Enlightenment Does Not Mean Being Psychic
by John Houseman
[This is the third essay on Enlightenment by John Houseman. His first
essay can be seen by clicking here, and his second by clicking here.
John has written two more essays which will follow, and he will be
avilable for personal enlightenment coaching and counseling when our
EnlightenMentor program debuts in the next few weeks.]
"Heaps of rubbish." – Swami Ramakrishna, on psychic powers
"They are obstacles to samadhi." – Patanjali, on psychic powers
Most people involved in spirituality have at some point had some
experience with people who are healers and psychics – if not being
healers and psychics themselves. Over 2,000 years ago, the Buddha had
a name for the extraordinary abilities of some people to see into the
future, talk to disincarnate beings, miraculously heal potentially
fatal injuries, and display other great powers that defy our common
experiences of life. He called these abilities … suffering. Yes,
suffering. In his teachings, the Buddha described three types of
suffering: the ordinary suffering of everyday life, the extraordinary
suffering of terrible tragic events, and the third type he called the
suffering of high mystical states.
All of the work of experiencing ecstatic awareness, astral travel,
long-distance healing – all of this, to the Buddha, was just more
suffering. It was suffering because none of these experiences could
release a person from the illusion of separateness. As long as a
person lived under that great burden of the illusion of separateness,
no matter how miraculous his or her spiritual talents, that person
was suffering.
From my own experience, I can see that the Buddha was right.
Throughout my long 15-year journey to enlightenment, I studied and
worked with many of Americaís greatest psychics and healers. They
cleared me of much of my karma, and taught me to develop my own
psychic and healing skills. Yet virtually none of them had even the
slightest clue of what enlightenment was. They had not read the
classics of enlightened writing, like the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad
Gita, or the Heart Sutra; they had not plumbed the depths of the
Gospels or the writings of the Sufi saints. Few had sat at the feet
of living enlightened masters to ponder the deepest truths of
existence. As a result, these great healers and psychics who I
studied with were almost totally ignorant of the highest goal of
spiritual growth.
Enlightenment is not about being psychic – it is about
identification. Enlightenment means identification with God. All the
healers and psychics I know of in America still cling to the orthodox
Western theological position that God and humans are fundamentally
separate. Most will occasionally pay lip service to the idea that "We
are all one," and many will share their rare and precious peak
experiences of unity with the Divine. But almost none live in that
state of unitive awareness permanently. I have rarely met a psychic
or a healer who could say from the core of their being "I am
that, I am awakened God Consciousness, God and I are one."
About ten years ago, I went to see one of the most highly regarded
healers on the East Coast, a real spiritual powerhouse, one regarded
as a true philosopher and wise man. It took me six months before I
could even see him because his wait list of clients was so long. I
arrived with great anticipation. He asked me how he could help me,
and I told him I was seeking enlightenment. "Enlightenment!?" He
exclaimed with horror, "Enlightenment!?" He was so shaken he could
hardly work on me for the rest of the session. This was one area
where he had nothing to give. My hour with him was a disaster, and I
almost asked for my money back. Truly, many wonderful skills are
taught in Americaís healing schools, but enlightenment, union with
God, is not one of them. And what I have seen in these great healer-
teachers is not the Bliss Consciousness of enlightenment burning
eternally from their eyes, but suffering. In addition, psychic and
healing powers can and do inflame the ego. Many talented healers I
know have enormous egos, which deepens their suffering.
Just as enlightenment means identifying with God (or Source), the
opposite of enlightenment, suffering, means not identifying with God.
Unenlightened beings take a very small portion of all of existence,
the part that starts at their feet and ends at the top of their head,
and say "This is me." Then they takeeverything else in the universe
and say "This is not me." This is a very lopsided way to divide up
the world, to say the least. And it leads one to feeling alienated,
alone, and scared. It leads to defensiveness, and to the assertion of
oneness at the expense of others. Even for those who find some degree
of happiness in this way of life, there is inevitably a degree of
existential anxiety from this illusion of separation. Surely, this is
suffering.
A few wise beings, however, are able to break out of the mold of this
highly limited structure of awareness. They are able to see that what
is around them is not composed of separate things and people, but
there is a flowing unity and connectedness to life. These individuals
have shifted their perceptual horizons, made a paradigm shift, and
discovered that they too, are a part of this oneness. It is an
important realization, for they have achieved identification with the
world of the senses. Those who have discovered this truth can be said
to be enlightened on the level of the personality. However, this
degree of enlightenment is so minor that it is not normally regarded
by enlightened masters as a true level of enlightenment.
From the pool of these few wise beings, a smaller group will go
beyond the dimension of the five senses to see an even larger
reality. They will come to know the multidimensionality of existence,
and they will become aware that they are eternal beings, souls that
live beyond the body. For those few who hold to an intention of union
with God, at some point in their spiritual development, they will
heal themselves to the point where they will release their
identification with the personality and identify themselves with the
soul. Knowing themselves fully to be eternal and beyond space and
time, they are still not enlightened.
At a still later stage, these spiritual heroes will heal the karmic
wall around them caused by the causal body, which separates the
individual from the rest of creation, and creates and sustains the
illusion of separateness. With the release of the causal body, the
higher spiritual energies of the entire universe will flood the
individual. This creates an awareness of being one with all creation.
Persons in this state of awareness know that everything in the
universe is a part of them. This new identification with creation is
the first level enlightenment.
However, there is still one more step to go, the most important step
of all. This individual may experience themselves as one with the
world around them, and one with the higher dimensions of elemental
beings, angels, and so on. But a wall of separation still exists
between those beings on the first rung of enlightenment and God. In
the final step, the individual releases his or her identification
with all he or she is, and simply dissolves back into Source. One
returns to the Source of Being, known in Kabbalah as Primordial
Cosmic Light. One says, in effect, "I am All of Created Existence, I
am the Universe, and I give it all to you, God, I give it all to
you." In this ultimate act of love and surrender, the soul returns to
Source, and is then reborn from the Source as Awakened God
Consciousness. The individual has made the final shift in identity
from individual personality, to eternal soul, to Creation, to Source,
and finally, to the Totality. One is finally a fully enlightened being.
In Tantric Buddhism, psychic abilities are considered one of
the"bonsues" of enlightenment. Traditionally, one does not seek these
powers but seeks enlightenment, and if these higher powers come along
the way, they are a gift to be shared with others in order to assist
them on their own paths to enlightenment. I have found through my own
journey that psychic abilities can be a very useful tool for reaching
enlightenment, but only because I was determined to apply them
towards the ultimate goal of union with God. In addition, in my
enlightened state, my own psychic abilities continue to grow, and I
am always happy to use them in service to others. It is my sincerest
hope that healers and psychics around the country will take a fresh
look at what spiritual growth means to them and re-center their
efforts towards identification with God and the realization of Unity
Consciousness.
