What is Enlightenment

Andrew Cohen has a magazine with this title. He claimed that he was enlightened but said that he had doubts about it all the time. So his definition of it included having doubts about himself. I am certain that I am not enlightened and have no doubts about it. But I am also certain about what enlightenment is. It is available to practically every person, but it is optional. This article could also be called East Meets West.

In psychology, they have the flow experience. There are a few books on it like, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (© 1990) by Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (last name pronounced "cheeks sent me high"). Dr. Seligman (former president of American Psychological Association) calls him "one towering figure in the social sciences." The first line of this book says "Twenty-three hundred years ago Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness."

In his book, Authentic Happiness (2003), Dr. Seligman (author of a dozen books on psychology) describes the flow experience like this: "When does time stop for you? When do you find yourself doing exactly what you want to be doing, and never wanting it to end? Is it painting, or making love, or playing volleyball, or talking before a group, or rock climbing, or listening sympathetically to someone else's troubles?"

The back of the book, Flow, says "These investigations have revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow-- a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity." Absolute is a powerful word. It is used to describe God. People can experience the flow at different degrees. I would play volleyball for hours and feel it during the whole time but at different degrees. Sometimes for a few minutes I would experience the flow experience to the infinite degree. This is the greatest thing that a human being can feel.

A woman had a near death experience and wrote a book about it. She said that while she was dead she felt something nicer than she ever felt when she was alive. This was her encounter with the flow experience. To feel it to the infinite degree, feels totally perfect. It is common for people to never experience it while alive. Although, the most ancient scriptures known to man say that people feel it while in deep sleep. This flow experience to the infinite degree is at the core of a human being.

During it, time stops. I would have a feeling of eternal peace while feeling it. Eternal is a powerful word, but it was a renowned psychologist whose book describes the flow as absolute. When you feel it, you know that it is the secret of life or the meaning of life. It is supreme. It is being one with the universe. So I would think about how if I could play volleyball all the time, without stopping, for the rest of eternity, then I would be really happy. Of course that is impossible. But it can be felt while doing nothing at all. Millions of people around the world do meditation where they are doing nothing at all, physically.

A Harvard Medical School professor (Herbert Benson, M.D.) has written a classic book on meditation called The Relaxation Response (1975) which is now being taught in many medical schools. Meditation creates a unique physiological state where your respiration (beathing) and heart beat are slower than when you are sleeping.This book teaches that the very purpose of technology is to make life easier so that people will experience less stress. But it explains that it is not working since people are now feeling more stress than ever before. So enlightenment is the ultimate state that a human can achieve. An enlightened person is someone who is in the flow experience to the infinite degree all the time. This is enlightenment.

According to those ancient scriptures, you will be feeling that infinite feeling the next time you go to sleep even though you do not remember it when you wake up. Several years ago, the singer Mariah Carey had a nervous breakdown and she said that it was due to lack of sleep. Some people have asked if someone could be enlightened and not know it. So you can see from the above that there is no doubt at all that you would know it if you were enlightened. I would also read non-fiction books for hours since I would feel the flow experience, but not to the infinite degree.

Where does this experience come from? It does not come from the brain. The science of cosmology teaches that if someone wants to know how long it took before the physical world was created or how far do things extend beyond the physical universe, these questions have no meaning. Time and space are only attributes of the physical universe, not the non-physical universe. You exist in the non-physical universe. Do you only exist there after you die? No, time has no existence there. So you could say that in that world or universe-- you are eternal. You have no beginning and no end. That is where the flow experience comes from.

A very famous American psychologist, Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), said "I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness." You can be in the eternal now. In reality, you are beyond time and space. You are the greatest thing in existence. You are the One! Copyright 2007 by Chuck Bluestein. www.phifoundation.org