On this blog I have given my opinion of what I think enlightenment is. Many will disagree with me. So I am devoting this post to what people think enlightenment is. I think there are three aspects to enlightenment.
- overcoming the cycle of birth and rebirth
- seeing reality instead of illusion
- personal development
Hindus and Buddhists believe in reincarnation. The idea though is to escape from having to return to this world. If you become enlightened then you no longer need to return to this world. If you meditate but don't become enlightened then you will have a happier life next time round.
seeing reality instead of illusion
In the film The Matrix there is the idea that what we think is reality isn't reality. You can do something to know true reality. In the film you can take the red pill to see reality. In real life you can meditate. Gradually you will see through illusion. Nondualists will say that direct pointing will allow you to see reality, it isn't a gradual process.
personal development
You can become less greedy and angry, more emotionally stable, and more compassionate. You can overcome your neuroses and conditioning. By the time that someone becomes enlightened they will have overcome all of these problems to become a perfected human being - so some people think.
They will not exploit their followers financially or sexually. They don't have powerful drives, and even when they do have drives they wouldn't want to see their followers suffer. They are aware of the suffering of others and wouldn't want to do anything which would create it. A paedophile isn't just someone who has a sexual attraction towards children, they are also someone who can look into the eyes of a child, see the confusion and distress, yet go ahead and do it anyway.
Enlightenment in my opinion has nothing to do with personal development. It is merely to do with overcoming the subject/object dichotomy. An enlightened person can be greedy, angry, emotionally unstable and neurotic. He or she can lack compassion. It might even be that enlightenment makes all of these things worse.
I used to think that overcoming desire was the way to escape reincarnation. Greed and anger are what pulls us back to this world. This is something that many Buddhists believe. When greed and anger are gone, then we are free. I don't believe this anymore. I don't believe in life after death and I don't believe that meditation can reduce anger and greed let alone eliminate them.
Neither do I believe that high altered states of consciousness are levels of reality that we can go to when we die and stay there. I don't believe that our Atman can merge with Brahman. I think Atman and Brahman are concepts that derive from one particular state of consciousness.
If you have a shift in your consciousness after doing intense meditation for a long time you might look at something and see it as part of you. Everything you look at seems to be part of you. This is your perception but it is a false perception. It isn't true that everything is part of you. It is an illusion. All that's happened is that part of your brain is no longer working normally. It can no longer distinguish between subject and object.
You can interpret your new perception in terms of Hindu philosophy or in mystical terms. Union with Brahman or God. When you see what it is though it's easier to see it in terms of altered brain functioning. Not only can an enlightened person not be able to see the thought of others (you would think they could if they are really one with everything and everyone), they can't even see the suffering of people around them. They are indifferent to it.
You might think that if everything is part of you then there is nothing outside you that you would need. You would think that but experience shows us that this is not the case. You would think that someone would be less controlled by instinctive drives, but it could be that people become more impulsive not less.
I used to think that meditation and enlightenment were spiritual, in the sense that I believed that you could experience higher levels of reality, expand your higher self, and purify your lower self. I know that sounds vague, but I won't elaborate on that here now. Then when I realised that there aren't any higher levels of reality, I thought that it was something psychological, in the sense that it could make you a more contented person. Now I can see that this doesn't happen, it doesn't make you a better person, I think of it as something neurological. What I mean by that is that it alters your brain functioning although it doesn't improve it. You see the world in a different way but not necessarily a better way. If that's what you want then fine, but why anyone would want it if they can see what it is is beyond me. I don't want it. If you do want it you would do better than going to someone like John Yarr or those who have taken his place because they don't know what they are doing. You're better off without them.
