John K: I think that this is an ideal stage to be at. Would you be able to name any practitioners or non-practitioners who are fully-integrated? Being able to visualize people can help us become more integral ourselves.
Lonny: What you’ve asked is a very important question that takes some looking into. Chinese medicine is a science of integrity and the gold standard of integrity is enlightenment which implies nondual consciousness. In terms of Chinese medicine this is suggested by the homophones and functionally related characters, all pronounced ming meaning variously “enlightenment,” “destiny,” clarity,” “sleep,” “name,” “meditation,” and “hell.” From the perspective of the inner tradition, the body is a vehicle for the evolution of consciousness and it is consciousness that is primary. From an evolutionary and integral perspective, consciousness exists in an ever evolving hierarchy of experiential states and of stages of development. There is no end point. The path is recognized to be one of striving to close the gap between one’s realization and ones actual condition. And it is recognized that on the one hand this is endless and, on the other, this never takes time because “the path and the goal are one”. Enlightenment only exists “right here, right now” and it is only the ego that puts time in the picture.
To answer your question we really have to ask, “What Is Enlightenment”? Most of us are either quite cynical about the possibility enlightenment in this or any lifetime. And, most of us have a lot of fuzzy thinking regarding enlightenment and prefer to mystify ourselves often as a way of taking it seriously right now. Many otherwise sophisticated people entertain any number of myths and superstitions held over from premodern traditions that, at least to me, make no sense in the context of the best information available today. I hear people routinely say things like, “an enlightened person would love you even as you were blowing off their legs with a shotgun” or “a truly enlightened person would feel no pain even as you cut off their arm”.
From my perspective what you’ve asked points to a myth inherent in all the pre-modern teachings regarding the idea of a “perfected one”. I see such notions as a “perfected Buddha”, for example, as being up there alongside virgin births, walking on water, and the resurrection. They are myth because they imply an end state and the realization of the higher implications of evolution has busted that myth wide open.
In an evolutionary context it makes no sense that an individual can reach a final state. It also makes no sense in a nondual context. If we are one, then how can any single part of the whole reach an undivided state if any part of the whole is still divided? I’ll go so far as to say that the premodern notion of individual enlightenment is no longer wholly relevant and that only collective enlightenment in an inter-subjective, and trans-egoic context makes any sense in a world moving toward a global perspective.
We might understand enlightenment as the absolute position at the center of all relativity, the central perspective between all duality. In terms of CM we can think of it as that single point at the center of the Sheng cycle that isn’t “out on the wheel” and sees through every single individual and seemingly “unique” position on the wheel (I’m pointing specifically to the relationship between the perspective of the dead center and the 60 element points). Such a perspective is objective
It is not hard to have a nondual experience and see through this perspective, and it isn’t difficult to transmit to other people either. The bar is so low in terms of authentic spiritual experience, and subsequent authentic development, in our culture that a lot of people who read a few books, meditate a bit, and take a yoga class are mistaken for having “enlightenment”. Even more so if they can transmit a little shakti which is basically a parlor trick in a culture so prone to consuming experiences under the auspices of “spirituality”.
Such an experience of objectivity beyond the mind is a higher state experience and the goal would be through setting one’s will, through care, and in recognition of an obligation to make that temporary state a new stage of development. All pre-modern traditions, for lack of having discovered evolution, postulate enlightenment in terms of being an end state of development. Looking for security in an uncertain world many premodern traditions define “that which does not change” as being “real”. In the East this was emptiness and in the West it was an omniscient, al powerful god, “out there” somewhere. But the revelation of evolution has introduced us to a new “face of god” and this is unceasing, integrative, and wholesome development.
Enlightenment as an end state is a myth in the context of awakening to the infinite and absolute nature, not of emptiness, but of the creative impulse itself. In this context awakening to emptiness as self is a necessary stage of development but only often the beginning of the story and not the end. In an evolutionary context, the degree of enlightenment possessed by a given individual has to do not as much with the stage of development he or she has already reached, but the degree to which one is striving to close the infinite gap between him or her-self and whatever degree of higher possibility has been authentically experienced.
And all of this is revealed in the context of relationship with others. An individual is enlightened to the degree they transform culture to higher states of wholesomeness and integrity. Such an individual would be living a truly engaged life, not for themselves, but for the sake of the whole continually pushing him or herself to a new edge. Such an individual’s ongoing transformation and integration as evident in behavior and effect on the world would be the evidence of enlightenment. In an evolutionary context enlightenment is not the end of development but rather the beginning. Using the ongoing degree of an individual’s development as a litmus test for what enlightenment actually is may challenge us to reevaluate our assumptions regarding that discernment at a fairly deep level.
Another myth is that when a person has an experience of enlightenment, or becomes “enlightened”, the ego dies. I’ve never met a person who would say that don’t have an ego. In my experience, an enlightened person bears their ego so that it doesn’t manifest in their behavior or personality. The ego doesn’t go anywhere. Ultimately, enlightenment, development beyond ego, may be bestowed by grace on a small few but, for the rest of us, it’s a choice. And that choice is aligned not so much with the realization of emptiness per se, but rather in our alignment to the creative impulse’s constant striving toward perfection, toward bringing heaven to earth. In short it’s up to us to close the gap right now between our highest ideals and our actual condition. There isn’t any other force “out there” that’s doing it.
The pre-modern traditions do not seem to have recognized cultural ego. They just didn’t have a global centric perspective that would allow for that type of nuanced discernment which is a newly emergent aspect of self-reflective awareness. The recognition of cultural ego works two ways.
One the one hand we may consider someone to be enlightened who actually isn’t. This has to do with understanding the differences between “states” and “stages” of development. For example there are many people who’ve reached very deep states of development, and are able to transmit deep state experiences, who aren’t actually at a very high stage of development. I think we’ve seen enough the last 100 years to know that many teachers have been able to transmit profound depth of experience to students even though they weren’t at a level of ethical development that we would take for granted. There is no enlightenment without concomitant ethical development.
I don’t think any women on this list would have wanted to have been married to any of the authors of the classic texts as “enlightened” as they may have been in the context of their own cultural level of development. There is a profound depth of field in India that’s readily apparent the instant one gets off of the plane there, but the second the taxi driver heads over the highway divider 60 mph into oncoming traffic, and one gets a look at the countries infrastructure, it’s also apparent that they aren’t generally at as high a stage of cultural development as we are in the West.
One the other hand, failing to recognize our own cultural ego can lead us to erroneously conclude that an authentically enlightened individual is not enlightened due to our own biases and unquestioned assumptions. The postmodern, pluralistic, fantasy of an enlightened person looks something like a sweet old man or women who is unconditionally loving, builds self esteem, and helps us accept ourselves. Such a one is generally conceived of as a cross between our fantasy of Laozi, our grandmothers, and a fantastic psychotherapist. Since we hold all points of view as being relative we don’t really recognize natural hierarchy. All points of view are held to be equal because they are all “just points of view”, even the teachers! Often, people at a pluralistic stage of development perceive wholehearted, un-waivering, conviction in anything at all as being a sign of ego (“Hitler believed he was right!”). And, nothing could be further from the truth. I would say that an enlightened person is one who has given him or her self entirely to that which is ultimately trustworthy and that their countenance never betrays the slightest doubt in who and what they are, or what they have seen and know to be true.
As to your initial question regarding who meets such a criteria, I can only speak from my own personal experience. I have only met one such person and that is my teacher Andrew Cohen and that is why he’s my teacher. This statement should not be taken to imply there aren’t other people so developed, I just don’t know them. We can see many people throughout history who had profound minds, profound realization, fantastic talent, and profound impacts on their culture and time. But I wonder, would their level of realization hold up in today’s culture according to the best of our knowledge? It’s an interesting thing to consider. Thank you John, as ever, for your engagement.
-Lonny