First, I will echo the many wonderful things that others have said about this book. Bob Forman shares his spiritual path and himself--warts, thinning hair, and all--with honesty and humor that are both all too rare in books on the spiritual life. He brings his journey to such vivid life that one feels one is walking the path with him every step of the way. I, and I suspect many others, find my own journey to enlightenment echoed and reflected in many of its passages. This book made me laugh, cry, shake my head in wonderment, and sometimes all three at the same time.
At the same time, however, I have to part company with the author on a number of issues. The central thesis of the book, as I understand it, is uncontroversial: that a massive shift in the way we experience consciousness in relation to its objects is not alone sufficient to produce the enduring peace and happiness that spiritual seekers crave-that we still have a good deal of work to do, spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically, to find real bliss. I say this is uncontroversial because it is something that has been taught by great wisdom traditions for centuries. The Buddha, for example, before he became the Buddha, had not only one, but two teachers (according to the oldest extant Buddhist texts) who guided him to advanced stages of yogic awareness that, as he had the honesty to admit, did not provide the answers to the great questions of suffering and human existence that drove his quest. Advanced meditative experiences combined with the cultivation of specific insights and ethical patterns are needed, and this is what the Buddhist path provides, as do the other great spiritual paths. Peak experiences, even enduring ones, may give us a "peek" at a higher reality. But they do not make up the entirety of the spiritual journey. I recently heard this illustrated beautifully by a very senior monk in my own tradition of Ramakrishna Vedanta. Swami Bhajanananda said that non-dual realization, popularly seen as the ultimate goal of Vedanta practice, while it may be the "peak" of the mountain that represents the spiritual journey, is not the end of the journey. We still need to come back down from the mountain after having been to the top. One who reaches the top of a mountain has only made it halfway! Similarly, back to Buddhism, the peak experience of Emptiness is only the eighth, and not the tenth, of the famous Ox-herding pictures of the Zen tradition that represent stages in the spiritual path. The last is returning to the village with open hands to serve humanity.
Where I part company with Bob Forman is in his definition of enlightenment as just that massive shift in consciousness that he describes, and that has been experienced by many of the sages of the past. While no doubt vital to the spiritual path, this experience is not the be all and the end all of practice. This, of course, is his point. But is this what all our wisdom traditions are talking about when they speak of enlightenment? Or are they, in fact, speaking of what Bob Forman calls "enlightenment plus"-an ongoing process and a way of life in the absence of which discerning the meaning of this shift in consciousness is either impossible or extremely difficult? The experience by itself does not tell us all that we need to know, absent some metaphysical and ethical framework provided by our traditions. This, for example, is why Shankara emphasizes understanding the meaning of the Vedic mahavakyas as essential to spiritual awakening, and not only yogic experience. And it is not the end of the journey, as mentioned in the last paragraph.
Again, I do not think I fundamentally disagree with Bob Forman. But his book leaves me asking the question, "Is it that enlightenment ain't what it's cracked up to be, or is it that enlightenment is vastly more than just a shift in consciousness, momentous though such a shift might be?" If enlightenment is a total way of life, I suspect it IS all it's cracked up to be, and more.
I could say more (about things like past life memory and the technical meanings of terms that have been conflated through the decades with the word "enlightenment"), but this is an Amazon book review, not a dissertation. Great book! Definitely read it. But then go back to the original, traditional sources with new insight.
