There are many different ideas about what enlightenment is: some come from the dogma of particular schools; some come from individuals only vaguely associated with a set of schools, etc. What follows is a list of “contemporary definitions” from teachers important to the Shala. The list is gleaned from Marianna Caplan’s very valuable book: Halfway Up the Mountain: the Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment. Are there desires after awakening? Does liberation mean that all of my problems are going to disappear?

This episode begins the conversation about the nature of awakening. The spirit of the discussion precedes in a way that hopes to shine light on how we might be confused about the subject itself. Without trying to define enlightenment in a propositional way, we look rather at what kind of transformation it is, and investigate the idea that Awakening is a qualitative transformation such that our deepest layer of values and desires is altered. What does it mean to value something? Can we simply decide to value things that currently do not? What is the nature of the agency that we display as we aim toward liberation and act?

Our sense of what is meaningful is tied directly to our sense of what is real. Humans need to feel that their hopes, beliefs, efforts, and relationships are grounded in something that transcends their own lives, something more substantial than their own personal concerns. This moreness is the sense of the real. Without that sense there is no meaning in life. In this episode we look at some of the work of cognitive psychologist and philosopher Dr. John Vervaeke of the University of Toronto, who has put forth several ways that we come to know the real, and hence to experience meaning. Along the way we’ll speak of Yoga as a system of embodied practice that addresses each of these ways with great facility.

Having established that what is most meaningful to us is that which is experienced as the most real, this episode delves into ways of imagining the specifics of realness itself. Drawing again on the work of Dr. John Vervaeke, we discover that realness is experienced along four dimensions. The real is purposeful, coherent, significant, and it grounds our sense of what matters. In the absence of these four things, humans begin to sense that they are in the grip of illusion, and the yoga traditions have much to say about the prevalence of illusion in our lives. The discussion ends with a few thought experiments geared toward demonstrating that we prefer reality to illusion.

This episode investigates the idea that human beings manifest an essential nature defined by the ancient Yoga tradition. We suggest that the modern world has mistaken this nature and that we have been educated incorrectly as a result. This in turn has made it much more difficult to experience meaning, which we need in the same way we need things like food and water, breath, and love. We trace the plausibility of these ideas from both Eastern and Western sources: from ancient models of the soul in the Taittiriya Upanishad, which identifies our essential essence as bliss (Ananda), to the work of Dr. John Vervaeke of the University of Toronto’s Cognitive Psychology department. What if loss of meaning means loss of contact with our essence?