Enlightenment – we spiritual seekers spend years and decades of our life in pursuing it, in trying to understand it, in trying to experience it, in trying to permanently become one with it.
Tens of thousands of books, across various ideologies and religions, have been written on it, and the purpose of all these books, of all these ideologies and religions is one and the same: to make you enlightened one day.
Enlightenment is supposed to be the end goal of us spiritual seekers. And yet it continues to evade so many of us even when we devote our entire lives in seeking it. Why is that?
One reason for not attaining it, irrespective of how hard and how long you’ve been practicing to attain it, is that you’ve been trying to approach it in the wrong way.
To even understand what enlightenment is, one has to keep a fully open mind, as it is something that is beyond the capabilities of even our mind to fully grasp it.
Enlightenment cannot be understood or experienced by your senses – your eyes cannot see it, your ears cannot hear it, your nose cannot smell it, your tongue cannot taste it, your skin cannot feel it.
Even your heart cannot understand it, nor can your mind. Our mind, in spite of all its amazing and unbelievable capabilities, cannot understand what it has never experienced and what is beyond its ability to experience.
And this is the exact reason why enlightenment can never be taught. Only that thing can be taught which we can learn using our senses and our mind or intellect. But what can’t be learned via the senses and mind, can’t be experienced either.
Enlightenment can only be experienced on its own. Our consciousness, in its purest form, is supposed to be timeless, formless, infinite, and desireless.
What is timeless, how can it be experienced by this body which is time-bound. What is formless, how can it be experienced by this body which has a form. What is infinite, how can it be experienced by this body which is tiny and insignificant.
A way to understand this difficulty in experiencing this enlightenment is to reflect upon how can the created understand its Creator, or even how can the Creator understand its creation.
Can the Sun feel its own rays? Can a rose smell its own fragrance? Can a strawberry taste itself? Can a candle see its own light?
The rays are what the Sun is. The rays cannot exist independent of the Sun, and the Sun can’t exist independent of the rays, as the rays are a characteristic of who or what the Sun is.
Similarly, the fragrance can’t exist independent of the rose, and the rose can’t exist independent of its fragrance. The fragrance is a characteristic of who or what the rose is.
Also, how can any enlightened being teach a non-enlightened being what enlightenment is. Can he show it? He can’t. Can he explain it? He can’t, because words are not enough to explain the wordless. How do you explain the fragrance of a rose to someone who has never smelled one. How do you explain the taste of a strawberry to someone who has never tasted it. And in spite of all your explanation, do you think when that person actually smells the rose, or eats the strawberry, his experience would be the same as what he had understood or imagined it to be? It won’t be.
Some things are hard to explain just by their very nature, and they can only be understood when they are experienced firsthand. And enlightenment being the ultimate state of your consciousness, can only be fully understood when you experience it yourself, when you become fully one with it.
All these religious books, all these Gurus, and even any Enlightened being, can only show us the path to enlightenment; they can only be our guide and the light that lights our path. But we have to walk on this path ourself so that we reach this destination of enlightenment one day. The path is not the destination. The teachings, the Do’s and don’ts, the rituals, the prayers; these are not enlightenment but just the steps which, hopefully, leads people like you and me to enlightenment, and that’s why we study or practice them every day.
These teachings and these practices are important for a seeker like us, without which we won’t even know what to do and how to progress towards enlightenment. But let’s not mistake this ladder for the peak of the mountain itself. The view from the peak is totally different from what it is now as we climb this ladder. Right now, our view is limited and therefore our understanding is limited, but once we reach the peak we can see everything around us, and our understanding and our experience changes as well.
The bliss one feels when he becomes one with the ultimate, one with the pure consciousness, one with God himself; how does one even begin to explain it to someone else.
Even in your meditation or spiritual practice, if you follow them seriously every day, you will come across moments that will make you feel blissful; that will make you feel detached from this body; that will make you feel highly conscious; that will make you feel deeply peaceful. Every serious spiritual seeker experiences such things even if he is not enlightened. And it’s hard to explain this even to yourself what exactly it is, but you know what it is only by experience. You don’t need to explain it to yourself, as your experience itself tells you what exactly it felt like.
The same way, enlightenment is the ultimate state we can reach with the help of this human body. And we all should endeavor to reach it one day. We all should pursue the path towards it, so that, hopefully, we experience it within this lifetime.
The purpose of this article is not to make you stay away from all teachings, all Gurus, but only to make this simple point: Enlightenment is beyond any words, beyond any view, beyond any feelings, beyond any thought, and it can only be understood by fully experiencing it. And so you need to keep a fully open mind to approach it, and not tie yourself too rigidly even to your own Guru, your spiritual master, your spiritual texts. You need to take their support, and one day even let go all of them when enlightenment approaches, so that you, only the enlightened being, remains and everything else disappears.
Your body, all your senses, your heart, your mind; you have to let go all your attachments to them and to whatever you have learned via them, whatever has been taught to them, so that you can experience enlightenment for what it actually is, what it truly is, and that there is nothing else beyond it, nothing more left to learn or understand beyond it.
So don’t rely only upon your senses, your feelings, your intellect, your mind, to understand it. Go beyond these limitations, otherwise you will never experience enlightenment. Break free from all these barriers of your mind and start trying to understand enlightenment independent of those things, for what it is.
You can only learn what can be taught. What can’t be taught must be learned by one’s own experience. I hope you and I get to experience that enlightenment one day. Until then, we keep practicing, we keep seeking.