Be not attached to your relatives and friends, or your possessions. Fix your attention upon the state of clear thought. Leave the mind blank. Keep your attention on you.
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and how to help others. 2020 New Year Eve Enlightenment Intensive 28 Dec - 3 Jan 2020 Adelaide Hills, South Australia Meditation upon the ancient yoga meditation, 'who am I'
is the main focus of the Enlightenment Intensive. The self inquiry into the conundrum 'who am I’ is followed by honest communication to another. It is not an intellectual process of thinking about who you are. It is being open and conscious of who you actually are beyond ego identification and personality. The Enlightenment Technique accelerates the process of enlightenment through relating, communication and understanding. Join Us for the 2020 New Year Eve Enlightenment Intensive 2020 New Year Eve Enlightenment Intensive 28 Dec - 3 Jan 2020 Adelaide Hills, South Australia EARLY BIRD deposit of $250 by 31 Oct Experience the mystery, "WHO AM I". Self reflection upon the ancient yoga meditation,
"who am I" is the main focus of an Enlightenment Intensive. Your self inquiry into the conundrum, 'who am I?' is followed by honest communication to another. It is not an intellectual process of thinking about who you are. It is being open and conscious of who you actually are beneath or beyond your ego identification and personality. The Enlightenment Technique accelerates the process of enlightenment through relating, communication and understanding. It has been experienced by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The Karma Technique Alternate the following instructions: Tell me something you have done that you think you should not have done. Tell me something you have failed to do that you think you should have. Clearing Manual
Volume 2 SECTION 19 THE KARMA TECHNIQUE The whole approach of sahaja or natural yoga resolves karma at its root. The very act of surrender to whatever may be Divine, Perfect, Absolute, God - whatever that may be - if one just surrenders to that, then in the instant that is an actual fact, all your karma is gone. This is the only way karma is resolved at its root. However, there are other ways to help an individual deal with karma so that he can make more progress in life. These ways are the subject of this section. What is karma? As used in the West it means 'that which you get for doing something bad.' But more properly it should be understood as either those good things that are going to happen to you, or the bad things that are going to happen to you, for the bad things or good things you did in the past, either recent, distant or very distant past. The word in Sanskrit, though, means 'action.' It's not like there is somebody up in the sky watching your every move and keeping a record of it in a book. It's not like he keeps track and adds them all up and cancels out the good ones and the bad ones and whichever is the highest he says, "Now you've got to pay for this, and then he calls up Central and says, "Now, you send out somebody to give this person their karma." This is a simplistic way of looking at it, but it's not in principle an error. The someone in the sky is you, and you watch everything that you do. And if you do something that you consider to be wrong, then you will pay for it. Or if you do anything that you consider to be right, then you figure you've got your reward coming. In other words, you will see to it that you learn the lesson that you need to learn by suffering whatever you need to suffer until you've learned that lesson, at which point you will be free of that karma. Or, if you have done good things, then when you've lived it up and gotten all the good things that you feel you're supposed to get, and you feel you're back to equal, the good things stop. Mankind keeps alternating between these good things and these bad things. This is a curious way to proceed. In this talk I am not going to stress what to do with karma if you are doing sahaja or natural yoga. If you surrender you are liberated from both your good and your bad karma. In other words, even if action does happen, when you surrender you no longer consider it good or bad. It's just something that's happening. So there's not good or bad karma any more; there's just karma, action. Here I am going to talk about a wilful way of making some progress in the face of karma. This is more realistic and practical for the vast majority of people, particularly ones who will come to you for sessions. Clearing sessions are a wilful technique. In the realm of wilfulness, you don't need to worry about the good karma. When you've done good things, you've helped people, you've worked hard, then you're going to get your reward. It will take care of itself. But what about the bad stuff? I'm not going to try to show you here how to free yourself from bad karma except on a psychological basis. A person does something he feels is wrong, and he feels guilty. As a clearer, how can you make some headway at getting the person over the feelings of guilt by using a wilful clearing approach? The realm of wilfulness begins when one leaves the realm of innocence and you start thinking, "I shouldn't have done that," and you feel guilty for having done it. "Shame on me. Why do I keep doing things like that? I must be bad." So the guilt extends from the action back towards your own convictions about who and what it is you are. People come to me every once in a while and say, "Is it possible that there could be someone born who is inherently bad?" Of course they don't say who they're thinking of But the answer is no, this is not the case. There is no devil. There is no Satan as a being, a person, an individual entity. Yes, there are those things that people consider to be bad, or evil even, and there is ignorance and unconsciousness in the world that leads to things that people consider to be bad acts. But there is no devil. In fact there is not even a bad side of you. You are not bad. But telling you this doesn't seem to spring you loose instantly from all your guilt: "Oh, I crashed into somebody and I'm ashamed of myself for being so careless and unconscious that I crashed into somebody else. Yes, I know all the theory that God does everything, and that I am good and pure and that I'm inherently Divine, but it doesn't mean anything to me. I still feel sick to my gut that I ran into that guy." What are you going to do with people like this? Let's investigate the subject. The guilt feeling comes from the sense that, "I did it and I should not have done it." Or, "I failed to to something when I should have, and so someone was hurt as a consequence." When this happens, a person will tend to conclude, "The only solution to this is for me not to do anything." This is mankind's constant solution. "I won't say anything. I just won't say anything more. No, you go ahead without me, I don't feel like going tonight. Never mind about me." In the extreme cases a person will not even turn on the T.V., because it might burn up. When it gets to that point, a person is really in trouble. But most people usually just stay at home and watch television. Why do people do this? Why do they hold back? People hold back because they care. They love other people. They are ethical. It makes a difference to them whether they hurt other people or not. This is part of one' s inherent nature to feel this way. You are truly good. And because you are inherently good, when you keep finding yourself injuring others, intentionally or unintentionally, by either an act of commission or an act of omission, you pull back. You close down, you shut up, you get behind your shell. You quit reaching out so much, and you just reach out in the ways that in the past you found didn't hurt other people. And so your personal power is throttled way back, held in and closed up. And of course that leads to tension. Your energy has no place to express itself. This leads to frustration, disappointment and lack of fulfilment in life. And you walk around with a guilty conscience. Now, most people are in a half and half situation. They're partly beat up in this way and they're partly not. They can do some things, they can reach out somewhat, and so it's not a total disaster, it's just a partial disaster. This is karma at work. When a person finds himself hurting others, he pulls back because he is basically and inherently an ethical being. You will hear kids say, "I didn't mean to." A kid runs around, does this and that and he loses his father's hammer. And he says, "Well, I didn't mean to. I don't know where it is." And he didn't mean to, and he doesn't know where the hammer is, but he still feels bad. The reason he still feels bad is because he blames himself, he thinks he should have kept track of where the hammer was. He feels that he's the one that lost it. These incidents keep building up in a person. It starts to bother the person more and more. More things go wrong, still more things go wrong, and it starts to become too much. The person starts to go to pieces: "Oh, I can't do anything, I can't go anywhere." Then he gets into a new syndrome, a new mechanism, of trying to lessen his bad act. In other words, he feels he has to defend himself, and to do so he will employ this mechanism of putting the other person down, or whatever thing it is that's been injured. He'll start to make less of it, so that what he's done doesn't seem so bad. He will say, "Yes, I broke the toy, but it was all wrecked up anyway." So it wasn't such a bad thing. Or, "The guy came up to me and he bumped into me first, so I hit him back." In other words, "He made me do it, I didn't do it. So therefore there is less on me. I am not the cause." Or, "Yes, I did something wrong but it doesn't matter because that person is no good anyway." I remember during World War II that the Japanese people were not Japanese people. The Japanese people were vermin. They weren't people. The only good Jap was a dead Jap. This was spoken not only in conversation but stated openly and widely in newspapers, on the radio and on television. The commentators, the new reporters, and even the political heads of state, including the President, called the Japanese rodents, sub-humans to be shot for the dastardly deed they had done by attacking us at Pearl Harbour. Now, Pearl Harbour was a bad deed which was uncalled for, but what I'm trying to illustrate here is the mechanism. Here we were, fighting back and shooting other conscious, living, caring beings who had families. Here we were killing them with our rifles, our machine guns, etc. But we said, "They're just animals and it doesn't matter," because we would feel too guilty if we were to admit to killing conscious, caring, loving beings. So we lessened the magnitude of our bad act when we couldn't stand it. It is true that we felt we had to fight in our own defence, but even then, if we really felt fully justified, why would we have to make less of the other beings that we were injuring? Because we did make less of them, it shows that in our heart of hearts we did not feel fully justified. When the guilt piles up too deep and it bothers people too much, but they still feel they must do the bad act anyway, then there is a tendency to start lessening, in their subjective estimation, the magnitude of the bad act so it doesn't seem so bad to them. They do this by saying that the other people, person or thing is no good. This is what makes people critical. College students who get bank loans from the Bank of America and then fail to make the payment because they bought dope instead, tend to conclude that the Bank of America is no good. It's a lousy, stupid Italian bank, probably run by the Mafia or at least by crooked politicians, they feel. And the best thing to do, therefore, is to burn it down. Now, there is injustice involved on both sides, but that's not what I'm trying to illustrate. I'm trying to illustrate how the establishment, in this case, becomes bad when someone inadvertently or advertently injures the establishment individuals, and feels that he has broken his commitment. Suddenly the other thing is no good anymore. "Burn the bank down!" Then the record will be gone. In Berkeley there is a Bank of America branch that was constantly being vandalized. The windows were broken regularly and there were practically wars on Telegraph Avenue. The bank Presidents, feeling that they had done bad acts themselves in their business would say, "Those dirty pot smoking hippies have got to pay!" And so they put down these awful animal people. "They're not even people, they shouldn't be treated as people." So it happens both ways. I'm just trying to illustrate the principle of what makes people critical and negative, and even insult the Divinity which everyone and everything is. You cannot see God and truth in everything and everyone if you are lying and cheating and injuring, because this mechanism automatically goes into effect. People don't even know what has happened to them. They don't think, "I've done something really bad, so therefore I've got to decide that this other individual which is really good is really a nothing." That's not a conscious thought. It's an automatic, subconscious mechanism that I'm bringing to your consciousness. There are several things that can be done about this whole business of doing bad acts, feeling guilty, and putting down the world. One thing is to start to speak the truth. This mechanism, this technique has been known for thousands of years. The Catholic Church has used it for about 1600 years. It's called confession. If you confess what you think you have done, then you will get better. Why do you get better? The reason is that you have not only done a bad act, you also didn't say who did it. You hid who did it. "I don't know who ate all the marmalade in the refrigerator." Most of the time you don't even say, "I don't know," you just don't say anything at all. It starts with little things like that. And why don't you confess in the first place? Because if you do, someone is going to say, "Oh, you' re going to get it for that. No more marmalade for you for the next month." You think, "But I like marmalade, so I'm not going to say who did it." When people put consequences on your confessions, you learn quickly not to confess. To the degree you are attached to having things the way you want them to be, you will tend to not confess what you have done. A mistake can happen here in using the confession technique. If you make people confess to things that they don't feel were wrong, the technique doesn't work. In fact, they feel like they are lying. "Confess that you did it." The person says, "Yes, I did keep the car out until 12 o'clock, but I don't think it's wrong." "You're going to pay for it. You did it and it's wrong." Someone else, in other words, is laying a trip on you about what is wrong, and this defeats the technique of confession. What heals you is speaking the truth. If you said, "Yes, I did it," it takes the shell off of you so you can come out again, at least partly. It feels so good when it's finally told. "At least I don't have to hide it anymore and feel guilty for hiding. I did it, O.K." You are easier to control if you allow people to impose on you a code by which to live. Then they can try to get you to confess to things that you don't think you did. If you break the code, you're supposed to feel bad about it so they try to make you confess what you did in violation of their code. If they can convince you enough of this, you'll really be guilty and you are easier to control. The Christian church, during the first 300 odd years of it's existence, was one of the most noble and pure religious organizations that ever existed. But right after that they discovered this mechanism of how to control people through guilt. If you make them feel guilty by the standards that the hierarchy of the organization sets up, then you can make them hold back. Then you make them confess to things that they don't feel guilty about, by their own inherent standard. They confess to violations of your code that you've laid on them. Now they have two things: they feel guilty for what they have done which they feel bad about, and they feel bad for having lied about things they didn't feel guilty about. And the whole thing becomes a farce. Hence the very powerful and successful mechanism of confession lost most of its strength. Confession also lost a lot of its strength because people were punished when they did confess. The justification for punishment is that if someone feels that he's done something bad and you punish him, then his karma is paid. Well, if the person really felt that he had done something wrong, and if he felt by doing the penance he learned the lesson of his incorrect action, then that mechanism will work, and he wouldn't feel guilty anymore. But if he broke a code that someone else has set up that he doesn't agree is a violation of good and honest and proper action, and then he is made to confess and is then punished, do you know what he will want? Revenge, that's what he will want. So, it's awesomely difficult to perform a successful confessional activity in the face of an external code of behaviour combined with punishment when one does confess. If you remove these two aspects, you have a successful system. And this was what was used in the early church. Just, "I did it. I'm guilty." If you confess to what you think that you did wrong, and no-one puts the slightest consequence on it, you think, "Hey, I can open up. I can confess. I can tell it all!" There was a movement started in England, in Oxford, sometime back, called the Oxford Movement, later called Moral Rearmament. They used this technique of confession without penance and without an external code. It had tremendous success It spread all over the Western world. It faded because the leaders happened to be fascists, but they had millions of followers and they did a lot of people a lot of good by using this one principle: they got people to confess and tell the truth about what they had done and they put no punishment on it. They said, "O.K. you've told. Just don't do it anymore." Nor did they say that they should confess to things that they didn't feel guilty about. They said, "Just write down a list of things that you feel guilty about, and we'll read them in front of the group." And when it was done, the people felt cleansed. Most of their guilt lifted. Confession is a wilful technique and it has a certain amount of success to it. Unfortunately, it also has a limitation. Confession can only be carried so far because of an underlying principle. Any time that you use your will, you are out of the realm of the absolute. In the absolute, there is only one. But when you get into using your will, you're using your will against something, and so you have duality. Therefore you can have directionality, you have going from here to there, up and down, hot and cold, good and bad. And when you push so far in one direction of a dualism or dichotomy, it's hard to push any further. In other words, when the swing of the pendulum has gotten so far one way, to push any further is very difficult, and it naturally wants to swing back to the other side. When you start piling up apples, higher and higher, the higher you go the harder it is to get them to stay up there. They tend to want to fall down, from the up to the down. The same thing is true of confession. When you confess to something you have done, it's all going in one direction. "I did this, I did that, I did this, I did that, and that and this and that. I can't think of anything else;" and you run down. There are a couple of ways to help solve this. One is to have a dyad situation in which you confess for a while and then the other person confesses to you, and this reverses the direction. Your partner confesses to you and therefore you have to be there and keep your mouth shut and not put any consequences on it, not even ridicule or look askance when your partner says something. Ridicule is one of the worst things you can do when someone confesses. One time I had a person who had done something that she felt ashamed of by her own standards. I had trained some clearers to do this confessional technique and I trained them not to put any consequences of any kind on the other person when the other person confessed, because if you do say something about what the other person did, that person it likely to shut up. Finally this woman struck a barrier in her confessions and she wouldn't say what it was. The clearer I had trained was saying, "Come on, come on, tell me." "No, no. I can't." "Come on." And she went on this way for hours, and they ran out of time and had to go at it the next day. In the meantime I said, "Don't let it go. Keep at it until you find out what it is." So the clearer continued and the person resisted: "Oh no, I can't tell, I mustn't tell. You'll never love me again. It sounded like she must have murdered someone. Finally she got the clearer to promise that he would not tell the police, that he would not tell anybody, except me, what this was that she had done, and she finally confessed. She said, "I played hookey from Sunday School." The clearer laughed at her for such a stupid thing. And that was it, she wouldn't talk to that clearer any more. "He ridiculed me," she said. He laughed at her and she shut up tight as a drum, because she felt ashamed of it. By her standards, it was the worse thing she had ever done. And by the confessor putting a consequence and punishing the person for that, it put a stop on it. So, if people are listening to each other confess in a dyad, which is an excellent wilful technique, you have to have a rule that the partner won't say anything or do anything about what you've said, and vice versa. As a listening partner you don't say anything. You just sit, watch and listen. Afterwards you can both go get a milk shake, and get your reward instead of punishment. It works very well, but you have to follow that rule. There is another way to deal with this mechanism of flows going from one side to another and the tendency for it to go too far. In a clearing session, if you get the clearee to confess and confess and confess, eventually the person runs down and says, "I can't think of anything else." Even after you dig around, the person will say, "My mind goes blank." What you should do then is to ask the person what he has withheld. Instead of just asking what he has done, ask him what he has held back, which is the opposite of a doing action. That reverses the direction of the flow and out comes a whole other view: "Well, I never told anybody that I took the 50 cents out of my older brother's pocket. I withheld that." You see, he didn't consider the action itself as a bad act, he was fixed on the idea that he never told anybody that he did that. So, by asking the clearee first what he has done and then by asking him what he has withheld, this keeps the duality problem balanced, and he can go on by the hour answering the questions. Confession is a powerful tool, especially when done under the conditions that I have described. It does not remove karma. It does not destroy karma, but it makes a person feel a lot better and a lot less guilty. People who are really jammed up and very negative are the type of people who benefit most from this technique. "The dumb world. I hate everybody. Stupid things. Everything is wrong, especially you." In the case of the clearee or the person being critical of you then you know he feels guilty about something he has done to you or has withheld from you. If you're smart you will ask him what it is, and when he tells you, if you're even smarter, you won't do or say anything about it, you'll just let it go. This will encourage him so much that he'll tell you the rest of the things he's cheated you out of which he never told you about, and also the things he did that were not directly done to you, but the truth of them was withheld from you. "Well, I went with your girlfriend, I never told you that." This wasn't an act towards you in itself, as far as he is concerned, it is the withholding of the information from you that he felt bad about. People withhold and ultimately withhold themselves. Confession opens the flow and the person feels much better. They are not liberated from their karma by confession. The Jams and the Catholics felt, "Well, it's not enough to confess, you must be punished." In fact, the whole of society at large punished people when they finally forced confessions out of them about what they had done. The mistake is that people feel it is their personal responsibility to see to it that you pay for your karma. This is their mistake. It is not any human's job to take care of someone' s karma. One always takes care of one' s own karma. When the punishment is to be metered out, it is done by the individual himself. You need not worry. And if he feels truly liberated in his heart, then there is no karma. But if deep down, underneath it all, he still feels like it was a bad thing, he will punish himself. You might say, "I don't see these people being punished, these dictators who kill and torture thousands of people to get in that position, and here they are living in the lap of luxury. You tell me there is justice in this world? There is none. We must get these people and meter out justice to them ourselves." You have too short a view of it. Maybe this dictator was tortured by somebody else in the past for 500 years, one lifetime after another. And now he is getting his torturers back for what they did to him. He lived a miserable and deprived life, lifetime after lifetime, and now he's living it up for one. Or maybe he did all kinds of wonderful, marvellous social acts, compulsively, for 500,000 lifetimes, and he's finally done enough and nobody has given him anything good so he's going to collect it himself. He's going to be dictator and live it up. It usually doesn't take long as a dictator to use up all your good karma. Most of them end up in a pretty difficult way. One must not look at the short-term when you are looking at justice. I am satisfied, through thorough testing of this principle, that it is accurate, absolutely, to the slightest brush stroke. Justice is absolute, total and complete. It is a quality of God, and therefore it is absolute. But for a human to try to take care of justice, this is impossible. Therefore, when someone confesses, put no consequence, no punishment, no standard on him. Someone might do something and not feel guilty at all about it, yet if you had done it you would feel horrible. If you say, "That doesn't bother you? Well, it should," you have made an error. People are marvellous justifiers and there are all kinds of justifying mechanisms. One is to make the other person less and insignificant. Even though you feel in your heart that you have done something bad, you try to blame somebody else or the circumstances for making you do it. "I couldn't help it. I had to do it. What else could I do, I had to keep my job? I had to make a living, to protect myself." That may superficially give you a clear conscience, but then your ulcer gets worse. Why does your ulcer get worse? Because in your subconscious you feel guilty. You feel in your ultimate consciousness that, "Even though I was justified in doing it, I still shouldn't have hurt him. I shouldn't have taken revenge, I shouldn't have hit back. I should not have done this, I should have turned the other cheek as Jesus told me to, and I didn't do it. I didn't live up to my own high standards." So, subconsciously you punish yourself. Just knowing about karma and long-term justice and all these mechanisms is very useful for the Western world, because until about 80 years ago, we didn't even know about this. It's been very liberating to the West. In fact, you find that karma is an ordinary word, even used on television. But then people start saying, "Well, if it's all karma, then I don't have to do anything." If you are not going to be responsible, you can't leave the responsibility blank, you have to give it over to that which is the truth. You have to turn over the responsibility to Truth. If you turn it over to your imagination or the devil, you will have trouble. If you are having trouble at work and are critical all the time, you can apply these principles by doing this: you take all the things that you think you have done that were bad, put them down on a piece of paper and send them to the board of directors that hired you. Then you won't feel critical and bad anymore. They may fire you, but you won't feel bad anymore, and it'll be settled one way or the other. Or they may say, "We knew that was the problem all the time anyway. Glad you told us. No, it's all right, go ahead and do it right. We have confidence in you now, because you have spoken the truth." People are very forgiving when they are given the truth. And when they are given unreal nonsense, they will not let you off the hook. If confessing doesn't work for you, you haven't told the whole truth. For those people who are guilt-ridden, always defending themselves, negative, insulting and always irritated, the thing that they need and that they will respond to is this karma technique. Nothing else will produce results on them. You can try sahaja yoga, you can try asanas, you can try Gestalt therapy, you can try anything you want. I've tried them. I spent from 1950 to 1973 testing methods and techniques on a large number of those people, and the only technique that would change these types of people is this one I have described here which would finally get them to see what they have done. The worst cases are the ones who, when you ask, "What have you done?" they say, "I haven't done anything to anybody." "You mean you've never done anything to anybody?" "No, not to anybody. Don't ask me such dumb questions." They've got themselves so justified mentally that they don't even dare to think of the subject that they've done something to somebody else, because if they do they'll feel overwhelmingly guilty. So you become the enemy of their mind. You say, "What have you done to someone?" "What? That's not what's the matter with me. I want to be able to levitate things. Teach me how to do that." People who don't respond to other methods and means are in their hearts guilt-ridden to the core. The first step of liberation is to get them to confess. As the clearer you ask them, "Tell me something you have done to someone," and you don't take no for an answer. They'll say, "Well, I don't know. There must have been something. I've given people a hard time." They will be vague and general at the beginning. You have to tie them down. "Well, what did you do to give them a hard time?" "I don't know." You see, they can't even think about it. By turning the whole business into a grey fuzz, they never have to think about it. Therefore, they are never able to confess without your help. As a clearer, you have to tie the person down so he is specific in his confessions. "Name one thing that you did to one person. "I don't know I can't think of anybody." You could suggest one. There is one person you can never miss on, and that's his mother. When he first tries to think of something he did to his mother, he'll say, "She was mean to me. She kicked me, she never loved me," and all these things will start coming out. These are not answers to your question. These are not responses. You have to be very patient and very persistent and not give up until you get him to confess one thing that he has done to his mother. "Well, one time I said, "Mother, you do dumb things.'" O.K. You've finally got a response. And he'll feel a little better. He'll eventually say, "Hey, this is not such a bad technique." You might have worked three hours on one confession, but you turned him around from this caustic, bitter individual into someone who has confessed to saying one slight little thing he did to his mother. Sometimes a person will answer in such a way that you can't see what it is that he has actually done to his mother. He doesn't look at what happened over there, he only says what he did. He says, "Well, I said 'Mother, you do dumb things sometimes.'" You should follow this up. "What did this do to your mother when you said this?" "I don't know what it did to her." He doesn't want to look at that. "What effect do you think this had on her when you said it?" He will probably start off again at this point: "Oh, she's such a fool. She never felt anything in her life." These are avoidances, justifications. "Well, what do you think, by your own judgement, that did?" "Well, you know, she cried." Here comes a real statement out of that person: "it made her cry and it really bothered me." And tears start to course down his cheeks and it transforms his life, in one moment. It will turn such a person around from the way he was being into a person who really did care all the time. You've transformed him from a critical person into a crying person, but he feels much better about the whole situation. From this, tension begins to relax. The person's ongoing guilt begins to ease up and he stops punishing himself so badly with migraine headaches, etc. As soon as he can begin to see what he feels he did to his mother, then he begins to say, "You know, mother wasn't so bad after all. You know, she did a lot of things for me." After the person has got such a big confession out, then you don't want to go on and ask him again what he has done to his mother. You say, "What have you withheld from your mother?" "Well, you know, I never told her I loved her. I loved her all this time. I hated her guts too, but underneath I really loved her. And I never told her that." This is a very powerful, simplistic approach to resolving the unchanging and critical case, that kind of person who won't let himself improve. Such people batter their heads against the most complex and clever techniques, but they won't get better because they, in their hearts, don't feel they deserve it. So you have confession and then they can grow. This is the karma technique, the confession technique. Call it what you want. You can even use it on yourself. If you've tried everything and nothing works for you, and yet you never did anything bad to anyone in your whole life, you're who I'm talking about. This technique is a God-send, but for a stubborn type of person who feels he never did anything to anybody, it takes a very clever clearer to get him started. Once started and he's got the idea, he'll say, "Hey, this is the greatest technique that I ever came across. I slept soundly for the first time in my life." Then almost anybody can work with him, in any technique, after he has confessed for a while about his mother, father, brothers and sisters, girlfriend, boyfriend, teachers, husband, wife, the boss, the employees, the government and all these things. As a clearer, do a thorough job. As a clearer you have to watch one thing especially. When the person is almost ready to tell you something and he is just on the brink, all you have to do is say, "Tell me." If you don't tell him to tell you, and it came right up in the person's consciousness but he didn't tell you, he will feel that he got away with not saying it, and he will turn critical of you. He will turn critical of you because he just did something bad to you. Here you are helping him, giving your time and effort, your love and your contact, your persistence, your training, you knowledge and your skills to help him confess, and something was right on the brink and he held it back. So now he has done something bad to you and he has withheld from you. Immediately he will say something like, "You sure you know what you're doing? I thought we were getting somewhere. This is dumb." They will complain about the technique, and especially about you, about what a fool you are. Or they'll think it privately to themselves, and just clam up. "I don't know. I don't think there's anything else. I think we've gotten everything. No, we don't need to go on with this. I'm not going to pay for this session either." And you feel crushed to pieces. You think, "I'll never do any sort of work like this again. People are awful." You will feel badly too, because you failed to get the person to say what it was. You know it in your heart and he knows it in his heart, always. When the technique is going properly, when the confession is going right, it's glory all the way. You have a beautiful, marvellous, growing situation. It's something that I have found extremely powerful, and it will unstick the most difficult-to-improve person. If all else fails, do this confessional approach as I have explained it. In the end karma only dissolves through surrender to Truth. What I told you here is a helpful wilful approach, because when a person is buried under a mountain of guilt he needs a wilful approach, with someone there to help him. Otherwise he won't let himself be forgiven. Everyone must forgive himself in his own heart, because your heart is God. THE Karma Technique Key Data 1. Because you are inherently good in your true nature, you will tend to pull back in life whenever you find yourself injuring another. Conversely, you will tend to let go and open up in life when you find yourself treating others in a way consistent with your true nature. 2. Guilt is the result of having the sense of, "I did it and shouldn't have," or, "I didn't do it and I should have." 3. Justifying one's actions or regarding others as being less than what they are, are two mechanisms one uses for trying to avoid guilt. 4. Confession without consequences will reduce guilt feelings and release mental tension. 5. In the Karma Technique, alternately instruct the clearee: "Tell me something you have done that you think you should not have done," and, "Tell me something you have failed to do that you think you should have." After any breakthrough confession, ask: "What have you withheld from (person, group or others)?" before continuing. 6. The act of surrender to the Divine is what finally removes one's karma. Open Mind/ Accepting Heart Principles of Mind Clearing by Charles Berner HOW DOES IT WORK? Mastery of the mind occurs as a result of finding: 1) the root of the mind, 2) the energy of which the mind is made and 3) why the mind exists in the first place. Mind Clearing automatically resolves the influences of the mind by: 1) Uncovering the states of being or personality traits that you identify with and get stuck in; 2) Unsticking the rigid states through meditation or pondering on its opposite; 3) Becoming aware of what your vested interest is in being in those fixed states and what you're trying to tell others by being in those states; 4) And by increasing your ability to communicate the actual message to others. The theory behind this approach to mastery of the mind is that the mind is made up of all the acceptances and denials by every individual of every other individual. It is up to each individual to determine whether or not other individuals, are an individual with the power to choose, like yourself. If one chooses to deny that another individual can also make choices, one is denying that the other is an individual. Thus, the other is, instead, just a thing that can't make choices and is simply an object to be manipulated. The result is a network of relations between all individuals of denials and acceptances of each other. (see diagram) Each letter represents an individual, and each arrow represents an acceptance by the individual from which the arrow originates to the individual at which the arrow terminates. The network is the collective mind of all the individuals; whereas, the individual mind is experienced by each individual for itself from where each individual is in the network. That is to say, one's own mind is how the collective mind looks from one's own place in the collective mind. This network of denials (the nonexistent arrows) and acceptances (the arrows) is that of which one's mind is made. The arrows are arranged in such a way as to store ideas and images. Each time an event occurs that involves an ordinary acceptance or denial in life, by oneself or someone else, that one doesn't like, the ideas and images of that event are stored in one's mind network. These ideas and images of ordinary acceptances and denials are confused with one's actual acceptances and denials of specific individuals and thus inhibit one's ability to accept and deny. Because one resisted the event, one also then resists exercising the ability to accept or deny. By inspecting and communicating about the ideas and images in one's mind of denying and accepting, one's ability to deny and accept becomes separated from those ideas and images stored in one's mind. This liberation of one's ability to choose to deny or not deny another returns one's capacity to disconnect from any part of the mind because those connections consist of choices to deny or not deny other individuals. This non-mental ability to choose to deny or not other individuals is then free of any mental influences. This means that one can then connect or disconnect from any part of one's mind by simply choosing to accept or deny one other individual, that is, by creating or vanishing an arrow from one's self to some other. The aim of the Mind Clearing technique is not to get you to accept everyone else; this would violate the your goals in life. The aim is only to restore your freedom of choice to deny or to accept other individuals, its up to you to choose whatever you wish. The Mind Clearing Technique The technique has four instructions that are given one after the other. 1. "Tell me an example of another accepting you." 2. "Tell me an example of another denying you." 3. "Tell me an example of you denying another." 4. "Tell me an example of you accepting another." By finding and describing examples of you being accepted and denied and examples of you accepting and denying other, you gradually separate the ideas and images in your mind of being accepted and denied from the ability to accept and deny. To the degree that this is accomplished for you, you are free of those compulsive influences, conscious or subconscious, in your mind. The process of living gives many opportunities to test your ability to disconnect from your mind. If you find that you've overestimated your ability to disconnect, which often happens, simply continue the Mind Clearing Program. Keep repeating the process until you find that regardless of the circumstances you are always able to disconnect from the influences of your mind. The Mind Clearing technique does not dissolve one's mind. It gives one control over one's mind. The reason it takes up to a few seconds to disconnect is that one is trying to find the exact individual (letter, in the network diagram) to accept or deny in order to turn the mind off from reacting.
To dissolve the mind out of existence, one would need to accept every individual other than oneself. This would directly connect one to everyone and thereby liberate one from the illusion of the existence of the mind. There is no wilful technique for doing this, it involves giving up all of one's desires and surrendering to the way things actually are. The Abilitist Issue 10 (circa 1969) Enlightenment: Self and Life New Technique Shortens Time by Factor of 100 Self Enlightenment Newsletter of the Institute of Ability The Abilitist
Issue 10; Circa 1970 Enlightenment: Self and Life New Technique Shortens Time by Factor of 100 Self Enlightenment Newsletter of the Institute of Ability Enlightenment Enlightenment is an interesting word in itself. Literally it means to put light onto, so one can see what it is he has set out to become conscious about. The first important, well documented enlightenment is that of Buddha. He spent many years in his endeavor to understand and become enlightened about his true nature and about the true nature of life. He finally attained a deep enlightenment after actively working on it 18 to 22 hours a day for 6 to 9 years. With his teachings began one of the first effective civilizing influences on this planet. Definition of Enlightenment Abilitism defines enlightenment as becoming conscious of, through direct experience, whatever one has set out to be enlightened about. Direct, as used here, means through no vias or no means by which. If self enlightenment is the goal, one directly becomes conscious of oneself. One employs no vias, nor does he figure it out by a series of logical conclusions. Enlightenment is arrived at through direct experience only (see figure 1). Self Enlightenment is more easily attained if several concepts are understood. The first to understand is the difference between being conscious of oneself as opposed to knowing oneself. According to Abilitism, consciousness always involves something other than oneself, along with oneself. A person must exist before it is possible for him to be conscious, but there must also be something outside of himself of which he is conscious. An individual can know unto himslef, but it is not possible for him to be conscious of himself by himself. Two different phenomenon are involved. One is self-knowingness by which one knows simply because one is oneself and has the ability to know; then there is the phenomenon of consciousness which involves something other than oneself. It is important to separate these two phenomena if Self-enlightenment is to be attained. An individual already knows who and what he is, but it is completely useless to him in Life. In order for something to be useful, one must have a consciousness of it. The difference between these two phenomena is a very critical point which has been overlooked, as far as I know, by every religion and philosophy on this planet. Self-enlightenment, then consists not of knowing oneself, but of being conscious of oneself without any vias. This statement imparts some intellectual understanding of what enlightenment is. What is needed at this point is an understanding of the role enlightenment plays in self improvement. Methods of Self Improvement There are three ways, that I know of, to acquire self improvement. One way is through education. Learning data and information from others results in a better understanding of Life and thus enables one to live life better. Education is a valid method of self improvement. However, currently in this society, it is the only method of any significance used. The sole answer of the so-called advanced nations to the question, “How to improve?”, is education. It is the only method that has ever worked for them. It doesn’t work very well, but it is successful to some degree. Education helps, but it is not enough, if one is truly interested in self-improvement. Another self-improvement method is that which involves people understanding each other. By understanding each other, they can relate better and get closer to one another. The pathways of communication are more open between them. Working to better people’s understanding of each other is probably the most important self-improvement approach that exists and Abilitism is highly involved in this work. However, Self-enlightenment does not play a significant part in this activity. The third method of self-improvement is enlightennient itself. (see figure 2) Enligtenment is not finding out information from others through vias as education is. Neither does it necessarily bring about a better understanding between people. Enlightenment is a separate method of self improvement. In the case of Self-enlightenment, enlightenment is directly experiencing oneself. Enlightenment was a missing factor in Abilitism until the spring of 1968 when we began our deep experimental research on the subject. It wasn't that I didn’t know anything about Self-enlightenment. I had worked on it in many ways and for many years. I found that the techniques other groups use are drawn out and slow, and that they don’t work very well. I finally became Self-enlightened in 1958, but I didn’t attach much significance to it. Then I realized that certain people’s advancement was being held up because they didn’t know who they were. They didn't know their own nature. They had read about it and heard lectures about it, but they had never had a direct conscious experience of themselves. Therefore, they lacked a state of complete conviction from which to act. A state of enlightenment is uninvalidatable. An individual experiences himself as a fact, not as a belief, an assumption, or a possibility. He is directly conscious of himself. There are only a few basic facts about life. One of these is the nature of the individual and the experience of this is enlightenment. Methods of Enlightenment Many techniques for attaining enlightenment have been used. Perhaps the strongest and best developed technique was that started by Buddha and which has been carried on through Zen Buddhism. They have probably had a higher percentage of success than any other group. However, their techniques are still very long and arduous. The Yoga approaches are other examples of techniques which have been used. These have often ended in a semi-enlightenment that is usually dependent upon holding the body still. This is a type of somatic state- a samadi. A person first experiences this state through various yoga. His body will get absolutely still. He can retain this state as long as he is not moving, or dealing with his body. It is a true state, but it is not very practical. Enlightenment is more useful if one can walk around and talk with people and be in the depths of dealing in life, and still be in the state of enlightenment. There have been other enlightenment techniques used in the past, and many are still being used today, such as Transcendental meditation, and Love and Inspiration (see table 1). However, to my knowledge, the techniques of Abilitism are the most rapid and the deepest going enlightenment techniques extant today. Purity of Thot Self enlightenment consists of an individual creating a thot in his own universe of himself. Thereby he has consciousness. In his own universe means in his realm of thot which is not connected to, related to, or dependent upon anything else. If his thot is related to or dependent upon something else, then it isn’t in his own universe. A thot that is in an individual’s universe is purely itself. Purity of thot is the crux of Self-enlightenment. Purity of thot means having one thot and one thot only. In Self-enlightenment, this thot is a pure thot of oneself which is not connected with or related to anything. In order to be a pure thot, the thot of oneself can't be in words such as “I am a spirit”. That thot is connected with sounds and words and symbols of those sounds, and it is also connected with the thot “spirit”. Purity of thot means not connected with or related to other things, not even other thots. To become Self-enlightened, an individual must have a pure thot of himself. It must not be connected to any other thot, especially an intellectual idea of who or what he is (see figure 3). Methods of Creating Pure Thot There are several ways to create a pure thot, but to do it in a reasonable period of time, there are two choices. The first is to separate oneself and one’s thots from Life, and thereby create an artificial separation from Life. If a person disconnects from Life until there is nothing else but himself, it is relatively easy for him to get the idea of just himself. This is what many teachings and disciplines of the past have led to. It works, but it has a disadvantage. An individual has the idea of himself, but only when he's by himself and not dealing with Life. Drugs have the same effect, Drugs create an artificial separation between an individual and his brain, and between his brain and the rest of Life. Therefore it is easy for that person to get the thot of himself. However, when the connections to Life are made again, he can no longer hold the thot of himself. He can remember, but that is a thot of the thot; it is a connected thot, not a pure thot. Abilitism does not use the technique of isolation from Life. In Abilitism, one ends up with a state that one can maintain when involved in Life. (see figure 4b) The path of Self-enlightenment that involves entering into Life through a carefully planned out technique will be covered in detail below. How to Tell if an Individual is Self-Enlightened The people who speak with true authority and don't act like fakes or personalities are people who are speaking from themselves. An individual who is enlightened speaks from himself and can be distinguished from one who is just relaying learned information. To be able, to speak with honest authority and certainty, a person must be at least Self-enlightened. He must be conscious of who he is. An individual is the source from which things come. But if he thinks he is a relay, he becomes a relayor; however, that is not his true nature. It is an interesting phenomenon that every person who has become Self-enlightened tells the same story of who he is. The words may be different, but the story is the same. One might expect them to come to different conclusions, but their conclusions are always the same. The value of Self enlightenment is that it enables an individual to speak from himself. He is conscious of who he is. He is conscious of himself, so there is no doubt about who or what he is. He has the composure of a person who can consciously create thots, can cause things, and is conscious of his relationships with others. A Graph on Self-Improvement If education is chartered on one axis, and understanding on the other, and if more knowledge, and fewer barriers are considered desirable states, the chart would look like the chart in figure 5a. An individual has “x” amount of ability to live life (the shaded area). However there is a third factor, and that is the factor of enlightenment. Imagine a third line perpindicular to both of the others and forming the three dimensional graph (see figure 5b). This factor represents “clarity of thot” or “degree of enlightenment”. In other words, this thrid line shows to what extent an individual can think a thot without it being connected to anything else. If a person is well educated and has few barriers to his own communication with others, but no clarity of thot in his own universe, then all his is education and all his relatingness would be meaningless. We would feel as if we were a fake and Life would have no meaning, no certainty, he would have no confidence. He is open with people, and he understands them, but he is not sure of anything. It is currently popular in education circles to' not know anythings for sure. There are people who have fairly good clarity of thot, are reasonable well educated, but can’t talk to anyone. Then there is the person who is open, has fairly clear thot, but who is completely uneducated. A well rounded person would be one who knows some things about Life, is open in relating with others, and who has a direct conscious expereince of himself. He knows what he is, and beyond that, he knows what Life is, which is Life-enlightenment. He know what Life is, not because anyone has said so, but because he has directly experienced it. The thing that has been missing in our work for years was, this fact of Self-enlightenment. Those who had some Self-enlightenment responded well to our techniques. Those who had a little enlightenment respnonded some. Those who had none, didn’t resond at all. They got changes, but, to them, it didn't mean a thing. The role of enlightenment is not a casual one in self-improvement activities. It would be wise to consider it very seriously, and to have as much knowledge on the subject as possible. The Nature of Thot It is easier to obtain Self-enlightenment if one has an intellectual idea and some knowledge of enlightenment. Knowing the nature of thot will help in this aspect. One of the major discoveries of Abilitism concerns what a thot is. For twenty-two years I worked on the question, “What is thot?” and I finally became enlightened on that subject. It is because of this that I think I can relate to others the key factors of enlightenment in a way that is not too foreign to them. Here is a summary definition of thot and even if only the most cursory understanding is drawn from it, it is enough to point the way to Self-enlightenment. The key to understanding what a thot is lies in the realization that the answer is not to be found in the nature of an individual. it 'is not something that an individual is capable of by himself. He is capable of "knowing" by himself, but even though he has the capacity to communicate, he still needs someone else to communicate with or communication is not possible. (see figure 6a) In a similar manner, thot involves others. A thot is an individual choosing to relate to another. The nature of his choice determines what the thot is. How he chooses to relate - in what way, to what degree, through what means - determines what that partioular thot is. Thot and Self-Enlightenment A thot is the state of having elected to relate to another. Self-enlightenment, then, is the choice to relate oneself. The moment a person has the thot to relate himself to another or others he becomes conscious of himself. That is Self-enlightenment. Let me explain this point further. Consciousness, as I stated earlier, is dependent on an outside something, and in this case, it's another person. Electing to relate oneself to others brings about a consciousness of oneself. Everyone has a consciousness of himself to some degree. For example if someone has a consciousness of himself as a body, he is presenting his body. In other words, he is electing to relate as a body. That thot of himself as a body is a via, a thot about himself. As long as one chooses to relate to others through vias, he will not become Self-enlightened. However, there are no vias between an individual and his thots. He experiences his thots directly. Therefore, when he has the thot of himself, it is direct experience, not a via, not through a via. This is Self-enlightenment. Mastery of Attention The depth and purity of thot that must be attained in order to become Self-enlightened is Self-defined. With the best techniques of Abilitism, it takes between twenty-four and one hundred hours of continuous attention on one subject to get the pure thot of Self. This is continuous attention. One must spend one hundred hours on only oneself without any distractibns or extraneous thots. I m'ean no thots like, "Gee, I'm hungry" or, "I wish 'I could quit,"' or, "I wonder if I'm getting anywhere." In order to do this, an individual must keep his attention on one thing. If I said, “Just consider who you are”, most people would spend fourty five seconds out of an hour on the subject. Let's figure this out. If they spend fourty-five seconds out of an hour, and they have to get one hundred hours in, it would take 8000 hours, or at four hours a week, fourty years. It's a long task, so being able to keep one's attention on the subject is very important. What we do in Abilitism is to get an individual into an environment in which he has relatively few problems. We get him out where he is not being distracted by his everyday problems. What is desired is a few days away from an individuals usual routine, with its usual problems and distractions. A proper Question is Needed We also need a question upon which to put one’s attention -some target for one’s attention. In Abilitism, we use a specific question that aims directly at an individual. "Who are you?" is one of our key questions. As one works on this question for several hours, one may start to get sleepy. However, it is important for one to be as conscious as possible. So, we have someone walk around and keep people awake. The important thing is that one is awake and conscious. The more conscious one is, the better the chance one has of becoming enlightened. So, we use monitors who help one keep awake and conscious and on the subject. In Abilitism, though, we go even farther than this meditational stage. Ability Exercise Structure In Abilitism, we have what we call ability exercises in which two individuals work together and take turns helping one another. Each person works for five minutes at a time. One partner gi0ves the other the instruction, “Tell me who you are” and the other says, I'm Charlie, I'm five feet eight and a half. The person doing the instruction or answering the question sits there for five minutes and alternatly meditates on the question and explains to his partner what thots he is having. In Abilitism, we have a partner sitting there with his attention on his partner. He keeps his partner on the subject that way. Having a partner is a further advantage because one has someone who will listen and understand when one speaks. An individual can work on many things in his mind, but if he does not relate them to someone, they stay in his mind. In Abilitism, we have a person relate what he is working on to his partner, and this gets it out of his mind and frees his attention. In a meditational discipline, it might take an individual three months to realize that he is not what he thot he was. However, if he has someone to talk to, it might take three minutes to gain the same realization. The two partners take turns listening to and understanding each other. This helping of one another is a very powerful technique for improving one’s opinion of oneself. In increasing one's demonstrable ability in Life in general, and in attaining Life-enlightenment, it is also very important and powerful. So it can be seen that the use of this technique of Abilitism facilitates enlightenment by allowing an individual to complete the thot he is working on, free his attention from that thot, and thus enables him to continue with the next thot. (see figure 7) The Importance of Treating Others Well If one has the thot of oneseIf, one will become Self-enlightened. The question now is how does one find out who he is. One answer to this question involves being conscious of other people. This is another thing one needs to understand about enlightenment. Being considerate of others is important because an individual's opinion of himself is determined by his opinion of other people. If he thinks they are worthless, that is what he really thinks of himself. It works both ways: What a person thinks of himself is what he thinks of others. A person knows that he is equivalent to others, that their basic nature and his basic nature are the same. As long as a person thinks of others as being worthless, he is going to fail to reach Self-enlightenment. Not until he'is considerate of others will he discover his own basic nature. People of other diciplines who have become Self-enlightened always say in one way or another the same thing concerning their basic nature. It always has the attributes of God in one respect or another. Unless an individual is involved with others and treating them as God, he will fail to discover his own divine quality. Isolation from others brings about a shallow enlightenment. Because the person isn't involved in relating to others, he doesn’t have very much of an opinion of others. Therefore, he doesn't have the problem of being considerate of others in order to become Self enlightened. Enlightenment, then, a true enlightenment, consists of very much involvement with others, and a very great consideration of them. The Role of Being a Master The next thing that is needed for rapid Self-enlightenment is a master. A master is simply a person who has two characteristics: one, he is Self-enlightened, and two, he can recognize this in others. In other words, he is open enough to other people that it becomes self-evident to him when another person is enlightened. Many people come up with the right answers intellectually. They'll say, “Well, I've thot it all out very carefully and I am God.” They go through all the types of connected thot but fail to have one pure thot, a consciousness of themselves, That is all enlightenment involves -they are conscious of, and presenting themselves. Once a person has the consciousness of himself, he has all the right answers and doesn’t have to think about them. He can answer a list of about eighty questions without hesitation even though he has never considered any of them previously. A master is also needed for inspiration. Enlightenment is not a matter of intellectually grasping a thot. It is a matter of having the courage to delve into the subject of oneself with sufficient intensity to break through the barriers that stand between one and Self-enlightenment. It is part of the master's role to inspire one to do this. The master also answers key questions. Key questions are those fundamental to a gaining of enlightenment and not those of a long intellectual study. There is nothing wrong with intellectualizing, it has its role in education, and gathering data and ordering it into knowledge. But, the key questions mainly concern how to get enlightened. A person asks the master, "'Am I doing this properly?” or “Should I change my question?”. These are the types of questions the master answers to guide the person seeking enlightenment, 1. Know the Natute of Thot 2. Keep attention Subject ubject 3. Ability Exercise Structure 4.Be Considera'te of Others 5.A Master Table II. The items necessary for rapid enlightenment Eat Lightly Another important factor is diet. It is helpful to eat lightly when one is seeking enlightenment. Overeating burdens one’s body and one's brain to such an extent that it is more difficult to become Self-enlightened. The Stages of Self-Enlightenment The first stage of Self-enlightenment is intellectualizing. A person is asked the question, "Who are you?", and he goes through all his past teachings trying to figure out the right answer. It's usually necessary to do this, but its just a stage that people go through in becoming Self-enlightened. One inteliectualizes, and finally he goes to the master and gives him his answer, and the master says, "How do you know that is true? There’s more”. A person goes through all the intellectualizing again and again and comes up with the same thing. He consults the master and is told, “There's more to it than that". He returns to his partner; despondent, and gives up trying to figure it out. A person will then just sit there and finally he'll become inspired. He’ll hear something in the lecture and think that maybe it really is possible to attain enlightenment. He begins to consider the possibility that there is a barrier he hasn't broken through yet. He really starts working on his question and on comes the phenomena stage. He is very determined now and his body starts to shake. The room may appear to move back and forth. He get’s cold. He gets hot. He sees bursting suns and other hallucinations. The effect is the same as if he were on some drug. He is trying to make his brain to think the thot of enlightenment. This stage is the point at which the separation of thot from the brain takes place. The amount of phenomena varies from person to person, but everyone experiences it. A person will see the master at this point, and explain that he has seen himself as a glowing sun. The master will say, “That is a phenomenon. Continue."' Sullenly, the person returns to the others. The next stage is no man's land. The person doesn't know which way to go. He doesn't know what to think about, or what not to think about. Then he'll start hitting body barriers. He will discover that he can now keep his attention on the subject better if he keeps his back straight. He will want to sit straight, but he will keep slumping. He will get so interested in enlightenment that he won't want to go to sleep, and yet he wilI get sleepy. He will feel pain in his body, but he is more determined than ever. Then, he comes to the point where he doesn't care whether it hurts, or whether or not it kills him. At that moment he goes through the barrier and he has what is called the experience. He may laugh, he may cry, he may scream, he may experience thrilling ecstasy. The experience, however, is not Self-enlightenment. It is just the Self-enlightenment experience. Usually, at the moment of the Self-enlightenment experience, or shortly thereafter, because the person has finally broken the barrier, he becomes Self-enlightened. Once the barrier is broken, Self-enlightenment is a certainty. The next stage is the glow. The person walks around very conscious of his state of enlightenment. This stage lasts a few hours or a few days. Then comes the final part of Self-enlightenment, the steady pure state. One of the most distinguishing factors of this deep enlightenment state is that a person no longer has any interest in himself. He answers all questions in terms of other people and Life. He is interested in Life in general, instead of himself. TABLE III - THE STAGES OF ENLIGHTENMENNT 1. Intellectual 2. Phenomena 3. No Man's Land 4. The Barriers of Emotion and'Pain 5. The Break Through 6. Enlightenment 7. The Glow 8. The Steady Pure State Life Enlightenment The steady pure state of Self-enlightenment leads to what we call Life- enlightenment. Life-enlightenment differs from Self-enlightenment in that it is a deeper state. One cannot become Life-enlightened unless he is Self-enlightened. Life-enlightenment consists of being conscious of the potential of complete understanding between individuals. In other words, it is the direct consciousness of the contact potential between all individuals. If one has a direct conscious experience that there is a possibility of contact with every being in the universe (not every being that exists), then it becomes obvious to him what the purpose of Life is and how that purpose is acheived. In some religions this is called the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit. In other religions, it is called Universal Nind. It is what is behind Tao. It is the miracle that it is possible for us to be able to relate with each other at all. It's not a matter of choosing to be committed to others. It is realizing that one already is. We do have the choice to act on that commitment or not. It is just a matter, then, of one doing the things that it is obvious to him need to be done. Life-enlightenment and Self-enlightenment can now be achieved through the techniques of Abilitism in the Enlightenment Intensive format provided by the Institute of Ability. H. Charles Berner, Founder ISSUE 10 |
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