This article is classified "Real"
The danger of enlightenment is often underestimated by people, for obvious
reasons. The common idea of enlightenment is that it is something positive
and wonderful that makes people consequently feel better afterwards. This
is a big mistake. For enlightenment always happens a little later than when
you expect it to happen, usually when you're already on the way back home in
your car. But then it is actually so overwhelming that you are quite busy
with all these feelings and thoughts of, "Yeah. Right. So that's what it's
all about" going on inside you.
In other words, you are in absolutely no condition to reliably control a
vehicle, so you'll very likely end up hitting a tree head-on.
This is why enlightenment is so dangerous.
But luckily, nature was smart enough to foresee this foolish human behavior,
and has therefore installed a safety measure: it's not easy to get there.
This ensures that only experienced people who know how to handle it get
enlightened, and thus humankind is prevented from self-extinction through
enlightened drivers causing car accidents.
For you as an average Hitchhiker however, these risks most likely pose no
extraordinary threat compared to your usual lifestyle, so you might try it
out as well. You have the option of several methods:
1) Ask a Guru or Master to show you how it works. This requires
you to first find such a person, which shouldn't be so
difficult, since they seem to be all over this planet lately.
Watch out for fakes though.
If the person smiles a lot, is not embarrassed by any of the
stunts you pull to test him and asks for no or little money in
exchange for teaching you, then you probably found one. The
second part is a little more tricky. The definition of
enlightenment claims that you cannot understand what someone
else tells you about it if you haven't been there yourself.
It also claims, however, that you don't have to be told,
because you already have the potential to eventually figure it
out for yourself, which brings you back to where you started.
This obviously leads to the question why you would need a guru
in the first place, since he can't explain it to you. So all
this guy usually does is tell you to meditate (see method 2,
below) and whack you on the back of your head or perform some
other mysterious action that he claims will speed up the
process of getting you there.
2) Meditation. Besides often taking a lifetime or longer to yield
any decent results, you usually have to stand incredible pains
in your legs or other parts of your body, plus possibly being
tortured by a guru with whacks on the back of your head (see
method 1, above). You are advised to try this only if you have
masochistic tendencies or you have tried pretty much all other
pastimes known to you and found them all boring.
3) Drugs. Since humans have become rather lazy, our technically
advanced society has invented means to make even the hardest of
tasks possible. Many people want to feel as positive and
wonderful as someone who is enlightened, but they don't want to
put up with all this lifelong meditation and whacks on the back
of their head. This is why drugs were invented. While some
purists claim that drugs are not the same thing, and nowhere
near as good as true enlightenment, this argument has never
been scientifically proven, so it can be discarded. The high
rate of people causing car accidents while under the influence
of drugs proves that there must be some effect of the same
quality. Besides, you can always cover the bad side effects of
drugs by taking more drugs, whereas you can't cover up the pain
in your legs through more meditation, so drugs obviously score
better on this part.
4) Instantaneous enlightenment. This is by all means the best way
to do it. Unfortunately, so far no one has found a reliable way
to successfully trigger it off. It appears to just happen
somehow, and before you even really notice, it's already gone
again. Hopes are high for neuroscience to come up with a device
that will be able to record and playback such a condition of
mind, but you might as well try some of the other methods while
you wait.