ENLIGHTENMENT WITHOUT MEDITATING

In this concise self-help book, a psychology professor provides an overview of the concept of enlightenment and instructions for achieving that state of being.

Britton immediately grounds his manual on spiritual awakening in his own experiences with the startling claim that he achieved enlightenment for the first time at age 14. Reserving a detailed description of this remarkable event for his second appendix, he embarks on a thought-provoking journey to teach the principles of consciousness, based on his conviction that years of study and practice are not necessary for achieving spiritual understanding. “Instead of meditating,” the author asserts, “there are practical and easy to use methods that you can use on your own to experience enlightenment quickly and easily.” Written in the form of a Socratic dialogue between himself as a teacher and a group of hypothetical students, dubbed “participants,” Britton’s narrative extracts principles and exercises from a number of authorities, ranging from seventh-century Zen master Huineng to 20th-century French psychoanalyst Hubert Benoit. The author’s streamlined approach to enlightenment is heralded in the title of the book’s first section, “Getting There Right Away Now.” Here, he defines the state of enlightened consciousness (a list of synonyms in Appendix 1 helps in understanding the concept) and provides a number of “tricks” to persuade the mind into an untrammeled awareness of itself. Like the Zen masters who use riddles, punches, and slaps to jar students into an awakening, Britton jokes, urges, and guides his putative participants into an experience of oneness that he does not identify as mystical or religious but “totally and markedly mundane.” The author’s writing is informative and his premise is beguiling. Who, after all, wouldn’t wish to achieve a state of enlightenment without years of dedication to a spiritual practice? He is successful at making the state of awakened consciousness seem accessible, and many of his suggestions for changing readers’ outlooks are playful and creative. But some readers may find themselves lost in such verbiage as “My emotional-imaginative movies of imagined social interaction have three tracks: mental images, mental talk, and emotional body sensations.” Still, willing students of mindful awareness are likely to find Britton an appealing teacher.

A pragmatic, engaging, and sympathetic guide to higher consciousness.