What is 'Enlightenment'? Options

[Shawn]

It's certain that enlightenment means different things to different people, and so I'm curious what it means to other people, and also to throw out a few questions to provoke thought.

Is Enlightenment an experience, process, realization, way of living, or what?

Is Enlightenment a multi-faceted word that is context-dependent and relative, or are there absolute truths that are invariably associated with any type of Enlightenment?

What are the 'truths', if any, that would invariably be realized/experienced thru Enlightenment?

Is Enlightenment an all-or-none experience (AHA experience) or is it a gradual accumulation of wisdom?

What is the relation of Enlightenment to mystical experience?

Please note that the above constitutes a partial list and is not meant to exhaust the range of questions that could, and should, be asked.

Personally, I believe the statement, "We are the Universe conscious of Itself", is on a par with Buddha's "All that we are, is the result of what we have thought" from the opening of the Dhammapada, and that both constitute part of a collection of truths that are invariably experienced during what I think many would call Enlightenment.   The task at hand, though, is to clarify this notion of Enlightenment to the best of our abilities thru mere verbal communication.  Is anyone up to this challenge?

[Shawn]

hello Timothy, Dan,

this is great conversation!

Dan,

What you say about being 'a chosen one' best capturing the essence of the feeling of high potential, I agree with entirely.  It's a very positive way of regarding one's mission, one's fate, one's life.    I do regard mine in this manner, as my fulfilling an inevitability of sorts.  I think it's a very meaningful way to regard oneself.

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I am getting a kick out of this because I believe I do understand both sides.  maybe you guys will get a kick out of that?  :

I think this is great.  It's always to one's advantage to understand both sides of an argument.   I believe you when you say that you understand both sides, and believe myself that I also understand Joe's viewpoint.  I respect his viewpoint, and am glad he's chosen to share it with all of us.  In the final analysis, I do not agree with him, but it's all good, right?  We don't have to agree about everything.   At the very least, though, we should make an effort to fully understand the other person's viewpoint.

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my question is then, are states of consciousness comparable as more or less desirable?  If so, then we can imagine a 'well-ordering' of known states which implies a 'least desirable' known state.  It also may imply a 'least desirable' possible state if one assumes any particular state to consist of a finite number of elements (and that the variety of possible elements is also finite).  The 'highest' state is also be like the infinite cardinal number, something that is manifest in idea alone

This is quite a brilliant little gem.  Just curious, how old are you, Dan?

I think it certainly possible to envision a 'well-ordering' of known states of consciousness, though this would necessarily leave out the 'unknown' or unexperienced ones, ones that are more transcendent.   And also, such a 'well-ordering' would no doubt be peculiar to each individual, depending on what they regard as 'desirable'.

The thing I have against a 'well-ordering' is that it would be trying to 'serialize' or 'linearize' states of consciousness, which of necessity, are multi-dimensional in character.   For example, states of consciousness can be classified in terms of 'activation' (or level of intensity and degree of Being), modality (visual, auditory, tactile, proprioceptive, or some combination, or even altogether novel modalities like the experience of echolocation in bats and dolphins), and no doubt others.  This notion of 'linearizing' states of consciousness, of 'well-ordering' them, will no doubt result in loss of information regarding their multi-dimensional nature.  It's just like in multivariate statistics, where you have N points distributed in some M-dimensional space and you try to project the points onto a single dimension; you're going to lose information in the process of 'linearizing' and projecting to one dimension, which seems to me is what your well-ordering principle is about (though, as you mentioned, the dimension corresponds to desirability of the state of consciousness).

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when we hit the 'reset' button on structure.  Just like last time(s) perhaps?  ???  :P

I didn't follow this.  What do you mean by hitting the reset button, and what is last time?


You know, when I think about what mind-brain.com is, and what it 'could' be, I'm disappointed.  There's so much more that mind-brain.com could be.   There's so much more useful information that could, and should, be available on this site.  For example, the discussion in this thread, if the different viewpoints and perspectives were written up nicely in an essay, I think a lot of people would get a lot of use out of that.   The essays I have posted, like the one on expanding consciousness, could and should be rewritten and made much, much better, clearer, and more informative.  

We are in the midst of a revolution.  The wisdom of the Upanishads, Gita, and Buddhism is not the be all and end all of wisdom, but is merely the beginning;  at best, the ancient wisdom is but a few sparks of a vast inferno of wisdom just waiting to be uncovered by expanding our consciousness beyond what these sages ever experienced and beyond their wildest imaginations.

We can do this.  We will do this.  It's inevitable.


Timothy, another interesting post.  Here are my thoughts:  since individuals can consciously suppress their reproductive instincts, and in fact, many 'enlightened' people actually do this, does this not argue against the notion that enlightenment is merely a convenient parlor trick for reproduction?  I understand what you say about conciousness enabling cooperation and consequently increased adaptivity, which would lead to increased reproductive success, and so yes, this fact suggests that 'enlightenment' may be merely a parlor trick or pawn for reproduction.   But if consciousness is experienced as transpersonal, as the Universe conscious of Itself, why would this increase the reproductive fitness of the individual (i.e., if the consciousness of the individual is no longer confined to the individual, or if the consciousness is experienced as dis-embodied)?

I'm not familiar with Howard Bloom's, Global Brain, but will see if I can obtain a pdf version of it through a file-sharing program so I can read more about this thesis of his.  I should point out, though, that social networks are nothing like networks in the brain.  There is much more connectivity between individual neurons than between individual people.   For example, your typical neuron receives inputs from at least 10,000 other neurons and projects to at least as many.    While the internet and other modes of communication may facilitate this sort of global consciousness, societies are not really organized like brains.   I know it's easy to make the analogy, but when you examine them both more closely, you see the analogy doesn't hold.

take care,
Shawn