Jan 28, 2005, 12.00am IST
Andrew Cohen.
What is enlightenment? The person who is truly enlightened has directly experienced the ultimate or absolute nature of life itself. In that revelation, he has seen far beyond the boundaries of the personal self and discovered the universal nature of all his human experience. That explosive realisation liberates the self from the perpetual tyranny of being trapped in a relationship to life that is merely personal. Enlightenment is a condition in which the individual has come to the end of a fundamentally self-centred relationship to life.
What do you mean by the term 'absolute'? Absolute means free from limitations. Those who directly experience enlightenment find themselves infused with a consciousness that transcends time, a consciousness that was never born and therefore is free from death. They experience that which is immortal. They are no longer fundamentally limited by the conditioned human personality that they have exclusively identified with since the body was born.
Does it happen gradually, or instantly? It really depends upon the individual. But it doesn't matter whether it happens instantaneously or gradually. The only important thing is that it happens. Because as long as we are self-centred, lost in that which is merely personal, we are simply not going to be available.
Available for what? Available to manifest the profound and extraordinary evolutionary potential that in most of us lies dormant. This suffering world is in dire need of truly conscious beings — human beings who know who they are and why they are here.
But wouldn't moving beyond the personal discount many important aspects of human life? Absolutely not. The enlightened condition in no way denies any aspect of our humanity. The condition enlightens it. It means that our perspective dramatically deepens and widens. The perspective of the one who has not awakened is limited by definition. The reference point for all of his personal experience is the separate ego. But the perspective of the one who has awakened is free from this fundamental limitation because he has realised the absolute nature of life and the universal nature of his own human experience. And that changes everything. It transforms his relationship to being alive because the context in which he is living now infinitely transcends the merely personal dimension.
Therefore, the question I encourage people to ask themselves is: How enlightened is my perspective on my own personal experience? So would we see all our experience in a much, much bigger context? Yes. And that bigger context reveals itself automatically when we make the thrilling discovery that who and what we are, beyond the personal ego, is a profound mystery that is completely free from any sense of limitation. A truly enlightened human being spontaneously expresses that freedom from limitation as his own humanity. Indeed, simply through spending time in the company of the enlightened, we can awaken to that same mystery that is also our own true nature. In their reflection, it becomes obvious how, in our ignorance, we have been living in an alarmingly small context. And we see directly that it is that small context alone which creates the painful sense of suffocation and isolation that is so familiar in the unawakened state. The miraculous experiential discovery of the enlightened perspective is instantly liberating. And it is in this discovery that our humanity is finally set free to manifest its evolutionary potential without inhibition.
Andrew Cohen.
What is enlightenment? The person who is truly enlightened has directly experienced the ultimate or absolute nature of life itself. In that revelation, he has seen far beyond the boundaries of the personal self and discovered the universal nature of all his human experience. That explosive realisation liberates the self from the perpetual tyranny of being trapped in a relationship to life that is merely personal. Enlightenment is a condition in which the individual has come to the end of a fundamentally self-centred relationship to life.
What do you mean by the term 'absolute'? Absolute means free from limitations. Those who directly experience enlightenment find themselves infused with a consciousness that transcends time, a consciousness that was never born and therefore is free from death. They experience that which is immortal. They are no longer fundamentally limited by the conditioned human personality that they have exclusively identified with since the body was born.
Does it happen gradually, or instantly? It really depends upon the individual. But it doesn't matter whether it happens instantaneously or gradually. The only important thing is that it happens. Because as long as we are self-centred, lost in that which is merely personal, we are simply not going to be available.
Available for what? Available to manifest the profound and extraordinary evolutionary potential that in most of us lies dormant. This suffering world is in dire need of truly conscious beings — human beings who know who they are and why they are here.
But wouldn't moving beyond the personal discount many important aspects of human life? Absolutely not. The enlightened condition in no way denies any aspect of our humanity. The condition enlightens it. It means that our perspective dramatically deepens and widens. The perspective of the one who has not awakened is limited by definition. The reference point for all of his personal experience is the separate ego. But the perspective of the one who has awakened is free from this fundamental limitation because he has realised the absolute nature of life and the universal nature of his own human experience. And that changes everything. It transforms his relationship to being alive because the context in which he is living now infinitely transcends the merely personal dimension.
Therefore, the question I encourage people to ask themselves is: How enlightened is my perspective on my own personal experience? So would we see all our experience in a much, much bigger context? Yes. And that bigger context reveals itself automatically when we make the thrilling discovery that who and what we are, beyond the personal ego, is a profound mystery that is completely free from any sense of limitation. A truly enlightened human being spontaneously expresses that freedom from limitation as his own humanity. Indeed, simply through spending time in the company of the enlightened, we can awaken to that same mystery that is also our own true nature. In their reflection, it becomes obvious how, in our ignorance, we have been living in an alarmingly small context. And we see directly that it is that small context alone which creates the painful sense of suffocation and isolation that is so familiar in the unawakened state. The miraculous experiential discovery of the enlightened perspective is instantly liberating. And it is in this discovery that our humanity is finally set free to manifest its evolutionary potential without inhibition.
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