Gnostic Intensive and the question that started the universe, Part Two

Written by Vladimir Stojakovic

NOTE: Please read Part One of this article first, as the two parts are one integral article. The first part is theory while the second part is practice.

Part Two

Even though the “Who I am?” enquiry is present in different spiritual traditions, the first one who fully emphasized and pronounced its significance and based his whole teaching around it was Ramana Maharshi, another reputable mystic of the twentieth century.

Maharshi pointed out and kept reiterating throughout his whole life, that the fastest way to Enlightenment is through a permanent “Who am I?” enquiry. He even titled his first book “Who am I?”.

However, Ramana’s teaching was more in the form of discourses and less in the form of practical and step-by-step structured technology that would cause the expected results with some degree of certainty, within some reasonable time.

The next evolutionary step in “Who am I?” technology, so to speak, happened when an American Charles Berner made a major breakthrough creating something that he called Enlightenment Intensive. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia Enlightenment Intensive’s entry:

“Enlightenment Intensives were devised by an American spiritual teacher named Charles Berner (1929-2007), also known as Yogeshwar Muni. A former teacher of scientology, Berner had been developing the use of interpersonal communication processes for personal growth during the 1960s. As he himself has explained it , Berner observed that those who tended not to make much progress in their personal growth would be those who did not actually know who they were - that is, they were "identified" with their false self-images or egos or personalities, unaware of their true inner being. Traditional techniques for experiencing self-realization, such as the ancient yogic method of self-enquiry using the question "Who am I?" (as taught in the Twentieth Century by Ramana Maharshi), were too long term for the average Westerner seeking personal growth.

The inspiration for Enlightenment Intensives came to Berner one sunny Spring afternoon in 1968.

“I had four or five hours one afternoon with nothing to do. I was in the Santa Cruz mountains in California, staring at the trees in a nice quiet area ... Suddenly the whole idea of the Enlightenment Exercise occurred to me and moments later it occurred to me to use the format of a Zen sesshin [intensive meditation retreat], but to call it an intensive. So essentially the basic outline of both the Enlightenment Technique and the Enlightenment Intensive came to me at that time. And what source it came from I know not but it wasn't a process of sitting down and figuring it out. It occurred to me in one moment. I was just reflecting on this problem on this beautiful spring afternoon and suddenly it came to me: why don't we take the age-old question of 'Who am I?" which is at least 7,000 years old, and combine it with the communication techniques that I had learned? And thus was born the Enlightenment Intensive.”

The first, experimental Enlightenment Intensive was held in the Californian desert soon afterwards. Berner went on to run dozens of Intensives over the next few years, gradually refining the format, the rules, the technique and so on. Having optimized the retreat for the "weekend truth-seeker", he also trained others to lead Enlightenment Intensives in the same manner. His 99th and last Enlightenment Intensive was held in Berkeley in 1975.
Enlightenment Intensives are now held in many countries around the world. They tend to be offered as a "stand-alone" process, outside of any tradition or movement or organization.”

What Enlightenment Intensive did was to enable any person, without any experience or knowledge in spiritual, to achieve, in only three days, something that generations of spiritual seekers were striving to, throughout their whole lives, in numerous monasteries or ashrams, in occult organizations or through independent efforts. To experience the Direct Experience of Truth, the Enlightenment.


It needs to be clarified that Enlightenments achieved on three days Intensives were not permanent, but temporary. However, this is essentially the same experience. The main difference is that in temporary enlightenment, the ego (sanskaras) would move aside for a very short time and then quickly come back, while in permanent enlightenment, the ego is either permanently gone or reduced allowing the human being to be in continues touch with the real self.

More from Wikipedia on Enlightenment Intensive:

“Format
The format of an Enlightenment Intensive resembles a cross between a meditation retreat and a co-counseling workshop. As with a Zen retreat, the Intensive is led by a person who is traditionally called the master, though some prefer the term facilitator. The master's role is to set up the retreat, ensure it runs smoothly, and provide the participants with appropriate information, support, and encouragement, both to the group as a whole and to individuals where needed. The master is supported by monitors who take care of both the participants and the retreat environment.

The Enlightenment Intensive also has a set of monastic-style rules, such as no reading, no TV, no makeup. These are designed to ensure that a single-minded focus on the purpose of the retreat is maintained and, as far as possible, participants do not get into discussions, issues, conflicts or collusions with each other. In particular, participants are required not to express judgments of other participants when communicating.

Technique

The technique used to seek truth centers on contemplating a question such as "Who am I?" throughout the retreat. (Other questions typically used are "What am I?", "What is life?" and "What is another?") This is combined with one-to-one communication exercises during which all participants sit in pairs and take turns to communicate to their current dyad partners whatever occurs as a result of their contemplations. Within every dyad, while one partner contemplates and communicates, the other partner listens attentively but is required to make no response. The benefit of communicating one’s inner experiences to another within a safe setting is that it dramatically accelerates the internal shifts needed to deepen one's contemplation towards ultimate truth.

The contemplation/communication technique is built into a daily schedule from early morning to late evening in which 40-minute dyads alternate with periods of silent contemplation (including all eating, resting, walking and break periods). Where the Enlightenment Intensive differs from a traditional meditation retreat and resembles a co-counseling workshop is in the fact that the participants, rather than facing a wall to meditate, spend much of the day sitting face-to-face in dyads, taking turns to communicate.”

In an article posted to Spiritual Technology discussion forum, Z.M. Slavinski discusses historical development of technology used in meditation that led to Berner’s technique.

“In ancient time Enlightenment demanded the devotion of the whole life of a human being: Severing connection with everyday living, with family, rejecting the goals and ambitions. The best example is Buddha. He got Enlightenment after eight years of persistent meditation. His Enlightenment was all-inclusive, he got Direct Experience about himself, another human being, life, everything…

Many centuries latter, Rinzai Zen school came into existence. They discovered that it was easier to get Direct Experience on one particular segment of reality then on whole of life. Thus their followers meditated on particular Koans or questions and their Gnostic Experiences were more narrow, but they use to get Enlightenment quicker. In traditional mystical school they did not pay attention to the time needed to attain Gnosis or Enlightenment, because they considered time as illusion anyway. But for us, people of 21st century, the time needed to attain anything, even Direct Experience of Truth, is most important.

So in the middle of last century some people discovered that it is more efficient if people work in pairs and groups then individually. Two human beings would alternatively meditate and communicate to each other. The logic of this conclusion is very simple: When working in pairs, we have two consciousnesses against one unconsciousness. Others discovered that the most efficient method is combination of meditation with communication, because such method empties the contents of mind most rapidly.”

Berner’s idea behind the Intensive’ technique was simple, yet incredibly efficient. As a participant would focus the attention to experience himself/herself, mind content (sanskaras) would come up. Through the effort of the participant to experience sanskaras directly, and through communication with the dyad partner, sanskaras would discharge. By continuing with the technique, at one point of time, enough of the mind content would discharge and/or the ego would move aside for a split second, and the participant was enabled, in that short point of time, to experience him/herself directly, to experience enlightenment, or the Direct Experience of Truth, as it was called in the terminology of Intensive.


However, Intensive, as it was designed by Charles Berner was not un easy task for an average human being. It lasted three days, eighteen hours a day. Yes, eighteen hours, from six o’clock in the morning, until midnight. It had around 40 dyads, and each lasted 40 minutes. Apart from the dyads, Intensive had some other activates, like walking meditations once a day, breathing and communication exercises, solo meditation etc. And these other activities were also governed by rules and directed by specific instructions.

All in all, Enlightenment Intensive required extraordinary efforts from the participants. These efforts involved pretty much every aspect of the human being, physical, emotional and mental. Apart from its extremely demanding structure, Enlightenment Intensive had a number of strict rules. Even though these rules were rightfully established with a purpose to create the environment where the Enlightenment was most likely to happen, they made the experience even more demanding.

Another characteristic of Enlightenment Intensive were frequent occurrences of strong energy discharges, catharsis. For a typical person, not used to such sort of social interaction and phenomena, they were often quite dramatic.

Apart from a short 3 day Intensive, there were also longer ones, lasted one, two or even six weeks. These were intended for serious seekers, and those who were able to endure the efforts.
Berner’s Enlightenment Intensive had the success rate around 30%. This means that the percentage of participants of every Intensive who achieved the goal of Intensive, the Enlightenment, was around 30%.

But the fact that Enlightenment Intensive was hard to endure, could not reduce its significance or stop people from attending. It was the only techniques in human history able to provoke the Enlightenment with any certainty in 3 days only. Many of us, who until then could only read in the books about Enlightenment, were suddenly enabled to experience it for themselves. Those who were not successful on their first Intensive would participate another or a few more until they also managed to experience the Direct Experience of Truth.

Even Osho, another significant mystic of the twentieth century, included Enlightenment Intensive in the range of techniques used in his community. And I would be surprised if Intensive was not the most effective of all of them.

The word about a new miraculous technique started spreading around the world. In 1980, Z.M. Slavinski from former Yugoslavia embarked on a journey to experience Enlightenment Intensive for himself, and if it fulfilled the expectations, to bring it to his country. The consequences of this decision will soon affect thousands of people.

In Yugoslavia, Intensive happened to be more successful then in any other country. Throughout the years, thousands of people attended Intensives and numerous Intensive Masters were trained by Z.M.Slavinski. Soon, Yugoslavia had more Masters of Intensive then all other countries together. Only Z.M. Slavinski himself led more then 130 Intensives of different length.

In 2005, he led the 25 years anniversary Intensive, where 60 people attended.
Quickly after Intensive arrived to Yugoslavia, Berner’s handbook "Consciousness of Truth - A Manual For the Enlightenment Intensive" was translated to Serbian by Z.M. Slavinski and his associates, and the whole print was sold out. This was, by the way, the first translation of Berner’s manual from English to any language.

In 1985, Z.M. Slavinski published his significant book “Encounters with Truth, Enlightenment Intensive”, which was the first book on Intensive ever written. Berner’s manual was not written as a book. His associates took transcripts of Berner’s lectures on the subject of Intensive and published them in the form of a book.

For 10 long years, Z.M. Slavinski conducted numerous Intensives, and trained many Intensive masters, without introducing any changes into the original Berner's version. He was asked by Charles Berner not to change anything, and if he does introduce changes, to also change the name of Enlightenment Intensive, as it will not be the same method any longer.

After ten years of using and teaching Intensive in its original version, Z.M. Slavinski introduced significant improvements and according to the agreement he had with Berner, he changed the name from Enlightenment Intensive to Gnostic Intensive.

The most important improvement was changing the technique of Intensive. Emotions were introduced as an operational element and the commands used in the technique were reformulated. This way, the technique was more efficient, much easier to understand and use. Explaining the technique to participants was not difficult any longer.

Explosive energy discharges that often preceded the experience of Enlightenment started to subside, being more and more replaced by “soft” dissipations of energy blocks. At that time, Z.M. Slavinski wrote: “There are two main ways one gets to Direct Experience: through catharsis with a lot of energetic discharge (the way of the Serpent) and the calm way, without noticeable energetic phenomena (the way of the Dove). This second way resembles a snowflake falling.”

A number of rules were abandoned as they proved either obsolete or unnecessary. The length of 3 day Intensive was reduced to one and a half days. The whole Intensive had 14 dyads only. Most importantly, the success rate jumped from around 30 to around 80 percents. Intensive changed from an extremely difficult experience to a reasonably difficult experience.

In 1993, Z.M. Slavinski published his book “Handbook for Masters of Gnostic Intensive: Theory and Practice”. Even though the book was intended for Master, it was in fact suitable for anybody interested in Intensive, as it did not assume any prerequisites in knowledge and/or experience.
In year 1999 a revolutionary development took place. This is how Z.M. Slavinski describes it in a post to Spiritual Technology discussion forum:

“All those years I kept in my mind Ron Hubbard’s words which I read somewhere: “This is a bipolar universe”. And couple of years ago I had a funny experience. Passing by a garden on the outskirts of Belgrade I noticed two men trying to bring down a large wooden pillar. Its lower part was buried deeply in the ground. They swung it left and right, forward and backward and in about 5 minutes brought it down. An idea came to my mind: “How long time would they need if they tried to do it by pushing that pillar in only one direction? Much, much more. Hours or maybe days.” In that moment I had a valuable cognition and the whole idea of a new, more efficient Gnostic Intensive with the “Alternating Technique”. I went home, called my family members and some friends and the next day I created a new kind of Intensive. I was right. The New Alternating Technique was extremely fast. Now instead of 40 dyads and many rigid rules for Participants, it lasts only 5 dyads and a participant can drink coffee, eat whatever they want etc. which was forbidden before.”

Another great improvement took place around this time, named the Diplomatic Speech. In previous versions of Intensive, a participant was required to communicate any mind content that would come up as a consequence of the application of the technique. The mind content was communicated “as it is”, without leaving out, adding or changing anything.


This was a great barrier to many participants, maybe the most difficult one. Due to the nature of Intensive, when you dive deeply into the suppressed content of the mind, into many troublesome and traumatic experiences, those that you suppressed the most, those that you were afraid of or ashamed of the most, keeping them away from yourself and especially from the others, would sooner or later come up, and one was supposed to communicate them to the dyad partner, without changing it, exactly as it is.

This barrier wasted so much time, as many participants would get stuck when experiencing these most private and often intimate mind content and were unable to communicate it. Prior to Diplomatic Speech, there was no workaround around this, as this mind content is what separates the participant from the Enlightenment.

Another aspect of this problem was that many critical or even offensive thoughts towards the Master of Intensive would come up, and Masters had to keep up with this, as a regular part of the technique, and was not entitled to intervene.

The Diplomatic Speech changed this completely. Using diplomatic speech, when you describe a traumatic experience, you do not have to describe it “as it is”. Using diplomatic speech, you can describe the experience, and formulate the communication to express your emotions and how exactly you feel about it in general terms, without specifics, without naming people or their relationships with you, or giving away any specific data by which somebody would be able to conclude who you are talking about or what exactly happened.

It is possible to use the Diplomatic Speech in all Spiritual Technology methods, which effectively removes one of the strongest barriers that prevented some people to attend seminars.
This is the Gnostic Intensive of today. The Alternating Technique reduced it to 5 forty minute dyads officially, but in many cases it is completed in four even three dyads. Cathartic behavior is completely gone, and the success rate is above 90%. And believe it or not, some participants get more than one Direct Experience.

Needless to say, Intensive today is an easy experience, so much different from its distant forefather.

Another extraordinary benefit happened as a consequence of the evolution of Intensive, and probably as a consequence of spiritual development on the collective level. To Z.M. Slavinski and his associates, it took ten years of participating on Intensives, ten years of “tears, blood and sweat”, to accomplish a major breakthrough in their personal spiritual development and reach the state of Meuna, the “Stable State of Consciousness”. In this state, the one is in continuous touch with the real self and does not need Intensive any longer, as one is all the time in the state of Direct Experience.

What took ten years to Z.M. Slavinski and his associates to achieve, happens today to inexperienced participants after a few or just one Gnostic Intensive! When you do everything you can to accelerate spiritual evolution, the existence responds this way, giving the awards beyond expectations.

In the past, a five days course for Intensive Masters was necessary to enable one to conduct Intensives, to “survive” numerous challenges and to successfully bring as many participants as possible to the Direct Experience of Truth. According to Z.M. Slavinski, this course is not needed any longer, as Gnostic Intensive as it is today, can be led by anybody who experienced it.

But this is not the end of the story about Gnostic Intensive. In year 2005, the last technological barrier of the “Who am I?” technology, standing between the human being and the Enlightenment came tumbling down.

Z.M. Slavinski combined the technique of Gnostic Intensive with DP4 (Deep Peat Level Four), his efficient method for integration of polarities and problem solving, and as the result of this fruitful synthesis, Individual Gnostic Intensive was created, effectively enabling one to reach the Enlightenment individually!

What once required a group of minimum of twelve participants, a minimum of tree days hard work, eighteen hours each day, a day off at work, a suitable location, a number of assistants, somebody cooking for participants, numerous strict rules, a bit of luck not to be interrupted by the police, ability to go through all sorts of both physical and psychological barriers and crises etc, is now completed by a Processor and a Client, in half an hour time.

In his announcement to Spiritual Technology discussion forum, Z.M. Slavinski wrote the following:

“I would like to announce the following: Now it's possible to get Direct Experience of Truth (Gnosis, Enlightenment...) individually!

Recently I created and started to practice Individual Gnostic Intensive (IGI). As some of you know, for 25 years I have been practicing Gnostic Intensive as a group technique. In this long period of time it underwent a lot of changes. Mainly, it became shorter, quicker and the percentage of participants getting Gnostic Experience (Enlightenment) was higher and higher.
It's evolution got a very high acceleration when I discovered Alternating Technique. Instead of 39 dyads (exercises) lasting 3 full days and nights (18 hours a day), it lasted six short dyads, then five and then only four dyads.

That's Spiritual Evolution! Now Individual Gnostic Intensive (IGI) lasts about 15-30 minutes! So, a Processor (the old term was "Master of the Intensive") is able to bring his/her individual clients to Direct Experience of Truth on all important koans (questions): "Who am I?", "What is Life?" and "What is another?" or any other question.

As some of you know, after discovering the Direct Answer to the Eternal question "Who am I", the person starts to advance much quicker in all and every Spiritual and therapeutic system, mental and emotional self-development and similar.

I must repeat - that's the Spiritual Evolution. Who knows which gifts It has for us in not so distant future?”

And here we are. From full unconsciousness and the “initial urge”, across eons of evolution to the aware human being, from our predecessors wondering about the eternal “Who am I?” question, across generations of spiritual seekers who had to renounce life in order to maybe find out the answer, across Raman Maharshi, Charles Berner and Z.M. Slavinski, here we are, being separated by 30 minutes of Individual Gnostic Intensive, from the most important discovery a human being can make. From discovering the answer to the question “Who am I?”, to the question that started the universe. Here were are, 30 minutes away from accomplishing the purpose of the universe.

And it is now our choice.