Infinite Spirit and Total Enlightenment
“If Spirit has any meaning, it must be omnipresent, or all-pervading and all-encompassing. There can’t be a place where Spirit is not, or it wouldn’t be infinite.
Therefore, Spirit has to be completely present, right here, right now, in your own awareness. That is, your own present awareness, precisely as it is, without changing it or altering it in any way, is perfectly and completely permeated by Spirit.
Furthermore, it is not that Spirit is present but you need to be enlightened in order to see it. It is not that you are one with Spirit but just don’t know it yet. Because that would also imply that there is some place Spirit is not. No, according to Dzogchen, you are always already one with Spirit, and that awareness is always already fully present, right now. You are looking directly at Spirit, with Spirit, in every act of awareness.
There is nowhere Spirit is not. Further, if Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means, as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened. You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true enlightenment.
Rather, Spirit, and enlightenment, has to be something that you are fully aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now… We are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don’t recognize it. We have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
“Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber” (Ken Wilber)
Moving Beyond False Dualities
“When I gained the unshakable belief that there is no death, that all life is indivisible, that the here and hereafter are one, that time and eternity are inseparable, that this is one unobstructed universe, then I found the most satisfying and convincing philosophy of my entire life.”
–Norman Vincent Peale (American Cleric, Writer and Self-help Expert, 1898-1993)
Your Real Self
“I shall now state clearly the profound secret. Understand that when the ego dies and the real Self is realized as the One Reality, then there remains only that real Self, which is pure consciousness.”
–Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1879-1950)
Sacred Cycles
“Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.”
–Heraclitus of Ephesus (Greek Philosopher, c.540-480 B.C.)
The Fruits of the Divine Vision
“When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low.”
–Sri Ramakrishna (a.k.a. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Indian Hindu Mystic and Promoter of Universal Religion, 1836-1886)
Nonduality Is Reality
“Enlightenment is the sudden recognition that non-duality is, has always been, and will always be the reality of our experience. Duality is an illusion. Consciousness is not private and personal, but impersonal, universal, and eternal. There is no limited personal entity, no conscious ego. The ego is a perceived object, not the all perceiving awareness.”
–Francis Lucille (Canadian Advaita Teacher, 1950-)
Hiding Behind Four Veils
“Four veils hide God from us: solids, liquids, gases and light. Lift these veils and find God everywhere, in everything.”
–Paramahansa Yogananda (Indian Spiritual Teacher and, in 1920, Founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship, 1893-1952)
Total Interrelation
“Everything in the universe is made up of the very same stuff, and it’s all absolutely interchangeable at every moment. The electrons of you are indistinguishable from the electrons of me are indistinguishable from the electrons in a star…and it’s all totally interrelated.”
–Ram Dass (a.k.a. Richard Alpert, American Spiritual Teacher, Author and Lecturer, 1931-)
