Enlightenment and Human Brain

dei,
I don't have any answers for you.
This is just a reminder not to believe what anyone tells you.
Question, discuss, contemplate......but don't accept an answer as true, including what I am saying here.
A word like realization would convey finding out for oneself what is true.

What about your own experience? What changes do you notice when you are sick or physically impaired in some way?

And what of Jill Bolte Taylor?

Would one consider her enlightened?

Semi-enlightened?

dei,

I think this is a fantastic question. Things like this still pop up for me from time to time, but I rarely think to ask about them. I occassionally get to speak to Bart Marshall at SIG, and once I asked him how he would distinguish disidentification with the body (world) from a dissociative disorder or something like depersonalization/derealization disorder. His comment, while I don't remember it word for word, was that there is a distinct difference qualitatively, but that it would be difficult to explain and he told me I might get a good perspective on it from Michael Hall, who has clinical psychology experience. Similarly Mr. Rose's fate has occurred to me, and Ms. Segal, and almost out of the blue while these things seemed to be comming up in my mind something David Scoma said in some ways made me think that enlightenment, in some small part, has to do with an individual.

Someone asked Scoma at one of our groups (and you can find the recording of this SIG on his site justperception.com) if this state (the unitive state) could be forgotten, or lost, or something of this sort and he answered that it could not. However, he qualified that by saying that nothing short of a brain injury/brain insult could make one lose it (not exactly his words again, but this was what was implied).

Bart Marshall has said that even though one can't do anything to bring the experience about it seems to happen to folks who are seekers more often than those not. This follows his analogy that a mathmatical stroke of genius might be more likely to occur to John Forbes Nash than to Picasso, and an artisitic stroke of genius might be more likely to occur to Picasso than Nash. However, either of these men could have an injury to the brain that would hinder their abilities to perceive these things. But if you were to ask one of the gentlemen directly if what they knew how to do could be forgotten, they might also say it isn't likely. I'd be interested to see what ZD has to say as well.

It is as impossible to predict who will wake up as it is to predict who will be drawn to this path in the first place. Most of the people I've met who have awakened became utterly consumed by their seeking and waking up became the most important thing in their lives. At the same time there are people, like Tolle, Hui Neng, Ramana, et al, who get struck seemingly out of the blue and get the whole shebang. There are no hard and fast rules about this as far as I can see.

Zen people generally distinguish between two kinds of enlightenment experiences. The first is called "kensho" and this is equivalent to a cosmic consciousness experience. Zen calls it "seeing into one's true nature." Many people have these kinds of experiences, and various things are learned as a result. Only rarely does this kind of mind-blowing experience lead to freedom. Almost always it is an introduction, only, to the world of the absolute, and it usually raises many new questions in the mind of the experiencer.

The second kind of enlightenment experience is called "satori," and this is what leads to freedom and the end of spiritual seeking. In this experience, which is not really an experience, one realizes that the person who was seeking enlightenment was an illusion and that there was never any self existence separate from the whole of reality. John Doe, for example, realizes that "John Doe" was a mirage.

From my experience MOST people who have this realization (who also retain their mental faculties) never again imagine that they are separate entities in the way they did prior to having the realization. Notice that I said "most." There are exceptions to every rule. LOL

After this realization occurs, seeking comes to an end, and there is a kind of mental relaxation. One finally gets to live an ordinary life without being hounded by the need to find the truth or experience the infinite. One realizes that who one is is infinite (is truth itself), but life continues as before without the seeking.

Here is a typical story: A man (who we'll call John Doe) always wanted to know God in some tangible first-person visceral sense. He went to church and did all the usual stuff without success. He searched from the age of eleven onwards. At the age of forty-five he walked by a TV and heard Deepak Chopra talking to Oprah Winfrey. Deepak said to Oprah, "Remember, you are not in the world; the world is in you." This statement mystified John Doe, so he bought one of Deepak's books and in that book he heard about "The Course in Miracles." He bought the course and worked through the whole thing, following all of the directions. Afterwards, he still didn't understand anything, but he had a strange feeling that something was going to happen. A few weeks later he was driving down a country road when he looked up into some pine trees and suddenly had a kensho experience. He saw himself everywhere--in the trees, in the roadway, in a hawk sitting on a limb, and in the license plate of a passing car. He called this experience his "shift." He tried to tell people about it, but no one knew what he was talking about. John began reading about non duality and later met some people who were able to explain what had happened to him. He had other experiences and learned about various non-dual traditions, but he still wasn't satisfied. He described his condition as one of "hurting inside." Subsequently he met Adyashanti and had some long talks with him which finally gave him the satisfaction he had been seeking. The hurting ended and his searching ended. Today, he is still married and still works at his regular job. He teaches about non duality to people who are interested in it. He teaches that ego is no problem; it is just part of being human and there is no reason to get rid of it once the nature of it is seen and understood. He is highly irreverent and works as a professional comedian (how appropriate).

Can enlightenment be lost? Sure. One can reenter the mind and stay there. That's a surefire way to lose one's clarity. One can develop delusions of grandeur prompted by fawning followers and start believing he/she's special (there are many well-known examples on the modern spiritual scene). One can develop alzheimers or suffer any number of brain diseases which takes away memory and/or understanding. The idea that enlightenment will continue indefinitely is just another idea to be tossed in the trash can. It is a fantasy about the future.

zd.- i agree with your post, yet reaching the point where john doe's ego could be seen as irrelevant and understood as such required a great deal of prep work. i think that many students might misunderstand that post as an oversimplification. if it were that easy we could just tell all graduating seniors as they were handed their diplomas," oh by the way that ego that we just helped program into you is irrelevant." and their first class in college could be determining ego relevance 101. obviously john doe had shown adyashanti that he, john, had reached a level of understanding where the truth could be seen.
most ego's won't relinquish control of one's life and just step out of the way simply because it was distracted by a couple of minutes of direct perception ( not to oversimplify direct perception)
robert

Wow! Thank you so much everyone, especially ZD and David... that was really... well... 'enlightening' is perhaps not the word in this forum...

I think my question (now that it's a week later) was mostly about the relationship of human brain function to realization of Oneness... whether it is necessary to be human, and to have a healthy brain. Why did i ask this? I'm so used to thinking 'outside the box' that it actually surprised me that there was still a box. What David said about piercing the veil resonates... and i am somewhat delighted that there may have still been no-self in Richard Rose (bad phraseology but it's too hard for me to be precise when i don't know what i'm talking about *lol*).

Thanks so much for the thoughtful discussion!

alzheimer's...
worked with ppl like your Mum.
Tell me, is she still with you in physical-life?

It is the I which fears.

ps, come back shortly...
i have a book ref for you.