 49. Enlightenment |
Spiritual enlightenment, also called Satori, Nirvana, Samadhi, Heaven, Kingdom of God etc, etc, is the most prior and primary condition known as REALITY but REALITY is more than just a condition, it is a LIVING REALITY, as truth is a LIVING TRUTH, a LIVING BEING, SPIRIT, CONSCIOUSNESS, SELF.
Murders, Death in all it's shapes. The capture and sacking of towns. All must be considered as so much stage-show. So many shifting of scents. The horror and the outcry of a play; for here, to, in all the changing doom of life, it is not the true man. The inner soul that grieves and laments but merely the phantasm of the man, the outer man (the psychological person-ality) playing his part on the board of the world.
-PLOTINUS
The lamp of the body is the eye. (The spiritual eye of consciousness) if therefore your eye be good your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye be bad (seeing and understanding from the limited subjective psychological person-ality, the ego-I) your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light (or lack of) that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness. No one can serve two masters; either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. He cannot serve God and Mammon.
-Jesus, Matthew 6:22,23,24
The previous statement by Jesus means that the inner real you, the soul or Holy Spirit, can only be in one state of being, i.e. either you know and experience yourself as eternal spirit or you don't, thinking, remembering and believing is not the same as experiencing it. Either the light is on, or it is off, but it may flicker "on" in any life time, even if for only an instantaneous moment.
The Bhagavad-Gita states: When God-self-realization first begins to be infused into the nature of the mind, the mind becomes as if intoxicated with the feeling of self-sufficiency. When the mind in this state acts through the senses, it behaves in a rather carefree manner, which may be thought of as akin to indifference. In the more advanced state of spiritual enlightenment, this peculiar sense of indifference diminishes, and the behavior of the mind becomes more natural. Activity in the outer sphere of life becomes harmonized with the natural state of inner silence.
Activity goes on as a result of the coordination between the mind and the organ of action. At the same time, coordination between the mind and the senses of perception enable the senses to register experience. With the infusion of God-self-realization (Satori, Niruatia, Heaven, Samadhi, etc, etc.) into the mind, the senses of perception, while engaged in the process of experience, do not register deep impressions of experience. The impressions they receive are just sufficient to enable them to experience, but are not deep enough to form the seed of future desires. This happens more and more effectively as the mind becomes more established in the condition, state of God-self-realization, i.e., spiritual enlightenment.
-Chapter Five (end statement)
The Bhagavad-Gita describes the three phases, degrees, levels, or states as: From the waking state of consciousness to the TRANSCENDENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS (over-coming the psychological personality, the ego-I) then to COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS (where the person becomes one and the same with all creation and people) the last phase is pure GOD-SELF-REALIZATION (in this state one is PRIOR to creation and is the same as, and is the DIVINE BEING called GOD which now supports creation as its own reflection or body (energy body).
