I've always thought that the name 'Cosmic Consciousness,' proposed as a synonym for the first stage of enlightenment, kinda misses the point. 'Cosmic' is just too damned serious.
I don't know about the rest of you out there in FFL-land who have had extended periods of realization or enlighten- ment, but my second reaction to it happening (my first was thinking "Wow, this is odd.") was thinking "Wow, this is funny." I mean, I stood there in my hotel room in Fiuggi Fonte and looked around at the world as it now was, the thing I had been seeking for so many years, and realized that it had always already been like that, and I began to laugh. I may have laughed continuously for fifteen minutes. My neighbors in the hotel must have thought that I'd lost it. Some of them were probably angry that the sound of my laughter coming through the walls was getting in the way of being all SERIOUS about their quest for enlightenment. Whereas what I was laughing at was the realization that all my years of questing after enlightenment had been getting in the way of realizing that enlightenment had always already been present. So, based on my first (and temporary) experience of CC, I'm going to propose a new definition for that creaky old TM acronym CC. I think that 'Cosmic Consciousness' is just too damned serious, and that CC should really stand for 'Comedy Consciousness.' The people on this planet who have most convinced me that they are experiencing Enlightenment Or Something Like It have all been, more than anything else, funny. If you ask their long-time students or people who have met them only in passing to describe them, the first words out of their mouths are often "He was funny." And I don't think that this description trivializes or demeans them in any way. I think it's one of the best things that any human being can say about another human being. It's certainly the thing I would hope someone would remember first and say about me when I am dead and gone. We're all a bunch of spiritual groupies on this forum. We've paid our dues hangin' out in rooms with a lot of spiritual teachers. Being as different as we all are, however, I'm sure that we all had different things that we were looking for IN those spiritual teachers. Some were looking for flash (shakti), others for wisdom (an intellectual facility with words), and others for silence (stillness, samadhi, the transcendent). And all of these things are important, I guess, but that's not what I look for in a spiritual teacher that makes him or her inter- esting enough for me to drive across town to see them. I'm looking for funny. I'm comfortable with describing enlightenment as Comedy Consc- iousness because I consider being a real-deal, no bullshit, honest and spontaneous spiritual teacher to be only the second most noble profession on the planet. The first is being a real- deal, no bullshit, honest and spontaneous comedian. Both professions involve helping others to take themselves (and life) a little less seriously, and helping them to laugh more. On the whole, comedians are better at their jobs than spiritual teachers. One of them, a little chap by the name of Charlie Chaplin, said, "Life is a tragedy in close-up, but a comedy in long shot." That's it. That's it exactly. That's the thing that all of these spiritual teachers have been trying to convey to all of us spiritual groupies for all of these centuries. They've been telling us, essentially, to Lighten The Fuck Up. The "long shot" on the quest for enlightenment is that it's a joke. Enlightenment has always already been there. ALL of your oh-so- serious attempts to achieve it have been and will always be a joke, because you are trying to achieve something you already are. That's funny, right?
