Here is how Jean Klein puts it:

“…it lies beyond duality and cannot be grasped by language. One can however, endeavor to describe it by saying that the realized man is one who has reached a pure and full consciousness of ‘I am’. For the ordinary man, such a consciousness is always confused because it is impure, that is to say, accompanied by qualifications. ‘I am this or that’, ‘I have to deal with this or that’. In reality this ‘I am’ is ever there, it can’t be otherwise. It accompanies each and every state. To return to the ‘I am’ in its complete purity, there is no other way than the total elimination of everything that accompanies it: objects, states. Then that consciousness which hitherto used to turn to the innumerable companions of the ‘I am’, sees them all to be lifeless, finds itself, and realizes its own everlasting splendor.”
[Be Who You Are, Jean Klein translated Mary Mann, Non-Duality Press, 2006, ISBN-10: 0955176255, ISBN-13: 978-0955176258]

 Unfortunately, between hearing this and knowing it to be true, there seems to be a very large, if not insurmountable, gap. How do we bridge it? Here is what Dhanya says:

 “Taking my existence/conscious self to be the body/mind is the most traumatic experience there is. There is nothing worse, and it is completely untrue.

 “But if someone walks up to you and says those words, I'm not sure that they would help. You would have to feel the person knew what they were talking about, and that they were not crazy or deluded, and be open to hearing and wanting to know what they had to say.

 “If all of the above criteria were met you might ask that person: ‘If you know that I am not the body/mind, and if you know that you are not the body/mind; if that is your direct experiential knowledge, is it possible that I can know the same thing? And, if so, how I can I know it? Can you actually prove to me and show me that what you are saying is true?’

 “Although there is nothing you can do to become who you are (because you are already that), there is something you can do to know who you really are.

 “Although you don't know it now, you can know it, because you are here to be known. The truth is here to be known. It is only a matter of having someone, whom you trust and who is skillful, logically point out to you certain incontrovertible facts about yourself and the nature of your experience, and then giving your mind time to assimilate those facts. Then you yourself will recognize the truth.

 “The end of becoming is knowing that you never could, and never have, become anything in the first place other than what you already are. And what you already are has never been subject to becoming ever. “ (Read the complete article at http://advaita-academy.org/talks/The-End-of-Becoming.ashx.)

 David Carse nicely expresses this paradox:
“There is a sense in which there is no ‘awakening’, no enlightenment, because there is no ‘one’ to awaken. Who would this be? Who is awakened?

 “’Me’, david? Of course not: david is a dream character, an idea, a fiction; not the dreamer, and therefore obviously cannot awaken. There is no ‘david’ to do anything, including awaken.

 “Or is it ‘Who I Really Am’ that has ‘awakened’; Presence, Awareness, All That Is?

 “But of course Awareness has never been asleep, has no need to awaken to anything; Awareness is always already All There Is.

 “Clearly then, there is no one to awaken. ‘Awakening’ is only an analogy, a concept, a pointer. The seeker community tends to take it literally, but like most analogies it only takes you so far.

 “What has happened is more like this: in the dream, in the case of the dream character ‘david’, All That Is stops pretending that ‘It’ is asleep. What has always been awake lets the misunderstanding that there is someone to be asleep and someone to awaken, fall away.

 “That is all. And the dream continues as before. The misunderstanding has fallen away but the misunderstanding was not real anyway, so what has happened? Nothing. The dream character ‘david’ now knows he is only a dream, not ‘real’; knows it is all a dream. But this dream character’s ‘knowing’ is part of the dream, part of the unfolding of the script of the dream for that dream character, and nothing has happened. The dream character goes on being the dream character.” [Perfect Brilliant Stillness, David Carse, Non-Duality Press, 2005. ISBN 0954779282.]

 This is the neo-advaitin way of putting things, using familiar language and not requiring a lifetime’s study of obscure, sometimes seemingly religious texts. To someone who is familiar with the concepts of advaita, his way of putting things can certainly be appreciated. To someone who is not, it may leave many questions unanswered and lead to the belief that seeking of any sort is futile. ‘I’ the dream character cannot do anything and ‘I’ as Awareness need not do anything. (And how can a non-dual reality have ‘dreams’?)

 Both neo-advaita and direct path advaita suffer from this problem, essentially trying to talk about the non-dual reality, when this is not possible. Traditional advaita utilizes two ‘levels’ of reality in explanation – paramArtha and vyavahAra. Neo-advaita tries to ‘explain’ everything purely from the pAramArthika standpoint. Direct path attempts to conflate the two.

 Ultimately, traditional teaching, too, comes up against such paradoxes. Ramana Maharshi makes not dissimilar statements: “The ‘I’ casts off the illusion of ‘I’ and yet remains an ‘I’. Such is the paradox of Self-realization. The realized do not see any contradiction in it.” But, with a few thousand years of experience behind it, it has built up a totally logical framework for such ideas. Starting out from our everyday, dualistic experience, it takes us to total Self-knowledge, i.e. enlightenment.

 Shankara says that, “though the Self is void of all modifications, it is imagined through nescience, in the form of non-discrimination from the modifications of mind, to be the perceiver of sounds and other objects brought before the mind. Similarly, the same Self, which is in reality beyond all changes of state, is called ‘enlightened’ on account of discriminative knowledge separating the Self from the non-self, even though such knowledge is only a modification of the mind and is illusory in character (and implies no real change of state).” [Bhagavad Gita bhAShya II.21, as translated and presented in Shankara on Enlightenment (A Shankara Source Book Volume 6), compiled and translated by A. J. Alston,  Shanti Sadan, 2004. ISBN 0-85424-060-8. Purchase from Shanti Sadan - http://www.shanti-sadan.org/]

 Simply wanting to become enlightened is of no use unless one understands that this means the acquisition of Self-knowledge. Swami Dayananda explains this:

“With so many concepts of mokSha available, a mere desire for mokSha is not good enough. It must be converted into jij~nAsA, a desire to know. This is very important. This conversion means recognizing the fact that mokSha is in the form of knowledge, which is to be gained here in this life. So mokSha is not later or elsewhere.

 “Conversion of one’s desire for mokSha into jij~nAsA implies a certain cognitive change. To begin with, one has some idea about mokSha, which may not be more than a belief. When one thoroughly exposes oneself to the teaching, there is the possibility of discerning that the mokSha is in the form of knowledge alone and not in any other form.” [vivekachUDAmaNi – Talks on 108 Selected Verses, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Sri Gangadharesvar Trust, 1997. No ISBN. Purchase from http://books.arshavidya.org/]

 As I have put it elsewhere:
“The Self is already ‘enlightened.’ There is nothing that can or need be done to alter this fact. The problem is simply the mind and, in its ignorance, the identification with something limited, be it mind, body, role or whatever. Accordingly, to remove that ignorance, knowledge is needed and this process is all at the level of mind in the phenomenal world. When sufficient knowledge has been acquired, the ignorance is dissolved and the mind realizes that already existent truth. But nothing has actually changed.

“Possibly a metaphor from the Zen tradition is as good as any, describing enlightenment as ‘the gateless gate.’ From the viewpoint of the seeker, there appears to be a gate through which one must pass in order to ‘become enlightened’ but, from the viewpoint of the ‘realized man’ looking back, there never was a gate. Enlightenment is gaining the knowledge that we are already free.

 “Believing that we are not enlightened, we are necessarily imagining enlightenment to be a ‘state,’ something that will be achieved or gained at some future time (if we are good, practice meditation regularly etc. or if we meet the right guru who will somehow transmit the knowledge to us). But we have already seen that Advaita defines reality as that which is not bound by time. It must already be the case and therefore cannot be a state. If, during the process of seeking, we encounter novel states of heightened awareness, mental clarity and so on, these can have nothing to do with enlightenment.” [Back to the Truth, Dennis Waite, O Books, 2007, ISBN 1905047614.]

The pramANa, the source of this knowledge, is the scriptures – the Upanishads and the texts written by AchArya-s such as Shankara. And someone familiar with these texts (and ideally someone who is themselves enlightened) is needed to explain them and answer questions. Many modern teachers disparage the scriptures. How can reading these possibly be of any help when it comes to something like enlightenment?

 Here is how Stig Lundgren justifies this:

 Q: Reading a book about swimming cannot make you an expert swimmer. How, therefore, can reading the upaniShad-s make one enlightened?

 A: This is not a valid analogy. It is true that you cannot learn swimming by just reading books on how to swim. This is because reading or hearing about swimming does not give you direct knowledge about swimming. But the upaniShad-s actually give direct knowledge on Atman, and this is clearly pointed out by Adi Shankara.

 I guess you are familiar with the story about the Swami and his disciples crossing a river. When arriving on the other shore, the Swami counted his disciples and it turned out that only nine persons had successfully crossed the river! He counted all his disciples over and over again, concluding: "There is one missing. We are only nine people, and it should be ten!" Then a stranger walked by. He overheard the conversation, and said to the Swami: "But there are actually ten persons. You have forgot to count yourself. You are that tenth person!" From the uttering of these words, the Swami at once realized that he was the tenth person.

 Well, the words of the stranger gave the Swami direct knowledge about himself as the tenth man. He didn’t have to put this knowledge into practice or anything. The very understanding came immediately by the words of the stranger. shravaNa gave him perfect knowledge, because he was the tenth man from the very beginning. He did not become the tenth man.

 This is also the case regarding the knowledge of Atman. You are Atman, you are not becoming Atman. But due to avidyA you are wrongly identifying yourself with your body, your senses, your feelings, your thoughts etc. shruti gives you direct knowledge of Atman, because it enlightens you on what you actually are, not what you are about to become. Realizing your true nature (Atman/brahman) is not about creating anything. j~nAna is just dispelling your superimpositions and thereby your misconceptions.

 You surely have to swim in order to learn swimming; you have to practice and not just read books on the subject. But this is because learning how to swim is about gaining something which was not there from the beginning. You have to get outside of yourself, so to speak, in order to learn how to swim. Swimming is not your true nature, and this is the reason why just reading books doesn’t work when learning how to swim. Books on swimming are not sufficient, because learning how to swim is not a matter of dispelling the ignorance of something which was there from the beginning.

 Gaining knowledge about something is usually a matter of a subject (you) learning about something external (swimming, or the taste of sugar). But regarding knowledge of the absolute (Atman/brahman), the case is different: You are about to realize your true nature, and hence there is no such thing as subject and an external object. You are realizing yourself, you own true nature.

 Perfect knowledge rises when avidyA is dispelled. It is not a matter of getting control over your thoughts, feelings etc. You can attain perfect control over your mind, but you will still be ignorant of your true self, Atman. Knowledge is not about getting perfect control of the mind. The mind is actually within the realm of avidyA, and accordingly brahmavidyA implies the dispelling of mind! Hence, the expression "the mind is under complete control" is valid only when you are still ignorant and within the realm of avidyA.

 Adi Shankara says that samAdhi is subject to the same conditions as deep-sleep: You are ignorant before sleep/samAdhi and when you wake up (or come out of samAdhi) you will still be ignorant. SamAdhi does not dispel avidyA. In his adhyAsa bhAShya (preamble to brahmasUtra bhAShya), Shankara says that avidyA = adhyAsa = mithyA j~nAna (false conception or error). Hence, dispelling avidyA is the same as dispelling your superimpositions and wrong knowledge of the Self. According to Shankara, this is the purpose of the upaniShad-s. So, shruti is the pramANa - not samAdhi, thought control or the like.

[Read the complete discourse at http://advaita-academy.org/talks/The-Role-of-Scriptures-in-Enlightenment.ashx]  

“Enlightenment is coming to the end of the search for enlightenment.” - Greg Goode

 “The plainest and simplest way of putting it is this: ‘I had mistaken myself to be a thinker, doer, perceiver, and enjoyer. That misconception has disappeared.’” - Atmananda Krishna Menon

A couple of years ago, at my old website, I began a quarterly journal aimed at presenting a number of key issues in Advaita. These were never actually published on the site and the circulation list for the journals was less than 100. So virtually no one has seen these essays. I did think of revamping them into formal essays but I think the existing style (aimed to be very readable, as with ‘Book of One’, but also containing lots of articles, book extracts, quotations etc from other teachers and writers as in ‘Back to the Truth’) will appeal to most readers and I think that they merit a wider audience. Accordingly, over the next few months, I will be revisiting and re-presenting them in these blogs.

 The articles are aimed at all serious seekers of the truth and will emphasize the traditional advaita approach but also include writing from western satsang and neo-advaitin teachers as well as classical Indian sources. Sanskrit terms will be introduced only occasionally, where there is no good English equivalent, to avoid potential confusion or to help familiarize readers with terms that will be encountered frequently in the literature.

 The first topic, then, is that of 'Enlightenment', which is after all the presumed aim of all readers of such material. The word akhaNDAkAra means 'form of the whole'. AkAra means 'form, shape, appearance'; akhaNDa means 'entire, whole' (a means 'not', khaNDa means 'broken, deficient, fragmented'). So, what happens on enlightenment is that the previous mental disposition of believing ourselves to be separate and limited is replaced by the realization that we are the unlimited whole - brahman.

 This realization takes place in the mind of a person at a moment in time but the irony is that, once it has occurred, it is then known that who-we-really-are is timeless and mindless.

 Swami Paramarthananda tells a story about a game he used to play as a child. He and his friends would take a child into a room that was entirely empty and they would place pillows about the room and stand the child up against one wall. He was told to memorize the positions of the pillows and then they blindfolded him. He was then told that he had to cross the room to the other wall without touching any of the pillows. The other children then watched as he very carefully edged his way forward. Whenever they laughed, he would retreat and move sideways before trying again. Eventually he reached the other wall and was allowed to remove the blindfold. He then discovered that all of the pillows had been removed before he began and that he had been moving across an empty floor trying to avoid non-existent objects.

 And Swami Paramarthananda says that mokSha or liberation is like this. As seekers, we make our way through life trying to avoid all the pitfalls of self-ignorance and arrive at the other wall of self-knowledge and enlightenment. But when we attain enlightenment, we realize that there never were any obstacles to begin with. In a sense, the ignorance was non-existent – the truth is that tat tvam asi, 'thou art That' already.

 Ramana Maharshi has a similar story:

“Our real nature is mukti (liberation). But we are imagining that we are bound and are making various strenuous attempts to become free, while we are all the time free. This will be understood only when we reach that stage. We will be surprised that we frantically were trying to attain something which we have always been and are. An illustration will make this clear. A man goes to sleep in this hall. He dreams he has gone on a world tour, is roaming over hill and dale, forest and country, desert and sea, across various continents and, after many years of weary and strenuous travel returns to this country and walks into this hall. Just at that moment he wakes up and finds he has not moved an inch, but was sleeping where he lay down. He has not returned after great effort to the hall but is and always has been in the hall. It is exactly like that. If it be asked why being free we imagine we are bound, I answer ‘Why being in this hall did you imagine you were on a world adventure, crossing hill, dale, desert and sea?’ It is all mind or mAyA (the world illusion).”
[Quoted in the book ‘Be As You Are. The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi’, edited by David Godman, Arkana 1985. ISBN 0-14-019062-7]

 Enlightenment is not an experience at all. As I pointed out in ‘Enlightenment: the Path Through The Jungle’:

1. Enlightenment is not about 'experiencing the Self' - otherwise everyone would be enlightened. It is not about experience at all, it is about self-knowledge - the direct knowledge that you are already that which you seek. (See 25 - 97.)
2. Nor is enlightenment itself an experience - experiences come and go. Enlightenment is not temporary - once it happens, that is it. Consequently, if you had an experience and wonder whether you are now enlightened, you can be sure that you are not. Also, there is no need for a seeker to try to recapture a ‘good’ experience, thinking that it was somehow closer to enlightenment than the usual ‘bad’ experiences. (See 102 to 104)

Wayne Liquorman uses a good metaphor to explain this, which he records in his book ‘Acceptance of What IS – A Book About Nothing, Advaita Press, 2000. ISBN 0-929448-19-7’. You may be familiar with those old ‘grandfather’ clocks which have a pendulum as the motive force and this pendulum often has a weight on the shaft that you can move up and down to alter the frequency of the swing. He imagines this pendulum swinging from one side to the other, with one extent of the swing representing happiness and the opposite representing misery. Or one being health and the other sickness, or any of the other opposites to which the body-mind is prone.

 He says that when we are completely identified with this process, we are equivalent to the weight being as far down the shaft as possible, swinging through the maximum degree of movement, from ecstatic to the depths of despair. If we become more aware of what is happening and therefore less identified with the body and mind, the weight is as though shifted further up the shaft and thus the arc measured out by each swing is less and our emotional ‘swings’ are less intense. Sometimes, our detachment can be such that we observe all of the excesses of life around us but are quite unmoved – this is equivalent to pushing the weight right to the top of the shaft, where there is scarcely any movement. But this remains an experience. Wayne says:

 “This experience may last five minutes, or ten minutes, or a day, or a week. Maybe it’ll last a month or six months. If you’re very, very lucky it could last quite a while. But what’s crucial to understand is that this experience at the very top of the pendulum is an experience in phenomenality, even though it’s impersonal. It is still an experience. It has substance. It has characteristics. You can say it’s great. Therefore, there’s something there. That means it exists in phenomenality. And anything that exists in phenomenality has one basic quality to it: it’s subject to change, it will change. It carries within itself the very seed of its opposite.”

 ‘What goes up must come down’, as they say, so that such a ‘high’ is inevitably succeeded by a low. Because enlightenment is not an experience, in terms of the metaphor, anywhere on the pendulum is still identification with being an experiencer in the world, even if this is that of an observer near the top, rather than a participant near the bottom. Enlightenment is rather the ‘positioning’ of oneself at the fulcrum of the pendulum. He goes on to say:

 “Now the fulcrum is that upon which the pendulum moves. The fulcrum is crucial to all the movement. Without it there is no movement. But the thing about the fulcrum is that nothing happens there. There is no movement there. There is nothing going on. There is no subject-object relationship, which is what movement is. There is just the Oneness.”

 This, then, is the metaphor and many seekers seem to think that there actually is a radical change from seeing the world as separate and dualistic, literally to seeing the ‘oneness in everything’. But it is not quite like this. When we wake up from a dream, we no longer see the dream creation at all and know it for what it was – a creation of our mind. But the world is not a creation of our mind. It is, if you like, a creation of the cosmic mind – Ishvara. Just as the sun still appears to rise and set, even after we have acquired the knowledge that this appearance is caused by the rotation of the earth, so the world-appearance continues after enlightenment.

 Enlightenment is the acquiring of the Self-knowledge that the non-dual brahman is the sole reality; that the world is mithyA; and that I, the jIva, am non-other than brahman. (This is the translation of the sentence that sums up the teaching of Shankara: brahma satyam, jaganmithyA, jIvo brahmaiva nAparaH.) Afterwards, the appearance of the world continues but I know, without the shadow of a doubt, that it is all simply name and form of brahman.

 This was the always the case – before enlightenment as well as after. Nothing has actually changed. There were no pillows in the room that I was crossing in the journey of ‘seeking’. But, as far as my mind is concerned, the outlook has totally changed. It has taken on ‘the form of the whole’ and I now know that I was never a separate entity in an alien world. I now know that I am ‘everything’.

 One might be tempted, then, to say (as some neo-advaitin teachers do) that there is not really any problem at all. After all, it is true that we are ‘already free’. But there is a very real problem, namely that we believe we are ‘bound’. We think we are the aging, ailing body or the mind losing its acuity and memory. We believe that happiness will only be gained through becoming rich, meeting the ideal partner and so on. As it is usually put, we are ‘identified’ with these or with the roles that we happen to be playing in life. Enlightenment entails the realization that I am not ‘a man’ or ‘a writer’; not a body or mind but simply ‘I am’.

To be continued…