reply to Malcolm's comment

To go to the beginning of this blog and an introduction to the Lifewave cult click here.

Malcolm made some good points in his comment on one of my posts. I replied to his comment but I didn't make a full reply because I was pushed for time and the comments section isn't the best place for a full reply anyway. So in this post I am making a fuller reply to some of the points he made.

Firstly I would like to say that I do believe that his enlightenment was the real thing, just the same as other people who in Lifewave were called Adepts. I also believe that the Lifewave enlightenment is the same as what mystics in different parts of the world have sought and sometimes found. So I'm not saying that his enlightenment is less than other people's enlightenment.

The point I was trying to make is that enlightenment is different from what we were led to believe. His account is valuable because no one else connected with Lifewave has given an account of what enlightenment actually is. That is why I was surprised by his account. Enlightenment seems to be to do with this material world. It seems to be about the perception of the material world, how someone relates to this world.

I expected enlightenment to be about some higher level of reality. I believed at the time that there are many levels of reality (Planes of Existence). There is the material world, which is the lowest level of reality. Then there is the highest level at the other end, you could call that God or Brahman. Somewhere in between is the level of the mind. These kinds of ideas are common in spiritual circles, in the Theosophical Society for example, and in Lifewave too.

He said that he didn't interpret what happened to him as merging with Brahman. However, I think that many people who have had enlightenment do interpret it as merging with Brahman, or union with God. Suzanne Segal seems to have had the same thing happen to her and gave a similar account in her book. She uses the word 'vastness' instead of Brahman or God.

On the 1meditation site they say this: "a desire to get beyond all separation and to merge with the cause of all things". What is the cause of all things? Some would call it Brahman, others would call it God. The Neoplatonists called it 'The One'.

It's a similar idea though. The idea that there is a universal or primordial consciousness and that you are part of it. You are not separate from it. I don't believe in this universal consciousness anymore, but I can see that people would interpret their enlightenment in that way.

Now I would interpret it as a shift in brain functioning. The brain can no longer distinguish between subject and object. Everything seems subject without object, everything seems to be part of you. Nothing seems to be separate from you. I think that ideas about Brahman, very common in Hinduism and New Age movements, derive from a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of this state of consciousness.

In one of my posts I copied-and-pasted something from a forum to do with the inner light. I thought that the writer (mungojelly) had a good understanding of what the inner light actually is. Malcolm replied that it didn't make sense to him.

What mungojelly was saying is that our brains create a model of our bodies and our environment. This model is updated by our sense perceptions. When we meditate we are focusing our attention on something - a mantra or the breath - and ignoring physical sensations apart from that. The model isn't getting updated in the same way and so the model starts doing unusual things.

The example that mungojelly gives is when the breath seems to turn into light. That seems to happen to people when they meditate on the breath, which is common in Buddhist circles. Eric Lerner writes about this in his book. I don't know how it happens with people who meditate using a mantra. I doubt if the mantra turns into light, or sound.

I understand that seeing coloured discs is common. Blue, golden or white usually. Then it seems you end up with an all-pervading white light. I used to think that this light was something spiritual in nature and divine in origin. Now I think that it is just something produced by the brain. That doesn't mean that it is valueless, it can help in entering different altered states of consciousness.

It's an interesting question as to why to begin with the light disappears when you focus your attention on it. That could be because if we turn our attention towards it we are treating it as a sense perception when it isn't that. We are updating the model and because the inner light doesn't derive from our senses then when the model gets corrected it is removed.

Malcolm said that he didn't think that Krishnamurti was as important in Lifewave as I had thought. He could be right about that. The reason why I thought Krishnamurti was important was for two reasons. First, an Adept had said in a talk that Ishvara (John Yarr) had sent someone to talk to Krishnamurti. This person told Krishnamurti that the Buddha of our age had now arrived and was teaching and enlightening people. He meant John Yarr himself.

The story went that Krishnamurti got angry with this person and told him to go. The Adept then said that it looks as if Krishnamurti is a very angry and dismissive man. It's not surprising that Krishnamurti got angry though, he was noted for hating anyone who set himself up as a guru. He was dead against gurus. He must have thought to himself 'Have they understood nothing of what I have said?' He said that he wasn't a teacher and had no teaching and no method (which seems to be not quite true).

The other thing is that when I was in Lifewave in Liverpool in the 1980s we had a little library of spiritual texts. I had a couple of books I didn't want so I donated them to this library. Some time after, one of the Second Initiates wanted to talk to me. He solemnly stated that one of the books was unsuitable so he was returning it to me. I said to him that they probably didn't want the book by Krishnamurti either. I said this because I knew that Krishnamurti hated gurus. To my surprise he said no, the Krishnamurti book is acceptable.

So I was intrigued. Why did Ishvara seem to like Krishnamurti so much despite Krisnamurti hating gurus? It could have been that John Yarr had sent people to talk to many spiritual teachers throughout the world, but it didn't seem that way. Krishnamurti seemed to be important to John Yarr.

Although Krishnamurti said he wasn't a teacher and had no teaching or methods, that's not quite true. Often teachers in the nondualist tradition say the same thing. It's part of their philosophy. If you read what Sam Harris has said about nondualism or Ken Wilber they do say that.

They have something called 'direct pointing' or 'pointing-out instructions'. This is where someone helps you to be aware of your inner consciousness. Then you can focus your attention on that as your form of meditation. I'm sure nondualists will say that I'm misrepresenting what they believe but the less extreme nondualists will accept they do have these practices.

According to Ken Wilber you establish the 'Witness'. The Witness will eventually disappear, and then everything you turn your attention towards will seem to be part of you. I don't know if John Yarr ever received or gave 'direct pointing' or anything like it, or if he just understood the principle and that was a big help to him in getting to enlightenment.

It would seem though that if you want this enlightenment then nondualists techniques would be a big help. It's found in the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Advaita Vedanta and Tibetan Buddhists. Meditating on the inner light and sound, and entering the various altered states of consciousness is the main thing though. The altered state of consciousness called in Lifewave 'Second Initiation' or 'going beyond form' is what the Theravada Buddhists call the 5th jhana or the Sphere of Infinite Space. That's quite a high one but there are even higher ones.

nature of the Lifewave enlightenment

what is the nature of the Lifewave enlightenment?

When I was in Lifewave in the 1980s there weren't any accounts of people's enlightenment. They talked about it in general terms as if it was the same as Shankara's view of enlightenment. The merging of Atman with Brahman, the realization that Atman and Brahman have never actually been separate, or union with God.

This is the same sort of idea that is found in the Radhasoami and Santmat traditions in India, and with DLM I guess. The philosophy of Lifewave derived more from the teachings of the Theosophical society and from Alice Bailey. However, they all seem to agree on much the same idea of what enlightenment is.

Recently though someone did give an account of their enlightenment experience on an internet forum. Someone called iamthat or Malcolm went through Second Initiation in Lifewave, then after it ceased he went through enlightenment on his own. In my previous post I quoted his account of Second Initiation.

When I read his account I was surprised though. Instead of writing that he merged with Brahman he wrote that everything seemed to be part of him. I will give a fuller quotation at the end of this post but this is the important bit: "I was everywhere. I was the walls, the carpet, the furniture, the space between it all. There was one Being pervading everything, and I was that one Being".

I thought 'Is that it? Is that all?' I didn't think it would be like that. I remembered that somebody else had written a similar account, but I couldn't remember who it was so it took me a while to track down the book. Suzanne Segal in book Collision with the Infinite wrote this:-

"In the midst of a particularly eventful week, I was driving north to meet some friends when I suddenly became aware that I was driving through myself. For years there had been no self at all, yet here on this road, everything was myself, and I was driving through me to arrive at where I already was. In essence, I was going nowhere because I was everywhere already. The infinite emptiness I knew myself to be was now apparent as the infinite substance of everything I saw."

At first I thought that he must have copied from her, especially when you consider this paragraph from iamthat's account:-

"Travelling in a car was also interesting, especially as a passenger. My body was still, and I was still, but there would be all this scenery moving within the stillness. And I could see that I was already at the end of the road, but my body had to move through me to get to where I already was."

Then I realized that quite a few people have had this experience. Ken Wilber, for example, calls it 'One Taste'. Below is a quotation from his book Grace and Grit:-

"That's right. The soul, as I am using the term, is a sort of halfway house, halfway between the personal ego-mind and the impersonal or transpersonal Spirit. The soul is the Witness as it shines forth in you and nobody else. The soul is the home of the Witness in that sense. Once you are established on the soul level, then you are established as the Witness, as the real Self. Once you push through the soul level, then the Witness itself collapses into everything witnessed, or you become one with everything you are aware of. You don't witness the clouds, you are the clouds. That's Spirit."

I found something else on a forum. G Tyler Wright gave his account on Quora.

"After some time in the thought-free state, my awareness expanded. I became my entire surroundings!

I was the bed, I was the closet, I was the door, I was the air. I was everything! I felt like I was awake for the first time in my life! I thought, How could I ever have mistaken myself to be that little body and that little mind?"

What all these accounts share is that they perceived that everything they saw was part of them. Everything they turned their attention towards did not seem to be separate from them. This isn't just a thought or a feeling, it is their perception. It seems to me that this can be better explained by brain functioning than by Hindu philosophy.

Most people's brains work on the basis of Subject and Object. You are the Subject, and something you observe is the Object. They are perceived to be different. This is called the Subject/Object dichotomy. The dichotomy can be overcome, in which case everything seems to be part of you.

The problem though is that everything is not part of you. There is no evidence apart from your altered perception that everything is part of you. If you look at someone and perceive that they are part of you, then you would be able to be aware of their thoughts just as you are aware of your own thoughts. That doesn't happen though.

You might say that enlightenment doesn't necessarily involve telepathy, but in the absence of any independent evidence that it is true we have to say that it is false. There are no psychic powers, you can lie to them (as I did) and they can't tell.

Someone can do this and they think that everything is part of them, or they are part of everything, or they and everything are one. They are at one with the universe. Then they start thinking they must have attained unity with God, or they have merged with Brahman or that they have always been Brahman but only now do they see their true identity. If they have done it all by themselves without a guru then they start thinking they must be the Kalki Avatar or the Maitreya Buddha. This is what happened to John Yarr.

It doesn't make people compassionate, or emotionally stable or less greedy. It could be it does the opposite. It doesn’t free you from the cycle of birth and rebirth because reincarnation isn't true. Neither is any form of life after death.

What's more there are two ways that someone can overcome the Subject/Object dichotomy. You can end up with all Subject and no Object. Or you can end up with all Object and no Subject (no Self). The first is Hindu enlightenment, the second is Buddhist enlightenment. The situation is complicated because some forms of Buddhism such as Tibetan Buddhism may have more in common with Hinduism than early Buddhism.

Some people will say that both forms of enlightenment are the same. When you are everything you are nothing. You are not everything or nothing though. The two forms are different. When I believed in reincarnation I thought that Buddhist enlightenment truly frees you from the cycle of birth and rebirth and Hindu enlightenment does not. Now I don't care what people do, I'm not interested in either path.

The Inner Light and Sound is not a spiritual energy and does not require initiation to experience it. Second Initiation does not take you a higher level of reality. Enlightenment does not help you see reality, free you from rebirth or make you a better person.

When I was told that enlightenment is beyond the mind, that we can never understand it with the mind, I used to accept that. We cannot understand it, only experience it. That made sense to me, because I believed that there were higher levels of reality, beyond the mind. I believed in the occult theory of different planes.

However, the reality of enlightenment seems to be very much to do with this material level of reality. That is what surprised me when I read accounts of enlightenment such as Suzanne Segal's. It seems obvious that it is to do with the way that the brain processes sensory information. That being so, we can understand what it is. There is nothing ineffable about it.

I have edited my original post. I used to think that John Yarr could have been influenced by nondualist teachers, perhaps Krishnamurti. I now no longer think this could be true.

Also I am beginning to think that John Yarr was never enlightened. He told people to meditate for many hours. He took the credit for whatever states of consciousness they achieved. They could have done it for themselves, just by meditating all those hours. He didn't give them his state of consciousness. If he could enlighten people at will, why did they need to meditate for hundreds of hours?

Below is the quote from iamthat about Lifewave enlightenment:-

"It felt as if the entire range of sound was flowing through my spine, from the deepest sound at the base of my spine, to the finest sound at my throat. My head was empty, beyond all sound, and the energy continued to flow. The light was golden-white and brilliant, and I gazed upon it, every part of me striving to surrender. I had no thought except to lose myself in that light, when suddenly the light dissolved. There was just emptiness. The flow of energy which had been so strong suddenly ceased. Everything was still and peaceful. I sat there for a while, enjoying the stillness, but wondering what had happened to all that energy. Eventually I came out of meditation and turned on the light, as the room was now dark.

I was everywhere. I was the walls, the carpet, the furniture, the space between it all. There was one Being pervading everything, and I was that one Being. My body was just another physical object sitting in this one Being. Nothing limited me, nothing interrupted me, I was complete Being. I went downstairs to make a cup of tea, and I was not moving; instead my body was moving in the stillness that was me.

I woke up the next morning, and I was still everywhere. After some more meditation, I went for a walk outside. I was the pavement and the houses and the trees and the sky and the clouds. I was the cars as they drove through the one Being that was me. I was everyone I saw – we were all physical bodies expressing this one Being. There was nothing in this world except me, and I existed without limits.

Travelling in a car was also interesting, especially as a passenger. My body was still, and I was still, but there would be all this scenery moving within the stillness. And I could see that I was already at the end of the road, but my body had to move through me to get to where I already was.
And this has been my daily reality since December 1986. It never changes, it never goes away. The mind is still present, with all its limitations. Emotions are still present, with all their highs and lows. My personality is still there, with all its strengths and weaknesses. But behind it all, unchanging, always present, there is limitless Being. It is hard not to take it for granted; I can spend hours absorbed in daily trivia, and then I pause and gaze around me, and I see myself everywhere. For me, this limitless Being is the only true reality of life."