Chapter 8 Chapter 7 Enlightenment: A Beginning Without an End

Meditation is access to the inner world.There is no end to this journey.Endless means that the door is opened and remains open until the door itself becomes the universe.Meditation blooms like a flower and keeps on blooming until the flower itself becomes the universe.This journey has no end, it has a beginning, but it will never end.There are no degrees of enlightenment.Once enlightened is enlightened.It's like jumping into the ocean.You jump, you become one with it, as a drop of water falling into the sea becomes one with it.But that doesn't mean you know the whole ocean. That moment is total: the moment of abandonment of the ego, the moment of annihilation of the ego, the moment of egolessness is total; it is total.As far as you are concerned, it is perfect.But for the ocean, for the divinity, it is only a beginning and there will be no end.

Remember this: ignorance has no beginning, but it has an end.You cannot know at what point your ignorance begins, you always find it there, you are always stuck in the mire of ignorance.You never know the beginning, there is no beginning. Ignorance has no beginning and no end.Enlightenment has a beginning and no end.And the two become one, the two are one.Enlightenment begins and ignorance ends at the same point.It is the same point, a dangerous point with two faces, one towards the beginningless ignorance and the other towards the beginningless enlightenment. So you have achieved enlightenment, but you have never achieved it.You have come to it, you have fallen into it, you have become one with it, but still there is a vast unknown.That is the beauty of enlightenment, that is the mystery of enlightenment.

If enlightenment knows everything, there will be no mystery; if everything is known, the whole thing will be ugly, then there will be no mystery, and everything will be dead.So enlightenment is not a "knowing" in this sense, it is not a suicidal "knowing", it is an entrance into a greater mystery. "Knowing" means that you have known that there is a mystery, that you have become aware of the mystery.It doesn't mean that you have solved the mystery, it doesn't mean that there is a mathematical formula and everything is known now.Rather, enlightened knowing means that you have come to the point where that mystery becomes the ultimate purpose.You have known that this is the ultimate mystery, you have known that it is a mystery, and now it has become so mysterious that you do not expect to solve it.Now, you no longer have any hope.

However, it is not despair, it is not disappointment, it is just a realization of the mysterious nature.The mystery is so inexplicable; the mystery is such that the effort to solve it is absurd; the mystery is such that the intellectual attempt to solve it is pointless.You have reached the end of your thinking.Now, there is no thinking at all, knowing begins. But this is something different from scientific "knowing". The word "science" means to know, but this knowing makes the mystery no longer a mystery.Religious knowing is just the opposite. Instead of unraveling the mysteries of real existence, it remystifies everything you knew before, even the things you were sure and absolutely sure of before.Now even that door is gone.In a sense, everything becomes deadlocked—no end, no solution.

Knowing must be known in the sense that it is participating in the mystery unique to being; it is saying "yes" to the mystery of life.Reason, which is the theory of reason, does not exist now, and you are confronted with it.It is an existential encounter, not through the mind, but through you, the whole you.Now, you can feel it everywhere: in your body, in your eyes, in your hands, in your heart.The whole personality comes into contact with the whole mystery. This is just the beginning.There is never an end, because ending means losing the mystery.This is the beginning of enlightenment.Enlightenment has no end, but it is the beginning.You can imagine the end of ignorance; but this enlightened state of mind has no end; now you have plunged into a bottomless abyss.

You can imagine it from many, many points of view.If one reaches this state of mind through kundalini, then it will be a flowering without end.The 1000 petals in Sahasrah doesn't really mean 1000, "1000" just means the maximum number, which means that the kundalini's blooming petals are infinite and they will go on and on and on and on.So, you will know the first flowering, but not the last, because it is endless.One can reach this point through kundalini, or through other paths.Kundalini is not essential. One who is enlightened by other means also arrives at the same point, but the names will be different, the symbols will be different.Your imagination of it will also be different, because what is happening cannot be described, and what is described is not exactly what is happening.The description is only a metaphor, and the description is metaphorical.You can say that enlightenment blooms like a flower, but there are no flowers there at all.But it feels like you're a flower that's just beginning to bloom, that's how it feels to bloom.But with another person, he would have another imagination.He may say, "It is like the opening of a door, a door to the infinite, a door that is always open." So, one can use anything.

Tantra uses the symbol of "sex".They can be used like this!They say, "It's a meeting, a never-ending fusion." When Tantra says, "It's like sex," that means: an individual person meets the infinite, but that's endless ,Everlasting.You can imagine it this way, but any concept must be only a metaphor.It's symbolic, it has to be.But when I say symbolic, I don't mean that a symbol is meaningless.A symbol has meaning in terms of your individuality because that's how you imagine it.You can't imagine it any other way.A person who has never loved flowers, a person who has never known that flowers bloom, a person who walks by flowers but still does not know what flowers are, a person who has never had a relationship with the world of flowers all his life, he cannot feel that it is like a flower bloom the same.But if you feel it blooming like a flower, it means many things, it means that it is natural to you, that it fits your personality somewhat.

How does it feel after Sahasla is opened? After Sahasla is opened, there should be no feeling, only inner tranquility and emptiness.Feelings will be strong at first.When you first feel it, it can be very intense, but the more you get to know it, the less intense it becomes.The more you become one with it, the more it loses its intensity.Then a moment will come, it must come, and then you will not feel it at all. Feelings are always something new.You only have feelings for unfamiliar things, but not for things that are not unfamiliar.That strangeness will be felt.If you become one with it, you are already familiar with it, then you don't feel it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.It still exists, even more so than in the past.It will become more and more intense, but your feeling of it will become weaker and weaker, and the moment of no feeling will come, and the feeling of "foreign body" will also disappear, so the feeling will disappear.

When the blooming of the Sahasrah first occurs, it is out of your possession.It is unknown to you, you are not familiar with it.It is something penetrating you, or you are luring into it.There is a gap between you and it, but gradually the gap disappears and you become one with it.Then, instead of seeing it as something that happens to you, you yourself become that happening.It will expand and you will become one with it. Then, you won't feel it.You only notice it, but you don't feel it any more than you feel your breath.You only feel your breath when something new or wrong happens to you; otherwise you don't feel it.You don't even feel it physically, unless the disease creeps in, unless you are sick.If you are perfectly healthy, you don't feel it, you just have it.Actually, your body is more alive when you are healthy, but you don't feel it.You don't need to feel it, you are one with it.What happens to religious visions and other manifestations of deep meditation when Sahasrah opens?

All this will disappear.All images - vision and everything will disappear, because these things only appeared at the beginning.They are good signs, but fade away. Before the opening of the sahasrah, you will see many visions, which are not unreal, the visions are real; but with the opening of the sahasrah, there will be no more visions.The vision is no longer there, because this "flowering experience" is the pinnacle of what the mind can experience, it is the last experience of the mind, beyond which there is no mind. Everything that happened before happened in the mind, but once you get out of the mind, then there is nothing.When the mind ceases, then there is neither Mudras, the outer manifestation of the spiritual transformation, nor visions; neither flowers nor snakes.There is nothing at all, because beyond the mind there is no metaphor.Beyond the mind, real being is so pure that there is nothing else; beyond the mind, real being is so complete that it cannot be divided into the experiencer and the experienced.

①Mudras (Mudras): A symbolic gesture commonly seen in various Indian religious ceremonies, statues, Buddha statues, chanting dojos or dances. ——Editor's note In the mind everything is divided into two.You experience something, you can call it whatever you want, the name does not matter, but there is a division between the experiencer and the experienced, the knower and the known.The duality still exists. But these visions are good omens, because they all come at the end stage, they all come when the mind is dying, when the mind is dying.Specific mudras and visions are symbolic only.By symbolic, I mean that they signify that the mind is near death.When the mind dies, nothing remains.Or, everything remains, but the separation between the experiencer and the experienced will not exist. Mudras, visions, especially visions, are experiences that guide a certain stage.It's as if you say "I'm dreaming" and we take it for granted that you are sleeping, because dreaming means sleeping.And if you say "I'm daydreaming," that means you also fall into a state like sleep, because dreaming is only possible when the mind, the conscious mind, is asleep.So dreams indicate sleep; likewise mudras and visions indicate a particular state. You may see images of certain people, you recognize who they are, and these images are different from person to person.The image of Shiva cannot appear in the Christian mind, it cannot, it cannot appear, but Jesus will appear.That will be the last image in the Christian mind, and it is very precious. The last video I saw was the image of the central figure of the religion.This central figure will be the final vision.For a Christian—and by Christian I mean one who has imbibed Christian language, Christian images, whose Christian faith has permeated his marrow and blood since childhood—the image of Jesus crucified will be the last video.The knower, the experiencer is still there, but in the end, there is only the savior.It has been experienced and you cannot deny it.In the last moment of the mind, the last moment of the dying mind, at the end, Jesus is there. But to the Jain, Jesus will not appear; to the Buddhist, Jesus will not appear.For Buddhists, the image of Buddha appears.As soon as the sahasra is opened, with the opening of the sahasra, the Buddha will be there.That's why Buddha is always seen sitting on a flower.There has never been a flower under the Buddha's real body, nor under the Buddha's feet, but a flower is placed under the statue of the Buddha, because the statue is not a copy of Shakyamuni Buddha, it is the last vision seen in the mind .When the mind fell into eternity, the Buddha I saw was sitting on the flower like this. ① Shiva (shiva): God of destruction, one of the two main gods of Hinduism. —— Annotation That's why Vishnu is always placed on the flower, which is the symbol of Sahasra, and Vishnu is the last image that the Hindus see in their minds.Buddha, Vishnu and Jesus are archetypes or what Jung called archetypes. ①Vishnu (Visnu): The god of protection, one of the three main gods of Hinduism. —— Annotation The mind cannot imagine anything in the abstract, so the mind's last effort to understand what really exists will be by means of the symbols that are most important to it.This peak experience of the mind is the last experience of the mind.The peak is always the end, and the peak means the beginning of the end.The peak is death, so the opening of Sahasrah is the peak experience of the mind, the highest possible experience of the mind, and the last possible experience.The final image - the most central image, the deepest image, the archetype will emerge.It will be real.When I say "visual", many people will deny that it is real.They say it can't be real because the word vision means hallucination, but it's more real than real existence.Even if the whole world didn't recognize it, you wouldn't agree with them.You say, "To me it is more real than the whole world. A stone is not as real as the image I see. It is real, it is absolutely real." But this reality is also subjective, this reality Colored by your mind.The experience is real, but the metaphor is given to you, Christians give one metaphor, Buddhists another metaphor, Hindus another. Does transcendence come with the opening of Sahara? No, detachment is beyond opening.However, enlightenment has two meanings.One, the dying mind -- the dying mind, the dying mind, the ultimate, the doomsday mind -- imagines enlightenment.But an obstacle has arisen, and now the mind will not be able to go beyond it.The mind knows that this is the end, and with this end the mind also knows that suffering will also end.The mind also knows that the division will also end, the old conflict will end.The mind takes the end of all this and thinks it is enlightenment, but it is still the mind imagining.So this is enlightenment imagined by the mind. When the mind disappears, then real enlightenment comes.Now you are detached, but you cannot talk about it, you cannot say anything.That's why Laozi said "What can be said cannot be true; everything that can be said cannot be true, and the truth cannot be said".Only this can be said, and only this is true. And this is the final statement of the mind.This last statement makes sense, and has a lot of meaning, but it's not detached.The meaning is still a limitation of the mind, it is still mental, it is conceived through the mind. It is like a flame, a flame in a dying lamp.The darkness is coming, the darkness is coming, it is getting closer and closer, the flame is going to disappear, the flame has reached the end of its existence, it says "now the darkness has come" and then it does not exist.Now the darkness is full and complete.But this last statement of the dying flame is still known to the flame: the darkness is not complete, because the flame is still there and the light is still there.Darkness is imagined by light. Light cannot actually imagine darkness, light can only imagine its own limitations, and beyond this is darkness.The darkness is approaching, and the light is about to die.It can make the final statement: "I'm dying," and then comes darkness.The darkness is always coming, and the light is extinguished when it makes its final statement, and then the darkness is complete.So, the statement is true, but it's not the truth.There is a difference between true and truth.Truth is not a statement.The flames go out and it's dark, that's the truth.At this time, there is no statement, only darkness.The statement is true, it is not untrue.It is real: darkness comes, looms, surrounds.However, the statement is still issued by the light.The statements made by the light about the dark can only be true at best, but not the truth. When the mind is not there, the truth is known.Truth exists when mind is absent.When the mind is there, you can become more real, but not the truth.You can become less false, but not truth.The last statement the mind can make will be the least false, that is all that can be said. So, there is a lot of difference between the enlightenment imagined by the mind and the real enlightenment, although the difference is not huge.There is not a single moment before the dying flame dies.At the same time as the flame died, darkness came, and there was only a moment between the two situations, but the difference between the two was great. The dying mind sees visions at last, seeing visions of things to come.But these visions are seen through metaphors, pictures, archetypes.The mind cannot imagine anything else, because the mind is trained with symbols and nothing else.Symbols are religious, artistic, aesthetic, mathematical and scientific, and they are all symbols.That's how the mind is trained. A Christian will see Jesus, but a dying mathematician who has never been brought up by religion may see nothing but a mathematical formula in his mind at the last moment, it may be a zero, it may be a A symbol for infinity, but it is by no means Jesus or Buddha.A man like Picasso might see an abstract flow of color on his deathbed.That would be his god, and he couldn't imagine another god. So, the cessation of the mind is the cessation of the symbol.At the last moment, the mind uses the most meaningful symbol it knows.Then there are no symbols anymore, because the mind is not there either. Because of this, neither the Buddha nor the Mahavira talk about symbols.They say that it is useless to talk about symbols, because symbols are things below enlightenment.Buddha didn't want to talk about symbols, so he said there are 11 questions that should not be asked of him.He announced that no one should be allowed to ask these eleven questions; they were not allowed to ask them because they could not be answered truthfully.Metaphors will have to be used. Buddha used to say, "I don't want to use any metaphors. But if you ask and I don't answer, you will feel bad. It's ungentlemanly, not courteous. So, please don't ask these questions. If I answer you, it's It's polite, but it's not true. So please don't put me in a dilemma. As far as truth is concerned, I cannot use symbols. I use symbols only when they approximate untruth or approximate truth." So there will be people who are reluctant to use any metaphors, any images.They deny everything because enlightenment imagined by the mind is not enlightenment itself: they are two things.The ideas of the mind disappear with the disappearance of the mind and then there is enlightenment. But it is not of the mind. So, the enlightened man is without a mind, he is a mindless being; he lives, but has no concept; he acts, but does not think about it; he loves, but has no concept of love; he breathes, but Do not do any meditation.To live thus, from moment to moment, and at the same time be one with the whole, with no mind in between.The mind is dividing, but now there will be no division.