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"Enlightenment is the emancipation of man from a state of self-imposed tutelage.  This state is due to his incapacity to use his own intelligence without external guidance.  Such a state of tutelage I call 'self-imposed' (or 'culpable') if it is due not to lack of intelligence but to lack of courage or determinism to use one's own intelligence without the help of a leader.  Saper aude!  dare to use your own intelligence!  That is the battlecry of the Enlightenment."

Immanual Kant

Essay:  What Is Enlightenment

It was August 1994.

A very great and everlasting change came upon me suddenly but not without some warning.  I was a seeker without a home, walking the side streets of the universe, begging a cup of nectar from the gods.  All I had left in the world was the memories of my previous homes, homes that I was unable to return to.

Then one fine afternoon I sat down, staring at a blank wall, with the intention of never arising until I found home again.  Seven hours later I stood up and found myself in my new home.  The same one I had been born into.  It was startling!  I had come full circle.

Images of all the religious figures I had studied and honored over my life swirled in my brain like fast moving pictures, going on, and on, and on.....then subsiding into the far reaches of memory.  A calmness moved over my entire being.  I felt light, as if I could fly or jump over trees with a single push.  Then peace and knowing washed over me like a breaker wave at the beach.  I suddenly knew!  Then I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.....until my stomach ached and my eyes watered.  I finally knew what I had been searching for all my life and it was inside of me all the time.

I walked outside into the warm August evening and looked up into the dark sky and trembled slightly.  Everything was now crystal clear.  I had no where to go, no one to see or no one to follow.....but myself.  With that awareness I looked at the task before me and trembled again.  I would be walking alone once again on the back streets of the universe with nothing but a knapsack full of memories and a cup to fill back-up with new experiences.

(This is a true story)