The Truth About Enlightenment
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- Опубліковано 12 січ 2021
- Many people seek enlightenment to ease their suffering and gain a greater understanding of reality. But few stop to think what enlightenment truly is. What does science say about it? And is it worth pursuing at all? In this Critical Thinkers episode you'll see enlightenment explained and the answers to these questions.
For more critical thinking in spirituality videos click on this playlist right here: • Enlightenment Is Not W...
For years I used to have a lack of critical thinking myself. I used to believe many things which had little evidence or truth behind them. These beliefs led me to decisions which did not turn out to my favor. Eventually I discovered critical thinking and changed my life for the better. Now I choose what I believe in with much more care. Make better, more informed decisions and enjoy the results. Yet it doesn’t take much time to see that many people still fail to separate true information from false. That’s why I created the Practical Critical Thinkers channel.
If you are looking for a critical thinking channel - look no more and let's create a culture of practical thinking together!
In this channel you will learn what is critical thinking, various critical thinking skills, find critical thinking exercises, learn how to use critical thinking in a debate, learn about the best critical thinking books out there, find critical thinking tutorials what results a lack of critical thinking has and much more.
#enlightenment #spirituality #meditation
From a Buddhist perspective, that's not what awakening is about.
Think about this simple analogy, and see if it's really the same as your understanding of "enlightenment":
Think back to your favorite toy when you were little. You were very attached to it. If it were taken away from you, you'd feel upset.
Now you've grown up, would you still feel so upset about losing that toy?
You wouldn't, because now, through life experience, you have an insight about this toy:
Yes it did bring you joy, but 1) it can't be with you all the time, 2) it can be a source of distress as well as joy, and 3) it's not essential to you.
With this insight, you can free yourself from the hold that the toy had over you.
Through Buddhist practice, one can realize that this is applicable to everything in the world (without having to go through countless lifetimes of experience).
And more importantly, one *does not* have to lead a particular lifestyle, with "hours of meditation" everyday, to continue to benefit from this kind of insight. (I mean, did you have to lead a particular lifestyle to remain detached from the toy? When you mature, you mature.)
The meditation is part of the means, but it's not the goal.
Buddhism philosophy is the best. It truly free you from suffering and it is not in conflict with science, which means it doesn't get in the way of advancement of humanity.
Countless hours of meditation? No. But practicing meditation regularly, it does wonders.
Absolutely beautiful! I’ve been trying to say this to many people, who are trying to solve all their problems using meditation. It’s just something within your brain misfiring. It may bring peace and even benefit you. But to attribute too much meaning and value to it is not the way to go. I feel anything affecting OAA is felt ‘too real’, and people seem to be defensive about it’s realness, Ayowaska, DMT and meditation advocates felt the same in that matter.
You fell into the materialist belief-trap, materialism the idea that our reality is reducible to particles, that matter is the fundamental substrate of reality, and that our conscious experience is produced by the brain. This worldview has been falsified and is on its way out. For more information, look into the work of people such as Bernardo Kastrup, Donald Hoffman and Thomas Warren Campbell.
My main teacher has been the books and lectures by Alan Watts. Your video evokes the same feeling of recognition in me, as you describe having had after gaining the insight and re-reading spiritual texts. It feels good to hear someone else explain this insight back to me. I sometimes try to "help" someone by pointing to this ego-less state of mind, but I'm discovering that people will only respond to this insight when they are truly ready to hear it. Forcing someone to consider non-duality is like a missionary trying to convert non-believers. Better to stay patient and compassionate.
One interesting aspect of this is that in Buddhist meditation practice this state is considered a kind of first step among many. Many people stop at it, such as those who keep meditating all their lives and such, but there are those who want to move beyond it precisely because they recognize, as you did, that this is not a true awakening. So, it forms a kind of trap, and the steps beyond this also have each their trap.
For example, I remember reading in a book by Thich Nhat Hahn that in one of the steps beyond this one the person begins to see and hear supernatural entities, interpreting them as deities, so many end up trapped there, becoming worshipers of those imagined gods. A good meditation master, however, when their student approaches them telling about it, correct them, informing this is a fantasy, and to refocus their meditation so and so to stop it.
Also, according traditional Buddhist teaching, the state of Enlightenment isn't an experience, but an actual form of knowledge. "All is one" and such sound nice, but they aren't actual knowledge, they're emotional impressions. Therefore, unless the person arrived at actual understandings capable of being objectively discussed, they haven't actually achieved Enlightenment, only an impression of it.
I myself have had my own experiences, but I had the good luck of knowing these details before having them. Nowadays I think of them as capabilities the brain has that should be scientifically explored, as it seems to me they'd provide additional useful capabilities when pointed towards useful objectives. And I hope psychology, psychiatry and neurology will eventually move in that direction, fully understanding them, their mechanics, how to activate them, what they can and cannot do, and which use use cases each one would be best suited for. :-)
I absolutely agree. The state of unity and bliss is just the first experience and not the enlightment. This is known in multiple spiritual traditions. And the fact that this corresponds to something in the brain is natural.
Damn. That feeling that nothing exists except for here and now, the task at hand, the right before me. That absolute focus on the mission when "i" does not exist. When im drawing, when im admiring the scenery, listening to rain, fighting.
All that is is the step, one leg after the other.
All that exists is the sound its one long, infinite all encompasing sound, its the onlu thing that exists.
All that exists is that line, it must be perfect, it must reach that image.
All that exists is my opponent, this fight, attack, intercept, gain the innitiative.
That feeling when *I* dont exist is ironically the best feeling i've experienced.
I think you'd enjoy "The Rise of Superman" book. Your experience sounds like what the writer describes a lot as "the flow" state
@@Rokasleo might check it out. Love your content
@@Rokasleo althou. Will it give me fullfillment or will reading it only make me less fullfilled
whoever teaches yoga telling you, you are NOTHING is a conartist, of course you are something, your time, money and energy put into their new age agenda is everything to do them. Healthy mindfulness acknowledges that you are both nothing AND something at the same time.
We are human, and therefore came here to have the human experience. It is ok to feel all the highs and lows. As a matter of fact, we grow during the roughest times. Avoidance of the ‘bad’ times would possibly rob yourself of the evolution to come.
You had an awakening then eventually your mind took control again.
This is very common and it's also the reason why very few actually go all the way.
Out of the 1% of the population who have a spiritual awakening it's another 1% of those who actually get 'enlightened' as very few are willing to give 'themselves' up.
I think this sums up the video pretty good
This was amazing. I wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Really enjoyed your video! I loved learning about the OAA. In my practice, I came to a similar conclusion about spiritual pursuits. Spirituality is rife with superstition and belief and interpretations of one's own and other people's experiences. The phenomena that is experienced while in different brainwave rhythms, heart rhythms, even gut rhythms are interpreted by the phenomenon of "the personality" or "I" as spiritually meaningful. This phenomenon of I is defined by a boundary that is me / not me, and this boundary can come and go. Thanks for sharing the OAA as a possible interpretation to explain how this might happen. Anyway, better for me to just have my experience and remember that it is a mystery (my interpretation) and that "I can get used to that." Pursuing non-ordinary experiences is good and can lead to a lot of learning. And, it can also be a place to get stuck grasping for more. Might as well be a human being and have the courage to pursue goals, make something in the world, care for others, care for the body, train to have the qualities of flexibility, mobility, and unity such that my experience is full and unconstricted (and even empty and constricted when that is what happens to be happening).
Great video. I think I have had a similar experience to you. Once I saw that duality is a construct and that really everything is one and everything is valid I felt total content. But I have my own business as a cabinet maker and I have to portray my idea of right and wrong every day. When designing and making, I have to constantly aim at perfection (even though it doesn't exist). So my new state made me feel that my work was pointless and can't be good or bad so why make anything at all. I didn't feel this in an apathetic way, I was happy but I was just puzzled as to what to do. I have a family to support and I didn't want to neglect my business or there would be no business; I didn't have long to ponder this. I came to the conclusion maybe like you that I can use both states of mind, so my work becomes a bit like a game that I choose to ingage in but when I start to get too lost in the game and take it too seriously I do some yoga or meditate just to remind me not take it all too seriously and enjoy life as it is. Strangely I find my work has improved and my business is running better in this slightly less serious state than when I was more ambitious and goal oriented. I think you are on to something that different states of mind are valid and being aware of them can be nothing but useful! Then you can use these states for what is required at the time. It's hard to portray what we have experienced with words especially in a comment section.
Great story and example. I've been there too where I was so into my meditative state that working didn't make sense to me anymore. But then I thought about my partner and people around me. Is it fair for me to be in a state of bliss and let them take care of everything? We still live in a society, it's important to contribute.
I hear stories of people discovering bliss and leaving their families and I always think - what about the family? Isn't it actually selfish to just leave them?
@@Rokasleo One good way to approach it is via Taoism. In it, Enlightenment happens _through_ whatever you do for a living, not apart from it. Other Eastern philosophies also provide this as an alternative to the "going alone" style, and even Buddhism offers it, although this isn't well known in the West:
"The Blessed One said, 'Now what is the level of a person of no integrity? A person of no integrity is ungrateful & unthankful. This ingratitude, this lack of thankfulness, is advocated by rude people. It is entirely on the level of people of no integrity. A person of integrity is grateful & thankful. This gratitude, this thankfulness, is advocated by civil people. It is entirely on the level of people of integrity.'
'I tell you, monks, there are two people who are not easy to repay. Which two? Your mother & father. Even if you were to carry your mother on one shoulder & your father on the other shoulder for 100 years, and were to look after them by anointing, massaging, bathing, & rubbing their limbs, and they were to defecate & urinate right there [on your shoulders], you would not in that way pay or repay your parents. If you were to establish your mother & father in absolute sovereignty over this great earth, abounding in the seven treasures, you would not in that way pay or repay your parents. Why is that? Mother & father do much for their children. They care for them, they nourish them, they introduce them to this world. But anyone who rouses his unbelieving mother & father, settles & establishes them in conviction; rouses his unvirtuous mother & father, settles & establishes them in virtue; rouses his stingy mother & father, settles & establishes them in generosity; rouses his foolish mother & father, settles & establishes them in discernment: To this extent one pays & repays one's mother & father.'"
-- Kataññu Suttas: Gratitude (Anguttara Nikaya 2.31-32)
@@Rokasleo Mindful living is not escaping...it is being present and doing the most you can in the moment with your potential to influence reality by taking part in it.
My way was the right way for me...
That's what all of us should be saying.
I'm sure as hell will not recommend you meditate naked online till you become one with the world and have a 5 day O face....
But it worked for me lol.
What you describe is the experience of a mind that became quiet for the first time and you stayed in this state and didn't continue. This is a known pitfall in Yoga, Sufism, Hassidism and other spiritual traditions. Another pitfall is opposite to not going deeper: staying infinitely in the blissful state. In some spiritual traditions, such as Judaism and Islam, living a non-monastic life is mandatory since it turns a passive experience into proactive caring for others. For this, one does not need deeper experiences but it is a feature of the mind to strive to understand the world, itself and what is beyond. We usually use the analytical side of mind to understand the world. Meditation gives experience. This experience corresponds to chemical reactions in the neurons. But when you go deeper that what you described, you won't be able to describe everything by the work of neurons. I am sure you will get back to this because once you tasted this ...
I had this exact experience first after the meditation, later after the use of substances. The deep sense of happiness never left after the realization, however, I would eventually fall back into being egocentric and would be swayed by emotions again. Currently I meditated and entered the state when my brain hardly functions the way it did before and I feel so light. Not sure how long it is going to last, but just wanted to say - being not Enlightened is equally beautiful, since you are capable to have feelings and that is what is the biggest strength of human beings. I have decided to not push or promote "realization", since I am not 100proc sure it is worth it. To believe that you are getting somewhere in life makes you feel so alive. Why would one want to lose it forever? It is probably possible to enter the constant "realization" state, but what if there is no way out?
Rokas, do you think this understanding of enlightenment from a more scientific perspective dimished the experience you had? Or has it somehow made you feel less enthusiastic about pursuing spiritual growth? Thank you for the great video, by the way!
This is a very important video. You did a good job shedding some rational light on the concept of enlightenment.
Hi
I've never been immersed in spiritual topics but have practiced meditation for the sheer peace of mind.
I didn't expect it to be the cause of this condition.
Very fascinating topic
Can you send a link to the scientific article ?
I would love to read more about it
When you mentioned OAA i immediately thought about the netflix series "OA"... now it makes even more sense.
great video! I'm a big fan and recently also started my martial arts journey with adding bjj and kickboxing to my judo, and i love to see how you've grown, making consistent video's on this channel even tho your other one is way biger, take care :)
Thanks Tristan! How was your experience adding bjj and kickboxing to your judo?
@@Rokasleo it was really new and completely different, but i love learning it. Sadly i havent been able to do any sparring because of covid, but now i'm really working on my footwork and general technique, so i'm ready when i can spar
Awesome Rokas! Thank you! So what do you think now is the benefits of meditation? I think is to get the mind "familiar" to the state of not reacting without thinking. (meditate in tibet means familiarize if Im not mistaken)
I think your description is spot on! I'd also add that meditation is good for slowing down our involvement in continuous thinking and becoming more aware of our thoughts.
not reacting to bullshit and can help with critical thinking too - since you don't fall for bs that easily if you meditate often you begin to see things as they are
Thank you for taking the time to share and explain this.
Very happy you found it useful
Excellent video.
wow, one of your best videos. keep it up
Thanks! Very glad to hear it!
Keep up the great work! Greetings from Germany.
Thank you! I really want to make this channel into a great one, so I'll do my best!
Thank you.
Glad to know you found the video valuable!
Yes, very valuable! Thank you.
“Temporary states become enduring states” through practice. And while I enjoyed the research on the monks, I’d challenge you to apply your critical thinking towards scientific reductionism. A footprint is merely an artifact of the living thing that left it there, not its cause.
Indeed. Science will never explain everything. I didn't mean to present it as an all true answer :)
@@Rokasleo whoever says they practice Hatha yoga but mocks or neglects left brain faculties & cognitive functions and science...isn't a true yogi or spiritual teacher...since yoga is about balancing right and left brain hemispheres
Thanks.
Excellent.
That's the problem with the term "awakening" and "enlightenment ". Each school interprets it differently. If you meant "the feeling of being one with everything" this can be easily induced through drugs and other methods. Spiritual development is of course a very different thing and is not limited to an "experience". However your contribution to the conversation is necessary since many practitioners begin "experience chasing " unfortunately
Good comment 👊
Hi Rokas, you discribed short awakening experience. Thats only experience of observer. When observer exists still exists what to seek - bliss. When observer disapear only observation exists. Thats is awakening. And you can do everything in meditate state of mind, you do not need sat in meditation for a days. You can do all that you did before, but now without fears. Because there is no more who fears. And that is only awakening, not enlightenment.
Beautiful
i have the same conclusions as yours, but we get to those conclusions by different paths, i think that what you have experienced is just a brief moment of enlightment (this phenomenon has his own name in buddhism) that is not the state of buddhahood or """real""" enlightment, by that i don't want to discredit what you said about his pshisical explanation, but, in my opinion, also if it has a scientifical explanation it doesn't mean that it is just a mystofication, it is like knowing that stars are big balls of gasses and by knowing it we start to think at them not as stars but just as big balls of gasses, wich is correct by not entirely, becaouse they are also stars (sorry for my bad english, hope i made my point clear, and at the and of the story my position towards "enlightment" is the same as yours, the words you chose from min 7:16)
i forgot to thank you for the beautyfull point of view, that lead to the occasion to think and explore something that i gave too much for granted as a thing
Thank you :)
Hi Rokas do you know about the third eye?
i know that the 3rd eye can be forced open.... I also know that some people claim to be yogis cannot distinguish their 3rd eye from the base/root chakra
The brown eye?
Did you get any insights during your blissful period?
It's all just different ways of telling the same story
Suffering brings sympathy or madness
Introspection brings clarity of self
Therapy WORKS
Very interesting!!
I got sucked into new age gurus and spiritually on UA-cam, and it made me feel terrible after, quite scared and disconnected from reality! This is great I think we just need to live our lives!
Check out Christina Lopes would love if you did a video on her 🙏🏼
Exactly
Is this all real? Or is it just happening inside my head?
Of course it’s happening inside your head, Rokas. Why should that mean that it’s not real?
-quote from Harry Potter, if you didn’t recognize it. :)
Nice quote! I'm still planning to watch Harry Potter with my gf. I've seen only a couple parts at the moment. It's my sin of life 😁
@@Rokasleo omg I hope I didn’t spoil the whole series for you now. Here’s the movie clip. It doesn’t explain context so you should be good not to ruin too much.
Also, the books on tape are excellent. I’d recommend them over the movies if you have a lot of driving/traveling time to kill.
ua-cam.com/video/MN7uK8KBODI/v-deo.html
@@etzmarzly Haha, no worries. Doesn't seem like a spoiler to me. I'm sure it's OK :)
my ex yoga teacher idiotically said " whatever you experience is part of your imagination, you cannot distinguish your imagination from your perception!"... she did not like the fact that she got checked quickly by me, telling her that: "isn't the point of yoga being self-aware, and science is about observation of reality as is, and how reality really is through observation between yourself and the reflection through interaction with your outer-environment to become grounded in reality, since ancient yogis were scientists not escapists." She proudly claimed she smoked weed and did other drugs...I guess her imaginative power is not that great or yoga is simply not working for her to ESCAPE reality she refuses to accept and deal with.
The only thing you didn’t have to do was pursuit . Perusing enlightenment is like pursuing a deer on run. You don’t overdue your shadow. Enlightens is what you need to awaken not peruse! How do you peruse wakefulness?!
Great video Rokas!
Thank you Mari! 🙏
Brain is a tricky little beast which we are just starting to understand. One of the oldest known phenomenon of the “brain bugs”, also one of my favourite, is the moon effect. Did you know the the huge full moon that we often admire at the horizon is not a reality and purely a “brain generated effect”? The actual size of the moon is exactly the same as when it is at the top of the sky. Simply take a picture of both moons and compare their physical size on the screen to see it for yourself. It’s our brain that makes it look bigger on our internal reflection of the world. Tricky bastard.
Brain function is my favourite subject right now. So many things we do in life, especially irrational things, can be explained by brain functions. It is essentially a collection of apps responsible for different functions, emotions, senses, thoughts, memories, etc. You mentioned the motion app. Usually it is always on when we are awake, but apparently some people found the way to turn it off through meditation. But if the same happens when we are sleeping, wouldn’t “enlightenment” be essentially just sleeping and seeing dreams?
There is an app for love, there is an app for hate. Did you know that they always turn each other off when one is activated? Thus, we can never feel love and hate at the same time. This is why we should not punish people for doing bad things. Punishment activates the hate app. Forgiveness and love toward “bad” people triggers the app of love inside them and automatically turns off the hate app. With hate or anger app off, people are not inclined to do bad things. So they change to being better people naturally. Thus, forgiveness and love is the only true way of reducing violence. Spiritual books told us this for thousands of years, but nobody really explains that this is also true from a pure brain function phenomenon.
Very interesting. The brain is amazing indeed and it's awesome to know more about it. It basically is our reality and many of us know so little about it :)
@@Rokasleo And speaking of “brain bugs”, here is another brain phenomenon, which is used similar to the way you described in the video, only not by monks, but by traditional medicine. It is the concept of pain. Apparently, human tissue does not experience any pain when it is damaged. But there are receptors in the tissue that send a signal to the brain and, by reading those signals, brain creates a feeling of pain. And not only it does that, but it also reconstructs a 3D image of the body and creates an illusion that the pain is not in the brain but in the part of the body that being injured. And it’s all done in the brain, not in the tissue. Just imagine what excruciating pain we can experience when getting into an accident, or when punched in the face with our nose broken, but all that pain is just an illusion created by the brain. There is no real pain in the tissue itself. Sometimes I wonder why the brains chose to make this feeling so intolerable. It could just as well make it a pleasant one and people would enjoy breaking their parts. Just kidding. So actually painkillers use this brain phenomenon to cure pain - they simply relax (sedate) part of the brain responsible for creating an illusion of pain, and our feeling of pain magically goes away. The pain app is being turned off. So if a medication can turn off this app, maybe some sort of meditation can do it to. Like with the orientation app.
@@VoidedTea Pain is nature's way to remind you that you are still alive.
If the brain was simple enough so that we could understand it fully, we would not be able to understand it.
No, there is no eradication of your identity. There is just an eradication of the part of your identity that is based on false conceptual ideation about reality. There is identity beyond conceptually created and therefor impermanent ideas about yourself and the universe around you. In buddhism they call it wisdom and direct seeing. You lose conceptual ideas about things but you gain wisdom insight that comes from directly seeing. Which is much more accurate and all encompassing than any conceptual idea about things can ever be. Plus, it's really a lot more beautiful. There is a strong aethetic component to seeing reality how it is because you lose the concept of ugliness too.
Well said. How my ex yoga teacher "directly" sees things - do coke or weed, then try to see, end up with a deluded mindset that serves any agenda of self-interest during such a "high" time...lmfao...those who do drugs are addicted to their own demons and darkness, or shadow self...so that is what they will manifest or embody.
Enlightenment is immortality. You escape samsara by living. Die and you reincarnate. Angels are the living not the dead. The end of suffering is the end of self imposed death by an ignorant mind unaware of its creative power through perception
when they want to teach you 'you are not your body in yoga' see how quickly the brain glitches🤣🤣🤣🤣
I am shocked. 😂😂
The first couple sentences let’s me know you never figured out what enlightenment actually is. It confuses 95% of people. No worries
Hi, can you be more specific with your criticism? Interested
@@tattarrrrattat first of all the removal of suffering is immortality when one discovers the true nature of reality and their dominion over it. Then they will stop becoming sick, aging and dying over and over again in forgetfulness and ignorance of their role in reality.
Enlightenment is immortality when one transforms their physical body into a finer light based material becoming imperceptible to the undeveloped eye. Enlightenment is how angels are born through living not dying. Angels are people who have achieved moksha in India, the rainbow body in Tibet. Nirvana, the great perfection in Buddhism , the luminous body in Egypt, the super celestial body in Islamic mysticism, it’s seen in shamanism, aboriginal, Native American, Christian etc etc etc etc etc. thousands of names world wide for one phenomenon. Exactly what Jesus demonstrated. The way the truth and the life. And just like in Taoism you must become an earthly immortal before becoming a celestial one. “The way is eternal and not in danger of physical death” - Tao te Ching. Why does the truth set you free? Because only you can keep yourself bound. Just as it says in the Upanishads, once you achieve nirvana you are in your final body and will not reincarnate again.
“You will not fall in death,
No shadow of you,
Nor shadow against lamps light,
Nor shadow mirrored on still waters,
If these quantum qualities emerge in ones form,
The body’s externalized coverings peel off one by one -
You radiate like the golden sun himself.”
-Siddha Sundaranandar
“Oh people of the world,
Come! Come you can live the life
Of deathlessness,
Speaking the truth,
Nor exaggerate nor lie!
But speaking the solemn truth
Come, follow me,
Enter the hall of Gnosis.”
-Siddha Ramalingam