Is enlightenment even possible?

[Carl-Richard]

26 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

It really isn't.

You simply have an apophatic disposition to talking about it. You feel more secure saying what it isn't than what it is. Which is fine, but the kataphatic way (saying what it is) is just another way of talking about it and is just as legitimate.

Regardless of which way you prefer, the mere act of talking about it is of course not it, and you can recognize this regardless of which way you choose to talk about it. The apopathic way is useful to make someone recognize that it can't be talked about, but when you do recognize it, I think the kataphatic way is more useful. That's what talking is for anyway: saying what things are.

[UnbornTao]

On 11/12/2024 at 3:49 PM, zurew said:

Reading is not to replace the work ,but to become better at communicating and it is to compare the insights you have with other people who are probably much better at explicating those insights. Also if you have an insight + you read books you will be able to recognize better who is talking about the thing you have insight about and then you can point other people to that work. It can fasten up the communication quite a bit, if you don't need to write down a book amount of information in every given thread.

Most of the confusion about definitions can be cleared up if there is a work or set of works that everyone is familiar with. This can also help with clearing up somewhat who had what kind of insight and what kind of awakening.

Yes, that applies to many things. However let me add: That runs the risk of turning into a religion. 

Some things are unknowable but still true--there's no way around this obstacle, except "consciousness".

Imagine hearing: "form is emptiness, emptiness is form", or claims of that nature. What do you make out of that? What can be made out of that? The effort to systematize absolute matters is doomed to fail, and with time it tends to degrade into a form of religion.

Edited November 15 by UnbornTao

[zurew]

7 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Yes, that applies to many things. However let me add: That runs the risk of turning into a religion

I don't know how that risk is lower if we don't engage with reading materials. Also im not really sure what you mean by religion there. 

7 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Some things are unknowable but still true--there's no way around this obstacle, except "consciousness".

I don't see how this is relevant and im not even sure if we should dig into this, because this will open up some stuff that might not even be relevant to the original thing I brought up.

7 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Imagine hearing: "form is emptiness, emptiness is form", or claims of that nature. What do you make out of that? What can be made out of that? The effort to systematize absolute matters is doomed to fail, and with time it degrades into a form of rerligion.

I don't really see what your concern is. Yes communication has its own limits, thats not an argument for not commincating about things though.

I also see some of you falling into the trap of "if you can't exhaustively describe something, then you can't communicate about it at all" , but that second part doesn't follow from the first one.

This whole forum is about debating about a thing that can't exhaustively be described that doesn't mean though that all these talks and debates are completely meaningless.

 

Things can be miscommunicated and misinterpreted and things can be misused - this is applicable to a lot of things, thats not a good reason though to not try to communicate.

Edited November 12 by zurew

[UnbornTao]

On 11/12/2024 at 3:55 PM, Carl-Richard said:

You simply have an apophatic disposition to talking about it. You feel more secure saying what it isn't than what it is. Which is fine, but the kataphatic way (saying what it is) is just another way of talking about it and is just as legitimate.

Regardless of which way you prefer, the mere act of talking about it is of course not it, and you can recognize this regardless of which way you choose to talk about it. The apopathic way is useful to make someone recognize that it can't be talked about, but when you do recognize it, I think the kataphatic way is more useful. That's what talking is for anyway: saying what things are.

Call it the truth, you, one's nature, real self, existence, absolute, not a highly abstract, vague philosophical notion--or banana. Bring it down from the land of airy fairy concepts to your present experience.

In what ways do you consider it to be useful? Curious. To be clear, there might be some value to talking from an "experience" of it--probably the most valuable being pointing to its possibility. 

Talking is symbolically representing (which gives rise to misrepresenting) things, it is not the same as saying what they are (we might not know that)--you are referring to the process of identifying (naming) things.

Edited November 15 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

On 11/12/2024 at 4:03 PM, zurew said:

I don't know how that risk is lower if we don't engage with reading materials. Also im not really sure what you mean by religion there. 

If a name is given, people cling to it and miss the reality. If no name is given, we remain unaware of its existence. This is a principle. 

Faith, adopting ideas as true.

Quote

I don't see how this is relevant and im not even sure if we should dig into this, because this will open up some stuff that might not even be relevant to the original thing I brought up.

I don't really see what your concern is. Yes communication has its own limits, thats not an argument for not commincating about things though.

I also see some of you falling into the trap of "if you can't exhaustively describe something, then you can't communicate about it at all" , but that second part doesn't follow from the first one.

This whole forum is about debating about a thing that can't exhaustively be described that doesn't mean though that all these talks and debates are completely meaningless.

In essence, your intention is to fit what by nature is "unknowable" and formless into a thing that can be intellectually grasped, which we could then share and discuss about. Hence why I brought up that point. It is not that realization can't be exhaustively described, it is that the desire to do so is problematic and might be based on false presumptions--such as that there is something that is there to be handed over to others through language.

If you study Rinzai and Ramana, you might get a better sense of why this matter is unassailable (unapproachable?) In any case, we like to chat, and some value may be gained from that--yet a kensho is a kensho, talk is talk.

This forum isn't exclusively about "awakening talk". But in the end all talk about the absolute is chatter, not a recognition of the thing itself.

Edited November 15 by UnbornTao

[Carl-Richard]

40 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Call it the truth, you, your nature, existence, the absolute, but not a highly abstract and vague philosophical notion--or banana. Bring it down from the land of airy concepts into your present experience. In what ways do you consider it to be useful? Curious.

Ironically, those are the airy fairy concepts that I'm trying to bring down, into more concrete terms. It's useful to talk about things more concretely, even if there is generalization going on that might not capture edge cases well. But so it is for all topics, not just enlightenment. Language is limited, and there are trade-offs between different levels of analysis.

And I'm not discounting the higher level either. I'm saying "why not both?". Because when things are concrete, you can understand things, predict things, and give concrete advice. If you're stuck at "realizing your true nature", you're not very useful. It might be safer, it might be less prone to inaccuracies, but it's a bit like only wanting to use a hammer and refusing to sow a shirt because you would have to use a needle.

Edited November 12 by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

48 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

If a name is given, people cling to it and miss the reality. If no name is given, we remain unaware of its existence. It's a principle. 

Faith, adopting ideas as true.

Is that supposed to be some kind of zen thing?

I have several thoughts to reply to that:

1) Im not sure its necessarily a problem to have a belief about something ,especially if that belief is true compared to not having any belief about it and staying completely agnostic about it. There is a further level to this, where we say you can't even be agnostic about it (you cant be neither passive or positive or negative towards something that you don't know the meaning of - so for example if I ask you do you believe sdbgjdjfg is true - given that you don't know what sdbgjdjfg  means you are not even agnostic about it )

2)Im not convinced that its better to not have anything in mind when you do your practices and when you do spiritual work. If that supposed to be some kind of argument about the efficiency about spiritual methods being better if you have no knowledge/belief about awakening or enlightenment beforehand vs in the case when you do - thats going to be an empirical claim and I don't think you will be able to subtanstiate it.

3)Its unclear to me whether the beforehand knowledge or belief will block the given person from enlightenment - again if you want to claim this, this is going to be an empirical claim but I don't see how you can substantiate this.

4)But even if you are right, all of this an argument for is to not watch any youtube video or to not read books in this case when when you are not enlightened , but this argument is not a reason to not do any of those things (after enlightenment). 

The issue about recognition (namely recognizing whether you are enlightened or whether you had an awakening will be probably there though, especially if you have 0 concept about it, when you go through it).

48 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

In essence, your intention is to fit something that is by nature unknowable and formless into a thing that can be intellectually grasped, which we could then share and discuss about. Hence why I brought up that point. It is not that realization can't be exhaustively described, it is that the desire to do so is problematic and might be based on false presumptions--such as that there is something that is there to be handed over. 

I don't think those things are entailed in what I said. Everyone here understands that talking about something is not the same as knowing something and knowing something not the same as experiencing something. Words are used to point to things  when you say its not a thing, you are pointing towards it and thats enough to communicate about it.

Look what you did there "something that is unknowable and formless" - you created a category which is applicable to the thing you wanted to talk about and all of those things are meaningful. What you are doing there is pointing towards it.

Again what you are doing there is pointing to a concern about "it can be misinterpreted or misused" - but again thats not necessarily entailed.

Edited November 12 by zurew

[zurew]

@UnbornTao I think you are falling in another trap, where you conflate the properties of the thing thats being pointed to  with the limitations of  pointing or communication itself .

This is similar to this: Don’t confuse the properties of your theories with properties of what your theories are about. Theories don’t need to exemplify what they are talking about. - You can have a clear theory about vagueness ; You can have a meaningful theory about meaninglessness ; You can have an intelligible theory about unintelligiblity etc

Edited November 12 by zurew

[Carl-Richard]

@Sugarcoat I mentioned Jan Esmann earlier. He has a very sober explanation of Enlightenment ("Self-realization") and its various stages ("God-consciousness", etc.) in this interview:

He also explains the curious phenomena of Shaktipat, which is a focused type of transmission of the enlightened state (which otherwise happens passively by just being with them and empathically tuning in to their state). I would love to study that scientifically one day.

And of course, the story about meeting the Blue Being 

Edited November 13 by Carl-Richard

[Sugarcoat]

5 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

@Sugarcoat I mentioned Jan Esmann earlier. He has a very sober explanation of Enlightenment ("Self-realization") and its various stages ("God-consciousness", etc.) in this interview:

He also explains the curious phenomena of Shaktipat, which is a focused type of transmission of the enlightened state (which otherwise happens passively by just being with them and empathically tuning in to their state). I would love to study that scientifically one day.

And of course, the story about meeting the Blue Being 

thanks

[theleelajoker]

14 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

@Sugarcoat I mentioned Jan Esmann earlier. He has a very sober explanation of Enlightenment ("Self-realization") and its various stages ("God-consciousness", etc.) in this interview:

He also explains the curious phenomena of Shaktipat, which is a focused type of transmission of the enlightened state (which otherwise happens passively by just being with them and empathically tuning in to their state). I would love to study that scientifically one day.

And of course, the story about meeting the Blue Being 

Very interesting  coincidence you mention Jan and Shaktipat.

In late 2019 - I just had finished my first meditation retreat and came back from living and working 1year+ in India and Nepal -  a friend told me about it. Jan was giving a two day seminar in London including Shakitpat. He said "seeing where you are right now, this might be the right thing for you". I was very skeptic, but also very curios. I trusted my friend, so I thought "why not give it a look"?

I went there. I did not like Jan at all. He was super boring, pessimistic, defensive, depressed, moody, the complete opposite of being inspiring. I thought about leaving early but stayed for the Shaktipat transmission. Other participants said sth like "yeah he is like that but we are here for the Shaktipat". Well, it seems you have to take the good with the bad...

After a while the participants - including me - were getting the Shaktipat. Shortly after, there was a lunch break and I went into a small cafe with another participant to eat. We talked about the Shakipat, asking ourselves if we feel something. We kind of felt something, we talked about it....and the next thing that got us out of our conversation was the waitress telling us that it's early evening and that the cafe now closes! How is that possible, we just sat down moments ago for lunch?

We talked for hours and we did not notice that time passed. It was crazy. Be both could not really describe what exactly was going on. We felt different and the Shaktipat definitely did sth to us. We both felt the same. If I had to describe it, then I would say it was like being high on very clean, very sharp MDMA but without the visuals. A very functional state of consciousness, being "high" without really noticing being high.

I completely forgot about this experience until now. Looking back at it now, I can take some conclusions from it:

1. Either Shakitpat is real - or they were serving us psychedelics in the cafe Assuming the first, you can - at least temporarily -  transfer states of consciousness from one person to the next one. How fucking crazy is that? I could not really contextualize this experience 5 years ago. Today it seems even more strange to me.
2. Your guru, or teacher can be a really shitty person and still have something real about him. Indian philosophy is coined by the idea that your teacher must live the teaching, that he should embody the principles in daily life (see e.g.: Heinrich Zimmer: Philosophies of India). I personally experienced that the complete opposite can be true as well. What an irony that the video above is in the context of "positive" life interview (LOL) as Jan is the most depressing teacher I ever met re any spiritual teaching. But who knows, maybe he just had a bad phase...
3. Shakipat alone does not really seem to change much in the long run. Many participants were already there for the second, third, fourth time. Can be a piece in the puzzle, but not more than that. Beyond the experience at the cafe I did not notice any changes in my state of consciousness or my life in general. Who knows, effects might be subconscious but I never felt like doing another Shakipat again.
4. "Bliss" and Enlightenment" seem very arbitrary. In the video above, Jan says he feels bliss right now. I don't get the feeling he does. Same way he did not seem to be in bliss when I saw him. Admittedly, only once for two days many years ago. But my impression re this is very constant.

Edited November 13 by theleelajoker

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, theleelajoker said:

I went there. I did not like Jan at all. He was super boring, pessimistic, defensive, depressed, moody, the complete opposite of being inspiring.

Sounds like exactly what @UnbornTao is looking for 😂 Cool that you met Jan. I met him in a dream once and he gave me some advice about spirituality which I can't remember.

Edited November 13 by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

@UnbornTao You don't need to respond to all of my stuff.

Some of it is not even relevant to what I really care about - some of them are secondary.

Without me writing essays lets go step by step.

1) Do you think the term enlightenment is actually a meaningful phrase or do you think its meaningless?

2) Do you think two enlightened people can have a meaningful conversation about enlightenment?

[UnbornTao]

On 11/12/2024 at 4:40 PM, Carl-Richard said:

Ironically, those are the airy fairy concepts that I'm trying to bring down, into more concrete terms. It's useful to talk about things more concretely, even if there is generalization going on that might not capture edge cases well. But so it is for all topics, not just enlightenment. Language is limited, and there are trade-offs between different levels of analysis.

And I'm not discounting the higher level either. I'm saying "why not both?". Because when things are concrete, you can understand things, predict things, and give concrete advice. If you're stuck at "realizing your true nature", you're not very useful. It might be safer, it might be less prone to inaccuracies, but it's a bit like only wanting to use a hammer and refusing to sow a shirt because you would have to use a needle.

Those are more experientially-oriented terms while "philosophical" ones are more difficult to relate to. As an example, "me" and "I" were probably one of the first words you learned, while many people haven't even heard of nonduality, which is a term abstracted out from experience. (?) 

A spiritual term can be intellectually apprehended, yet highly abstract ones might in some ways preclude personal discovery. Abstraction is convenient for the mind because nothing or very little gets confronted within your self-experience--just notions being discussed, refuted, agreed upon, etc. In the context of enlightenment work is where this negation or mindset, if you will, comes in--I wasn't very clear about that from the beginning.

About understanding and communication, it depends on what you are up to, but it is obviously needed and valuable. We would have to start by clarifying for ourselves what is being communicated and for what purpose.

Edited November 15 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

On 11/13/2024 at 6:26 PM, Carl-Richard said:

Sounds like exactly what @UnbornTao is looking for 😂 Cool that you met Jan. I met him in a dream once and he gave me some advice about spirituality which I can't remember.

That you hold such a relationship to what I said is your contribution, not mine. And it shows we don't like our fantasies being destroyed. Consider that there might be some truth to it.

Edited November 15 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

On 11/12/2024 at 5:02 PM, zurew said:

@UnbornTao I think you are falling in another trap, where you conflate the properties of the thing thats being pointed to  with the limitations of  pointing or communication itself .

This is similar to this: Don’t confuse the properties of your theories with properties of what your theories are about. Theories don’t need to exemplify what they are talking about. - You can have a clear theory about vagueness ; You can have a meaningful theory about meaninglessness ; You can have an intelligible theory about unintelligiblity etc

I'm saying there is no substance to enlightenment and so no property or thing that can be pointed at--that's one reason why I recommended checking out guys like Rinzai and Ramana.

Consider that Ramana's "deepest" teachings were said to consist of him sitting in silence, and you'll notice a lot of "nonsense" in Rinzai's communications. 

I can understand the desire to understand enlightenement via the mind and intellect, yet taking this too seriously is counterproductive.

Rather than adding more notions onto our experience of self, what we want is to substract what's false from it, so to speak. Also, trying to fit a square peg in a round hole leaves out the reality of what's being referred to--this dilemma is encountered every time we deal with "enlightenment." I do want to acknowledge the possibility of transmission, too, but don't know anything about it. Who knows?

Mu!

Edited November 15 by UnbornTao

[Staples]

Enlightenment is a construction.

[UnbornTao]

On 11/12/2024 at 4:48 PM, zurew said:

Is that supposed to be some kind of zen thing?

And a principle. Like the finger pointing at the moon.

Quote

I have several thoughts to reply to that:

1) Im not sure its necessarily a problem to have a belief about something ,especially if that belief is true compared to not having any belief about it and staying completely agnostic about it. There is a further level to this, where we say you can't even be agnostic about it (you cant be neither passive or positive or negative towards something that you don't know the meaning of - so for example if I ask you do you believe sdbgjdjfg is true - given that you don't know what sdbgjdjfg  means you are not even agnostic about it )

When it comes to your nature (or anything else for that matter), belief is actually an impediment, as it precludes questioning. Bring to mind what you believe about yourself--I bet that set is considered to be true or descriptive of yourself, at least in some way, if we're honest about it. That certainty gets in the way of a genuine and open inquiry. After all, why question in the first place if "the answer" is already known (assumed)?

Quote

2)Im not convinced that its better to not have anything in mind when you do your practices and when you do spiritual work. If that supposed to be some kind of argument about the efficiency about spiritual methods being better if you have no knowledge/belief about awakening or enlightenment beforehand vs in the case when you do - thats going to be an empirical claim and I don't think you will be able to subtanstiate it.

It's just that in this context, "knowledge" is covered up ignorance, as the underlying condition remains the same--we have no clue about what being is.

Besides, no method for itself can achieve it for you--it might help in a lot of ways, too, such as by focusing the mind. Similar to how no action within a dream can wake one up.

Quote

3)Its unclear to me whether the beforehand knowledge or belief will block the given person from enlightenment - again if you want to claim this, this is going to be an empirical claim but I don't see how you can substantiate this.

See above. If you "know", then there's no possibility for discovering something new, or beyond what you currently hold as the truth.

Quote

4)But even if you are right, all of this an argument for is to not watch any youtube video or to not read books in this case when when you are not enlightened , but this argument is not a reason to not do any of those things (after enlightenment). 

It could be said that on this thread I'm advocating for a change in how we relate to this matter. That relationship would go like this:

Inquire and grasp your nature. Direct is the way to go. Reading, research, dialogue, are useful for certain things. However, the absolute must be gotten in a direct fashion--the breakthrough itself is what's important.

Recognize your knowledge and beliefs as what they are, and set them aside when questioning the nature of anything.

Quote

The issue about recognition (namely recognizing whether you are enlightened or whether you had an awakening will be probably there though, especially if you have 0 concept about it, when you go through it).

If it is a genuine recognition, which might not be as common as it is thought, then it is self-validating, yet the validity isn't found in mind, preference, conviction, but rather on the consciousness if the thing itself. As far as the enlightenment goes, your consciousness of what was realized is clear and by definition true.

Quote

I don't think those things are entailed in what I said. Everyone here understands that talking about something is not the same as knowing something and knowing something not the same as experiencing something. Words are used to point to things  when you say its not a thing, you are pointing towards it and thats enough to communicate about it.

Look what you did there "something that is unknowable and formless" - you created a category which is applicable to the thing you wanted to talk about and all of those things are meaningful. What you are doing there is pointing towards it.

Again what you are doing there is pointing to a concern about "it can be misinterpreted or misused" - but again thats not necessarily entailed.

Do we? To what degree? Do we experience that difference deeply? Isn't it mostly a notion? This recognition can still be deepened. For example, consider that most of what you call yourself is conceptual in nature, yet it appears to be solid and real. 

You apply meaning to things. Is it true? is the question to ask, in my view. In any case, why you engage in something determines the meaning it has for you. Forget about the formless unknowable. Like I said, it just gets in the way. This is why I shared that fancy zen quote on my other post. Now we are focusing on the words, missing an experience of the truth that might lie underneath them.

On 11/13/2024 at 7:16 PM, zurew said:

@UnbornTao You don't need to respond to all of my stuff.

Some of it is not even relevant to what I really care about - some of them are secondary.

Without me writing essays lets go step by step.

1) Do you think the term enlightenment is actually a meaningful phrase or do you think its meaningless?

2) Do you think two enlightened people can have a meaningful conversation about enlightenment?

Depends on what you mean by meaningful. As a term, it points to a possibility. Any other use apart from that might cause more harm than good.

What's a meaningful conversation? As it isn't a thing, my guess is that it can't be shared.

Edited November 15 by UnbornTao

[Carl-Richard]

23 hours ago, theleelajoker said:

Assuming the first, you can - at least temporarily -  transfer states of consciousness from one person to the next one. How fucking crazy is that? I could not really contextualize this experience 5 years ago. Today it seems even more strange to me.

Do you consider it crazy that this happens every day? Empathy is the transfer of consciousness from one person to the next one. Just looking at a person can radically change your state. Just a warm touch from a loving person can radically change your state. A smile, a hug, a kiss. These are viewed as normal states, but there is principally no reason why more elevated states cannot be transfered as well. Try trip sitting a bunch of people on LSD or mushrooms and see what happens (this is a known phenomena; "contact high").

As for why Shaktipat doesn't seem to work well for some people but is very effective for others, it can have to do with how open and allowing you are, similarly to how for empathy, you have to be open and allowing to tune into another person's state. If you are skeptical (which you seemed to be), you will be more closed, and the energy will be less able to get in. So if you manage to put down your barriers and completely buy into the process, that is maybe when you will see more drastic effects.

As a self-proclaimed empathetic person, when I try my fullest to tune into Jan's state in some of his videos (e.g. this one, it's crazy), and the times I have been rather successful at that, I have sensed that he is in a extremely different state than most people are in. It's actually unbelievable how he is able to even talk in that state. It's like he is constantly shooting heroin into his veins. So to me, it would actually be quite odd that him touching you for a prolonged period would not cause at least some effect on you, even if you are closed empathetically in that particular situation.

 

23 hours ago, theleelajoker said:

What an irony that the video above is in the context of "positive" life interview (LOL) as Jan is the most depressing teacher I ever met re any spiritual teaching. But who knows, maybe he just had a bad phase...

I personally don't find him "depressing", but maybe a bit low on interpersonal warmth at times. Interestingly, people tend to have similar mixed feelings about Sadhguru.

As we discussed briefly earlier, the personality of enlightened people can be highly variable, especially in aspects such as interpersonal warmth, lifestyle choices and general thinking style. What is more standardized is a lack of worry, overthinking and rumination. Look up e.g. "Rumination-Reflection Questionnaire" (RRQ) for examples. My prediction is if you give that questionnaire to enlightened people, they will regularly score 0 or close to 0. But indeed, they can definitely still have weird personalities.

And this is understandable, especially in cases like Jan where there was an almost pure obsession about enlightenment since a young age. Ramana had a similar approach. He neglected his body so much that he needed other people to care for him at points so he didn't die. Similarly, if you pursue enlightenment obsessively and happen to eat too much food and drink Pepsi and you finally get enlightened, probably not much will change.

Even if you ask less interpersonally controversial people like Mooji, Eckhart Tolle or Rupert Spira, I would bet they still probably go to the same store, buy the roughly same foods, and eat with the same knife and fork as they used to before they became enlightened. There is still a person there with distinct behavioral patterns that logically follow from their past actions and that have to live themselves out (prarabdha karma). "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop food, carry water".

Edited November 14 by Carl-Richard

[Yimpa]

20 hours ago, Staples said:

Enlightenment is a construction.

And the construction workers are an illusion