# Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Flogged Misconceptions Frequently Flogged Misconceptions ## You don’t Understand Enlightenment / ## You Weren’t Enlightened
| My impression from reading your post is that you don’t really know anything about enlightenment. You obviously know quite a lot about ‘disassociative identity disorder’, however you have erroneously equated this with the state of enlightenment.
| This is your interpretation, but not at all what Krishnamurti said. Where does he speak of a ‘me’ in the heart? If there is a me that is apart feeling, the perception is not unitary.
| So first prove to me that you was enlightened ... and then we can speak about actuality, because if enlightened was in your imagination, so can be actual freedom as well.
| I’m pointing out the flat obvious. Namely that the Awakening the Buddha taught is NOT the Enlightenment that the Indian spiritual tradition talks about (neither in it’s pre-Buddha expressions nor it’s after-Buddha expressions). I am also (obviously) aware that the Indian spiritual tradition has not always been called ‘Hinduism’ and I was just using that term as a convenient well known catch phrase. I hope that was not cause for some confusion. I am also not denying that you were authentically Enlightened as per something similar/identical to what Enlightenment means in the Indian/Hindu tradition. Again, however your Enlightenment is not the same as the Awakening the Buddha taught per the Pali Canon (it is best to not even use the term ‘enlightenment’ for what the Buddha was on about as Awakening is a much better translation of what the Pali was getting at.). Your very own testimony shows you were not free of the 10 Fetters, so I’m really surprised how you do not understand this. I guess we need to go into the 10 Fetters to try to clear this up.
| You gave me the following question: ‘Does the roughness or smoothness of bark exist when a tree falls in a forest if nobody is present to touch it?’ I answer you no. Because these qualities need a brain and senses. And you gave me also the following question ‘Yes because does not depend from your senses and brain. I wonder if you ever was enlightened. ‘This is not one insult’. Because when I asked you if we see the same tree, because we see it from different angles, you answered we are seeing the same tree. That means you are seeing things and not the reality as is.
| Is your right to think the way you think, but I strongly believe that you are in an altered state of consciousness], even if you are defined it like PCE. Is your personal interpretation.
| How can you classify your own (past) state as enlightenment when comparing with the highest accomplishments in that field, your (past) reactions are to be found wanting? Your response to a woman who was interested in your state led to a situation in which you were personally (as in sexually) involved with her, all this while you (presumably) were enlightened. This kind of phenomenon [being personally (as in sexually) involved with a woman] is not to be found in people who are considered the supreme examples of enlightenment (e.g. G Buddha, Ramana Maharishi).
| Richard I think you are an intelligent person, but I don’t think you have the awakening you think you do. My experience is that almost 100% of awakened people went thru the agency of some teacher or guru, that this is not the sort of thing that can be self-taught. Did you do that?
| Ok Richard. If you have the practical experience regards the core teaching of the different traditions then (...) In what particular initiatic ‘chain’ were you initiated and by whom? Ramana Maharshi got what is called spontaneous initiation at the age of 17, then he left home and went to Arunachala and behaved like any other sannyasin. Who was your guru? What was the teaching you were told by your master and what was the meditation techniques you were instructed by him to exercise? Does it mean that you put me in the spinner by asking me questions back to demonstrate that Ramana Maharshi obviously had no more qualification than his ‘experiences’, that is, no personal guru, no teaching, no meditation techniques? Which would demonstrate that your ‘experiences’ (11 years of enlightenment) are as valid as Ramana Maharshi’s?
| I think that you have failed to appreciate the necessity of your 11 years of ‘delusion’. And you do your readers a disservice in declaring enlightenment to be worthless. It is the journey that can’t be totally eliminated. In my opinion you have to meet the dragons on their own turf.
| As I suspected, you are using the term ‘enlightenment’ in a much different fashion than I, Buddha, Huang Po, Wei Wu Wei, et al. They stipulate unequivocally that there is no identity to become enlightened. Perhaps you mean that the identity is extant ‘after’ enlightenment?
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