Only Consciousness Is, August 14, 2007

Enlightenment is not a subjective experience. It’s not a particular subjective experience and it is not an experience that is ongoing in your subjectivity.

Enlightenment is the waking up of Consciousness Itself, the disintegration of the distinction between inner and outer. It’s simply waking up beyond the mirage of duality. And therefore, again, it is not “an experience.” An experience only happens to the subject. It only happens to the mind or the inner being.

So, when we are talking about enlightenment, we are deconstructing this erroneous notion. It’s very important to understand this. Otherwise, you will be running around looking for something that doesn’t exist, which is that some part of you is enlightened. Enlightenment, in such a case, would be a fragment, just another extension of fragmented consciousness and experience, and it is precisely that has been transcended in real, true enlightenment.

So truly, when we use the word enlightenment, we are not really talking about anything that we know. We are not talking about something that we can define.

Even when words like Absolute or Self (big Self) are used, they too are metaphorical pointers towards a Reality that cannot be grasped. It’s very difficult to have a discussion about an arena that transcends subject-object duality. It’s impossible and yet we continue to talk because we have to.

If we don’t talk and remain silent, that’s one possible solution to the problem. But, silence points toward nothing, towards nothingness and life is not silent. Life has color, form, energy, movement, direction, intelligence; it has all qualities in it. So, to remain silent and point toward the Self is not really an adequate tool either.