Eckhart Tolle on Enlightenment

The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some super-human accomplishment and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible something that almost paradoxically is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and term. The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation from yourself and from the world around you. You then perceive yourself consciously or unconsciously as an isolated fragment. Fear arises and conflict within and without becomes the norm.

~Eckhart Tolle in 'The Power of Now'

Instant Karmic Enlightenment

I think Ram Dass (in 'Paths of God') has some important things to say concerning Jnana Yoga which are very translatable towards the Neo-advaita way or non-way, and what some call its fast food servicing of enlightenment.

The first thing is a general statement concerning intellectual spiritual practices in the west, that “we are coming out of a kind of sickness here... in the way in which we have overthought” so that “we have been intellectually way ahead of our hearts’ and bodies’ wisdom.”

I think this should serve great warning to any intellectual spiritual practice, and something that has made me stop and... think?

The second thing concerns Ramana’s practice of Self-Inquiry. He calls it a “beautiful method—if you can stand it!” Furthermore, he says, it’s a practice “that takes incredible intellectual discipline” and “the fiercest gyan method I know.”

Now, I see this as no critique of Self-Inquiry, but possibly a consideration concerning any method involving something like Instant Karmic Enlightenment.

I myself have benefited from both Sailor Bob’s method and Ramana’s practice. There have been times when I’ve known here and now what I am. But I have not yet experienced a carse-like disassociative new world order.

I’ve experienced moments. And I understand on an intellectual level. But this body-mind mechanism still feels separate most of the time, even though I know it isn’t.

So for me, these Ram Dass comments strike exactly to the heart of things.