Q. Which path must one use to reach enlightenment?
A. Any path and perhaps sometimes no path at all. It is well known that many practices, even things like sport, singing, performing, and dancing, take the brain into the alpha and theta brainwave states that, if done enough times, may lead to a permanent experience of blissful well being. It is another common misconception. We think only those that describe the experience like us or follow our path can be enlightened. It is divisive nonsense. All methods are a means to the same result, just like many different sports can create the same joy in the observers and participants. People of many faiths, no faiths, all character types, all backgrounds, all colours, creeds and sexualities are enlightened. Anyone that thinks there is a tightly defined, special path above all else with only a few enlightened beings at the end of it, are incorrect.
Use whichever path works for you. Perhaps use your own. No one else’s teachings are the same as my internal path nor will yours be the same as mine. I modified what worked for me based on my knowledge and experience. No one was as accurately able to describe what I experience, and I don’t think anyone else can do that for you.
Q. You say you need to set asides years of personal dedication to enlightenment, yet this is surely impossible in today’s life.
A. Listen to how often politicians mention the word growth today, then listen to how often it is in reference to the economy instead of people, and you’ll see the problem.
Today’s lifestyle is one shaped around flawed methods to desperately try and sustain well being through buying things, success, love, family, status, intoxication and entertainment. Such a society is mirror of the current state of human consciousness itself. It has people looking for lasting happiness through outside objects because either they have been deliberately kept from the truth about human potential for the benefit of the few, or that the real potential state of mankind/the mind is genuinely only known to a few.
The modern lifestyle leaves very little time for anything else — for any evolution or cultivation of real inner peace — because it’s all about your time being taken by others, doing, and things. All that stuff is fine, but it’s the icing on the cake – not the cake!
The current financial system is geared to pay a government that is indebted to a central bank, itself owned by a few private individuals. What is going on is a game of the funnelling and stripping of resources to the privileged few via a system them set up centuries ago, when there is enough to really go around for everyone. The real losers are the human race and the environment in our relentless quest for “growth”. Our current societal structure is one that resembles that of utter savages and is either designed to or inadvertently makes you into a learned robot, filling your head with a useless education and useless desires and needs as you attempt to escape a debt-based system to free yourself in order to find peace.
The system isn’t bad; it’s how it’s set up to benefit a few hundred people in the world that it is bad. Everyone else does their best to get along with it to varying degrees. If you find a job and love it, do that, but be aware it can’t ever deliver what is promised. Don’t expect the system to change anytime soon; like everything else, the system has its own energy and its own momentum.
In today’s world, one can practice but may struggle to obtain a permanent state of bliss/enlightenment whilst working and raising a family. I’d suggest use of aids, such as binaural beats and isochronic tones, as much as possible if you are low on time. In years to come, as people’s understanding grows, the system will no longer exist in it’s its current rotten state; if you can, reject its flawed methodology and make your money doing what you love, alongside your quest for inner peace.
Q. I have heard teachers say “forget about enlightenment.” What do you say?
A. Whenever I hear “do this” or “do that,” we enter the world of the relative. Forget or don’t forget, listen to me or to them,and find out what remains no matter what cause of action you take, practice being that. And, again, that becomes a relative instruction. Do you see the difficulty of articulating the starting point?
Q. Is there a final question or set of questions to gain enlightenment?
A. I don’t think so because really it’s a game of physical change in the brain/mind. Perhaps for the very ripe devotee after hours of practice who is happily in bliss most of the time, but for me, these questions and understanding them is often the start not the end. These questions might include “Can the perceiver be perceived? Will the consciousness/the absolute you be there after “you” are gone? Does this consciousness/the absolute you belong to “you” your brain/mind alone?” But, more so than these questions, it is a matter of practice.
Q. I have heard advice, stop the search because there is nothing you have to do. You are free already and already enlightened. Is this true?
A. The observer, that which cannot be observed, is already there/ the act of being mindful can be done right away. On an absolute level it is true; however, no amount of such advice will really help enlighten anyone. The brain is as it is right now. You can’t magically change it’s structure! That is where brain plasticity, and intention, effort and focus come into play. No matter what you understand, if bliss is not there, it is not there; that is a fact. By being that which allows the mind, is unabsorbed in it or observes it, you become more and more able to experience that absolute factor. Then total bliss floods your being at every waking second of every day, no matter what the relative energy of the mind does.
Q. I have heard many people say enlightenment is just a deep acceptance of every moment, seeing there is nothing but life itself, a sort of perception free state that comes when you stop the search, with all temporary states rejected. Is that true?
A. If this was genuine enlightenment, then there you go, you have it. You are enlightened just by reading that sentence and doing that. These sort of methods are a Western way, we make something to be knowledge, we think we have to “get something” alone and the job is done. I call this “intellectual enlightenment.” All such a teacher is doing is outlining that you are conscious – alive – able to observe all else. I don’t doubt the intentions of such teachings and teachers, but they ignore something vital, the physiological underpinnings of all of this, regarding the brain and the plasticity of the brain itself. If your brain has high levels of beta brainwaves, it can’t just drop them or slot out of them any more than you can unlearn how to drive, – play tennis or write!
Thus, they ignore something vital – practice in order that one day no practice is required.
Enlightenment is highly experiential. It exists as the most blissful state, way of being, known to the human race just as the un-enlightened state is experiential too. I will be very clear what I mean by enlightenment. Full enlightenment is a 100% absolutely blissful state of being at all times along proper ethical understanding of protection of the well-being of all. Nothing less. Entering permanent bliss is total and utter paradise incomparable to the like of anything any regular person has ever experienced and totally untouched by anything that is occurring in the mind, a pure elixir.
Enlightenment is not “normal” with all the usual hallmarks of the human condition and just thinking, “accept everything as it is.” If it was, millions are enlightened with no practice. Very few experience the bliss of the absolute – it takes practice to tune into it. If you need to reject every state, all one is doing is saying, “I am conscious” no matter what – and one can do that with very little changes in the brainwaves or the structure of the brain. It’s very easy to do that, this is the “impersonal seer” vein of enlightenment, which promises real enlightenment can be got instantly, and it is only the thought that it cannot be got that stands in the way. Again, all such a teacher is saying when teaching instant impersonal seer enlightenment is really you are alive/aware/able to observe your mind.
The absolute is ultimately the relative and the absolute, being one or the other alone, implies some sort of limitation on the limitless. The absolute, once absorbed in itself fully, is not affected one bit by the relative. So, there is a stage beyond the purely absolute – the absolute can be non dual and dual, impersonal and personal, at the very same time.
No, there is one state you should not reject — the real bliss of the self/the absolute you — and one you should — anything that seems to obscure it — is not it. Enlightenment is evolution of the human condition of the human race, through the use of time, evidenced in changes in the brain/mind via the habit mechanism. All you need are the methods, and then the intention, and the understanding it may well take years to reach the bliss of absolute nirvana. Effort is needed until none is required. Evolution doesn’t take place over minutes, it takes years. Anything else is greed. The fact is can be done in years itself is a miracle!
Q. What are the requirements for one to become enlightened?
A. A lot of free time preferably free of pressing obligation, and busyness, an understanding of how habits and the mind work, an extreme devotion/motivation, usually deep suffering of some sort, understanding of methods, correct, timely and continual application, the dedication to protect oneself and all others from suffering.
Learn Bliss 