Message 75

San Diego, U.S.A., 5 Oct. 2004

What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment is the light that dawns making clear the limitation of dualistic nature of the thinking apparatus of human beings which unnecessarily creates division between the thinker and the thought, observer and the observed, experiencer and the experienced, spectator and the sight, controller and the controlled, consciousness and the content of the consciousness. This limitation sabotages an impartial, holistic, detached, free and effortless process of pure experiencing, pure insight, pure observation, pure thinking, natural control, unbiased analytical and rational faculty thus preventing to leap to another level of consciousness where the Reality, which is not ‘I-ness’ (experience) but ‘Is-ness’ (existential emptiness) resides!

This consciousness with which we are familiar and is felt with such conspicuousness, can not capture the ‘otherness’ under any circumstances because of overwhelming involvement and preoccupation with ‘thisness’. There are, however, flashes of ‘otherness’ when ‘thisness’ somehow gets abandoned occasionally!

The flash is grasped by a kind of shock shattering the separative consciousness.

The way of enlightenment is the way of our daily life, watching the daily living in a state of wisdom which means no watcher! Watcher prevents wisdom by its past prejudices, pressures, pretensions and pursuits. Enlightenment happens under the sky, not in the meditation halls run by ‘spiritual’ scoundrels and ‘religious’ rascals! The challenge of enlightenment is to meet each moment with clarity without any pre-concepts and pre-determined conclusions. Comprehension is not reached by climbing a ladder of concepts. Perception is not paradox of postulates. ‘Here and now’, not hypotheses and notions, is the dynamism of Enlightenment. It is the aesthetic spirit of awareness, not ambition and achievement!

Diversity for performing daily tasks and for daily living is sabotaged by attachment through psychological recording in addition to the necessary technical recording by the memory. Then ‘I’ springs up as the aggregate of psychological investments, positive or negative, that is, attachment or aversion, likes or dislikes, justifications or condemnations, pleasant or unpleasant, profitable or not profitable. Now this garbage ‘I’ imagines a separate and godly ‘I’, an individual soul, a supersoul, i.e. a ‘higher self’, ready for the Saviour, success, sin and Salvation and so on! These illusions perpetuate the split in the consciousness, the duality, the opposites, the choices, the separation generating demands, desires, cravings, fears, dependencies, belief-systems and bigotry, conflicts, wars and so on.

The garbage ‘I’ seeks to glorify, grandise, gratify itself through ideals, holy concepts, heaven, high sounding phrases, ‘culture’, nationalism, internationalism, God, ‘no-God’, Enlightenment, peace, conquest of evil, communism, capitalism and on and on!

Diversity is sabotaged by psychological residues in the technical recording by the memory, thus giving rise to an ‘I-ness’ and, in turn, this ‘I-ness’ is perpetuated by the duality of a spurious higher and permanent ‘I’ as against the lower ‘I’. But the higher self is the lower self. The Saint is the Sinner! Allowing this duality to disappear by a total inaction on the part of the ‘I’ is to allow the advent of the divinity. This is the most sacred mutation, the radical change, the fundamental transformation in the psyche and the absolute and unconditional freedom of humanity from sorrow and suffering.

Enlightenment is like a toilet paper which cleanses you by making itself dirty. Throw it and flush out immediately. Otherwise, it would become an experience and start stinking and spread pollutions all around!

JAI ATMASAKSHATKAR!

Download the Message in PDF format:  Message 75: What is Enlightenment?; (English)