faq
perspective - monthly articles
expression of their experience
Where can I participate in an awareness intensive?
Me enlightened?
Who created this process?
Awareness intensives versus enlightenment intensives?
What is the purpose of the awareness intensive?
What is a direct experience or direct knowing?
What are the common attributes of a direct experience?
Are there degrees in direct knowing?
Can one describe a direct experience?
Why "Who is in?"
What is the difference between "Who is in?" and "Who am I?"
What is a Koan?
What is a dyad?
What is the format of an awareness intensive?
Why a retreat format?
Why is this method so powerful?
Who runs awareness intensive?
Are awareness intensives part of any tradition, movement or cult?
Where are awareness intensive held?
Can you really get enlightened in just three days?
Are you guaranteed to experience yourself directly?
What happens if you are directly experiencing yourself?
What happens after you have directly experiencing yourself?
Is there any follow-up support for participants?
Why do it?
What can I gain taking and awareness intensive?
What participants have said about awareness intensive retreats
Where can I participate in an awareness intensive?
Awareness intensives are happening all around the world; please check the upcoming events page on this site to participate in an awareness intensive with yves-rakendra.
Please check the awareness world wide links page on this site to find an awareness intensive or an enlightenment intensive near you with other facilitators.
Me enlightened?
Yes, even you reading this are an enlightened being. But don't worry, we all are. Because of an apple, or so it seems, we have lost the connection to this state and we have to crawl or way back into it.
Thousands of techniques are available to get back in 'heaven', yet none is so direct and fast than the Awareness Intensive one.
"I salute the Buddha within you. You may not be aware of it, you may not have ever dreamed about it -- that you are a Buddha, that nobody can be anything else, that buddhahood is the very essential core of your being, that it is not something to happen in the future, that it has happened already. It is the very source you come from; it is the source and the goal too. It is from buddhahood that we move, and it is to buddhahood that we move. This one word, buddhahood, contains all -- the full circle of life, from the alpha to the omega. But you are fast asleep, you don't know who you are. Not that you have to become a Buddha, but only that you have to recognize it, that you have to return to your own source, that you have to look within yourself. A confrontation with yourself will reveal your buddhahood. The day one comes to see oneself, the whole existence becomes enlightened. It is not that a person becomes enlightened -- how can a person become enlightened? The very idea of being a person is part of the unenlightened mind. It is not that I have become enlightened; the 'I' has to be dropped before one can become enlightened, so how can I become enlightened? That is absurdity. The day I became enlightened the whole existence became enlightened. Since that moment I have not seen anything other than Buddhas -- in many forms, with many names, with a thousand and one problems, but Buddhas still. So I salute the Budhha within you."
Osho, Excerpted from: The Heart Sutra, chapter 1
Who created this process?
Originally called enlightenment intensive, the awareness intensive retreat was developed by an American named Charles Berner, who had been working with communication techniques for personal growth during the 1960s. In 1968 Charles Berner had the idea to merge together three unique self improvement practices; the ancient "Who am I?" question, the Japanese Zen sesshin* format and a modern communication technique. Soon after that, the first, experimental enlightenment intensive was held in the Californian desert.
* Zen Sesshin - a self-awareness retreat that takes place in Japanese monasteries where monks sit practicing zazen for long periods of times and use koans.
Awareness intensives versus enlightenment intensives?
In the awareness intensive Osho active meditations are use to help participant move more rapidly through physical and emotional barriers as well as to root their meditative space, anchor themselves in a state of 'being'.
These active meditations – mainly Dynamic, Mandala and Kundalini also help creating a balance between physical and non physical activities.
What is the purpose of the awareness intensive?
The sole purpose of the awareness intensive retreat is to create a supportive environment within which participants can open themselves to themselves and to others with the intention of directly experiencing their true nature, their own direct experience of truth. There is no other purpose.
What is a direct experience or direct knowing?
Direct knowing refers to a conscious, direct experience of the truth in the absolute sense.
The objective of the Awareness Intensive is to directly experience the reality of self. When this fundamental truth is experienced directly, it is referred to as a no-mind experience, an enlightenment experience, a state of conscious presence. It is always an experience in the present moment, where all separation has disappeared, where no sense of "I" can be found.
"The question is knowing -- directly, straightforwardly. The question is being one with the truth, not knowing the truth from far away, from others' experience, from scriptures. You cannot borrow truth; it is not a commodity.
You have to become the truth.
Even if a person says, "I have seen truth," it is wrong, because you cannot see truth -- truth is not something material. If you see, it is hallucination…
Neither understanding is needed -- because understanding is intellectual -- nor not-understanding, because that too is intellectual. You can be a theist, you can be an atheist, that does not matter; both are intellectual standpoints. You have to drop them both and you have to see without any prejudice, without any hypothesis, without any belief system. Only then... then you don't see the truth, you become the truth. And unless you become the truth you are not enlightened.
So see the difference: it is not a question of seeing God, it is not a question of seeing Buddha. It is a question of being a buddha. There are not three, the one who sees, the one who is seen, and the process of seeing; there is only one.
You are it."
Osho, Excerpted from: Rinzai: Master of the Irrational - Talks on Zen, chapter 2
What are the common attributes of a direct experience?
It is often described as instantaneous and sudden.
It is experienced as timeless and with a sense of universal love.
There is a sense of union or oneness.
It is often very ordinary and so obvious, that when you experience 'It', you realize that you knew it all the time, but didn't know you knew.
It can be very funny. A cosmic joke and you're often the punch line.
Are there degrees in direct knowing?
Direct knowing is direct knowing! They are no degrees in it. Yet one can be in it for a split second or for a lifetime. That is what makes the difference, the depth one has reached in directly experiencing oneself. In Awareness Intensives most of the participants who directly experience themselves do so for few seconds, few minutes or few hours. Then they return to their so called 'normal' state of being in life. Identification starts again, paradise is lost one more time – yet, not completely this time, some of its fragrance remains.
The state of direct knowing or conscious presence is always there, there is no way of not being in it, it is our true nature. What fades away is our ability to be in this state and this ability to connect can be cultivated, can be enhanced.
All that is needed is to continue the dis-identification process until a full union is achieved.
Can one describe a direct experience?
A direct experience is beyond words, symbols or conceptualization. It is beyond all the indirect methods we commonly depend on for knowing; sensing, thinking, believing, deciding, reasoning, or feeling. Language can not describe a direct experience. There can only be an attempt.
"The ultimate experience is not an experience because the one who experiences has disappeared. And when the one who experiences has disappeared, what can you say? Who could talk about it? Who could describe this experience? When there is no subject the object disappears, the banks of the river withdraw and only remains the flow."
Osho, Excerpted from: The Heart Sutra, chapter 1
People who have achieved a direct experience of self speak from their deepest or highest source. They no longer identify themselves as only being their body, emotions, thoughts, mind or the roles they may play in life.
Such people speak from that space of experiencing without having to refer to their past thoughts or the thoughts of others. A person who has had a direct experience of self increasingly sees each moment in life as a new and unique experience and does not tend to be stuck in a limited way of seeing things.
Why "Who is in?"
The Enlightenment Intensives were intensively practiced in Pune , India
What is the difference between "Who is in?" and "Who am I?"
"Who
is in?" helps participants access more easily the different aspects of
their personality, their masks, their conditionings, their 'inner voices'. It
gives them an opportunity to recognize more easily what they are not. As for
the answer is concerned, there is no difference between "Who is in?"
and "Who am I?".
What is a Koan?
In Zen tradition, riddle-like question, called Koans, are used to provoke you to find the truth within yourself. A koan cannot be answer through logic. When your mind is exhausted with trying to figure it out, you are available to experience the existential truth of the answer.
Here is some famous one:
'Is the moon happy or unhappy?' - 'What was your face like before your mother was born?'
- 'What is the sound of one-hand clapping?'
- 'Does a dog have Buddha nature?'
- 'Mu'
What is a dyad?
Dyad is a Greek word that means 'two'. A relating dyad is two people who work together to bring about understanding through effective communication and focused listening. It is this element of relating added to the self-pointed question that accelerates the process of direct knowing in an Awareness Intensive.
What is the format of an awareness intensive?
The awareness Intensive format is a highly structure combination of communication exercises, Osho active meditations and silent activities. The core of the process is to experience directly our true nature. The structure helps participant to cut through the non essential layers in themselves and get in touch with their true nature.
There are no 'teachings' about what the truth supposedly is, or discussions about what it might be.
The Schedule
The awareness intensive has a full daily schedule from early morning to late evening in which periods of dyad communication exercises alternate with periods of silence (eating activities, walking, rest and sleeping periods) and Osho active meditations.
The Agreements
The awareness intensive retreat has a set of agreements designed to ensure a safe and secure environment for all participants. A confidentiality clause is asked of each, including the staff, to support this opening and trust for each.
The Communication Technique
The method used to seek this direct knowing involves focussing on a unique question (such as 'Who is in?') throughout the retreat. This is combined with one-to-one communication exercises, or dyads, during which all participants sit in pairs and take turns to communicate to each other whatever occurs as a result of their intention to experience themselves directly in the present moment.
Within every dyad, while one partner contemplates and communicates, the other partner listens attentively but makes no response.
The whole communication technique is carefully explained at the start of the retreat.
The Osho Active meditations
Interwoven with the communication technique and other silent activities, these Osho active meditations help participants move more rapidly through physical and emotional barriers as well as to root their meditative space, anchor themselves in a state of 'being'.
These active meditations – mainly Dynamic, Mandala and Kundalini also help creating a balance between physical and non physical activities.
Other silent activities
Silence is a tremendous help and support to any inward journey. In an awareness intensive participants are asked to maintain silence at all time except during the communication dyads.
All activities - eating activities, walking, resting and sleeping periods – are considered as meditation time and a support to the inner search.
The facilitator
The awareness intensive is led by a person who accepts full responsibility for ensuring that the retreat runs as it should. The leader's role is sometimes called "master" - not as in master/slave or master/student - but more like the "master or captain of a ship".
He or she is someone who has acquired the knowledge and skills needed specifically to help participants in their journey towards themselves within the format of the awareness intensive. The facilitator provides appropriate information, support and encouragement, both to the group as a whole and to individuals when and where needed.
Why a retreat format?
It helps remove oneself from everyday life in order to minimize the usual distractions we usually indulge in. Maintaining silence and isolation during a period of time help our energy to flow inwards, dedicating it to a single purpose, directly experiencing oneself.
The awareness intensive retreat is a safe, supportive environment that encourages honesty, authenticity, contact, understanding and deep meditative self reflection.
Awareness Intensive retreats have been presented all over the world in every climate and in all kinds of venues.
Why is this method so powerful?
The key principle that accelerates the process of direct knowing is relating or communicating yourself to another.
The live interaction helps keeping you at the task of intending to experience yourself.
Consciously communicating the things that you are identified with but that are not actually you, vanish to the degree that they are communicated fully and understood by another. Presenting fully to your partner whatever you have become aware of as a result of your intention to directly know who you are clears mental confusions.
Awareness of yourself grows by presenting yourself to another, by opening, by being open to the unknown of you. The more one is able to open to oneself the more true communication can happen.
Who runs awareness intensive?
Ordinary people who have been inspired by their own experiences of truth by taking awareness intensive themselves and want to share this process with others. They have usually gone on to take the awareness intensive training course.
There is no controlling organisation behind the awareness intensives, just a loose network of inspired individuals. Quite a few of the current facilitators are counsellors or psychotherapists by trade.
Are awareness intensives part of any tradition, movement or cult?
No. Awareness intensives do not belong to any organisation or promote any particular spiritual path. Nor are they presided over by any authority figure (even Charles Berner).
Self-discovery is a personal affair, thus awareness intensives function independently of any philosophical, psychological or spiritual teacher or organisation. Participants are never required or expected to adhere to any belief system or ideology. If the facilitator happens to be a member of a particular organisation or following a particular path, this should not 'feature' as part of the awareness intensive.
Where are awareness intensive held?
They are mostly held in hired retreat centres or growth centres. People generally prefer to run them in quiet, natural settings with plenty of walking space. The food served on these retreat is vegetarian.
Can you really get enlightened in just three days?
Yes. Many people have conscious direct knowing of the self in three days or less, though some people need more time. Many report having conscious direct knowing experiences on the way home or in the days or weeks following the intensive.
It is a powerful personal and spiritual growth process and the state of conscious presence or direct knowing that people experience is the same that Buddha experienced centuries ago or that anyone has ever experienced through any spiritual or personal growth system.
Yet, to say that a person can gain enlightenment in just three days is not entirely accurate as one can be in it for a split second or for a lifetime.
In Awareness Intensives most of the participants who directly experience themselves do so for few seconds, few minutes or few hours. Then they return to their so called 'normal' state of being in life. Identification starts again, paradise is lost one more time – yet, not completely this time, some of its fragrance remains.
The state of direct knowing or conscious presence is always there, there is no way of not being in it, it is our true nature. What fades away is our ability to be in this state and this ability to connect can be cultivated, can be enhanced.
All that is needed is to continue the dis-identification process until a full union is achieved.
Are you guaranteed to experience yourself directly?
No. Statistically, on a typical three-day Intensive, about 35-40% of participants will experience themselves directly. Sometimes there are more; sometimes there are none at all. There is no way of predicting, and no way to force direct knowing to happen.
However, not doing the proposed technique is one way to guarantee that you won't experience yourself directly!
What happens if you are directly experiencing yourself?
If you are directly experiencing yourself, then the facilitator will encourage you to communicate yourself to your partners from that state of conscious presence. So that you bring it more and more into your ordinary level of consciousness, that you root yourself in it and that your partners get it in the process.
Expressing your truth is an essential part of the process of assimilating an enlightenment experience. But there is definitely no prize-giving ceremony!
What happens after you have directly experiencing yourself?
Well… that all depends on you! and how much you are able to open to the experience, open to let 'you' disappear.
In most cases you will return to your so called 'normal' state of being in life as identification will start again.
Yet your life will not be the same, you will not see things from the same stand point as you used to before you had the experience. It will not be possible to completely return to a state of unconsciousness. If it is your own estimation that this direct knowing is what being alive is all about, then you will find ways to keep a live contact with it and support its growth.
Is there any follow-up support for participants?
At the end of the awareness intensive or if possible a couple of days later, integration dyads are proposed to participants to check how they can integrate their experience in their daily life.
Awareness intensives uses a "stand-alone" technique and, as they do not belong to any organisation or promote any particular spiritual path, they are not embedded in any long-term system of personal or spiritual growth.
However, it is part of the facilitator's responsibility to be available for post-retreat "counselling", or a more casual sharing, it can be done physically, by email or over the telephone, whatever fits best.
Why do it?
Usually people come to an awareness intensive because they want to know who they are. They have a quest for who is this one doing whatever they are doing (talking, walking, eating, etc…).
Sometimes it is also simply a sheer curiosity or the desire to tackle the intensity of the process.
Some want to dis-identify from patterns they are caught in. Reasons for taking part in an awareness intensive are as abundant as stars in the sky.
What can I gain taking and awareness intensive?
As a result of participating in an awareness intensive retreat, one may gain or experience some or all of the following:
You may gain an increased ability to focus your intent.
You may achieve a quiet, peaceful mindYou may experience an opening of the heart.You may experience an increase in your self esteem as you let go of what you think others think about you.
You may love yourself more than you ever have.You may experience a tremendous surge of life energy, experience orgasmic sexuality, ecstasy or bliss.
You may gain a wider freedom of choice, choosing to accept what is rather than wanting things to be different than what they are.
As a side effect, you may experience yourself more joyful in life, more loving towards others. You may realize that you are now living your life from a more relaxed state.
What participants have said about awareness intensive retreats
Michel, France 3-day awareness intensive
"a total mind-blowing experience!"
Leela, Belgium 3-day awareness intensive
For the first two days I was in the grips of my mind that seemed hell to me. I could not feel anything apart from a blank state that wouldn’t clear up, no matter how much I looked into it. I wanted so much to escape this state and my mind was going crazy. In fact, I thought I was going crazy. I wanted to run away from this group as far as possible.
The breakthrough came in the evening of the second day when I started to notice that my mind was behaving in the same cunning ways that I had often been behaving in some situations with other people. It was playing the same tricks; it was using the same strategies. My mind was not me and I felt that a space had been created for acceptance and understanding my mind. I stopped feeling that I was wasting my time just watching it and I stopped expecting anything.
After Dynamic on the third day I felt light; as if a heavy burden had been lifted off my shoulders. I could still notice my mind trying to go back in the past or plans for the future, but this did not affect me. These thoughts were separate from me, on the periphery and they could not affect me. I suddenly realized that all my suffering in the previous days had been because of my expectations that I didn’t want to let go. In that moment all my expectations became dust. There was no pain, no suffering, no desires, just an overwhelming present moment, infinite moment.
Samarpan, Germany – 7-day awareness intensive
I love sitting opposite different partners; each one can trigger something from inside me – not related to them at all. The challenge is to allow myself to be who I am right now and to communicate that in truthfulness, making the communication so intimate. Being truthful and real created awareness about what is happening inside of me. I learned to be in the moment and to be the feeling, not just talk about it.
The challenge continues for me in daily life; to be real with people, to be real with myself, to be present in a conversation. It is an adventure to continue to discover myself. The meditation techniques help me go deeper in discovering who I am. This awareness intensive brought a clearer understanding about: “you are not the body, you are not the mind.”
I have become more relaxed, more receptive, not only to people but also to trees and flowers. I think that anyone who wants to live a life of joy, aliveness, and truth, should participate in an awareness intensive.
For more, please check our Expressions of their experience
People who have achieved a direct experience of self speak from their deepest or highest source. They no longer identify themselves as only being their body, emotions, thoughts, mind or the roles they may play in life.
Such people speak from that space of experiencing without having to refer to their past thoughts or the thoughts of others. A person who has had a direct experience of self increasingly sees each moment in life as a new and unique experience and does not tend to be stuck in a limited way of seeing things.
The awareness intensive has a full daily schedule from early morning to late evening in which periods of dyad communication exercises alternate with periods of silence (eating activities, walking, rest and sleeping periods) and Osho active meditations. The Agreements
The awareness intensive retreat has a set of agreements designed to ensure a safe and secure environment for all participants. A confidentiality clause is asked of each, including the staff, to support this opening and trust for each.
The method used to seek this direct knowing involves focussing on a unique question (such as 'Who is in?') throughout the retreat. This is combined with one-to-one communication exercises, or dyads, during which all participants sit in pairs and take turns to communicate to each other whatever occurs as a result of their intention to experience themselves directly in the present moment.
Within every dyad, while one partner contemplates and communicates, the other partner listens attentively but makes no response.
The whole communication technique is carefully explained at the start of the retreat.
Interwoven with the communication technique and other silent activities, these Osho active meditations help participants move more rapidly through physical and emotional barriers as well as to root their meditative space, anchor themselves in a state of 'being'.
These active meditations – mainly Dynamic, Mandala and Kundalini also help creating a balance between physical and non physical activities.
Silence is a tremendous help and support to any inward journey. In an awareness intensive participants are asked to maintain silence at all time except during the communication dyads.
All activities - eating activities, walking, resting and sleeping periods – are considered as meditation time and a support to the inner search.
The awareness intensive is led by a person who accepts full responsibility for ensuring that the retreat runs as it should. The leader's role is sometimes called "master" - not as in master/slave or master/student - but more like the "master or captain of a ship".
He or she is someone who has acquired the knowledge and skills needed specifically to help participants in their journey towards themselves within the format of the awareness intensive. The facilitator provides appropriate information, support and encouragement, both to the group as a whole and to individuals when and where needed.
The awareness intensive retreat is a safe, supportive environment that encourages honesty, authenticity, contact, understanding and deep meditative self reflection.
Awareness Intensive retreats have been presented all over the world in every climate and in all kinds of venues.
The live interaction helps keeping you at the task of intending to experience yourself.
In Awareness Intensives most of the participants who directly experience themselves do so for few seconds, few minutes or few hours. Then they return to their so called 'normal' state of being in life. Identification starts again, paradise is lost one more time – yet, not completely this time, some of its fragrance remains.
All that is needed is to continue the dis-identification process until a full union is achieved.
"a total mind-blowing experience!"
For the first two days I was in the grips of my mind that seemed hell to me. I could not feel anything apart from a blank state that wouldn’t clear up, no matter how much I looked into it. I wanted so much to escape this state and my mind was going crazy. In fact, I thought I was going crazy. I wanted to run away from this group as far as possible.
The breakthrough came in the evening of the second day when I started to notice that my mind was behaving in the same cunning ways that I had often been behaving in some situations with other people. It was playing the same tricks; it was using the same strategies. My mind was not me and I felt that a space had been created for acceptance and understanding my mind. I stopped feeling that I was wasting my time just watching it and I stopped expecting anything.
After Dynamic on the third day I felt light; as if a heavy burden had been lifted off my shoulders. I could still notice my mind trying to go back in the past or plans for the future, but this did not affect me. These thoughts were separate from me, on the periphery and they could not affect me. I suddenly realized that all my suffering in the previous days had been because of my expectations that I didn’t want to let go. In that moment all my expectations became dust. There was no pain, no suffering, no desires, just an overwhelming present moment, infinite moment.
I love sitting opposite different partners; each one can trigger something from inside me – not related to them at all. The challenge is to allow myself to be who I am right now and to communicate that in truthfulness, making the communication so intimate. Being truthful and real created awareness about what is happening inside of me. I learned to be in the moment and to be the feeling, not just talk about it.
The challenge continues for me in daily life; to be real with people, to be real with myself, to be present in a conversation. It is an adventure to continue to discover myself. The meditation techniques help me go deeper in discovering who I am. This awareness intensive brought a clearer understanding about: “you are not the body, you are not the mind.”
I have become more relaxed, more receptive, not only to people but also to trees and flowers. I think that anyone who wants to live a life of joy, aliveness, and truth, should participate in an awareness intensive.