Enlightenment, Time, And The Role Of Heroic Individuals

“The biggest obstacle to God is time.” ~ Meister Eckhart

In this paper, I will be investigating a theme of the axial age related to the power of the individual to know ultimate reality and become one with it. I make the argument that this unique phenomenon of oneness is no different from what is commonly known as spiritual enlightenment.

The first part of this paper will define enlightenment and separate it from what is commonly known as the mystical experience. The second part of this paper will explore the individuals within the axial age who, I argue, embodied the enlightened state, namely Jesus, Buddha, and Socrates. And the last section of this paper will address how enlightenment is expressed and why it is significant in the evolution of religion. If the reader thinks that enlightenment is not as exotic as the new-age era has made it out to be by the end of this paper, I will have done my job. Better yet, if the reader feels as if I have used the work of Robert Bellah and countless other scholars in a creative and intellectually stimulating way to birth new and original insights about enlightenment and its implications on the evolution of religion, I will have done a better job.

It must be said that the inspiration to write this paper dawned on me when recalling an emotional breakdown I had about a year ago when I broke up with my now ex-girlfriend. After the breakdown, I had a spiritual breakthrough and spent an entire week abiding in an unconditional state of peace and unwavering presence (it is interesting to note that in Bellah’s book, there is a strong correlation between breakdowns and breakthroughs, though he connects them more with the evolution of certain cultures). Everything I had read about the topic of spiritual enlightenment suddenly became my first-hand experience. Events happened spontaneously, without any effort or resistance on my end. All was a non-dual happening, and I was witnessing the mind-body called “Preston” move through time and space in an unattached way. But I was also extraordinarily intimate with absolutely everything in experience. Whatever I needed came to me; and no matter where I was or whom I was surrounded with, there was absolutely no anxiety. I felt like all was well and all manner of things shall be well. Even though the cloud cover returned and obscured this feeling of peace after about a week or so, I realized through direct experience that the fundamental nature of myself and the world—“I and my Father”— was blissful consciousness. After that week, I decided to dedicate the entirety of my professional and personal life to writing about it.

Some readers may be wondering why I included the quote by Meister Eckhart at the beginning of the paper. It was to draw a stark distinction between it and the quote by Hegel that Bellah includes in his book, Religion In Human Evolution. For those who have not read it yet, here is the quote: “Those moments which the spirit appears to have outgrown still belong to it in the depths of its present. Just as it has passed through all its moments in history, so also must it pass them again in the present.” (Hegel 2011) Although Hegel might be correct on a relative level, I am going to be exploring a state of being that stretches beyond time and history into the non-discursive and transconceptual realm that many mystics have alluded to—and which Wittgenstein pointed to when he said these words: “If we consider eternity not to be infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternity belongs to those who live in the present.” (Wittgenstein 2016) But why start the discussion of enlightenment with the topic of time, you may ask? And why is the present moment timeless? As a methodological technique, I wanted to bring attention to time because the entirety of Bellah’s book is about the evolution of religion in time; and enlightenment, as I define it here, has to do with exiting time—or seeing through its illusory nature, rather. If enlightenment is worth the praise many people have given it, such as Rupert Spira, Adyashanti, Ramana Maharshi, and Eckhart Tolle, anything less than this would make it worthless. After all, our main trouble is that we are apparently stuck in time. While the clock ticks, so does suffering. As David Loy points out in his fantastic book on Nonduality: “For both Advaita and Buddhism, as in the “illuminative” traditions generally, time is a problem, and not an abstract problem but a very personal and immediate one.” (Loy 2019) Our entire lives revolve around becoming—and becoming can only happen in time. If we are caught in the troubles of time and the psychological illusions that manifest because of it, we will never be free in the unconditional sense. Robert Bellah certainly does a brilliant job of touching on the unitive event and Being cognition, both of which are characterized by the transcendence of time and space. But I found myself hungry for more. After all, these are perhaps the most exciting topics to ponder. Who doesn’t want to consider the possibility of living outside of the world of daily life, as Schutz put it? Who doesn’t want to exit the socially constructed reality, with all its impositions and strange rules? And why should we, as human beings, simply accept the fact that, for the rest of our lives, there will always be a need to participate in a state Maslow referred to as D-cognition, characterized by striving and a “Fundamental anxiety that propels us toward practical and pragmatic action in the world of working?” (Bellah 2017) Is there not another way to live? Are we condemned to oscillate back and forth between multiple realities? Is the point of life to switch on and switch off? I would like to suggest that it is not, since enlightenment, otherwise known as sahaja samadhi, “Is a state in which a silent level within the subject is maintained along with (simultaneously with) the full use of the human faculties. It is, hence, continuous through part or all of the twenty-four-hour cycle of (non-meditative) activity and sleep.” (Forman 1990)

But there is a problem here, because the nonduality of the seer and the seen—which is the most important quality of the enlightened state—is, as Plotinus suggested, not susceptible even to adequate conceptual description, much less proof. Unless we have had first-hand experience of the present moment in all its non-dual totality, no conceptual answer will be valuable. This is especially the case for people who are ‘absent while present’ and ‘oblivious of what they do awake, just as they are forgetful of what they do asleep,’ as Heraclitus put it. Telling these people that the present moment is all there is and that everything they have been seeking can be found when they stop seeking is not very useful. It is a sad reality to ponder the fact that even people who have dedicated their entire life to studying the mystical traditions have not come close to their own innate wakefulness. In fact, by studying the scriptures and analyzing the mystical traditions, some scholars have perhaps obstructed the present moment with their concepts about it. Unfortunately, when we attempt to study and research something as profound as enlightenment from an intellectual and scholarly perspective, we risk adoring our ideas and criticisms about it more than we adore the possibility of it being veridical. That is one of the reasons why Nisargadatta Maharaj consistently told his listeners to get rid of all ideas, both good and bad. It is also one of the reasons why Ramakrishna uttered these words: “Only two types of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realize that they know nothing.” (Ramakrishna 1984) And let us not forget Socrates. Here was a man whose “superiority lay not in his own wisdom, but in his knowledge of his lack of it.” (Bellah 2017) The same goes for Buddha, who remained quiet when asked about the nature of God. Too much knowledge clouds the knower. And too many concepts get in the way of The Way. Who can forget the great utterance in the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.” (Mitchell 2006) Ram Dass— who was himself a very learned professor before having a spiritual awakening—said it quite poetically: “The goal is not to become a somebody, it is to become a nobody.” For those of us who are “somebodies,” that is, beings falsely identified with a skin-encapsulated ego, as Alan Watts called it, lost in the world of becoming, conceptual knowledge, and ponderings about past and future, timelessness is an abstraction that stretches far away from our direct experience. How do we solve this issue? We cannot do it conceptually, as I have already pointed out. No amount of philosophical rigor will shake us out of a rut that supposedly ends philosophy altogether. But perhaps we can be convinced that there is a transconceptual reality readily available, and that this reality isn’t as fantastical as we imagine it to be. Perhaps it is so obvious that we cannot see it.

We must be careful here, though, because the word ‘enlightenment,’ like mysticism, is exotically flavored by our misconceptions and misunderstandings. In fact, ‘enlightenment’ is often erroneously associated with mysticism, as “a set of experiences or more precisely, conscious events, which are not described in terms of sensory experience or mental images.” (Forman 1990) Contrary to what some scholars and practitioners think, enlightenment is not a set of experiences at all, but rather a waking up from experience. The modern-day non-dual teacher, Rupert Spira, doesn’t stutter: “The divesting of our being of the qualities it seems to have acquired from experience is referred to as ‘enlightenment’ in the traditional literature. Our being sheds the limitations of experience that seemed to ‘obscure’ or endarken it… Enlightenment is, as such, not a new or extraordinary experience to be attained or acquired; it is simply the revelation of the original nature of our self or being.” (Spira 2021) For those who are familiar with Jorge Ferrer’s paper, Spiritual Knowing as Participatory Enaction, one might suppose that this interpretation is too perennial and falsely presupposes a pregiven, independent reality when none such reality exists. But I would like to defend Spira here. Even though consciousness can reveal itself in different ways (see The Leap by Stephen Taylor) and express its realization in a multiplicity of ways, it is always the same behind these expressions because it is contentless and pure. And since it is contentless and pure, it is not susceptible to the diversity and adventure of experience, though it can certainly put a dent in it, so to speak. Just as the magician can reveal his secrets in many ways but remains the same magician behind these revelations, so consciousness can disclose itself in multiple ways but remains the same consciousness behind it all. But to say that there are different types of enlightenment is the equivalent of saying that there are different spaces in the only space that exists. Since consciousness has no qualities, it makes no sense to say that there are differences within it. Furthermore, Ferrer has made the erroneous error of supposing that there are two realities—the divine and the human—participating when, in fact, no duality exists in the first place. Admittedly, this may sound rather arrogant, but it is only in defense of directness that I write these words. The idea of participation is dualistic and thus falls prey to dualistic interpretations of reality, which can only ever be relatively true. If humans believe that they are in some way separate from the divine, multiplicities will seem to be the case, and consciousness will be mistaken for its states and manifestations. In light of this, Thomas Merton said these words: “Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.” (Merton) It is also why Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon told a questioner that, of all the paths to truth, only the jnana path is complete. All other paths, according to him, “deal only with relative things falling within the sphere of mind and sense organs.” (Tripta 2009)

But waking up from experience doesn’t mean we suddenly exit experience altogether, does it? Of course not. One does not suddenly float away from experience when enlightenment occurs. Ironically, they become more intimate with it. It turns out that the most beautiful way to participate in experience is to wake up from it. There are many beautiful stories that illustrate the profundity of this, but my favorite comes from the Zen tradition in the form of Bankei’s Miracle.

Here is a summary of the story: Bankei was approached by a priest who boasted that his master possessed miraculous powers. This master could take a brush and write Amida in the air and the word would appear on a sheet of paper in the distance. Challenged to equal this, Bankei replied, “My miracle is that when I feel hungry, I eat, and when I feel thirsty, I drink.”

What is so miraculous about that? Well, when Bankei is eating, he is not thinking about what to eat tomorrow. He is simply eating. And when he is drinking, he is not replaying a scenario in his head about an interaction he may have had with someone the day before. He is just drinking. In other words, Bankei’s miracle is that he is locked into the freshness of the present and all the invitations it has to offer. Thus, there is no resistance to the next moment. He is, as it were, riding experience in the same way Kelly Slater rides the waves of an ocean. In a chapter on Nondual action, David Loy describes it as a state where there is “no differentiation between agent and act; in other words, no awareness of an agent as distinct from its actions.” (Loy 2019) I find this to be a favorable and adequate description of Bankei’s miracle, for it represents the subtle yet profound intimacy involved in the non-dual participation with reality.

But what does this all have to do with the work of Bellah? The first point to make is that this phenomenon of enlightenment, which can be related to a connection with a transcendental realm, is uniquely axial in that it involves the power of the individual to reach salvation. As the professor of religion, Jake Sherman, once reminded me in a discussion post related to the axial age: “The vocation of Buddha, Christ, and Socrates is marked by a courageous witness to a Real that is not reducible to how things have always been… The infinite dignity and potential insight of the individual are indeed one of the most important legacies of axiality.” It is impossible to deny that these beings contained an immense amount of courage, but is it accurate to categorize Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, and even Plato as enlightened beings? All of these individuals, apart from Plato and Socrates, came from drastically different cultures with teachings that were in some way opposite from the others. Is my perennialist leaning over-estimating the diverse number of ways in which enlightenment can occur? To briefly remind the reader of my original argument, I don’t believe that there are different types of enlightenment, just as I don’t believe that there can exist different spaces in the only space that exists. But I do believe that when enlightenment has occurred in an individual, it can express itself in a multiplicity of ways. And I would like to suggest that the axial heroes—Jesus, Buddha, and Socrates—were exemplars of this enlightened state because of (a) how original and dynamic their personalities and teachings were, and (b) how their stories left a mythical and timeless mark.

For many people, there may not be a need to argue that Buddha was enlightened. After all, the word ‘enlightenment’ is a translation—however inaccurate—of the original Buddhist term bodhi. But what about Jesus and Socrates? To answer this question, I think it is important that we analyze the work of certain scholars and listen to the words of individuals who embody, teach, and seem to abide in the enlightened state. One of the teachers that comes to mind is Adyashanti, who has written a fascinating book about Jesus called Resurrecting Jesus: Embodying The Spirit Of A Revolutionary Mystic. In this book, he has argued that Jesus was an enlightened being. More enthrallingly, however, he has put forth the argument that his external life was a representation of the inward journey toward enlightenment. In other words, the external story of Jesus is the internal story of enlightenment, with the crucifixion representing the final act of surrender, the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, of the ego’s resistance to reality. But how does he know this? It is certainly not because he knows more facts about Jesus than some scholars, but because he is an awakened being himself and is thus more attuned to the essence of Jesus’ teachings. I believe the core lessons of the great teachers—regardless of what tradition they come from—are better understood by human beings who are abiding in an awakened state. Adyashanti is one of those teachers. As for Socrates, Bellah has done a fantastic job of reminding the readers that the man described by Alcibiades in the Symposium “Could lose himself in standing meditation for 24 hours, walk barefoot comfortably on ice whereas his fellow soldiers had difficulty walking in boots, who was immune to alcohol, and who did not need sleep.” (Bellah 2017) Although the possession of such powers is not clear evidence of enlightenment (in the yoga sutras, they are seen as distractions) they point to the mythical aspect of Socrates that most enlightened beings leave behind in their wake. Here are the exact words of Alcibiades at the end of the Symposium: “I tell you, and all his life he keeps on being ironical and playful to human beings. And when he is in earnest and opened up, I do not know if anyone has seen the images within; but I once saw them, and it was my opinion that they were so divine, golden, altogether beautiful, and amazing that one had to do just about whatever Socrates commanded.” (Johnson 2012) Bellah points out yet another interesting aspect of Socrates: “Socrates was one of the last citizens of the type which flourished in the earlier Greek Polis. At the same time, he was the embodiment and finest example of the new form of moral and intellectual individualism. Both of these characters were united in him, without impairment of either. The former pointed back to a mighty past; the latter looked forward to the future.” (Bellah 2017) In other words, Socrates, like Jesus and Buddha, was a highly dynamic individual—which is a quality of an enlightened being. I don’t want to make radically poetic statements that have no grounding in reality, but it certainly seems like the lasting influence these figures had on the world, and a part of their dynamic nature, was a result of their unique blend of relatability and originality. I wrote a short poem when thinking about this the other day. Here it is:

It happens to those whose time has come.

They lure the future into them

And speak as if they come from

The past, but underneath it all,

Remain free from both.

It happens to those who love wisdom:

They become see-through as a

Result of loving something more

Than themselves.

There is perhaps not one day that the names of Jesus, Buddha, and Socrates have not come out of someone’s mouth. Because they realized a timeless truth, they immortalized themselves in time and escaped Hegel’s idea of history. That’s really the main point of this paper, and why I thought it was important to write about these exceptional individuals. Once a Being is enlightened, they become mythically significant, and, as it were, historically complex. They become essential parts of mythistory. Even though there may not be a lot of facts about their lives, the stories about them are in some ways more important because they speak to a place in us that is deeper, subtler, and more timeless. One cannot help but love the truth after hearing that Jesus and Socrates died for the truth. And who does not feel courageous after hearing that Buddha left his home of comfort to seek the real? When we hear the stories of these great individuals, we contact narrative truth, which is, as Bellah said, “No more secure than any form of truth, but stable, reliable, even profound.” (Bellah 2017) There is something in the stories of these great beings that allow us to identify with them. This is far more profound than knowing some information about their lives. I am reminded of something a devotee said about Maharajii (the guru of Ram Dass): “Stories are many, facts are few.” (Dass 2013) When enlightenment occurs in an individual, their life unfolds in a way that whispers to the same life that wants to wake up in us. But it does so in ways that we cannot fully rationalize or understand. And that is okay. Sometimes, the best way to come into a relationship with the mystery is to let it be a mystery.

Bibliography

Bellah, Robert N. 2011. Religion in Human Evolution. Harvard University Press.Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1980. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Cambridge University Press.

Johnson, David. 2012. Socrates and Alcibiades: Four Texts. Hackett Publishing.

Loy, David R. 2019. Nonduality. Simon and Schuster.

Spira, Rupert. 2021. Being Myself. New Harbinger Publications.

Forman, Robert K. 1997. The Problem of Pure Consciousness. Oxford University Press.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2016. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Chiron Academic Press - The Original Authoritative Edition).

Ramakrishna, and Mahendra Nath Gupta. 1942. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna Vivekanada Center.

Atmananda, Shri, and Nitya Tripta. 2009. Notes on Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmanand. Non-Duality.

Baba Ram Das. MIRACLE of LOVE: Stories about Neem Karoli Baba. S.L.: Munshiram Manoharlal Pub, 2013.