Ilie Cioara - Enlightenment

Ilie Cioara's description of his enlightenment.

I was 55 years old. One morning, waking up from my sleep, I noticed that, psychologically, I was functioning differently from the night before. The mind had lost its usual turmoil. In a state of serenity I had never felt before, I was functioning in perfect communion with my whole somatic structure.

My surprise was so great that it prevented me from understanding the mysterious phenomenon as I didn’t manage to put it into words. I had read, of course, lots of descriptions of Enlightenment, Liberation, but there is a great difference between mere intellectual knowledge and directly experiencing the phenomenon.

Only after a couple of hours I realized what had happened to me, without pursuing this “something” as an ideal to accomplish. I was, to use a simile, in the situation of a man blind from birth, who had just gained his sight after undergoing surgery. Everything around me was as new. I had an overall perspective on things. A silent mind allows the senses to perceive things as they are.

The mind in its totality had become, through silence, an immense mirror in which the outside world was reflected. And the world I was perceiving directly through my senses revealed its own reality to me. My fellow beings, close friends or complete strangers, were being regarded indiscriminately, with a feeling of love I had never felt before.

If any reaction of the mind surfaced, it disappeared immediately in contact with the sparkle of impersonal Attention. A state of quiet and all-encompassing joy characterized me in all circumstances, whether pleasant or painful. My behaviour was that of a simple witness, perfectly aware of what was happening around me, without affecting my all-encompassing state of peace.

The State of Sublime is, of course, difficult to describe, but not impossible to experience by someone who authentically practices awareness. In order to communicate it, a simple and direct language is used, which is not filtered through reason, because the “ego” with its subjective perception is no longer there. To put it this way: the psychological emptiness is the one who lives in the present moment, expresses this encounter into words and still remains present and available to the next moment.

As a result of this direct encounter with the moment, always new and renewing itself, I felt the need, fueled by intuitive impulses, to express “Self-knowing” using verse. It was a natural thing to do. In few words I could encompass and communicate the essence of the experience.

In the first year I wrote 300 poems. Later on, their number reached 1000, of which 600 are accompanied by prose explanations, such as the ones in this book.

I would also like to describe a few effects which, as a result of becoming aware of the reactions of my own thinking process, have completely disappeared, without any other intervention from my mind.

After experiencing this phenomenon, I felt as a broken vessel, from which the following started to disappear: my interest in astral journeying, my religious beliefs, my egoism, desires, fear, envy, pride etc. My awareness remained open all the time, offering me the possibility to pass from the finite dimension into Infinity.

When encountering this extraordinary phenomenon, with the help of a global perspective, I understood the whole human tragedy, caused by the misinterpretation of life in its constant mobility and newness from one moment to the next.

Life cannot be encountered and understood objectively unless we are in a state of complete freedom and serenity of the mind. Life is always new, from one moment to another, and it demands, even forces us to encounter it with a new mind, with a new brain and with new brain cells, which have not been used previously. It is a well known fact, scientists claim that man, during the whole span of his life uses no more than 10-15% of his brain cells and memory potential. As you can see, our psychological possibilities are unlimited.

After these explanations, it will be easier to understand the process of our own conditioning, as well as the phenomenon of breaking the shell of the “ego”.

As I had shown previously, life demands that we encounter it directly, without any memory baggage.
How do we lose the memory baggage? Easy, very easy. Here is how:

We encounter the movement of the mind with the flame of total Attention - requested by the aliveness of life in its continuous flow. Without the light and serenity provided by Attention, nothing can be understood in a real way.

In the light of Attention, any reaction of the mind (thought, image, fear, desire), which functions chaotically, obsessively and dominates us, is instantly dissolved. In the psychological void that follows, a new mind appears which expands into Infinity, as a state of Pure Consciousness, pure understanding as well as transformative action.

This simple state of “being” is in itself an action, where the entity who performs the action doesn’t exist anymore. The old man, conditioned by his behavioural patterns, loses its authority as the chaotic, uncontrollable reactions dissolve - they are the energies which sustain and fuel the “ego”. Only in this way, by a simple encounter with the reactions of the mind and its subsequent demise, the barrier of the “ego” is broken. Through a momentary opening, our real being is revealed - which alone can transform and heal us.
The total Attention without any purpose is the Sacred itself in action. There is, in fact, another type of attention directed by will, which behaves subjectively by limiting itself to one object. By its own nature, this type of attention defines itself as lack of attention.

In the peace of the soul, in the passiveness of the mind, in the psychological emptiness or stillness - who exists nevertheless? When the usual mind is silent, can you notice that, as silence takes over, a new mind appears, which expands into Infinity and defines itself as Pure Consciousness?

Thus we discover that we are a simple ”being”, “here and now”, boundless - one with Infinity. In this simplicity, there are no expectations or purpose, because the “ego” has completely disappeared. This is the Absolute Truth, existent within us and everywhere around us, revealing itself to us when we open the gate, through the humble silence of the mind.

Such realizations, on moments of existence, operate radical transformations which will eventually shatter the fortress of the “ego”, whose prisoner you are as long as the mind dominates you and as long as you give psychological importance to the mind.
When this fiction disappears, melting into the Sublime, we experience creative Intelligence, Love, Beauty and Happiness, which direct our behaviour through intuitive impulses.