Do questions continue after awakening?

Do questions continue after awakening?

Dear Rupert,

You wrote: ‘The first true glimpse of this is sometimes known as enlightenment or awakening, although in almost all cases the habitual tendencies of the mind and the body reappear and apparently veil this knowingness again. The subsequent establishment in this understanding, sometimes known as self-realisation, is not a process towards a goal. It is a re-orchestration of the body, mind and world that comes from understanding, rather than going towards it. Enlightenment is instantaneous. Self-realisation takes time.’

Thank you for freeing me from the feeling that I failed class! Since the wonderful experience of awakening about two years ago, I have felt I missed some important points, and that’s why I found myself back in the same old game of identification. With your explanation I can accept my situation much better.

Nothing is really the same as it was up to that point, of course. One thing that stopped and doesn’t seem to come back is spiritual searching and questions. Even though I don’t yet have the direct experience of self-realisation all the time, my mind has shut up completely when it comes to spiritual questions. I know everything there is to know. There are no doubts.

Namaste,
Mia

 

Dear Mia,

Thank you for your email. I would like to make one observation. You say, ‘One thing that stopped and doesn’t seem to come back is spiritual searching and questions’.

In this statement you seem to equate ‘spiritual searching’ (by which I assume you mean the conventional spiritual search in which an apparent person seeks ‘enlightenment’) with ‘questions’. It is true that this type of spiritual search comes to an end with the deep experiential understanding that we are unlimited, unlocated, impersonal consciousness, an experience that is sometimes referred to as enlightenment or awakening.

However, in most cases a further ‘process’ unfolds in which this understanding becomes progressively more stable at all levels of experience, that is, at the level of the mind, the body and the world. This process of stabilisation or, as it is sometimes referred to, self-realisation, often involves the asking and answering of questions.

It would be a misunderstanding to assume that such questions imply a personal questioner or indeed that such questions arise from ignorance and are aimed at achieving a personal goal of enlightenment. This misunderstanding is particularly prevalent in some areas of contemporary Advaita where the mind is automatically equated with ignorance and indiscriminately dismissed.

I am not suggesting that this is your attitude, but your comment could be open to misinterpretation and prompted me therefore to make the point.

With love,
Rupert

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