Shanmugam

What limitations are you talking about? What do's and dont's are you talking about? I am not talking about the limitations of truth or enlightenment. I am talking about the limitations of language. Is it too hard for you to understand? Are you a student of neo-advaita? I remember you saying in another post that all one needs to understand is just 'I am that I am", when I was discussing about another book I was going to write. You were also concerned that why is there a need for too many words.. If your concern is about using too many words, then what are you even doing here in this forum? Just sit in silence and teach people in silence. Or just write 'I am that I am' in your forehead and walk around the city. I write for everyone. And I know perfectly well that if you just walk out of your house and say 'You are already enlightened' to the next random person that you meet, he is not going to understand a damn thing about it. My posts are intended to guide people, just to show them the way that I found. And I remember all the obstacles and traps I went through. I just don't want others to get into those traps and be careful about it. I am interacting with many kinds of people in my blog, in quora and in forums. The kinds of people include hard core rationalists who even reject meditation as useless, vedantins who are so much identified with tradition, followers of certain cult leaders who want to engage in verbal wars with me, religious people, psychologists and true seekers. And I can't say to them, 'Just realize I am that I am and be done with it'... There are ways to talk to each of those groups, So,most of the things I discussed with you in this thread is about communication. Understand? I am not really sure about the exact intention of your interaction in this thread. You don't sound like someone who is asking for help, and thats fine... I am not looking for a help towards liberation from you either, because I am no longer seeking. So, what exactly is your concern here? If your intention is to say 'look, I am better than you', then shut up and get out... I am not insulting you... 'Shut up and get out' is a teaching by Swami Chinmayananda..

@SOUL One thing that I have recognized very clearly is that language is a double-edged sword. Language helps people to understand. But it is the same language which also leads people to misunderstand... Talking always in the absolute language is not going to help anyone. And what you said will make sense only because of the statement 'Everyone is always enlightened'. If that statement was not there, it would be a problem.

The description you gave is not wrong at all. Because, you said that it is always there, which is true. What you are saying is, everyone is already enlightened. It is not something that has to be attained. But this is not in everyone's experience. So, there are always stages in the progress, which is undeniable. But whatever I write is intended to help people so that they don't get trapped anywhere in anyway. For example, If a teaching simply begins by saying 'You are already enlightened, There is nothing you can do to be enlightened, etc", how many people do you think will find such a teaching useful? When I say enlightenment is binary, it is intended to help people. I know how the human mind works and I am aware of the fact that there are millions of ways in which people can fool themselves. And I can clearly see how safe it is to tell people that 'you are either enlightened or not enlightened'. I am not the only one who said it though. Ramana Maharshi said the same thing and Osho said the same thing too. Even Sadhguru, who I criticize often, also says the same thing. So, what is the problem?

First of all, I don't know any foolproof way to confirm somebody else's enlightenment. And anybody who has realized the truth wouldn't be looking for my validation either. So, there is no need for such a question. Second, the way they describe it can be different depending on their word choices, the meaning they give to those words and the ability to articulate. But when someone describes how they experience the reality every moment, I have many times noticed the truth and authenticity of what they are saying. The words don't have to be same but they can still hint what they are pointing to.

Your question is not clear to me... When you feel no separation from the rest of the existence, when you don't have a boundary in your experience that creates an 'I' and an 'other', when you no longer feel trapped inside an identity, when you feel no conflict or split inside the mind, when you feel fulfilled and in peace, when there are forgiveness and acceptance and when you also realize that all these words that I have mentioned so far still haven't captured the truth, the seeking has ended.

Absolute truth is the same for everyone... I am not sure what you mean by a 'different experience'... Give me an example..

What is stopping anyone from eating food, talking with family, laughing at jokes or listening to music etc? It doesn't have to be an ego game. You can do all with even more involvement after enlightenment. The life doesn't change. It is the same life. There is a difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Do not go for jogging to reduce weight, go for jogging because you enjoy doing it. The results will be the same but you will enjoy doing what you are doing.

@Serotoninluv There has to be a right balance.. Even though you know that achieving something in the life is not going to offer lasting fulfillment, it doesn't mean that you should resist the temptations. The spiritual path is not life negative, it will not work that way in modern times. But fortunately, life and spiritual path can be integrated. Then whatever you do in your life becomes a spiritual practice. Read the books of Osho, I think it may help you a lot. Lot of sufferings that people go through is unavoidable. But existence always blesses equally with beautiful moments. You always need to remember that it will pass, whenever the times are hard. Also, when you are listening to or reading one teacher, it is better to not listen to another teacher. You may get confused. I spent about three years in reading only the books of Osho. Once I got some understanding, I checked out the talks of Ramana Maharshi and others.. It actually helped me tremendously, because the foundation I got from Osho was strong. Yet, I did face the issues similar to what you have been facing in relationships. I sucked at any kind of relationships including forming friendships. Only after enlightenment, I found the secret key to make anyone to like you or be with you. The secret is a cliched teaching but people don't realize the power of it and I was one of them too. The secret is 'listening to them'.. After enlightenment, the desire to speak, give my opinions and talk about myself disappeared. But I didn't expect that it would make a lot of people to respect me and share their most guarded secrets with me. Many things I wanted to achieve happened when I no longer sought them. . Please go through this post:

@SgtPepper But there is a point when you drop the story completely.. It is not something that you do, it happens...

I have done it many times when I was a seeker. Whenever there was resistance from the ego, I did allow the ego to slip in and take a break for a couple of days or even more. That was actually a routine for me. As long as you know what you are doing and are aware of it, it is not a problem.

There is a reason why they say that silence is the best teaching. It is actually a pointer. Because, no matter how certain things about enlightenment is conveyed, there are always ways to find fault with it. That happens when it approached intellectually.. There are stages for sure in the progress. But they are not different levels of enlightenment. The truth is still the same. Either you are living in duality or non-duality. There is no partial non-duality. It is also true that the idea of enlightenment itself is within the illusion. Since you think you are bound, we have to give you a concept of liberation. You will find many verses in Vedanta which says 'I am neither in bondage nor liberated'...:) Enlightenment is also within the thought story, but it is the climax. The thought story ends with enlightenment. Anyway, whatever teaching really resonates with you, just go ahead with that.

@Shin May I know how you first got introduced to non-duality? And what kind of practices you have been doing?

It all boils down to one thing.. There are two kinds of people who are seeking enlightenment. One group is seeking enlightenment for wrong reasons.. They seek enlightenment because they see it as an achievement, the peek of self-improvement, the peek of knowing everything, an opportunity to impress people, an opportunity to become guru, have an 'enlightened' self-image etc etc.. you name it. They will be fooling themselves for their entire life. No matter what teaching is given to them, they will simply find a loophole through which the thought story can re-enter and assert its existence. The other group of people seeks enlightenment because they know that it is the only way out. Their seeking is true that they will somehow find their way out. They will learn from everything, including a fake guru. They did not choose to seek, but seeking chose them. I just found a story to illustrate this, which was shared by a member in our own forum. Here it is:

exactly.. An enlightened person is an enlightened person only for the person who is not enlightened.

Of course, it is very much possible for anybody to mistake an experience as 'enlightenment'. Anybody may conclude that this is it. It has been happening from time immemorial. It is just a game that ego is playing. Because the label of enlightenment sounds good for the ego. But the problem will be worse when he thinks that enlightenment is not binary. Because, now ego has more options. Then the person has a lot of reasons to call himself as 'enlightened' 'guru' 'sadhguru' etc. He will impress people with information and fantasy. He will understand the temptations of sincere seekers and will continue to play with their temptations... If you really realize that you are the absolute, then you will realize that. Thankfully for me, Osho's instruction helped me. I still remember those lines he used to say, which kept repeating in my mind when I was a seeker: "You will encounter many beautiful moments. They will be absolutely convincing. You will certainly convince yourself that you got it. But keep moving. Don't ever convince yourself at any point that you got it."

Not really sure how you understood my post. Probably, the problem is with the words I am using. Let me put it this way. Every person has a story, the story of 'me'.. This story is the most important thing in a person's life. A person seeks a consistency, protection, enhancement, and justification to this thought story. Past and future are very important to the story. Self-improvement is very important inside the story. When a person is seeking, there may be non-dual glimpses where the story temporarily loses the continuity. In fact, it happens every day when he sleeps. But permanently waking up from this story is enlightenment. After enlightenment, there is no longer a longing to seek consistency, protection, enhancement, and justification to this story at all. He realizes in his experience that this story is just a dream. But the story of this person is still true to an on-looker. Anybody looking at him will still see him as a person. But this enlightened person doesn't really have a concept of himself. He doesn't even feel that his existence is time-bound. Even after enlightenment, a person continues to learn things in relative reality, but whether that happens or not is really not a matter of concern. The story still continues but the person doesn't really keep track of the story as much as he did earlier. He doesn't strive to maintain consistency to the story at all. There is a paradox of existence and non-existence. But when he becomes a teacher, he may have a challenging job. Because he knows that other people see him as a person even though he himself doesn't really have a concept about him.

@Shin One problem I always have when communicating is that every person has a different meaning for words.. Some people would say awakening and enlightenment is the same and other people would say both are different. It doesn't necessarily mean that there is a real contradiction but they just use the words in different meanings.. The problem will not be solved unless the terms are standardized. It will probably happen after spiritual enlightenment becomes an important topic in psychology. Anyway, If I have to talk about my own experience, there was a shift that happened in 2002 and another one happened in 2014. Both were irreversible but only the one happened in 2014 actually removed duality. Also, as I have been always saying, many things about spiritual enlightenment has been generalized for everyone, after observing only a few people. But when it comes to whether enlightenment is binary or not, any authentic guru who want to help people would not say that enlightenment is a life long process. Because, it will be a trap for people. Even though there is a life long deepening to enlightenment, no one can bypass the line where duality actually disappears forever.

Actually, you are right! But is there any other choice? Every enlightened person only knows his experience. But I have compared what many people said regarding this. And even though they may be contradicting each other on many things, they certainly agree on the disappearance of the sense of separation. (And Ramana Maharshi also said the same thing about enlightenment: You can either be enlightened or not enlightened. Half-baked enlightenment that is talked about in the forum is not enlightenment at all) Regarding feeling special, I am not sure what Adyashanthi said and in what context he said it, but there is no feeling of special-ness that comes because of enlightenment itself. But if you ask me whether the enlightened person feel proud, it is certainly possible. But the pride is actually very faint. It is similar to how bright a night lamp will look in sunlight. . Again, this is also coming from my own experience, that is the only thing I can talk from. This is exactly the reason why I keep insisting on bridging science (psychology) and spirituality. It is already being built. Many things are possible once they two are completely bridged.

@Shin An enlightened person can never think he is special. In fact, he really doesn't have a definition about himself. He doesn't consider himself as enlightened or not enlightened. If a person thinks or believes he is enlightened, he is certainly not. Confidence is something that only belongs to a mind living in duality. For an enlightened person, there is nothing like 'confidence'.. Another way to say that would be that there is always a confidence.

@Joseph Maynor relax! you are a wise philosopher, and I am a nobody.. Nobody is not a 'somebody'... Any wise man is a 'somebody'... There can be a comparison between two wise men but nobody cannot be compared to anything! I am like a white board where anything can be painted; whatever is painted on the white board is painted by somebody; But those paintings don't define the white board! I am not the words that you are reading right now... I am the space behind these words... And so are You!

@Outer Actually, there are lot of factors which decide how one becomes a spiritual seeker, not just being smart. There is a one word answer in the ancient traditions, which is 'Karma'... But let us put aside the karma theory for a moment and talk about the factors that this 'karma' has supposedly given to a seeker. How a person is going to behave and experience anything depends on two factors: Nature vs nurture. The nature is purely genetics. And most of the personality traits are the results of genetics. I used to wonder if being high or low in certain personality traits makes one to have an extreme longing for liberation. And I was surprised to come to know about another person (who is possibly enlightened) that he also had an opinion regarding this. He said that a person who is high in neuroticism, high in open to experience and low in conscientiousness is more likely to have an intense longing for liberation. And my score of those personality traits would be 5/5 in neuroticism, 5/5 in open to experience and possibly 1/5 or 2/5 in conscientiousness. And the reasons he gave also made sense to me. But it is just an assumption. Unless studies are conducted in large scale with a huge sample size, it cannot be confirmed. Anyway, here is the link to the descriptions of the traits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits Then comes the nurture. Nurture actually includes everything that happened in one's life, till date. If there is a variety in life, it is certainly favorable, in my opinion. Above all, extreme courage to lose oneself is needed. Just intelligence alone will not be sufficient. I know many extremely intelligent people who are hardcore Christians, Orthodox Hindus etc. They are for sure very intelligent and smart. But they can't afford to lose their beliefs or conditioning. There is something worse that is happening in India. The party which is ruling India right now is a political party based on Hindu religion. The politicians indulge in kindling violence among various people regarding religions. There is nothing spiritual about it. I will give you an example. After seeing all this, a famous actor tweeted saying that 'I am against any kind of Hindu terrorism'. He was obviously referring to the actual verbal wars, abuses etc that was happening in the name of religion. But a politician from the ruling party reacted to this tweet saying that 'Anyone who associates terrorism with Hinduism doesn't have any qualification to live. That actor has to be shot dead'... Doesn't this confirm what the actor actually tweeted about? .

Correct! The problem I see among spiritual seekers is that they have a certain stereotype about scientists. There seems to be a group called scientists who seem to act in a totally different way from the rest of the world's population. But is this true? First of all, attributing certain qualities for an entire group of human beings is in itself a huge fallacy. In fact, some people even have a typical image for a scientist: A person with a beard and a white lab coat looking something through the microscope and always thinking about stuff. He is usually an arrogant, close minded guy who has no idea about the beauties of life. He can't enjoy sunrise, sex, nature, music, art, love or poetry and he simply spends his time in just thinking hard, analyzing etc. Throw this image out of your mind if anyone has it, no matter what group it is about. When a person sees another person as just a human being, without judging him based on his profession, race, gender, economic status, language religion etc, he has come out of one of the biggest traps. Because, stereotyping, even though is a tendency of a typical human mind, is actually a trap. This is one of the things which needs to be overcome... Joseph... Can I ask you a question? Do you really think you are ready to preach others? Do you realize the obsession you seem to have in aggressively trying to tell others what they need to do? You may ask, 'What is wrong with that? I am trying to help people'... An important rule of thumb when it comes to spiritual path is to first help oneself completely, get actually liberated before he can guide others. Because, there is a big problem here. Do you know the reason why there are a lot of confusions, debates etc in many traditions? It is because, people who never actually got liberated have tried to preach others in the last 2500 years. A famous metaphor that is given to this is 'a blind man guiding another blindman'...This is not to be taken as an offense. No offense intended. Anyway, what you are saying about people who are obsessed with concepts, and relative truth is true. But that doesn't mean relative truth doesn't have any importance. It doesn't mean whenever someone talks anything about relative truth at all, you should jump in and start to preach. It doesn't mean that the person who is talking about a lot of concepts is actually obsessed or identified with them. And you said ' And they've been warned again and again and again, and they still don't grok it. '... Yes, that happens for anyone. Because, certain conditionings are so deep rooted that people will have a long time in throwing their attachments away. This is how it happened to me and this is how it happens to majority of people. If someone immediately gets something as soon as it is told, that person doesn't become any superior than others either. Another suggestion.. Again, don't interpret as a judgement. I am not judging you. And I will come to that later in this post. My suggestion would be this: Don't make assumptions about people. This is a trap as well. Usually when this happens, there is an overconfidence and probably even a little bit of arrogance (which is not obvious because it happens unconsciously) in the person's mind. This may not be true when it comes to you but I can't be so sure when it comes to what goes on in your mind. But to be honest, it seems to be the case. And this also annoys people. Earlier (a few months before), I noticed that whenever anyone says anything in their post, you would immediately jump in to say 'it is a concept'.. Yes, as soon as something is put down in words, it is a concept. But that doesn't mean that the person who says that is actually obsessed or attached to those concepts. For example, when I write my posts, I am not writing from certain conceptual framework in my mind; I just sit down and words seem to flow, not from some conceptual understanding of some dogma that I have in mind, but from what spontaneously arises at the present moment. But main problem I see here when I try to explain something is this: Most of the people seem to approach spiritual path with a wrong understanding of it from the very beginning. Because, most of the time, people are not ready yet. They have not seen a lots of ups and downs of life and they haven't probably began to live a life. If this is the case, then no one can help it. Because,unless a person has seen enough in life at least to some extent, he will not have the maturity to understand about spiritual enlightenment. There are exceptions though. The reason why I said that is because, you already said in one of your posts that enlightenment is not binary. I also tried to explain that it is not the case. I am not sure if you understood that because I think you didn't really reply to that post. But this is a misunderstanding about spiritual path and enlightenment. Unless you get this clarified once and for all, there are chances that you will stay in duality, thinking that enlightenment is something that keeps happening throughout lifetime (But I see why you probably say that.. I will explain more in a minute). It is actually a good excuse that mind creates so that you can call yourself 'enlightened', start playing a role of a guru and start preaching to people right away. I am not exaggerating it because I know what I went through in my life. The first time I meditated in my life was when I was 7 years old. It is true. But the year when the duality completely dissolved was when I was about 31 years old. Life is so huge and there are countless layers in the mind which have to be stripped off. For me, it was a question of life or death. And between the age 19 to 31, there were so many moments, countless moments when I thought that enlightenment was near. In fact, during my 19th age, I clearly remember talking to my close friend everyday about spiritual enlightenment and I even told him that enlightenment is very near for me. That was actually in 2003. I will shortly share an email conversation that I had with an American teacher in 2008, which was 5 years later. It is true that there is a lifelong deepening and growth. But there is a line in the middle, during which you psychologically die and be reborn. I got my first glimpse in 2002 and I was extremely peaceful for the next 6 months (which obviously made me to think that I was close to enlightenment). But I didn't realize that many things are going to happen in the next 12 years. After it occurred in 2014, it was very difficult to get my thoughts together about what happened. I was pretty sure that the journey as an individual is over. But I had no reason to talk about it for the next 2 years. Not only there was no reason to talk about it but I immediately realized that it is going to be very difficult to make people understand. I even thought once that why would a person wants to teach this to anyone anyway, because it seems to be almost an impossibility (this is totally contradictory to what I thought in the early years, because I used to imagine myself as a Guru. It happened at least in a few occasions). Also,there were many other problems that I don't have time to discuss right away. But I had no issue in pretending that I was not enlightened. In fact, what happened to me didn't gel with what Sadhguru has been describing. I even thought that I accidentally stumbled upon something else that is not enlightenment but it was actually a complete fulfillment and liberation. The sense of lack disappeared; the sense of a separate self disappeared; and since then, the experience of reality has been pretty similar to how my mind was when I was about 3 or 4 years old. There is no conflict, no guilt and no resistance in experiencing life. Above all, there is a sense of innocence and authenticity. It is extremely authentic and real that nothing could be more authentic or real than this. And I didn't plan anything that happened in the last one year. Because, after seeing a lot of confusions among seekers, I couldn't help but assist them. But I don't want to be labelled as a Guru because that label has already lost its appeal, especially in India, In the last one month, worst things are happening in Tamil Nadu in the name of spirituality. So, my choice would be to just remain as a friend. And regarding judgement part, let me just quote one of my recent posts that I made in a different thread: I took my time to write such a long post for you because at one hand, you seem to be so dedicated; on the other hand, you seem to have already come to conclusions about many things. So,I hope you take this post just as some suggestions from a friend and not take it personally.

And that means? It is not clear

'Ma Lolsha..' To my knowledge, the longest thread in this forum is the 'enlightenment jokes' thread, which was started by you. I am pretty sure that many people have had a lot of 'LOL' moments because of that thread. 'Ma' is the usual prefix that is given to female sannyasins. Osho used to name female sannyasins this way too. And obviously, the last syllable 'Sha' comes from your actual name. And by the way, Osho was probably the first person to use jokes as a means to silence the mind. Because, when a person is laughing, his mind is usually silent. I thought of a name for Leo Gura too. It is easy and just involves changing one letter...