It has been said that of all the billions of people alive today there are probably only 1000 truly Enlightened beings currently inhabiting the planet. Some say even that estimate is way too generous while others say it is not generous enough.[1] Either way I have been more fortunate that most during my wandering path through life to have met or crossed paths with at least seven, possibly eight individuals, that were truly Enlightened beings. So said, I can speak from experience that Enlightenment is something that is --- and not some mystical or subjective non-existant philosophical happenstance beyond the reach of the common individual.

1. THE BHAGAVAN SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI

2. MY OWN SPIRITUAL GUIDE AND MENTOR

3. SWAMI RAMDAS

4. YASUTANI HAKUUN ROSHI

5. ZEN MAN HIGH IN THE MOUNTAINS ALONG THE QINGHAI-TIBET PLATEAU

6. ALFRED PULYAN

7. ROBERT ADAMS

8. FRANKLIN MERRELL-WOLFF

In addition to the above eight Enlightened individuals it should be noted that I have also met the Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw, meditation master and Principal Preceptor of the Mahasi Meditation Center in Rangoon, Burma; Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the head master of the Rinzai-ji Zen Center and the Mount Baldy Zen Center, briefly twice; as well as Emmanuel (Alfred) Sorensen, known as Shunyata, a man of great spiritual renown --- Sorensen, it has been said, was BORN Awake. So too, there was a brief crossing of paths between Suzanne Segal and myself on a beach in northern California one morning that could possibly be taken into count.

The teacher of Alfred Pulyan, a woman of great Attainment that I liken to a Sri Ramana only without a mountain or a following, although not listed in the above eight, is done so because of the nature of the unusual circumstances surrounding her. For more please see Pulyan's Teacher.

JOHN WREN-LEWIS

People often ask about John Wren-Lewis. I write elsewhere that I met Wren-Lewis and it is known he was Enlightened, so why isn't he included amongst others on the list they ask?

In an odd variation on the above meetings, sometime in the early 1970s, via a personal request through an intermediary, I crossed paths with Wren-Lewis who was not, that is NOT Enlightened at the time. As a matter of fact, he was actually more of a spritual skeptic. Twelve years later, as Karma or fate would have it, following a near death experience after ingesting poisoned candy while traveling in Thailand, he experienced a permanent altered state of consciousness not unlike that of the eight individuals listed above. Our meeting came about as follows:

"While on the west coast for his Regents Lecturer position, which was in Santa Barbara, California, and some twelve years before his own Awakening experience --- with no indepth knowledge of the subject --- it was brought to his attention, as the skeptic he was, that there existed a person known as the "holy man of the Channel Islands" that had Awakened to the Absolute after studying under the venerated Indian sage, the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. During the period we are talking about here the holy man was all but unreachable. There was, however, a devotee or follower of the holy man living on the mainland that had himself reached Full Attaiment some two years before. Prior to his going to Florida Wren-Lewis sought out the devotee, which turned out to be a rather long discussion between the two.[2] The interesting part of it all is that the devotee, in describing his Enlightenment experience called it Dark Luminosity. Twelve years later Wren-Lewis described his Experience by calling it the Dazzling Dark."(see)

Following his near death experience and his Attaiment, Wren-Lewis became a fairly well known mover in Enlightenment circles. In an interview in Symposium with one Dan Sutera in an article titled "Conversations with the Down-Under Mystic" Wren-Lewis says, as written by Sutera:

"In the sixteen years since his experience, he has sought out other people who have had permanent Enlightenment experiences. He has thus far found fifteen, and only two had previous spiritual backgrounds. Just as we are all different people, John told me, there is an infinite variety in the types of Enlightenment experiences that people have."

SYMPOSIUM: August 1999 Volume II, Number 1

I was NOT one of the fifteen!

SEE:
THE AWAKENING EXPERIENCE IN THE MODERN ERA

SEE ALSO:
WHEN INFINITIES COLLIDE

ZEN BUDDHISM, ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT

STEPHEN HAWKING: BLACK HOLES, ENLIGHTENMENT, AND ZEN

Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.

(PLEASE CLICK)

AWAKENED TEACHERS FORUM

ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT IN A NUTSHELL

GASSHO
(please click)

CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT

ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE

E-MAIL
THE WANDERLING
(please click)

AS FOUND ON
delicious

FOOTNOTE [1]

The figure 1000 cited above in the sentence "only 1000 truly Enlightened beings currently inhabiting the planet" comes from eastern religion and Zen pundit Ken Wilber in his book "One Taste." The quote below, and of which I am more fully in agreement with than Wilber's 1000 figure, comes from James Swartz, known as Ram, in an interview titled Commentary on the Teachings of Ramana Maharshi and conducted by John Howells in January 2003, at Tiruvannamalai, South India:

"(W)hile enlightenment is rare with reference to the total number of people on the planet there are tens of thousands of ‘fully’ enlightened people worldwide and particularly in India. I’ve lived here many years and was introduced to the highest levels of Indian spirituality when I was quite young and I’ve lived with a number of enlightened people of the same caliber as Ramana and have personally met more than one hundred enlightened people. And this is just India. Although I am not an expert on Buddhism I know that it is a living enlightenment tradition with roots in the Veda that has been going on for a couple of thousand years, perhaps more. And there are undoubtedly many thousands of enlightened persons who gained it through that means; Tibetans, Indochinese, Sri Lankan and Japanese and now Europeans and Americans." (source)

FOOTNOTE [2]

In the 1970s era when the discussion was held, Wren-Lewis was a self-professed nearly ordained spiritual cynic. Because of such he approached the meeting in a highly skeptical state, especially so anything regarding the potential possibility of an Awakening experience. However, he mellowed significantly as the meeting progressed for a number of reasons. Wren-Lewis had an educational background as a mathematical physicist even to the point of being a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematicas and its Applications. He was pleasantly surprised that the devotee he ended up meeting had a broad general background in astronomy and had, in his youth, met both the famed mathematician, meteorite hunter, and astronomer Dr. Lincoln La Paz as well as Albert Einstein. In a continuing vein of similar science related happenstances, some years later the devotee met the eminent theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking also.