This Is Enlightenment Chapter 1
If enlightenment were an ocean, then the objects in your world would be its waves.
The Perfection Of Enlightenment In enlightenment, everything is perfect exactly as it is. The whole field of experience shines with unwavering perfection. This perfection is fully intact, and it’s not created or sustained through any effort of the self. What is already is perfect.
With enlightenment, a beauty and perfection that never fade become visible in all of life.
You could say that the happiness of enlightenment is ultimate happiness. It is the greatest and most fundamental happiness there is. It is a happiness within which there is no need for more happiness. And it is a happiness that is intrinsic to all things.
More than ninety-five percent of the spiritual teachers today teach partial forms of enlightenment. They are not actually offering the full form of enlightenment.
They may be yearning for the full form, but instead they are seeking—or, in some cases, experiencing—a partial form without realizing it.
Section I Spirit-Based Enlightenment
With that being said, the form of enlightenment we now turn to is the first of the two partial kinds of enlightenment. This kind of enlightenment can be called “spirit-based enlightenment,” because it rests on the experience of spirit. Spirit-based enlightenment has two main aspects to it: perceiving the presence of spirit and experiencing yourself as spirit.
Perceiving The Presence Of Spirit Chapter 2
More specifically, are you also perceiving the presence of spirit? Spirit is just as real and eventually becomes just as obvious to you as anything else that you are now perceiving. Spirit is ever-present, changeless, and beyond time and space. It is in a permanent state of wellbeing. Spirit is who you fundamentally are. It resides in the heart of all things, and it is the ground of the world. Everything that you are now experiencing is one in spirit. Are you perceiving this?
If you can persistently perceive the presence of spirit, then you are enlightened. If you can’t, then you are not.
After enlightenment, the presence of spirit becomes stabilized, and it is always with you. So much so that it can cause you to almost forget that it is there—much like the shirt you are now wearing. You won’t need to worry about it or put energy into keeping it around. You won’t lose it and have to go looking for it again.
other words, spirit doesn’t just dwell inside you; it is you.
Therefore, with enlightenment, you perceive the presence of spirit not only in your own heart but in the heart of all things.
their physical form, but also their “spiritual form.” You perceive the presence of spirit shining inside them.
In this enlightened state, you perceive the presence of spirit within all things: human and non-human, conscious and non-conscious, sentient and insentient, animate and inanimate.
This third place is not exactly “within” yourself or “within” others. Instead, you perceive the presence of spirit as underlying and pervading the world and all things.
It has no locus or center in anyone or anything. In this third instance, rather than conceiving of spirit as the “heart” or “center” of something, you can simply imagine it as another
“layer” or “level” of reality. This level underlies and pervades your entire world. It is not concentrated within or emanating from anything, but it is evenly distributed beneath and throughout all of the world. And it is perceived in and through every part of the world equally.
Instead, its presence is “spread” or uniformly manifest throughout all experience; it equally pervades and underlies all things.
Perhaps a better way of understanding this experience of enlightenment is to think of the presence of spirit as something that is added to your current experience of the world, rather than something which takes away your world.
When you look out at the world, you merely see things; but I see pristine, limitless Being.
You only see a body. Yet through your body, I see the unfathomable beauty of the Infinite. The Spirit in me recognizes Itself in you. And It sees Itself everywhere. In Essence, you and all things are timeless and boundless. Beneath the incessant change of the world, one unchanging Reality endures. Whatever happens in the world, you are always companioned by a deeper Presence of perfect peace. Through the vicissitudes of your life, the bliss of your Divine Self remains untouched and unmoved.
With spirit-based enlightenment, both your ordinary world and spirit are co-present with one another: you experience both time and the timeless, space and the spaceless, change and the changeless, manyness and oneness, your humanity and your divinity, and so forth. In short, although you perceive the presence of spirit, your ordinary world persists.
Through spirit, God is always present within you, whether or not you realize it. So, when you experience spirit, you experience not only your own divine spirit, but also God’s presence within you.
Because the presence of spirit is within all things, all things are divine and come from God, and God too is present in all things. Spirit is the place within where you and God are both eternally present and united with each other. And spirit is also that place where you and all things are eternally united in and with God.
Experiencing Yourself As Spirit Chapter 3
Who are you? How do you experience yourself now, in this very moment? Are you a body or a mind? Or are you a self who is inhabiting a body/mind?
As spirit, you are ever-present, changeless, and beyond space and time. You are in a state of permanent wellbeing. You reside at the heart of all things. You are the ground of the world. And all things are one in you.
Regardless of when or how you share this, the point is that with enlightenment, you know this to be your deepest truth and reality. This isn’t a thought or a belief that you have about what might be real or who you might be. This is how you actually experience yourself. This is an obvious and undeniable fact that you are directly aware of in an irreversible, ongoing way.
Believe it or not, this eventually becomes very ordinary. Although, admittedly, it can take some time to adjust to.
Finally, although who or what you are as spirit might seem mysterious to you now, believe it or not, your ordinary human self is just as much if not more of a mystery. In fact, once you come to experience the presence of spirit, you will know what spirit is.
Spirit-Based Enlightenment Defined: Part II
enlightenment is the irreversible, ongoing experience of
yourself as spirit—ever-present, changeless, beyond space and time, and in a state of permanent wellbeing.
Your body might be in a state of ease or disease. You might be tired or well-rested, hungry or satiated, healthy or sick, in pleasure or pain. But, despite the state of your body, your divine self is unchanged, and its wellbeing persists.
Section II Awareness-Based Enlightenment
recognizing the presence of awareness and knowing yourself to be awareness.
Awareness-based enlightenment and spirit-based enlightenment are fundamentally different and independent from one another.
Recognizing The Presence Of Awareness Chapter 4
More specifically, are you also aware of the presence of awareness itself? Awareness is just as real and eventually becomes just as obvious to you as any of the things that you are now aware of. Awareness is still, clear, luminous, and always at peace. It is ever-present, changeless, and beyond time and space.
The content of experience is in perpetual flux. But awareness is still, quiet, clear, luminous, and always at peace. Finally, the universe contains a multitude of things. But awareness is one and undivided in itself, and all things are one in it.
It will persist until you begin to disentangle awareness from the rest of your experience and encounter it by itself in its unmixed or pure form.
The level of your experience where awareness resides is prior to or “beneath” your mind/body. And your mind/body appear “on top” of it. Once you experience pure awareness, you will see that awareness is unmistakably distinct from your mind/body.
Technically speaking, there is not one sip of coffee in which water is not present. With each sip of coffee, you are therefore experiencing water. However, you can’t distinguish the presence of water from all the other flavors in the coffee. You can drink coffee all day for the rest of your life, and you will still never really know what water is. In order to recognize the presence of water and know its nature, you can’t drink coffee. You must taste water by itself—in its pure form, unmixed with anything else. Only then will you really know what water is.
Knowing Yourself As Awareness Chapter 5
Therefore, if you are searching for awareness, you can initiate your search from either side of experience: the object side or the subject side. In the previous chapter, we focused on the object side. And in this chapter, we are focusing on the subject side. Awareness is equally present on both sides and equally accessible through both.
You refer to yourself as “I.” Yet you don’t know who or what “I” is.
In the end, the mind must surrender in order for pure awareness to reveal itself. Pure awareness doesn’t simply show itself to “you,” the mind/body self, or shine its light into your world. Rather, in revealing itself, pure awareness replaces your current reality with its own.
When all is said and done, however, you as awareness are beyond the
mind: not beyond the current state of the mind, and not in a more altered or expanded state of mind. You are beyond the mind itself in a way that the mind can’t imagine. Beyond the mind, you know what you are. You know what you, unmixed or pure awareness, is.
Awareness-Based Enlightenment Defined: Part II If you are seeking awareness-based enlightenment, then what you are trying to do is distinguish yourself as awareness from the rest of your experience. This will enable you to know yourself as you are and see your real nature.
Spirit vs. Awareness Chapter 6
Spirit vs. Awareness Some of you might be wondering how the presence of awareness differs from the presence of spirit.
You can be fully established in the experience of spirit, and awareness can be just as unrecognized, just as “mixed” or entangled with the content of experience as ever. In fact, awareness not only can be entangled but it will be. It will remain entangled, unless you also undergo a spiritual process which leads specifically to the disentanglement and recognition of awareness. Likewise, you can fully recognize the presence and nature of awareness and still not even vaguely perceive the presence of spirit. You can have no clue that spirit even exists.
Similarly, if you experienced spirit, I don’t think you would name it “awareness.” Again, that certainly wouldn’t be your first choice. However, names such as spirit, the divine, and God fit the presence of spirit perfectly. The presence of spirit is not figuratively but literally spirit, the divine, and God.
In an ideal world, the presence of awareness would only be called awareness, and the presence of spirit would only be called spirit, the divine, and/or God. But this is not what happens. To complicate things, there are also more general terms such as presence, heart, and ground which in fairness could be used as names for either awareness or spirit.
Descriptions Of Awareness And Spirit
For instance, you will find that both awareness and spirit are described as being “ever-present” or always present. As a result, finding or having an experience of something that is “ever-present” isn’t enough to enable you to identify what it is. Is it spirit or awareness? Since both are described in this way, you can’t know. You’ve likely heard statements such as:
If you find one, how can you tell which one you’ve found? How can you identify it and tell it apart from the other one? As you’ve seen, names and descriptions usually fall short. Fortunately, there is another way.
The Function Of Awareness
In fact, to distinguish awareness and spirit from one another, you only need to know the function of one of them: awareness. Awareness functions in a distinctive way that spirit does not. Once I point this out to you, it will be obvious.
So how does awareness function? Awareness functions as awareness. It is what is aware. If you are aware of the sensation of your right hand, it is awareness that is aware of that. If you are aware of anything else, it is awareness that is aware of that.
This is not spirit’s purpose or what it does. Spirit does not function as awareness.
The “I” Of Awareness And The “I” Of Spirit
Rather, it is awareness. “I” refers to the one and only self that you have: non-mental, non-physical awareness.
In experiencing yourself as spirit, you don’t disentangle the “I” of awareness from the mind/body or from the content of experience. You don’t remove or stop experiencing yourself as a human mind/body self either. Instead, with the experience of yourself as spirit, two selves become available: yourself as human mind/body and yourself as spirit.
But what you are is found both in a divine spirit and in a human mind/body. You are not merely one or the other; you are both.
With awareness-based enlightenment, you discover the true nature of “I.” You see that “I” is spiritual in nature—it is awareness—and not physical or mental at all. You discover that there is only one “I” or one self. And that “I” or self is not a mind/body or someone inside a mind/body. It is awareness.
However, with spirit-based enlightenment, the “I” of awareness is still entangled with the mind/body, and the ordinary mind/body self is still intact. Instead of disentangling the “I” of awareness, you become able to perceive another dimension of yourself: the presence of spirit. And you realize that you are not only a human mind/body, but you are spirit too.
In both cases, the same basic mistake is being made: the assumption that there is only one possible spiritual “self” for you to realize in enlightenment. It never occurs that each statement could be correct, but for a different spiritual “self” found in a different state of enlightenment.
Section III Full Enlightenment
In the full form of enlightenment, the chronic feeling that there is something else, something different, something better, or something more finally goes away. The full form of enlightenment removes the underlying sense of dissatisfaction and incompleteness that nothing else can take away. And it is in the full form of enlightenment where ultimate happiness, unbounded oneness, and the intrinsic beauty and perfection of all things is disclosed.
The full form of enlightenment does not rest on the experience of a deeper spiritual reality, such as spirit or awareness. Instead, in the full form of enlightenment, there is nothing but a spiritual reality, you could say.
In connection with this, full enlightenment can also be characterized as two other things: experience in the absence of a self and of objects; or the experience of no-self and of no-objects. For this reason, full enlightenment can seem highly unusual and even counterintuitive at first.
No-Objects And Unbounded Oneness Chapter 7
It doesn’t reduce conscious experience to a swirling mass of undifferentiated sensations. And you don’t regress to an undeveloped, baby-like state in which you can’t function. Finally, no-objects is also not the experience of a visual field flattened into something resembling a two-dimensional plane or a flat surface. As a flat or two-dimensional object is just as much of an object as a three-dimensional one.
Rather, it is the removal of their objectness. It includes the objects you are now experiencing minus their objectness. So experiencing no-objects doesn’t mean that you’ve somehow gone through your world, gathered up all the objects, and cast them away. The same objects are still there—chairs, dogs, laundry baskets, body sensations, emotions, thoughts, and what have you. However, they are no longer there as objects; they have lost their objectness.
Whenever you see a wave, you are encountering the ocean. And whenever you see an object, you are encountering no-objects, whether or not you realize it. Once you recognize the “ocean” of no-objects, all apparent objects lose their objectness. In an instant, you know that they not separate, independently existing things but are “waves” or appearances of the “ocean” of no-objects.
First, in the oneness of no-objects, there is nothing other than oneness. There is nothing else outside it or beyond it or in addition to it. There is oneness and oneness alone, and nothing else. Since the oneness of no-objects alone is and there is nothing else, you could say that it is a total oneness. Similarly, the oneness of no-objects doesn’t exist in relation to anything else. It is not present within, throughout, or beneath the ordinary world or things in it.
It is what the world and everything in it has become or now is. Actually, this has always been what the world and all things are. But with full enlightenment, this reality is no longer hidden; it becomes visible. Since the oneness of no-objects doesn’t exist in relation to anything else, it is a non-relative or absolute oneness.
Nonetheless, if it were to somehow reappear in some way, its status would be no different than that of the chairs, dogs, laundry baskets, or anything else in your experience—it would be just as objectless as anything else. And it wouldn’t be any more or less “spiritual” than anything else either.
It is also so much more. It is an impenetrable silence beneath the cacophony of the world; an immovable stillness within life’s vicissitudes; an unshakeable ground beneath life’s turbulence. It is the tangible presence of the sacred itself, in its distilled, immaculate form. It is a constant guide, lighting your way. It is an ever-present holy refuge. It is your most meaningful and intimate companion. It is your Beloved, in whose warm embrace you could disappear forever. And it is even more.
Not only does your Beloved—the deeper spiritual reality—go away and your relationship with it end, but you go away or end as well. There is no Beloved, no self, and no relationship in full enlightenment.
No-Self And Ultimate Happiness Chapter 8
However, if you are in the state of full enlightenment, then you will not experience yourself in any of these ways—as a body, mind, spirit, or awareness. In fact, in full enlightenment, there is no “I” or
self inside you. And there is also no “I” or self outside you or anywhere else. Then, who are you?
Full enlightenment is the experience of no-self or experience in the absence of a self. As strange as it might initially seem, the experience of no-self can eventually become even more obvious, natural, and real to you than any experience of self you could have.
No-Self And Consciousness It’s hard to imagine how you could experience anything without a self, not to mention how you would function. Nonetheless, experience continues without a self and so does functioning.
So, no-self is a form of human consciousness. It is a form of human consciousness in which there is no self; it is human consciousness without self-consciousness.
In other words, you might believe that the ability to have experiences at all depends on the existence of a self. But the two—self and experience—are distinct. And it is possible to have experiences without having or being a self
In death, “I” end or die. And because there can be no experience without “me,” then when “I” die, experience dies with me. Death is the end of “me” and therefore the end of experience. Or so one might suppose.
You might imagine death as a cold, unconscious blackness, or as an infinite space devoid of anything, or as being a disembodied point of consciousness floating in nothingness, or what have you. This, of course, wouldn’t be the actual end of experience but just another type of experience.
No-self isn’t an unconscious blackness, or an infinite empty space, or the state of being a disembodied point of consciousness, or anything like that.
On a more mental or psychological level, you still naturally prefer equanimity over anxiety, connection over loneliness, happiness over depression, love over heartbreak, and so on. Not only that, but you still have your personality—for better and for worse—with all of your likes and dislikes. If you liked Italian food when you had a self, you will probably still like Italian food in the absence of your self.
Finally, in addition to still having a personality, you will still have your psychological conditioning and wounding. This might be unwelcome news, but the removal of self doesn’t remove your psychological conditioning or heal your psychological wounds.
Additionally, there is no self who is the owner of experience: “This is my body, my emotions, my thoughts,” or even “my first-person perspective.”
“This is my action. I am authoring and doing this.” And there is no self in relationship. In fact, there is no relationship. As no-self is also no-objects—no things, no others, no objective world.
First, you no longer are or have an existence to reflect on. There is no one or nothing there existing “inside” you.
Second, and even more surprising, with the experience of no-self the act or process of reflection subsides. Reflection is no longer a means by which you know your experience.
No-Self And Depersonalization In case there is any confusion, I should clarify that the experience of no-self is not depersonalization. It is not the experience of alienation from yourself or the experience that you are unreal. In the experience of no-self, you are not detached from yourself or disconnected from your body sensations, feelings, thoughts, or actions. And you are not separate from yourself, as though observing yourself from the outside.
In the experience of no-self, there is no longer a self that is mediating experience. Experience is no longer filtered through a self-other, subject-object structure, so it is known in a more direct, non-dual way. (If you are interested, non-duality is a topic covered in Book II.) If anything, you might argue that it is the self which is actually “detached” or at least a step removed from this more fundamental intimacy with what is.
In addition to this, the happiness experienced in no-self is already complete and self-sustaining. You don’t have to bring it into existence or fashion it. You also don’t have to monitor it in order to sustain it at a certain level or manage it in any way. In the absence of self, this happiness is discovered to already be in all experience, and you don’t have to do anything for it to be this way.
So, it’s not like a happy feeling that you could have more or less of or that can come or go. It’s also not to be mistaken for the greatest amount of relative happiness one can experience. It’s not part of a happiness-unhappiness continuum. It’s an
unchanging, non-relative happiness. So, in brief, the happiness of no-self is an ultimate, self-sustaining, pure, unchanging happiness.
The self can experience non-ultimate happiness in endless forms. But those endless forms of non-ultimate happiness will always be less or other than ultimate happiness.
Spiritual Self Or No-Self? Chapter 9
So if the question “Who am I?” were posed to you in the state of full enlightenment, your answer would be “No one” or “There is no ‘I’” or “Experience is occurring, but there is no self who is experiencing it.”
discussed. In response to the question “Who am I?” those forms of enlightenment include statements such as “I am spirit,” “I am awareness,” and “I am presence.” There is an “I” and there is something that it is: spirit, awareness, presence, essence, the heart, etc. But in full enlightenment, there is no “I” and, as you saw in Chapter 7, there is also nothing else for it to possibly be.
The first part of the challenge is that what it means to have no self is impossible to imagine from the point of view of a self. It doesn’t matter if the self trying to imagine no-self is in a state of partial enlightenment or not. No-self is equally unimaginable from the points of view of the body, mind, spirit, and awareness.
While the self is present, you can’t clearly see it, and as a consequence you can’t really tell if it’s there or not. Therefore, you don’t actually know what it is that is supposed to be absent or no longer there in no-self. And you won’t really know until the self is gone. So the nature of both the presence and the absence of the self will remain elusive until it’s gone.
The whole field of experience and everything in it was caught up in and shaped by the self. So when you lose your self, everything else loses it too. Not just you but the whole field of experience and everything in it will be selfless.
It is not only in those things but it is them. No-self is what they are discovered to be.
However, with the full form of enlightenment, there is nothing but a spiritual reality. There is no other aspect, level, or dimension of experience. In full enlightenment, spiritual reality is the only reality that there is, and there is nothing else existing alongside or in relation to it.