Is enlightenment an illusion?

As Mark Twain once observed, the efforts of many researchers has already shed considerable darkness on this subject, and it is likely that in the very near future we shall know nothing at all about it.

Yes, it is all a mental concept including what I am saying.

No, it is not necessary to suffer to gave "talent of a mystic." They may not be the only ones, but this is one of the myths put about by those people I rant about from time to time: the christians.

I was saving the "conclusion" until the end Nick, you seem to be a premature concluder! Yes we end up at Nothing/Emptiness or can we call that pure/undivided consciousness???

Here's the last Quotes from "toward a psychology of awakening";

Ongoing Self-Liberation

Transmutation, as described above, still involves a slight sense of duality,
at least initially, in that one makes SOme effort to go toward experience,
go into it, open oneself to it. Beyond transmutation lie still
subtler possibilities of non dual presence, usually realized only through
advanced meditative practice. In the Mahamudra/Dzogchen tradition,
this is the way of self-liberation. Here one learns to remain continually
present within the movement of experience-whether
thought, perception, feeling, or sensation. In the words of a great
Dzogchen master, Paltrul Rinpoche, "It is sufficient to simply let your
mind rest in the state of whatever takes place, in whatever happens."
This kind of naked awareness-where there is no mental or emotional
reaction to whatever arises-allows each experience to be just what it
is, free of dualistic grasping and fixation, and totally transparent. Pure
presence makes possible the self-liberation of the mindstrenm. This is
Mahamudra-the supreme mudra, the ultimate seeing that "lets beings
be as the beings which they are."
What is this supreme mudra? In the words of Tilopa, one of the
grandfathers of Mahamudra, "When mind is free of reference points,
that is Mahamudra." Not to rely on reference points-attitudes, beliefs,
intentions, aversions, self-concepts, object relations-to interpret
Our experience or evaluate who we are in relation to it is to rest
in the "core" of being, "at the still point of the turning world, neither
from nor towards." This sense of "resting in the middle of one's experience"
is not a "position" in any determinate "place." This use of the
term middle is taken from Nishitani, who describes it as the "mode of
being of things as they are in themselves-namely, the mode of being wherein things rest in the complete uniqueness of what they themselves
are .... It is immediately present-and immediately realized as
such-at the point that we ourselves actually are. It is 'at hand' and
'underfoot.' ... ALL actions imply an absolute immediacy. And it is
there that what we are calling the 'middle' appears." Resting in the
middle of being means standing in pure presence.
Normal divided consciousness places us on the perimeter of the
field of experience, stepped back from whatever we are observing.
When resting in the middle, by contrast, "the standpoint of the subject
that knows things objectively, and likewise knows itself objectively
as a thing called the self, is broken down." The self-knowing that
arises here is immediate and nonobjectifying.
It is not a "knowing" that consists in the self's running to itself and
refracting into itself. It is not a "reflective" knowing .... This selfawareness
... is a knowing that comes about not as a reflection of me
self bent into the self but only on a position but is, as it were, absolutely
straightforward .... This is because it is a knowing that originates
in the "middle." It is an absolutely nonobjective knowing of me
absolutely nonobjective self in itself it is a completely nonreflective
knowing .... On all other fields the self is at all times reflective, and
caught in its own grasp in me act of grasping itself, and caUght in the
grasp of things in its attempt to grasp them .... It can never be the
"straight heart" of which the ancients speak.
The ultimate practice here is learning to remain fully present and
awake in the middle of whatever thoughts, feelings, perceptions, or
sensations are occurring and to appreciate them, in Mahamudra/
Dzogchen terms, as dharmakaya-as an ornamental display of the
empty, luminous essence of awareness. Like waves on the ocean,
thoughts are not separate from awareness. They are the radiant clarity
of awareness in motion. In remaining awake in the middle of
thoughts-and recognizing them as the luminous energy of awareness-
the practitioner maintains presence and can rest within their
movement. As Namkhai Norbu suggests, "The essential principle is
to ... maintain presence in the state of the moving wave of thought itself. ... If one considers the calm state as something positive to be
attained, and the wave of thought as something negative to be abandoned,
and one remains caught up in the duality of grasping :md rejecting,
there is no way of overcoming the ordinary state of the mind."
It is dualistic fixation, the tension between "me"-as self-and "my
thoughts"-as other-that makes thinking problematic, tormenting,
"sticky," like the tar baby to which Brer Rabbit becomes affixed by
trying to push it away. Thoughts become thick, solid, and heavy only
when we react to them. Each reaction triggers further thought, so
that the thoughts become chained together in what appears to be a
continuous mind-state. These thought chains are like a relay race,
where each new thought picks up the baton from the previous thought
and runs with it for a moment, passing it on again to a subsequent
thought. But if the meditator can maintain presence in the middle of
thinking, free of grasping or rejecting, then the thought has nothing
to pass the baton on to and naturally subsides. Although this sounds
simple, it is advanced practice, usually requiring much preliminary
training and commitment.
When one can rest in presence even in the midst of thoughts, pcrceptions,
or intense emotions, these become an ongoing part of one's
contemplative practice, as opportunities to discover a pervasive quality
of even awareness in all one's activities. As Tanthang Tulku describes
this:
It's possible to make thought itself meditation .... How do we go into
that state? The moment you try to seperate yourself from thought,
you are dealing with a duality, a subject-object relationship. You lose
the state of awareness because you reject your experience and become
Seperate from it. ... But if our awareness is in the center of thought,
the thought itself dissolves .
At the very beginning stay in the thoughts. Just be there....
You become the center of the thought. But there is not really any
center-the center becomes balance. There's no "being," no "subjectobject
relationships": none of these Categories exist Yet at the same
time, there is ... complete openness.. . So we kind of crack each thougt like cracking nuts. If we can do this, any thought becomes
meditation Any moment, wherever you are, driving a car, sitting around, working,
talking, any activities you haveieven jf you are very disturbed
emotionally, very passionate, or even if your mind has become very
strong. raging, overcome with the worst possible things and you cannot
control yourself, or you feel depressed ... if you really go into it,
there's nothing there. Whatevcr comes up becomes your meditation.
Even if you become extremely tense, if you go into your thought and
your awareness comes alive, that moment can be more powerful than
working a long time in meditation practice.
Here no antidote need be applied: no conceptual understanding,
no reflection, no stepping back, no detachment, no witnessing. When
one is totally present in the thought, in the emotion, in the disturbance,
it relaxes by itself and becomes transparent to the larger ground
of awareness. The wave subsides back into the ocean. The cloud dissolves
into the sky The snake naturally uncoils. These are all metaphors
that say It self-liberates.
Self-liberation is not a dialogical process but a "straight heart" realization
of being-emptiness. It makes possible an intimate knowing
of reality, as Nishitani suggests when he writes that "things reveal
themselves to us only when we leap from the circumference to the
center, into their very [suchness)." This "knowing of not-knowing" is
a complete openness and attunement to the self-revealing qualities of
self, world, and other beings.
For one who can remain fully present even in the middle of deluded
thoughts and emotions, the distinction between samsara and nirvana,
conventional and awakened consciousness, duality and nonduality is
no longer of great concern. This is known as the awareness of one taste.
When one is no longer trapped in divided consciousness, the relative
duality, or play of self and other, in daily life is not a problem. One
can play by the conventional ground rules of duality when appropriate
and drop them when they're not useful. The interplay of self and other
becomes a humorous dance, an energetic exchange, an ornament
rather than a hinderance.

Summary and Conclusion


Most of us live caught up in prereflective identification most of the
time, imagining that our thoughtS, feelings, attitudes and viewpoints
are an accurate portrayal of reality. But when awareness is clouded by
prereflective identification, we do not yet fully have Our experience.
Rather, it has us: we are swept along by crosscurrents of thought and
feeling in which we are unconsciously immersed. Driven by these unconscious
identifications-self-images, conflicting emotions, superego
commands, object relations, recurring thought patterns-we remain
asleep to the deeper import of Our experience. We remain angry without
even knowing we are angry, anxious without understanding why
we are anxious, and hungry without realizing what we are truly hungry
for. This is the condition that Gurdjieff called "the machine."
Reflective attention helps us take a major step forward from there.
Conceptual reflection allows us to make an initial assessment of what
is going on and why. Beyond that, subtler, more direct kinds of phenomenological
reflection Can help us finally start to have our experience.
In psychotherapy, it is a major advance when clients Can, for
example, move from just being angry to having their anger. This
means that their awareness can hold the anger and reflect on it, instead
of being overwhelmed or clouded by it. Beyond that, mindful witnessing
allows us to step back from our experience and let it be, without
being caught up in reaction or identification.
A further step on the path of awakening involves learning to be with
our experience in an even more direct and penetrating way, which i
call unconditional presence. Here the focus is not so much on what we
are experiencing as on how we are with it. Being fully present with Our
experience facilitates a vertical shift from personality to being. Being
with anger, for instance, involves opening to its energy directly which
often effects a spontaneous transmutation. The anger reveals deeper
qualities of being hidden within it, such as strength, confidence, or
radiant clarity, and this brings us into deeper connection with being
itself. From this greater sense of inner connectedness, the original
situation that gave rise to the anger often looks quite different.
Beyond transmutation there lies the still subtler potential to self- liberate experience through naked awareness. Instead of going into
the anger, this would mean simply resting in presence as the anger
arises and moves, while recognizing it as a transparent, energetic display
of being-awareness-emptiness. This possibility is discovered not
through a dialogical process like psychotherapy but through contemplative
practice.
To summarize the progression described here: it is a movement
from unconscious, prereflective immersion in our experience (identification),
to thinking and talking about experience (conceptual reflection),
to having our experience directly (phenomenological reflection),
to nonidentified witnessing (mindfulness), to being-present-with experience
(unconditional presence, leading to transmutation), to a
transreflective resting in open presence within whatever experience
arises, which is no other than pure being/emptiness (self-liberation).
If we use the analogy of awareness as a mirror, prereflective identification
is like being captivated by and lost in the reflections appearing
in the mirror. Reflection involves stepping back from these appearances,
studying them, and developing a more objective relationship
with them. And transreflective presence is like being the mirror itself-
that vast, illuminating openness and clarity that allows reality to
be seen as what it is. In pure presence, awareness is self-illuminating,
or aware of itself without objectification. The mirror simply abides in
its own nature, without either separating from its reflections or confusing
itself with them. Negative reflections do not stain the mirror;
positive reflections do not improve on it. They are all the mirror's
self-illuminating display.

Goodness... maybe I'll be able to manage that when my sinuses clear!

At the moment, through the remaining fug of this summer's cold/throat/chest infection, I think things like, It's only a lifetime: why must people take it so seriously?

And I wonder how it is when we are not incarnate, because I think that there will not be an absence of self even then. Not the same self, the spirit of which is but a fragment of the greater soul, but still an individual.

But, as all thoughts are coloured by, and interpreted through, belief and experience, so mine is by my beliefs not being incarnation-centric. Maybe that's what comes of finding a little old lady in Epsom, rather than a little old man in the Himalayas! (ok, not that old, and not so little either! And no beard. Or robes). But it is belief and if I ever realise it, then my self thoughts about self might change in a trice.

I'm afraid you will be a protestant pastor in your future life...

Amen.

Then you will be one of my flock ... and I will not go easy on the fire and brimstone!

Reality is weird without any effort from our side. Twenty five fields and now the twenty sixth, Higgs', each having their own particle/wave when excited.

Eh, what about "turning the other cheek" thing?

Look, you dirty sinner.....

Maf karna bhai, where we are now in regards to the Higgs' particle took considerable human effort with out a certain outcome. But I get what you're saying there.

An enlightened man was asked : what did you before you attained enlightenment?
"Chopped wood and drew water" he replied.
What will you do now that you are enlightened ?
"Draw water and chop wood " he said.

The main difficulty is the term spirituality, unless spirituality means love, because if one deconstructs the spiritual thing there is to be found nothing more and nothing less than love - then it is just down to behaviour, nothing mystical there!

Non-expression of love is our greatest persisting difficulty, leading us far away from the place where humanity says it wants to go, and there's the rub = wanting, pity we don't 'choose' with a bucket full more discernment.

Anyone know the story of the great Polish Franciscan monk Maximillian Kolbe in WWII? Few saint stories are more moving than his.

There is no way to tell as we navigate our way through the daily thing, or strive to improve as a person, whether we are actually doing anything through our own will. When we intend to reach improving states of consciousness, are we really doing anything or is it just happening to us? It could be either way. You are acting your part in the lila, but the real motivation comes from outside; if we want to be strictly accurate, it is all happening to you, rather than the other way round.

Oh My God.

(says an atheist )

We have enough difficulty with the word spirituality, now you go and bring love into it!

well you can't escape work, every single individual is compelled to it..