Who we are, what we know and believe are at the center of our actions. Knowledge and belief are majority of the time about our experiences, and form the medium—the mind—that defines the nature of our relationships with other people and the environment we find ourselves in.
When the indirection of aboutness ceases, the direct experience of reality happens. This point in human life is liberation from the skewed and biased aspects of one’s self-consciousness since anything about anything is according to our take, which are the acquisitions, mindful or not, that we continuously rely on.
The state of freedom (“detachment”) from the mind’s relativistic reality—symbolically characterized and filtered—is illuminating; revealing the “true” nature (“the Truth”) of our and everyone else’s (ontological) being. This is Enlightenment.
“…and ye shall know the Truth, and The Truth shall make you free.” (Hz. Jesus)
The “directly experienced” knowledge of the Truth (without any mediation) is to the ultimate degree unifying since the experiencer feels the ground of be-ing on which all stand and share immediately, including their self (with Grace).
The worry by some about the thrill seeking for enlightenment is valid. However, any seeking is a mediated act that will, by definition, keep one distant from the unmediated purity required for illumination. Seeking intended for an end (or means to justify an end) is of such nature that is unfit for attaining the pure Nature of Be-ing (God). In other words, there is a mismatch between the way of getting something and that something needing its own way of being received. I presented the SIRDS as an example on page 92 of my book “The Unrelative Truth” to demonstrate how unseeking process for seeing the 3D picture in the 2D pattern is essential.
The path to purity is through empathy and compassion, kindness and fidelity, justice, and objectivity. It is no simple easy task to gain those virtues (especially while playing the “thrill” game).
In the aftermath of appreciating Saint Augustine’s words, “God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed,” there is an emerging need for a new verb to replace “to understand” (of cognition) when the context is God. This new verb is “to instand.” It is how one acquires knowledge unique to the spiritual realm of pure Be–ing, where the “unmediated” hence directly experienced form of knowledge is with authenticity. There, the knowledge “about God” is unsatisfactory.
Understanding is all about aboutness while instanding is immediacy with zero aboutness.