What is Enlightenment?- Andrew Cohen

Q: Andrew, you are a teacher of enlightenment. A lot of people would like to understand what that word means. So, my first question for you is : What is enlightenment?

A: That’s a very difficult question to answer in a simple, succinct way, because enlightenment means many different things on many different levels. Maybe I can begin by giving you one definition, and hopefully by the end of our dialog together, a full picture of what it means will have revealed itself.

A good place to start would be this: One who is truly enlightened has directly experienced the ultimate or absolute nature of life itself. In that revelation, they have seen far beyond the boundaries of the personal self and discovered the universal nature of all their human experience. That explosive realization liberates the self from the perpetual tyranny of being trapped in a relationship to life that is merely personal.

Another way to answer your question would simply be to say that enlightenment is a condition in which the individual has come to the end of a fundamentally self-centered relationship to life. Most human beings, it seems, are concerned only with their own needs – constantly thinking about themselves, always wanting for themselves, perpetually lost in an endless, narcissistic preoccupation with their own personalities. So one way to understand what enlightenment is would be to say that it is a condition in which we have come to the end of this painfully self-centered relationship to the human experience.

© "Living Enlightenment" by Andrew Cohen, published by New Age Books, A-44 Naraina Phase I, New Delhi 110 028. Website: www.newagebooksindia.com. Reprinted with permission.

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