| Selections |
| Selections on 'enlightenment, final understanding'
June 2009 MESSAGE FROM WAYNE Hello my loves,
I am very pleased to have my new book, Enlightenment Is Not What You Think, coming out this month. If it is at all successful in dispelling some of the myths about Enlightenment, I will be gratified. In the Living Teaching it is recognized that seeking Truth is infinitely more valuable than finding it. The search is alive and vibrant. Once you think you have found it, the resulting knowledge is dead. Knowledge is acquired. Truth is revealed. The nature of this revelation is an absence rather than a thing that is to be gained. Of course, it is impossible to describe an absence... we can only describe something that has properties. The impossibility of the task of describing Enlightenment, combined with the insatiable thirst on the part of the seeker to know what it is, has produced an incredible array of pointers. The inevitable fate of such pointers is that people hear them as descriptions and then take them to be Truths in and of themselves. It would be an endless and thankless task trying to point out the fallacy in each belief about Enlightenment. I have contented myself with presenting a broader perspective on the subject, in which a new and deeper insight may be found. I hope you find it valuable. As always, we shall see what happens. With love, Wayne
March 2009 MESSAGE FROM WAYNE Hello my loves, Freedom is a word that is often used interchangeably with the word Enlightenment. To be enlightened is to be free. But have you ever stopped to consider what it means to be free? It is curious. Ask people what they think of when they think of freedom and most people speak in terms of freedom to do what they please. Freedom to go where they want to go. Freedom to say what they want to say and do what they want to do. Freedom is often associated with choice. Freedom to chose a leader (vote). Freedom to chose a spouse. Freedom to chose a career. Boil it down and this kind of freedom is about getting what you want. Presumably, the freer you, the better able you will be to get what you want and the more satisfied you will be. Such a notion of freedom is inevitably linked to power. If you have physical power you are then free to climb mountains you could not if you are weak. If you have financial power you are free to go places and acquire things you cannot if you are poor. In this way freedom becomes associated with acquisition or control and so it is that most people imagine that the road to freedom lies in acquisition or control. But the desire for such freedom is limitless and insatiable. The more you get, the more remains ungotten. We need only read the newspapers to see where such an approach has lead in the fiscal world. In the spiritual world this same desire for acquisition and control takes the form of a spiritual materialism in which more and deeper UNDERSTANDING is sought. Spiritual freedom is often thought to be freedom from mentation or freedom from anger or freedom from desire. In this way, equanimity and peacefulness are seen as states to be attained either through diligence or surrender. In fact, freedom is never attained. It can only be revealed. Freedom is not a thing to be acquired but a condition that currently exists. It is here, now and it underlies everything. True freedom is total Acceptance. With love, Wayne
October 2004 MESSAGE FROM WAYNE Hello my loves, Many people who come to my Talks say they are there because of an interest in enlightenment. But when we get down to what this thing called enlightenment actually IS, there is enormous confusion. When I talk about enlightenment, I talk about it very, very specifically, and it's very simple. In humans, at around the age of two-and-a-half, a shift occurs whereby they change from free-flowing, uninvolved beings to experiencing everything in terms of 'Me!' and 'Mine!' It is that moment in which what I call the 'false sense of personal authorship' kicks in. It happens to virtually every human being. It is the false sense that 'I' as this body/mind am the source; that 'I' as this body/mind am responsible for making it all happen. It is this false sense of personal authorship that creates suffering, because the sense is that 'I' am in control of things, and, yet, there is continuous evidence to the contrary - that I'm not in control. So a powerful tension is established. In some body/minds, for whatever reason, that sense of personal authorship permanently dissolves - dies. That event, for lack of a better name, is called enlightenment. Over the millennia, generations of seekers have mystified the hell out of it. Basically, it's an event that happens in the history of some human organisms. Now, the reason this event is so interesting to people is that the organism through which it happens is no longer suffering. There is total acceptance within the organism. There is total acceptance because it is 'understood' that what is, is. There is no longer a separate sense of 'me' to become involved with what is and claim it as 'mine'; - egoically mine. When that process is no longer occuring, that permanent lack of occurence may be called peace or bliss or enlightenment. What is crucial to realize is that it is a happening. It happens as part of the functioning of the universe. The pointer of this teaching is that everything happens that way; everything happens as part of the functioning of Totality. With love, Wayne
Hermosa Beach, 15 November 2005 Webcast Transcript Excerpt ...Wayne: [reading from chatroom] Jeff says, "A number of awakened spiritual teachers sound remarkably similar to your Advaita, but they speak about the temporary coming-back of identification as part of the dance of what is, but their true nature is untouched. Does this make sense to you?" I have no desire to talk about anybody else's teaching. If it makes sense to you, if you like it, terrific, but understand that all these teachings are pointers. They are not truths. So, if you like one representation, and the fact that it does not jibe with another, you're not going to uncover which one of them is true, you see? Neither of them is true, none of them are true. They are all pointers. Now, I make a distinction between spiritual experience and the final understanding. That's my notional distinction. For me, I make it conceptually very clear that the final understanding is total, final, irrevocable, complete. Nothing is left to come back. That's my concept. The states, the stages, before that are what I would call spiritual experiences, in which the ego goes, and comes back, goes and comes back. So it's a matter of definition, and it is often called awakening, mainly because, in my feeling, people like it, people like to be told that they're awakened. What the seeker is seeking is to be awakened, so when you tell him he's awakened, and he's just stabilizing into his awakening, his awakening is becoming finalized, or whatever the explanation, it makes people happy...
Hermosa Beach, 21 September 2004 Webcast Transcript Excerpt ...Wayne: How is it that you find yourself here today? I was visiting my daughter in Redondo Beach. My friend Sherry told me about you. The same day another friend from Florida told me about you. Wayne: What did they tell you? They told me to go see you. Wayne: Why do you think they did that? They've been spiritual friends for a long, long time. I knew Sherry from New Mexico. I've been suffering very much spiritually. My twenty-one year old son died a couple years ago and it knocked me out. Wayne: Are you familiar with Ramesh? A little bit. Wayne: My guru, this fellow Ramesh Balsekar, is an enlightened master. I was with him some fourteen or fifteen years ago when he was in the States on a speaking tour and news came to him that his son had died in Bombay. He had lived with him essentially his whole life. His grief was enormous, of course. People have this fantasy that when there is enlightenment there is no longer any pain and everything becomes fine, okay, beautiful - all sweetness and lights all the time. That's not true. Life is by its very nature exquisitely beautiful and exquisitely painful. As long as there is life in the organism we call the sage, there will be beauty and horror, joy and sorrow. What we can call the blessing of the ultimate understanding is that there is no suffering attendant to the pain. There is not the slightest sense that things as they are, no matter how painful, should be different or that what has happened should not have happened. There is the implicit understanding that everything that happens is part of a massive functioning, a part of a huge tapestry of Totality, and it is inescapable - could not be otherwise. In that acceptance, there is peace even in the most profound grief, the most profound pain. The impact of this teaching is often to diminish that sense that things should be other than they are. Which is, of course, why I've struggled so much with it. How I used to feel is much more different now. Wayne: I have not lost a child, so I don't have that experience. But every experience, particularly those that are dramatically painful and emotionally devastating, does change the organism. They change the programming of the organism, and so life is viewed differently. There is a difference in perspective and perception in accordance with the occurrences of life. The good news is that the change in programming is dynamic, it is continuously happening. So the fact this is how it is now does not mean it will be that way next week, next month, or next year; in the same way that where you are now is different then where you were three years ago because of the event that intervened. This is all summed up in what has almost become a corny phrase, but is really to my mind a very deep one with impact: "This too shall pass." It points to this basic law of life, which is change. Change is the very heartbeat of this dualistic manifest universe. That change is programmed into the most elemental building blocks of the manifest universe in the movement from wave to particle. It goes all the way up to the grossest structures such as the galaxies. It is all in flux, all changing. Everything is in movement. Nothing is static - even though it may appear to be...
Hermosa Beach, 30 August 2004 Webcast Transcript Before realization were you like I am now, i.e. attracted to that presence and pursuing it? Wayne: Absolutely! Once you taste that presence it's like a drug, you go after it. It's great. So you pursue it in accordance with your nature. If you're a wild man, you pursue it wildly. If you're more restrained, then perhaps you'll pursue it in a more dignified, restrained fashion. But pursue it you will. Do you know if that helped or hindered the process that eventually led to realization? Wayne: In my mind it had nothing whatsoever to do with realization. It was an independent event. Al I can say for certain is that in my case the experience of presence and the seeking for that experience of presence preceded the event of realization. But I would stop far, far short of saying that it caused it or hindered it. You said that the sense of intention is an aspect of the sense of authorship. Then all the other aspects of it, such as worry, fears, etcetera, must be impersonal happenings as well. Wayne: Yes. The pointer of the teaching is that all of the occurrences that happen through the organism are ultimately impersonal, meaning they are not personally sourced or personally authored. It is important to understand that there are two aspects of personalization that arise following the occurrence or action. The first aspect is a functional personalization in which the organism relates the occurrence to its physical form. It says, "I felt that, I experienced that." There's a functional identification with what happens and, thus, what happens becomes personalized as 'my' experience. The second aspect of personalization is where there is a claim of authorship where the ego personalizes the action as being my egoic action or my sourced action. The egoic personalization and the functional personalization are often indistinguishable; they are intertwined and you can't readily see where one starts and the other stops. The ultimate understanding is that they all are impersonal happenings. They are happenings that are part of the functioning of Totality. Every thought, every action, every feeling is part of the functioning of Totality - and they are then subsequently personalized. Was the presence you were attracted to and pursued before realization the same presence after realization? Or was the elimination of the sense of separateness the only difference? Wayne: It was a quantum difference, not an 'only' difference! It changed the whole ballgame. My point is that before the final understanding and realization there is an experience of presence. After the realization - which is the absence of the separation - the one who would experience the presence is no more. You can only experience something if you are separate from it. Therefore, the experience of presence no longer has any meaning because there is no separation. There is only presence. There was a quote by Ramesh in your last newsletter about walking the dog. The understanding I had was that because there's no thinking mind there, there is no separation for the dog. Wayne: That is correct. Would it be correct to say that is in a sense a step of evolution - or that we're a step of devolution - Wayne: It depends on who is making the evaluation whether its evolution or devolution. But then is the sage closer in equivalency to an animal than to - Wayne: It depends on who you ask! I know what you're saying. What characterizes the organism we call the sage and what differentiates the sage organism from the baby or the animal (both of which are without a sense of personal authorship) is that the sage organism developed the sense of authorship and then it went away. It is this event, this 'going away' of the sense of authorship in the organism, which defines the sage. So it is distinct in that regard from the animal or the baby. And still it apparently has the capacity for self-reflection. It can talk about it. I mean it has other capacities it can verbalize. Wayne: Well, the point is that because it is human it can talk and it can conceptualize in human terms. I can't imagine a sage organism being moved to talk about 'it' in the absence of someone coming to ask about 'it' because there's nothing to talk about. In essence, it's not talking about something. If there were a something, then you could talk about it. There is only 'what is'. The only thing to talk about is in relation to the questions of the seekers. That is what we engage in during these types of gathering - when we're talking. It's like all the concepts and everything are just something to talk about. Wayne: Yeah. In the bhakti path, we sing bhajans to pass the time. Here we talk about 'what is'. There are different ways to occupy oneself during Satsang. In the karma yoga path, you just do something - helping. All of this 'fills the time'. It is the activity that describes the various paths. But what is truly happening is underneath all these activities, which is this presence. So you can step outside of whatever you're doing and say, well, this is stupid; it's stupid that we're talking about this or it's stupid that we're singing these songs and always one lyric. It depends on whether you're involved in it, because it may be quite entertaining and equally meaningful. It's either subject to critical attention or its being involved in it and enjoying it. It depends on where you are in the relationship. It occurred to me that there is a hint that comes up occasionally that there is this thing, I've heard you call the 'cumulative effect' of intellectual understanding, that could have some benefit to the organism. Wayne: Yeah. It doesn't have anything to do with enlightenment, though. It has to do with living; just doing. That's almost like the one thread that you just removed from being absolutely ridiculous. Wayne: But you can't hold on to that one. The big word there is 'could'. The cumulative effect could be negative as well. I could point to cases where we could arguably say that the cumulative effect has been negative, meaning that person's life was in the can. They didn't have a peaceful, happy life as viewed with a deep, intellectual understanding. From where I sit, I'm gratified to see when the teaching apparently has a positive impact on someone, and I'm saddened to see when it has a negative impact on someone. It would be hard to even suggest that those are direct causal relations, wouldn't it? Wayne: Oh, of course. Ultimately, we understand that this is the story in phenomena that we tell about something. We say, "It's the teaching that brought about this." Historically it seems that way, but that is part of this phenomenal way of interacting. We talk in terms of cause and effect relationships; we tell stories about things; it's part of that drama of life. And we react accordingly to all of it as human organisms. There is an interesting book that Ramesh asked me to take a look at called Visual Intelligence by Donald Hoffman. The main message is that the brain creates reality. Specifically, the book made the case of how what you see is dependent upon rules in the brain. The brain uses rules that it applies to the patterns that register in the eye. Basically, the patterns have no meaning until the brain interprets those patterns according to its rules. It doesn't memorize each scene and then check that scene against its database because things are constantly changing. It has to evaluate and process according to rules. The book breaks down those rules of vision. This also applies to the fabrication of our total reality: it is a process of the brain. Brains organize 'what is' and human brains organize "what is" generally in human terms. So there is a 'human' reality. It's very different from a dog's reality or dolphin's reality, because the sense organs are different and the processing cues inside the brain are different as well. Obviously, the realities are going to be vastly different. We're not talking about some kind of objective reality that we all perceive. It's that we're assembling a similar kind of reality, a shared reality, based on the properties of the organisms. Because the organisms are essentially similar, we develop similar kinds of realities. But as we've discussed, if you've ever lived with anybody you know that two people experiencing the same thing can have different realities, different perceptions of the event. "What just happened?" What each person thinks just happened can vastly differ. Yet, because of the generalized structure of the human brain, there is a commonality of realities. When the brain does not form the normal structures, we end up with crazy people, those that we call autistic, or whatever. Their brains are processing differently from the normal shared reality - the reality of society. [Pause] Wayne: Have you ever looked at the Advaita Press logo? I'm sure I have. Wayne: Here is the title page from Acceptance of What Is. Look at it closely. [Pause] So, how many cubes are there? There appear to be five. Wayne: Okay. Now look at it a little more deeply. It keeps changing. Wayne: To how many? I now see three. Wayne: You can ask someone how many cubes are there and they'll say there are three. You then ask someone else how many cubes are there and they say there are five. There can't be three and five. Are there three or are there five? This is similar to the types of questions that people ask such as, "Is there free will or is everything determined?" But what they really are asking is are there three cubes or are there five cubes. So, you can point out the three cubes and give the answer that there are three, or you can point to the cubes and say there are five cubes. But if someone asks, "How many cubes are there?" really, there are no cubes are there at all; it's a flat piece of paper with some lines on it. Back in the early days, I had a t-shirt that had the logo on it and it said "It's all in how you look at it." That relates to your definition of a concept. Some people are going to see three cubes; some people are going to see five cubes. It's also true with any concept apparently. A concept can be taken in different ways by different people. So everything you talk about is interpreted depending on how that person looks at it. Wayne: That's right. Everything. And like you've also pointed out, it changes from moment to moment - the hypnosis, the realization. In a second it's forgotten and not even noticed. Wayne: Exactly. You're looking at it in one moment and it's three cubes; in the next moment it's five cubes. The exact image is seen entirely differently one second later. And you can't see both three cubes and five cubes at the same time. It's absolutely impossible. You can switch back and forth really quickly, but you can't see them both at the same time; it's either one or the other. Does the sage also have the same experience seeing three cubes versus five cubes? Wayne: Of course. That's a physical phenomenon. We can say that in terms of the sage's perspective on reality there is an understanding that the reality is total; it embodies everything - the three and the five and the flat; it embodies it all. So, it is not a relative understanding. That's what we point at as the understanding of the sage - the apperception in which the question dissolves entirely.
August 2004 MESSAGE FROM WAYNE Hello my loves, As I have been traveling around, there has been a lot of interest lately in Ramesh's concept of the working mind and the thinking mind. The working mind is, as the name suggests, the aspect of the organism that does the work of keeping the organism functioning. It is the repository of genetic heritage, memory, knowledge, culture, identity, all of those qualities that are essential for day to day living. The working mind functions in accordance with its programming. This programming is dynamic; it's an ongoing process whereby new information is being added to the mix all the time. What Ramesh calls the thinking mind is another term for what is commonly referred to as the ego. The thinking mind's sole function - the ONLY thing it does - is to claim the operation of the working mind as its own doing and become involved in that operation to the extent solely of preserving itself. It's a false claimer of primacy or authorship which arises in virtually every human at the age of about two and a half. The ego/thinking mind authors nothing. There is no such thing as ego-created action. The body/mind organism that is popularly called a sage is one in which the thinking mind has died. Famous historical resurrections not withstanding, dead is dead and there is no possibility of return. That is my working definition for what constitutes an organism called the sage and what the event of enlightenment represents. It is that very precise occurrence. Therefore, far from being a superman, the sage is completely ordinary. In this model the sage has not gained something more but rather is simply a human organism with one thing LESS....it is without the false sense of personal authorship. With love, Wayne
June 2004 MESSAGE FROM WAYNE Hello my loves, There is a prevalent notion that there can be Awakening or Realization that comes and goes and finally stabilizes after some time. I do not believe that there is such a thing as 'partial realization'. I recognize there is seeking. I recognize there is intellectual understanding and there is spiritual experience, both of which are progressive and cumulative. And I recognize there is the final understanding, which is sudden, irrevocable, and after which there can be no further process, in the same way that you cannot be 'more dead'. You can only be dead; you can't be dead plus. Once dead, there is no question of stabilizing into your deadness. And realization, or the final understanding, is exactly like that. In my definition of this final understanding, gradual or evolutionary enlightenment is not possible. What that refers to is this unveiling process of seeking in which you have spiritual insights. In that stage, there are often very real spiritual experiences in which you know the oneness of things. Such experiences ebb, and then they often come back again. That's what I call the process of spiritual seeking. This process has increasingly been redefined as enlightenment or awakening. In fact, much of the modern Satsang movement is based on that model of spiritual experience being called enlightenment. So after your spiritual experience has been officially declared enlightenment by someone who had their spiritual experience declared to be enlightenment by someone else who once flew over Lucknow, you are then urged to teach that to others as being awakening or enlightenment. Part of the appeal of such a model is that the goal of virtually every seeker is to gain this enlightenment. Therefore, if you tell them that they gained it, everybody's happy because they're getting what they wanted, and they are happy with the teacher for giving it to them. If they're honest and they say, "Well, this enlightenment, this experience that was so profound and important seems to have gone or ebbed," then the teacher says, "Well, it isn't really gone, you're just settling into it. You're just learning your new spiritual body. Your physical being is learning how to accept it" or some similar explanation often accompanied by a supporting quote from a sage who has been dead long enough to no longer be controversial. Implicit in the notion that enlightenment is progressive is that enlightenment is a state - an experiential state. The pointer in this teaching is that it is not an experiential state; an experiential state is by its nature transitory. If you're experiencing something, it will change. The very basis of duality is change. Change is integral to experience. In fact, what we call life is movement and change. In the absence of this movement, when it's localized in an organism, that state is what we call death. So in terms of the experience of life, the states of life are always alternating, but this is not what is pointed to in this teaching as enlightenment. It is why sages like Nisargadatta Maharaj would speak from the standpoint of Totality and make statements such as, "I'm awake even when I'm asleep. I will live even after I am dead." They are linguistically pointing to that which is not conditional. That which is the source and substance of everything - what we 'truly are' - is not experiential except in its aspect. It's experiential only as what we can know and touch and taste and live. But enlightenment is beyond that kind of knowing because it is beyond the limit of experiential knowledge. With love, Wayne
Hermosa Beach, 24 May 2004 Webcast Transcript Excerpt ...Is the coming and going of the unity that the seeker experiences the only thing that differs from the unity of the sage? Wayne: That difference is total. It isn't a matter of being the only thing. It is a total quantum shift in the paradigm of reality. The coming and going of this state of unity is experiential, is knowable, is understandable. The final understanding - what we call the state of the sage - is not knowable, not experiential, and it cannot be referred to. All that can be referred to is this, this dualistic universe. We can say that the final understanding is the knowing that everything is one, but it isn't a relative knowing - knowing it is one, experiencing it as one. All experience is of separation and duality. The Unity, this Oneness of the sage, is not something that he has, it's something that he IS. There is absolutely no separation possible unless there is no knowing of 'it' possible, because 'it' does not exist separate from the sage...
Hermosa Beach, 29 April 2004 Webcast Transcript Excerpt One of the things I asked him was how can one know if one has what he calls the deepest understanding. And the reason I asked it is because there appeared to be a distinction in this teaching between simple comprehending versus the deepest understanding. Wayne: What did he respond? He said one could take a lie detector test! [Laughter] What would you respond if someone were to ask a question like that? Wayne: Are you asking me that or is that hypothetical question? I find that it implies levels of understanding. So when one says 'deepest' there has to be a way of distinguishing from superficial understanding. Wayne: The distinction Ramesh generally makes is between intellectual understanding and total understanding or awakening; it is a way of saying that there are two distinct kinds of understanding. The intellectual understanding is a type of subject/object understanding, where someone understands some thing. While that kind of understanding can be quite useful and productive in terms of making one's life easier and more complete, the final understanding is transcendent, which is to say that it is not some thing that someone has. The limitation of the language is such that we have to use words, and all the words are in subject/object orientation. But the pointer of that term 'final understanding' or 'ultimate understanding' is beyond the finite, beyond that which is known by a knower. So what Ramesh calls the ultimate understanding, Wei Wu Wei would call 'apperception', which is a knowing without a knower, understanding without someone that understands- where the distinction between the known and the knower is dissolved. Essentially it's the difference between verbal versus sub-verbal; an understanding behind the words is what I consider the deeper understanding. Wayne: No. It's actually transcendent, rather than behind. It's not intuitive; it's not a non-verbal understanding. It is truly totally transcendent and non-experiential in nature. You mean it can't be experienced. Wayne: It is not experienced because it is not an object. It is not a thing. One can only experience some thing. Okay. So you have three types of understanding: verbal, non-verbal or intuitive, and the transcendent or the ultimate? Wayne: You could probably subdivide those into six, the six into twelve, and the twelve into twenty-four. The distinctions are useful for pointing to something. Thus, Ramesh would make an apparently hierarchal distinction between different kinds of understanding. Though I like his "take a lie detector test' answer better. It raises a peculiar point, mainly the possibility of the ultimate understanding existing and the body-mind not realizing that understanding is there - in that particular body-mind. It's hidden. Wayne: More precisely, when the understanding is expressed, when there is some need to express it, and that expression may come forth as a result of a question from someone, or it may come forth as a burst of creative energy, as in the case of spontaneous poetry or something like that; what is absent in the sage, if you will, is the slightest shred of belief that what is being said or being written or being thought is the Truth - with a capital 'T'. Any such comment is understood at the most fundamental level to be a pointer, a relative teaching tool. That's why the sage is said to have a natural humility, because there is the total absence of the conviction that what the sage is saying is the Truth. The humility comes from the fact that of course it is relative, of course it can be argued, of course it can be disagreed with, and within that is the very basic humility. So, I personally have no trouble with anybody's teaching. If someone says that you exist and another one says you don't exist, and this one says that you're god incarnate and this other one says that you're nothing, whatever the teaching tool, I don't care. What I object to, in an aesthetic sense, is when someone says, "What I am saying is the truth and what the other person is saying is bullshit." Because that lacks that essential clarity of understanding that it's all bullshit, and that one's teaching is a matter of enculturation and personal preference and a variety of influences that determine how the teaching is expressed...
Amigo Magazine #5, in Holland, February 2003 INTERVIEW EXCERPT ...''Chopping wood before enlightenment and chopping wood after enlightenment." In other words: coming back to the point were one was before... Everything is the same but now it can be embraced, without resistance. Wayne: Mmmm... It is truly not an embracing. Embracing is what the seeker does. The seeker says, "Okay, life is glorious, I will not resist it, I will embrace it." For the sage, there is no one left to either resist or embrace. There is simply the 'river' of life. You mean "being here, seeing that there is nobody there." Wayne: Right. The reaction of the seeker upon having a spiritual experience is the reaction "I am embracing life. This is all Me. I Am It. We are all One..." but that is still that separation of I am going to embody or take all of this into myself. For the sage there is no self to bring all of this into. That separation is completely absent. So after understanding or after seeing, there is still a process going on to see that it is not 'done' by anybody? Wayne: No. There is no process of seeing that. My saying that is simply a pointer or a teaching tool, but it is not the awareness of the organism that things are that way. There is no separate awareness about the nature of things. That whole question of one's relation to IT, one's union with IT, that is gone. There is no One to relate to. For the sage after enlightenment there is no longer a process. But one day you discovered something, or you saw, or you had an Insight. Suddenly you 'knew': It is not me seeing it. Wayne: Yes, that point, that moment when the ME completely dissolved is a historical moment in the history of the organism. What happened in that moment we can point to and allegorically say, "There was then the realization, there was then seen that there is no separation." But that is not really accurate! In that moment the whole paradigm, the whole question, is dissolved! A false idea disappears, and nothing literally changes. And so the most precise thing you can say is that nothing happened! ...
On KAZU Radio, CSU Monterey Bay, September 1999 INTERVIEW EXCERPT ...And it sounds like you are the sort of individual that we can ask questions of like, "What is Enlightenment?" Wayne: That is a question that is frequently asked. Yes, I am just going to start off with that one... that is a pretty major one. I would love for you to tell us about that. What the heck is it? Wayne: My feeling about enlightenment is that it is a concept that has been widely misunderstood to be a personal sort of development, and what Enlightenment is in fact is an impersonal event that happens through what we would call a body-mind mechanism. Which is simply this package that we consider ourselves to be, a physical body combined with a mind, a mechanism through which God or Totality or Consciousness, if you will, functions. One of the aspects of this body-mind mechanism is the development, around the age of two and half, of a sense of personal doership so that the actions that happen through it are considered to be 'my actions'. Most people go through their life without ever really questioning whether that is true or not. So part of enlightenment is asking questions of that process? Wayne: I would say that questioning whether "I am the doer" or whether I am an instrument through which doership happens is what I call... seeking. Now seeking happens in a relatively small percentage of body-mind mechanisms. Most people are content to get a new car every once in awhile or a better job, or more money. In relatively few people does this quest develop for a direct experience of their true nature. The seeking which begins in certain body-mind mechanisms is a process through which perhaps this sense of personal doership will fall away. When the sense of personal doership falls away this is what is known as Enlightenment...
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