THE REALIZATION MOMENT: Exiting the Stage of the Drama of the Lie, Part One

F.: Addicts often claim that they are “sober” or “clean” if they stop using for a time, yet physical sobriety is only one of four stages of sobriety. If non-using addicts continue to exhibit all of the traits and behaviors of the Addictive Personality Disorder on a regular basis, then they likely have not eliminated their mental intoxication or emotional intoxication and can very likely be suffering from spiritual intoxication as well. Such is exactly the case, too, with those who think they have Realized but are not truly free of mental intoxication, emotional intoxication and spiritual intoxication. How much sanity has been restored when one thinks he/she can give away something that they do not even have, be it all four levels of sobriety or be it Realization?

Questions from two seekers this week who have not Realized fully were responded to thusly:

Something is missing in your case. Realization is about being free of the dream and being fully awake, aware, and conscious. Post-Realization, a lightness of being happens, but the "pink cloud syndrome" does not happen. Post-Realization, functioning should happen more clearly...not less clearly. The Realized can still get a job, keep a job, pay bills, etc. Post-Realization, AS IF living happens, meaning you know that “none of it is real” but you behave as if it is. Then, the relative existence tasks required for providing food, clothing and shelter happen...but without attachment. Insane-like behavior ends, but the invitation to you, at this point, is that you "help yourself" before you go about trying to "save" others.

Short of Full Realization, the only "change" (which is always a disingenuous change) is a change in personas as the acting continues. Persons only put on the cloak of a different character, only change the lines being spoken when in the spotlight, and only change from swaggering and blustering about on stage left to swaggering and blustering about, stage right. With Full Realization, there is no such thing as “I’m getting it.” Is there reading preparation? Usually. Is there some time spent with a teacher? Often. (Maharaj reported that the entire process took three years in his case, yet the exact moment of Realization was clearly fixed.) Can there even be further purification of the consciousness post-Realization? Certainly in some cases, including among some of the most revered Advaita jnanis/teachers/gurus; yet even then, the exact moment of Realization was obvious to them.

Once the consciousness has been bastardized to the point that body identification is happening, there are seven degrees of separation from Reality. Every one of those stages must be transitioned (and never revisited) if Full Realization can be said to have happened. There are no “slips,” there is no “backsliding,” there is no “I had it but lost it,” and there is no “I’m moving through ‘levels’ of Realization.” If Full Realization has happened, the exact instant when Realization “strikes” is known, and from that point there is no “going back.”

To understand that moment and to be able to recognize that particular instant if it happens (and to distinguish a "real happening" from all other assumed but fictional “moments of awakening”), the dramatic arts have provided terms that clarify that moment of true awakening. Realized playwrights have illustrated the awakening process for centuries and they (along with Realized screenwriters now) continue to do so to this day. Here are some theatrical terms that are relevant to the awakening of characters in drama and that are relevant to the Realization moment as well:

“Anagnorisis” (or, “discovery” or “recognition”): a Greek term referring to an actor’s recognition of the fact that he had been representing something that was not real; the discovery by an actor that what he had assumed to be real is actually false; the realization of things as they truly are; an understanding of the basis of antagonistic relations with other characters; and according to Aristotle, “the discovery of one’s own identity and true character”; anagnorisis generates “peripetia”

“Peripetia” (or, “peripeteia,” “peripety”): From the Greek “peripet,” meaning “to change suddenly” or, in drama, “a turning point”; or “the point in a drama when a character learns something he had been previously ignorant of”; Aristotle defined it as "a change by which the action veers round to its opposite”

“Catharsis” (Greek, “Katharsis”): the “purification” or “cleansing” that accompanies “anagnorisis” and “peripetia”

Further discussion of the Realization moment will continue tomorrow, but for today the invitation is to use the definitions above to look at your self/Your Self and answer honestly:

Have you truly and completely recognized the fact that you have been representing something that was not real?

Have you truly and completely discovered everything that you had assumed to be real but that was actually false?

Have you truly and completely realized the way that things truly are?

Do you truly and completely understand the functioning of the totality?

Have you truly and completely understood the basis of every antagonistic “relation”?

Have you truly and completely discovered Your True “Identity”?

Have you truly and completely undergone a sudden (and permanent) change?

Have you truly and completely reached that “turning point” and become aware of all that you had previously been ignorant of?

Have you truly and completely undergone a change that has resulted not only in every action being the opposite of the way your personas acted in the past but has also resulted in your being free of all illusions about the existence of any “do-er” at all?

Has the Consciousness That You Are been truly and completely purified and cleansed of all programming and conditioning?

Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

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THE DIRECT (SEVEN-STEP) PATH TO REALIZATION, Part One

FROM A SITE VISITOR: Do some people just suddenly realize or does everyone have to go through the seven steps you talk about? If so, why seven and why any exact order.

F.: Thx for the questions. If you were to, first, understand the seven steps that are explained in the book FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality) and then, next, read the pointers offered by the “sages” over the centuries, you would see references to all seven of the steps (or "stages," to use Maharaj's word) in the pointers offered. The same seven steps referenced on this site can all be found in the talks or in the writings of most of the earliest “Spiritual Masters” as well as in the talks or in the writings of some of the more recent “Masters” such as Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. The only difference is, no one before has presented the steps in their specific order.

Yet Maharaj did advise those seeking to shift from identifying with the false “I” to abiding as the Absolute to “follow the same path by which you came” and “…You should go back, reverse, to the source.” To “go back” to the Absolute in the ‘”reverse” order in which the movement from the Absolute to identification with the “I” happened, why must the steps be followed in a particular order (just as Maharaj said), and why are they not always presented in that exact fashion? Both of those will be explained in the next few postings.

Traditionally, when a seeker arrived at the feet of a “Realized Master” to discuss THAT which is eternal, he/she would be allowed to make brief comments and/or ask a question. (Another format involves the "Master" offering opening remarks and then taking questions that reveal "path location of the questioner" and then providing level-appropriate answers.) There is a sound, logical reason for that approach: a jnani, after hearing a few comments by (or questions from) a seeker can pinpoint immediately “where” the seeker is on the “path.” For example, is the seeker still fixated in body identification? Or is the seeker still trapped in the obsession-of-the-mind stage? Or has the seeker moved beyond that stage, stopped identifying with most of the false identities that had been assigned or adopted in the past, but is now trapped in a religious or spiritual false identity/ego-state?

A sage’s response is, and always has been, “level-appropriate.” Responses should provide the pointer(s) required for a seeker to shift to the next stage of re-purification or to at least be free of certain specific deceptions that are revealed in the seeker’s words. The result of any such daily sessions was, and is, a shift of one level, not a movement through several steps to Full Realization all at once.

While the nine satsanga sessions offered in the retreats linked on this site use a direct path approach that reveals all seven steps in order, the more traditional approach described above (whereby seekers at varied stages are responded to in varied ways) is the one used on this site. Why? Questions are answered in whatever order they are received, and questions arrive in no particular order from seekers who are at varied stages on the “journey.” The response to one, therefore, will not be the same response to another. Further, the chances are nil that seven persons at seven levels will submit seven questions in the exact order of the seven steps, and even if they did, the explanations and guidance through the seven steps are book-length, not post-length. So visitors to this site might read a response to a seeker at level 6 on one day and an entirely different response to a seeker at level 1 on the next day.

For example, the March 7, 2007 response was aimed at the level of one trapped in the identification of a specific persona (husband). The March 9, 2007 response was to one enamored with his accumulated knowledge—trapped in the dilemma of wanting to show off his knowledge to people on one hand but wanting to isolate from people on the other hand. The invitation to him, therefore, was to consider abandoning the ego-state that loves to display accumulated knowledge and seek SELF-knowledge instead. The March 10, 2007 was geared to one still at the rudimentary levels. Note that those three discussions were not presented in the order in which the steps are taken in order for Full Realization to happen. The questions were answered in the order received. In the multi-day retreats, however, where attendees are being guided through all of the steps, the specific order is observed.

The “Masters” showed that the level of each seeker much be determined and then the specific seeker must be responded to accordingly. If some seeker is at the “wet charcoal” stage rather than at the “dry charcoal” stage, that seeker will be addressed at the “wet charcoal” stage with pointers intended to allow a movement to the “dry charcoal” stage. If one is at the “gunpowder stage” and only requires a few key pointers in order for Realization to explode into consciousness, that seeker will be provided those pointers, not “wet-charcoal-level pointers.”

Are you beginning to see why level-appropriate responses might cause confusion when you read something one day that is written for a seeker at level 5 but then you read the next day a response that is for a seeker at level 2? That explains why confusion happens so often when seekers read collections of transcripted talks (such as Maharaj's I AM THAT) wherein pointers offered on one page seemingly contradict pointers offered on the very next page. It is the audience that is varied, not the answer, but confusion often results among readers nevertheless. That is why, at some point, you need to know the exact order in which the stages must be transitioned, and that is why most do require a "guide," at least temporarily, that can point the way along the "path." Please enter the silence of contemplation.

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MISTAKING THE MID-POINT OF THE “JOURNEY” FOR THE END OF THE “JOURNEY,” Part Two (The Conclusion)

F.: Most persons will never understand that “the spiritual state” is not the end of “the path” but is a step nearer the middle of “the path” to Full Realization. Thus, many claim that they have reached the vijnana state (of “spiritual knowledge”) and subsequently claim that they are, therefore, “jnanis” (or “knowers”). The fact is that all persons who claim to be religious or spiritual believe also that (1) they know something that others do not know and that (2) others need to know what they know. Yet to assume an identity of “The Religious Person” or “The Spiritual Giant” or “The Knower” is to assume an identity that is not the Self and that leaves persons far removed from truly Realizing the Self (as well as all that is beyond the Self, including the non-beingness and the Absolute). The completion of the "journey" to Full Realization happens after the burdensome weight of spiritual knowledge--and of all learned ignorance--has been discarded.

Of course “jnani” and the other identities mentioned above are nothing more than time-bound, body-bound, “mind”-induced personas or assumed identities, dealing—by definition—with knowledge. Talk of spiritual knowledge has its place, but that happens at the “dry charcoal stage,” not at the “gunpowder stage.” Full Realization is marked by an awareness that is beyond all knowledge and which is, therefore, beyond all spiritual knowledge as well. Upon Full Realization, it is seen that all spiritual knowledge was nothing more than a part of that massive accumulation of learned ignorance which burdens persons with the heaviness of their “something-ness” rather than the lightness of the “nothingness.” To fixate at that knowing stage—at the so-called "spiritual stage"—prevents abidance as the Pure Consciousness and prevents eventual abidance as the Absolute. Therefore, the final step of the “journey” is not marked by the gaining of spiritual knowledge but by an understanding of the functioning of the totality that happens in the absence of any “Understander” or any “Knower” or any “Spiritual Person” or any other “good” identity that is being assumed in order to replace former “bad” identities.

The Original Understanding happened when the consciousness functioned on a pure, intuitive level rather than on a “thinking-mind”-level or a "knowing level" that came after the development of language (which allowed the programming and the conditioning and the corrupting of consciousness to happen). Truth is pointed to when the re-purified consciousness speaks, not when self-proclaimed jnanis or "priests" or "holy men" speak. To say “I am a jnani” is as much a lie as any other instance in which the I am is followed by a word or phrase, such as “I am a spouse” or “I am a human” or “I am a holy man.” (Should this talk be disturbing to those who consider themselves jnanis or to those who claim to love a jnani, then that very disturbance itself reinforces the accuracy of the pointer. WHO is disturbed?) The jnani level can happen near the mid-point of “the path” (where spiritual knowledge leads to spiritual role-playing); however, every level or step along “the way” must be transitioned—and every label and assumed identity must be discarded—if abidance as the Absolute is to happen.

Finally, it is that same dualistic trap of adopting new (and hypothetically “good”) personas, such as “The Knower” or “The Spiritual One,” that causes (1) so many to fixate at the third step—at the so-called “spiritual level”—of what is really a seven-step “journey” and that also causes (2) so many who have not Realized fully to think that they are jnanis and which also causes (3) so many to believe that they have finished a “journey” that is not even halfway complete. The dawn should not be mistaken for high noon.

From the trap of that assumption of the jnani or "spiritual person" role, a man e-mailed last week to say that he “had gained a new-found power during recent years” and that he “wanted to share his spiritual experience with other people” and that he wanted to know “how to get started at teaching Advaita” so that he could “help” other people. The reply that he received was not the answer that he sought:

You have mistaken the dawn for the noon, so you should abandon your plan (which is rooted in nothing more than ego-states and the corrupted consciousness) and complete your own “journey” before trying to guide “others” along a “path” that you have not yet traveled. Then, such questions as yours will not be asked, and whatever happens will happen spontaneously without any motives or attachment or beliefs, including your beliefs about “power” and “sharing” and “others” and “helping” and—especially—the idea that someone can teach you to teach something which you have not yet understood YourSelf. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
TOMORROW: More discussion with Vigneshwar regarding “do-ers,” “the mind,” and other such mirages.