WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ENLIGHTENMENT IN HINDUISM ?

What is Enlightenment?---- 14 FACTS----- 1-Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. 2-Enlightenment is nothing but your becoming light, your inner being becoming light. Perhaps you are aware that the physicists say that if anything moves with the speed of light, it becomes light—because the speed is so great that the friction creates fire. The thing is burned, there is only light. The material disappears, only immaterial light remains. 3-Enlightenment is the experience of an explosion of light within you. Perhaps your desire to be enlightened is moving with the speed of light, like an arrow, so that your very desire, your very longing becomes a flame, an explosion of light. There is nobody who becomes enlightened, there is only enlightenment & only a tremendous sunrise within you. 4-In India, enlightened beings have been referred to as Dwijas. Dwija means twice-born. Once, you were born out of your mother’s womb; it happened unconsciously. You did not make it happen – nature did it for you. When you were born, you came with a certain innocence and blissfulness. A child is innocent and blissful by himself. But since this blissfulness did not happen consciously, anybody can corrupt it in no time. 5-Now, if you have to be born once again, you must die first. If you are not willing to die, the question of being reborn doesn’t arise. This does not mean dying physically. But if you die the way you are,,,,, if you destroy everything that you called “myself,” then you are born once again. This kind of birth happens 100% consciously. Once again you become blissful and innocent, but fully aware. Now, this blissfulness cannot be taken away by anybody. So, what you call “enlightenment” means a conscious self-annihilation. 6-Right now, most people are not thinking of enlightenment. They are just trying to live a little better. They want to live a little more peacefully, joyfully, more efficiently, more effectively. We can use yoga for that also. It is a poor way of making use of yoga because yoga is capable of delivering you to another dimension of life If you talk about enlightenment to somebody who is hungry right now, he only thinks of food. Whatever people feel is missing right now in their life,,,,, needs to be taken care of to some extent. Otherwise they will not seek anything higher. There is a need to create a taste of another dimension ,,so that they will seek it. 7-If someone wants is to be peaceful and happy, Then they should do better in the activities---What they are doing – But it doesn’t mean enlightenment is ruled out, Actually, such a longing has not come yet. Still, the basic longing is to live better,,, so first, live well. When you have lived enough and you know that living better is not going to get you anywhere, then you want to go beyond life. 8-The non-enlightened soul is unable to look through and beyond Mâyâ, which, like a veil, hides from it its true nature. Instead of recognising itself to be Brahman, it blindly identifies itself with its adjuncts (upâdhi), the fictitious offspring of Mâyâ, and thus looks for its true Self in the body, the sense organs, and the internal organ (manas), i.e. the organ of specific cognition. 9-The soul, which in reality is pure intelligence, non-active, infinite, thus becomes limited in extent, as it were, limited in knowledge and power, an agent and enjoyer. Through its actions it burdens itself with merit and demerit, the consequences of which it has to bear or enjoy in series of future embodied existences, 10-. -Enlightenment simply means an experience of your consciousness unclouded by thoughts, emotions, sentiments. When the consciousness is totally empty, there is something like an explosion, an atomic explosion. Your whole insight becomes full of a light which has no source and no cause. And once it has happened, it remains. It never leaves you for a single moment; even when you are asleep, that light is inside. And after that moment you can see things in a totally different way. After that experience, there is no question in you. 11-Enlightenment means being fully conscious, aware. Ordinarily we are not conscious and not aware. We are doing things either out of habit or out of biological instincts… Enlightenment is coming to understand, coming to realize that you are not the body. You are the light within; not the lamp, but the flame. You are neither body nor mind. Mind belongs to the body; mind is not beyond body, it is part of the body—most subtle, most refined, but it is part of the body. Mind is also atomic, as body is atomic. You are neither the body nor the mind—then you come to know who you are. And to know who you are is enlightenment…. Enlightened means you have realized who you are. 12-Enlightenment simply means becoming aware of yourself. Ordinarily, a man is awake to everything around him, but is not aware who is awake and aware of all the things around. So we remain on the periphery of life and the center remains in darkness. To bring light to that center, consciousness to that center is what enlightenment is. 13-It is just being absolutely centered in yourself, focusing all your consciousness upon yourself as if nothing else exists,,,,,, only you are. Just be natural so that you can remain in tune with existence. 14-The Lord--as a retributor and dispenser--allotting to each soul that form of embodiment to which it is entitled by its previous actions. At the end of each of the great world periods called kalpas the Lord retracts the whole world, i.e. the whole material world is dissolved and merged into non-distinct Mâyâ, while the individual souls, free for the time from actual connexion with upâdhis, lie in deep slumber as it were But as the consequences of their former deeds are not yet exhausted, they have again to enter on embodied existence as soon as the Lord sends forth a new material world, and the old round of birth, action, death begins anew to last to all eternity as it has lasted from all eternity. The means of escaping from this endless samsára, the way out of which can never be found by the non-enlightened soul, are furnished by the Veda. ……….SHIVOHAM…..