The Enlightenment Technique; Part 2
The essay, The Enlightenment Technique was first published in The Transmission of Truth, which is the primary source material for training new facilitators of the Enlightenment Intensive.
I have also published this and other essays in Enlightenment and the Enlightenment Intensive: Volume 1.
Section 3
The Enlightenment Technique
Part II
The Enlightenment Technique is remarkably effective if followed by a participant on an Enlightenment Intensive. But that's a big if, It is my experience that if a participant will do the Enlightenment Technique, within a day and a half he will always have an enlightenment experience, It seems impos_sible to avoid. So, what happens instead is that people don't do the technique or they do it in a very thin manner. Even if it's only pretty well done three-quarters of the time, it will still produce an enlightenment experience in about a day and a half. The problem is getting the person to do it, and in this you will encounter two difficulties. One is their understanding of what it is that they are to do, and the other is the mental, emotional and physical barriers that arise when they try to do the technique. Your job is first to make clear to the parti_cipants what the technique is, and second, to give them the support to get through the barriers that arise, Therefore, you must understand very, very clearly not only what the technique is, but why it is that way.
Earlier we were discussing the subject of being open and what occurs subjectively when one is being open to whatever may occur in one's consciousness as a result of intending to directly experience the object of enlightenment. This includes being open to having a direct experience. The participant should be intending to have a direct experience. Without that intent there's no openness; without the openness you don't really have the intent. And this gets us to the point of dis_cussing what intent means.
We intend to move to St. Helena. We're not hoping; we are going to go there. So, intent and hope are not synonymous at all, Intent is even more than expectation. In just plain En_glish, you're going to do it. Intent is more than just a wish: "Gee, I wish I were in St. Helena. I wish I could go to St. He_lena." That's not going to do it. Intent has commitment involved in it. Your ego is often hesitant to make a commitment because you might fail. This is where the difficulty lies in getting people to intend to directly experience the object of enlighten_ment: they often fall short, In fact, almost all the time they're going to fall short and they might fall short the entire intensive. And people don't like to fail. They don't like to come up empty-handed. So they say, "Well, I'm just going to sit here. Maybe something will happen, maybe it won't, and then they're covered, they won't really have failed because they won't really have in-tended. There's a certain virtue to that approach to things, but in a wilful technique you use your will. This is a wilful tech_nique except for the conclusion which is the enlightenment exper_ience itself.
The next question is, what is one going to intend to do? The crux of the matter is in two words: direct, and the object of their enlightenment. Direct and object are the key words. What does direct mean? There's no way to explain it, You could hit around the edges, but in the end you're going to have to be satis_fied with a primitive idea of the word direct. It's not that in_direct a word. You can define it negatively by saying that it is through no process or means or via. Then the participant will very often think and say' "Well, then how do you do it directly?" There is no how involved. They say, "Well, then what do I do?" Your response is, "You intend, that's what you do. You intend to di_rectly experience the object of your enlightenment." If they come back to you and say, "Now look, the word 'direct' as you have ex_plained it, and the word 'experience' are mutually contradictory because experience involves process, which is indirect." You say, "Yes, that's correct." But what else are we going to do in the English language? We're using the word 'direct' to modify the word 'experience,' to say that what we mean by direct experience is whatever the essence of experience is that excludes process. And they are to intend to directly experience whatever the object of their enlightenment is. We've already discussed that what the object actually is is different from the idea of the object.
Then what is the participant's job? In the technique it is to remain open to whatever may occur in his consciousness as a result of having the intention to directly experience the ob_ject of his enlightenment. That's a mouthful of words, but it's a rigorous description of what they have to do. They are not to just remain open to whatever may occur in their consciousness. You have to get this clear with the participants, otherwise they're just going to sit there and be open. At the same time, if you intend to go to St. Helena, you don't have to keep con_stantly thinking the thought in order to still have the inten_tion. You don't have to think, "I intend to go, I intend to go, I intend to go..." You just say, "Well, I'm going. That's it. That applies from now on. That's my intent." You don't have to keep running the thought through your brain. So if one intends to directly experience the object of his enlighten_ment, one simply means it. This is what an intent is: you mean it. Then you remain open to whatever may occur in your consciousness as a result of that intention. You don't have to keep thinking the thought of the intent: the intent is opera_tional.
We've already discussed what open means: not having pre_conceived ideas, and not trying or intending to make it come out a certain way. And yet people do have all kinds of preconceived ideas about what enlightenment is and what a direct experience would be, and who it is that they are. Now, when something does occur in their consciousness that is a result of having the in_tent, they should communicate this as well as they can to their partner. Here is where the power of this particular technique takes over. We've been talking for a long time about just getting up to this point, and now we come to power time. Because up to this point the technique is really not much different from any good Zen master's instruction. But at this point the individual is to communicate what has occurred in his consciousness as a result of his intention. Other things that occur in his con_sciousness are best ignored, but one shouldn't wrestle with them mentally either, like trying to clear them out of the mind or
look them over or think about them. Those things that show up that are not a result of the intent should be ignored. The participants should ignore them as well as they can.
Ignoring is a very powerful technique. When you don't add your energy or your life to something it tends to wither, or at least wander away. It is not possible for a participant on an Enlightenment Intensive to deal with everything in the mind. To deal with everything in the mind you've got yourself a ten to twelve year project, working eight to ten hours a day. Working eighteen hours a day on an Enlightenment Intensive is not going to compensate for that, in a three day period. Therefore, one should ignore those things that are not cogent to.the exact intent one has in the
Enlightenment Technique.
The standard to use by which to discriminate what is cogent and what is not is this: if, to the participant himself, something has come up as a result of his intention, then that is what he should communicate. But if, to him, something has not come up as a result of his intention, or if he doesn't see any connection between what has occurred and his contemplation, then he should ignore it. This is how to handle the communication aspect of this technique, and this is how you should explain it to the participants. It is a subjective judgment on the part of the participant whether or not to communicate something, and that judgment should be based on whether or not the participant feels that something has occurred as a result of his intention to directly experience the object of his enlightenment. The participants are not to communicate whatever occurs. They are to communicate only that which occurs as a direct result of their intention.
You should explain this to the participants and see how well they do with it. If someone is taking advantage of what you've said to just chit-chat, stop him. Become his subjective judgment for him, and intervene. If you need to, sit down next to him and, whenever he says something, inquire if it's directly connected to his intention to~directly experience the object of his enlightenment. Have him explain the connection. He'll be cured in ten minutes or so.
At the start of the intensive, for the first few hours, people tend to either talk and talk or sit there and not say much. You should let that occur. As soon as possible, however, you should instil in the participants the power of discrimination between what is cogent to communicate and what isn't, and simultaneously encourage them to communicate to their partners those things which they feel are cogent. The rest of what occurs, which the participant feels is not cogent, should be ignored.
We can't set down firm guidelines for what to communicate. The only guideline is, "Do you see any direct connection to your contemplation, or not?" On an Enlightenment Intensive, it is better to give people the benefit of the doubt and guide their consciousness to following the general guideline I have given you. That will leave room for error but the trend will be in the right direction, and that is better than having to spend the entire time learning and applying rules. Errors are not so bad unless they are consistent. When they are consistent, step in and make the correction.
Another aspect of the communication part of the Enlightenment Technique, which you should make clear to the participants, is this: when a participant communicates something to his partner, he should be trying to get the partner to understand what he has to communicate, rather than just saying the thought out loud. If you as a participant say, "Who I am is a computer analyst," and you see a blank stare on your partner's face, then you can tell he doesn't understand what a computer analyst is. He may think it's a new kind of psychiatrist who does his psycho_analytical work by using computers. As a master you should clarify to the participants that they are to try to get their partner to grasp or have an understanding of what has been said. You notice I use the word 'try.' It is not always possible to achieve an understanding. So every word of this Enlightenment Technique is carefully chosen: they should try to get their partner to understand. After reasonable efforts of trying -I know that's a vague phrase, but it is the best we can use -after reasonable efforts of trying, if an understanding is not being reached, they can abandon trying to get that particular communication across. The reason you should not go for complete understanding is that it is not necessarily possible. If it is not, they should abandon trying to get that communication across. Or, you could step in as the master and say, "Explain that to me." It might take ten seconds for you to understand it. Most of the time just have them go on to other things. But they should try and make a reasonable effort to be understood. One of the most serious problems in communication is people skipping over things that are obvious, things that they just don't say or don't want to say. There could be a variety of reasons why they won't say it: they want to protect their image, they're embarrassed, or they think that it's not permissible to discuss certain things in a group situation like this, especially about sex. "I know who I really am. I'm a rapist. In my heart I'm a rapist. I never let it out, but I'm a rapist," They're afraid to say something like that, You have to invite them to say these things. You have to create an atmosphere in which it is all right to say these things and confess the things that they usually don't say about themselves and who they are. There are a variety of ways to do this. One is to invite them by saying, "It's OK. This is the place. In order to really make progress this is a necessity, so we all do it," and that kind of thing. But the most important thing of all is to create a safe situation in which it's actually all right to say these things. You create this by not having a consequence put on them when they do say something. And if they see that some time has gone by and no matter what they've said so far, no consequence has been put on it, then they'll risk the heavy ones.
The main person who puts consequences on communications is the partner. This is so important that it is a major error if you permit trip-laying to occur. Trip-laying is one of the most serious things that can creep into an Enlightenment Intensive. It's serious because it happens often and it's easy. There are lots of ways it could happen. For example, a person finally says, "Yes, I know who I am, I'm an angel." And his partner says, "Hah, if you're an angel, I'm Saint Peter himself." About three-quarters of the people will resign from the human race, or the race of angels, at that point. They'll say, "OK, that's it. I'm saying nothing about anything that's close to my heart." And they close down. If someone telling someone else who they are and who they're not helped enlightenment, we'd all have been enlightened eons ago. The enlightenment experience is a direct experience, and it does not come from another person. It comes from one's own internal openness to the truth of the matter, and not from someone else imposing an idea or an image, a foreign evaluation or a trip, from the outside. As a master, do not permit triplaying. Stop it instantly: firmly and nicely, but instantly. Stop any evaluation or judgment which occurs verbally or through gestures or facial expressions about the person's communications. Ridicule is the worst, And one very subtle thing you have to watch that partners will do, and this is probably the greatest weakness in the whole enlightenment format, is that when it comes their turn to talk they talk about what the other per_son just got through saying. For example, they'll say, "Well, I think you're on the right track." So you have to work with the partner to get them to not judge or lay a trip.
Your greatest problem here as a master will be to listen, through your monitors and through your own ears, to what the listening partners are saying, especially when it's their turn to speak because then you have to actually hear it. It's easy to tell when they've spoken out of turn, When you see any lip move at all on that whole line of listening partners - whomp! -you're right there correcting it. Your attention has to be on all those people. Your monitors are involved in individual situations, but you've got to have your attention on the whole crowd. I have my psychic ear so attuned, backed up with my physical ear and my eyeball that I'm in touch with every one of those people and if they say something - "whoom!" - I snap my fingers and call my monitor over and say, "So and so is talking out of turn." Your monitors have to work very hard to see to it that the partners do not speak out of turn, es_pecially during the opening two or three periods.
The whole thing that goofs up ordinary communications between people is judging and interrupting. Especially be_tween husband and wife. Even the judgment could be put up with if they didn't interrupt each other when they were trying to say something. There's one simple principle: don't inter_rupt. Take turns. You talk for five minutes, I'll talk for five minutes. If a husband and wife just did that and still laid trips on each other they'd still make it through. So partici_pants should not speak when it's not their turn and when it is their turn to speak, they should be speaking about and dealing with their own situation, the things that have come up in their consciousness as a result of their contemplation. It's often easy to detect when they are not doing this because when the changeover comes they start talking immediately. There's no period of contemplation that takes place first. Sometimes you can go in and query them, "I notice you're talking immediately. Are you having the intent and doing your contemplation?" "Well, I was thinking while the other person was talking." "You're supposed to be listening while the other person is talking. Even if something comes up while you're the listener, you should still contemplate only when it's your turn," The one way to tell whe_ther they're judging or not is that they don't have anything to say about what their partner said. If they're not judging, then when it comes their turn they just contemplate, and there's no judgment. But when you see someone laying a trip or speaking without contemplating, check into it and correct it if necessary.
The role of the listening partner is to listen and under_stand as well as he can. There's no guarantee that they're going to be able to understand everything. But they should try to understand as well as they can, and to say nothing. The only thing they say is the instruction and "Thank you," when the moni_tor says "Thank your partner."
Watch gestures and facial expressions. Some people get really good at it. These can be even more evaluative because gestures are powerfully received. On the other hand you may get the automaton type with the unblinking, straight-faced robot ef_fect, You'll see the active partner lean over and snap his fin_gers in front of his partner's face and say, "Hey, Harry, you there?" As a listening partner you just sit there and listen, that's all, Try to understand what your partner is saying. You can laugh if your partner says something that's funny, but not unless your partner is laughing first, because some people are so weak that if their listening partner starts to laugh first, they'll start to laugh too but they really feel ridiculed. So it should be something that's actually funny and if they're laughing about it, that's OK, You don't want to stop that kind of stuff. Sometimes I've seen them fall right off their stools, because some things are just so hysterical. Permit that kind of thing. Be very liberal at that point. But if you see them express judgment, you be right there to stop it.
People will fall short of doing the technique perfectly. If you ask them on the opening gun to do it precisely as I've set it forth here you will have almost one hundred percent failure, They can't do it. You have to keep reminding them, instructing them, see where they're failing the most and correct that part and take what you can get. It's like a corralling job. You have your ponies, and your monitors and you are grad_ually corralling them down through this chute. And they'll bounce this way and they'll run off that way and somebody will go that way and a whole crowd will go with them because they heard them doing it that way, and you send out your sideman and he corrals them back and gradually, little by little, you get them through this chute of doing the technique. Some of them will still be lagging and not doing it too well by the end of the intensive But the technique is self-correcting and this is one of its greatest virtues. It tends to reinforce them when they do it according to the way you tell them. They think, "Ah-ha, hey, hey, that's what you want - that makes sense, that's what I'll do." If it wasn't for that I think I'd have abandoned this whole thing. But you know you're onto something when you have a self-reinforcing phenomenon taking place; when you have something that's operational, that can be used by people and that's somehow based on truth. When a technique is self-rein_forcing and feeds back into itself, then when they do that tech_nique even close to the right way they go, "Ah, yes, results, progress, I'm getting somewhere, it feels right in my guts," and so they're encouraged to do it more that way, As time goes on their experience gradually grows, they're brought closer and closer to the technique as I've given it to you.
Say somebody has just been thinking about who he is and has not been dealing with himself at all. And yet you've told him to intend to directly experience himself. And you've said, "Not an idea about yourself, but the real self." Well, he heard that and sometime on the first day he discovers, "Hey, I'm just dealing with ideas about myself. What about the real me?" And this will touch his internal sense of Truth. He will finally hear what you said twelve hours before. And the clever ones will say, "Why didn't you tell me in the first place?" knowing that you did. They know it was their own difficulties and technique errors that were in the way. And the ones not so kind don't put it that way, but you don't care as long as they're learning to do the technique correctly.
If you wanted, you could just type up the technique on a card and give it to them and gradually let them learn it for themselves, and after five or ten intensives they would begin to catch on to it. You can do that if you want to, but I think it behoves you to take considerable time and effort to explain it, especially as their experience grows. A very good time to ex_plain the technique is in the five minute break before they resume. You can take each five minute period before they're ready to begin again and you explain to them another aspect or facet of the technique. Slowly, it begins to soak in, hour by hour, day by day.
One thing I haven't discussed here is why the interval of contemplation and communication is the way it is. On the first intensive I did not have the five minute change-over. I let them talk until they were finished and they say "OK" and they would change over at that point. I found that some people were not very considerate of other people, and during one sitting one partner might talk 95% of the time and the other would talk 5% of the time. It just wasn't fair, so that is one reason. Another reason is that the people got so deeply involved that they got in over their head. They would get so deeply into the depths of their mind and into emotional states that they would get lost and swept away. They'd be crying and kicking the floor and they'd lose all sense of the world. This has some virtues for certain purposes, but what it does is tend to exclude a large part of society from being able to participate in Enlightenment Intensives because it gets too heavy too quickly for them. When the period goes on too long people get emotionally overwrought. They get into the subconscious too deeply and they lose touch with the environment and they flip out. They get hysterical, go unconscious or doze off. Some people can dope off in ten seconds but for most people it takes more than five minutes. And the reason for doping off, getting sleepy, heavy-headed or spaced out is that the flow is going in one direction for too long. What you have to do is reverse the flow. You have them change roles and that snaps them out of the state. Some people will complain, "I was just getting going and I got cut off with that gong. I was just getting rolling." Yes, perhaps there is a liability to this arbitrary gong firing off, but the other liabilities are much greater. And besides, when they talk about just getting into it, what that means is that they were sinking deeply into their mind and their emotional traumas and those were starting to take over. What happens then is that they lose their orientation toward enlightenment and get caught up in phenomena and dramatizing. That's all right for Primal Therapy, Spiritual Emotional Release, and that sort of thing, but that's not what we're trying to do on an Enlightenment Intensive. Here we're trying to get people enlightened.
By watching empirically in actual sessions, and trying various lengths of time, I have found that four minutes and thirty-seven and a half seconds is the optimum length of time. They'll start to double-cycle on you at that point. In other words, they will do a contemplation and communicate what comes up, and this, on the average, comes out to take a little over four and a half minutes. Past that point they go into it again and they start over again. So the average cycle comes out to between four and a half and five minutes. And the average that I worked out was about four minutes and forty seconds, There's an advantage to not making it a full five minutes because of that reason, and also because it gives you a little extra time to make up for any sloppiness of your following the schedule, We'll talk about schedule problems later.
If you make it shorter than that period of time they don't have a chance to get enough into their contemplation or to com_municate to their partner. Some people will talk all the time. Other people will contemplate all the time, Neither is correct. Over the long run they should come out to be approximately even, talking approximately half the time and contemplating half the time. In any one five minute period there may be more talk be_cause they didn't get a chance to finish communicating what occurred in their last five minutes. Or they may contemplate the whole time. But over the long run the times should average out to roughly half and half, Watch them and see whether they're doing it that way or whether they talk or contemplate all the time.
At first they tend to talk a lot. They've got a lot of ready made answers about who they are and preconceived ideas about who they are, and they're not really experiencing much of anything and their contemplation is weak. All right, let them run off at the mouth for a while. But by eleven o'clock on the first morn_ing, start to turn the screws on them and tighten up how they're doing the technique. By that time you can tell who the talkers are. They almost never contemplate, and they'll defend them_selves gloriously by saying, "Well, I know what I want to say, I've been thinking during the whole time my partner's been talking," or "I think as I go," There are people who think as they go and there is a certain virtue to this, but somewhere along the line they've got to get over thinking and start to intend to directly experience their object and be open to whatever may occur. At some point you've got to cut these people off. Yes, let them go through their think, think, reasoning process, but somewhere along the line cut it off, I've seen people talk their way from one end of an intensive to the other, And if they ever do have an enlightenment experience, it's very shallow, Your job is to watch these people, When I say "you" I'm talking to you as master and that includes all your monitors, They are extensions of you. But that five minute period is a good one, I have experimented with shorter times. longer times, ten minutes, seven minutes, three minutes, two minutes. Between four and a half to five minutes is right.
The technique as I have given it here is polished and proven. One of its greatest virtues is that it tends to be self-correcting. If you were to set two people down with the intention to get enlightened, by the time three or four months had gone by, they would end up, if they were sincere and intel_ligent people, with the same technique. In fact, that's how this technique in its final form came about: although the basic concept came in a flash, the final form came out empiri_cally, from working with hundreds of people for hundreds of thousands of hours. From 1968 to 1978 I spent about a tenth of my life on Enlightenment Intensives, about one full year, and I analyzed the technique and broke it down, piece by piece, inch by inch. What I've given you is the technique that came out of those experiences and the core of this whole course is contained in that technique. The rest of the course is built around that core, and is necessary, but without understanding the core, the Enlightenment Technique, you will not really be able to follow the rest of the course. For example, when we talk about how to do interviews you should understand the technique rigorously because interviews are primarily based on the technique. Giving talks to your people is primarily based on the technique and explaining it to them. About the only other thing you have to do is to be a master If you understand the technique inside and out, the rest of it, in_cluding being a master, will tend to fall in line after a while.
So understand this technique, and during the question and answer periods that we have in the course have your questions ready so that if you need any clarification on this technique you get that clarification. Every part of this technique has sound reasons behind it as well as years and years of experience, so if you have any doubt or confusion, get it clarified, Study the technique, write it out, go over it, and memorize it word for word. Then do whatever you have to do to understand it com_pletely.
The Enlightenment Technique, Part II
Study Questions
1. What are the two main difficulties that keep a participant from doing the technique?
2. How does a master get a participant through his difficulties in doing the technique?
3. What is the relationship between being open and intending to have a direct experience?
4. What does intent mean?
5. Why do people find it difficult to consciously intend or to have the intention?
6. What is the participant to intend to do when doing the En_lightenment Technique?
7. What does "direct experience" mean? Why are the two words contradictory?
8. What is the next step in the technique after the participant has intended to directly experience the object of his en_lightenment?
9, What are the main things people have preconceived ideas about in an Enlightenment Intensive?
10, What is the factor that provides the power of the enlighten_ment technique?
11. In this technique, what things should be communicated and what things should not be communicated?
12. What should the participant do with things that come up in his mind that are not a result of his contemplation?
13. What does one do as the listening partner?
14. How is the technique self-reinforcing?
15, Why is the standard period of the Enlightenment Exercise five minutes (or four minutes and forty seconds) in dura_tion and not longer or shorter than that?
16. Why is allowing trip-laying a major error?
The Enlightenment Technique
Part II
The Enlightenment Technique is remarkably effective if followed by a participant on an Enlightenment Intensive. But that's a big if, It is my experience that if a participant will do the Enlightenment Technique, within a day and a half he will always have an enlightenment experience, It seems impos_sible to avoid. So, what happens instead is that people don't do the technique or they do it in a very thin manner. Even if it's only pretty well done three-quarters of the time, it will still produce an enlightenment experience in about a day and a half. The problem is getting the person to do it, and in this you will encounter two difficulties. One is their understanding of what it is that they are to do, and the other is the mental, emotional and physical barriers that arise when they try to do the technique. Your job is first to make clear to the parti_cipants what the technique is, and second, to give them the support to get through the barriers that arise, Therefore, you must understand very, very clearly not only what the technique is, but why it is that way.
Earlier we were discussing the subject of being open and what occurs subjectively when one is being open to whatever may occur in one's consciousness as a result of intending to directly experience the object of enlightenment. This includes being open to having a direct experience. The participant should be intending to have a direct experience. Without that intent there's no openness; without the openness you don't really have the intent. And this gets us to the point of dis_cussing what intent means.
We intend to move to St. Helena. We're not hoping; we are going to go there. So, intent and hope are not synonymous at all, Intent is even more than expectation. In just plain En_glish, you're going to do it. Intent is more than just a wish: "Gee, I wish I were in St. Helena. I wish I could go to St. He_lena." That's not going to do it. Intent has commitment involved in it. Your ego is often hesitant to make a commitment because you might fail. This is where the difficulty lies in getting people to intend to directly experience the object of enlighten_ment: they often fall short, In fact, almost all the time they're going to fall short and they might fall short the entire intensive. And people don't like to fail. They don't like to come up empty-handed. So they say, "Well, I'm just going to sit here. Maybe something will happen, maybe it won't, and then they're covered, they won't really have failed because they won't really have in-tended. There's a certain virtue to that approach to things, but in a wilful technique you use your will. This is a wilful tech_nique except for the conclusion which is the enlightenment exper_ience itself.
The next question is, what is one going to intend to do? The crux of the matter is in two words: direct, and the object of their enlightenment. Direct and object are the key words. What does direct mean? There's no way to explain it, You could hit around the edges, but in the end you're going to have to be satis_fied with a primitive idea of the word direct. It's not that in_direct a word. You can define it negatively by saying that it is through no process or means or via. Then the participant will very often think and say' "Well, then how do you do it directly?" There is no how involved. They say, "Well, then what do I do?" Your response is, "You intend, that's what you do. You intend to di_rectly experience the object of your enlightenment." If they come back to you and say, "Now look, the word 'direct' as you have ex_plained it, and the word 'experience' are mutually contradictory because experience involves process, which is indirect." You say, "Yes, that's correct." But what else are we going to do in the English language? We're using the word 'direct' to modify the word 'experience,' to say that what we mean by direct experience is whatever the essence of experience is that excludes process. And they are to intend to directly experience whatever the object of their enlightenment is. We've already discussed that what the object actually is is different from the idea of the object.
Then what is the participant's job? In the technique it is to remain open to whatever may occur in his consciousness as a result of having the intention to directly experience the ob_ject of his enlightenment. That's a mouthful of words, but it's a rigorous description of what they have to do. They are not to just remain open to whatever may occur in their consciousness. You have to get this clear with the participants, otherwise they're just going to sit there and be open. At the same time, if you intend to go to St. Helena, you don't have to keep con_stantly thinking the thought in order to still have the inten_tion. You don't have to think, "I intend to go, I intend to go, I intend to go..." You just say, "Well, I'm going. That's it. That applies from now on. That's my intent." You don't have to keep running the thought through your brain. So if one intends to directly experience the object of his enlighten_ment, one simply means it. This is what an intent is: you mean it. Then you remain open to whatever may occur in your consciousness as a result of that intention. You don't have to keep thinking the thought of the intent: the intent is opera_tional.
We've already discussed what open means: not having pre_conceived ideas, and not trying or intending to make it come out a certain way. And yet people do have all kinds of preconceived ideas about what enlightenment is and what a direct experience would be, and who it is that they are. Now, when something does occur in their consciousness that is a result of having the in_tent, they should communicate this as well as they can to their partner. Here is where the power of this particular technique takes over. We've been talking for a long time about just getting up to this point, and now we come to power time. Because up to this point the technique is really not much different from any good Zen master's instruction. But at this point the individual is to communicate what has occurred in his consciousness as a result of his intention. Other things that occur in his con_sciousness are best ignored, but one shouldn't wrestle with them mentally either, like trying to clear them out of the mind or
look them over or think about them. Those things that show up that are not a result of the intent should be ignored. The participants should ignore them as well as they can.
Ignoring is a very powerful technique. When you don't add your energy or your life to something it tends to wither, or at least wander away. It is not possible for a participant on an Enlightenment Intensive to deal with everything in the mind. To deal with everything in the mind you've got yourself a ten to twelve year project, working eight to ten hours a day. Working eighteen hours a day on an Enlightenment Intensive is not going to compensate for that, in a three day period. Therefore, one should ignore those things that are not cogent to.the exact intent one has in the
Enlightenment Technique.
The standard to use by which to discriminate what is cogent and what is not is this: if, to the participant himself, something has come up as a result of his intention, then that is what he should communicate. But if, to him, something has not come up as a result of his intention, or if he doesn't see any connection between what has occurred and his contemplation, then he should ignore it. This is how to handle the communication aspect of this technique, and this is how you should explain it to the participants. It is a subjective judgment on the part of the participant whether or not to communicate something, and that judgment should be based on whether or not the participant feels that something has occurred as a result of his intention to directly experience the object of his enlightenment. The participants are not to communicate whatever occurs. They are to communicate only that which occurs as a direct result of their intention.
You should explain this to the participants and see how well they do with it. If someone is taking advantage of what you've said to just chit-chat, stop him. Become his subjective judgment for him, and intervene. If you need to, sit down next to him and, whenever he says something, inquire if it's directly connected to his intention to~directly experience the object of his enlightenment. Have him explain the connection. He'll be cured in ten minutes or so.
At the start of the intensive, for the first few hours, people tend to either talk and talk or sit there and not say much. You should let that occur. As soon as possible, however, you should instil in the participants the power of discrimination between what is cogent to communicate and what isn't, and simultaneously encourage them to communicate to their partners those things which they feel are cogent. The rest of what occurs, which the participant feels is not cogent, should be ignored.
We can't set down firm guidelines for what to communicate. The only guideline is, "Do you see any direct connection to your contemplation, or not?" On an Enlightenment Intensive, it is better to give people the benefit of the doubt and guide their consciousness to following the general guideline I have given you. That will leave room for error but the trend will be in the right direction, and that is better than having to spend the entire time learning and applying rules. Errors are not so bad unless they are consistent. When they are consistent, step in and make the correction.
Another aspect of the communication part of the Enlightenment Technique, which you should make clear to the participants, is this: when a participant communicates something to his partner, he should be trying to get the partner to understand what he has to communicate, rather than just saying the thought out loud. If you as a participant say, "Who I am is a computer analyst," and you see a blank stare on your partner's face, then you can tell he doesn't understand what a computer analyst is. He may think it's a new kind of psychiatrist who does his psycho_analytical work by using computers. As a master you should clarify to the participants that they are to try to get their partner to grasp or have an understanding of what has been said. You notice I use the word 'try.' It is not always possible to achieve an understanding. So every word of this Enlightenment Technique is carefully chosen: they should try to get their partner to understand. After reasonable efforts of trying -I know that's a vague phrase, but it is the best we can use -after reasonable efforts of trying, if an understanding is not being reached, they can abandon trying to get that particular communication across. The reason you should not go for complete understanding is that it is not necessarily possible. If it is not, they should abandon trying to get that communication across. Or, you could step in as the master and say, "Explain that to me." It might take ten seconds for you to understand it. Most of the time just have them go on to other things. But they should try and make a reasonable effort to be understood. One of the most serious problems in communication is people skipping over things that are obvious, things that they just don't say or don't want to say. There could be a variety of reasons why they won't say it: they want to protect their image, they're embarrassed, or they think that it's not permissible to discuss certain things in a group situation like this, especially about sex. "I know who I really am. I'm a rapist. In my heart I'm a rapist. I never let it out, but I'm a rapist," They're afraid to say something like that, You have to invite them to say these things. You have to create an atmosphere in which it is all right to say these things and confess the things that they usually don't say about themselves and who they are. There are a variety of ways to do this. One is to invite them by saying, "It's OK. This is the place. In order to really make progress this is a necessity, so we all do it," and that kind of thing. But the most important thing of all is to create a safe situation in which it's actually all right to say these things. You create this by not having a consequence put on them when they do say something. And if they see that some time has gone by and no matter what they've said so far, no consequence has been put on it, then they'll risk the heavy ones.
The main person who puts consequences on communications is the partner. This is so important that it is a major error if you permit trip-laying to occur. Trip-laying is one of the most serious things that can creep into an Enlightenment Intensive. It's serious because it happens often and it's easy. There are lots of ways it could happen. For example, a person finally says, "Yes, I know who I am, I'm an angel." And his partner says, "Hah, if you're an angel, I'm Saint Peter himself." About three-quarters of the people will resign from the human race, or the race of angels, at that point. They'll say, "OK, that's it. I'm saying nothing about anything that's close to my heart." And they close down. If someone telling someone else who they are and who they're not helped enlightenment, we'd all have been enlightened eons ago. The enlightenment experience is a direct experience, and it does not come from another person. It comes from one's own internal openness to the truth of the matter, and not from someone else imposing an idea or an image, a foreign evaluation or a trip, from the outside. As a master, do not permit triplaying. Stop it instantly: firmly and nicely, but instantly. Stop any evaluation or judgment which occurs verbally or through gestures or facial expressions about the person's communications. Ridicule is the worst, And one very subtle thing you have to watch that partners will do, and this is probably the greatest weakness in the whole enlightenment format, is that when it comes their turn to talk they talk about what the other per_son just got through saying. For example, they'll say, "Well, I think you're on the right track." So you have to work with the partner to get them to not judge or lay a trip.
Your greatest problem here as a master will be to listen, through your monitors and through your own ears, to what the listening partners are saying, especially when it's their turn to speak because then you have to actually hear it. It's easy to tell when they've spoken out of turn, When you see any lip move at all on that whole line of listening partners - whomp! -you're right there correcting it. Your attention has to be on all those people. Your monitors are involved in individual situations, but you've got to have your attention on the whole crowd. I have my psychic ear so attuned, backed up with my physical ear and my eyeball that I'm in touch with every one of those people and if they say something - "whoom!" - I snap my fingers and call my monitor over and say, "So and so is talking out of turn." Your monitors have to work very hard to see to it that the partners do not speak out of turn, es_pecially during the opening two or three periods.
The whole thing that goofs up ordinary communications between people is judging and interrupting. Especially be_tween husband and wife. Even the judgment could be put up with if they didn't interrupt each other when they were trying to say something. There's one simple principle: don't inter_rupt. Take turns. You talk for five minutes, I'll talk for five minutes. If a husband and wife just did that and still laid trips on each other they'd still make it through. So partici_pants should not speak when it's not their turn and when it is their turn to speak, they should be speaking about and dealing with their own situation, the things that have come up in their consciousness as a result of their contemplation. It's often easy to detect when they are not doing this because when the changeover comes they start talking immediately. There's no period of contemplation that takes place first. Sometimes you can go in and query them, "I notice you're talking immediately. Are you having the intent and doing your contemplation?" "Well, I was thinking while the other person was talking." "You're supposed to be listening while the other person is talking. Even if something comes up while you're the listener, you should still contemplate only when it's your turn," The one way to tell whe_ther they're judging or not is that they don't have anything to say about what their partner said. If they're not judging, then when it comes their turn they just contemplate, and there's no judgment. But when you see someone laying a trip or speaking without contemplating, check into it and correct it if necessary.
The role of the listening partner is to listen and under_stand as well as he can. There's no guarantee that they're going to be able to understand everything. But they should try to understand as well as they can, and to say nothing. The only thing they say is the instruction and "Thank you," when the moni_tor says "Thank your partner."
Watch gestures and facial expressions. Some people get really good at it. These can be even more evaluative because gestures are powerfully received. On the other hand you may get the automaton type with the unblinking, straight-faced robot ef_fect, You'll see the active partner lean over and snap his fin_gers in front of his partner's face and say, "Hey, Harry, you there?" As a listening partner you just sit there and listen, that's all, Try to understand what your partner is saying. You can laugh if your partner says something that's funny, but not unless your partner is laughing first, because some people are so weak that if their listening partner starts to laugh first, they'll start to laugh too but they really feel ridiculed. So it should be something that's actually funny and if they're laughing about it, that's OK, You don't want to stop that kind of stuff. Sometimes I've seen them fall right off their stools, because some things are just so hysterical. Permit that kind of thing. Be very liberal at that point. But if you see them express judgment, you be right there to stop it.
People will fall short of doing the technique perfectly. If you ask them on the opening gun to do it precisely as I've set it forth here you will have almost one hundred percent failure, They can't do it. You have to keep reminding them, instructing them, see where they're failing the most and correct that part and take what you can get. It's like a corralling job. You have your ponies, and your monitors and you are grad_ually corralling them down through this chute. And they'll bounce this way and they'll run off that way and somebody will go that way and a whole crowd will go with them because they heard them doing it that way, and you send out your sideman and he corrals them back and gradually, little by little, you get them through this chute of doing the technique. Some of them will still be lagging and not doing it too well by the end of the intensive But the technique is self-correcting and this is one of its greatest virtues. It tends to reinforce them when they do it according to the way you tell them. They think, "Ah-ha, hey, hey, that's what you want - that makes sense, that's what I'll do." If it wasn't for that I think I'd have abandoned this whole thing. But you know you're onto something when you have a self-reinforcing phenomenon taking place; when you have something that's operational, that can be used by people and that's somehow based on truth. When a technique is self-rein_forcing and feeds back into itself, then when they do that tech_nique even close to the right way they go, "Ah, yes, results, progress, I'm getting somewhere, it feels right in my guts," and so they're encouraged to do it more that way, As time goes on their experience gradually grows, they're brought closer and closer to the technique as I've given it to you.
Say somebody has just been thinking about who he is and has not been dealing with himself at all. And yet you've told him to intend to directly experience himself. And you've said, "Not an idea about yourself, but the real self." Well, he heard that and sometime on the first day he discovers, "Hey, I'm just dealing with ideas about myself. What about the real me?" And this will touch his internal sense of Truth. He will finally hear what you said twelve hours before. And the clever ones will say, "Why didn't you tell me in the first place?" knowing that you did. They know it was their own difficulties and technique errors that were in the way. And the ones not so kind don't put it that way, but you don't care as long as they're learning to do the technique correctly.
If you wanted, you could just type up the technique on a card and give it to them and gradually let them learn it for themselves, and after five or ten intensives they would begin to catch on to it. You can do that if you want to, but I think it behoves you to take considerable time and effort to explain it, especially as their experience grows. A very good time to ex_plain the technique is in the five minute break before they resume. You can take each five minute period before they're ready to begin again and you explain to them another aspect or facet of the technique. Slowly, it begins to soak in, hour by hour, day by day.
One thing I haven't discussed here is why the interval of contemplation and communication is the way it is. On the first intensive I did not have the five minute change-over. I let them talk until they were finished and they say "OK" and they would change over at that point. I found that some people were not very considerate of other people, and during one sitting one partner might talk 95% of the time and the other would talk 5% of the time. It just wasn't fair, so that is one reason. Another reason is that the people got so deeply involved that they got in over their head. They would get so deeply into the depths of their mind and into emotional states that they would get lost and swept away. They'd be crying and kicking the floor and they'd lose all sense of the world. This has some virtues for certain purposes, but what it does is tend to exclude a large part of society from being able to participate in Enlightenment Intensives because it gets too heavy too quickly for them. When the period goes on too long people get emotionally overwrought. They get into the subconscious too deeply and they lose touch with the environment and they flip out. They get hysterical, go unconscious or doze off. Some people can dope off in ten seconds but for most people it takes more than five minutes. And the reason for doping off, getting sleepy, heavy-headed or spaced out is that the flow is going in one direction for too long. What you have to do is reverse the flow. You have them change roles and that snaps them out of the state. Some people will complain, "I was just getting going and I got cut off with that gong. I was just getting rolling." Yes, perhaps there is a liability to this arbitrary gong firing off, but the other liabilities are much greater. And besides, when they talk about just getting into it, what that means is that they were sinking deeply into their mind and their emotional traumas and those were starting to take over. What happens then is that they lose their orientation toward enlightenment and get caught up in phenomena and dramatizing. That's all right for Primal Therapy, Spiritual Emotional Release, and that sort of thing, but that's not what we're trying to do on an Enlightenment Intensive. Here we're trying to get people enlightened.
By watching empirically in actual sessions, and trying various lengths of time, I have found that four minutes and thirty-seven and a half seconds is the optimum length of time. They'll start to double-cycle on you at that point. In other words, they will do a contemplation and communicate what comes up, and this, on the average, comes out to take a little over four and a half minutes. Past that point they go into it again and they start over again. So the average cycle comes out to between four and a half and five minutes. And the average that I worked out was about four minutes and forty seconds, There's an advantage to not making it a full five minutes because of that reason, and also because it gives you a little extra time to make up for any sloppiness of your following the schedule, We'll talk about schedule problems later.
If you make it shorter than that period of time they don't have a chance to get enough into their contemplation or to com_municate to their partner. Some people will talk all the time. Other people will contemplate all the time, Neither is correct. Over the long run they should come out to be approximately even, talking approximately half the time and contemplating half the time. In any one five minute period there may be more talk be_cause they didn't get a chance to finish communicating what occurred in their last five minutes. Or they may contemplate the whole time. But over the long run the times should average out to roughly half and half, Watch them and see whether they're doing it that way or whether they talk or contemplate all the time.
At first they tend to talk a lot. They've got a lot of ready made answers about who they are and preconceived ideas about who they are, and they're not really experiencing much of anything and their contemplation is weak. All right, let them run off at the mouth for a while. But by eleven o'clock on the first morn_ing, start to turn the screws on them and tighten up how they're doing the technique. By that time you can tell who the talkers are. They almost never contemplate, and they'll defend them_selves gloriously by saying, "Well, I know what I want to say, I've been thinking during the whole time my partner's been talking," or "I think as I go," There are people who think as they go and there is a certain virtue to this, but somewhere along the line they've got to get over thinking and start to intend to directly experience their object and be open to whatever may occur. At some point you've got to cut these people off. Yes, let them go through their think, think, reasoning process, but somewhere along the line cut it off, I've seen people talk their way from one end of an intensive to the other, And if they ever do have an enlightenment experience, it's very shallow, Your job is to watch these people, When I say "you" I'm talking to you as master and that includes all your monitors, They are extensions of you. But that five minute period is a good one, I have experimented with shorter times. longer times, ten minutes, seven minutes, three minutes, two minutes. Between four and a half to five minutes is right.
The technique as I have given it here is polished and proven. One of its greatest virtues is that it tends to be self-correcting. If you were to set two people down with the intention to get enlightened, by the time three or four months had gone by, they would end up, if they were sincere and intel_ligent people, with the same technique. In fact, that's how this technique in its final form came about: although the basic concept came in a flash, the final form came out empiri_cally, from working with hundreds of people for hundreds of thousands of hours. From 1968 to 1978 I spent about a tenth of my life on Enlightenment Intensives, about one full year, and I analyzed the technique and broke it down, piece by piece, inch by inch. What I've given you is the technique that came out of those experiences and the core of this whole course is contained in that technique. The rest of the course is built around that core, and is necessary, but without understanding the core, the Enlightenment Technique, you will not really be able to follow the rest of the course. For example, when we talk about how to do interviews you should understand the technique rigorously because interviews are primarily based on the technique. Giving talks to your people is primarily based on the technique and explaining it to them. About the only other thing you have to do is to be a master If you understand the technique inside and out, the rest of it, in_cluding being a master, will tend to fall in line after a while.
So understand this technique, and during the question and answer periods that we have in the course have your questions ready so that if you need any clarification on this technique you get that clarification. Every part of this technique has sound reasons behind it as well as years and years of experience, so if you have any doubt or confusion, get it clarified, Study the technique, write it out, go over it, and memorize it word for word. Then do whatever you have to do to understand it com_pletely.
The Enlightenment Technique, Part II
Study Questions
1. What are the two main difficulties that keep a participant from doing the technique?
2. How does a master get a participant through his difficulties in doing the technique?
3. What is the relationship between being open and intending to have a direct experience?
4. What does intent mean?
5. Why do people find it difficult to consciously intend or to have the intention?
6. What is the participant to intend to do when doing the En_lightenment Technique?
7. What does "direct experience" mean? Why are the two words contradictory?
8. What is the next step in the technique after the participant has intended to directly experience the object of his en_lightenment?
9, What are the main things people have preconceived ideas about in an Enlightenment Intensive?
10, What is the factor that provides the power of the enlighten_ment technique?
11. In this technique, what things should be communicated and what things should not be communicated?
12. What should the participant do with things that come up in his mind that are not a result of his contemplation?
13. What does one do as the listening partner?
14. How is the technique self-reinforcing?
15, Why is the standard period of the Enlightenment Exercise five minutes (or four minutes and forty seconds) in dura_tion and not longer or shorter than that?
16. Why is allowing trip-laying a major error?