Hi Judy, you wrote, "You do understand that Robin does not claim to be enlightened and is not seeking enlightenment, that he thinks it's a snare and a delusion, that he believes he was enlightened decades ago and has made a huge effort since then to "de-enlighten" himself."
After reading a lot of what Robin writes about enlightenment and his experience being enlightened, he says he was witnessing the whole time. That stuck out when I read it. Enlightenment as it grows, and it always grows if it is real, eats up and integrates witnessing. There is a period following waking up or the stabilizing of Self Realization, where witnessing everything, seeing the frictionless flow of life and your silent place in it, dominates perception. Freedom! Absence of fear! A great influx of cosmic energy as the Atman or Soul becomes a permanent flame within and shines forth. If you want to stay there for awhile, then others can see your light and respond to it. I'll not go much further into Robin's experience but I think this is where he was during his leading of an alternative spiritual movement. It was 100% genuine regarding the Soul carrying out its function of expansion. As the Atman continues to shine forth, extending one's boundaries, making them less distinct, melding one's identity with that of the Cosmos, the unity between us and others and everything else in our experience becomes more obvious. As the soul continues to radiate outward from deeper and deeper within us, that cosmic energy we become permeates everything. Everything. At that point, the lights seem to go out! Holy shit, what happened? The light we (the personal and Impersonal self) are radiating becomes so pervasive, inside and out, that life is at once transformed, becoming progressively more interesting, captivating and beautiful, while remaining exactly as it was before. So we no longer see the contrast between the light that we are, and the light now everywhere else. We are no longer witnessing, or perhaps the witness has come out to play. There is no longer the longing for *peak* experiences that we used to want, but instead, it is *all* very much better.:-) In order to witness, there has to be something distinct from something else. There has to be the unfettered ;-) bliss of the soul, the personal Being, distinct from everything else, and we are residing in Being, looking out as it were on everything else. People describe witnessing as being so free! so weightless almost, just in a big cloud of bliss, mind almost empty. It is an awesome feeling, but not a complete one. Even the witness has to be transcended in order to for enlightenment to continue, and continue it will. There is no way to put the soul back to sleep once it wakes up, and one Day of Enlightenment lasts a very, very, very long time! :-)
