One thing we really need to establish or define is just what "Enlightenment" is and what the word should be referring to. Because without a proper pointer, idea or understanding of the aim of Enlightenment we have no way of knowing if we are on the right track towards it or any way to assess whether Enlightenment is even truly worthwhile or desirable in the first place. There is an irony in that spiritual jargon often use terms such as "unity" or "oneness" or "Absolute" without actually having a unitive or "absolute" teaching or perspective on Enlightenment itself, and any person who happens to believe that various teachings do have unity in perspective is just as deluded as people being stuck in Samsara. Many spiritual schools, traditions, gurus or "masters" are not always on the same page in regards to this matter and instead seem to be trying to one-up each other to appear as if they are higher on the mountain, all the while their followers are unable to reach the high bar set while real, useful, tangible, beautiful and amazing things are actually being achieved in the mundane world by ordinary people who are not even part of the Enlightenment game.
There is a reason I do not use terms like "Enlightenment" in Timeless Education but rather "Wisdom" or "Timelessness" because these are things I know well, and things I know most people can grasp with not too much effort. A person who talks about, preaches or teaches something he or she does not really know is a fool. And a person who talks about, preaches or teaches something he or she know most people will have difficulty achieving or understanding, is mostly wasting their time teaching or creating a "spiritual" separation from people with little or no functional purpose for the masses.
From the beginning I wanted a new terminology and language precisely because I did not want people to be confused or differ too much in their understanding of what we are talking about in Timeless Education. I knew that words or terms like "spirituality," "ego," "self-annihilation," "Enlightenment," etc, would mean something different to different people, and if I attempted to correct them and explain my interpretation people might simply argue that they or teacher x has a different interpretation they stand by. Or, they might change their mind to my perspective, but then another person would just come along that I need to convince again because everyone starts out being influenced by the wrong interpretations. This was also the reason I felt the need to create my own typology, because trying to improve a typology or anything that already exists and has established itself in the mind of others is going to be ridiculously difficult to maintain and constantly clarify to people. This is why you need to let the old die and constantly create something new because it is a law of nature that the new can only emerge and grow from the corpse or ruin of the old. If I can only salvage what's useful or good about Enlightenment by replacing it with new terms or demolishing Enlightenment then so be it.
This is why I prefer to talk about "essentialness," "partiality," and "Timeless Man" instead and why I actually dislike a lot of the more familiar jargon. Unfortunately, in order to make people interested in something new, or to even find the material, I had to often resort to more common terms like "spirituality" or "ego" while commenting on or communicating with people. However, as more and more people find my material, I find it more and more important to stress the new terminology and leave older terms behind. But before doing so, we need to examine the relation between the ideas in Timeless Education and the ideas of "Spirituality" and "Enlightenment" by defining the latter.
I shall start from a very simple point, which is my definitions of these terms. I define "Spirituality" as Essentialness, and I define "Enlightenment" as Self-Knowledge (especially awareness of awareness or receptive "No-Self" awareness). The relation between "Spirituality" and "Enlightenment" is thus obvious, since understanding or discovering ourselves is essential and what we have to go on in terms of finding out our meaning, purpose, joy, peace, and so forth. Short of this we can only "take orders" and hope an external source knows what's best for us, which is an alternative ripe for potential manipulation, exploitation and abuse.
But this is all in the realm of "Being" (where the conclusion tends to be a perspective of "Non-Being" in regards to one's Self) which is essentially passive (without motion) and contrasts sharply with a world of (or seeming world of) activity and also a concern for survival. And no satisfying answer has been given to the question of "Doing." Let us contemplate for a moment the classic Zen Kōan: "Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water." What this quote suggests, and I would say correctly gets at, is that Enlightenment is a change in one's internal Being (attitude, mentality, understanding) that allows one to appreciate and perform in the world (the realm of Doing) in a more functional and joyable way than before, where whatever is happening or what one does is a reward in itself rather than being done with the aim of some specific future reward or attachment. Also, "No-Self" is an insight and does not necessarily equal other qualities of "development" such as self-control even though the two exist in a mutual supportive role.
However, to achieve this liberated internal state of Non-Being one is dependent on "Doing" whether it be through learning, practice, concentration, relaxation, finding a guide, and not be dying of starvation, cold, violence or thirst. Furthermore, once the "state" or Being (Non-Being) is achieved, the person is left without orientation in regards to what to do in a world with many choices. This orientation is further complicated by the often required cessation of desires or "ego" in order to 'have joy in everything' and leaves the person a potential "desireless automaton" ready to be pushed around and directed by other people's will or the pressures of their surroundings without complaint. It is difficult to reconcile the extinguishing of desires with any activity at all, and it is similarly difficult to reconcile impartial duty with ethics and morality.
Also, achieving Non-Being or Enlightenment in this way tells you nothing about the world or its hidden laws. At best it tells you that consciousness is fundamental and that matter is an effect or not-quite-what-you-think while also providing you with the basics of human psychology to navigate the world. But I find even the psychology of Buddhist doctrines to be incomplete or flawed when it comes to lower consciousness human psychology.
I say this as a person who has actually achieved quite a large measure of self-annihilation and capacity to let things be and find joy without effort. If this is Enlightenment then it also makes sense that I do now what I did before Enlightenment. And what did I do before Enlightenment? I thought about things, had questions regarding my purpose or value in life, and wondered what I should be doing since I didn't have a lot of worldly desires to begin with. It thus equally makes sense to rephrase the Zen Kōan into: "Before enlightenment; do philosophy, entertain ideas what to do in life. After enlightenment; do philosophy, entertain ideas what to do in life." Since Being is entirely in the realm of Non-Doing, any kind of Doing (including thinking or contemplation) is thus equally valid after Enlightenment as before Enlightenment. Thus nothing anyone does can truly be criticized.
Because of this, I have made Timeless Education to be a teaching about something more than merely Enlightenment, focusing also on the "lower" dimensions of Doing and Surviving, perhaps even improving upon the very idea of Enlightenment in the process. After all, I need something to do. And from the Enlightened perspective, I can not be faulted for this. Nor can I be improved on this. In fact, I am expected to do it and take joy in it, enjoying it for its own sake.
However, there are other interpretations of Enlightenment. These are interpretations I don't always understand, partly because they make no sense or seem to be almost impossible to achieve, and partly because they are being peddled by people who themselves admit they have yet to reach Enlightenment (big surprise!). But there are a few principles one can employ in order to assess what is being said by certain gurus or defenders and peddlers of these interpretations. In fact, Timeless Education was developed as a set of parameters or "timeless principles" that could deal with precisely this issue of "wisdom" in interpretation or orientation. Because ultimately we are not simply looking for what is the true interpretation of the term "Enlightenment." We also want to know if it is wise, useful, sensible, or even achievable. Ancient people may have practiced and come up with all sorts of things, but just because such a thing have become revered or gained an impressive mythology around itself does not necessarily mean that it is something good. Ancient people were just as fallible, superstitious, and moronic as many modern minds are today, and that goes especially for those who constitute the social elites and reclusive monks who are often divorced from the real world most people have to deal with in their place.
Another reason timeless principles are useful is because the question of Enlightenment is not always a question of interpreting the term but instead confrontation with something else in its place or attempts to go further or making claims about a particular experience that people or gurus appeal to rather than traditional conceptions of Enlightenment. Of course, there is usually an attempt to tie in these experiences with the traditional language of spirituality or religion which still makes the question of interpretation relevant. Interpretation is a form of categorization or attempt at identification of what sort of experience it is someone has had and its relation to other types of experiences. It is for this reason I regard categorization and interpretation as inseparable from development and Wisdom, while rejection of categorization or interpretation from the view that they belong to the lower or "unenlightened" mind in fact fails to be wholistic and thus not desirable even if that would happen to be the real meaning of Enlightenment.
My stance on Enlightenment and the real experience of it is a minimization of one's self-concept due to the impossibility of defining the Self, as well as the minimization of one's beliefs since preconceived notions and assumptions tend to create delusions, rigidity and make it more difficult to actually perceive or engage with what is really and spontaneously arising in front of you (inside and outside) and that this is the "void," self-annihilation, or "No-Self" spoken of in traditions. In other words, Enlightenment is something relatively simple, achievable, and consistent with the traditional terminology taken in their most "mundane" form. It is my experience that if something can be interpreted in a more mundane way, it probably should be (even though this isn't exactly mundane, but it will be perceived as that by people who expect more out of Enlightenment). Because, as we will discover, blowing the interpretation (or experience) of something out of proportion will either lead to inconsistency, poor philosophy, incompatibility with many other traditional terms, or not being consistent with timeless principles (and is thus not Wisdom even if it happens to be true or possible).
The timeless principles can be summarized as follows:
1. Interconnection.
2. Contrast.
3. Ceaseless change, no final state.
4. Analogy, relationship, energy-exchange.
5. Emphasis on Timeless Principles and Self-Knowledge.
6. Non-Attached awareness.
7. Wisdom Compass, epistemology, transmission competence.
8. Unconditional Love as manifestation of Will.
9. Self-Expression and Authenticity.
10. Non-Avoidance, engagement (because if another condition is preferable, why is that not our natural situation or more easily attainable?)
Out of all of these 10 principles (which you can read more about here), perhaps the most important and useful one as regards to this subject is the last principle. Although I have put it last on this list, it was actually the first principle for evaluating wisdom that I followed, long before being interested in "spiritual" stuff or trying to create a philosophical system.
Let us start with an example: self-annihilation or escaping the Wheel of Samsara. In my interpretation this refers to the minimization of the self-concept and thus of less identification with the temporal, hence the person is liberated in "attitude" (for lack of a better term) and therefore does not cling to things or states it will inevitably lose. Although it is the common condition to be identified, it is also not too difficult to drop one's identification. It is simply a way to adapt to reality, in many ways a very easy to grasp and logical reality (and entirely believable that ancient people would come up with such a concept), and can also simply be regarded as one attitude among a natural diversity of attitudes, although more beneficial. Thus this view is compatible with the principle of Non-Avoidance or engagement.
However, as we all know, there is another interpretation of self-annihilation that suggests an escape from the reality we are in, also interpreted as putting an end to "the cycle of reincarnations." In my interpretation (and which I think is the true interpretation) the Wheel of Samsara or "cycle of reincarnation" refers to the cycle of psychological wandering or incarnation of identifications that happens in a mind lacking a clear centre to stand on. Not referring to anything beyond a particular lifetime. The reason why this is my interpretation is because 1) it is known to be a valid one, 2) it is practical and doable, and 3) it is consistent with the principle of Non-Avoidance (or Non-Escape if you prefer) while the literal interpretation of wanting to disappear from the Earth and Universe through "self-annihilation" is not consistent with the principle of Non-Avoidance and also does not seem to be doable (or at least not achievable in a simple and natural way) and with no tangible results existing outside of the realm of myth and speculation that some Enlightened Buddhas might have achieved it.
The philosphy of "Non-Escape" (a term made up by me) is something like this: The condition or world we are in, even if ultimately an illusion or even created inside a computer, is intrinsically meaningful and exists for a reason; because, assuming there is something like God or an infinite intelligence, naturally what this God or intelligence has created would be the most meaningful and interesting one possible that could be created, or it would have created something else. Trying to escape it would simply be a rejection of this intrinsic meaning for something that is actually less meaningful, and would be more likely to suggest an error or dysfunction in the program than actually being driven by and appreciating the designed purpose. Of course, this view makes less sense in a "non-spiritual" materialistic worldview. But materialists are also not making fancy statements about Enlightenment or trying to escape reincarnation, which they don't believe in.
Another common interpretation is the idea that we are God or the Universe trying to understand itself. I'm not sure what the precise origin of this idea is but very likely it stems from Hindu concepts, perhaps even a specific school (I will use the term 'Hinduism' for the outside form and collection of schools and concepts in India while reserving the term 'Sanatana Dharma' for the original primordial core that remains to be properly identified). The problem with this idea is that it seems to lack the perspective of eternity; suggesting a goal the Universe or God has that it either should already have achieved by now or will achieve in the future, thus posing yet another question this view fails to answer: what comes after God finally understands itself through us and comes together? Eternity doesn't stop once the Universe or God knows what it is. The natural conclusion that tends to follow is that God simply decides to forget itself again, splitting up into many pieces so as to start the cycle all over again and repeat this process eternally. This could be the case, and would be consistent with Non-Escape, but is also therefore unnecessary as a philosophical viewpoint when it would make more sense for a God to simply want stimulating experiences and surprises, similar to how we use our creativity to create drama or engage in various games of risk and reward rather than simply aiming to understand itself over and over. The purpose of understanding has a goal while the purpose of experience may go on forever. Hence it makes more sense for the latter to be the eternal purpose.
Related to these ideas of the nature of God and the Universe is the interpretation or assumption that Enlightenment is an experience or achievement that will make you understand all of existence, the mind of God, the laws of the Universe, past and future events, etc, whatever you can think of. However, given how many of these Enlightened "Buddhas" or gurus (existing now or in the past) make for inadequate psychologists, scientists or even philosophers, with very little cultural achievement in the area of knowledge, invention or medicine, I see no reason to believe Enlightenment has anything to do with knowledge. If it did we should be able to find among self-realized gurus useful and genius science beyond the minds of Tesla or Einstein, and we don't. It is in some way understandable why this interpretation would arise though, since the word "enlightenment" implies a powerful insight or understanding of some kind. But everything points to this insight merely being that we are not the temporal or anything that can be perceived, and instead our true nature or core lies beyond time and space.
It is important to understand that ideas about the "mind of God" and the purpose of existence is philosophy and not a realization that comes with Enlightenment experience. Enlightenment experience tells you nothing except who you are (or rather who/what you are not). Deductions that the world is "illusory" can be made from things like quantum physics, psychedelic exploration, or simple observation that everything changes with time. But none of these insights are "Enlightenment experience" because if they were then it seems Enlightenment isn't even necessary to reach such a conclusion. Philosophy and even science is entirely adequate, or arguably the same thing.
And here we reach two more conceptions of Enlightenment that needs to be addressed, that of "nothing is real" and, often related to that, "in the Enlightened state anything is possible." This is the realm of magical powers, supernatural abilities, and recreating the world according to your own wishes and fancy. Obviously, in order to break the laws of reality you need to invalidate and deny them as being real, and this seems to align with Eastern conceptions of the world being illusory (even though an "illusion" could also simply mean the distortion of a thing rather than the thing not existing at all). Here, any conception of "laws" or acceptance of reality is considered "materialistic" and spirituality seems to reside only in the realm of superhuman abilities and achieving godhood. From a more grounded point of view this reeks of hubris, ego, and avoidant life-denial (or life-narrowing) rather than humility, self-annihilation, and non-avoidant life-affirmation. Ideas such as the Law of Attraction also belongs here, even though they don't speak of Enlightenment per se.
The source for this seems to be a hodgepodge of ideas ranging from occult magic to the miracles of Jesus to the concept of Maya in Advaita Vedanta. There is, however, no reason to interpret the miracles of Jesus literally and if taken as such the Bible would not be compatible with Eastern ideas of Enlightenment anyhow. Since nobody has actually been confirmed to achieve such a state of "superhuman Enlightenment" we are naturally left in the realm of speculation and interpretation, yet people who hold on to this view will defend it as if it was something new, novel, and game changing that requires an open mind. Suckers have been attracted to this idea for centuries.
This is also related to the idea of going "deeper" than anything before. A person once asked me in the comment section of a video: "Have you considered the possibility that Leo [Gura] has gone so deep, and his teaching are way more advanced than what you can comprehend? After all, he said that he has accessed rare levels of consciousness that [mystics] haven't reached. More advanced than some spiritual traditions, so it shouldn't be a surprise that you can't make sense of it from your level"
To which my answer was:
"There can be one aim with authentic spirituality and one aim only, and that is open receptivity to direct experience and awareness of your direct experience. Any convoluted add-on, acquiring fantastic powers, exploring other dimensions, making reality vanish, talking to other-dimension creatures, or attempting to control or interfere with your experience and reality is going in the wrong direction and will only support dissatisfaction with what's in front of you – creating an endless distraction and focus on becoming rather than on being. Becoming (striving) can never be as timeless as being, especially since implicit in striving is distrust in mere being (that which is). By attempting to go "higher" or "deeper" he is just making a parody of spirituality that makes it more difficult for people to recognize and accomplish the real goal of spirituality. I am not the least bit impressed by Leo even if what he said was true. Just because something is "possible" doesn't mean it is good for you. Spirituality is about what's authentic and essential, not about what's possible by jumping ahead into some next stage in Darwinian evolution.
Chasing deeper understanding of reality ceases to be higher consciousness if the conclusion arrived at isn't Being because striving is always at a lower state than mere experiencing, because true experiencing doesn't reject things and instead fills you with substance and a sense of abundance. Can't you see that Leo's constant seeking for more and deeper has led to an outright rejection of both reality and experience as pure illusion to be distrustful of? Is this wisdom or just thirst for knowledge? Spirituality is wisdom before anything else, not simply acquiring knowledge of existential mechanisms. This is why it is said that young children are wiser than most adults and the best candidates to get into "heaven."
If Leo wants to be some kind of psychedelic explorer, that's fine. But ask yourself if that's the point of wisdom and the best way to live? Is an animal a fool for not figuring out it is God? What's wrong with simply being a biological creature? To become at peace with this is actually a very high state of consciousness. Higher states are simple, not complex. And if you don't want to take my word on that, then at least contemplate why a higher state couldn't be simple? Remember, it is about wisdom, not knowledge."
My response was slightly rushed and could've been polished or improved, but I cannot devote as much time to answering comments on Youtube as when explaining my position in a book or article like this. But by reading it in the context of this article it should be easier to understand what I tried to get at and is an example of what kind of claims you may need to confront.
Sometimes there is an appeal to psychedelic experience, but psychedelic experience do not result in powers or permanent states and we have reason to question their objective value since they appear to have a different effect on different subjective minds. Not to mention that psychedelics themselves exist in the realm of Maya or illusion so one wonders how substance or chemicals made out of illusion can liberate from illusion?
Our 10 timeless principles are very useful here, since they transcend time and circumstance and thus are capable of going beyond "possibilities" or endless "open mind" arguments and aim straight at the heart of wisdom. Hence why the argument should be made, were I to be wrong about my interpretation of Enlightenment, that Wisdom simply transcends Enlightenment. Different principles are more useful when evaluating some interpretations of Enlightenment than others. Here I will focus on the first three:
1. Interconnection.
The first timeless principle is interconnection. This is the essence of a word like "unity" or "oneness." Without two or more different parts working in tandem there can be no unity or oneness. To experience or suggest that Enlightenment is awareness that nothing exists or that only one thing (God) exists is thus not unity or oneness because it renders such terms meaningless. One thing existing is not oneness (the quality of several things making up a whole), it's just one. Neither is it a wholistic worldview. It is merely reduction until you get to one thing or nothing, and since this is not compatible with traditional terms such as unity it must either constitute an error in interpretation, a trivial experience that misses the target, or something "going beyond Enlightenment." If it is the latter then it makes no sense to still call it Enlightenment. You need to come up with a new term to illustrate the new or "deeper" concept and argue for its merit (and good luck with that).
2. Contrast.
For experience to occur, the element of contrast is necessary. If nothing exists or only one thing exists there can be no experience. Indeed some Advaita teachers says the Absolute is prior to awareness and experience, which would mean that no awareness or experience of the Absolute is possible (and also that no knowledge of it is possible beyond philosophy). And if experience is to be regarded as something bad to be escaped, that even spiritual experience is at the level of illusion (since it is still experience), then you need to argue for the merits of that and why you couldn't be equally "realized" by simply an act of suicide or lobotomy.
3. Ceaseless change, no final state.
Going beyond change into a final permanent state or literal annihilation means stagnation and boredom or death. If this is desirable you need to explain why even the gods would not get bored outside of our world, or argue for the merit of non-existence or non-experience. In a similar way, supernatural abilities and god-like control creates predictability even though it might sound appealing and fun at first, and predictability is known to lead to a lack of excitement and boredom. When you can have anything you want it is like using a cheat code for a video game. It ruins the intended meaning of the game and why people like games and dramatized entertainment.
The focus on reality being an illusion is often reductionist in that the conversation often misses that there are many different degrees to an illusion. There is the illusion of solidity in matter which, according to quantum physics, contain mostly empty space. Then there is the illusion of permanence in things when not attentive to the fact that all things deteriorate or change with time. In addition to this there can be mental illusions about the space-time illusions based on preconceived notions or ideas one carries in the mind. When ancient doctrines spoke of the world of illusion, to which of these illusions did they refer? Advaita Vedanta seem to recognize an absolute reality (Brahman), an empirical and pragmatical reality, and an unreality based on imagination. However, there is clearly no escaping the empirical and pragmatical reality and so the point of absolute reality should be to protect one's mind from falling into subjective imagination as one traverse and orient oneself in the empirical and pragmatical world.
Any idea about our space-time level existence being some kind of mistake or error to be removed is simply dumb and philosophically poor, impossible to experience (since experience is not possible outside of a world of experience), and I don't care if such ideas come from actual spiritual teachers, Indian gurus, or some traditional doctrine. It is profoundly passive, nihilistic, off-putting to the majority, yawn-inducing, and, yes non-materialistic but also non-spiritual, and anyone who argues for it is not entitled to make a claim for a single word, definition, expression or experience (including the term "spirituality") since all this belongs to the realm of life and existence and not to the non-realm of the nothing-Absolute. The universe may be a dream or illusion but the Absolute is not even that. One would think the argument that something is an illusion would be intended to arouse the desire for something real and non-illusory, but no, some of these Advaita guru types want you to become interested in something even less real than the illusion. Make you interested in nothing.
It's the equivalent of someone turning off the TV while your are watching a movie or playing a video game with your buddies and says, "Hey, did you know that actually what's in the TV isn't real? You can turn it off and it all goes away. See!" Or, "Why are you discussing the plot? It's not real!" Yes, we know. We don't care. We want to keep playing or engage with the make-belief. That's why it was created.
Re-interpreting the "void" or nothingness as simply referring to the ultimate self-concept, however, allows the experience of life to pour through us fully without blockages or avoidances, giving a sense of richness or abundance to life, and this resolves the paradox of life-affirmation and nothingness-centredness neatly and beautifully in a way that is graspable and doable for most people. Whether this is actually called Enlightenment or not I don't care, because I don't care about words, only what is meant by them.
I also talk about what I myself have experienced or figured out, because why should I talk about or preach something else? I have not personally verified that quantum physics is even real, nor do I know how any of the scientists arrived at their conclusions through their complex mathematics and experiments. And neither do most other people even though they may point to quantum this and quantum that because they are hypnotized by cultural assumptions. That's why I don't teach quantum mechanics or talk about "Quantum Philosophy" because that stuff is not timeless. Only the knowledge or understanding that can be arrived at without era-specific-science is timeless.
How do you know that the world is an illusion? How do you know anything? How do you explain what you know to someone who don't know anything? If nobody had ever mentioned that the world is an illusion, would you even talk in that way? Is that the real you talking?
The reason I refer to the world as an unchanging process or perpetual change instead of being "illusory" is because that is something I can verify for myself and also explain to other people in a simple and convincing way, allowing them to easily verify it as well. And that is enough to point out the folly of material attachment and instead find solid ground in our higher unchanging core or "soul" that is aware of awareness (another thing that can be verified through quiet contemplation and meditation). And yet some people will claim I am actually a "materialist" until I renounce existence itself or something.
Not only is that a misuse of the term "materialistic" that runs the risk of giving most people an erroneous impression of what I am about (and thus potentially choose to avoid Timeless Education out of misinformed prejudice) but it is also a claim that assumes that I am supposed to know about something of which I have no experience or knowledge. And by making random statements, often parroting some text or teacher, these people are not exactly enlightening me. If you are being a parrot then I think it is about time you become enlightened enough to understand that you are being a parrot, and then come back when you know what you are talking about, are sure you are able to convey it to people, and also are capable of paying attention to what I am saying so that you can properly address it and engage with me at the level I am at. Not high from above or poorly from below. But obviously people are not going to bother improving their communication skills or even their awareness and critical thinking if reality is just a "dream" anyway and their only focus is to become one with everything through their "feelings."
The child is pure and often feels at one with things, not recognizing the same boundaries that adults do. But the child can also not survive without the help of "material-minded" providers. And frequently I feel that I am in the role of a parent trying to provide something that is of use in life to immature seekers merely citing teachers or doctrines. Compare my approach with the useless answer Stephen Wolinsky gave to the question: "Ok, I accept this is All an Illusion. How is this going to help me in my life and relationships?"
Stephen Wolinsky:
"Believing that upon realization, and getting that it is all an illusion, that somehow it's going to help you in your life or your relationships, is a complete distortion of spirituality. Spirituality is about finding out who you are. ... Yes, it's all an illusion, but what isn't included is [that] the knower of the illusion, the awarer of the illusion, the witness of the illusion, is part of the illusion. ... If you can perceive it or conceive it, it's not you, therefore discard it. The significance of that is not only [can I] perceive and conceive this physical universe or my relationships or my health or whatever it is. I can [also] perceive and conceive the knower, the awarer – I can be aware of being aware – I can be conscious of consciousness. The witness? I can know or know about the witness. Therefore all of them are part of the illusion. Part of the problem is that we assume that somehow if I realize and find out who I am, I'll be able to be more, do more, have more, create more... I'll be omniscient, I'll always pick the right stock, I'll always pick the right relationships, I'll never make a mistake, I'll always be kind, loving and all of these types of things. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. It's All an illusion."
Gee, I guess that clears things up then.
Notice that what he says has absolutely no value or relation to life whatsoever. This is not wholism or unity or oneness or interconnection. It is actually a separation. If "one has absolutely nothing to do with the other" then it (spirituality) has nothing to do with life. If it has nothing to do with life then it can only have to do with non-existence, separation, or death. It is no wonder a lot of Christians take the stand that these religions are "demonic." I would certainly not teach this stuff to my kids. Also note how the question isn't even about becoming successful in life, even though he partly answered as if it was. It is simply asking for a basic usefulness or even a point to it. The answer is clearly that there is no point. Things that have a point are part of the illusion.
This is why we need to be open-minded or critical enough to entertain the idea that perhaps Enlightenment is actually not something constructive or even good in many cases like this, assuming Mr. Wolinksky or Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (who he often quotes) wouldn't simply say that Enlightenment is also part of the illusion, which would not surprise me. My argument is thus that, to the extent that Enlightenment is actually defined the same as Timeless Education, it is something positive and the two are compatible as aims. But if Timeless Education and Enlightenment are different, then it is Enlightenment that is to be discarded.
