Since I am suggesting in this series of talks that the ultimate role of art is self-cultivation, it begs the question of self-cultivation to what end? The process of self-cultivation is enlightening at every level, of course, that is the whole point regardless of whether it is individual or collective enhancement, but definitions of enlightenment differ.

We can be enlightened by an invitation to a function that tells us what time it starts or suggests appropriate attire. The polar opposite meaning, with Enlightenment capitalized, refers to the paradigm-shifting, utterly transformative, ecstatic, transcendence of self, ego and the stage of time. This full realization of Enlightenment, this other way of knowing, provides the necessary meta-perspective for the intellect to recognize both is role and its limitations, and begin to integrate both ways of knowing to make the intellectual mode far more efficient in making sense of it all. By directly experiencing the nature of the realm of non-duality and fully understanding the distinction between it and that of duality - the intellectual way of knowing that dominates our every-day lives - we gain unlimited clarity.

I dealt at greater length with our two ways of knowing, their incompatibility, but complementarity and how they function when united in The Riven Reality of Consciousness.  Here I deal with the Enlightenment experience itself.

The problem with doing so is that, until directly experienced, it can appear to the entrenched intellect as suspicious, even delusional. The fact is, however, that the experience of the transcendent mode has been so well documented globally throughout history, and with such commonality of experience, that to deny it as real would also seem delusional. Within our intellectual domain there is another main dichotomy between rationality and faith, their incompatibility causing conflict and confusion. When they come into conflict, which should govern? Faith in a trans-universal prime mover (as in monotheism) or the rationality of the human mind. It is impossible to prove whether or not God exists, as it is impossible to prove whether or not a trans-intellectual, directly accessible state of consciousness exists. Both lie beyond intellectual reach wherein, alone, the concept of proof is meaningful. But there is a salient difference between them which is open to rationality, albeit if only as circumstantial evidence.

Throughout recorded history, the intellectual approach to meaning is defined by a constant and ongoing refinement of understanding. In religion, philosophy, science and art, prevailing conviction is in a state of constant re-assessment; it is defined by change. In cosmology, for instance, we shifted from a flat to a spherical world, both at the centre of the cosmos, the sun orbiting around it. This was overturned with the advent of a helio-centric solar-system, then a growing understanding of it galactic context and eventually to our present understanding of Earth as a minor planet, one of untold billions, at the fringe of one of equally untold billions of galaxies. In the West we have seen religious beliefs change from animism, to polytheism to monotheism, which, in turn, has split into numerous branches, with many radically different interpretations of the same fundamental idea. It is the nature of the intellectual domain to be constantly refining its understanding; that is its role, it is precisely how it works. Throughout this evolution, time and time again we have had to abandon previous ideas the moment they are proven no longer consistent with current data.

The opposite is true of our other way of knowing. Multiple reports of the experience throughout recorded history, once stripped of their local, socio-cultural and religious interpretations in the intellectual domain, agree on the core experience: the dissolution of ego and self into a higher mode of universal, undifferentiated consciousness; a sense of all-encompassing luminescence (of which the halo is a pan cultural symbol); an overwhelming sense of comprehension and release from all existential concerns, including death; and unbounded joy that infuses remaining lifespan.

In the seventeenth century, Nathanial Lee amusingly summed up sanity with his ‘They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.’ The nature of reality is arrived at by consensus, and if we are faced with two convictions, neither provable, where the one is constantly changing its mind, while the other is millennially consistent, across cultures, and beyond the possibility in many cases of them influencing each other, it seems perverse to dismiss it out of hand. It is also worth noting that until the creeping hegemony of the West in recent centuries, half the world believed in the reality of the transcendent mode, based their lives, philosophies and religions upon it, and recognized it as the goal not only for individuals, but for evolving consciousness collectively.

Conviction one way or the other is unlikely to arise out of a paragraph or two in single essay, but it is worth keeping an open mind.

My focus here is on the Enlightenment experience, so it is worth offering my credentials in dealing with it. I am not just dealing with a theoretical concept here; I have directly experienced it, as previously published.¹ I repeat it here, although it remains, for obvious reasons, fundamentally unchanged.

In March 1983, I was seated on the prow of a small, rented motorboat, moored in a remote canal (klong) on the sunset side of the Chao Phrya, the river that is the breathing heart of Bangkok. I was klonging, a favourite pursuit over many years involving afternoon and sunset explorations of the rural wonders of this Venice of the East. I was sitting cross-legged on a pile of very comfortable cushions, watching an enormous lizard climb a palm tree as the sun boiled downwards towards the horizon. At the back of the boat, my regular boat-boy had gone to sleep crouched over the wheel, his default mode whenever not either plying his craft or tinkering with the string, bits of wire and chewing-gum that had become an integral part of his ancient diesel engine. Often on such forays into wonder over the years, all involving the same craft and boat-boy, and the same unreliable engine, he had proved utterly useless, if equally charming, and as often as not led me up a coalmine of a Klong while the sun set majestically elsewhere. On this occasion, to my surprise, he had got it just right. It was as if all his previous mishaps had merely been preparatory for this one perfect, essential moment.   

I had a problem to resolve, which is why I was there on this particular occasion. As a keen collector of modern Chinese paintings I had become involved in the first symposium on the subject in Hong Kong later that same year. To the astonishment of the company organizing it, the top academic experts invited had all agreed to participate – among the perks for academics are freebies to exotic locations to share their knowledge. I had been co-opted into putting on an exhibition of my collection, for which I had agreed to write a catalogue. I had been struggling with the latter in a mild state of apprehension as I would be writing for an audience of the world’s leading experts, and doing so as a relative beginner and lacking their academic training. Making little progress, I decided on a few days Klonging in Bangkok to clear the mind - it had so often worked before.

It occurred to me, as the lizard slowly climbed, that my problem was that I was trying to explain in words something the essence of which existed far beyond them – it was my first insight into this possibility. What happened then took place faster than I can recount it. Without pausing to think about what I was doing, I decided to imagine sweeping all those wretched little words, even the ones I could spell, into the back of my mind and slamming shut a mental door on them. As soon as I did, it happened - the utterly joyous, revelatory, outrageous, transcendental, full-on experience which is known as Enlightenment.

Other than a barely adequate but amiably pleasant sojourn at a co-educational boarding school for eleven years followed by some commercial training, my background was mostly in Oriental rather than Western culture. My father was one of the leading dealers in Chinese art in London in the mid-century and we were surrounded at home by Chinese art and books on Chinese art. By the time my mental boat came home, so to speak, although the actual boat remained firmly moored to a clump of canal-side bamboo, I was familiar with Oriental respect for the experience. As a student, dealer, collector and chronicler of Chinese art for more than twenty years, I was well aware that the Enlightenment experience is at the heart of Daoism and the predominant Chinese and Japanese versions of Buddhism (Chan , Zen ). I recognized the luminous experience for what it was and appreciated its importance, so instead of it becoming no more than an amazing glimpse, momentary respite from the real world, or a supposed religious revelation, I was able to enjoy it full on and in all its glory, as a permanent, paradigm shift granting access to the full bandwidth of consciousness.

I have no idea precisely how long the experience itself lasted in the parallel world of incremental time, but the sun was only approaching the horizon when I slammed that door, and by the time I re-opened it to allow all those little words to come tumbling back into my head, squabbling noisily, the sun had set, the night was purple, the stars were twinkling, the lizard had climbed down the tree and headed for the nearest lizard bar, and I was a ‘new man,’ as the expression goes.

What happened? Well, that’s not so easy to explain. But for what must have been more than half an hour, possibly as long as an hour, I became  the light. It wasn’t a separate thing of me and  light, definition and separation are incompatible with the experience itself, they can only be applied retrospectively and with difficulty – hence the frequent use of analogies and metaphors by those with direct experience. I can only describe it as undifferentiated luminosity. I can’t even explain that anything happened, other than the act of becoming the light, since it wasn’t until afterwards, with the intellect regained, and all those words reordered from their stumbling confusion standing to attention, that I could even consider, and begin to ‘make sense’ of it. But what was immediately obvious is that somehow, while I was  the light, all those tricky little life questions, the doubt, the ‘what’s-it-all-about’ angst, all those fears and uncertainties dissolved into a single, infinitely elegant perspective that seemed to be the answer to everything. Not in words, not in fragments, not over time, but as a unified whole.

Whoosh! …but without the ‘Whoosh.’

As an analogy, imagine taking a tiny, personal computer containing just individual, limited experience and understanding and instantaneously uniting it with a cosmic equivalent with the entire consciousness of the universe stored in it. That might explain the light: it’s going to be quite an energetic process absorbing that lot in an undifferentiated mass.

It is very easy to see how such an experience could be interpreted as an audience with God for the religiously inclined. If bought up in a culture that believed in monotheism, taking it (and oneself) seriously enough to be willing to entertain the belief that it was you, yes, you , He had personally selected for His purpose, it could easily unbalance an over-reaching ego - once ego was regained, that is, along with intellect, its sibling twin. Fortunately my pleasantly inadequate education was religious only in the sense that the school had a chapel, although mostly used, as far as I was concerned, for xylophone practise (don’t ask) and snogging sessions, since it was one of the few places in the entire school, other than the trunk and suitcase storage loft, where you could be reasonably certain of not being disturbed – other than occasionally on a Sunday morning.

It would be all too easy to come back from that moment of luminosity and overlay it with all sorts of socio-cultural prejudice. It is just begging to be brushed down, saddled up, and ridden out blazing with faith and distorted reason in search of a posse and a clutch of villains to chase. You could just dive into the memory of that light the moment it was over, rip it apart, and come out dressed as an angel. But I was lucky enough to be aware, and respectful of the state, so all I did was burst into tears of joy while I began to process the extraordinary insight, the new perspective that suddenly had the potential to make utter sense of everything I had ever experienced, ever doubted.

I sat there for a while doing my best to raise the level of the Chao Phrya river, revelling in the sense of utter, even if inexplicable, comprehension from the new perspective. I stayed on board for the rest of the evening, bathed in the afterglow of light and in the balmy, deep purple, star-studded, crescent-moon-bejewelled Bangkok night, laughing, tears pouring down my cheeks as the awesome nature of the experience kept washing over me in waves of wonder and delight - and no doubt confirming to the boat-boy the local belief that most farang  (we foreigners) were truly unhinged.

Everything just fell into place. The next morning, awash with wonder, I read my newspaper upside down just because nothing in it really made any substantial difference. I went home a couple of days later and banged out the catalogue in a week. It didn’t matter anymore, the pressure was off, no fear remained; I just picked the paintings I liked best and said what I felt like saying about them. I also realized that my fear was probably misguided in the first place, since none of the academics present was remotely likely to read what I had written.²

That moment lights up my life still, informed everything since, and has led directly to the theory of art and its role in evolving consciousness I propose in these essays and, indeed, for a book on the nature of religion and consciousness that is in progress. It also pierced for me the mystery in Chinese art and culture that had so intrigued and puzzled me. Suddenly I got it. I could look at a literati painting, or calligraphy, read Chinese poetry and Daoist texts feeling like an insider, no longer peering in through a crack in the door hoping for glimpses. Finally I could understand it all like a Daoist - I had experienced the Dao. I also realized that once experienced, what it is called becomes utterly irrelevant which led me to ponder the nature of religion and our other vehicles of evolving consciousness. By separating the Source from its intellectual interpretation and understand that they are two separate aspects not to be conflated, it all became clear.

Although my background did not encourage me to be diverted by the religious potential of the experience, I did initially, and mercifully briefly, have the born-again urge to ram it all down people’s throats, but I soon realized that they were beginning to look at me strangely, so I buttoned my lip other than in appropriate company. I realized, of course, since there can be no irrefutable proof of the experience, that I might as well have reported that I had seen a pink kangaroo. Had I done so, however, I would have certainly doubted it myself and expected anyone else to dismiss it as illusion.
Apart from its immediate benefits it led to a prolonged study of mystical experience across the world and throughout recorded history, where I encountered endless confirmations that it was not only shared by many people, who, essentially, described it in similar terms, but that it was widely recognized as a life-changing, positive experience. There was no mention, in all my sources either before or afterwards, however, of any encounter with a pink kangaroo.

I discovered that the entrenched intellect finds any claim to Enlightenment to be either illusionary or elitist, in that the claim seems to be that it is the achievement of something super-special, setting one loftily apart. Well, it is super special, but in my case was far from an achievement as I had made no effort whatsoever to achieve anything. I did not even investigate meditation until subsequently. While transformational, and joyous, it was just a random event; for which I shall be profoundly grateful for the rest of my life, but which is hardly admirable as an effort, as, for instance a Ph. D, is admirable. It is only admirable as a result, in essence a bit like winning a lottery.

Not only was no achievement involved, it was not even aspirational since it had never occurred to me to realize for myself a state that I understood to some extent from my upbringing. It is perennially difficult to explain anything to do with Enlightenment, and any explanation is likely to lead to misunderstandings, as it has over the millennia. One of the problems of the duality between the Source and intellectual interpretations of it, is that so often the definite, binary answers preferred by the intellect, simply can’t be applied. The answer to many intellectual questions asked of the trans-intellectual way of knowing is ‘well, yes and no’ depending upon which domain you are talking about. This remains true in judging the experience; it is both the most important thing that ever happened to me, and nothing special. It both lifts me to dwell beyond the gods, not that I had taken them at all seriously beforehand, and makes little material difference.

For those who are sceptical, we might offer the evidence of glimpses of this other, undifferentiated way of knowing which are far, far more common than the full experience. The extraordinary power of music, as the least inhibited by its medium of all the arts, commonly offers such glimpses. They are readily accessible to all, and illustrate the important role art plays as a conduit between our two realms of understanding. We refer to such experience, appropriately, as being ‘carried away,’ as indeed we are, carried beyond the intellectual mode to experience the music directly and at its most transformative. Momentarily we find our chattering minds quieted, we no longer have any sense of separate self or environment, the constant soundtrack of existence playing in our minds is muted and unify with the music. The same also happens frequently enough in the face of the wonders of nature, with a glorious sunset, or dawn outing for instance. Whatever the trigger, the experience takes us, even if only momentarily, beyond the separate self, beyond the ego. The deeper the glimpse, the more the experience of the transcendent becomes transformative. The full-on Enlightenment experience is the extreme case of such glimpses when, instead of being immediately dragged back to the intellect as governing, the shift in perspective is permanent and paradigm shifting.

Because of the pervasive denial of the transcendent mode in western culture, this common experience, easily accessed glimpses into the alternative realm of reality beyond the stage of time often go unrecognized. The most entrenched of intellects can enjoy them then dismiss them as no more than brief, relaxing moments. They are, of course, but the reason they are disproportionately relaxing, and inspiring, is precisely because they are glimpses of the alternative realm of reality we seek, even if our intellectual inclination is to deny as illusory the full-on, transformational Enlightenment experience.

Even if we dismiss them as no more than momentary breaks from our daily routines, we value such moments and seek to repeat them. They are therapeutic, regenerative, inspirational, fulfilling and disproportionately restful given their usual brevity. But because such experience lifts one momentarily beyond the confines of both time and place, a brief moment can have the regenerative potential of a month in the Caribbean.

If we recognize these common glimpses as an invitation to the wider potential of the transcendent realm of reality, we will have more respect for the glimpses and the realm to which they grant access. We will be more open to its acceptance as something real rather than delusional or threatening. The full-on Enlightenment experience makes it quite clear that such moments threaten only the intellectual tyrant, not the intellect as a valuable tool. You can’t sensibly threaten a tool kit, although dear old Basil Fawlty in the spectacularly funny but frustrating episode of Fawlty Towers  entitled ‘Gourmet Night’ did just that with a leafy branch as he berated his car, giving it a good talking to after it had broken down at a crucial moment in the escalating culinary lunacy caused by his pretentions.

Sir Alister Hardy investigated thousands of such experiences publishing the results in his The Spiritual Nature of Man: A Study of Contemporary Religious Experience  which I read many years ago as part of my own investigation.³ He compiled a database that now languishes in the University of Wales, Lampeter. Hardy’s focus was religious, which influenced both his selection for publication and his title, but even the edited selection indicates the broad swath of such experience and the equally broad interpretive possibilities.

In any culture that values Enlightenment and aims directly and efficiently towards it, such as in China, records of it are legion. Hanshan Deqing (1546-1623)⁴ records that after arriving at a mountain monastery, and asking the monk Miao Feng why he didn’t find the constant noise of roaring wind and rushing water disturbing, received the answer: ‘You should listen without judgment, concentrating on the act of merely hearing so that no thoughts of any kind can arise in your mind.’ Hanshan Deqing went every day to a wooden bridge to try to master this technique until, one day, he reports, as he became able to step beyond the intellect: ‘my thoughts ceased to surge like water. The noise and my existence were gone. Serenity enveloped my mind. After that, whenever I heard a sound that previously would have annoyed me, all I had to do was concentrate on the sound without mentally grasping it, and I would be lulled into the same serene state… One day, while I was walking, I happened to stop and stand still, and in that blissful moment I entered samadhi  [Enlightenment]. Soon I ceased to be aware of anything except a great brightness…’

He likened this brightness to a great mirror, and it is worth recording what he wrote when he returned to his hut, as it sums up our two realms of reality rather well:

In Chinese culture such records of aspiring to or attaining the transcendent mode are manifold from existing records.

How we interpret transformative experience is an issue separate from the experience itself. All such experience can only be interpreted after the event, within the intellectual domain. Only then can we decide what happened and what it meant, and proceed to apply its perspective, to everyday life. That is the third phase of the Enlightenment process: aspiration, Realization and integration. But any such post-rationalizations are doomed to inadequacy as they can only be a fragmentary, intellectual explanation of what lies beyond the realm of fragments and intellection; they can only stand for the Reality, allegorically, analogically and metaphorically. Trying to adequately explain it is like trying to sculpt smoke.

The experience of this transcendent mode is completing. After a lifetime of tending to see things from the perspective of the egoic self with all its personal and, therefore, relatively petty concerns, one steps off the stage of time into a domain beyond ego and self. Responses to the experience over the millennia, and pan-culturally, suggest that by integrating the two modes of consciousness, by infusing meaning with Meaning, the intellect becomes not only profoundly wiser but far more effective. Integrated consciousness tends to radiate harmony, but it also deals with the realities the problems that life throws up, far, far more effectively. The trans-egoic perspective tends towards harmlessness because most harmful practices emanate from the ego, a belief in the importance and autonomy of the separate self, and its benefits and interpretations.

Given time for such experience to become both more common and better understood, we might cautiously hope that the inevitable dark side of intellect will be gradually tamed, harmony spread, and perhaps the unlikely paradise monotheists dream of in the afterlife come closer to reality in this one. We see convincing signs of these possibilities in cultures where the transcendent state is recognized, aspired to, and informs the highest levels of the culture.

My own experience and subsequent study lead to the conviction that historically the experience is shared by a large number of people in all cultures. Regardless of how it is interpreted, it is essentially described in similar terms and is transformative, whatever its local interpretation may lead to. This unanimity of the essential experience, regardless of socio-cultural raiment in its intellectual interpretation, is impressive for something we are claiming as the realm of Meaning.

We cannot prove beyond a doubt that the Enlightened are not involved in a millennial, global, collective delusion. Atheists claim the same for monotheists who, in turn, believe that atheists are tragically mistaken. Our minds are uniquely adapted to living up to our expectations and desires in interpreting what the senses encounter. But the core consistency in the experience is impressive, even if we include those records of it which were then diverted by monotheism – where it is not the experience of encountering something important beyond the self, but the subsequent interpretation that differs radically.

One last personal incident is worth recording, just to hammer home the susceptibility to subjective interpretation of the intellect. While drafting my forthcoming book on the nature of religion throughout the summer months of 2017, I was in the Sussex countryside. On more clement mornings, as the rising sun filtered through the branches of ancient trees, I would walk one of many possible indirect routes past the pines and maples, yew trees and oaks of an ancient garden to a swimming pool, always deserted apart from the occasional crested newt, or careless, baby frog. Whichever unnecessarily long route I took would end up taking me along the banks of a lake where a lone heron would rise elegantly into the air and disappear the moment it saw me settling onto the boat-house veranda for a few moments of stillness as the morning warmth lifted moisture off the surface of the lake like incense smoke. By the time I reached the pool and slipped out of my bathrobe I was usually in a state of meditative calm. As I began my usual forty lengths of the long pool (ok, it might not have been exactly forty, but working on a book on religion such biblical tropes stick in the mind) within the first few laps ideas would start to pop into my head resolving the problems or doubts left over from the previous day’s writing when I had become tired and less focused as the day wore on and concentration flagged. Flashes of inspiration as to the way forward, or another avenue to explore would strike me with inspiring and sudden insights, often coming into my mind fully formed. Most were sufficiently powerful arising out of the theoretical perspective I was dealing with that there was no question of my forgetting them, so I could concentrate on the process rather than on memorising its results. One morning a particularly useful and revelatory realization came to me as I turned back to swim towards the East and the sunrise. The distant clouds parted, and the sun shone directly through the thinning foliage of an ancient oak. Suddenly the upper part of the tree was ablaze, a brilliant golden circle of light. It was as if a voice inside me, clear as a bell in the quiet morning air, SPAKE THUS… Had I been an illiterate seer long ago, perhaps in an altered state through meditation or ascetic self-deprivation, pondering how to come closer to God rather than how to proceed with the next chapter, I would almost certainly have interpreted my experiences as divine revelation of some sort. I would also probably have convinced myself that instead of an inspirational moment drawn from the sub-conscious to resolve an immediate problem of my own, accompanied by an entirely natural meteorological event, I was hearing the word of God from a blazing oak; that I was blessed, the chosen one. In a swimming pool in Sussex in the twenty-first century it was easy enough to recognize the process as no more than a creative flash of inspiration combined with a standard metrological event.

Hugh Moss
At the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat.