Is Enlightenment Really Possible?

Many people think of enlightenment, or a perfect union with God, as something unattainable for an ‘ordinary’ person, something that only rare, ‘special’, and highly qualified people experience. This is not true.

In the Yoga Sutra 1.23, after describing the difficult process of attaining samadhi by the practice of astanga yoga, Patanjali says:
ईेस्वरप्रणिधानाद्वा ।।२३।।
Īśvara-praṇidhānād-va
One can also attain the highest state of samadhi by supplication, devotion and surrender to Ishvara.

Transcript

So,

Last week,

Was it last week?

We spoke about beyond nirvana.

And afterwards,

I was speaking with one woman who said a couple of things to me that made me feel incredibly sad.

Because I had not done a good enough job in terms of being able to dispel feelings of hopelessness.

You know,

It's a big question.

Can I become enlightened?

Is it really a possibility for me?

And I've been asked this type of thing quite a few times.

And because I'm the guy sitting on the chair here,

People go,

Well,

It's sort of different for you.

What about us?

And when I hear that kind of thing,

I feel deeply saddened.

And so I want to share something with you that I hope you will find beneficial.

And it has to do with how one is able to make genuine spiritual change and advancement in one's life.

There is generally the idea amongst most of us that somehow I need to gain qualification.

I need to become qualified.

I need to be disciplined.

I need to be good in my life,

In my actions.

I need to become qualified to be able to approach God or approach that which is truly spiritual.

So I relayed to her a wonderful experience I had in relation to my dad.

I had not yet moved back to New Zealand.

It was before I moved back.

And I came to visit him about three weeks before he died.

And he was not doing too well.

And so I was going to take him for a spin around the block in a wheelchair.

And he's a big guy like my size.

So getting him into the wheelchair was a bit of a challenge.

And we had had over the years different discussions.

And one of the things that he had told me was that he was not really afraid of death.

My mother had had a near death experience.

She left her body during a heart attack and then reentered that body.

And she told him that it was,

You've got nothing to fear,

That death is not something to fear.

So he wasn't sure exactly what she had gone through.

But he sort of accepted that.

But here on this day,

He told me that actually now that death is approaching,

He was feeling fearful.

And he turned to me and said,

You know,

I've always been interested in what you're doing.

So I asked him,

You mean like what I'm doing,

My occupation?

And he goes,

No,

What you're doing with your life.

And I'm going like,

I'm only here for like three days.

And now he's going to ask me such a,

You know,

He wants to engage in a very profound way.

And I knew that,

You know,

It was only a matter of a quite relatively short time before he died.

So as we get outside,

I told him that he needs to think about something very clearly that I will tell him.

My father was not a very religious person.

He used to go to church a little bit,

But he wasn't like a regular churchgoer.

But he tried to live a good life.

He told me that he personally prayed every morning and every evening,

Which kind of surprised me a little bit because he didn't seem like the kind of person that would do that.

But I did see in his character and in his life,

He believed that you should do no harm to anyone.

That didn't preempt him because he was a bit of a tough guy also knocking somebody on their ass if they were causing trouble for others.

But he really wouldn't do the wrong thing because it was wrong.

And he would always try to help people in a cheerful kind of way.

It wasn't kind of sucky.

You know,

It was like it was quite just cheerful and straightforward about it.

And my understanding,

Of course,

From observing his life and the way he related was that he really had this idea in his mind that if he was to go to some spiritual place,

Whether that's heaven or whatever people want to describe it as after death,

He needed to become to be qualified.

He needed to earn his right to do that.

I told him,

You know,

From our training in the Vedic perspective,

There are fundamentally two ways in which a person can attempt to approach their spiritual development or God.

One is called the ascending process and the other one is called the descending process.

In the ascending process,

It is like you feel there is a need by your austerity,

By your goodness,

By your charity,

By your kindness,

By all these things you earn this right.

And I told him in the yoga system,

This idea is also very prevalent amongst a lot of yoga practitioners where I'm talking about not the fluffy ones where the people really see this as a spiritual part.

They feel that they must gain this qualification.

So I told him it's kind of like somebody wanting to climb Mount Everest.

If you want to climb Mount Everest,

You need to train for a long time.

You need the physical capacity.

You need high altitude training.

You need the techniques to work on rock and on ice or snow.

You need all different techniques with using rope and everything.

So it's quite an effort and endeavor.

And then once you become qualified and you've got a qualified team with you,

You are going to do something.

They call it an assault on the mountain,

Which sounds a little bit on the violent side,

Doesn't it?

You're going to attack it.

So imagine if you set up base camp at the bottom of Mount Everest and you rested for the evening with the idea early morning,

You're going to launch the assault and you unzip your tent and you look out and Mount Everest has moved about 30 kilometers.

It's like,

What the hell happened here?

And I got to pack up all the gear and move it all close and set up another base camp and try and set it all up again.

And then that night while you're asleep thinking tomorrow it's it,

You open and it's moved somewhere else,

Like 25 kilometers.

Of course,

This example,

We are talking about will.

Is God or the highest truth or spiritual attainment,

Is it,

Are we dealing with something impersonal that has no will of its own and I can do to it whatever I choose according to my ability and my talents or is it something a little bit deeper?

This idea that you can earn your right to enlightenment or you can earn your right to enter heaven or whatever people want to speak about is a wrong idea because that which is ultimately the highest spiritual existence is not unconscious and it is not impersonal.

It is not without will.

So okay,

What's the options available then?

So I told him that,

You know,

A person who has spent their entire life,

It was a wasted life,

You are maybe a drunkard or an alcoholic,

An abuser of others,

Exerted violence,

You are fevery,

You know,

You were just like a social misfit and a troublemaker.

At the last moments of your life,

You may be even lying in a gutter,

Taking your last breaths and have a dawning realization that my life has been an utter waste and I have no good qualities or no good qualification.

In that condition,

Feeling utterly unworthy,

Utterly unworthy,

I can turn to this higher existence or God and I can say,

I am unworthy,

I am undeserving of anything,

Yet I have no other shelter.

At this moment when I am about to face death,

I have no other shelter and I approach you and ask,

Please give me that shelter,

Unworthy as I am.

For such a person that would have such an experience,

They are capable of instant enlightenment,

The most profound spiritual experience and it's not about what they are doing or where they're going,

It's about becoming a recipient of that which is divine,

A recipient of the great mercy,

The spiritual mercy of the Lord.

You will see that there is a common characteristic amongst all.

I'm not talking about people that engage in what I will say and I don't mean to say it in a way that's offensive but people that superficially engage in religion or some spiritual path.

I'm not talking about these,

I'm talking about people that have gained success on their spiritual journey.

They all have a common characteristic.

That common characteristic is a profound humility where they all feel that I am unworthy,

I've got nothing good going for me,

I am a reject and a basket case,

I am in need of help.

This path is referred to in some religious traditions as a path of revelation or a path of divine mercy,

A path of beatitude.

This principle is deeply embraced in the yoga system where any person that is actually made great and I hate even you to use the word spiritual advancement because it's like becoming better than others somehow or other.

No,

You never become better than others but in a state of profound humility and lowliness of heart,

One can become graced with divine mercy and spiritual experience and realization.

It is because we have become open to it.

We have no more armor protecting us,

We have no more guard up,

We don't have to prove anything to anyone,

I am simply asking for this divine grace,

For this mercy.

And you know what?

This is available to everyone.

It is available to all of us and by embracing this,

By striving to cultivate this lowliness of heart,

This openness,

This humility,

Your life will change like in amazing ways.

Your relationships and your connections with others will become profoundly wonderful.

If your life,

Your everyday life can become a genuine spiritual experience because you will begin to see this world yourself and others differently than you were seeing them previously.

So this is actually the key.

This is the key.

Does it sound so difficult that it's not doable?

No,

It requires just that commitment to become so vulnerable to open your heart and to declare your unworthiness.

And you will be embraced in the most amazing way.

You will experience how your spiritual worth,

Your spiritual worth is not dependent upon your body and your material position or things that you have acquired or your so-called learning in this world,

Anything.

It's got nothing to do with that.

If you're going to place an idea of your worth on the body that you have or the things associated with that,

I'm sorry,

Your life is going to be miserable.

There will be times when things are going what you think is well for you and oh,

Yeah,

Feeling really good about this.

But that doesn't last.

We all crash and burn.

Time makes fools of us all.

There is nothing worse than growing old,

Becoming an invalid,

Being alone.

This is where it all goes if you live long enough.

But there is no need for fearfulness.

There is no need for anxiousness.

Don't be concerned about feeling that you have to become qualified,

That you have to become spiritually developed.

Choose this path of humility,

The path of surrender,

It is called.

In the Yoga Sutra,

Patanjali,

He speaks in the most amazing way about the process of spiritual realization.

And he talks about how difficult it is to do all these things,

To come to an elevated condition to experience what's called samadhi.

Then he just throws out this tidbit,

Which everybody ignores.

He says that this is also attainable through what's called Ishvara Pramida,

Like utter self-surrender to this higher power,

To Ishvara.

One can attain the highest spiritual state.

Okay,

That's the good news for the evening.

Lighten up.

No one is disqualified.

What we are talking about is your eternal spiritual nature,

The nature of the soul itself.

It's already there.

You have a spiritual nature.

You might have been covered up with all kinds of crap and conditioning and ideas and everything,

But it's there.

You are an eternal,

Glorious,

Lovable,

Amazing spiritual being.

You must simply put aside all this stuff.

Accept the fact that I'm very,

Very small,

Almost insignificant.

I have no qualification.

It's kind of like,

Sounds like a 12-step program.

Anybody here been to AA?

You know,

This is one,

They've got 12 steps.

And one of the things they tell you is that you must recognize that in dealing with addiction that you are powerless and you must come to depend on a higher power as you understand it.

That's a profound spiritual principle.

And it is always being taught in all spiritual traditions as a core thing.

But everybody has forgotten this.

This has become lost and that is unfortunate.

So yes,

There is hope for the hopeless.

I'm a living example.

I'm a living example of hope for the hopeless.

Reviews

Interesting!