Are You Enlightened?

June 4, 6:22 AMPhiladelphia Yoga ExaminerJonathan Bartlett

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Opran (www.makemeheal.com)

Enlightenment is a term you hear a lot from yoga folks. You can use yoga to reach enlightenment, they say. It’s one of many paths, but others have taken it and reached that destination, they say. The Buddhists have their way, and I’m sure there are many other spiritual paths which offer a route to that place within us that is outside the entanglements that make up daily drama that is our life. One guys says "Enlightenment is a merging of emptiness with euphoria." If I were enlightened, I would probably understand what that means.

And, the yoga literature states, there are many ways even within yoga to get to that state of being. You can do it through just poses(asanas). BKS Iyengar, one of the big names in yoga, is a proponent of this method. Of course your awareness as you do the asanas must be focused inwardly. Yoga performed this way is not just exercise. And you can get to this place, they say, through meditation and following the eight-limbed path(Raja Yoga), through self-inquiry(Njana Yoga), via devotion(Bhakti) or selfless service(Karma). Yogani, I have found, is the best at uncomplicated explanations of all of this.

Me, I still have no idea what enlightenment is. I’ve read thousands of words about it. I’ve been in the presence of dozens of yoga folks who seemed to know what it is. I’ve watched videos, listened to audio gurus, investigated hundreds of web sites and read a lot of books. There are thousand who claim to know of a path to enlightenment. There’s even a guy who tracks these gurus on a web site, fascinating reading if you are into this.

Despite my confusion, I am convinced that I have encountered folks who truly are enlightened, even some who may not even know it. I’m almost convinced that Oprah is enlightened. While some might dismiss her as just another opportunistic afternoon TV talk-show host, albeit a standard-setter, I believe that she has at some point come into contact with a state of being that transcends garden-variety reality. While I have seen Oprah on TV only a couple of times, I am in awe of her and the influence she has built up over the years. To my mind, only an enlightened person could do that.

I also think the guy on the bus I ride to work might be enlightened. Most would take a look at this guy, hair unwashed and unkempt, his clothing soiled, and think ‘homeless guy’. But I’ve been watching and listening to him and I’m thinking differently. When waiting for the bus, he always strays off to a safe distance away from the bus crowd as he squawks to himself. Most of he says, I can’t get a grip on, but I’ve sidled up and heard him talk about his mother in not very complimentary terms, and one day he was particularly animated and I heard him say, ‘Every time I want something, it takes a long time to get it, but when I don’t want something, it comes right away.’ “Wow,” I thought to myself, “I don’t think most folks I know would say or even think something like that!’ To have an understanding of the relative nature of time is a top-level thought that I don’t thing occurs to most people. I once heard Jerry Garcia make reference to this at at Dead concert, when the crowd started getting unruly while the band was working out some tweeks, he walked out on stage, took the microphone and said, “Time is a relative phenomenon,” and the went back to his guitar.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe a lot of people have had this thought. How would I ever know what other people think? And that’s kind of my point. How do we know what other people are experiencing as they interface with reality? We can’t and we don’t. But every day that I’ve seen this guy, he gets off the bus and heads right for the nearest trash can, a big Buddha smile on his face, truly in the moment. For me, that’s a sure sign of enlightenment. But what do I know?