Enlightenment is a deeply misunderstood and often misused word.
Anyone who has attained Enlightenment faces an immediate difficulty when attempting to explain it: words and concepts belong to the mind, while Enlightenment lies beyond what the mind can adequately describe. The well-known statement, “The Tao that can be described is not the Tao,” captures this difficulty.
We can therefore make attempts to point towards Enlightenment through words and analogies, but these should never be mistaken for Enlightenment itself.
Clearing Up Some Common Misconceptions
Before attempting even a limited description of Enlightenment, it is important to address some common misconceptions.
Enlightenment is a state of consciousness. It does not, in itself, confer particular physical, mental, emotional or personality characteristics.
It is therefore not possible simply to analyse someone’s behaviour, personality or abilities and determine whether that person is Enlightened.
Some commonly held assumptions include:
“Only a humble and compassionate person can attain Enlightenment.”
“An Enlightened person understands all spiritual philosophies.”
“An Enlightened person possesses psychic abilities.”
“Enlightenment is Self-Realization.”
“Enlightenment is realizing your true self.”
Within the teachings presented here, none of these statements defines Enlightenment.
Self-Realization and Enlightenment
Self-Realization is frequently described as Enlightenment, but within these teachings an important distinction is made between the two.
Self-Realization is the direct recognition of our spiritual nature beyond the personality, thoughts and ordinary sense of self. It represents a profound awakening, but it is not the completion of the spiritual journey.
Enlightenment involves moving beyond Self-Realization into progressively higher states of consciousness, culminating in God Consciousness.
Self-Realization can therefore be understood as a major awakening on the journey, while Enlightenment represents its ultimate realization.
Are We Already God?
It is sometimes said that we are already God but have simply forgotten our true nature. Within the teachings presented here, this creates a fundamental difficulty.
If God is absolute, then God cannot consist of separate parts. Nor can the Absolute be something that an individual personality once knew and subsequently forgot.
To say that we have a “true self” that is already God can therefore imply a separation that ultimately does not exist.
At Enlightenment, the realization is not simply “I have remembered who I really am.” Rather, the apparent separate personality itself is seen to have been an illusion arising within consciousness.
What remains is the recognition of an absolute and permanent Reality, in which the identity previously experienced as a separate individual is understood to have had no independent existence.
Pointing Towards Enlightenment
Rather than attempting to define something that cannot adequately be contained within words, it can be more useful to consider statements that attempt to point towards the Enlightened state:
“I am in a state of Being and doing No-thing.”
“I am without beginning or end. I have always been.”
“I am the Space within which all of creation manifests.”
“I was never born and can never die.”
None of these statements defines Enlightenment. They are attempts to express, through the limitations of language, a state in which the ordinary distinction between the individual and the Absolute has disappeared.