Did you take your blue pill this morning?

Douglas Brooks writes on Rajanaka and his perspective on Shaivism, Advaita Vedanta, Classical Yoga, etc. His penultimate post is a good place to get a little confused - he writes about what others have said about that ineffable concept we call enlightenment. As you may know, there are about as many different perspectives on what "enlightenment" is as there are yogis. He's clearly a bit skeptical about the claims of Shaivism, and even more critical of Classical Yoga, which I can appreciate. He says, of Classical Yoga, that it purports enlightenment is such a wildly unique state that it is completely indescribable, but that when you get "it" you realize that you had it all along. He finds this more than a bit specious; "I’m not mystical enough to want a yoga of the ineffable. For me yoga has to be instruction about the world I’m living in, not a mystical otherness."
Of Shaivism, he wonders how it is that the sages expect us to believe their rather contradictory thesis. They seem to be teaching that enlightenment-- or realization of the sacred oneness -- is a state so fully unique that we cannot even imagine it, and yet, simultaneously, they tell us that when we get there, we'll realize that it is precisely what we've known and been all along. He writes; "We’re still left to wonder how something ---the state of Oneness recognition ---is by definition nothing like what we are having now and yet is nothing but what we are having now. Did you take your blue pill this morning?"
I won't comment too extensively on these writings, since I just barely grok them. But give them a read, and if you do, tell me what you think.

Douglas Brooks is Author of Poised for Grace, Anusara Books, 2009