Standing as Awareness- The Direct Path

by Greg Goode

  Why Wasn’t I Enlightened at Satsang?

  I have been attending satsangs for years. I’ve gotten very close to enlightenment. In fact a few times the teacher told me I was actually There. But then it seemed to go away. This has happened to lots of others too. Why?

  Many satsang attendees report this. It seems like this experience came, then went, correct?

  Yes!

  This coming and going is called the “flip-flop.” It’s one of the main dynamics at most satsangs, as well as their main problem. It is the onset of a very transcendent experience, followed by its departure.

  Yes, that’s right.

  Now at satsang, didn’t the teacher tell you that it is not about having an experience?

  Yes. They all say that.

  And yet you are wondering about the onset and disappearance of an experience.

  Uh, I guess so. (smiling sheepishly) I think it is because at those times, I am in contact with my true nature.

  And at other times, you are not, correct?

  Yes, that’s right. It is blocked.

  This is due to some of the satsang teachings themselves. One well-known teaching is that at some moments there is a direct, experiential, knowing contact with your nature, while at most other times this knowledge is veiled or confused by story, belief, doubt, fear, anger or scattered-mindedness. According to the “veil” teaching, there are certain moments at satsang where the student has heart-opening, oceanic, loving, emotionally blissful experiences. It is taught that during these moments, the normally occluding veils have dropped away, giving the student a direct experience of their true nature. Sometimes it’s called a “free sample.”

  Not all satsangs teach this. It’s less common than it used to be, as some of the teachers seem to have recognized problems with it. But the veil teaching sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

  Yes, this sounds pretty familiar. And I must say, it sounds pretty good, too. Are you saying that something is wrong with it?

  It tends to identify the timeless truth of your nature with a coming-and-going experience. And it is based on the false assumption that there are times in which you are not in direct contact with your nature. It creates the expectation that to be enlightened, to be free, one must perpetually have the same blissful, expanded experiences. Because all experiences come and go, this impossible expectation leads to repeated frustration and actually borders on nihilism.

  The teaching that a veil can come between you and your nature, and that you peek through the veil at those times when you feel open confuses a particular feeling of openness with the openness from which feelings arise. You are always in direct contact with your nature as awareness. Enlightenment does not reside in a feeling; it is much vaster, sweeter and more effortless than this.

  There is deep irony in this. In the satsang teachings, these oceanic states are usually not seen as experiences, since satsang is primarily interested in coarser and more tangible experiences such as emotions. But since they come and go, they are experiences. So when the satsang teaching fails to see these more subtle happenings as experiences, it privileges them by converting them into impossible experiential goals. This makes the goal just another phenomenal experience. A subtle one, but an experience all the same. What the nondual teachings speak about is more subtle and infinitely more pervasive than this.

  Do you mean I am in contact with my nature even when I have doubts and confusion?

  Yes. Doubts are simply passing objects, just like bubbles of bliss. They all come and go. Their arising and passing are directly noted by awareness – there is never a veil or covering.

  You as awareness certify this at each moment.

  Is there a way for me to be as sure of this as you seem to be?

  Look very deeply. The Awareness that I’m speaking of isn’t the activity of the brain. It is That to which appearances appear. Can you find a time when awareness is out of touch? When awareness is not present? Even in deep sleep, you are there as awareness, registering the fact that there are no objects at the time. Awareness is present – you are presence – in the midst of objects, in the absence of objects, and beyond all objects. Try to find a time when there is an object arising, pain, pleasure, bliss, anger, depression – when awareness is lacking.

  Hmmm. So how does this mistake actually get made in satsang?

  It often goes like this – it actually emerges in the teacher’s performative cues as well as in the language. Let’s try something, and I’ll demonstrate what I mean.

  OK.

  So now close your eyes. (speaking very slowly) You may have questions or anxieties about your state. (pause) You may have yearnings to have a feeling of knowingness, a sense of security about yourself. Let these questions and yearnings arise in this very moment. (pause) Let them come up and be seen in the full light of your awareness. Don’t solicit them, and don’t chase them away. Rest in openness... (pause, about half a minute goes by)...

  Mmmm...

  Where are the questions and yearnings now?

  There are not there.

  That’s it! Now open your eyes.

  But I know the questions and yearning will come back.

  Exactly, and what we just saw in our mini satsang emulation is just how the confusion arises. This very same procedure has been used in satsangs dozens of times. You attend the meeting with certain experiences you wish to transcend, including your doubts and questions. You are encouraged not to push these experiences away, but to open to them. A gentle frame of mind ensues, in which the undesirable experiences are not present. The teacher points to this moment by saying, “That’s it!” or “You are there!” She may add that at this moment you are directly in touch with your true nature, without veils or coverings of any sort.

  OK, so what’s wrong with that?

  Through the teacher’s endorsement of this one moment, you are led to believe that the experience during this moment has a special, perhaps enlightened status. You end up chasing more moments like it, motivated by the impossible hope that they last forever. Because of the teacher’s congratulatory remarks, you become dissatisfied with any other experiences.

  But it wasn’t an experience, it was a moment of direct seeing, wasn’t it?

  No more direct than barking your shin on the coffee table. It was a particular pleasant experience in which doubt wasn’t present, but a feeling of spaciousness was. In satsang, the feeling of spaciousness tends to be misunderstood as the spaciousness which gives rise to all thoughts and feelings. So when the feeling of spaciousness is not present, you come to judge yourself as being out of touch with yourself. But you as pure spaciousness are never out of touch with anything. Passing feelings are just objects. You experienced the object of a phenomenal pleasantness which consisted of the lack of doubt and yearning. And the absence of one object is merely the presence of another object. Absences are a bit more subtle, so might not be treated as experiences in the same way as the emotional experiences favored in satsang. The very subtlety of the expanded feeling is responsible for its mis-characterization and the demand that it be present 100percent of the time.

  I see now...

  This misunderstanding is endemic to most of the satsangs I have seen or heard about. With teaching like this, the flip-flop is inevitable. No wonder you feel an intense desire to replicate those “That’s it!” moments.

  So what should the teacher do? How could he or she teach this kind of thing?

  By reducing the felt distinction between moments, not increasing it.

  How?

  By piercing the myth of filtered access to your nature. This dualistic model is an introductory teaching metaphor, but at a certain point it was taken literally and became another piece of baggage. You can see through this myth by being true to your experience and checking for evidence of anything that blocks awareness. Can you find any such thing? And if you find something, consider this – its very ability to be “found” certifies it as not being apart from awareness. So just where is the bloc
k? Comfort is not the criterion of being in touch with awareness, and discomfort is not the criterion of being out of touch with awareness. On the contrary, any thought or feeling is brilliantly lit up by awareness, as awareness.

  You will come to see that every moment is exactly like your “That’s it!” moment.

  You will find that you are always thoughtless just like in the satsang moments. This is because your nature is that space within which thought arises. Thought is free to arise, or not. And you are always in direct contact with awareness, because there is nowhere else to go, and nothing else available that can serve as a veil between you and awareness. There is never anywhere else for you to be. You are in unbroken contact with awareness because you are awareness. “You” and “awareness” – two words for the same thing.

  And what is enlightenment?

  The unshakeable knowledge that your nature as awareness has never included separation. Enlightenment is when the difference between enlightenment and unenlightenment drops away.

  The Social Construction of Enlightenment

  I must admit, when I think of being enlightened, I don’t imagine myself at work on the midnight shift at the local 7-11!

  That’s a nice image from Steven Harrison. It points to the social construction of the “enlightenment” concept. Although there are traditional teachings with strict and specific definitions of the term, those traditions themselves are also social contexts. And for those people seeking enlightenment who don’t see themselves as belonging to a traditional form of spirituality, “enlightenment” is quite a vague term. Its vagueness allows it to be filled in with whatever the heart desires, and most of the images have their social and cultural elements. The particular content of the images spring from whatever is considered desirable by the subculture where the term is employed.

  Different traditions have their different models and personality profiles associated with enlightenment. These profiles carry images. In Zen the image is that you are stern, spontaneous, efficient and unpredictable. In Tibetan Buddhism you are kind, you laugh a lot and you become philosophical if the need arises. According to the Western satsang motif, your eyes are open and deep, you don’t blink very much, you are mostly silent and if you speak it is very slowly. These images usually involve some form of being regarded by others.

  This is why people don’t usually imagine being enlightened yet residing in a cave or on a desert island. That would be too boring, and it doesn’t contain any of the cultural desiderata that constitute the Enlightenment concept. No one imagines being enlightened in situations where other people are totally oblivious, treating you the same old way as before. You’d think, “What would be the point?”

  Of course the teachings differ, but aren’t they all talking about the same thing? Isn’t true enlightenment the same everywhere?

  You might feel like this is an essential place to begin. After all, no one wants to think that they are proceeding in the wrong direction. But as you proceed, you will find something curious happening. As your inquiry deepens, you will feel more and more free from the spell of images, including images of enlightenment. This reflects greater confidence, and less concern that you might have pursued a wrong path. You will enact fewer comparisons between self and others. You will be captivated by the warm, sweet calling of the search for the truth of yourself. It is what Jean Klein calls “higher reasoning.” It doesn’t take place through comparative images, but through a deep and intuitive opening towards perhaps a feeling of sweetness, or as a feeling of always having been home.

  So as I get closer to enlightenment I will think less about enlightenment?

  That’s good! (laughing) The closer you get, the less it seems like a thing or destination or state or possession. The same can be said of every other “thing” as well!

  This is also reflected in the various spiritual teachings too, if you look at them as a discourse. In a given book, website, or metaphysical tradition, you’ll notice something happening as you progress through the material. The advertising portion of the teachings (the face they present to the public in the spiritual marketplace) relies more on the kinds of concrete enlightenment images we spoke about before. This is because these parts of the discourse also serve the purpose of getting you interested in the higher-level teachings. The more advanced the teachings, the less they paint pictures, and the more they concentrate on searching for the truth of things.

  Increasing the Sense of Separation?

  At certain times, you advise people to inquire deeply, or look into certain things. Doesn’t this advice as advice merely strengthen the sense of personal doership? Isn’t it less nondual when you advise people what to do?

  The avoidance of recommendations is an idea from the teachings that used to be called “non-doership teachings” and which are now called “neo-advaita” teachings. I see spiritual advice as being on a par with what a physician or auto mechanic would tell you, and no spiritual teachings object to these conversations! So I don’t think that advising someone to try something will cause the damage claimed by these teachings. In fact I think that advice will help in many cases.

  Can you give an example?

  First, let’s see an example in which advice might not help. Some people feel a lot of guilt or anxiety from wanting to control or choose in just the right way. They might feel that their particular identity is closely tied up with being the agent of actions, and they feel the need to do the “right” things. They might be the people who say, “That’s what I do, it’s who I am.” In these cases, hearing spiritual advice can increase their anxiety, as it only gives them more stuff to do, which they must perform correctly. In these cases, the anxiety can be reduced when they see the automaticity of actions they had thought they were responsible for. If actions are automatic events, then the whole notion of responsibility loses its stinging personal, judgmental, moral tone. The neo-advaitin descriptive teachings are a very effective and immediate antidote for issues like this. They hit the spot perfectly.

  But there are many issues which aren’t so explicitly tied up with choice and control. There are many people who don’t feel that much investment in being a doer or controller. Their issue might be self-esteem, or they might feel identified with the body, or a set of memories. Prescriptive language can help in these cases.

  Advice and recommendations don’t exacerbate every issue the way they might exacerbate a feeling of controllership. In fact, the irony is that the neo-advaitin’s carefully worded descriptive phrasing is lost on many students anyway. Many students just translate the teacher’s descriptions right back into prescriptions for themselves. The teacher’s “There’s no one here” becomes the student’s “If I keep attending these talks, then there will be no one here for me, either.”

  For example, in the direct path, one of the principal teachings is to take your stand as awareness. Once you know the truth even intellectually, you take your stand as that which you already know yourself to be. You don’t need to wait for a transformation. Your subsequent experience will come to confirm the stand you have taken. Notice that this is a kind of doing, not just a case of hearing descriptions. And notice the irony that in spite of the neo-advaitin teacher’s characterization of things, the student still sees himself as listening to the carefully crafted non-prescriptive descriptions. So he’s still doing stuff!

  But there really isn’t a doer. So why speak as if there is?

  (laughs) It seems like there’s no doer. But does it seem that there really is a body or mind, or pencil or teacup? That’s just the point. In the very same way that there’s no doer, there’s nothing else either. So why stop short? Sure, there’s no separate controlling entity. If it’s all awareness, then for the same reasons, there are no independent thoughts, feelings, actions, movements, objects, bodies or worlds. Speaking in terms of a doer isn’t metaphysically different from speaking of a mind/body mechanism. If you say that one doesn’t exist, then why does the other exist? Why stop right there? The same an
alysis applies to both, and to every supposedly objective thing. Inquiry will have stopped short, gaps will arise, separation will be felt, because the basis to which you used to attribute doership will be left in place.

  For now, you can look at speaking in terms of a doer, like speaking of a sunset even though the sun doesn’t actually settle down, or speaking of your car not “wanting” to start up even though your car doesn’t have desires. In fact, all speaking is like this. Things don’t exist “out there,” independent of awareness. There is no borderline between “in” and “out.” Things are merely awareness itself. This frees you from the responsibility to “accurately” capture things by speech, and yields the freedom to speak of everything.

  A while ago, you said that advice is empty. Is this what you meant?

  Good point! Yes, doership and the separate existence of a controlling entity aren’t special metaphysically. Everything is empty of separate existence in this same way. All events of speaking, and all other things, are just like this.

  The “Enlightenment” Story

  Why don’t you tell your enlightenment story in these conversations? After all, it’s on your website.

  Yes, such a story often tends to get the conversation going; but as the conversation proceeds, that story quickly melts away into what is always impersonally present everywhere. In this way, you could look at it as a bit of fragrance but not the rose itself. There are many other bits of fragrance as well.