Enlightenment is the difference between a person who perceives their reality through the senses, and one who, instead, understands that the senses can be deceiving, and adjusts their lifestyle to compensate.

In a sense, most of mankind, although perceiving the world through their senses, actually lives as though they were blind, deaf and mute, which suggests that the senses can be more of a hinderance to evolution than a benefit. It was not so long ago that the phrase, 'deaf, dumb and blind', was used to describe the disabled person's gutteral attempts at communicating in a world they perceived to be quite different from the reality of most of their brethren. The use of the word 'dumb' to describe the inability to speak would however better define the able-bodied person's inability to understand the reality of the situation.

The disabled person who cannot hear or see may have all of the physical attributes to speak as anyone else, but without the other senses to form words through perception, they might as well have no tongue at all. The senses are a person's contact with reality, which becomes 'reality' as they perceive it through their senses; which may not be the 'reality' of another person, whose senses have brought them to a different perception.

If you give a blind and deaf man an apple and he tastes it, he can grunt his approval at the smell, taste and feel of the fruit, but he cannot tell you he likes it, or hear you tell him what it is. He can only identify the fruit by what senses he has. If the next day he would like to have another apple, and his grunting indicates to you that he is hungry, and you then give him an orange, he would toss it aside and grunt his disapproval. His senses have alerted him to the fact that this was not an apple, or at least not what he thought an apple to be. But suppose you then give him an apple that came from a different tree, which was more sour than the one with which he was he was familiar. The feel of the skin and the smell would tell him that it was an apple, but when he tasted it he would once again toss it aside assuming it was not an apple. His reality is not yours. You know this to be an apple, yet he would argue with that perception. Most of mankind experiences life through this perception of their senses, and are as easily confused and misguided by them as any disabled person. It is our natural state before we become enlightened to this fact. Hense Plato's 'allegory of the cave'.

The struggle after enlightenment of this reality will be in how to apply our knowledge to our new reality. How can we look at an apple and understand its reality when we now know that what is an apple to us, may not be the same apple to someone else. What we see, smell and taste becomes what our own senses tell us that it is, but someone else who may smell it differently would have a completely different perception of it. Their sense of taste may find it far more sour than our own. If their sense of smell is more sensitive than ours, they might enjoy a more heightened sense of the fruit than what our reality of it becomes. In this enlightened stage a person must now ask themselves if this apple is an apple because they perceive it as such, or because an apple is just an apple. Why? Where did they come to this conclusion that it is an apple? The deaf, blind mute does not know it is an apple. They know it as a smooth textured round thing that tastes and smells a particular way. Noone can tell them it is an apple. Thus we have the reality of man's world. His existence is an apple because of what he has been conditioned by his senses and his fellow man to believe. Somewhere he learned that it was an apple, and learned this through his ability to apply his senses of hearing, speaking, tasting , smelling, and seeing.

So here we have the enlightened person experiencing the ability to now question and discern the reality of their sensual experience and interaction with life around them. Through this advanced stage of development they are now able to apply logic and comprehend the matters of their existence with a greater degree of understanding. They have become aware of another world; a different reality. One which they are now aware has been defined to them by their senses and the defintions of their fellowman. Someone has told them this was an apple, and someone has told them that this was the world. Now, being enlightened to this new reality, they understand that existence is an individual perception and can be very different from one perception to another. Reality can actually be altered if one has the ability to comprehend the perception of it and willingly alter those perceptions. In other words, the ability to teach your brain that what it thinks it sees and smells is not what you are going to accept as reality anymore. You will now think with your mind, and rationalize your perceptions, instead of simply giving in to them. Now when someone hands you a fruit and tells you it is an apple, and even though all of your senses want to tell you that is what it is, you will teach yourself to question that assumption until you have further examined it and applied your intellect and logic. You are no longer just eating the apple; you are now devouring every aspect of it.

You have become aware that eating an apple is not just a physical bodily function of satisfying hunger and taste, bit that you are now satisfying something else; yourself. The enlightened one has become attuned to their inner self. They have become aware that there is a need inside of them that requires more than physical satisfaction. They now understand that this inner self seeks more than the communication of language to know what an apple is. They must now know that it is an apple for themselves. Self! The spirit of a man. The enlightened one understands that the life force inside of them that uses these senses, and applies this new ability of comprehension, is also their identity, and the the location of their logic, and the center of their awareness. Self! The inner core of their true reality, from which the reality of their existence stems. A reality that no other individual can share. A reality so intimate and personal that only by experiencing it can it be expressed, and than that even expressing it does not make it a reality to someone else. Reality has become our own personal creation. No other living creature will experience it the way that we can now create it for ourselves. Our enlightenment has enabled us to create our own existence. We are now able to comprehend how our interaction with the creation around us is now affected by our enlightened perceptions of it. And now we can take those who have been imprisoned in Plato's allegorical cave and reveal the shadows to them.

But what of their pain? What about the shock to their perceptions? Are they able and ready to be enlightened? Can they be simply taken from the shadows into the bright light in their state? We may feel a need to save them from their ignorance, and reveal what we know to be the truth, but can we tell a man staring directly into the blinding sun that he should be able to see the world around it. We can tell a man that what he perceives as reality is only shadows of the true reality on the cave wall reflected from the light of the fire, but when he turns and is only blinded by the fire, his sense will tell him to turn back and protect himself.

The further enlightenment of a person tells them that, until a man can overcome their senses, they will not be able to look toward the fire. That step in evolution must be a personal choice based upon a change in perception, and a recognition of their inner self, which will experience the urge and need to look in that direction. Until that alteration of the spirit, and that awareness of self, a man is led and guided by the senses and cannot, and will not, deny them. If you give them an apple and tell them it is an orange they will simply laugh at you. And if you tell them that it is the apple of your world, they will have you committed in theirs.

There is a barrier to communication between the two realities that can only be torn down by self awareness. Language only becomes another log in the dam. One may call the fruit a pomme, while another calls it an apple. Is it a pomme or an apple? How do we reconcile that we are speaking of the same item? Generally we would do so by comparison. Language will become a matter of comparing one's word with another's and applying it to a point of reference. But referencing emotion and personal experience cannot be so easily done. It is simply fact that one reality will not be the same as another reality when they are being compared through sensual evaluation. So how does man communicate between the realities? How do we share the same pathways and enjoy the same gardens and sights and smells? How does one outside of the cave share their world with those inside of the cave?

This is where the enlightened ones come to understand the universality of creation, and that they are the working force behind it. They become aware that there is no such thing as sharing creation, but that there is only creating it as we live and experience it. Reality is only what we choose it to be ourselves, and yet we have no ability to make it a reality for anyone else. We are creating our own reality, and yet everyone else is also doing the same, and it becomes one place in the universe, full of individual realities. Creation is a montage of individual realities all combining to make one universal location. Thus we have the spirit of mind. A knowledge of self that overcomes the physical, and permeates the universe, gathering together in one cosmos of shared creations. The universal mind. The true God. The real world. Thought, becoming intelligence, and self aware, and becoming creation. Evolving through degrees of sensual revelations and enlightenment, and using experienced logic to apply the accumulated knowledge. We are all a part of this universal mind; this universal, and yet very individual and evolving self, and play our part in the creation of this universe.

It is unknown to us where this evolution will take us in the future, but it is obvious to see that there is a continuing advancement in spiritual knowledge that will only continue. Therefore we can logically assume that since we have reached this point of advancement, than it is very likely that others have advanced to stages of development ahead of ours. What abilities and awarenesses that they are capable of can only be imgained. But we can surmise, knowing the differing degree of awareness between enlightened spirits and those who remain trapped in the allegorical caves of Plato, that there could also be such a gulf between those who have advanced beyond our abilities and ourselves. Evolution is evident and unavoidable. That it cannot be accomplished in one human lifespan is obvious. There are too many elders who have not reached enlightenment. And there are too many young people who have reached enlightenment who have not lived long enough in one life to accomplish it. Evolution through many lifespans is evident.

It is also evident that the spiritual is not bound or restricted by the physical. the simple fact that our inner spirit resides in us right now in this present body, tells us that it had to come from somewhere. It tells us without question that there is a place where the spirit resides before it indwells a body, and that obviously tells us that it could also return to that same place at death. This also tells us that if our spirit can dwell in this present body now, that it is than likley that it could do so in the future in another body, and that it has likely also done so in the past. What can be possible now, could certainly have been so in the past, and can be so in the future. These simple logics help us to conclude the liklihood of reincarnation and a spiritual realm that coincides with the visible world we know.

Again we become aware of a universal bond connecting the immaterial with the material, and the spiritual with the physical. Each using the other to progress. A connection where life, and its energy of living, is expressed into billions of realities, all evolving into the one cosmic reality we know as 'Creation', and which many living in the shadows have come to call God.

Sincerely,

Pathfinder