5.2 What are the differences between the first stage of enlightenment and an awareness based on a gradual integration into, and involvement with, your wider cultural environment?

The primary function of this book is to provide a simple self-help technology which, with committed daily use, leads to the first significant transformation in consciousness. The technology leading to the full understanding of reality through experience is beyond the scope of this book. The secondary function of this book is to enhance the implicate technology skills developed to attain the first stage of enlightenment, so that you will be able to set your life in harmony with the wider cultural forces shaping your environment: the moral, social, economic and political conditions.

To achieve this, one needs both a model of reality and an understanding of the true nature of meditation. The model of reality serves as a goal; only when the accuracy and completeness of the model is realised is the final stage of enlightenment attained. Meditation is the priceless, free tool available to each of us to assist us in the transforming and transcending of the conditions of our lives.

The model of reality is this: the true nature of reality is consciousness without content, which none the less permits all contents to exist. This cannot be understood within the range of experiences accessible to a person with a normal level of consciousness. A person who has attained the first stage of enlightenment is correctly positioned at the start of the path which leads towards understanding the fulness and unity of reality through experience.

The experience you are aiming for is to understand what is meant by a consciousness without content. To be able to experience this, you must develop your understanding through further committed daily practice of meditation. The true purpose of meditation is to develop your ability to still the process of thinking.

To still the thinking, to transcend the thought process, is a skill which you will develop, quite naturally and spontaneously, through meditation. As your everyday experience unfolds, you will gradually realise that your experience up to attaining the first stage of enlightenment has completely misled you as to the nature of reality. The goal of the culturally integrated and committed level of awareness, as discussed extensively in chapter 2 of The advanced guide to enlightenment, is to understand, with an intuitive certainty of knowledge, the true nature of’ reality; keep in mind, though, that this is not yet direct experience of the true nature of reality.