I went to look up on India Swami Nithyananda's account on his
enlightenment experience. It was an inspiring talk, and it is a joy
to just listen to that description of his experience/story of his
awakening... partly because there is also a recognition of what is
being spoken/described with my experience, just as I wrote some of
my nondual experience many months back in Death, Consciousness,
Nondual Perception
But I have to say that even that is not yet enlightenment in
context of Buddhism yet.. it is intense luminosity.. it is the
direct experience of your own consciousness, the luminous aspect of
your Buddha-Nature.. but it is not yet the realisation of anatta
and emptiness. In Buddhism, only when there is the prajna insight
into anatta and emptiness can be considered enlightenment.
I would say that the experience being described in the video
corresponds to our moderator Thusness's stage 1 and 2 experience,
which he describes in the following:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html
NOTE: This article has been
updated on 8 December 2007 after Thusness requested that this
article be updated with his comments to avoid misleading people.
Also, for a more thorough explanation of the experience of I AM and
how the experience is misunderstood, see Buddha Nature is NOT "I Am".
“It should also be noted that
the stages are nothing authentic or any indications of achievement;
it is wrote simply for the purpose of sharing to ‘JonLS’ when
condition arose; there is no need to overemphasize
anything.
If the stages are seen as
gradual ascendance, the essence is again lost completely. All
described stages are mere appearances and no one appearance is
purer than the other.”
Based on: http://buddhism.sgforums.com/?action=thread_display&thread_id=210722&page=3
Stage 1:
The experience of “I AM”
It was about 20 years back and it all started with the question of
“Before birth, who am I”. I do not know why but this question seems
to capture my entire being. I can spend days and nights just
sitting focusing, pondering over this question; till one day,
everything seemed to come to a complete standstill, not even a
single thread of thought arise. There is merely nothing and
completely void, only this pure sense of existence. This mere sense
of I, this Presence, what is it? It is not the body, not thought as
there is no thought, nothing at all, just Existence itself. There
is no need for anyone to authenticate this understanding.
At that moment of realization, I experience tremendous flow of
energy being released. It is as if life is expressing itself
through my body and I am merely nothing but this expression.
However at that point in time, I am still unable to fully
understand what this experience is and how I have misunderstood its
nature.
Stage 2: The experience
of “I AM Everything”
It seems that my experience is supported by many Advaita and Hindu
teachings. But the biggest mistake I made is when I spoke to a
Buddhist friend, he told me about the doctrine of no-self, about no
‘I’. I rejected such doctrine outright as it is in direct
contradiction with what I experienced. I was deeply confused for
sometime and could not appreciate why Buddha has taught this
doctrine and worst still make it a Dharma Seal. Until one day, I
experienced the fusing of everything into ‘Me’ but somehow there is
no ‘me’. It is like an “I-less I’. I somehow accepted the 'no I'
idea but then I still insist that Buddha shouldn't have put it that
way...
The experience is wonderful, it is as if I am totally
emancipated, a complete release without boundary. I told myself I
am totally convinced that I am no more confused so I wrote a poem
(something like the below),
I am the rain
I am the sky
I am the ‘blueness’
The color of the sky
Nothing is more real than the I
Therefore Buddha, I am I.
There is a phrase for this experience -- Whenever and wherever
there IS, the IS is Me. This phrase is like a mantra to me. I often
use this to lead me back into the experience of Presence.
The rest of the journey is the unfolding and further refining of
this experience of Total Presence but somehow there is always this
blockage, this ‘something’ preventing me from recapturing the
experience. It is the inability to fully ‘die’ into total
Presence...
Stage 3:
Entering into a state of nothingness
Somehow something is blocking the natural flow of my innermost
essence and preventing me from re-living the experience. Presence
is still there but there is no sense of ‘totality’. It was both
logically and intuitively clear that ‘I’ is the problem. It is the
‘I’ that is blocking; it is the ‘I’ that is the limit; it is the
‘I’ that is the boundary but why can’t I do away with it? At that
point in time it didn’t occur to me that I should look into the
nature of awareness and what awareness is all about, instead, I was
too occupied with the art of entering into a state of oblivious to
rid the ‘I’...this continues for the next 13+ years (in between of
course there are many other minor events and the experience of
total presence did occur many times but with few months of
gap)…
However I came to one important understanding –
The ‘I’ is the root cause of all artificialities, true freedom is
in spontaneity. Surrender into complete nothingness and everything
simply Self So.
Stage 4.
Presence as Mirror Bright Clarity
I got in touch with Buddhism in 1997. Not because I wanted to find
out more about the experience of ‘Presence’ but rather the teaching
of impermanence syncs deeply with what I experience in life. I am
faced with the possibility of losing all my wealth and more by
financial crisis. At that point in time I have no idea that
Buddhism is so profoundly rich on the aspect of ‘Presence’. The
mystery of life cannot be understood, I seek for a refuge in
Buddhism to alleviate my sorrows caused by the financial crisis but
it turned out to be the missing key towards experiencing total
presence.
I wasn’t that resistant then about the doctrine of ‘no-self’ but
the idea that all phenomenon existence is empty of an inherent
‘self’ or ‘Self’ did not quite get into me. Are they talking about
the ‘Self’ as a personality or ‘Self’ as ‘Eternal Witness’? Must we
do away even with the ‘Witness’ itself or the Witness is another
illusion itself?
There is thinking, no thinker
There is sound, no hearer
Suffering exists, no sufferer
Deeds there are, no doer
I was meditating the above stanza deeply…about its meaning until
one day, suddenly I heard ‘tongss…’, it was so clear, there was
nothing else, just the sound and nothing else! And ‘tongs…’
resounding…. It was so clear, so vivid!
That experience is so familiar, so real and so clear. It is the
same experience of “I AM”….it is without thought, without concepts,
without intermediary, without anyone there, without any
in-between…What is it? IT is Presence! But this time it is not ‘I
AM’, it is not asking ‘who am I’, it is not the pure sense of “I
AM”, it is ‘TONGSss….’, the pure Sound…
Then come Taste, just the Taste and nothing else….
The heart beats…..
the Scenery…
There is no gap in between, no longer a few months gap for it to
arise…
There never was a stage to enter, no I to cease and never has it
existed
There is no entry and exit point…
There is no Sound out there or in here…
There is no ‘I’ apart from the arising and ceasing…
The manifold of Presence….
Moment to moment Presences unfolds…
Presence is the Crystal Bright Clarity.
Updated comments: Insight into no-self has arisen but
non-dual experience is still not stabilized. The tendency to
experience as a clear mirror reflecting still persist, however, the
attention is shifted to experiencing pure presence rest in being
authenticated by mere phenomenon. There is no more resistance
towards phenomena manifestation, the ‘illusion’ of a background is
seen and effort to sink back to a void background diminishes
substantially.
Stage 5. No
mirror Reflecting
When
every single moment is purely nothing but the unfolding of total
presence under differing conditions, there is only chirping birds,
drum beats, foot steps, sky, mountain…there never was a Witness
hiding anywhere!
There is no mirror reflecting
All along manifestation alone is.
The one hand claps
Everything IS!
For further
comments: http://buddhism.sgforums.com/forums/1728/topics/210722?page=6
Updated comments: The drop is thorough, the
center is gone. The center is nothing more than a subtle karmic
tendency to divide. A more poetic expression would be sound hears,
scenery sees, the dust is the mirror. Transient phenomenon itself
has always been the mirror, complete in arising, self-liberates in
its own accords.
Stage 6.
The nature of Presence is Empty
Not only is
there no ‘who’ in pristine awareness, there is no ‘where’ and
‘when’.
Pristine Awareness cannot be contained within a 6-foot body --
neither within nor without. The ‘bond’ makes it so.
All is Presence! But “TONGSss…” is radically different from “the
blue sky”….When conditions are, there is. There is no need for a
'who', ‘when’ or ‘where’, only causes and conditions are necessary.
This is its nature.
When there is this, that is.
With the arising of this, that arises.
When this is not, neither is that.
With the cessation of this, that ceases.
-- the principle of conditionality
The self-luminous awareness from beginning-less time has never been
separated and cannot be separated from its conditions. They are not
two -- This is, That is. Along with the conditions, Luminosity
shines without a center and arises without a place. No where to be
found. This is the emptiness nature of Presence
Updated comments: With the willingness to let go of
the ‘I’ and ‘Mine’, the ‘emptiness nature’ is clearly understood.
Practice is neither going after the mirror nor escaping from the
maya reflection; it is to clearly 'see' the 'nature' of
reflection.
To see that there is really no mirror other than
the ongoing reflection due to our emptiness nature. Neither is
there a mirror to cling to as the background reality nor a maya to
escape from. Beyond these two extreme lies the middle path -- the
prajna wisdom of seeing that the maya is our Buddha
nature.