the insignificance of any possible grandiose accomplishment in life and in doing so realizes what's actually important
4. Accepts that we have extremely little control over of what happens in our lives but total control over how we perceive what happens.
5. Learns to follow their hearts and disregard all the rest.
6. Extinguished fear by accepting death and an eventual certainty and realizing they are strong enough to deal with anything life throws at them.
7. learns to live in the moment and not brooding over the past or worrying about the future.
8. Realizes that physical human beauty means very little, is fleeting and such leaves us all. So is able to appreciate it, realizes it unimportance, thus does not obsess over it, and surrenders it gracefully.
9. Learns forgiveness of oneself and others.
10. realizes that life is always journey and there is no destination we will ever get to where everything will be perfect and we will finally be blissful.
11. accepts others and does not attempt to control them.
12. reaches a place where the opinions of others hold no power over them.
13. Is completely honest with oneself and others.
14. Promotes peace above all while cultivating the thoughts which create pleasurable emotions and eliminating the thoughts that create negative ones.
15. Realizes that the whole experience of life is based of their thoughts and that they control their thoughts.
16. finds love and acceptance for every aspect of life while working to promote peace and ease suffering.
 
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"Enlightenment" is really very complex. There's too much going on to fit on a list.

One way of seeing it is a development from mass-consciousness - individualised-consciousness - group-consciousness.

Getting "individualised" takes a VERY long time. It separates you from the whole and developes an ego and strong personality that can affect others (think someone like Madonna). You know yourself, have command of yourself, and can influence others easily. To become a strong leader or make a strong impression on people you also need to be individualised.

This process separates you from our natural unity-consciousness but when that is completed you can start returning to group-consciousness. A lot of the desire to define yourself as an individual, win, or go into conflict with others then disappear. You start to function more in harmony with the whole and be more interested in the good of all.

Also, the more individualised/group-consciousness you are, the more you will be liked, they give different kinds of social skills. Although the immature mass-consciousness kind also has its charm. It just lacks the power to impress itself on others.
 
NSA said:
the conscious mind (PFC)
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,
the unconscious mind (limbic system).
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We have to be careful to avoid reductionism, particularly such based in assumption. The brain is not as modular as prior research suggested, and while the removal or damage of some neural regions can induce loss of consciousness, willfully directed behavior, etc., such phenomena fail to establish some module that acts as the 'seat' of consciousness. I am partial to the hypothesis that consciousness is emergent due to certain informational properties of the brain functioning as a systemic whole.

ebola
 
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