The Three Card Monte Enlightenment Scam

One of the most common neo-Advaitic or neo-Buddhist tricks that gets played by the "awakened" set these days is to point to the simple fact that our everyday awareness has no visible ego in it, and with a bit of three-card Monte misdirection and creative shuffling of concepts, viola! - suddenly we can see that every negative emotion or thought we've suffered arises within a radiant, luminous, transcendental awareness or emptiness, and we have either rigpa or the Self at our fingertips, and now we are not just on the road to enlightenment, we are already there.

Did you miss that? Okay, let me slow down the card-palming a moment and point out how the trick is done. The neo-Advaitin or neo-Buddhist teacher begins with the simple trick of claiming that there is only one mind, or one reality, and that of course this is it, right here and now, in this present moment, just as we experience it. Who's going to argue with that? This is the setup, and it's very important that no one question it, because without this setup the whole game falls apart. But we've all heard that reality is non-dual, and that nirvana and samsara is the same, and that we are the Self, so what's to question? Doubting that would be dualistic delusion, right?

Okay, so that part is settled. Next step is to examine our awareness in this moment, and to point out that we are always looking at objects of one kind or another. Thoughts, or perceptions obsess us, and preoccupy our attention. But...what about the awareness that is aware of these objects and thoughts? If we simply invert attention on its own awareness for a moment, we can see that sure enough, this basic awareness we have right now is distinct from the objects or thoughts we perceive. We can see that awareness itself is actually an empty screen of sorts, and that thoughts and perceptions themselves have no real solid substance to them in our minds.

And guess what? There's a kind of relief in seeing that. Even a kind of temporary bliss and happiness we can find in it. Because, for sure, these things that bother us aren't actually real, they're just thoughts! And this ego we've been so troubled by? Well, it's just like these thoughts, it's just a thought itself, and not real. The awareness that is aware of these is the only reality, and it, too, is empty and untroubled. So, just notice that, be that awareness, and we are released from all the trouble we previously thought ourselves to be in. In fact, if we invert just a bit on this awareness, we can experience some sort of amazing pleasure and even inexplicable bliss. Who knew?

Simple, right? No need to do anything more than keep repeating this insight, and keep pointing to our own awareness, inverting upon it, and by that process becoming more and more free, happy, even enlightened. It doesn't get any better than that!

Well, there's a few little problems with this approach to non-dualism.
First, obviously, is that the presumption we began with is a false one. As with any decent three-card Monte scam, the card we are looking for isn't in even in the deck. It's been shuffled up the sleeve of the teacher, who may even believe that's the right way to play the game.

That simple everyday awareness we have been pointed to look at? That's the misdirection that keeps us thinking we are going to find the real deal card, when it's actually been removed from the table. It's not actually the free condition of primal awareness at all. Not even close. It's nothing more than the emergent ego awareness, the stepped down, object-oriented awareness that we began the trick with. Nothing has been done to undermine this ego at all, or change our perspective, our assumption, or our delusions. Instead, we've merely been tricked into thinking that the illusion is itself the reality. Which is a pretty great trick come to think of it.

The primal Reality? The primal non-dual awareness beyond all illusions? Well, that's not even in this deck. It's already been removed, by our own identification with form, which happened long before we ever sat down to play this game. So there's no way we can find it this way. No shuffling of the deck, no pointing to anything in our ego-consciousness, can ever reveal this reality. It's a lost cause, a scam made to resemble the reality we seek, but it's simply incapable of delivering the goods. So, instead, it delivers mock goods, dressed up in flattering dramatic constumes like the Emperor's new clothes, to make us believe we've found the real deal.

So these sorts of "pointing out" exercises are really just a bunch of hokum put out there to fool the tourists in us all, who are easily hoodwinked by a little flash of the hand and some fancy abracadabra flourishes. It's not that it's completely foolish to point out these basic factors of our everyday consciousness - the witnessing awareness, the objects of awareness, the dualism of it all, and the fact that even a little bit of interruption of our routines can bring some happiness or bliss. But none of that is what enlightenment is actually about. It's only what the ego is about. And pointing this out, without pointing out that it's the ego at work, just strengthens the egoic illusion.

What, after all, is this everyday consciousness that we walk around in? Is it the enlightened condition? If you believe that, I have a bridge to nirvana to sell you. Sorry, but it's not the enlightened condition at all. It's the ego. Yes, you heard me, the ego. I know these neo-three-card-Monte teachers have told you there is no ego, but that's another scam, told to set you up for the old enlightenment con. As mentioned in a previous post, the ego is alive and well, not as some "thing" inside us, but as the emergent consciousness that arises when we identify with the complex body-mind. It is this emergent consciousness we walk around as every day that is the ego. This ordinary awareness, filled with thoughts and perceptions and ideas about enlightenment, separated it seems from its own awareness, and easily fooled by spiritual sharpsters and con men - that's the ego. My humblest pardons for bursting the bubble, but it's true.

This ego whose dualistic awareness we are trapped within, is ready to believe just about anything, including the notion that its own basic consciousness is actually the primal intelligence of the universe. What ego wouldn't love to believe that? What ego doesn't want to be told that there is no ego, that what it really is, is transcendental awareness, empty of all thought and content, the same as God or Buddha or Jesus, and that this can be understood by a simple logical argument and a few simple practices and perhaps joining some group and following a teacher and becoming part of a great awakening process?

Well, sorry to break the news, but this is just a scam. A popular one to be sure, but a scam nevertheless. That's painfully disappointing, and a whole lot of people don't want to believe they've been scammed because they don't want that kind of pain and embarrassment in their lives, so they go on believing, since that's preferable to being left broke on the sidewalk while the scamster moves on to the next mark. It's the kind of scam you can believe in and get behind, and learn how to teach to others too, like any other religion.

It's not just the usual dualistic religious and theistic belief systems that pull off scams, it's the neo-Advaitins and the neo-Buddhists and neo-Bonists and so on that can do this trick too. It doesn't take long, it doesn't require much in the way of understanding or practice or sophistication. You don't have to know much about the traditions, but if you do, you can twist them around into fancy pretzels to make it look like that's what they were teaching all along, and that broken down to their bare essence, this is what they really are about, and the rest is just cultural mumbo-jumbo we can safely ignore. So never mind those from the traditions who warn about just this kind of scam. Those are just stuffy, prickly fuddy-duddies who are part of the conspiracy to keep the rest of us from being realizing our natural birthright as enlightened Masters of the Universe.

I'm sure that's what they'd say about me if they read any of this. After all, they have the cutting- edge spiritual technology we in the modern age can now have access to because of our advanced integral consciousness, and they know better. And who the fuck am I, after all?

Except...it's still just the ego, playing more spiritual games with itself. That bliss you feel from inverting on your own awareness? Not really any different from the bliss you feel from stroking your own dong or clit. It too is just temporary and fleeting and partial, because that's what the awareness we invert upon is. It's just the same egoic awareness that emerges from our identification with the body-mind, that sees nothing but illusions everywhere it turns. Even when it turns within, it just finds illusions within.

But what about Ramana Maharshi, you ask? Didn't he tell people to look within, to look for this ego, and in not finding it, to know our own awareness as transcendental infinite consciousness? Well, in a larger sense, that's almost true, but not quite, and the ways in which it's not quite true are hugely important.

First, Ramana didn't teach that there was no ego. Instead, he taught that the ego was a thought, the root thought, which he called the 'I'-thought. He recommended finding this 'I'-thought, grabbing hold of it, and finding out where it came from. One thing he made crystal clear is that that this emergent ego-consciousness is not the Reality, but an illusion that hides reality, and that whole point of self-enquiry was to go past the illusion of the ego, and find the reality it obscures.

Don't believe me? (Or don't care? Sorry, can't help you with that one.) Let's examine work that is probably most central to Ramana's teachings, Forty Verses On Reality:

26. If the ego is, everything else also is. If the ego is not, nothing else is. Indeed, the ego is all. Therefore the enquiry as to what this ego is, is the only way of giving up everything. 

27. The State of non-emergence of 'I' is the state of being THAT. Without questing for that State of the non-emergence of 'I' and attaining It, how can one accomplish one's own extinction, from which the 'I' does not revive? Without that attainment how is it possible to abide in one's true State, where one is THAT?

Alert: Ramana is pointing out that the ego is an emergent state of awareness, rooted in the "I"-thought. The only way to know the reality of the Self, is for this ego-awareness to no longer emerge from the Heart of awareness - it can't be found within the 'I'-thought and its world. So, this ego-awareness that emerges with the 'I'-thought is not That. And no amount of inversion upon that awareness will make it otherwise. The only point of such inversion, is to see the whole nature of this emergent ego-awareness, take it to its source, and strangle in in the crib, so to speak, so that it won't continue to arise and dominate our attention.

So, how is that done?

28. Just as a man would dive in order to get something that had fallen into the water, so one should dive into oneself, with a keen one-pointed mind, controlling speech and breath, and find the place whence the 'I' originates.

Notice what Ramana is pointing to here. He's not pointing us to the ordinary ego-awareness that we are confounded by on a daily basis, and saying, that's it! He's saying, dive down deeper, and see where this ego-awareness comes from. Find the source of it. Don't just re-label the ego-awareness with some fancy new concept, find the place from which it arises.

29. The only enquiry leading to Self-realization is seeking the Source of the 'I' with in-turned mind and without uttering the word 'I'. Meditation on 'I am not this; I am That' may be an aid to the enquiry but it cannot be the enquiry. 

30. If one enquires 'Who am I?' within the mind, the individual 'I' falls down abashed as soon as one reaches the Heart and immediately Reality manifests itself spontaneously as 'I-I'. Although it reveals itself as 'I', it is not the ego but the Perfect Being, the Absolute Self.

Again, notice that the ego-illusion is only vanished when one's mind falls into the Heart of Reality. Not merely by pointing out the separated awareness that we all have at the superficial level of our ordinary life. Then, the 'I' that we previously experienced ourselves to be manifests as the Perfect Being, the Absolute Self.

That's what enlightenment is about. And that's what genuine "pointing out" instructions refer to. Not this cheap three-card-monte game of getting you to see that your ordinary awareness is actually blissful to invert upon. It is, the way your sex organs are blissful to invert upon. But that's exactly the problem. We spend our lives inverting on one thing or another in our pursuit of pleasure, satisfaction, and enjoyment. But everything we invert upon is weak sauce, faux-satisfaction, of temporary and limited value, and empty of any real substance.

The same is true, unfortunately, of our own ordinary awareness. It's not any different than anything else we put our attention upon. Objects are not ultimately real, but neither are subjects. The subject of dualistic awareness is a faux-consciousness, a false consciousness, a mind of smoke and mirrors and trickery that keeps us running in circles. Do you know what real insight is? It means seeing that whole show for what it is, and not having any more of it, not being fooled by its next set of answers achieved by reshuffling the same old deck. It says, let's look behind the curtain, let's look up the sleeve, let's unmask these con-men. No more three-card Monte.

And guess who the worst con man of all is? That's right, it's us. We fool ourselves constantly into thinking this ego-awareness of ours can deliver us the answers, and provide for us the happiness we have sought. It even tells us, look within ourselves, pointing to this egoic awareness as if it were our real source. But the answers we need aren't found in this ego-consciousness. Thinking that it must be there, is just one of the ego's most prized tricks to keep us fooled into keeping the ego-game going round and round. The real answer is to look behind the ego-show, examining the source from which it emerges - the Heart.

The Heart doesn't play these games. The Heart is a not a con man. But finding the Heart, locating the Heart, isn't the same as just examining our daily awareness and re-labeling its masturbatory ground of pleasure "the Self". The Heart isn't found by just accepting ego-consciousness as Reality. It requires a process of deepening feeling that asks itself where all of this comes from? What is the source of even this ordinary awareness? What is the source of the bliss we experience? What are we before we begin to identify with form and thought and awareness? What kind of consciousness are we exactly, before all of that? This means beginning to recognize that we are not only living a lie, but that the very awareness we live within is a lie.

That implies a much more difficult and interesting form of enquiry than this superficial "pointing out" process most neo-teachers are recommending. One of the reasons these people don't refer much to genuine teachers like Ramana Maharshi is that they don't want anyone to find this out. Even quoting from Ramana as I have done is often anathema to them. They don't even want to know these teachings themselves. It would be so awfully inconvenient. It would undermine the spiritual scene they have helped create around themselves. It might even make them look like foolish con men.

The same is true of neo-Buddhist teachers selling Big Mind products or discount Dzogchen dharma and so on. If it seems too good to be true, too easy to be real, it probably isn't. But finding that out for oneself can also be a very rewarding lesson as well. Buyer beware, as always.