VINEETO: During my process of actualism there was a time when I watched the biography of many people who made it to being famous enough to have a biography report made about them. I wanted to find out what exactly it is that made people successful in what they wanted to achieve in life, be it a gold medal in an Olympic sport or the winner of the Tour de France, be it a successful business entrepreneur or a famous dancer or painter, be it a well-known architect or a renowned author or inventor or, in the spiritual realm of achievements, become an enlightened master. What all these people had in common was a burning passion to be successful at their chosen field of interest and an unwavering determination to do whatever it takes to reach their goal.

RESPONDENT No 23: This shows that likely you have not (yet) understood what a spiritual master is.

VINEETO: I take it then that you have not read Mohan Rajneesh’s autobiography ‘The Golden Childhood’ or any other autobiography or biography from a genuine enlightened person? They all describe, without exception, that they were pursuing enlightenment like all get-out for many years with a strict discipline of meditation, fasting, yoga and other spiritual disciplines and then, when after years of arduous practice they exhaustedly relaxed and gave up control enlightenment happened. Face it, there is no such thing as a free lunch – not even enlightenment happens on its own accord – you’d have to work really, really hard if you wanted to achieve it.

RESPONDENT: Here are 3 cases for consideration that seem to me like ‘genuine enlightenment’ without the typical meditation and preparation that goes along with seeking it.

John Wren-Lewis – http://www.spiritualteachers.org/john_wren_lewis.htm

Meher Baba – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meher_Baba

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As for John Wren-Lewis – he was not a complete novice to religion and spirituality before his near death experience incident. He had developed strong interest in problems of relationship between science and religion, leading to frequent broadcasts and to over 300 articles in leading periodicals, as well as contributions to numerous books and he also developed a strong interest in psychology and religion, leading to publication of the now famous essay in Psychoanalysis Observed and to appointment as Advisor to the Association of Psychotherapists in the United Kingdom. In 1971 left industry to become Visiting Professor in Religious Studies at the University of California and thereafter at New College, Sarasota, Florida. His book, ‘What Shall We Tell the Children?’ is widely used as study of the basis of religious education in a scientifically oriented culture (excerpted from http://www.geocities.com/eckcult/lane_live/lotus_feet.html). Additionally he is married to, and very likely influenced by, Ann Faraday who is a self-realized person in her own right.

Nevertheless, his near death experience after eating a poisoned lolly on a bus in Thailand did not make him enlightened as for instance Dan Sutera tries to make him out to be (http://www.selfdiscoveryportal.com/arConversation.htm). John Wren-Lewis himself describes the experience of ‘the Void’ as fluctuating in a Spiritual Magazine published in 1991 –

[John Wren-Lewis]: ‘I still slip back into that old clouded state frequently, but this is not a process of ‘coming down.’ What happens is something I would have found unbelievable had I heard of it second-hand – namely, I again and again simply forget about the pearl of great price. I drift off into all kinds of preoccupations, mostly trivial, and become my old self, cut off from the Void-Background. Then, after a while, there begins to dawn on me a sense of something missing, at which point I recall the Void and usu-ally click back into the new consciousness almost immediately, with no effort at all.’ http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/sectiona.htm

His NDE was rather the cataclysmic event that sparked an intense interest in enlightenment just as similar near death experiences have either initiated or intensified the search for enlightenment for other people. Ramana Maharshi and Mohan Rajneesh are examples that spring to mind.

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VINEETO: (…) As for John Wren-Lewis – (…) his near death experience after eating a poisoned lolly on a bus in Thailand did not make him enlightened as for instance Dan Sutera tries to make him out to be (http://www.selfdiscoveryportal.com/arConversation.htm). John Wren-Lewis himself describes the experience of ‘the Void’ as fluctuating in a Spiritual Magazine published in 1991 –

[John Wren-Lewis]: ‘I still slip back into that old clouded state frequently, but this is not a process of ‘coming down.’ What happens is something I would have found unbelievable had I heard of it second-hand – namely, I again and again simply forget about the pearl of great price. I drift off into all kinds of preoccupations, mostly trivial, and become my old self, cut off from the Void-Background. Then, after a while, there begins to dawn on me a sense of something missing, at which point I recall the Void and usu-ally click back into the new consciousness almost immediately, with no effort at all.’ http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/sectiona.htm

His NDE was rather the cataclysmic event that sparked an intense interest in enlightenment just as similar near death experiences have either initiated or intensified the search for enlightenment for other people. Ramana Maharshi and Mohan Rajneesh are examples that spring to mind.

RESPONDENT: What I do know of John Wren-Lewis is although he had an interest in science and religion, etc – he has often characterized his ‘enlightenment’ as being quite opposite in nature to his former dismissals of such. For example, from http://www.geocities.com/jiji_muge/dazzdark.html –

[John Wren Lewis]: ‘Before I had my experience, I was a Freud-style skeptic about all things mystical. I wouldn’t have called myself an atheist or materialist; in fact I’d published extensively on the need for a religious world view appropriate to a humanity that has come of age in the scientific and technological area. But I emphasized that such a faith would have to be essentially positivistic, focused on the human potential for creative change, which I believed could become as effective in the social realm as it has been in the physical realm. I even believed it possible that the creative human personality might eventually discover technologies for transcending mortality, but I saw mysticism as a neurotic escape into fantasy, due to failure of nerve in the creative struggle’.

VINEETO: Yes, I came across this quote in my research on him. It goes to show that being skeptical is not the same thing as having investigated and abandoned one’s beliefs, doesn’t it?

RESPONDENT: If one admits that the experience of John Wren-Lewis was a ‘genuine enlightenment’, …

VINEETO: Why would you say ‘if one admits…’ when John Wren-Lewis himself admits that he still slips ‘back into that old clouded state frequently’? Do you have a different definition of enlightenment than that of a *permanent* altered state of consciousness, a *permanent* transcendence of the ego?

RESPONDENT: … then it does certainly seem to be an exception. Of course, the wavering quality, its here now, gone now quality might lead some to disqualify it as genuine.

VINEETO: I would certainly disqualify his experience as genuine enlightenment, but I have come across a lot of people, particularly of the Advaita/Non-Dualistic persuasion who have a vested interest in watering down genuine enlightenment into varying states of ‘self’-realization whereas all genuinely enlightened beings point to a single edifying moment of awakening (with a variety of descriptions) (for 3 examples see ).