Spiritual enlightenment is not about ‘permanent non-dual awareness’, or anything remotely like it
Introduction
There is a noticeable drift, amongst those who promote spiritual teachings on the internet, towards something like a loose consensus, or a vague coming together, on the matter of what it is that constitutes spiritual enlightenment. We can take one such acknowledged formulation and examine its validity.
The claim exists that spiritual enlightenment is equivalent to ‘permanent’ or ‘abiding non-dual awareness.’ ‘Awareness’ alludes to Buddhistic mindfulness and popular conceptions of living in the now; ‘non-dual’ reflects the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, and the tag ‘permanent’ makes it clear that this is a state of a special order.
Analysing and evaluating this particular conception of spiritual enlightenment – and by extension, those similar to it – appropriately and accurately – is not about philosophical cleverness, or religious doctrine, or whether or not it manages to project a certain intuitive cogency. It is about identifying the phenomenon it claims to represent, and assessing its reach, and then examining the extent to which it can meaningfully be said to resolve the mystery of the human predicament. This should be done objectively, and without the intervention and mediation of any form of esoteric doctrine.
A phenomenology of ‘awareness’
If we are talking about an ‘awareness’ –an attentive presence of consciousness – we are talking about a capacity for both a focussed and a diffused attention on to a field of experience. Attention can be either narrowly focussed, or it can be generalised and non-contracted. Generally speaking, however, if we refer to ‘an awareness’, we tend to be referring to the generalised, non-contracted attentiveness; and in our normal, everyday experience, our awareness is directed at a field of experience which we experience as being external to us, and therefore very definitely separated from us. We experience something of an intimate awareness of our own bodies, and towards some aspects of the workings of our own minds, but beyond that our awareness is of a field of experience outside of us, and characteristically not of ourselves, and not intimate, and not subjective. This is the classic duality between the ‘inner me’ and the ‘outer world’.
And the major qualitative features of basic experience – that is, whether it is experienced as internal to me, or as external to me – is, surprisingly perhaps, not contained in the experience itself, but in our perceptual mechanism. A full justification for this assertion is not necessary here, suffice to say that it is eminently possible – for the experiencing subject – to undergo a radical modification in their perceptual capacity, and thereby experience what is normally experienced as external to them as if it were internal, and has become intimately a part of them and not at all separate and objective. ‘I’ as the lucid subject becomes transformed into a ‘greater Self’; expanding, in the process, to incorporate the entire universe into itself. Instead of experiencing the rest of the world as other than me, and external to me, I now experience it as internal to me, and my self-identification expands from the limitations of my body and my mind, to a sense of limitlessness, in that I now identify intimately with everything, and everything seems, in a very real sense, to belong to me. I cannot bend this new universe of ‘me-ness’ to my previous ego-will – and make this universe do whatever I please – though there doesn’t seem any need for me to want to, because the needs of my normal ego have no priority in a universe where my sense of self has expanded to incorporate everything and everyone.
This radical shift in my perceptual capacity may seem impossibly remote to some, but in reality it only involves the merest flick of a perceptual switch. Similar radical shifts of elemental perception are well-known to those who have taken psychoactive drugs, and this is at least part of the evidence to show that the fundamental perceptual features such as ‘internal to me’ or ‘external to me’ are not contained in the experience itself, but rather in the essential predisposition of my perceptual capacity. And there are artificial methods whereby the switch can be flicked; taking drugs is one such method; mystical practices, such as meditation, another.
‘Non-dual awareness’: what does it amount to ?
Having established the basic principle behind ‘non-dual awareness’, we now need to see what we can meaningfully conclude from it. It obviously constitutes a radical departure in our normal perceptual capacity, and it is obviously not something most people would be familiar with, but what would make anyone who found their perceptual capacity transformed in this way believe that they had achieved supreme enlightenment, and had no further to travel on any spiritual path ?
To begin with, we are talking about an event which, in the first instance, overwhelms the intellect. In the immediate aftermath of the radical shift from dual to non-dual, the intellect finds itself both redundant and rudderless, and is powerless to confront the new mandate. All the old certainties, and apparent convictions, have been abolished, and a sense of quiet, inner, cosmic confidence has taken their place. No more the tiny little frightened ego; now a greater Self which contains everything there ever was or ever could be, underpinned by a tremendous sense of achievement and satisfaction. The intellect, which previously might have spoiled the party with its mischievous questioning, has been silenced.
Secondly, there is the fact that the levels of expectation, brought about by years of reading books, listening to lectures, meditating, thinking, discussion and argument, seem to have been fulfilled to the furthest degree, perhaps even surpassed. All the mystical scriptures – the Upanishads, some Buddhist Sutras, the writings of Shankara, the utterances of Ramana Maharishi – are now perfectly transparent, and could have been written with no purpose in mind other than accurately to describe this very event. The whole situation figures in a very direct and convincing way, and is backed up by all the holy books. Why would you question it ?
However, if you have had the good fortune to be intellectually acquainted and familiarised with a metaphysical perspective which seeks to fulfil the capacity to know and reflect for its own sake, and in its own right, rather than for the sake of the subjective self, you can relatively quickly understand what this particular event –the arrival of a non-dual awareness – is all about, and not be dazzled by it. Of course at the moment of transformation, no-one can withstand being astonished by the sheer force of the event, or failed to be awestruck at its myriad implications, but in the days and weeks that follow, the grip of the initial euphoria begins to diminish, and everything slowly starts to return to normal: the little ego returns. Now it also happens, in some cases, that this new expanded awareness of my expanded self – the greater Self – rather than returning to normal, remains in consciousness, either as a trace element, or as a full-blown feature, leading to what is termed ‘permanent non-dual awareness’; so the lucid subject continues to experience everything as if it were a product of their own mind, rather than as if it were external to them. This may seem to some like a tremendous spiritual advancement, but in truth not very much has been achieved.
And following on from this, a further point to note from the metaphysical perspective which seeks to fulfil the capacity for knowledge on its own terms – and not on those of subjective self-aggrandisement – is that by transforming your awareness from a fragmented, dualistic, ordinary, everyday normality into a permanent non-duality, you have actually succeeded in damaging your relationship with normality, and can no longer be sure that your judgement is underpinned by the kind of sombre and thoroughly ordinary everydayness that the rest of the world is familiar with. This is not as trivial an observation as it might seem, because genuine spiritual progress requires sanity, and normality, and everydayness for its insights to be tested against. If you now exist permanently in a distorting new zone of consciousness, what exactly have you succeeded in doing ?
But more to the point, what can we conclude from all this ? Basically that tinkering with our perceptual access to experience – our primary mode of awareness – and having this perceptual alternation interfere with the quality of our normal experiencing, is not as significant an achievement as it first appears. It can only continue to be regarded as of the utmost significance if it is sustained by an intellectual environment which values such achievements, and which reinforces them by various transparently inconclusive methods, such as validating them by reference to scriptural and textual sources.
Spirituality as the quest for principial insight
But if ‘permanent non-dual awareness’ – and all sorts of other kinds of altered states of consciousness – do not qualify as supreme enlightenment, where else do we look ? The fact is, approaching the whole subject of spirituality from the perspective of altered states of consciousness is essentially mistaken, though thoroughly understandable, given the way humans think, and given the way they try to turn everything into something tangible, graspable, and attainable by force of will. But spiritual enlightenment is not a matter of achieving specialised and apparently high-octane altered states of consciousness, it is a matter of allowing the ‘knowing capacity’ at the centre of our being to fulfil itself on its own terms. Our ‘knowing capacity’ does this by shifting – slowly, over a considerable period of time – from a position whereby the human subject – the ordinary self-centred individual – is the epicentre of all knowledge, significance and meaning, towards a perspective whereby ‘knowing’ and ‘knowledge’ are no longer constrained by such self-centred concerns, and which can then operate according to an utterly unforeseen – and unimaginable – modality.
And it’s only a modality of the order of ‘knowing’ which can possibly shed light on the mysteries at the base of the human condition. Anything else is simply an additional mystery which may well modify the basic features of the human predicament, but not resolve it. Some might argue that the attainment of super-states of consciousness obviates the need for any resolution, because the basic predicament has been dispensed with, and a new and improved condition of being imposed over the old, obliterating it, but this can only be a valid outcome if an adequately evolved intellect could find its fulfilment in such improved conditions of being, and this is clearly not the case. A healthy intellect, once it has regained its footing, will cut ‘permanent non-dual awareness’ down to size.
The faculty which our ‘knowing capacity’ employs to achieve this new modality is that of ‘insight’ – our ordinary, everyday, and familiar capacity for insight – but now to be employed specifically in the service of our knowing lucidity (in all its forms and abilities), to elucidate it, and to bring it into reflective consciousness, and no longer to be so concerned with individual self-advancement, and individual self-preservation. The shift in insight is towards what Meister Eckhart termed ‘principial knowledge’: knowledge on its own terms, unrestricted by human concerns. Knowledge in this modality would give you principial insight into everything that has ever been or could ever be, as there is nothing other than it anywhere, in any state, or in any mode of existence. It is this which constitutes supreme spiritual enlightenment, not some modified state of consciousness. Spirituality is therefore a steady movement away from a limited, self-centred knowing, towards a limitless knowing-in-itself; though this is never going to be a form of limitlessness as imagined by a human self –which will always be pictured as a kind of massive collection of facts – but to a limitlessness appropriate to the unconditioned order of knowledge on its own terms. Supreme enlightenment is to be found in a realm of this sort, and not in realms which relate to human accomplishment, because these, with their obsessive human self-concern, are as remote from ‘unconstrained knowing’ as anything could be. The conception of spirituality outlined here is obviously quite other than that which you might find in orthodox religions as well as in New Age schools, both of which always seek – using mystical practices like meditation, prayer, contemplation and the rest – to turn the ordinary lowly individual into some kind of perceptually-enhanced super-experiencer, not understanding that spirituality is to be found in principial knowing, not in gross states of mind.
There is a noticeable drift, amongst those who promote spiritual teachings on the internet, towards something like a loose consensus, or a vague coming together, on the matter of what it is that constitutes spiritual enlightenment. We can take one such acknowledged formulation and examine its validity.
The claim exists that spiritual enlightenment is equivalent to ‘permanent’ or ‘abiding non-dual awareness.’ ‘Awareness’ alludes to Buddhistic mindfulness and popular conceptions of living in the now; ‘non-dual’ reflects the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, and the tag ‘permanent’ makes it clear that this is a state of a special order.
Analysing and evaluating this particular conception of spiritual enlightenment – and by extension, those similar to it – appropriately and accurately – is not about philosophical cleverness, or religious doctrine, or whether or not it manages to project a certain intuitive cogency. It is about identifying the phenomenon it claims to represent, and assessing its reach, and then examining the extent to which it can meaningfully be said to resolve the mystery of the human predicament. This should be done objectively, and without the intervention and mediation of any form of esoteric doctrine.
A phenomenology of ‘awareness’
If we are talking about an ‘awareness’ –an attentive presence of consciousness – we are talking about a capacity for both a focussed and a diffused attention on to a field of experience. Attention can be either narrowly focussed, or it can be generalised and non-contracted. Generally speaking, however, if we refer to ‘an awareness’, we tend to be referring to the generalised, non-contracted attentiveness; and in our normal, everyday experience, our awareness is directed at a field of experience which we experience as being external to us, and therefore very definitely separated from us. We experience something of an intimate awareness of our own bodies, and towards some aspects of the workings of our own minds, but beyond that our awareness is of a field of experience outside of us, and characteristically not of ourselves, and not intimate, and not subjective. This is the classic duality between the ‘inner me’ and the ‘outer world’.
And the major qualitative features of basic experience – that is, whether it is experienced as internal to me, or as external to me – is, surprisingly perhaps, not contained in the experience itself, but in our perceptual mechanism. A full justification for this assertion is not necessary here, suffice to say that it is eminently possible – for the experiencing subject – to undergo a radical modification in their perceptual capacity, and thereby experience what is normally experienced as external to them as if it were internal, and has become intimately a part of them and not at all separate and objective. ‘I’ as the lucid subject becomes transformed into a ‘greater Self’; expanding, in the process, to incorporate the entire universe into itself. Instead of experiencing the rest of the world as other than me, and external to me, I now experience it as internal to me, and my self-identification expands from the limitations of my body and my mind, to a sense of limitlessness, in that I now identify intimately with everything, and everything seems, in a very real sense, to belong to me. I cannot bend this new universe of ‘me-ness’ to my previous ego-will – and make this universe do whatever I please – though there doesn’t seem any need for me to want to, because the needs of my normal ego have no priority in a universe where my sense of self has expanded to incorporate everything and everyone.
This radical shift in my perceptual capacity may seem impossibly remote to some, but in reality it only involves the merest flick of a perceptual switch. Similar radical shifts of elemental perception are well-known to those who have taken psychoactive drugs, and this is at least part of the evidence to show that the fundamental perceptual features such as ‘internal to me’ or ‘external to me’ are not contained in the experience itself, but rather in the essential predisposition of my perceptual capacity. And there are artificial methods whereby the switch can be flicked; taking drugs is one such method; mystical practices, such as meditation, another.
‘Non-dual awareness’: what does it amount to ?
Having established the basic principle behind ‘non-dual awareness’, we now need to see what we can meaningfully conclude from it. It obviously constitutes a radical departure in our normal perceptual capacity, and it is obviously not something most people would be familiar with, but what would make anyone who found their perceptual capacity transformed in this way believe that they had achieved supreme enlightenment, and had no further to travel on any spiritual path ?
To begin with, we are talking about an event which, in the first instance, overwhelms the intellect. In the immediate aftermath of the radical shift from dual to non-dual, the intellect finds itself both redundant and rudderless, and is powerless to confront the new mandate. All the old certainties, and apparent convictions, have been abolished, and a sense of quiet, inner, cosmic confidence has taken their place. No more the tiny little frightened ego; now a greater Self which contains everything there ever was or ever could be, underpinned by a tremendous sense of achievement and satisfaction. The intellect, which previously might have spoiled the party with its mischievous questioning, has been silenced.
Secondly, there is the fact that the levels of expectation, brought about by years of reading books, listening to lectures, meditating, thinking, discussion and argument, seem to have been fulfilled to the furthest degree, perhaps even surpassed. All the mystical scriptures – the Upanishads, some Buddhist Sutras, the writings of Shankara, the utterances of Ramana Maharishi – are now perfectly transparent, and could have been written with no purpose in mind other than accurately to describe this very event. The whole situation figures in a very direct and convincing way, and is backed up by all the holy books. Why would you question it ?
However, if you have had the good fortune to be intellectually acquainted and familiarised with a metaphysical perspective which seeks to fulfil the capacity to know and reflect for its own sake, and in its own right, rather than for the sake of the subjective self, you can relatively quickly understand what this particular event –the arrival of a non-dual awareness – is all about, and not be dazzled by it. Of course at the moment of transformation, no-one can withstand being astonished by the sheer force of the event, or failed to be awestruck at its myriad implications, but in the days and weeks that follow, the grip of the initial euphoria begins to diminish, and everything slowly starts to return to normal: the little ego returns. Now it also happens, in some cases, that this new expanded awareness of my expanded self – the greater Self – rather than returning to normal, remains in consciousness, either as a trace element, or as a full-blown feature, leading to what is termed ‘permanent non-dual awareness’; so the lucid subject continues to experience everything as if it were a product of their own mind, rather than as if it were external to them. This may seem to some like a tremendous spiritual advancement, but in truth not very much has been achieved.
And following on from this, a further point to note from the metaphysical perspective which seeks to fulfil the capacity for knowledge on its own terms – and not on those of subjective self-aggrandisement – is that by transforming your awareness from a fragmented, dualistic, ordinary, everyday normality into a permanent non-duality, you have actually succeeded in damaging your relationship with normality, and can no longer be sure that your judgement is underpinned by the kind of sombre and thoroughly ordinary everydayness that the rest of the world is familiar with. This is not as trivial an observation as it might seem, because genuine spiritual progress requires sanity, and normality, and everydayness for its insights to be tested against. If you now exist permanently in a distorting new zone of consciousness, what exactly have you succeeded in doing ?
But more to the point, what can we conclude from all this ? Basically that tinkering with our perceptual access to experience – our primary mode of awareness – and having this perceptual alternation interfere with the quality of our normal experiencing, is not as significant an achievement as it first appears. It can only continue to be regarded as of the utmost significance if it is sustained by an intellectual environment which values such achievements, and which reinforces them by various transparently inconclusive methods, such as validating them by reference to scriptural and textual sources.
Spirituality as the quest for principial insight
But if ‘permanent non-dual awareness’ – and all sorts of other kinds of altered states of consciousness – do not qualify as supreme enlightenment, where else do we look ? The fact is, approaching the whole subject of spirituality from the perspective of altered states of consciousness is essentially mistaken, though thoroughly understandable, given the way humans think, and given the way they try to turn everything into something tangible, graspable, and attainable by force of will. But spiritual enlightenment is not a matter of achieving specialised and apparently high-octane altered states of consciousness, it is a matter of allowing the ‘knowing capacity’ at the centre of our being to fulfil itself on its own terms. Our ‘knowing capacity’ does this by shifting – slowly, over a considerable period of time – from a position whereby the human subject – the ordinary self-centred individual – is the epicentre of all knowledge, significance and meaning, towards a perspective whereby ‘knowing’ and ‘knowledge’ are no longer constrained by such self-centred concerns, and which can then operate according to an utterly unforeseen – and unimaginable – modality.
And it’s only a modality of the order of ‘knowing’ which can possibly shed light on the mysteries at the base of the human condition. Anything else is simply an additional mystery which may well modify the basic features of the human predicament, but not resolve it. Some might argue that the attainment of super-states of consciousness obviates the need for any resolution, because the basic predicament has been dispensed with, and a new and improved condition of being imposed over the old, obliterating it, but this can only be a valid outcome if an adequately evolved intellect could find its fulfilment in such improved conditions of being, and this is clearly not the case. A healthy intellect, once it has regained its footing, will cut ‘permanent non-dual awareness’ down to size.
The faculty which our ‘knowing capacity’ employs to achieve this new modality is that of ‘insight’ – our ordinary, everyday, and familiar capacity for insight – but now to be employed specifically in the service of our knowing lucidity (in all its forms and abilities), to elucidate it, and to bring it into reflective consciousness, and no longer to be so concerned with individual self-advancement, and individual self-preservation. The shift in insight is towards what Meister Eckhart termed ‘principial knowledge’: knowledge on its own terms, unrestricted by human concerns. Knowledge in this modality would give you principial insight into everything that has ever been or could ever be, as there is nothing other than it anywhere, in any state, or in any mode of existence. It is this which constitutes supreme spiritual enlightenment, not some modified state of consciousness. Spirituality is therefore a steady movement away from a limited, self-centred knowing, towards a limitless knowing-in-itself; though this is never going to be a form of limitlessness as imagined by a human self –which will always be pictured as a kind of massive collection of facts – but to a limitlessness appropriate to the unconditioned order of knowledge on its own terms. Supreme enlightenment is to be found in a realm of this sort, and not in realms which relate to human accomplishment, because these, with their obsessive human self-concern, are as remote from ‘unconstrained knowing’ as anything could be. The conception of spirituality outlined here is obviously quite other than that which you might find in orthodox religions as well as in New Age schools, both of which always seek – using mystical practices like meditation, prayer, contemplation and the rest – to turn the ordinary lowly individual into some kind of perceptually-enhanced super-experiencer, not understanding that spirituality is to be found in principial knowing, not in gross states of mind.