1. What Is Enlightenment?
Q Andrew, you are a teacher of enlightenment. A lot of people would like to understand what that word means. So, my first question for you is: What is enlightenment?
A That's a very difficult question to answer in a simple, succinct way, because enlightenment means many different things on many different levels. Maybe I can begin by giving you one definition, and hopefully by the end of our dialogue together, a full picture of what it means will have revealed itself.
A good place to start would be this: One who is truly enlightened has directly experienced the ultimate or absolute nature of life itself. In that revelation, they have seen far beyond the boundaries of the personal self and discovered the universal nature of all their human experience. That explosive realization liberates the self from the perpetual tyranny of being trapped in a relationship to life that is merely personal.
Another way to answer your question would simply be to say that enlightenment is a condition in which the individual has come to the end of a fundamentally self-centered relationship to life. Most human beings, it seems, are concerned only with their own needs—constantly thinking about themselves, always wanting for themselves, perpetually lost in an endless, narcissistic preoccupation with their own personalities. So one way to understand what enlightenment is would be to say that it is a condition in which we have come to the end of this painfully self-centered relationship to the human experience.
How does this realization happen? Does it happen gradually, or is it a dramatic transformation that can occur in an instant?
It really depends upon the individual. But it doesn't matter whether it happens instantaneously or gradually. The only important thing is that
it happens. Because as long as we are self-centered, lost in that which is merely personal, we are simply not going to be available. Available for what? Available to manifest the profound and extraordinary evolutionary potential that in most of us lies dormant. You see, this suffering world is in dire need of truly conscious beings—human beings who know who they are and why they are here.
But wouldn't moving beyond the personal in the way you are describing discount many important aspects of human life?
Absolutely not. The enlightened condition in no way denies any aspect of our humanity. It
enlightens it. What does that mean? It means that our perspective dramatically deepens and widens. The perspective of one who has not awakened is limited by definition. The reference point for all of their personal experience is the separate ego. But the perspective of one who has awakened is free from this fundamental limitation because, as I've said, they have realized the absolute nature of life and the universal nature of their own human experience. And that changes
everything. It transforms their relationship to being alive because the context in which they are living now infinitely transcends the merely personal dimension. Therefore, the question I encourage people to ask themselves is:
How enlightened is my perspective on my own personal experience?
So an "enlightened perspective" would be one where we see all our experience in a much, much bigger context?
Yes. And that bigger context reveals itself automatically when we make the thrilling discovery that who and what we are, beyond the personal ego, is a profound mystery that is completely free from any sense of limitation. A truly enlightened human being spontaneously expresses that freedom from limitation
as their own humanity. Indeed, simply through spending time in their company, we can awaken to that same mystery that is also our own true nature. In their reflection, it becomes obvious how, in our ignorance, we have been living in an alarmingly small context. And we see directly that it is that small context alone that creates the painful sense of suffocation and isolation that is so familiar in the unawakened state. The miraculous experiential discovery of the enlightened perspective is instantly liberating. And it is in this discovery that our humanity is finally set free to manifest its evolutionary potential without inhibition.
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