what I used to believe

Ever since I was at school I have wondered if there is any truth in religion. I didn't like the idea of God. The Hindu idea of Brahman seemed more likely. Although God and Brahman are often thought of as the same, they are different. God is a being who has thoughts and emotions, likes and dislikes. Brahman is not a being, it is pure consciousness.

When it comes to life after death, I didn't like the idea of heaven and hell. Reincarnation seemed more likely. It isn't that people are rewarded or punished perpetually, it's more that there are consequences of actions. If you behave in a hateful way then you may end up in an unpleasant situation.

So I was attracted towards the religion of India. Hinduism, and Buddhism. Buddha didn't believe in Brahman, so it was a bit of a puzzle how that fitted in. Lots of people believe that all the religions are saying the same thing really just expressing the truth in different ways.

I think that people who commit suicide probably don't believe in life after death. If you believe in heaven or hell then it seems unlikely you would want to kill yourself: you're not going to go to heaven. If you believe in reincarnation then you're not going to solve any problems, just make things worse for yourself. I was unhappy as a teenager and I thought about suicide but not seriously. I thought Enlightenment would be the more sensible thing to do, then I would be free of suffering.

Sometimes people think of Enlightenment as the death of the self, especially in Buddhist ways of thinking. I can now see that this is misleading. The self is just a small part of your mind. The self is like a part of a machine that you can remove and the machine keeps on running much as before. Thinking continues. Emotions continue. Sensing and movement continue as before. Suffering continues, although there is no sufferer.

I couldn't see this when I was young. I thought that Enlightenment would be the end of suffering. There are many things that people think Enlightenment is. I have come to the conclusion that it is about nothing but Nonduality. Nonduality means that you no longer perceive that the world is separate from you. Before there was Subject and Object, after Enlightenment there is just one. The Subject is you, the Object is anything you turn your attention towards.

I used to wonder if Enlightenment was a permanent state of consciousness, or something that you might glimpse just once in a particularly deep meditation. I thought perhaps it could be either. Maybe the difference between Hinduism and Buddhism is this. I also wondered if, when it becomes a permanent state then it might be possible for the lower self to be more and more controlled by the higher self. Eventually there would be a perfected human being with mind and body controlled by God or Brahman. He or she would be an expression of God: when he or she speaks then it would be God speaking to us. I wondered if there have ever been people like that.

Not all Hindus believe in Brahman, and some Buddhists believe in something similar to Brahman. One of the most important Hindu teachers was Shankara. He taught something called Advaita Vedanta. Each of us has an inner consciousness, which is something different from the mind. This inner consciousness or awareness is called Atman. Our Atman seems to be different from Brahman, but this is an illusion. We can overcome this illusion and then we will be enlightened.

I thought that if there is any truth in religion it would be this. This is the clearest expression of the truth, other religions are attempting to express the same reality but none so well. I thought that it is possible to prove this. If I meditated then I could become enlightened and then I could prove it to myself. I would not be able to prove it to anyone else, but they would have the choice of following the same path.

This was the fundamental idea in my spiritual beliefs. Without this my spiritual beliefs would have no basis. Accepting it would allow me to develop my beliefs to incorporate other ideas consistent with it. A common idea is that there are different levels of reality. There is the physical world, which is the lowest level. There is the level of Brahman or pure Consciousness which is the highest level. Between these two is the level of the mind.

That gives us three levels. You can subdivide them to get five or seven levels. The Theosophical Society and various occultists talk about seven levels of reality, but whether it is seven, or five or three is not important. We have a presence on each of these levels of reality. They are called Planes of Existence or Planes of Consciousness.

I used to believe in the idea of spiritual progress or spiritual development. We are all on a path of development. Some of us are progressing rapidly, some of us are slower or have stopped. It is our destiny to escape from the cycle of rebirth and end suffering. It is the most important thing that we can work towards in life. It's as if we're all in prison but there is an escape hatch. The method of escape is something that was built into us from the beginning.

It's only recently that I came across facts which challenged these ideas. I read a book by Daniel M Ingram which is about Enlightenment. He writes a lot about what Enlightenment isn't. He doesn't believe that it frees us from reincarnation. He doesn't believe in reincarnation. He doesn't believe that Enlightenment will make us better people. He thinks it is just about Nonduality.

Another thing about Ingram's ideas is that he writes about two completely separate forms of spiritual development. These two forms give different but comparable results. His path is the path of Theravada Buddhism, the path of vipassana meditation combined with samatha meditation. This, he assumes, is the original teaching of the Buddha.

However, he heard about another path. This is called Actualism (also called Actual Freedom) which seems to be a method that a man called Richard in Australia stumbled upon. Ingram tried this method and got spectacular results. You could say there are many methods of development, but I thought they all have the same end result. Now it seems there are different results.

It's as if there isn't an escape hatch, there are two escape hatches, and we can't be sure where either of them leads. This makes it seem that there's nothing natural about spiritual development and Enlightenment. They aren't our destiny, they aren't inbuilt into us. Meditation isn't something natural, like placing a pot plant in the sunshine so it can grow. Meditation is unnatural, forcing the mind to do something against it's nature. Starving parts of the brain of sensory stimuli so that they shut down and make us perceive things that aren't real.

It's just playing about with your brain. Making your brain do tricks. Perceptual distortions. You perceive that everything is light. You perceive that you're in a vast empty void. You perceive that everything is part of you. You perceive that there is no you and things are aware of themselves. You perceive your Self stopping and then your brain rebooting followed by a bliss wave. All these are common perceptions. If that's what you want, fine. But there's no point in it, any more than there's any point in stamp collecting. When you've got the complete set, what do you do then?

So Ingram's book and his venture into Actualism caused me to doubt the validity of my core spiritual beliefs. There were other things too. Someone who had been in Lifewave wrote an account of his Enlightenment experience. We didn't have anything like that in the 1980s. He said that everything seemed to be part of him. It would have been easy for me to have thought that this isn't what Shankara meant by Enlightenment. I could have said that the Lifewave Enlightenment isn't the real Enlightenment.

However, it's easy to see that if someone starts perceiving everything to be part of them then they can explain that by thinking that they must have merged with the universal consciousness. Whether you call it Brahman or God. So I started thinking that the whole idea of Atman and Brahman is a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of this state of consciousness. This isn't proof of the existence of Brahman or God. People in early India had no concept of brain functioning and could only explain their experiences by supernatural ideas.

I found lots of other people who had the same experience of perceiving everything as part of you. Suzanne Segal wrote the same thing in her book. Someone on a different forum said the same thing. The author Ken Wilber describes it, he calls it One Taste. It's quite common. It's not exclusive to the John Yarr club.

One Taste doesn't appear to be the same as Ingram's Enlightenment. They are both Nonduality but they are not the same. Whatever it is that Actualism achieves is different again. There are similarities between all three.

I have become a materialist. The world is pretty much how Richard Dawkins and others see it. If you think that I am rejecting the Wisdom of the East then there are two things that you should realize. First that Buddha didn't believe in Atman or Brahman. Not all meditators have the same realizations. Second that in India there is a long tradition of materialism. It is called Charvaka or Lokayata. There was a man called Ajita who was teaching this at about the same as Buddha in the same part of India.

I'm not trying to indoctinate people into my own beliefs. I'm just trying to explain why I don't believe what I used to believe and what many believe today. I've wasted enough of my life trying to reach a goal that isn't there. I want to tell people what I would have liked to be told 40 years ago. I hope that this may help them. Or at least make them think.

review of One Taste part 2

Below is an extract from One Taste by Ken Wilber. It is part of an interview of him by Pathways magazine ('A magazine of Psychological and Spiritual Transformation'). It is interesting because Wilber believes that meditation can give you direct experience of what can be called either God or Brahman or Spirit (he uses all three terms in his book). He thinks that it can be proven in much the same way that any fact can be proven.

PATHWAYS: But what about the notion that these experiences of "One Taste" or "Kosmic Consciousness" are just the by-product of meditation, and therefore aren't "really real"?

KW: Well, that can be said of any type of knowledge that depends on an instrument. "Kosmic Consciousness" often depends on the instrument of meditation. So what? Seeing the nucleus of a cell depends on a microscope. Do we then say that the cell nucleus isn't real because it's only the by-product of a microscope? Do we say the moons of Jupiter aren't real because they depend on a telescope? The people who raise this objection are almost always people who don't want to look through the instrument of meditation, just as the Churchmen refused to look through Galileo's telescope and thus acknowledge the moons of Jupiter. Let them live with their refusal. But let us - to the best of our ability, and hopefully driven by the best of charity or compassion - try to convince them to look, just once, and see for themselves. Not coerce them, just invite them. I suspect a different world might open for them, a world that has been abundantly verified by all who look through the telescope, and microscope, of meditation.

PATHWAYS: Could you tell us ...

KW: If I could interrupt, do you mind if I give you one of my favourite quotes from Aldous Huxley?

PATHWAYS: Please.

KW: This is from After Many a Summer Dies the Swan:

"I like the words I use to bear some relation to facts. That's why I'm interested in eternity - psychological eternity. Because it's a fact."
"For you perhaps," said Jeremy.
"For anyone who chooses to fulfill the conditions under which it can be experienced."
"And why should anyone wish to fulfill them?"
"Why should anyone choose to go to Athens to see the Parthenon? Because it's worth the bother. And the same is true of eternity. The experience of timeless good is worth all the trouble involved."
"Timeless good," Jeremy repeated with distaste. "I don't know what the words mean."
"Why should you?" said Mr. Propter. "You've never bought your ticket to Athens."

PATHWAYS: So contemplation is the ticket to Athens?

KW: Don't you think?

The problem with this argument is that in reading Wilber's account of his spiritual experiences the only proof it offers is that there is a state of consciousness where you perceive that everything is part of you. That's all. It is not direct experience of God or Brahman or Spirit. It's not even proof that when you perceive that everything is part of you it is a correct perception: some perceptions are false.

I realize that part of his argument is that you're never going to see God. You can't see God, you can only be God, and look out on the world through God's eyes. He is the see-er who cannot be seen. I understand the meaning of this theory, especially after the 'pointing out instructions' earlier in the book. That doesn't alter the fact that God, Brahman or Spirit have not been proved.

Now that I know what pointing out instructions are in detail I am no longer impressed by them. I don't see how anyone is going to get a sudden enlightenment from them, which is what authors like Sam Harris believe. I have mentioned nondualists and their pointing out instructions in earlier posts on this blog, I doubt if I'm going to be mentioning them again.

There was a man who looked at Mars through a telescope and thought that he could see lines on the surface. He called them 'canali' which means 'channels' in Italian but which became translated into 'canals' in English. He believed they were evidence for a civilization on Mars. Many people believed years ago that there was proof of a Martian civilization that dug canals.

When you look at Mars through a telescope, you can see the disk of the planet and then perhaps shifting patterns of relative light or dark. That's all. They went too far in saying they had proof of a civilization there. So too people like Wilber go too far in saying they have proof of God, Brahman or Spirit. Or that there are higher levels of reality. Or that One Taste is something spiritual and not just neurological.

In the book he talks about the marriage of Buddha and Freud. Not a nice image. What he means is that Eastern mysticism should be combined with Western psychology to create a more complete system. You can be enlightened and still be selfish and immature. Without the ability to relax fully you will find it difficult to enter the depths of meditation. I used to believe that.

The interesting thing though is that Buddha did not teach a belief in God, Brahman or Spirit. Teachers in India who came before him taught the existence of Brahman, but Buddha went against that. This is the most important thing about Buddha, yet Wilber doesn't understand it. I know that his favoured forms of Buddhism are Mahayana and Vajrayana but even so he shouldn't be letting people think that all meditators come out of meditation with the same insights. That's not true.

review of One Taste part 1

People say that you can't learn anything about enlightenment from books. It has to be personal experience. Books, however, are records of personal experiences. Also, how do you know that your enlightenment is the same as other people's enlightenment? How do you know that it is enlightenment at all?

Are we not all familiar with the idea that someone can think they are enlightened and yet there is another level beyond what they have reached? John Yarr used to say that Buddha had only got to the level of 'going beyond form'. I don't believe that. I don't believe John Yarr got as far as Buddha.

Ken Wilber has a lot of theory that I have found meaningless and pretentious. He is interesting however when writing about his own spiritual experiences.

I have said that I think the Lifewave enlightenment is the same as what Ken Wilber calls 'One Taste'. I am reading one of his books now that goes into greater detail. Both Suzanne Segal and Malcolm seemed to be saying that you get enlightenment suddenly and in one go then it's a permanent state of consciousness. Perhaps it was for them but Wilber says that he does not maintain this state for long periods of time.

In this passage from 'One Taste' by Wilber he is on holiday and spending a lot of time in the sea.

"I had fully expected to lose all access to the Witness, given our vino schedule. And for the first night and day this happened. But floating in the water has not only brought back the Witness, it seems to have facilitated the disappearance of the Witness into the nondual One Taste, at least on occasion. (The Witness, or pure witnessing awareness, tends to be of the causal, since there is usually a primitive trace of subject/object duality: you equanimously Witness the world as transparent and shimmering object. But with further development, the Witness itself disappears into everything that is witnessed, subject and object become One Taste, or simple Suchness, and this is the nondual estate. In short: ego to soul to pure Witness to One Taste.) So I am utterly, pleasantly surprised, floating here in nature's blood, to be dipped into One Taste, which in this case, is nicely salty.

There is no time in this estate, although time passes through it. Clouds float by in the sky, thoughts float by in the mind, waves float by in the ocean, and I am all of that. I am looking at none of it, for there is no center around which perception is organized. It is simply that everything is arising, moment to moment, and I am all of that. I do not see the sky, I am the sky, which sees itself. I do not feel the ocean, I am the ocean, which feels itself. I do not hear the birds, I am the birds, which hear themselves. There is nothing outside of me, there is nothing inside of me, because there is no me - there is simply all of this, and it has always been so.

My ankle hurts from dancing last night, so there is pain, but the pain doesn't hurt me, for there is no me. There is simply pain, and it is arising just like everything else - birds, waves, clouds, thoughts. I am none of them, I am all of them, it's all the same One Taste. This in not a trance, or a lessening of consciousness, but rather an intensification of it - not subconcious but superconscious, not infra-rational but super-rational. There is a crystal-clear awareness of everything that is arising, moment to moment, it's just not happening to anybody. This is not an out-of-the-body experience; I am not looking down; I am not looking at all; and I am not above or below anything - I am everything. There is simply all of this, and I am that.

Most of all, One Taste is utter simplicity. With mystical experiences in the subtle and causal, there is often a sense of grandeur, of ominous awesomeness, of numinous overwhelmingness, of light and bliss and beatitude, of gratefulness and tears of joy. But not with One Taste, which is extraordinarily ordinary, and perfectly simple: just this.

I stay here, neck deep in water, for three hours. How much of it I spend as ego, as Witness, or as One Taste, I don't know. There is always the sense, with One Taste, that you have never left it, no matter how confused you get, and therefore there is never really the sense that you are entering or leaving it. It is just so, always and forever, even now, and even unto the ends of the world."

Wilber writes that this isn't a permanent state for him. It can last for 24 - 36 hours, and once it lasted for eleven days. He says he believes that for some people it is permanent, including several teachers that he has met.

The other surprising thing to me about this passage is that he seems to have moved from what some people call One Mind or One Taste to what some people call No Mind. When he writes "I do not see the sky, I am the sky, which sees itself" etc what does this mean?

I don't believe that it literally means that the sky sees itself. This is his perception. It's as if consciousness has become fragmented. Differerent parts of the brain are processing sensory information, with no centre, no self. One Mind (or One Taste) means that everything seems to be part of you. No Mind means that there is no you. What is it that perceives sensory information when there is no you? It's as if they perceive themselves: sensations appear to be what some people call 'self-knowing knowns'.

There is seeing be no see-er. There is hearing but no hearer. There is thinking but no thinker.
Some people will say that One Mind and No Mind are the same. If you are everything then you are nothing. I don't think so. They have different characteristics. Is it possible for One Mind to shift into No Mind all by itself? I don't know. It's possible that it only happened to Wilber because one of the many forms of meditation he practiced was vipassana. Or it might just require a shift of perspective.

enlightenment book

I have come across an interesting book partly about enlightenment called "The Buddha is still teaching Contemporary Buddhist Wisdom". It is a compilation of writings from many authors from different spiritual traditions selected and edited by Jack Kornfield.

Most people who come to this blog won't be from the Buddhist tradition but the first of the two quotations applies to everyone who is interested in enlightenment.

p 201 BECOMING ENLIGHTENED

Before becoming enlightened you just think that you are here and things that are not you are over there, and you are unable to take even one step out of a dualist world. Experience enlightenment, even shallow enlightenment, and you naturally understand that the thought of "objects over there" is completely mistaken - you have opened your eyes on a world where the totality is yourself. This is enlightenment.

Taizan Maezumi in The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment: Part of the On Zen Practice Collection, by Taizan Maezumi and Bernie Glassman

I think that this quotation sums up what enlightenment is. It is nothing more than this. The second quotation tries to take it further and comes to a wrong conclusion. At one time I would have believed it but I don't now.

p 205 NIRVANA

The word nirvana ... means extinction of thirst and the annihilation of suffering. Buddhist masters teach that within each of us there is always a fire. Sometimes this fire is quietly smoldering; other times it is raging out of control. This fire is caused by the friction of duality rubbing against itself, like two sticks. This friction is generated by me (as subject) wanting other (as object) and the interaction between the two. This ever-present friction that irritates us blazes up into the fires of suffering. When we realize emptiness and perfect oneness with all, the fires of duality go out. When even the embers themselves are cool, when conflicting emotions are no longer burning us - this is nirvana, the end of dissatisfaction and suffering. This is liberation; this is bliss; this is true freedom. 

The freedom from craving spoken of by the Buddha is an inconceivable inner peace, a sense of at-one-ness and completion. 

The lasting happiness the Buddha speaks of does not mean having no personality or passion. Desirelessness means lacking nothing. Consider this possibility ... for your life.

Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World

beyond the mind

Someone made an interesting comment. He said that Enlightenment is 'beyond the mind' and so there is no point talking about it. If you are not enlightened your opinion has no worth.

If Enlightenment was about Atman and Brahman - as I used to think it was - then that would be correct. However, concepts of Atman and Brahman are explanations of the enlightened state, they are not descriptions of it. People may choose to interpret their enlightened state in terms of a universal cosmic consciousness, but that isn't what they have experienced.

It would be reasonable to think that each person's enlightenment would be different. When I read Malcolm's account of his Enlightenment and then I read Suzanne Segal's account of hers, they seemed so similar that I was forced to conclude that there is no variation in the end state. Although there seem to be different ways of getting there. And it does seem that there is another form of Enlightenment apart from theirs.

From Malcolm's and Suzanne's accounts, and what Ken Wilber has written, it looks as if Enlightenment is to do with the senses. Whereas previously the brain had interpreted some sensations as being external to the self, after Enlightenment the brain interprets all sensations as being internal. Everything you look at seems to be part of you. Nothing you turn your attention towards seems to be separate from you.

When you are moving it seems to you that your body is moving through yourself to get to where you already are. Both Malcolm and Suzanne have said this. It can be overwhelming when you first experience this, especially perhaps if you are an impressionable person, but then you get used to it and it becomes quite ordinary.

If Enlightenment is to do with how your brain processes sensory information then I would say it is below the mind, not beyond it. It is not to do with your thoughts, emotions or memories and so it is not of the mind. That doesn't mean however that it is beyond the mind.

Only someone who has smelled cat pee knows what cat pee smells like. There is no point talking about it, there is no point discussing it. If you have dwelled in cat pee then you are the one who knows it. If you haven't then your opinion is of no worth.

Many say that Enlightenment can't be described. Well, I think that Malcolm and Suzanne have made a pretty good job of it. If I had known this decades ago then I would have walked away from Lifewave without getting involved. I wouldn't have been the only one. Perhaps they knew that so they kept quiet about it, only talking about it in very vague terms.

They tell you what they want you to know, not what you need to know. That's the way it is with cults. They will tell you your opinion is of no worth, that you can't possibly think it out for yourself. Only they know. Don't talk about something you don't know, they will tell you.

Their state is an illusory state because it isn't true that everything is part of you. There are other people who have attained this state in other movements. There are people who experience the Inner Light and don't think that it is a divine energy. They understand what it is and can better help people who want to experience it. Meditation in Lifewave was always hit and miss: the minority who took to it went far but the majority didn't get the guidance they needed.

There are people who have experienced the vast empty void and don't think of it as a higher level of reality. They have experienced the perception that everything is part of you but they know that there is something beyond that.