Enlightenment East & West - Comparing Bliss in Yoga / Buddhism with Christianity

So there are two kinds of enlightenment. One which is characteristic of eastern spiritual paradigms like Buddhism and yoga and another characteristic of the west. Uh and by enlightenment I just mean uh this sort of uh union with or joining to something universal. That's the that's considered to be ultimate human fulfillment, right? that you're like when you're joined to this you're you're you have uh bliss and uh and so the model is very different in the east and the west uh let's compare them Eastern enlightenment uh like uh yoga and Buddhism see all of reality as m and m is this word uh for undifferentiated energy or sort of pool of pulsating ating energy that has no form that's not a specific kind of thing uh but it's just this sort of pulsation behind creation. The idea is that if you could uh transcend your own personal limited nature and get beyond your own personal limited perspective that you would have limitless potential. That's the eastern model. Now uh let's look at the west. The west um sees energy first of all as material, right? That like normally we think of energy and matter as as very different kinds of things. Uh but in the west uh we see uh the the idea is that energy and matter are kind of the same. You see it in modern physics in the equation E= MC^². But even before that uh predating modern physics this idea that things which have no form or no specific nature are like clay and uh or raw material that you could shape into uh something specific. Now in order to shape clay you need a potter right? you need the something that can shape the clay into uh a statue or into a particular kind of thing. All right. So in the west there's a third thing uh besides energy and material which is a kind of shaper and it's this third thing that's the key to the western concept of enlightenment or fulfillment. All right. So uh let's look at that for a second. When you take a second glance, you realize energy can't really do anything on its own. Take gasoline for example. In order for gasoline to uh power an engine and make an engine move, first of all, it has to be ignited by something else. And second of all, when it explodes, that power has to be channeled in a specific way in the engine in order uh for the engine to move, right? Um so in order for gasoline to do anything, it has to be activated. But in order for the engine to activate gasoline, someone has to turn it on. And in order for someone to turn it on, they have to be activated as well. Like I uh was activated not by myself, but by something else, my parents, you might say. Um uh but even in the current moment, something has to um direct all the energy within my body in a specific way in order for my body to work as a body, right? So there's this chain of activation that's necessary to use energy and we can trace that back to an origin which is an origin of all activation you might say an origin of all um uh doing and it's this is which is the object of western enlightenment. So in the east you see this sort of undifferentiated energy that can't do anything on its own that's uh but it's like but it's receptive. It's this a totally receptive potential which we would call uh matter and it is on its own kind of still right uh in the uh western paradigm the idea is that there's this activator behind all um things in the universe that makes the diversity and specialness of uh each unique thing and if we could sort of become united to that then um then we would um be united to the source of everything having life. All right. So there's a uh um uh uh this activator in modern physics is called force. Now the difference between force and energy is this. Force has direction and energy does not. And force always has a specific nature whereas uh raw energy or raw power uh doesn't. And um and it's this uh specific nature that we're really trying to get at. Uh there are seven main forces of nature. Gravity, nuclear forces, electromagnetic, all that kind of thing, right? And each of those need to be activated by something in order for uh anything to do anything. Right? Direction just uh doesn't appear but it is uh given to something. Okay. Um so at a very high level the eastern system looks at receptivity and kind of becoming clay. the uh this is a kind of unschooling where you're undoing your nature and the western system is a kind of activation where you are becoming fully developed not that you are losing your nature but that you are becoming fully developed and activating every part of your nature and that you are um close to or joined to the activator of everything and so you have um life in every possible way. Not the potential to become anything but the activation but totally activated um so that you are uh uh seeing and participating and living um uh in a fully developed way. So you can look at the eastern system as kind of like becoming a baby or a tabular russa and the western uh system of enlightenment as kind of like a master piano player who having fully developed the skill to play the piano can now express themselves artistically um and beautifully. Uh so the the you can see then the the fascination with both uh of limitless potential on the one hand of full development on the other hand. All right. To this I would add one more thing that the western um philosophy would say that there's really just no such thing as energy or matter that isn't uh that doesn't have a nature. Right? Every single thing has a nature in our uh reality that uh there's no such thing as something that ha that is no kind of thing. Um um and so western philosophy would say that that um prime matter or matter without form is just a logical concept in someone's in a in a mind but not having uh real actuality um uh outside of uh a thought. And um now uh I'll say one more thing about it. It's you can uh from this description you can see that one vision of enlightenment is losing your nature and the other vision of enlightenment is fully developing your nature. And so they're kind of opposites to each other. And in fact, I would say that um in the uh having eternal life is simply to say that your nature continues to exist forever. And when we talk about heaven, we often talk in the in a western context, we often talk about having eternal life. Um to lose your nature is the western concept of hell, right? Which is where you lose your life. Um now that word hell gets thrown around all over the place um and used in very many different contexts. I'm talking about in a sort of western theological or philosophical context. It uh to that hell is this sort of idea of selfabandonment uh in the west. Very interesting that the eastern heaven is considered to be the western hell and the western heaven is seen as eternal life. The eastern system as um exiting the circle of birth and death, right? this sort of endless karmic wheel of uh or cycle of birth and death is the thing you're trying to get beyond. Uh one system eternal life, the other trying to get out of the circle of life. One uh says that to retain your nature is to have eternal life and to lose it is hell. The other says to lose your specific nature is to become um is to uh have a broader perspective or sort of be liberated from your nature so that you have limitless potential. Enlightenment east and west. What are your thoughts?