What is spirit and enlightenment? A friend’s conversation…

Photo Credit: emilio labrador (License)

What is Spirit and enlightenment? A conversation between friends!

It’s funny sometimes how the casual chatting conversations give way to some deep insights. My friend and I work in different office locations for the same company so we pretty much use messenger as our main medium of conversation all the time and sometimes these chat conversations go far deeper than a live conversation. Below is one of such conversations about Spirit/enlightenment. Feel free to add your comments.

Q: Have you ever felt closer to Spirit? If so, how did you know you were close?

A: Hmm…I had few moments but I don’t know how close, certainly I could not measure the distance J

Q:  How do you define that moment?

A: When I used to lie down on terrace and stare at stars and felt as if I knew that place like I have been there, in that overwhelming experience I felt I was closest to the spirit.

Q: Is being trance count as being close to spirit?

A: Could be. All the masters we have learned so far tell us one thing right, that Spirit is within you, you cannot find it outside but have to transcend into yourself. I guess then being in trance may feel like being closer to spirit, whether it is real or psychological is a question long debated.

I heard of a Sufi master who went on whirling for hours without stopping and when he fell down he could see that he was separate from his body and in those moments he got enlightened and went on preaching rest of his life.

Q: Well, I don’t know about that, I used whirl when I was a kid for 5 minutes or so to get that trance kind of feeling.

Q: What is enlightenment?

A: I am not sure. Do you have any idea about what it is?

Q: That was my point, everyone tries to define it but to me it is something one can experience and can never be explained using finite words.

A: I agree God/enlightenment/nirvana these are words used for sake of it, because it is utterly impossible to define the experience of infinite by finite words.

Q: We never felt or experienced it ourselves but we talk about it all the time.

A: Words in themselves are confined/finite and how can they describe infinite! but they can give us a flavor

Q: Anyone who attained enlightenment had their own way to reach there and there are infinite ways – few long, few short and some impossible ones.

A: Hmmm

Q: As Charles Haanel said: we need to generate those vibration thoughts to experience it, according to him ‘anything can be created or manifested just by a thought’.

A: Hmm…can you create that created you? like you can become parent of a new born child but never your parents. And parents are as miniscule as ourselves just another creation in the grandeur. They are most important for us but for the infinite everyone is same. Thoughts may manifest anything and we may manifest the realization but NOT the actual Spirit itself, because it’s already there. We cannot create something that is already there.

All we can do with thoughts is to get to a knowing place but once we are there words loose significance.

Q: Everything is an expression of Spirit form maybe different. If you ask me ‘can you give birth to your parents? It may be possible they may not look the same but they can have their essence their energies you can see when they grow up, my brother was born after my grandfather passed away, few months later he had same lines exactly like my grandpa on his palm everybody said ‘grandpa is re-born’. He had his features. We create out of what is already there in a different form different expression.

A: Hmmm

Q: Universe is contained in itself there is nothing to add or remove. We are not generating anything new. We are manifesting the same matter the way we want it to through the Spirit.

A: Well said. Great way of looking at things.

Q: Matter is never created nor destroyed it can just be transformed. In that perspective, we all might have the essence of those who we are successors of.

A: But we are confining ourselves to manifesting but the spirit is far greater than the manifestation?

Q: Again, what is Spirit?

A: What is the energy that is the difference between a dead person and a person who is alive?

Q: re-phrase

A: To me spirit is that which binds everything together – material, spiritual and everything else. It is the very core of things created. As we know there is no matter but only energy. Energy is itself that forms all things including you and me. We do not see/perceive the energy, our senses have limited scope in this regard, and our senses can only show us the form that Spirit has given not the Spirit itself. That is why all the enlightened ones have conquered their senses and that is why they see the truth that we cannot.

Q: Then how different is Spirit from form?

A: Form is illusion, Spirit is real – from our minds – we only see illusion, in a state of no-mindedness1^[1] – we see the Spirit.

Q: Both are same, it’s the mind that perceives it differently? right?

A: no, minds can only perceive the illusion i.e. the outer form. For example – we see the light from a bulb – we cannot see the electricity. That is the subtle difference is the difference between form and spirit. Everyone knows without electricity there is no light but no one can see electricity itself, same way, we can see the forms that Spirit is transforming into all the time but never the Spirit itself.

Q: I did not mean ‘mind’ in literal sense.

A: I know. As long as we ‘perceive’ we cannot know Spirit because Spirit is something we can experience/know but never can see/explain.

Q: Is there no way then to know/experience the Spirit?

A: That is where the meditation, masters, literature, holy books come to rescue, I guess. Seek and you will find!