Balsekar on Enlightenment
While the nature of sleep, trance, fainting and death may differ somewhat,
in each case the surrender of consciousness and individual identity is
essentially the same and accompanied by a loss of awareness while
enlightenment is the surrender of consciousness and individual identity in a state of total Awareness.
Only when it is time in the cosmic scheme of evolution for a particular
psychosomatic apparatus to get enlightened can enlightenment happen. And if that time has come, nothing in this world can prevent it from happening.
Nor can anything in this world make enlightenment happen if it is not time.
Enlightenment is total emptiness of mind.
There is nothing
you can do to get it.
Any effort you make
can only be
an obstruction to it.
Real bliss is the absence of the wanting of bliss. The enlightenment state
is not wanting either bliss or anything else.
Enlightenment is merely an understanding in which there is no comprehender. It is a surrender in which there is no one to surrender anything.
It is vital to realize that UNDERSTANDING IS ALL, that there is no question of altering or amending WHAT IS, and that therefore the very question of any method or technique for "attaining" enlightenment is totally irrelevant.
Desire refers not only to desiring some object,
but even to the desire for enlightenment.
The need to know, to have the knowledge of one's true nature,
even that is a desire, and that desire
is by the "me."
Self-enquiry is the direct path to Self-realization or enlightenment. The only way to make the mind cease its outward activities
is to turn it inward.
By steady and continuous investigation into the nature of the mind, the mind itself gets transformed into That to which it owes its own existence.
The crux of man's dilemma lies in the concept of time. While chasing his mythical happiness of the future, man has no time to enjoy the present
moment. And actually there is no such thing as the present because by the time one thinks of it, it has already become the past. Therefore, what is vital is not thinking about the present but actually being the present moment -- and that is nothing other than enlightenment.
Compiled by Jan Sultan
