What do you say after the search of lifetimes has ended?

For me, as for many people, enlightenment has always been a destination the end of the road. Whenever someone asked me to define my highest goal in life, I always said ‘enlightenment’. I could never see beyond that. I was so attached to the seeking, the questing, the journeying, what was there to do with my life afterwards? Who would I be if I weren’t always seeking?

No wonder it took so long! While I craved enlightenment, some part of me also resisted it. Enlightenment is a warrior’s path, I realize now. You search, you struggle, you fight to get there. And when you finally do, you’re dead!

Who dies? After enlightenment I realized it is only the ‘self’ which dies – the little fixated self that was forever seeking, urging, comparing, judging, never allowing itself to be still because it was afraid that somehow life would pass by with nothing to show for it.

What did I know of life before? Even though I had been on a spiritual path for a long time, I had still very much been identified with one little fixation in the boundless flow of life that I called “me” – the me that felt so unworthy sometimes, and was always yearning for more, the self that felt so powerless and was always holding on to what it knew, the self that felt so small it had to force the universe to fit into its own little concepts of it.

This little “me” had tried so desperately to control everything in my life! Yet, what did I know of the brilliance of life, the endlessly creative rhythms of the universe that were constantly beating through my heartbeat in every moment of existence? In constantly trying to control my life I had only succeeded in separating myself from the river that was constantly seeking to carry me home.

How did I come to the end of the search? In a small ashram in south India, there is an avatar named Kalki. People call him a ‘mukti avatar’, and his life mission is to give enlightenment to the world. He says that enlightenment is a neurobiological process, and that all it takes is a little adjustment in the brain, which then allows the cosmic energies to flow through and dissolve the concept we have of a ‘self’, which in fact is only an illusion of perception.

This happens through a process known as the ‘diksha’, or the transfer of divine energy, as the ‘dasajis’ (Kalki’s disciples) place their hands on your head and allow cosmic energies to channel through. This energy is programmed to lead to enlightenment. Many people experience a golden ball descending into their heads, and a restructuring of the brain begins to take place.

As this restructuring continues to happen, people begin to enter into deep states of silence, or joy, or cosmic consciousness. At a certain point, they discover that there is no more a reference point called the ‘self’. All that remains is the vast ocean of consciousness. The drop dissolves into the ocean, or perhaps, the ocean dissolves into the drop. All concepts about reality and spirituality dissolve into the direct experience of it.

My wife, Grace, had gone through her enlightenment process a few months earlier. Now it was my turn. Along with six others, I was given a series of dikshas to initiate the biological transformation leading to enlightenment. Each one came with its own insights into the fabric of reality. After one of the dikshas I felt my body expanding far, far out into the universe. I felt this expansion, not just in my subtle bodies, but also in my physical body, which felt like it was expanding to ‘become’ the universe.

It was a beautiful, powerful, joyful experience. Although the peak experience subsided after a few hours, I felt a permanent shift in my perceptions of reality. At a certain point in the process, I discovered there was no more a fixed reference point that I could call ‘me’.

It is difficult to find the right words, all the more because it has been less than two weeks at the time of this writing since I completed the process! Over the years I had built up all kinds of concepts about enlightenment, and I found that I would often try and squeeze my experience into one of these concepts. I finally came to accept that it isn’t something the mind can wrap itself around. Enlightenment is the realization that there is no ‘self’ to become enlightened. When there is no fixed self, no permanent identity that moves in linear sequence from birth to death, then you become an empty sky, which all the winds of creation can blow through.

Just because I am not identified with a fixed self does not mean I am some blob of consciousness floating around without an identity. I am still Kiara, except that Kiara is no longer caught up in a treadmill of mental chatter and noise. Many things continue as before. I still have the same hopes and dreams for life, but what has changed is my motivations.

I am no longer struggling to be at peace, struggling to make relationships work, struggling to change the world. It is an effortless thing, based on the recognition that I am not in charge anymore, that there is a divine perfection at play that is far bigger than my capacity to understand or control it, and that I am simply a hollow reed in service to this divine play. I’ve always known that, and felt that, but now I find myself living from this place moment by moment. My energy levels are higher, my mind more efficient, the synchronicities stronger, and what felt like effort before is now joy.

The most notable change is the deep silence I feel throughout the day. The silence does not depend on external factors. It does not matter whether I am talking or writing or thinking or meditating. This silence is here to stay. It is the undercurrent of everything I now experience. It does not even matter if I am in the bustle of Indian traffic, or listening to the blaring of loudspeakers in every marketplace. The silence is never far away.

I have had a practice of meditating with the ‘sound current’, a tone experienced inside the head, which facilitates access to deeper states of consciousness. I had never been able to get beyond a certain depth, however. Now, in this deep silence, the sound current takes me into vast realms of wonder.

I experience this silence as the absence of ‘static’ in the mind. It is like exchanging a pair of crackling speakers with a studio quality sound system. When I pay attention to this silence, it opens up the door to an endless creative flow, and I feel an immense joy in expressing from it. I understand now what Simon and Garfunkel meant by ‘the sounds of silence’!

Instead of a single, continuous stream of identity, I now experience ‘myself’ as bubbles of consciousness rising and falling from the silence underneath. An emotion or a thought comes up, remains for a while, then disappears into the silence. Another emotion or thought comes up, remains for a while, and again disappears into silence. When the mind is needed, it is extremely focused and efficient. When it isn’t needed, I return into the silence, and ‘de-clutch’ from it.

These bubbles of consciousness could be anything. It surely does not mean I am free from frustration or anger or hurt or pain. I realize that I had a misconception that enlightenment means instant saintliness, or freedom from negative emotions. No, all these emotions still come and go as before. The difference is that where previously that would become my identity, now I simply watch them come up, and watch them disappear. Sometimes they come up and stay for a while, sometimes they disappear very quickly. I no longer feel the need to judge them or change them. I am no longer identified with saintliness!

Another misconception about enlightenment I had carried is that there would be an instant flowering of psychic gifts and inner vision, or that I would forever dwell in cosmic consciousness. I even fantasized about going out like Christ and healing everybody. This has not been so. I notice, however, that my craving for these things has disappeared in the recognition that all things come in their right season. With the narrow identity of a fixed self gone, I see that I am a channel for the entire universe to flow through, and that these gifts and states will come and go as needed. There is no sense of lack here, no sense that I have to hold on to an image or concept of how it should all look like.

There is no more ‘trying’ to meditate. Or to say it differently, all my life is now a meditation. Much of my need to meditate earlier was to stop the clutter in my mind so that I could attune to a deeper vastness. This is my normal state now, and I am able now to experience a deeper state of consciousness in two minutes of stillness than after an hour of meditation before this experience. I know there is a lot further to go, but I am no longer craving these states like I did before. This moment is profound enough! Every moment is.

I had always seen enlightenment as the end of my spiritual journey, the ultimate in human attainment. I now see that it is merely another beginning. Enlightenment is both an event and a process. The event corresponds to the restructuring of the brain following the ‘diksha’. It is also an ever-deepening process. Consciousness has its own intelligence, its own cycles, and it is an endless journey of discovery.

There is a sweetness to this state that is extremely joyful. I am told, however, that at some point I should expect to go through a ‘dark night of the soul’, a period similar to what Jesus experienced in his 40 days in the wilderness, as he ‘wrestled with Satan’ prior to embarking on his mission. The dark night could last for several months, a time during which the unconscious mind would become completely cleared out.

Perhaps it is similar to what the Australian aborigines and shamans in various traditions refer to as ‘dismemberment’, in which one’s entire foundation of being is erased. This is a deeper stage, necessary in order to de-clutch from the collective mind of humanity. It is from this state, says Kalki, that Jesus was able to effectively realize his mission.

Kalki says there are as many kinds of enlightenment as there are people on Earth. He emphasizes that it is a biological event, and describes the possibility of anchoring this state into the collective human consciousness, which he believes can lead to ‘mass enlightenment’ by 2012. This date, interestingly, also coincides with the ending of the Mayan calendar.

The idea of a mass enlightenment feels very joyful to me. Through my study of the Mayan calendar and various mystical and scientific research, I had come to see the possibilities for a massive awakening as a planetary species. I no longer see this as just a possibility. During my experience of cosmic consciousness I felt a cellular certainty that this is where we are headed, despite all the political dramas and environmental traumas that we now face and will continue to face as this Age draws to a close.

Since Kalki’s public mission began, close to a year ago, many thousands of people have become enlightened, and all kinds of miracles of healing and grace are being reported from all over the world! As more people become enlightened, the ‘morphogenetic fields’ of enlightenment will become stronger and stronger, and gradually begin to overcome the ‘morphogenetic fields’ of oppression, manipulation, greed, and deception that are so prevalent in the world today.

The world is a dream in the mind of God, who dreams through us moment by moment in a continuing dance of Creation. It is a beautiful dance, and it is an exciting time to be alive.