Enlightenment
What is the experience of enlightenment like?
People attempt to describe it in many ways. Ramana Maharshi says that when you realise the Self (enlightenment), the sense of yourself as distinct from the world disappears.
Another person describes it by saying, 'I was sitting opposite someone during an enlightenment intensive workshop. We had been posing the question for days - "Who are you?" Suddenly I realised that it was a silly question, because I was the answer. All thought stopped and I existed as the answer. My being had always been this. In this state there was an awareness of being connected with everything around me, in the beginning of creation. This was the first day.'
Another person says, 'Unexpectedly everything changed and my fundamental self was something that existed throughout all time. It didn't have a beginning or end. There was no goal to achieve. I am.'
Slightly different but still the same enlightenment. 'Everything seemed to slip away and I felt as if I melted back into the primal being of the universe. It didn't seem as if my ego was gone, just melted into everything else. It was blissful.'
In her book Collision With the Infinite, Suzanne Segal writes, 'In the midst of a particularly eventful week, I was driving north to meet some friends when I suddenly became aware that I was driving through myself. For years there had been no self at all, yet here on this road, everything was myself, and I was driving through me to arrive where I already was. In essence, I was going nowhere because I was everywhere already. The infinite emptiness I knew myself to be was now apparent as the infinite substance of everything I saw.'
As can be seen, there is no final description of enlightenment, just as there is no final definition of life, or love, or any human person. Everything is, in the end, transcendent. Eveything, even the commonest of objects or events, transcends final definition. For instance a cup we drink from can be seen as a household item. It can be looked at chemically. We can see it as a piece of art. There may be personal associations or feelings we link with it. There can be an atomic or subatomic examination of it, or a cultural interpretation. Which one of these is correct? Which one is the final or fullest definition?
There is no final definition. The cup is a part of transcendence. Enlightenment occurs when we directly know the transcendence of our own existence, beyond any definition. It is a direct knowing beyond thought or feeling, of the world and self as One.
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