The Architecture of Enlightenment

Martin Boroson

The experience of enlightenment, reported by saints, yogis, and sages, shows remarkable similarity from one culture to another. Modern consciousness researchers are increasingly identifying the "deep structure", or common features, of the path to enlightenment and the crowning experience itself. This pattern is echoed in many aspects of life, from the beginning, as we struggle to be born, and at the end, as we struggle to die. It structures all effective rites of passage, and is what makes drama dramatic. Each time that we cross a threshold, no matter how inconsequential the moment may seem, we experience the architecture of enlightenment.

Enlightenment brings an entirely new, transcendent worldview, usually after a period of great conflict and suffering. It can occur after many years of hard spiritual discipline, or it can happen spontaneously, as in "near-death" experiences. It involves a movement from darkness into light that is both metaphorical and real. Whenever a new idea is born, we imagine, cartoon-like, a light bulb above our heads. And when, after a period of depression, we say that there is a "light at the end of the tunnel", this too is metaphorical. But those who report "seeing the light", in the mystical sense, take this experience for real. They have had a convincing encounter with a light from a higher order, a light that carries wisdom and love, and that utterly transforms the personality.

Descriptions of enlightenment also often involve the language of death, birth, and rebirth. What dies is the ego, the sense of self, with its conditioned fears, beliefs, and expectations. But as this death rarely happens without a fight, the struggle is often quite dramatic. Over time, after many such "ego-death" experiences, a person comes to identify more with the "All" than just the "I". The sense of feeling separate�from self, from others, and from the Divine�yields to a deep awareness of unity, and a sense of compassion for all things. Life is no longer about preserving one�s own form, but is experienced as a flow of ever-changing forms.

The research of psychiatrist Stanislav Grof suggests that the basic structure of this experience has a deep connection to the history of the body, and in particular, the process of birth. Grof�s work involves bringing his patients into a deep state of trance, without any belief structure or agenda, and ensuring that they have the maximum possible safety and freedom to express themselves in this state. His research reveals that, given these conditions, individuals spontaneously re-experience moments of their birth. These actual birth memories, often verified, are also related to a symbolic process of rebirth, as if the actual birth provides a template for experiences of rebirth.

Grof observed that this process consists of four phases, based on the physical stages of birth. The foetus begins life in an "oceanic universe", a fluid paradise in which all needs are met, with no sense of separation. With the beginning of the contractions, however, its world is turned upside down. The enormous force of the contractions causes immense distress and danger, even cutting off the supply of nourishment. The womb threatens to become a tomb, from which the foetus must escape. But in this stage, which Grof calls "no exit" or "hell", there is no way out, and no relief in sight. When the cervix dilates, there is at last a way out�a tunnel. But this journey�the "birth struggle"�is intensely painful, often violent, and potentially life threatening. The process reaches its climax as the foetus "dies" to the only environment it has known since conception. It is delivered into a completely new experience�air, weight, and space�and is flooded with light. The enormous physical constriction and torture suddenly vanish. Reunited with the mother, the newborn learns to eat and breathe in completely new ways. Fully and finally a separate human being, it must now face all the new challenges of being an individual.

Grof�s research suggests that this basic pattern is deeply imprinted in our psyche and soma. The distinctive features of each individual birth, and the generic features of the birth process, are echoed, later in life, through many recapitulations. When replayed by an adult, this drama may be cast purely in psychological or spiritual terms: After a period of happy innocence, our world collapses. We are plunged into darkness, as deeply held beliefs are fundamentally challenged. Life becomes a terrible struggle, until at last we are delivered into a new reality. The light returns, and a new idea is born.

Whenever we leave the familiar to face a new challenge, our own particular hopes and fears around change and loss and the unknown come to the surface. Sometimes the terror of crossing this threshold is so great that we cling desperately to an old way-of-being, long past its usefulness. This drama is obvious around major life transitions, such as adolescence, marriage, moving house, and death, but can also been seen in smaller ways each day. Whenever we meet someone new, leave the house, or begin a journey, there is a tiny drama�a twinge of fear (or hope) about the unknown ahead. We re-enact the ritual of birth each time we cross a threshold.

In its simplest form, a threshold is just a line, a line imbued with great power. Division is the first act of creation. Before there can be any one thing, or any particular space, the infinite must be divided. A world must be created that has limits, boundaries and rules. This act of division, the creation of a particular space, is also the first condition of theatre. "Theatre" happens whenever some action or location is marked out as "special". In earliest ritual, this space was simply a magic circle drawn in the earth. A space was created in which something otherworldly might happen. In the temples of ancient Greece, this space, a formal room, was called the "temenos", the place in which the gods could be experienced directly. The temenos was so sacred that only the most prepared, or most privileged, could enter it. The designation of space as special gives it potential, and the ritual around the use of that space gives it power. Entering and leaving a sacred space become life-changing acts.

There is no more extraordinary example of the union of architecture, theatre, and a rebirth than Newgrange, the 5000-year-old passage grave in County Meath, Ireland. Newgrange, shaped like a mound, sits on top of a hill in the Boyne Valley, and is made of over 200,000 tonnes of stone, covered in earth. It is entered through a very narrow stone passageway, which opens out into a central chamber, set deep within the structure. This central chamber, like a womb, is completely dark, and remains at a constant temperature year round.

Newgrange was designed to house and facilitate what must be the most extraordinary lighting effect in the history of theatre. At dawn, the sunlight enters a small hole above the entrance to the passage. Then, for about fifteen minutes, a shaft of light penetrates the dark, inner chamber, filling it with golden light. This spectacular effect, created 3000 years before the birth of Christ, happens only on about five days, just around the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year.

No one knows for sure exactly what ritual the celebrants at Newgrange performed, or what they believed about the sun. On a simple level, perhaps they were celebrating, or trying to guarantee through magical means, the return of the light after the dark, dormant winter. Or perhaps they were trying to ensure, for their dead, a birth into another realm. Recent research indicates, however, that whatever the purpose of Newgrange, what occurred there was quite a performance, using the structure�s acoustic properties to create a spectacular fusion of sound and light just at the sunrise.

Even in the modern, secular theatre, there is some trace of the ritual and structure of enlightenment. The act of attending a performance is built on small rituals, rituals of entrance and expectation, which include queuing, handing over tickets, taking seats, and joining a group. We feel a heightened sense of anticipation as a drum roll or overture begins, and the houselights fade. (Often this is the most exciting part of the experience.) We pay a fee, and hope to be transported and renewed. As the curtain rises, a veil lifts, and we enter another world, a world in which the rules are different, and may surprise us. A theatre is a deliberately constructed structure, a space of darkness that we enter in order to experience a more dazzling play of forms. And no matter how removed this tradition has become from its sacred origins, we still hope, when we enter that space, that something truly wonderful will occur.

This can be discerned even as theatre has evolved into other forms: "happenings", performance art, and site-specific work. We do not need to have a specific kind of building in order to have theatre. Indeed, we do not need a building at all. Even if conventional contexts or frames are violated, they are present in their absence. Theatre exists whenever a space is created that facilitates play, and this space can be psychologically defined. We can choose to enter this play, or not. But we can�t avoid the dynamic, the structuring. It seems to be our nature to create structures for transcendent experience, and then wonder when and how and whether we will cross the threshold into them. Every period of stability becomes tired and dark, and calls out for a new light�a pattern so pervasive that, it seems, we have been built for it.

Bibliography
Campbell, Joseph, The Hero With A Thousand Faces
Devereux, Paul, Stone Age Soundtracks
Grof, Stanislav, Beyond the Brain
Grof, Stanislav, The Cosmic Game
Huxley, Aldous, The Perennial Philosophy
Smith, Huston, Forgotten Truth
Wilber, Ken, Sex, Ecology and Spirituality

Martin Boroson is the founder and director of The Temenos Project, a multi-disciplinary arts organisation, funded by the Arts Council of Ireland (www.temenosproject.org). He is the author of Becoming Me, a modern story of creation for adults and children (www.becomingme.com).