review of the year 2025

When I started this blog in 2019 I wasn't expecting much to happen. This year 2025 however has been very revealing.

• contacted by author Ben Machell who told me he is writing a book about cults
• contacted by documentary maker Chris Atkins
• contacted by Ryan who as a child lived with John Yarr
• found articles in the Portsmouth Evening News - more revealing than any other articles
• found an old web site about John Yarr and Lifewave (www.johnyarr-lifewave.co.uk)
• I found out a lot more about the 2000 arrest and court case from this old site
• there was another site created by Maxine Reynolds but I haven't found it yet - need name or URL
• told about another site (https://spiritualenlightenments.weebly.com/)
• read through Paul Bennett's (Yogi Paulo) Facebook pages

When I started I assumed that John Yarr was enlightened. This year I have started considering that he was never enlightened. Some of his followers "enlightened" themselves through their own efforts. What they have is a form of nonduality but it's not true enlightenment. I used to say that there are two forms of enlightenment, one where everything seems to be part of you, and the other where there is no you. Now I can see that the first of these two states of consciousness will always be intermittent - it comes and it goes. That's not enlightenment. John Yarr may well never have had even that. He told people to meditate many hours a day and then took credit for the results.

review of Zen and the Art of Consciousness

I am reading Zen and the Art of Consciousness by Susan Blackmore. She understands more about true enlightenment than John Yarr or Mooji put together. Some parts of the book are boring, such as when she is writing about philosophical concepts such as free will.

There is no point in discussing philosophical concepts here. I'm sure Yarr and his Adepts will say there is no point to thinking, it is experience that matters. Except that I don't believe they have experienced true enlightenment: Susan Blackmore has.

There are just a couple of things I want to mention about free will though. Susan says that science tells us that everything has a cause therefore everything is predetermined. I know that is what you learn on a philosophy course but that's not true. Science tells us that some things are random. We live in a universe where some things happen because of previous things and some things happen at random. How that affects our understanding of free will I don't know but I think it's important to point that out.

Then there are the ethical implications of not having free will. It seems that someone who is enlightened does not feel they have free will and does not feel regret for past actions. Is it good to have people who never feel regret? Does it make them more capable of actions that harm others?

If they were always accepting everything that would be one thing. However, they seem to accept that their cult leader is abusing children yet at the same time not accepting that someone they have initiated doesn't want to continue to be part of their cult - they get very upset about that.

Before I read this book I understood certain things. I understood that there are two forms of enlightenment. Both are nonduality, but nonduality can manifest in two different ways. First, you can perceive everything you see to be part of you. Second, you perceive that there is no you.

I understood that sense perceptions are important in how a self is formed. Somehow sense perceptions become woven together to create a self. Susan Blackmore shows more about how this happens. I have quoted two passages from her book below.

page 129

"The difficult part, in my experience, is the letting go, but then it always is. This practice has a very odd quality about it. Self seems to dissolve into the multiple threads so that there is no longer any central self whose attention switches to one stream or another. So there is no longer a 'string of beads', or a 'stream of consciousness', or a 'movie in the brain', but experiences and experiencers that co-emerge all over the place and not to anyone in particular. It is much more like Dennett's 'multiple drafts'."

pages 154 and 155

"Then suddenly it's possible. Perhaps all those years of practising some kind of letting go have stood me in good stead. There goes the traffic noise, thrumming along. Someone has been listening to it all the time. Let it arise, let it be for however long it stays, and let it go. Meanwhile, in parallel with that, something else has risen up. The birds are singing. The drill has started up again. There's a sense that each arises, stays for a while, and fizzles out. They're not being attended to one at a time, but go on in parallel with nothing holding them together.

It is the fizzling out that is the tricky bit. I notice that as each sound or feeling dies away, or ceases being brought into play, there is a bit of me that wants to hang onto it; that wants to keep saying, 'I experienced that. I remember it. I exist.' But the task is clear. Let all these threads do their stuff, and that includes fizzling out again. So they are let go. It is possible after all. They do just seem to arise and fall away again, but not to me.

I have a little chuckle. For years and years I have understood John's instruction to 'Let it come, let it be, let it go' in the following way. Here I am, being mindful, practicing meditation, sitting in the middle of my world, and along comes some thought or idea or perception. What I must do is let it arise - here in my consciousness - let it be for a little while and then, when its time is up, let it go out of my consciousness again. I've done it for years, and very useful it has been too.

But now it seems that it isn't like that at all. No, not at all. Rather, there are myriad things arising and staying for a while being experienced by someone and then fizzling out again. The meaning of John's meme is to let that happen. It is not that they are happening to me. They are not coming, being and going, to me. It's all just happening anyway, whether I like it or not. The task is not to prevent it, not to interfere with it, not to suppose that there even is a me who could interfere with it all. Ah."

The problem that I have with Susan's position is that if you don't believe that the Self (or the illusion of Self) has a supernatural cause then you have to believe that it is an evolved characteristic. Either it has evolved through Darwinian natural selection or it is intimately associated with an evolved characteristic. It must have a purpose. To blithely say that we can get rid of it and everything will be fine is taking a big risk.

I used to think that we don't need a Self. That was because I believed in traditional Buddhist and Hindu belief systems. This included the concept of reincarnation: enlightenment means we don't have to reincarnate. Now I no longer accept these belief systems I think people are taking a big risk in playing about with their heads.

You go on intensive meditation retreats and you don't know what you will end up with. It affects different people in different ways. It could be mental illness. You want to risk your mental health? For what? The Truth?

I know that the peak of Everest is the highest point on Earth. I don't need to go there to prove it. I certainly wouldn't want to live there. I know that my Self isn't real. I don't need to spend vast amounts of time and money on intensive meditation retreats to prove it. As for being in a state of no-Self 100% of the time, I wouldn't want it even if it was easy to achieve. I have no reason to believe that it is a superior state of being. I gave up believing that when I gave up believing in reincarnation.

narcissism

I came across something in an article in The Times (saturday review 09/01/21 by David Aaronovitch). It is a review of The Act of Living by Frank Tallis.

"It seems appropriate at the moment when I'm writing this to end with one of the key personality traits identified by psychotherapy: narcissism. We are born thinking we are the alpha and omega. However, Tallis writes, "the infant learns that he or she is not the fulcrum around which everything turns. Other people are not there simply to meet needs and there are limits to his or her powers." The child learns that this is so and has to accept it.

"But Freud warned that it is always possible to slip back, to regress and suddenly find that we are repossessed by the megalomania of infancy." And there we have the narcissist. Whose condition, as the child psychotherapist Melanie Klein wrote, can "mutate into something more monstrous. Narcissistic entitlement can become so grotesque that the affected individual covets more or less everything. The narcissist becomes envious and hateful... Only the narcissist has a right to exist."

Occasionally the worst happens. Such a person becomes a leader and projects his narcissism on to an entire people. And can you imagine what would happen if such a person was to be elected to the most powerful job in the world, the presidency of the United States? You sense it wouldn't end well."

I've never been a big fan of Freud but sometimes he had an insight into human nature. When someone becomes enlightened, it seems to them that everything is part of them. Does this mean that when someone becomes enlightened they become narcissistic, as if only they exist?

The Theosophical Society always said that when we come to know our unity with other human beings we will treat them with respect and the world will be a better place without the problems of violence, manipulation etcetera. Perhaps the opposite is true, that enlightenment makes people manipulative.

Then you have the question of why some enlightened people say they don't have emotions when it's obvious to anyone who meets them that they do. As Daniel M Ingram has written:-

"Why is it that even the few people I do know who claim to have eliminated the internal feeling of all emotions (e.g. Gary Weber, a Vedanta practitioner, who I have just met briefly, and he seemed to be a very nice guy with an interesting message), still totally seem to manifest emotions externally?"

If someone sees an ice cream they may have desire for it. How does that work though for someone who perceives themselves not to be separate from the ice cream, or anything else? Perhaps they have problems registering their own desires. They have problems registering other people's desires and needs. Then they don't care if their actions cause others suffering.

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.

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.

what enlightenment isn't

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

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.

1. overcoming the cycle of birth and rebirth
2. seeing reality instead of illusion
3. personal development

overcoming the cycle of birth and rebirth
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.

Enlightenment explained by brain functioning

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

When I wrote in a previous post that enlightenment 'can be better explained by brain functioning than by Hindu philosophy' I wasn't thinking that it would be possible to locate the specific areas of the brain responsible. Now it seems we might be able to do that.

There are different ways of imaging the brain. One way is to track blood flow. The more active the neurons in a particular area, the greater the blood flow. When someone meditates some areas of the brain become more active. For example, the prefrontal cortex - seat of attention - becomes more active in meditation.

There are a couple of areas of the brain can become less active in meditation. Both of them are towards the top and back of the brain, one in the left hemisphere and one in the right. These are the Orientation Association Areas. They process information about space and time, and the orientation of the body in space. They determine where the body ends and the rest of the world begins. Specifically, the left orientation area creates the sensation of a physically delimited body; the right orientation area creates the sense of the physical space in which the body exists.

Shutting down the right OAA produces a sense of absolute spacelessness and infinite time. Shutting down the left OAA produces a sense of limitless or extinguished self. Going beyond form is explained very nicely by the shutting down of the right OAA. Enlightenment is explained very nicely by the shutting down of the left OAA.

There will be some people who will say that what goes on in the brain is the result of changes on other levels of reality. Our mind exists on a higher level of reality. They will say that enlightenment cannot be explained by changes in brain functioning, but I would not agree with them.

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."