The Origins of the
Enlightenment Intensive
|
This is a 10 minute excerpt of Charles Berner, the originator of the Enlightenment Intensive giving a talk in 1993 on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Enlightenment Intensive.
Jeff Love:
On the Second Enlightenment Intensive This is reprinted from Miracle of Truth by Lawrence Noyes. It is the edited transcript from a talk with Jeff Love. He is the man who introduced Enlightenment Intensives into Western Europe in the early 1970'. He started a trend which swelled and continues to this day. In that period he also helped establish two of the first growth centers in that part of the world. My mother had remarried four times and each father was a different religion. So I wasn't brought up in any one religion. But when I was around eighteen I started this ... quest ... this search for myself and the meaning of fife. I originally studied the Kabbalah, the old Jewish metaphysical system, which I loved. Then around 1966 1 was living in Topanga Canyon, north of LA, and got into psychedelics. LSD was actually legal back then. It was a very strange, weird time. I eventually moved up to Big Sur because a friend of mine offered me a job fixing cars. And while I was working there I noticed that a lot of the cars that came in were on their way to this place up the road called Esalen So by 1967 I was working at the Esalen Institute as a builder, taking the psychotherapy groups for free in my spare time, from people like Fritz Perles and Bob Hall and a whole bunch of other people who were there at that time. That's how I got into Humanistic Psychology. I lived there for about a year in my van. After that period I was living in the mountains of Santa Cruz with my first wife, Wendy.
At one point in 1968 Charles Berner’s cousin came around. I forget his name. He started telling a friend of mine named Sarah about this Enlightenment Intensive thing that had just happened out in the high desert, down south. This guy was talking about how you could get enlightened in a few days. I was very sceptical about it and I thought it was silly. So we sort of dropped the matter. But then Sarah sold her car and bought Wendy and I two places on the next Enlightenment Intensive. So we couldn’t say no. And when the time came Wendy and I and our friend Steve drove down to the desert in Southern California to do this thing called an Enlightenment Intensive. It was in the winter of 1968 and the Intensive was five days long. It was the second one ever given. We got to Lucerne Valley, drove up a gentle slope on a dirt road, and arrived at the place. There were patches of snow on the ground in these low rolling hills at the base of the south side of the San Bernardino mountains. There was mostly sand, with brush here and there, and little flat flowers with leaves that came out and hugged the ground. You could see for miles all around and it was beautiful. But the compound itself was very unimpressive. It was very utilitarian and practical, just three simple A-frame buildings, with no aesthetics at all. But somehow, everything started to click. The people were really nice. We went upstairs into a rectangular, attic-like room with slanted ceilings, and Charles Berner was there. He was sitting in a chair wearing all beige and holding a staff. He looked like a Buddhist and he looked like he knew what he was doing. That enabled me to make a decision right then to go with the program, to really try it and give it an honest chance. And I'm glad I did, because it completely changed my life. On acid, I’d seen a lot of things that led me to know that the universe was not how it seemed to be, that there was something beneath the surface that was ... churning ... that had some reality beyond what we could think of. But there were no words to put on it, no framework ini which to fit it all. But in few days I had three enlightenment experiences, on who I am, what life is, and back into who I am. It was a radical change in my consciousness that I could apply to my life. I started the Intensive really wanting to know who I am. And so experiencing who I am was very powerful for me. Yet, working on the question 'What is life?’ was even more powerful. I was out on walking contemplation, walking very slowly, looking down, holding my question. The road was mostly sand colored, and suddenly it seemed to turn into a grate, as if the road wasn't physical at all. As if there was something under the road. It was as if the earth itself was hollow, and what I had been looking at all my life was just the surface of things. I experienced that there was something underneath the physical reality that was inexplicable, a void. It wasn't anything I could name. And ever since then I've had that experience of looking at life, knowing that it's solid, yet also knowing that I'm looking at the reflected light off the surface, and everything is empty beyond that. I didn't have much contact with Charles, but I totally fell in love with the process and I wanted to know everything he could teach me. But at that time there was no training program for giving Enlightenment Intensives. So I made a deal with him. I said, “I'm not a joiner. I don't join things. I don't believe in following gurus or any of that but I really want to learn what you have to teach." So we arranged that I would come back and spend three or four weeks there, studying his tapes and all the stuff he was teaching at the Institute then. So after my time, there and after learning all I could from Charles about Intensives, I just decided to do one. I gave my first Enlightenment Intensive in the Santa Cruz mountains to ten or twelve people. And it worked. I don know where I got all the confidence, it just was there, somehow. Later I realized that being in that role of the master is a different state of consciousness than any other. The role itself gives you the means to do it. I remember there was this kind of frail woman on that Intensive who came up to me and told me she thought she was going to die. But I kept her at it and later she went through this physical crisis and came out the other side blossoming like a flower. Seeing that just blew my mind, and I thought that is what I want to do for the rest of my fife. Later, in 1971, went to Europe on a kind of vacation. And while I was there I learned about a growth centre in London called Quaesitor. It was London’s first growth centre, started by Paul and Patricia Lowe. So I visited them before I left Europe, and they wanted me to work with them. At that time they had the first group of Europeans there in a six month training program to become Humanistic Psychologists. The training consisted of group leaders from America (mostly from Esalen) coming over to train them in Gestalt, Encounter, Bioenergetics and so on. So I said, “Why don't I do an Enlightenment Intensive for this group?” They liked the idea, and they took a fairly big chance with it because they had to really believe that this would be a good thing for these eighteen people. Also, everyone then was used to two day, weekend groups, and I was insisting on three days, which made it awkward. Finally they agreed. They organized it and there I was, alone, with no monitors and nobody I could count on to help me. So we went to a beautiful old house in Sussex, and did it. I had no recorded gong tape, I just rang the bell by hand, every five minutes. Well, it worked. It was a great Intensive. There were a lot of breakthroughs, and it blew their minds. And this is what really kicked off my career in Europe, because these people were the first Europeans to not only be trained in Humanistic Psychology but also the first to take an Enlightenment Intensive. So they went back to their native countries: Holland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Norway. Many of them started growth centres because there was nothing happening in their locations. And they invited me to come do Enlightenment Intensives at their places, which I did for several years. More and more people asked me to come to their city to give an Intensive. So for months on end I was literally going from city to city, giving an Enlightenment Intensive every weekend, in almost every country of Western Europe. I found that the language barrier could be overcome by using translators, and letting people speak in their own language in the dyads. I found I could give Intensives under almost any circumstances. I remember giving one on a boat on the Thames River once. The room was awful. It was freezing and wet and everyone was bundled up, but it still worked. Looking back, some of those Intensive were sloppy, often because I didn't have trained staff to help me, but they still worked. Later I went back to the States and did the Masters Course, to clean up my act and see what I was missing. In Amsterdam, I was involved in starting the first growth centre there with the woman I was together with then, Alexis Johnson, and a Dutch woman named May Cairns. It was called Centre. I trained May to give Enlightenment Intensives. She had also been on that first Intensive in England. She was later instrumental in taking Intensive to India and to the Rajneesh movement there. She was not involved with Rajneesh when I trained her but later she was. In fact at that time in Europe, in the early '70's a lot of people were getting into Rajneesh. I had the attitude that you don't follow gurus. So following Rajneesh was not my cup of tea. But a lot of the people I knew who were into growth then, especially a lot of the talented ones, were going to India and writing me letters saying, “This guy is God. You've got to come here.” Well, I never did, but May went and became a sanyasin and ended up running the growth centre there in Poona, at Rajneesh's ashram. May had a lot of skills and she loved Intensives. She had the personal power that it takes to give them. Rajneesh looked at this method and he liked it. And so she started giving a lot of them there, to the sanyasins. And they became a standard process there. Most sanyasins have taken them. After Amsterdam around '74, I was involved in setting up Europe's first fully residential growth center. It was in the South of Spain and it was called Finca de la Follenca. People would come for three months at a time. We used a shotgun approach, using yoga, bioenergetics, isolation processes, everything in the book, plus Enlightenment Intensives. It was very successful. People from all over the world were coming to do these three month programs. This became my lifestyle for about two years. It was beautiful. We built a little village of eight houses, with a hot tub and a swimming pool all overlooking the Mediterranean. The weather was great, we were making money doing what we loved to do, and it was paradise. But at one point around '75, I got that it was time to move on. I was a little homesick for California. Before leaving Europe, I spent some time in London finishing my book ‘The Quantum Gods,’ and then came back to the States. There is this fundamental question of what are we going to do with all this knowledge that we've gained from experiencing our true nature? Self enlightenment in itself doesn't change the outside world. It changes your internal world, and then it wants to come into life. But then the question is how? Well, there are some easy answers. I know, for example, that it's hard to keep being a racist after you’ve experienced who you are. I know that people find out that interpersonal relationships are really where the fulfilment of life is. But there are many unanswered questions about all this, and they are what I think about a lot. I think that if life were set up more along lines that would allow people to get enlightened, more people could get enlightened, just in life. I think parts of the Enlightenment Intensive could be used as a model for a social system like that. I actually started making my Intensives looser, in order to get to this, to make it more like fife, more natural. Looking back, as a whole, I feel really good about the Enlightenment Intensives I've given. They've really benefited people. Every once in a while I get a letter from someone, from somewhere in the world telling me about how much the Enlightenment Intensive helped. This feels good. 
Charles and Ava Berner, circa 1966
|
When is the next Enlightenment Intensive
Questions & Answers
Enlightenment Intensive |
A Brief History of the Dyad Process
Yoah Wexler
This is a brief history of the Dyad Technique from my point of view.
I was first introduced to the dyad process in 1968 by Tom Darling. We were both students at San Diego State University when he introduced the WHO AM I enlightenment technique to my circle of friends. The dyad seeds he dropped in my life sprouted and have continued to grow over these past 45 years.
The Dyad Technique, and in particular the WHO AM I Enlightenment Dyad Technique that is used in the Enlightenment Intensive has spread around the world in much the same way that I learned it from Tom. It spread by word of mouth from one person to another who found it of value. There never has been a corporate headquarters or corporate marketing program organizing its dissemination. It has been taught and shared and continues to be transmitted that way because it is a useful, effective and a powerful transformational process. It spread around the world, relatively rapidly, decades before the internet, email and the social networking websites of Face Book and Twitter. A major seed spreader for the dyad process was the spiritual community of the new age teacher and guru, Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, who later changed his name to Osho. Tens of thousands of his students and disciples from scores of countries around the world learned to do the WHO AM I Enlightenment Dyad process when they became involved with his community. But let me not get ahead of myself. I’ll back up a bit and tell you how Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, aka Osho, found out about the dyad process.
Like Tom, who first introduced it to me and my circle of friends in 1968, Jeff Love, first introduced it to England and Europe in 1971. Jeff found a nutrient rich soil there and the dyad seeds he planted grew strong producing ripened fruit whose seeds keep sprouting today.
In a publication by Lawrence Noyes, entitled Miracle of Love, Jeff Love tells the story of how he learned of the Enlightenment Intensive and how he introduced the Enlightenment Intensive to Western Europe in 1971.
“It completely changed my life!”
Jeff recounts that “Wendy and I and our friend Steve drove down to the desert in Southern California to do this thing called an Enlightenment Intensive. It was in the winter of 1968 and the Intensive was five days long. It was the second one ever given. We got to Lucerne Valley, drove up a gentle slope on a dirt road, and arrived at the place. There were patches of snow on the ground in these low rolling hills at the base of the south side of the San Bernardino mountains. There was mostly sand, with brush here and there, and little flat flowers with leaves that came out and hugged the ground. You could see for miles all around and it was beautiful. But the compound itself was very unimpressive. It was very utilitarian and practical, just three simple A-frame buildings, with no aesthetics at all. But somehow, everything started to click. The people were really nice. We went upstairs into a rectangular, attic-like room with slanted ceilings, and Charles Berner was there. He was sitting in a chair wearing all beige and holding a staff. He looked like a Buddhist and he looked like he knew what he was doing. That enabled me to make a decision right then to go with the program, to really try it and give it an honest chance. And I'm glad I did, because it completely changed my life.”
Jeff goes on to describe about how the enlightenment experience transformed his conscious reality and that he decided he wanted to learn everything there was to learn about the Enlightenment Intensive process. But at that time, says Jeff, there was no training program for giving Enlightenment Intensives. “So I made a deal with Charles. I said, ‘I’m not a joiner. I don't join things. I don't believe in following gurus or any of that but I really want to learn what you have to teach.’ So we arranged that I would come back and spend three or four weeks there, studying his tapes and all the stuff he was teaching at the Institute.”
Jeff followed through with that arrangement and returned to study with Charles. After learning all he could during his visit and training with Charles Berner he facilitated his first Enlightenment Intensive in the Santa Cruz mountains of California. It worked, Jeff recalls. “I don't know where I got all the confidence. It just was there, somehow. Later I realized that being in that role of the master (facilitator) is a different state of consciousness than any other. The role itself gives you the means to do it.”
Jeff went to Europe
A couple of years later Jeff went to Europe. While in London he found out about a growth centre called Quaesitor. It was started by Paul and Patricia Lowe. Jeff remembered that at that time they had the first group of Europeans there for a six month training program to become Humanistic Psychologists. “The training consisted of group leaders from America, mostly from Esalen, coming over to train them in Gestalt, Encounter, Bioenergetics and so on. So I said, ‘Why don't I do an Enlightenment Intensive for this group?’ They liked the idea, and took a fairly big chance with it because they had to really believe that this would be a good thing for these eighteen people.”
The Enlightenment Intensive that Jeff facilitated and the training they received at Quaesitor was successful. The participants went back to their respective countries like Holland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Norway where many of them started growth centres. Subsequently they invited Jeff to facilitate Enlightenment Intensives at their growth centers. Jeff recalls, “I did that for several years. More and more people asked me to come to their city to give an Intensive. So for months on end I was literally going from city to city, giving an Enlightenment Intensive every weekend, in almost every country of Western Europe.”
Jeff remembers the language barrier could be overcome by using translators, and letting people speak in their own language in the dyads. “I found I could give Enlightenment Intensives under almost any circumstances. I remember giving one on a boat on the Thames River once. The room was awful. It was freezing and wet and everyone was bundled up, but it still worked.”
May Cairns and Patricia Lowe
The potency and awakening power of the Enlightenment Intensive was appreciated and respected by the small but growing personal and spiritual growth movement in Europe. May Cairns and Patricia Lowe both loved the Enlightenment Dyad process and Jeff taught them how to facilitate Enlightenment Intensives.
Patricia and May were both instrumental in taking the Enlightenment Intensive to India and to the Rajneesh movement there. May Cairns who was later called Ma Prem Arup, and Patricia Lowe, who was given the name Poonam became students and devotees of Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh. Rajneesh, who years later changed his name to Osho, became a world famous Indian guru with the largest personal and spiritual growth center in the world. People from scores of countries around the world visited his ashram and became his students.
When Rajneesh was first introduced to the Enlightenment Intensive and the WHO AM I Dyad Technique he liked it so much that it became a standard workshop for the thousands of Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh devotees and visitors to his ashram. May Cairns, aka, Ma Prem Arup began to regularly facilitate the Enlightenment Intensive at the ashram in Poona, India. Jeff remembers that she had a lot of personal growth skills, loved Enlightenment Intensives and had the personal power that it takes to give them.
Rajneesh and Ramana Maharshi
In his book, The Seventy Two Hour Mirror, Jeff Love quotes Rajneesh as saying, “That question is very good. Ramana Maharshi used only that meditation. Through that meditation he attained his enlightenment, asking who am I? That was his whole yoga, nothing else. The meditation is tremendously powerful, but one should go as deep as possible. One should allow it to sink to ones innermost core. It should penetrate you like an arrow going on and on and on, and suddenly one day a moment comes as if you are drilling a hole and suddenly the drill has passed to the other side. It is a drilling exactly like that. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Go on drilling and then suddenly you see that you have drilled the hole, you have reached the core. And it is tremendously beautiful.”
Looking back Jeff remembers, “I feel really good about the Enlightenment Intensives I've given. They've really benefited people. Every once in a while I get a letter from someone, from somewhere in the world telling me about how much the Enlightenment Intensive helped. This feels good.”
And that my dear readers is part of the story about how the dyad process in general, and the WHO AM I Enlightenment Dyad Technique and the Enlightenment Intensive in particular was spread throughout Europe and the world.
So in respect and celebration for today, March 8th, being the 100th Anniversary of International Woman’s Day, I want to acknowledge Ava Berner for creating the Dyad Process and May Cairns and Patricia Lowe for doing their part in spreading the seeds of enlightenment on our fertile planet.
Over the last 40 plus years I've experienced and heard about people using the dyad process or a dyad-like process. I've always found it curious how those people using the dyad came to it. How did they learn it? Where did they learn it?
Six Degrees of Separation
Do you know the "six degrees of separation" idea? It’s a theory that we are all connected to everyone on earth by an average of six steps or degrees or people. How many degrees (or people) of separation away from the originator of the dyad did the dyad come to someone? Ideas and stories change when they are told from one person to another. Like the game of siting in a circle and whispering a phrase or idea into the ear of someone. That person does the same to another who does the same to another until it comes back to you who started it. And when it returns to you it is usually very different from what you said in the first place.
The communication dyad that I teach was originated by Charles and Ava Berner. In fact it was Ava who came up with the idea in the 1960's. I had thought it was Charles. But about 10 years ago, I was with Charles and Ava at Sydney airport when it came up in conversation. Ava said she developed it and that it was her idea. I looked at Charles with some disbelief. He smiled and shook his head 'Yes.'
In the 1960's they had been doing 'one on one’ clearing (or counselling) sessions where an instruction is given by the 'counsellor' to the 'client'. The 'client' follows the instruction. It's the same format and communication principles as the dyad, but it is a 'one way street.' Only the counsellor gives the instructions and the client follows the instructions getting the benefits of healing or clearing of the body-mind and emotions. It's a great technique based upon sound spiritual, psychological, metaphysical, communication and healing principles. It was and has been called 'clearing' in the jargon. In more recent years I have called the private or group sessions in which I use it counselling or healing sessions.
Ava and Charles, in the 1960's did hundreds of 'one to one' clearing sessions. They wanted to help more people clear the barriers of the mind. What could be done so more people could benefit. That's when Ava came up with the idea of what has now become called the 'dyad.' Both Charles and Ava explored and experimented with using the dyad in groups. They found that one skilled facilitator can teach and monitor a large group of people who are using the dyad technique and following its principles.
It worked. They taught it to their students and their students taught it to others until it has spread around the world.
Romantically Intimate Partners and the Enlightenment Intensive
I’m now going to answer a question that has been asked about the notion of NOT doing a WHO AM I dyad at an Enlightenment Intensive with someone you are romantically involved and intimate with. It is a general rule that at an Enlightenment Intensive it is recommended that people who are intimate not work as enlightenment dyad partners because they will wind up working on their relationship rather than on enlightenment. If they have problems or issues, one or both most likely, won't be able to help themselves to NOT work on their relationship. They will be drawn into working on the relationship and not enlightenment. Of course working on their relationship is helpful but it is not the main purpose of the Enlightenment Intensive. In light of this, it can be easier for Enlightenment Intensive facilitators to just not let intimate partners work together at the Enlightenment Intensive.
Relationship Evolution Dyad
The Relationship Evolution Dyad is particularly helpful for two people who are intimate. In doing this dyad process it is important, and vitally so, to communicate what is arising in consciousness without blaming, criticizing, making the other wrong or trying to change them. If one or both dyad partners fail to follow this guideline then what results may be some version of trying to change or make the other wrong. This is a state of victim consciousness on the part of the person doing the 'make wrong.' It takes a skilled facilitator to catch the hidden or unconscious 'blaming and criticizing' that goes on with intimate partners, particularly if there is some degree of crisis in the relating space.
Learn the Dyad Technique inside and out. Become experienced and a master of the process. Learn its psychological and metaphysical principles and practices. And use it yourself, with your lovers and friends while you also teach others how to use it.
And finally, if you communicate what is arising in your consciousness without blaming, criticizing, making others wrong or trying to change them or even referring to them overtly or covertly, then you are on the path of righteousness and are doing no injury. You are speaking your truth that is originating in your universe and you are living not from victim consciousness but from Self-hood.
You are liberated.
You are the Holy One.
You are, according to the Biblical reference, "A light upon the world."
Yoah Wexler
This is a brief history of the Dyad Technique from my point of view.
I was first introduced to the dyad process in 1968 by Tom Darling. We were both students at San Diego State University when he introduced the WHO AM I enlightenment technique to my circle of friends. The dyad seeds he dropped in my life sprouted and have continued to grow over these past 45 years.
The Dyad Technique, and in particular the WHO AM I Enlightenment Dyad Technique that is used in the Enlightenment Intensive has spread around the world in much the same way that I learned it from Tom. It spread by word of mouth from one person to another who found it of value. There never has been a corporate headquarters or corporate marketing program organizing its dissemination. It has been taught and shared and continues to be transmitted that way because it is a useful, effective and a powerful transformational process. It spread around the world, relatively rapidly, decades before the internet, email and the social networking websites of Face Book and Twitter. A major seed spreader for the dyad process was the spiritual community of the new age teacher and guru, Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, who later changed his name to Osho. Tens of thousands of his students and disciples from scores of countries around the world learned to do the WHO AM I Enlightenment Dyad process when they became involved with his community. But let me not get ahead of myself. I’ll back up a bit and tell you how Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, aka Osho, found out about the dyad process.
Like Tom, who first introduced it to me and my circle of friends in 1968, Jeff Love, first introduced it to England and Europe in 1971. Jeff found a nutrient rich soil there and the dyad seeds he planted grew strong producing ripened fruit whose seeds keep sprouting today.
In a publication by Lawrence Noyes, entitled Miracle of Love, Jeff Love tells the story of how he learned of the Enlightenment Intensive and how he introduced the Enlightenment Intensive to Western Europe in 1971.
“It completely changed my life!”
Jeff recounts that “Wendy and I and our friend Steve drove down to the desert in Southern California to do this thing called an Enlightenment Intensive. It was in the winter of 1968 and the Intensive was five days long. It was the second one ever given. We got to Lucerne Valley, drove up a gentle slope on a dirt road, and arrived at the place. There were patches of snow on the ground in these low rolling hills at the base of the south side of the San Bernardino mountains. There was mostly sand, with brush here and there, and little flat flowers with leaves that came out and hugged the ground. You could see for miles all around and it was beautiful. But the compound itself was very unimpressive. It was very utilitarian and practical, just three simple A-frame buildings, with no aesthetics at all. But somehow, everything started to click. The people were really nice. We went upstairs into a rectangular, attic-like room with slanted ceilings, and Charles Berner was there. He was sitting in a chair wearing all beige and holding a staff. He looked like a Buddhist and he looked like he knew what he was doing. That enabled me to make a decision right then to go with the program, to really try it and give it an honest chance. And I'm glad I did, because it completely changed my life.”
Jeff goes on to describe about how the enlightenment experience transformed his conscious reality and that he decided he wanted to learn everything there was to learn about the Enlightenment Intensive process. But at that time, says Jeff, there was no training program for giving Enlightenment Intensives. “So I made a deal with Charles. I said, ‘I’m not a joiner. I don't join things. I don't believe in following gurus or any of that but I really want to learn what you have to teach.’ So we arranged that I would come back and spend three or four weeks there, studying his tapes and all the stuff he was teaching at the Institute.”
Jeff followed through with that arrangement and returned to study with Charles. After learning all he could during his visit and training with Charles Berner he facilitated his first Enlightenment Intensive in the Santa Cruz mountains of California. It worked, Jeff recalls. “I don't know where I got all the confidence. It just was there, somehow. Later I realized that being in that role of the master (facilitator) is a different state of consciousness than any other. The role itself gives you the means to do it.”
Jeff went to Europe
A couple of years later Jeff went to Europe. While in London he found out about a growth centre called Quaesitor. It was started by Paul and Patricia Lowe. Jeff remembered that at that time they had the first group of Europeans there for a six month training program to become Humanistic Psychologists. “The training consisted of group leaders from America, mostly from Esalen, coming over to train them in Gestalt, Encounter, Bioenergetics and so on. So I said, ‘Why don't I do an Enlightenment Intensive for this group?’ They liked the idea, and took a fairly big chance with it because they had to really believe that this would be a good thing for these eighteen people.”
The Enlightenment Intensive that Jeff facilitated and the training they received at Quaesitor was successful. The participants went back to their respective countries like Holland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Norway where many of them started growth centres. Subsequently they invited Jeff to facilitate Enlightenment Intensives at their growth centers. Jeff recalls, “I did that for several years. More and more people asked me to come to their city to give an Intensive. So for months on end I was literally going from city to city, giving an Enlightenment Intensive every weekend, in almost every country of Western Europe.”
Jeff remembers the language barrier could be overcome by using translators, and letting people speak in their own language in the dyads. “I found I could give Enlightenment Intensives under almost any circumstances. I remember giving one on a boat on the Thames River once. The room was awful. It was freezing and wet and everyone was bundled up, but it still worked.”
May Cairns and Patricia Lowe
The potency and awakening power of the Enlightenment Intensive was appreciated and respected by the small but growing personal and spiritual growth movement in Europe. May Cairns and Patricia Lowe both loved the Enlightenment Dyad process and Jeff taught them how to facilitate Enlightenment Intensives.
Patricia and May were both instrumental in taking the Enlightenment Intensive to India and to the Rajneesh movement there. May Cairns who was later called Ma Prem Arup, and Patricia Lowe, who was given the name Poonam became students and devotees of Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh. Rajneesh, who years later changed his name to Osho, became a world famous Indian guru with the largest personal and spiritual growth center in the world. People from scores of countries around the world visited his ashram and became his students.
When Rajneesh was first introduced to the Enlightenment Intensive and the WHO AM I Dyad Technique he liked it so much that it became a standard workshop for the thousands of Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh devotees and visitors to his ashram. May Cairns, aka, Ma Prem Arup began to regularly facilitate the Enlightenment Intensive at the ashram in Poona, India. Jeff remembers that she had a lot of personal growth skills, loved Enlightenment Intensives and had the personal power that it takes to give them.
Rajneesh and Ramana Maharshi
In his book, The Seventy Two Hour Mirror, Jeff Love quotes Rajneesh as saying, “That question is very good. Ramana Maharshi used only that meditation. Through that meditation he attained his enlightenment, asking who am I? That was his whole yoga, nothing else. The meditation is tremendously powerful, but one should go as deep as possible. One should allow it to sink to ones innermost core. It should penetrate you like an arrow going on and on and on, and suddenly one day a moment comes as if you are drilling a hole and suddenly the drill has passed to the other side. It is a drilling exactly like that. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Go on drilling and then suddenly you see that you have drilled the hole, you have reached the core. And it is tremendously beautiful.”
Looking back Jeff remembers, “I feel really good about the Enlightenment Intensives I've given. They've really benefited people. Every once in a while I get a letter from someone, from somewhere in the world telling me about how much the Enlightenment Intensive helped. This feels good.”
And that my dear readers is part of the story about how the dyad process in general, and the WHO AM I Enlightenment Dyad Technique and the Enlightenment Intensive in particular was spread throughout Europe and the world.
So in respect and celebration for today, March 8th, being the 100th Anniversary of International Woman’s Day, I want to acknowledge Ava Berner for creating the Dyad Process and May Cairns and Patricia Lowe for doing their part in spreading the seeds of enlightenment on our fertile planet.
Over the last 40 plus years I've experienced and heard about people using the dyad process or a dyad-like process. I've always found it curious how those people using the dyad came to it. How did they learn it? Where did they learn it?
Six Degrees of Separation
Do you know the "six degrees of separation" idea? It’s a theory that we are all connected to everyone on earth by an average of six steps or degrees or people. How many degrees (or people) of separation away from the originator of the dyad did the dyad come to someone? Ideas and stories change when they are told from one person to another. Like the game of siting in a circle and whispering a phrase or idea into the ear of someone. That person does the same to another who does the same to another until it comes back to you who started it. And when it returns to you it is usually very different from what you said in the first place.
The communication dyad that I teach was originated by Charles and Ava Berner. In fact it was Ava who came up with the idea in the 1960's. I had thought it was Charles. But about 10 years ago, I was with Charles and Ava at Sydney airport when it came up in conversation. Ava said she developed it and that it was her idea. I looked at Charles with some disbelief. He smiled and shook his head 'Yes.'
In the 1960's they had been doing 'one on one’ clearing (or counselling) sessions where an instruction is given by the 'counsellor' to the 'client'. The 'client' follows the instruction. It's the same format and communication principles as the dyad, but it is a 'one way street.' Only the counsellor gives the instructions and the client follows the instructions getting the benefits of healing or clearing of the body-mind and emotions. It's a great technique based upon sound spiritual, psychological, metaphysical, communication and healing principles. It was and has been called 'clearing' in the jargon. In more recent years I have called the private or group sessions in which I use it counselling or healing sessions.
Ava and Charles, in the 1960's did hundreds of 'one to one' clearing sessions. They wanted to help more people clear the barriers of the mind. What could be done so more people could benefit. That's when Ava came up with the idea of what has now become called the 'dyad.' Both Charles and Ava explored and experimented with using the dyad in groups. They found that one skilled facilitator can teach and monitor a large group of people who are using the dyad technique and following its principles.
It worked. They taught it to their students and their students taught it to others until it has spread around the world.
Romantically Intimate Partners and the Enlightenment Intensive
I’m now going to answer a question that has been asked about the notion of NOT doing a WHO AM I dyad at an Enlightenment Intensive with someone you are romantically involved and intimate with. It is a general rule that at an Enlightenment Intensive it is recommended that people who are intimate not work as enlightenment dyad partners because they will wind up working on their relationship rather than on enlightenment. If they have problems or issues, one or both most likely, won't be able to help themselves to NOT work on their relationship. They will be drawn into working on the relationship and not enlightenment. Of course working on their relationship is helpful but it is not the main purpose of the Enlightenment Intensive. In light of this, it can be easier for Enlightenment Intensive facilitators to just not let intimate partners work together at the Enlightenment Intensive.
Relationship Evolution Dyad
The Relationship Evolution Dyad is particularly helpful for two people who are intimate. In doing this dyad process it is important, and vitally so, to communicate what is arising in consciousness without blaming, criticizing, making the other wrong or trying to change them. If one or both dyad partners fail to follow this guideline then what results may be some version of trying to change or make the other wrong. This is a state of victim consciousness on the part of the person doing the 'make wrong.' It takes a skilled facilitator to catch the hidden or unconscious 'blaming and criticizing' that goes on with intimate partners, particularly if there is some degree of crisis in the relating space.
Learn the Dyad Technique inside and out. Become experienced and a master of the process. Learn its psychological and metaphysical principles and practices. And use it yourself, with your lovers and friends while you also teach others how to use it.
And finally, if you communicate what is arising in your consciousness without blaming, criticizing, making others wrong or trying to change them or even referring to them overtly or covertly, then you are on the path of righteousness and are doing no injury. You are speaking your truth that is originating in your universe and you are living not from victim consciousness but from Self-hood.
You are liberated.
You are the Holy One.
You are, according to the Biblical reference, "A light upon the world."