AI Podcast Summary of this Article

This podcast is a Google Notebook LM-based summary of my article. Those interested in a deeper dive can head to the article with greater details.

Introduction

This blog post is a response to a question posed by one of my friends, who is interested in pursuing self-inquiry about what enlightenment is. I remember, more than two decades back, when I started my own self-inquiry, I too had a question as to what exactly is enlightenment. Those were days when the internet had not yet arrived, the only recourse I had to get an answer to this question was through people around me, or through books. So, I went around asking this question to all people whom I knew and thought had the remotest inkling about what enlightenment could mean. Needless to say, none could satisfy me. Consequently, I decided to get an idea of what this term meant by studying some books. A breakthrough, or at least I thought it to be one at that time, happened when one of my friends who was also seriously pursuing self-inquiry gave me a book on mysticism. Reading the many scholarly articles in that book, I gathered that enlightenment is some altered state of consciousness. My readings on J. Krishnamurti, the teacher whom I solely followed in my initial phase of self-inquiry, particularly his “Notebooks”, cemented the idea in me that enlightenment is some altered state of consciousness which corresponds to something blissful and supernatural. For the next fifteen years, I chased this experience-based enlightenment, which I had constructed through my readings.

However, I started seeing cracks in the teachings of J Krishnamurti. I had questions that his teachings were not resolving. Like all teachers talking of experience-based enlightenment, even with Krishnamurti, one was not supposed to ask any questions about the nature of enlightenment. In fact, in his teaching span of sixty years, he seldom even used the word “enlightenment”. It was taboo for him. The answer to “what is enlightenment?” is usually met by experience-based teachers as “when you have the experience, you shall come to know. There is no point philosophising about it.”

My dissatisfaction with Krishnamurti’s teachings, which failed to answer some fundamental questions I had, ultimately led me to Advaita – a non-dual path. This was also the first time in my entire journey of self-inquiry that I came across the words “non-dual”. Coming from the claustrophobia of Krishnamurti, who abhorred philosophy, I breathed the fresh air of traditional Advaita, whose main tool of self-inquiry and enlightenment was philosophy. In Advaita, no question of a seeker is dismissed as unimportant, and every single question that can be raised by any human being on earth has been answered. And what’s more, enlightenment in Advaita is not kept under wraps, enshrouded in a veil of mystery. One does not have to feel shy using that word. In fact, in Advaita, mumukshutva or intense desire for enlightenment is one of the four prerequisites for attaining liberation.

In this post, I present the answer to this question without mincing any words, without cloaking enlightenment in a cloud of mysticism, in a language of reasoning that stands up to every form of scrutiny.

Question

What does it really mean to know yourself? How does it feel to have no more questions about life – its meaning, its purpose, its glaring inequalities?

What does it mean to reach, not just a roadblock, not a fuelling station, not a cul-de-sac, but the actual end of the journey? What does it mean – really mean – to be enlightened?

Answer

I am glad that you asked this question, Andy. You shall rarely find this question answered directly, intimately or convincingly. In my readings so far, the answer to this question almost always borders on some mystical experience or an exaggerated and highly celebratory note, making an enlightened person into some kind of superman.

So, the first thing that every student of self-inquiry has to understand is that enlightenment is not an experience, no matter how fantastic or blissful a particular experience is. This is simply because every experience is passing and temporary, while truth has to be permanent. If we say that a particular experience is true, it automatically means that all other experiences are false. If one experience is true and all others are deemed false, then, quite obviously, truth exists alongside falsity, which is like light existing alongside darkness. It was contradictions like this that made me move away from all dualistic paths and teachers to non-duality; this being the case even when I had not encountered the words, duality and non-duality.

If enlightenment is not a particular experience, then what is it? It is direct knowledge or insight into the nature of all experiences. Enlightenment answers the most basic questions about the nature of experience. What can be the most basic question about the nature of experience? If you think through it, you shall find that all questions about the nature of experience shall involve three entities – Jiva, Jagat and Isvara or the subject, object and creator. Who am I, What is this world? And who created this world?

All dualistic paths answer the question of subject-object-creator by giving different accounts of creation. The account of creation can be materialistic like modern science, or it can be theistic, wherein the world has been created by God. There are still other schools which talk about creation happening through some form of impersonal energy. And there are others, too, that talk of creation happening through time, sound, etc. These creation theories are the basis from which the schools build their philosophical systems. Once the philosophical system is put in place, then through it the path of liberation is fixed by every school. For theistic schools, it would be the worship of God, and for other schools, it would be to reach the source of whatever they have posited as the source of creation. Because only by reaching the source of creation can anyone understand the nature of all experiences; understand oneself, the world and creation.

Now, one can easily see the problem with all dualistic paths. Each has its own theory of creation, which obviously contradicts the other schools. Thus, each school, apart from building its own philosophical framework to account for creation, also have to defend their framework against other schools. This defence of one’s theory of creation necessarily implies criticism of the philosophical framework of other schools. Not only does this lead to antagonism in the seekers of one school towards other schools, but any intelligent inquirer (which is a very rare breed) shall see that if different schools are giving contradictory theories of creation, how can any one of the schools be true? And how does one even decide which school’s theory to follow as the true account of creation?

What is common to all dualistic schools is that they accept the theory of creation. They accept that creation has happened. Once they accept this, they have to accept the triad of jiva-jagat-Isvara(or whatever the source is in their system). This means all dualistic schools accept that there are individual subjects, a world of objects and a source of these two. And all experiences are that of an individual subject experiencing a world of objects. The way out of suffering in these schools, therefore, is to “reach the source”, whatever it is defined as in their system.

If one has gone so far in one’s self-inquiry and negated dualistic schools, something which only a handful of seekers do, they shall come to a truly non-dual school like Advaita (which, we shall see, is actually not a school but just a negation of all schools). Since all dualistic schools have proposed different theories of creation, a non-dual school recognises the obvious error of these dualistic philosophical enterprises. A truly non-dual school like Advaita pushes the inquiry even further than the dualistic schools and asks the most fundamental question: has creation ever happened? This question is startling. Even asking this question requires enormous clarity and courage to push self-inquiry to its limits. That is why only a handful venture into this path.

Advaita examines the question of creation itself. It examines all experiences in all three states – waking, dreams and deep sleep – to find out the answer to whether creation is a fact. And then it finally comes to the most powerful inquiry – the examination of the principle of cause and effect. If creation has really happened, then there has to be a cause different from the effect. Advaita studies all theories of cause and effect propounded by different schools and negates them by showing their inconsistencies. Finally, it proves that one cannot hold the theory of cause and effect without involving oneself in some form of logical inconsistency or the other. Since cause and effect cannot be logically and experientially demonstrated and justified, the student of Advaita has a direct insight into the nature of reality as unborn. This means creation has never actually happened. This further means that the triad of Jiva-Jagat-Isvara actually does not exist. This means that there are no individual persons, no world and no God or source.

What would be the experience when one comes to understand that there is no self, no world and no source? It’s somewhat similar to sleeping while awake. There is no individual experiencer experiencing a world of objects. As the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad says about the state of non-dual experience:

‘For where there is duality as it were, there one smells another, there one sees another, there one hears another, there one speaks to another, there one thinks of another, there one understands another. Where, verily, everything has become the Self, then by what and whom should one smell, then by what and whom should one see, then by what and whom should one hear, then by what and to whom should one speak, then by what and on whom should one think, then by what and whom should one understand? By what should one know that by which all this is known? By what, my dear, should one know the knower?’

~ verse 2.4.14

Thus, after enlightenment, all questions come to an end because there is no questioner left. There is no doer left, so for the “enlightened person,” who also does not exist except in the eyes, of others, there is no doing happening at any time. There is no experiencer left because there is no world of objects there to experience, as the world has never been created. All experiences are nothing but a magical display of appearances which, even though appearing to be born and dying, are actually never born.

The Whirling Firebrand: Unborn Appearances in Mandukya Karika 4.48–4.52

In verses 4.48 to 4.52 of the Mandukya Karika, Gaudapada presents one of the most striking metaphors in Advaita Vedanta—the image of a blazing firebrand whirled in darkness. When set into motion, the firebrand appears to form varied shapes: circles, lines, or serpent-like curves. But the observer, upon reflection, knows that no such shapes exist in reality. They are mere illusions, products of motion and perception, superimposed upon a single, unmoving point of fire.

Gaudapada uses this image to describe the illusory nature of the phenomenal world. Just as the shapes do not exist apart from the firebrand, the manifold world does not exist apart from Consciousness (Ātman/Brahman). The so-called birth, change, and multiplicity are projections of the mind, born from ignorance and movement, not inherent realities. The Self, like the firebrand, remains unmoved, singular, and unborn, while the world is a momentary shimmer of appearance.

When the firebrand stops moving, the illusion collapses into the simple reality of a point of light. Likewise, when the mind ceases its projections, non-dual awareness is revealed. The Self is not transformed into the world, just as the firebrand is not transformed into a circle or line. What appears to be a world in flux is, in truth, the unborn Self shimmering through the illusion of mental motion.

In this vision, nothing is ever truly born, nor does anything change. The firebrand never becomes the figures; the Self never becomes the world. There is no real transformation—only seeming, only appearance. To the wise, the entire phenomenal world is recognised as like the patterns traced by a whirling firebrand: unborn, insubstantial, and dependent solely on perception.