FROM A SITE VISITOR: You mention “Realization,” “awakening,” “liberation,” “Full Realization,” “Awareness,” “Enlightenment,” all sorts of terms that I thought meant the same. Do they or not? And what about self knowledge, self realization and self actualization? I’ve seen those too. Thank you. Greg
[Continued from yesterday: enlightenment]
F.: The lightness happens automatically when there is no longer an ego-state that is driven to defend the defenseless; that is programmed to present nonsense in a fashion that makes it appear to be sensible; or that is conditioned to try to convince persons that those who accept fact and who discard fiction are demonic or infidels.
No one need wonder if a “state of enlightenment” has actually manifested. There is an obvious lightness that follows the forfeiture of the load of thoughts and theories and tales that were being believed in and being fought for and being fought over. Post enlightenment, it is obvious that all things are taken lightly since freedom from emotional intoxication has happened and since feelings are merely witnessed as they rise and fall.
Yet enlightenment is limited. It involves understandings that are understood during the period of manifestation, not unlike The Original Understanding to a degree. That understanding, accessed via an inner resource, allowed humans to know intuitively that whatever “I” is, it is beyond that which can be seen.
(Of course, it was that inner sense of “something beyond” this body and “something beyond” the relative existence that has set humans up to be deceived by charlatans and medicine men and priests for thousand of years. Those, and their cohorts, have dreamed up tales about what is “beyond”...tales which have allowed them to control the masses with fears about death and punishment as well as false hope and desires regarding continuity and reward.)
That same inner sense, however, can be employed to induce seeking…seeking the truth. Yet enlightenment can be involved with the phenomenal to the extent that it can take the form of religious enlightenment, spiritual enlightenment, or intellectual enlightenment. It can be dualistic in that sense because it is not a happening but a process; nevertheless, each of those relative levels can serve as steps along the “path.”
Why? Enlightenment can involve progressive degrees of seeing more clearly, so that which might be assumed to be “a total understanding” or assumed to be "a state of enlightenment" today can give was to understandings on other levels tomorrow.
[For a concrete example, read chronologically all of the books that offer transcriptions of talks with Maharaj and watch that process unfold via that speck of consciousness. From the talks shared in I AM THAT to The Final Talks, the continuing purification of the consciousness can be witnessed. Of course, that pointer will be labeled as "heresy" by Maharaj "fans" who will deny that they are in awe of the man Maharaj even as they ignore "the space" and "the speck."]
Ultimately, if one completes all seven steps on the path away from identifying with the “I” and then understanding Reality, then it is understood that there is no one to be enlightened. “I see the light” can give way to “I am light,” but even that understanding does not guarantee an understanding of that which is before the manifested energy, before the Absolute, or “beyond something.” Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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