8.5 What are the Implicate Technology guidelines for operating openly and yet unnoticed, for being different and yet the same?

There are no culturally approved, readily accessible roles available for an enlightened, or relatively enlightened, person in our late twentieth-century Western cultures. We have no true cultural equivalent of the Eastern guru – a person who is recognised and accepted as having realised through inner experience the true nature of reality, and so has become fit to teach others how to attain this ultimate experience. Accordingly, those who follow the path begun in this book and to be completed in its successor, The advanced guide to enlightenment, will face the challenges, opportunities and dangers common to all pioneers.

You may have to deal with the incomprehension and hostility of those around you, as you seek to express your new-found understanding. The way to avoid conflict is to blend in with your environment. The way to change and enhance your environment is to lead by unspoken example.

This activity of leading, yet not being seen to lead, is achieved through the use of a by-product of your daily practice of meditation. Progress in meditation assists you to leave behind narrow, subjective, personal ways of behaving and experiencing reality. Learn to Act impersonally, without subjective regard for self or others.

The way ahead for our Western cultures lies not with those who merely talk about the nature of reality and enlightenment. The pressure to lift our understanding from an ethical to a spiritual base will be generated by those who show by their behaviour that they understand from their own experience. Integrate your enlightened understanding into your everyday activities and you will lead by example and influence others without being seen to do so. You will be different and yet the same.