ELEMENTS OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Joan P. LaMontagne, PhD.

Consciousness is the next continent of exploration. Many people have had unusual or mysterious experiences of consciousness and wondered about what they mean or why they occurred. I too have had such an experience that, although it lasted only two hours, has been the most profound experience of my life.
For 12 years I had been taking a college course or two in psychology while I raised my family of four children. One day I discovered I had enough units to obtain my Master’s Degree. The deadline was May 4, I remember, when I laid my thesis on the library office desk.

I was driving home on the freeway full of relief and happiness. Suddenly my consciousness shifted into another state of consciousness that I had never before experienced. My awareness expanded to include everyone and everything in the whole world, including the drivers in the other cars. My body extended to the horizons of the earth, as if I identified with every pain and joy of the world. My body was also flooded with ecstasy, not specifically sexual, but exponentially more pleasurable than any experience I had ever had, flowing through every cell of my body. I was in love with the whole world. I knew I was experiencing something extraordinary, and although I felt in perfect control of my car, I drove up the next off-ramp in order to stop and fully experience this moment. I parked on a little tree-lined street in a miscellaneous neighborhood. I threw my head back in the driver’s seat and laughed and laughed and laughed. “So, Jesus” I said out loud; “You said there was a Kingdom of Heaven, and THIS IS IT!” I could hardly believe the beauty and fulfillment of my Presence. I just sat there in it for a while appreciating the magnificence of the moment. Finally, reluctantly, I started the car and headed for the freeway home.

No one was home for me to share with, so I walked down and sat on the sea wall by the bay. The late afternoon lighted the water with pink and gold. As I viewed the lovely homes across the bay that I had often eyed with envy, now I felt that I knew the people in each house, that I understood them and was glad for them. I lingered there until my family arrived. I told them about my experience, but they did not seem to understand the significance of it. Gradually it dissipated. Not until the next day did I realize it was May 5, my 50th Birthday.

This experience has been a touchstone experience for the rest of my life. I KNOW that I experienced Enlightenment. Now all the spiritual seeking and the religious experiences of others make perfect sense to me. I feel so grateful that I have been blessed with the Knowledge of this experience. For decades I have kept it to myself, feeling no need to try to repeat it because it was so complete in itself and because it seemed self-serving to do so.
Now that I am 80 years young and our world is writhing with the pains of the birth of a new way of living, of a New Age, I want to contribute this experience to it, to communicate that such a state of consciousness is a possibility for all of humanity, to identify the elements of which it consists, to consider the potential causes that unknowingly preceded this experience, and to recognize the healing potential that awakening a higher level of Cosmic Consciousness in humanity could be to our planet.

Elements of My Enlightenment

First, what IS Enlightenment? There has been a wonderful magazine on the market for ten years entitled “What is Enlightenment?” which evidences the depth and breadth of humanity’s interest in the potentials of the development of their own consciousness. Later I will discuss some of the current Western and Eastern thinkers on this subject. What were the elements of Enlightenment that distinguish this experience from a state of ordinary consciousness for me?

1. ONENESS : Enlightenment was an integration of all the parts of myself that I am, inclusive of all things, a falling together of all that is and has ever been true in my life. It included all the negative and all the positive parts of myself, organized into a new whole and yet in its wholeness was more than its parts. After all, I had just written a thesis into which I had put my whole heart and truth. Like putting in a last piece of a puzzle, it suddenly organized the whole personality into an unseen grand picture I had never seen before.

I am not separate from the whole Force of life, but I am one with it.

I belong to It, I came from It, I am one with it, and I am inside It.

The puzzle is the mystery of life, which recognizes that the energy of God lives within us, or we live within God, or both.

I am It. Now I understand the meaning of the Hindu phrase, “I am That; you are That, and all this is That.”

The energy and intelligence behind the whole of creation lives within us, which we observe outside of us as the whole living universe, and which we experience as the inner being or Self.

Our consciousness expands not just to include all things but to identify with all things. We feel ourselves one with each human being, with humanity.

The outside and the inside become one.

The objective and subjective experience becomes one.

The macrocosm and the microcosm becomes one.

We are not separate; we are connected to all people and all things.

There are no boundaries; we identify with all people and happenings on the earth.

We are all related to the whole of humanity and the whole of the physical world.

Therefore whatever one person does or experiences effects the whole world. Enlightenment is an identification with God.

The Rig Veda expresses this oneness so beautifully:

There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe.
The horizontal threads are in space.
The vertical threads are in time.
At every crossing of the threads, there is an individual.
And every individual is a crystal bead.
And every crystal bead reflects not only the light
from every other crystal in the net,
but also every other reflection throughout the entire universe.

2. ECSTASY: Ecstasy is more than peace, more than joy, more than bliss, but it includes all these. It is ecstasy. It is beyond all measure. It is an exponential explosion of sexual energy but not specific to any part of the body. It is the supreme pleasure of bodymind wholeness. Although it is ineffable, when I experienced it, I knew it. I was fulfilled. There is nothing I desired more than being myself just as I was at this moment. This is Paradise. I laughed and laughed and laughed that God made the world such a delightful place for humanity to live.

3. LOVE: Enlightenment is an embodiment of unconditional love. I felt loving of all human beings, as if I were they, from the inside out. I understood why they feel and think and act as they do, so there is no judgment about them, just compassion. It is unselfish, because my sense of self expanded to include all selves. There is no need for forgiveness, because all feelings are understood. Perhaps Enlightenment is loving and being loved coming together as one whole. Joseph Campbell suggests to “follow your bliss.” Wayne Dyer says to “follow your passion.”

4. PEACEFUL: Enlightenment is perfectly CONSISTENT with itself. It is the realization of which there could be no other. It is oneness, not twoness. It subsumes all opposites. It includes all variety and uniqueness of things. It is whole. Each part is known as having its place, its reason, its season. It is a Unity. In it is no conflict. It is like living on an endless piece of flat planet where you take in everything from horizon to horizon. There are not partial pieces of it to be against or conflicting with other pieces. Seamlessly the pieces are quilted together in one big spread. There was both complete peace because I knew that the whole Divine plan is good and great and just as it should be, and because I felt a lack of any anxiety. “God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.” (Browning, R.)

5. KNOWLEDGE: Knowledge is not information. I KNEW that I knew. I knew this embodiment or incarnation was the ultimate experience of being human, and I was It—or It was me. I knew that I was experiencing a oneness with God, an unshakable knowledge, not a belief, of the Presence of God within me. I recognized that the one Mind is in all people, the same mind expressing itself through me. It was a shift from being dependent upon other’s ideas to trusting my own Knowing. Because of this Knowing, I resonate with mystical writing of any religion, faith, or time. Because of this, when intuition beacons on the edges of my rational mind, I trust it, knowing that It knows my highest good and the highest good of the whole.

6. EXPANSION: I was not only on my Centre, as I call it, but this Centre was expanded to include the whole world. I had a sense of identifying with the world to the edges of the curved horizons on either side, and understanding the feelings of everyone within it. Ordinarily it appears to me that I am looking “out there”, but suddenly there was a realization, a simple recognition, that I was looking at myself, and myself was the entire world. Enlightenment is like the unifying of the microcosm (me) and the macrocosm (the world). It is a profound recognition of something that is already present.

7. EMPOWERMENT: Enlightenment is a movement from a limited, uncertain sense of self to an expanded, positive sense of Self. It is a sense of self-acceptance of all the positive and negative aspects of oneself. It is the acceptance of self-responsibility for ALL that we are. It is not self-conscious, but speaks with clarity and authority. In writing my thesis, I was accepting my shadow side and using it in the service of the good of humankind. What an explosion of positive energy was released in my life by doing so, confirming the mental healthiness of my direction.

8. SILENCE: Silence or stillness seem to be the container in which Enlightenment is created, “the creative womb of consciousness.” Enlightenment is a cessation of thinking, not doing words in the mind, a disidentification from the mind. Identification is more with the energy of the whole body. I was driving down the freeway in joyful silence. I was in the bodymind flow of being. Thomas Hora, MD, a New York Psychiatrist, expresses it as the truth “obtaining” in your consciousness. (Hora, T., 1977)

9. NOW: Enlightenment only happens in the Now. It is not something you can make happen in the future because it descends by GRACE. It happens in the Eternal now, the present. It is not in a time-bound experience, but is timeless or outside of time. This kind of time is called Kairos time. Chronos time is intervals of time, or outer time that are linear, and evaluated by some chronological mechanism like a clock. Kairos time is the Eternal now, inner time, which relies on inner knowing; it is a time when we are relaxed and flowing, we are doing something we love, we are intensely focused on the present; an hour may seem to go by in moments. It is a time when another kind of reality has access to enter between the gaps of our thoughts. We identify with the timeless order of life that was, is, and will be, that have now all become one. And time never runs out, for we have all the time in the world because we are part of the ever-changing continuum of Eternity. As James Twyman says,
“Enlightenment happens NOW or it does not happen at all. It is not an historical occurrence. It happens through your desire to SEE as God sees now.” (Twyman, J., 2003)

In Reality time does not exist. Time is a man-made imposition upon the being of Nature. We create time by the movement of our own thoughts. Time is an invention of the human mind and is relative to human existence. Even beginnings and endings are illusions of Eternity; they come about from not seeing the total picture.

10. PRESENCE: There is a natural state of felt oneness with being. “Being is the eternal, ever-present one-life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.” (Tolle, E., 1999, p. 10) I felt totally, completely on my Centred being. Because it happens in the present, it is recognized in others as a Presence. In this Presence, action and interaction occurs but without self-seeking. The Self does not need the future for its fulfillment; it does not cling to past identities; rather it surrenders to whatever is in the now. A now-being-presence.

11. EVOLUTION: Enlightenment is the realization of a higher stage of evolution. Our sense of self begins with the oceanic stage of being physically one with our mother, complete in loving harmony. Then gradually a sense of separate self emerges during the pre-operational stage of mental development, like one egg gradually differentiating into two eggs. The feeling attachment is strong to the mother while the physical body begins to walk and talk and be toilet trained. As the physical development and the emotional development continue, during latency or elementary-school age, the child learns to think in a concrete way. Next the adolescent body develops and the emotional body of sexuality blooms, and we think more abstractly. Each of these levels is a stage of evolutionary development of all human beings. When we reach adulthood with both a loving heart and a rational mind, we may unite with another human being at the evolutionary state of marriage, and perhaps become the next stage of a family. As the family grows up and leaves home, our having experienced the love of our parents and the loving of our children, our consciousness now embraces the family of humankind.

Enlightenment, I think, is the next and perhaps highest evolutionary stage of human development, which has progressed from physical to emotional to mental to spiritual, each growing in each stage and each stage building upon each other. We start from a one-celled Force or Spirit as babies with an explosion of sexual joy. Enlightenment seems to me the human being come full circle, embodying the joy and richness and fulfillment and wholeness of the Spiritual Energy from which we came.

REALIZATION: Enlightenment takes place in consciousness, and yet we are NOT conscious of our conscious mind. Consciousness is like an empty container that holds our experience. Enlightenment is a conscious Realization; it is a REAL experience. It takes place in the body; the body becomes a Bodymind. It is not a dream experience or a visionary escape from the body. As my psychic friend says, “We need a body to experience Enlightenment in this life.”

SHIFT IN PERCEPTION and CONCEPTION: Enlightenment is a shift in perception and conception of reality, of the world, in what our senses receive from the outside of us, and what our thoughts conclude from the inside of us. Like the classic psychological experiment that shows a white vase on a black background, we can suddenly see instead two black faces facing each other. The change of focus from background to foreground changes the content of what we see. In the case of Enlightenment our focus shifts from the part to the whole of Reality.

SCIENCE: Physical creation begins as one, divides into two, and divides and divides into “1000 things”, as the Hindus say. Science names them (nominal), compares them (ordinal), measures them (creates a 0 baseline), gathers them into groups (holons) and recognizes that the smallest and the largest trail off into infinity. Science thinks in straight lines, in cause and effect. When two opposites unite, a new thing is created which is unpredictable from and more than the sum of its parts, more complex, more conscious, with more freedom. (Wilbur, K. 2002) This is growth.

Nature, however, thinks in graceful curves. The basis of curves is a circle. The circle can be so large that a part of it looks like a straight line. Life can be conceived as a series of circles, each whole (holon) including the previous one but adding information and experience of its own. For instance, our bodies can be seen as a whole, or as an integration of a number of systems like the digestive system or the blood system or the nervous system, and each system can be seen as made up of different functions of cells, and each cell can be seen as made up of different atoms, and each atom made up of different particles, and each particle can exist as physical matter or a wave of energy, our body composed of smaller and smaller holons until it becomes energy. Or our one body holon can be seen as part of a family, a family as part of a community, a community as part of a state, a state as part of a nation, a nation as part of the world, and the world as part of the holon of the infinite universe. The very smallest and the very largest holons that we can conceive are infinite, the seen being surrounded by the unseen. The change in focus from one holon to another holon adds information and understanding not available to the smaller holon. Enlightenment seems to me like the jumping in perception and conception from ordinary reality to a whole new world, which in no way diminishes the former holons, but which includes them and adds truth to reality. This is evolution. Jean Houston calls this shift in perception and conception “Jump Time” (Houston, J., 2000).

SURRENDER: It is said that we must surrender all of who we are to God. Yes, I surrendered all to God. I surrendered to who I am, willing for private or public to know my true story, in faith that my suffering could help another helpless soul not to suffer, and in my belief that I belong IN God, I am a part of God, I am not separate from God just as I am. I trusted that all of myself is lovable to God. I accepted all parts of myself. I knew this might subject me to academic or professional rejection. I was willing to give my life or take any negative consequences in order to give the gift of my healing experience to the world.

CRISIS: Some kind of struggle or profound conflict occurs within the person, and the inner Enlightenment experience follows the resolution or action that resolves this conflict. The anguish of conflict thereby becomes a motivation toward evolving to a higher level of consciousness. My thesis demonstrated the healing of a psychological problem through psychotherapy. Taking the action of turning in my writing to the library resolved this conflict.

The experience of Enlightenment seems to be similar to the Near Death Experience (NDE) and to have a similar effect on one’s life. Like the many reports and books about the Near Death Experience (i.e. Moody, 1975), they report bliss, an all- knowing and all loving experience, and an unshakable trust in the goodness of God, a loss of the fear of death, and often the presence of Light. Maybe the difference is that Enlightenment is the death of the ego, and NDE meets the boundary of the death of the body.

FULFILLMENT: In ordinary consciousness I experience a “call”, a passionate pull toward true ideas and spiritual interests. In Enlightenment there was a sense of utter, inner and outer fulfillment. I needed nothing. This is why Enlightened beings relate to others without being self-serving, because they are already fulfilled. In fact, I have heard that some Enlightened beings do not even need to eat, and some Yogi’s can be buried for long periods and live without needing to breathe.

ACTION: What we do is who we are. We are Being expressed in doing . Transcending the world does not mean to withdraw from the world and no longer take action, or to stop interacting with people. The key is to act and interact without self-seeking. Words are a vehicle of action, to say, to share, as if God were speaking through us, as us. In my case it was a thesis to give to the public realm the knowledge of the therapeutic process and the healing I had experienced. This was not “dictation”, or words coming from a separate entity of Higher Consciousness. I was simply communicating the truth of my experience in ordinary consciousness. Perhaps the element was TRUTH, my speaking my truth, that opened me to receiving this Enlightenment experience.

To separate is good to find Enlightenment and Unity Consciousness. To return to the world is good and live out from that Enlightenment/Unity consciousness Center, seeing through the forms of ignorance your life contacts in order to remain centered in the Good. (Cohen, A., 2003)

ALPHA: Enlightenment is hidden outside of time in the Absolute realm. It is an inner call from the Absolute Reality, formerly a sense of unfulfillment, a goal yet in potential. This is why Andrew Cohen says, in his book by the same name, “Enlightenment is a Secret” (1995). Although I did not know how this experience fit in to the reality of my life when it occurred, now I recognize that this was the beginning of the AWAKENING to being on a spiritual growth path, or an evolutionary direction toward higher consciousness. Jesus said that “the Kingdom of Heaven is nearer than hands and feet”, available to each of us, perhaps when we are ready to receive it, perhaps by our faith that there is such a higher power, our belief in God. We are seekers (of the secret). Maybe FAITH is the Alpha, the belief that there is a whole beyond our experience that is our potential to manifest.

0MEGA: We are not only spiritual seekers, we are also spiritual finders. In Enlightenment one has a conscious knowing that one has come to the end of becoming, which is the end of all true seeking, the final goal of living. To be able to live from that state of consciousness, to perceive as God sees, to live in that Christ Consciousness, becomes the holy purpose of the rest of one’s life. Enlightenment is the fulfillment of transcending all other levels of our development. Enlightenment is the oneness that takes in twoness, all opposites. All conflicts are included under this one peaceful Higher Level of Consciousness. Omega is the Greek letter for “O”, a full circle. Enlightenment is the Omega of life.

Therefore Enlightenment is both the Alpha and the Omega of life, both the beginning and the completion of life.

GRACE: The experience of Enlightenment is given to us; it is not something we can make happen. It takes place in our consciousness, and yet we are not conscious of our conscious mind. We are not consciously trying to make anything happen. We are not self-conscious. We are not thinking. We are humble. We are silent. We are simply in the bodymind flow of being. For me that quiet mind was obtained by the hypnotic sameness of driving on the freeway, but there are many methods, both psychological and religious, to open ourselves to altered states of consciousness.
In writing about the Elements of Enlightenment, I find it difficult to abstract just one element without explaining it by including some other elements, which is of course because I am trying to put into words something that is already ONE, and something that is ineffable, or difficult to find words to express, because the experience is beyond words.

Other Religions Regarding Enlightenment

There is more to Enlightenment that the elements I experienced. For instance, some people experience inner light, and this light may become perceptive to others who experience their Presence, or symbolic of their divine mental connection with Higher Consciousness. This is the meaning of the halo painted in old and young Christian art. Other people experience what the Hindu’s term Siddis or Riddis. Siddis are internal paranormal abilities, and Riddis are abilities to change external manifestations.

Each religion also has its own term for the Enlightened state of being, this awakening to a Higher State of Consciousness or Superconsciousness. For instance, to Christians it is the Kingdom of Heaven or Christ Consciousness. The Hindus call it Moksha, meaning the individual soul and the universal Soul become one. Buddhists call it Nirvana, Heaven, or Liberation, the freedom from the endless cycle of birth and death by becoming one with God. Zen Buddhists call it Satori. Muslims call it Marfat. The American Transcendentalists called it the Oversoul or Cosmic Consciousness. Science calls it the Absolute realm, as opposed to the Relative world. Psychologist Carl Jung, MD, called it the Self, vs. the self, transcending the boundaries of the ego-self. Today’s foremost psychologist, Ken Wilbur, calls it Transformation, a vertical shift into a higher state of consciousness which transcends the ego versus a horizontal translation to create meaning by new ways of naming, thinking about or understanding the world. (Wilbur, 2002)

Each religion also has a branch the goal of which is to realize this state of Oneness with God in this lifetime. The Jews have the Kabbalah. The Christians have their Christian mystics and their monasteries . The Muslims have their Sufi’s, which include the whirling dervishes. The Hindus have their gurus and their ashrams and the Buddhists their bodhisattvas and their monasteries. There are a myriad of names throughout the cultures and the history of the world for this Higher State of Consciousness. Just the simple fact that all religions have a name for and a history of revered persons who have experienced this state of consciousness is evidence of its existence in nature. Enlightenment is also the meaning of the Pearl of Great Price in the West, and the Jewel in the Lotus (Om mani padme hum) in the East.

Current Thinkers Regarding Enlightenment

All at once without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-colored cloud. For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration of the great city; the next, he knew that the light was within himself. Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exaltation of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his brain streamed one momentary lightening flash of the Brahmic Splendor which has ever since lighted his life. Upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving thence-forward an aftertaste of heaven. Among other things he had not come to believe, he saw and knew that the cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure, all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of everyone is in the long run absolutely certain. He claims that he learned more within the few seconds that the illumination lasted than in previous months or even years of study. (1901, pp. 9-10)

In his book he listed the common factors among the many recent and historical illumination experiences he studied:

1. The person had reached full maturity (30-40 years),
2. was of earnest and honest character, open to truth and knowledge, and was quiet. Formal education was not necessary but helpful.
3. He/she was physically healthy, and from highly-evolved parents. They evidenced a balance of male-female capacities.
4. The experience was accompanied by bliss,
5. and understanding of a higher order of ideas.
6. The experience was difficult to express in words,
7. and included the knowledge of one’s own immortality.

Furthermore, Dr. Burcke believed that Cosmic Consciousness was the evolutionary destiny of the human race, and therefore more and more individuals would experience It in each succeeding generation.

In my profession as a Psychotherapist, the conceptualization that has been the most meaningful to me has been that of the esteemed American psychologist, Ken Wilbur. He has differentiated mythological understanding from mystical experience. In his circular transpersonal view of human development, consciousness develops after birth from subconscious to conscious to superconscious. Both magic and mythology are to be found at the transition from subconsciousness to consciousness. Psychic and mystical experiences are to be found at the transition from consciousness to superconsciousness where subtle and eventually causal energies emerge, leading full circle to the birth of Enlightenment (Wilbur, l980).

Enlightenment therefore is to Ken Wilbur and to me the transcendence of all the known evolutionary states of human development. It is the growing-tip of human possibilities, and we in our time are the growing-tip of humanity.

Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut, had an epiphany experience as he returned from walking on the moon 35 years ago, watching the blue earth floating in space from his space capsule:

It wasn’t until…we were hurtling earthward at several hundred miles per second that I had time to relax in weightlessness and contemplate that blue, jewel-like home planet suspended in the velvety blackness from which we can come. What I saw out the window was all I had ever known,…all that I once thought had ever been and would ever be. It was all there suspended in the cosmos on that fragile little sphere. I experienced a grand epiphany accompanied by exhilaration…From that moment on my life was irrevocably altered.

What I experienced during that 3-day trip home was nothing short of an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness. I actually felt what has been described as an ecstasy of unity…and there was the sense that our presence as space travelers, and the existence of the universe itself, was not accidental but that there was an intelligent process at work. I perceived the universe in some way conscious. The thought was so large it seemed at the time inexpressible, and to a large degree it still is. (Mitchell, l980, pp. 3-4)

Nothing in his extensive education had prepared him for this experience, and so he started a society to investigate spiritual experiences, the Institute of Noetic Sciences. His current belief is that physical reality, which we perceive with our physical senses, is complemented by a quantum, holographic, subtle energy that pervades all things and all space, which we can know because it pervades us too. (Mitchell, 2003). This subtle energy is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and eternal.

Andrew Cohen, the spiritual teacher and creator of the important magazine, “What is Enlightenment?” tells of his Enlightenment experience:

When I was 16 years old…late one night as I was talking to my Mother…my consciousness began to expand in all directions simultaneously, and I experienced what could only be called Revelation. Tears profusely poured out of my eyes, and my throat began to open and close for no reason. I was completely overhelmed and intoxicated by love and was struck by a sense of awe and wonder that is impossible to describe. I suddenly knew without any doubt that there was no such thing as death, and that life itself had no beginning and no end. I saw that all of life was intimately connected and inseparable. It became clear that there was no such thing as individuality separate from that one Self that was all of life. The glory and majesty in the cosmic unity that was revealing itself to me was completely overwhelming. I could hardly speak.

My Mother told me years later that I had said to her at the time…that this used to happen to me often when I was a child.

He currently writes that there are “Five Fundamental Tenets of Enlightenment”:

1. Clarity of Intension: You want to be free now, to become a human being who is truly trustworthy, strong, undivided and whole.

2. Law of Volitionality: You take responsibility for your negative feelings; you take radical responsibility for your own feelings and thoughts, not to see yourself as a victim, not to act out ignorance or selfishness that causes harm to other people.

3. Face Everything and Avoid Nothing: You bring awareness to your own psyche, instead of acting unconsciously; you pay close attention to the dark corners of your own psyche so that you make right choices instead of wrong choices.

4. The Truth of Impersonality: You are part of the universal whole. For instance, there is only one experience of fear, or the feeling experience of sexuality is the same for each of us. “Your own personal, human experience is an impersonal expression of something that is Universal.” (Cohen, 2003)

5. For the Sake of the Whole: You care about life, for the transformation of the whole world, for the Enlightenment of the whole universe, for the evolution of consciousness itself. You have a natural sense of dignity as a human being for a cause greater than yourself, which displaces ego.

Eckhart Tolle is the author of a profound book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. To him, Enlightenment is a state of connectedness with the Source, with God. It is entering the Unmanifest energy consciously. “You become a bridge between the Unmanifested and the manifested, between God and the world.” (Tolle, E., 1999, p. 109) He lists the following portals through which Enlightenment can come from the Unmanifest into awareness:

1. Now: Access it by contacting your inner body.
Focus on the present without past or future awarenss.
Dissolve time by intense focus in the present, which is the eternal now.

2. Cessation of thinking, which is the purpose of meditation.
Disidentify with the mind; identify with the body.
Allow the Unmanifest to enter through the gaps between words.

3. Surrender to the resistance of what is.
Accept all positives and negatives, forgiving all things.

4. Silence is the creative womb of consciousness.
Pay more attention to the silence than the sounds, for all sound manifests from the silence.

5. Space: The essence of all things is emptiness.
The Unmanifest pervades the entire physical universe as space-- from within and without.
The world is needed for the Unmanifest to be realized.
It is through the world and us that the Unmanifest knows itself.

6. Death of the body is also a portal to experience Enlightenment.
“The luminous splendor of the colorless light of emptiness.” (Tibetan Book of the Dead)
To die to the ego is a conscious death.

Barbara Marx Hubbard, the feminine futurist, has experienced a gradual awakening to Higher Consciousness:

After asking Eisenhower, as a young woman, she asked God, “What is the meaning of our power?”, and the intuitive answer came: “The meaning of our power is to connect the whole world into one living, interacting organism of far greater capacity than the sum of its parts. When she prayed, “Thank you”, she heard “Thank you, Barbara” which seemed to flow from the heart of the cosmos.

In 1966, at age 36, she asked God , “What is OUR story that is comparable to the Christ story? And heard:
Our story is our birth. It is the birth of humandkind as one body. What Christ and all great beings came to reveal is true. We are one body born into this universe. GO TELL THE STORY OF OUR BIRTH, BARBARA.”

At age 49, as a Christian retreat on Mt. Calvery in Santa Barbara, she experienced a marriage of herself with God, a second coming, a virgin birth, giving birth to ourselves as fully human beings, co-creating with God. She felt an electrifying presence of light, and the voice even higher:

This wedding takes place between me—Christ--and all humans who are willing it with their whole being. Through this marriage you experience the ecstasy of union with me. The union ceremony, wherein you place your dense body in my light body, transforms your mind-body systems to resonate at higher frequencies, rendering you capable of seeing face to face that which you now see through a glass darkly.” (Hubbard, 1999, p. 286)

At age 69, she described in her recent book, Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence, her spiritual journey from seeing God as a force outside of herself to seeking God within herself. She carried on a Divine correspondence with the God in herself: “I felt as though I were falling in love with myself, an inner love affair” (Hubbard, 2001). This experience culminated in her writing the profound internet program, “Gateway to Conscious Evolution”, to teach the co-creation of Higher Consciousness to the world.

Deepak Chopra, MD’s understanding of Vedanta, the early, pure teachings of Hinduism in India, is that there are only two symptoms of Enlightenment, or indications that transformation is taking place within you.

The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don’t bother you anymore. You become lighthearted and full of joy.

The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities – and this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous. (Chopra, 2003)

I am writing this story exactly 30 years after my Enlightenment experience occurred. I have been through many and profound emotional ups and downs since then, and only now am I beginning to stop worrying so much and be a little more lighthearted. I am feeling joy and peace more often and letting them be my guiding compass. In writing, I am following my passion. I have learned to be more open to intuition and to recognize synchronicities as they occur in my life, and again to use them as my guiding light. Actually I am still very far from being an Enlightened being, but I am blessed to know not only that this is my purpose for living, but that this is the evolutionary goal for all humankind.

CONCLUSIONS:
So what is Enlightenment? Enlightenment is the shift in perception of one’s identity from being a separate ego to being identified with God.

My GRATITUDE is great. I am so profoundly grateful to have experienced the glory of the presence of God in me. It was surely an experience about which to sing Alleluia and Gloria in excelcius Deo (Glory to God in the highest) and I would add (Peace on earth, good will to men). There IS an unseen power we call God that can guide us and sustain us if we are open to allow it and trust it to do so. To me, this is the purpose of Spiritual gatherings of all religions, to open people’s hearts and minds to the presence of God, and to encourage us on the spiritual path toward experiencing God in our own bodily experience.

I believe that God can be experienced both personally in this life at the individual level AND impersonally at the world level. The same spiritual laws apply at the micro and at the macro levels. “As above, so below.” I not only touched the impersonal experience of Enlightenment; I also experienced the personalness of my Christian beliefs from my upbringing. Perhaps It can be either personal or impersonal, but mine was both.

In the same way that learning can occur through one-trial learning or incremental learning, I believe that the awakening to Enlightenment can happen suddenly by Grace without warning, or it can happen gradually as we develop and continue to evolve toward Higher Consciousness. Perhaps it also happens by a combination of both processes.

I now understand that the Mystical Marriage to Christ is the same experience as the Enlightenment experience. My body and the World Body of God were one, accompanied by a profound experience of ecstasy.

I also believe that Enlightenment is an evolutionary potential of every human being in this life, and that Enlightenment is also to be experienced at death.

I think that the ideas and practices of religions are efforts to teach the elements of the Enlightenment experience to people in their ordinary conscious state in order to encourage the occurrence of this evolutionary state of awareness, but just doing them is not a necessary or sufficient condition. Religious services are also an effort to induce a meditative or alpha-brain-wave state of awareness or even a hypnogogic state in which the information and affirmations presented are accepted uncritically.

In my experience, the quantum jump to a higher level of consciousness occurs by GRACE, as if an outside force were reaching down to us. It occurs I believe when the qualities within our consciousness are reaching up or ready to hold the higher vibrations of Higher Consciousness. I do believe the Universe is responsive to our thoughts and requests. We cannot force it, but we can intend it. Each of us is on a spiritual journey to seek and speak our truth from the Centre within us that is synonymous with God.

I also believe that God does not choose people or have a “chosen” people. Rather, we are the people who choose to seek God, choose to seek the good, who choose to follow the spiritual principles of creation, the natural laws of life as we come to understand them, and when we do, we are rewarded. All people are part of God, and no one is excluded, Jew or Christian or Arab, Hindu or Buddhist, atheist or believer, convict or hero, poor or rich, sinner or saint. It is we, the highest truth within us, who choose to live from the truth of God. It is we who choose to see with the eyes of God.

Easter has suddenly taken on a new meaning for me. Easter is the time of the spring equinox, when the day grows longer than the night, more light than darkness, more joy than suffering, more peace than fear. Surely Easter is the celebration of Enlightenment. After 40 days of Lent, internal examination and personal forgiveness, thoughts or behaviors that are not of God consciousness are given up or surrendered. The dark night of the soul is followed by the Easter Sunrise. Historically, the intellectual Enlightenment took place during the l7th and l8th Centuries. Spiritually our next stage of individual evolution is to live from an Enlightened consciousness. Whereas Christmas, the time of the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year, is symbolic of the rebirth of longer light and the birth of love, Easter is the celebration of Spring, the season of growth, the birth of a new stage of life for the individual and a New Age for the planet. Easter is the ritual to celebrate the sun rising again and spreading its light over the world. Easter is the symbol for ENLIGHTENMENT.