4.6 What does it mean to realise the unconditioned state, in a psychological sense?

As taught in chapter 3, in reality, every experience of your life is bounded by a specific configuration of the ten conditions. The specific details vary from life to life, and from situation to situation. What remains constant is the influence, on your life, of these ten conditions at every moment.

The successful outcome of attaining the psychological stage of enlightenment involves transcending the relatively illusory limitations of your personality. Put simply, you go beyond your emotional and intellectual conditioning. You are able to exist, in your daily life, in a state unconditioned by your previous emotional and intellectual constraints.

This is a state of clarity, serenity and quiet joy, where you are centred in the midst of conditions, becoming increasingly free of the thrall of your needs and desires, accepting reality as it unfolds to your awareness. The world is as full as ever of people and things you need and desire; only now you become increasingly freed to react or not, in any situation, according to your intuition. Your life is no longer as constricted by the emotional pressures and intellectual preconceptions of your personality; instead, by a process of natural, spontaneous growth, you are developing an unfolding vision of yourself and others as components bound by implicate laws to the unified process that is reality.

From the transpersonal point of view, this is experienced as a great release from life’s burdens; the burdens may still be there and have to be endured, but one’s attitude to them has profoundly altered. Through a growing feeling of reconciliation and harmony with all that happens, one experiences the movement of responsibility for the direction of one’s life to a force both within and outside the self. It is a feeling of free dependence, based on a calm acceptance of the harmony inherent in reality.

This free dependence on reality is your birthright. It is yours simply by committed daily practice of the meditation, coupled with sustained effort to understand your life in the context of these teachings. In this way, within a hundred days, it is possible to attain the first, or psychological, stage of enlightenment.

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.

5.4 What is the meditation on the model of reality?

The root Implicate Technology image of reality is: consciousness without content, which none the less permits all contents to exist. The truth of this is all-embracing. The function of this meditation is limited to preparing your understanding only; the meditations leading to experience of the final stage of enlightenment will be included in the follow-up teaching from the Implicate Technology Centre on the nature and purpose of reality: The advanced guide to enlightenment.

The nature of your mind reflects the nature of reality: your mind is a microcosm of reality. The first stage of the process leading to a fully unfolded experience of reality is to develop an understanding of your mind. When you have understood the structure and functioning of your mind, you will then be in a position to experience the inherent unity and fulness of reality.

The function of meditation, when sustained with committed effort over time, is to produce a still mind. Put simply, this is the mind in its natural state, fully aware and freed from the tyranny of the thought process. You need give no thought at this stage to this process of developing a still mind; it will occur quite naturally as you develop your work in meditation, as taught in this chapter and chapter 2 of The advanced guide to enlightenment.

The mind, when uninhibited by the process of having thoughts, perceives clearly that the true experience of reality is of existence unfolding spontaneously, according to the inherent implicate laws. A measure of your progress towards advanced meditation is the development of the capacity to experience your life as unfolding naturally and spontaneously. Be clear: any thought or action, occurring outside of Act‘s guidelines, acts against the flow of reality and incurs negative karmic consequences, whose nature will be according to the true needs of your nature.

Through sustained, committed meditation, the thought-process slows gradually and imperceptibly. The richest fruits of meditation can only be realised once one understands, through experience, that the true nature of mind is emptiness and silence. A measure of your progress towards the advanced meditative practices is to be found in the relative decrease in the pace of the thoughts; when you experience thoughts as unfolding interminably and endlessly, but more slowly this week than last week, then you are progressing in meditation.

A mind which has attained emptiness and silence is far more aware and more powerful than a mind operating at the level of normal consciousness or the first stage of enlightenment. Such a mind is aware of its contents and is no longer preoccupied with compulsive satisfaction of needs and desires. The world, as rich and beautiful as ever in its fulness, still unfolds moment by moment, but it no longer dominates consciousness.

When the fulness of the world ceases to press on consciousness, then the mind turns naturally towards understanding the nature and purpose of reality. Before you can fully understand reality through experience, you must understand the nature of your own mind. You must first understand that the thoughts in your mind create your experience of reality.

From your own attainment of the psychological stage of enlightenment, you will be aware how the experience of emotional conditions is significantly determined by one’s unconscious emotional projections. The emotions you were unaware of, before the first stage of enlightenment, none the less deeply shaped the experiences of your life. Changes in your feelings produced corresponding changes in your conception of the external world.

From your current, relatively enlightened, perspective, you now can understand that the emotional conditions experienced are relatively illusory, because they are the externalised products of mind. There is a general principle embodied here which is equally applicable to all conditions. Meditate on this long and hard; when you have developed an intuitive understanding of this principle, you will be clearly set on the path to advanced meditation.

5.6 What is the meditation on hearing?

Not all of the confirmatory experiences can be expressed in words; reality is too simple and unified for words. What you will experience is a function of your own nature and karma. If you accept these experiences as real, then they are real to you.

The purpose of these confirmatory experiences is to help you to understand the links between your own nature and reality. As you will gradually learn, the experiencing of reality solely through the five senses is limited and relatively illusory compared to the experiencing of the enlightened state. This meditation on hearing is an illustration of the general principle that reality is not structured, and does not function, in a way that is comprehensible within the limitations of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.

Reality only becomes comprehensible when one activates one’s sixth sense of direct intuitive perception. Committed daily practice of meditation develops your sixth sense. As your intuitive perception of reality unfolds, you will experience a subtle, but real and lasting, change in your sense of hearing.

As the meditation takes holds and produces fruit, one’s way of hearing alters, naturally and spontaneously. One becomes aware of hearing the ordinary sounds of the environment in a different way. One experiences sounds in this way: each is heard quite clearly, quite separately, and each is equally significant in your hearing.

Through meditation on this experience, one comes to realise how constrained is the hearing of normal consciousness. The lesson of this meditation is simple. Life is: become aware.

5.7.2 The first step is to retain the sexual energy your body generates.

If you are a man, this means retaining semen through avoiding ejaculation. If you are a woman, this means avoiding the release of sexual energy when menstruating. [The original text stated incorrectly “If you are a woman, this means avoiding the release of sexual energy through clitoral orgasm”.] The remainder of this chapter is written from the viewpoint of male sexual energy. [Females will gain by reading this chapter, and also see Comments below this paragraph for further information from a female perspective.]

Practice of this meditation does not preclude any form of sexual activity, provided it is in accord with Act. The meditation may also be practised during periods of celibacy or by renouncing sexual activity through chastity, provided such activities occur within the guidelines of Act. The key lies in retaining your sexual energy, not in the nature of your sexual activity.

Sexual activity involving this meditation can occur on your own through masturbation, or with a partner or partners. The practice for males in each case is the same : learn to refrain from physiologically-based orgasm. As you develop in this practice, through repeated failure then gradual success, you will begin to understand, slowly and naturally, the power inherent in your psycho-physiological system.

The practice of this meditation is the same for a person who does not experience orgasms. Your body’s adaptive powers will compensate in a natural way. The essence of the technique for both sexes lies in transmuting retained sexual energy.

The goal for males is not complete abstention from physiological orgasm. A fair but demanding target to set yourself is thirty days between orgasms. Be clear: this need not mean thirty days between sexual activities; that is a function of personal choice and the circumstances of your life.

Do not delude yourself that physiological orgasm is a great pleasure and release which males cannot do without. You only think this because you have nothing to compare such orgasms with. Be assured: the pleasures you will experience, on many levels of your being, will transcend, in intensity and power, anything unenlightened sexual activity can offer.

The actual techniques you use to refrain from physiological orgasm are a matter of personal experience and choice, subject to Act. There are many books offering sound advice for men on delaying ejaculation; there are now some books for women on reducing or eliminting blood-loss through menstruation. Our culture promotes achieving orgasm for both men and women: as you develop in this meditation, you will come to understand, through personal experience, that the key sexual activity is to practise retaining the sexual energy naturally and spontaneously produced by your body.

The key to realising this control is to understand, through meditation, that a physiologically-based orgasm is triggered by mental activity. As you learn to control your mind, you will learn to control your orgasms. All physically-based control techniques are inferior to this level of mental control.

5.7.3.2 The second step: understanding the retained energy

This may usefully be read by both sexes, although it refers primarily to the male aspirant. The method of releasing yourself from the tensions sweeping your body and mind is twofold. Firstly, at any time, enter into the deep, slow breathing you have become accustomed to from your meditation practice. Secondly, learn to raise your retained energy from the sexual energy centre in your groin to the highest energy centre at the crown of your head.

Begin with a transition, willed or spontaneous, to deep, slow, meditative breathing. Do this during sexual activity, while working, while just relaxing at home or in any circumstances you can. The meditative breathing will help you to become centred in the midst of conditions.

This is a process you learn to achieve by experience. There are virtually no sets of conditions during which meditative breathing cannot be entered into. You must be your own teacher in this matter.

Now, with greater or lesser ease, you have settled into meditative breathing. Your psycho-physiological organism, your mind and body, is in a state of tension. You need or desire the release of orgasm.

For the male, the source of this disturbance in your whole organism is the sexual energy you have retained through not experiencing the pleasure and release of physiological orgasm. This energy, naturally produced every day by your body, and retained either by your body’s natural functioning or by an act of experienced will, is located, at first, in the sexual energy centre. For both sexes, your task now is to raise this energy to the crown energy centre: by first achieving, then sustaining, this practice, you generate all the power you will need to transform your experience of reality.

5.7.3.4 The second step: raising the sexual energy.

(This paragraph is relevant to both sexes.) Begin, then, the second step of the meditation on sexual energy. This involves a focussing of your awareness. This is simple to explain but hard for you to realise. Once you have gained the experience and skills to realise this step of the meditation, the natural functioning of your organism will spontaneously take over, and the energy will circulate, without any effort on your part, in a harmonious manner.

The practice required to raise the sexual energy, to power your own internal dynamic forces is simple. During the deep, slow in-breath, visualise the energy travelling from your groin, up your spine, to the very top, the crown, of your skull. During the deep, slow out-breath, visualise the energy travelling down from the crown, through the roof of your mouth, which your tongue is touching, down the front of the chest, through the abdomen, and back to the groin.

At the beginning of this practice the energy will most likely move in your imagination only. But as your skill develops with unwavering determination, you will, in time, experience the actual movement of this energy. Be assured that this is fact, not theory or fantasy.

If it helps you in the early stages, focus your awareness on an image of erotic significance to you, and in your imagination visualise this image located at the crown of your head. This is an aid which should be discarded once you have learned to raise your sexual energy. To be successful in your quest for enlightenment, you must face reality directly, not through your fantasies.

Once the energy begins to circulate naturally, spontaneously and effortlessly, the tensions in your organism will begin to resolve themselves. Your power and understanding will grow, as the circulating energy is transmuted into a clearer and clearer understanding of the nature and purpose of reality. Without succeeding in this practice, you cannot attain the final stage of enlightenment: success is available to you, regardless of the conditions of your life, provided you Act and meditate with unwavering determination.

6.2 How does one experience karmic testing?

Throughout your life, you feel in turn joy and sorrow, and move up and down, endlessly up and down. In a vain effort to smooth out this process, some try to control others; some try to control themselves; and some try to endure the highs and lows. This constant experiencing of opposites, life’s highs and lows, is a natural process; enlightenment offers the only real escape from this endless play of opposites in your life.

When you are far removed from the psychological stage of enlightenment, the alternation of joys and sorrows occurs as a long-term pattern flowing throughout your life. As you get closer to the first enlightenment, this alternating of joy and sorrow becomes more and more rapid. A person close to this stage of enlightenment experiences a profound lack of stability in both inner and outer emotional conditions.

It is important to distinguish between such emotional transformations leading to the unfolding of awareness, and the constant transformation in conditions experienced by the emotionally immature. The difference lies in developing your capacity to endure and persevere through time. One who is moving towards enlightenment understands the instability of conditions as a learning process; one who is emotionally immature simply desires to experience positive rather than negative emotional conditions.

The degree to which your emotions alternate between the opposites of joy and sorrow is a function of karma. The specific circumstances and conditions of your life are formed and structured, by karma, to test your capacity to become free from attachments to joys and sorrows. Learn to become responsive to the direction of karma in your life; trust in your karma to guide you through the maze of joys and sorrows. The commonest response to the difficulties experienced during intense periods of karmic testing is: why me? The answer is: there is a lesson you have to learn before you can progress in your inner development, before you can progress along the path we each must travel, and your current situation is specifically configured, precisely drawn together, to enable you to understand and learn the lesson. Continue to meditate, Live and Act throughout your life, and the difficulties will be overcome.

Do not think, foolishly, that you can escape your karma. You cannot successfully swim against the flow of reality, because you are an integral component of the one reality. Remember, the implacable process that is reality will devour your personality and its products, at its own pace and in its own way – this is the root cause of your emotional suffering.

In the midst of your life conditions, blown here and there by karma, overwhelmed by difficulties and the illusion that they are permanent, your feelings may revolve around despair. Sustained despair can lead to the utterly false and illusory attempt to escape your problems through ending them by suicide. The only sure way out of the suffering experienced in all limiting emotional conditions is to cultivate detachment, yet to remain fully involved in your day-to-day life.

6.4 How does one become detached from fear and desire?

Fear and desire are deeply intertwined in our lives. What we desire most is often what we fear most. Fear is, in reality, the inverse of desire —”No! I don’t want that.”

Both fear and desire, experienced with intensity, can be very stressful on your whole organism, both mind and body. To become detached, you must free yourself from this stress, which invariably occurs on the path to the first enlightenment. The first and simplest technique is to enter into deep, slow meditative breathing- this will have a calming effect on your whole system.

There is also a second, more advanced, technique available to you. However, to develop in the practice of this second meditative skill you will require considerable faith. Not faith in anything particular, just faith.

Faith, pure and unbounded, grows in you naturally and spontaneously as your awareness unfolds of your role in the process that is reality. Your faith grows with the realisation of the fruits of meditation. Committed daily practice in meditation inevitably produces these fruits.

As the results of your meditation unfold, a simple fact will become clear to you. You will come to understand this fact gradually, with the certain knowledge of experience. This fact is that you and reality are one and indistinguishable.

This fact, which is the ultimate truth of reality, is not at all apparent to common sense. Only gradually will you come to understand what it means. When, finally, after many trials, you know through experience what it means, then and only then will you have attained the final stage of enlightenment.

Through time and meditation on your experiences, you will come to understand that you and karma are indistinguishably one. That is to say, everything that happens to you is a function of who you are and what you think, feel and do. It will slowly dawn on you that everything which happens in your life is part of a meaningful and purposeful pattern.

In time, with this realisation comes freedom from bondage to fear and desire. All along the path to the final stage of enlightenment, you will still have the capacity to experience fear and desire. However, through meditation, you can free yourself from attachment to fear and desire.

This freedom from attachment comes from realising that everything that happens in your life, everything, without exception, has meaning and purpose. All fear is relatively illusory, because what is happening, or will happen, is structured to teach you a lesson about your own nature. All desire is relatively illusory, because the conditions of your life will supply you with all you truly need to understand your own nature, which is the true nature of reality.

As your work in meditation develops, and your practical experience expands, you will experience a growing capacity for fearlessness and desirelessness in the face of reality. Reality is not to be feared, because you and reality are one. Trust what happens, however fearful, with a calm acceptance of the reality of life and death. Reality is not to be desired, because you and reality are one. Accept what you receive from life and have no doubt that it will be sufficient.

Put simply, whatever is happening will happen as it occurs; avoid letting your fear and desire interfere with the course of events. To develop your capacity for fearlessness and desirelessness, Live and Act throughout your life. Think long and deeply on this.

6.6 Why is it crucially important to forgive?

In your life it can happen that you are wronged – unfairly, unjustly and apparently without rhyme or reason. Your sense of injury, in such a situation, is acute and very often considerably justified. If your pain is deep, and your sense of having been wronged is considerable, you may feel it is impossible, indeed stupid, to forgive one who has so clearly and unjustly mistreated you.

Be clear: when such situations occur in your life, you are being tested by the process that is reality. The operator, structuring the situation to create your pain and sorrow, is the implacable law of karma. Whether you are able to forgive, or not, will significantly determine the shape of your life.

Christianity teaches the moral necessity for forgiveness. The supreme example of forgiveness, in our Western cultures, is set by Jesus accepting and forgiving the suffering of his crucifixion, so that the prophecies of his culture might be fulfilled, and primitive peoples raised to an ethically-based civilization. The secular Implicate Technology teaching of the clear setting face to face with reality deals only with the mechanics of the process of forgiveness – the morality of each situation is dealt with by your responding positively to the promptings of your karma.

The mechanics of the process of forgiveness are simple. If you remain attached to your suffering, and are unable to forgive, you will continue to incur negative karma. If you forgive the person or persons who wronged you, you will be relieved from the weight and burden of your accumulated negative karma, according to the degree of your forgiveness.

If you refuse to forgive the wrongs done to you, you will remain bound to the pattern of pain and sorrow which has brought about such a significant opportunity in your life. If you refuse to forgive, you are reinforcing your commitment to unenlightened behaviour. Reality will so structure itself that the opportunities to forgive will continue until you learn the lesson—this means you will continue to suffer through the workings of your karma.

To commit an act of genuine forgiveness is to release yourself from bondage to a specific pattern of pain and sorrow in your life. To forgive is to confirm your commitment to enlightenment, to affirm your determination to act in accordance with the flow of reality. Now reality will so structure itself, because you have learnt an important lesson, that your life moves on to the next lesson. This does not mean the end of your pain and sorrow; it simply means an opportunity to move closer to enlightenment.

The act of forgiveness is simplicity itself. Words alone are not forgiveness. Reality is beyond mere words such as: “I forgive you”.

For the forgiveness to be a genuine release from the burden of accumulated negative karma, it must involve a sincere stepping away from attachment to your pain and sorrow. Mere words may fool other people; they can never fool karma. Within yourself, you must become committed to detachment from your suffering – only then does the genuine act of forgiveness take place.

The first step in the sincere act of forgiveness is to become detached from your negative emotional responses. Calm, slow, meditative breathing will help you to achieve this. Think about this teaching in the context of your own life, long and carefully.

The second step in the sincere act of forgiveness is to convey the fact that you have forgiven to the person or persons who have wronged you. This can be conveyed in simple words, when and if a suitable opportunity arises. What you have to say, according to circumstances, is some variation on this theme: “These things happen. I was hurt, but we can all learn from experience”.

Do not, foolishly, believe that a genuine act of forgiveness will cause your pain to disappear rapidly, nor that your life will suddenly be filled with what you desire as a reward. The consequence of a sincere act of forgiveness is to release you from the burden of your accumulated negative karma. The true benefit you derive, freed from attachment to your pain and sorrow, is to be set clearly face to face with your experience of reality. In this way, you progress along the path to enlightenment.