Excerpted/Abridged from Highway of Diamonds – by J Jaye Gold
“For most people the concept of enlightenment is just that – only a concept. People want to know, ‘Are you or aren’t you?’ so that they can compare you with other persons that they’ve heard are also enlightened. And then they can group those people together in their thoughts – you know, like lump that person with other people that they’ve heard are enlightened. So that person becomes part of a category – like your American movie stars, you’re in with the movie stars of the enlightened crowd. Of course, that doesn’t help them to understand anything more than they first understood – which was nothing. They are left with their concept. If we put it really simply that concept would be, ‘It’s a good thing – it’s a very good thing to be.’ Everybody is thinking, ‘Well, it’s a good thing.’ But not knowing what that good thing is. There is no essence to their understanding. I’m going to tell you something more valuable than my ranking on the scale of enlightenment. I’m going to tell you what it means to be enlightened.”
“To begin with, let me tell you that my teacher taught me how to see a light within myself. Now this has been said before. Most people would hear my statement as meaning the light of understanding, the light of knowledge, the light of wisdom, the light of inspiration. But it’s not those things. So what I’m telling you is not a scientific theory and it is not my quote from the teachings of the Buddha. There is a light within us, and I’m not using the word light in a metaphorical sense but in an actual sense. So let’s talk a little about the nature of this light. There’s a light within us and the nature of this light is that it is a manifestation of a power – the creative power that maintains life, that maintains our life, that creates life, that created our life, that destroys life, that destroys our life. No one would deny the existence of such a power. What people are unaware of is that it must create us and maintain us through an intermediary. And there is an intermediary in this case. It is not a burning bush. It is not a magical medium in the sense that it is a metaphysical medium. It is an actual medium, and that intermediary is the connection between that creative energy and the life that runs through a human being. That intermediary has three components and one of those components is light.”
“In a way of speaking, that light within us is the first descendent of that primal creative energy. So, in the same way of speaking, the light is what keeps us alive. The force of that energy operates through that light to keep us alive. If this is so, then that light must also be within us, and witnessing that light is within our capacity – though not within our ordinary capacity. It is within our natural capacity, but it is not within our normal capacity. Because our normal capacity has become focused outside of ourselves.”
“If something were actually beneath, within, before your heart-beat, actually energizing your heart-beat, it would be still harder to notice than that heart-beat itself. “
“We don’t notice respiration and heartbeat because we’re focused without and not within. So if there is an energy inside that manifests as light and energizes our respiration, then that energy would be still yet more subtle. And in being more subtle it would be less noticeable even than our respiration. But this creative force continuously maintains our bodies, so there must be some link between that maintenance and this body. And it must be nonstop because it keeps going. We have the capacity to experience that moment-to-moment energy coming into us, and nothing will be as it should be until we do so.”
“The practice of learning to go within to experience that energy necessitates a training that includes eliminating what is without, then going within, and witnessing. It would not be accurate to say seeing, because seeing is what we do with our eyes. This light that is inside us doesn’t require eyes. In fact, it necessitates that they be closed – and the darker the better.”
“When my teacher first explained these things to me, he described that in order for this light to be witnessed within oneself, the process is two-fold. First, you must learn to try to live and witness life as it is, and second, you must also learn to focus within at that light inside. I hope you understand that what I’m describing is what the term enlightenment actually means.”
‘What is it like to have the experience of having that light of the creative force, that first generation manifestation from the creator’s energy, be real and witness-able within you?’ And in this case the word real means every day it’s there. It’s always there, within you. So to be enlightened is not a concept.”