Never Mind - A Journey into Non-duality by Liquorman Wayne

Author:Liquorman, Wayne [Liquorman, Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0929448219
Publisher: Advaita Press
Published: 2012-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Socrates

PARTIAL AWAKENING OR

SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION?

There is a prevalent notion that there can be awakening or Realization that comes and goes and finally stabilizes after some time. I do not believe that there is such a thing as “partial realization.” I recognize there is seeking. I recognize there is intellectual understanding and there is spiritual experience, both of which are progressive and cumulative. And I recognize there is the final understanding, which is sudden, irrevocable, and after which there can be no further process, in the same way that you cannot be “more dead.” You can only be dead; you can’t be dead plus. Once dead, there is no question of stabilizing into your deadness. And realization, or the final understanding, is exactly like that.

In my definition of this final understanding, gradual or evolutionary enlightenment is not possible. What that refers to is this unveiling process of seeking in which you have spiritual insights. In that stage, there are often very real spiritual experiences in which you know the oneness of things. Such experiences ebb, and then they often come back again. That’s what I call the process of spiritual seeking. This process has been redefined as enlightenment or awakening. In fact, much of the modern satsang movement is based on that model of spiritual experience being called enlightenment. So, after the seeker’s spiritual experience has been officially declared enlightenment by someone who had their spiritual experience declared to be enlightenment by someone else who once flew over Lucknow, they are enlisted to go teach that to others as being awakening or enlightenment.

Part of the appeal of such a model is that the goal of virtually every seeker is to gain this enlightenment. Therefore, if you tell them that they gained it, they’re happy because they’re getting what they wanted, and they are delighted with the teacher for giving it to them. If they’re honest and they say, “Well, this enlightenment, this thing that was so profound and important seems to have gone or ebbed,” then the teacher says, “Well, it isn’t really gone, you’re just settling into it. You’re just learning your new spiritual body. Your physical being is learning how to accept it” or some similar explanation often accompanied by a supporting quote from a sage who has been dead long enough to no longer be controversial. Implicit in the notion that enlightenment is progressive is that enlightenment is a state—an experiential state. The pointer in this teaching is that it is not an experiential state; an experiential state is by its nature transitory. If you’re experiencing something, it will change. The very basis of duality is change. It’s integral to experience. In fact, what we call life is movement and change. In the absence of this movement, when it’s localized in an organism, that state is what we call death.

So in terms of the experience of life, the states of life are always alternating, but this is not what is pointed to in this teaching as enlightenment.

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