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A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT INTENSIVE

Everyone has their own story about how they were introduced to the Dyad Practice and the Enlightenment Intensive. This is mine. I was first introduced to the dyad process in 1968 by a friend. We were both students at San Diego State University when he introduced the WHO AM I enlightenment technique to my circle of friends. The dyad seeds he dropped in my life sprouted and have continued to grow over these nearly 50 years.

The Dyad Technique (created by Ava Berner) and the WHO AM I Enlightenment Dyad Technique (created by Charles Berner) that is used in the Enlightenment Intensive has spread around the world in much the same way that I first learned about it from a friend. It spreads by word of mouth from one person to another who finds it of value. There never has been a corporate headquarters or corporate marketing program organizing its dissemination. It has been taught and shared and continues to be transmitted that way because it is a useful, effective and a powerful transformational process. It spread around the world, relatively rapidly, decades before the internet, email and the social networking websites of Face Book and Twitter. A major seed spreader for the dyad process was the spiritual community of the new age teacher and guru, Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, who later changed his name to Osho. Tens of thousands of his students and disciples from scores of countries around the world learned to do the WHO AM I Enlightenment Dyad process when they became involved with his community. But let me not get ahead of myself. I’ll back up a bit and tell you how Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, aka Osho, found out about the dyad process.

Like Tom, the friend who introduced it to me and my circle of friends in 1968, Jeff Love, first introduced it to England and Europe in 1971. Jeff found a nutrient rich soil there and the dyad seeds he planted grew strong producing ripened fruit whose seeds keep sprouting today.

In a publication by Lawrence Noyes, entitled Miracle of Love, Jeff Love tells the story of how he learned of the Enlightenment Intensive and how he introduced the Enlightenment Intensive to Western Europe in 1971.

IT COMPLETELY CHANGED MY LIVE
Jeff recounts that “Wendy and I and our friend Steve drove down to the desert in Southern California to do this thing called an Enlightenment Intensive. It was in the winter of 1968 and the Intensive was five days long. It was the second one ever given. We got to Lucerne Valley, drove up a gentle slope on a dirt road, and arrived at the place. There were patches of snow on the ground in these low rolling hills at the base of the south side of the San Bernardino mountains. There was mostly sand, with brush here and there, and little flat flowers with leaves that came out and hugged the ground. You could see for miles all around and it was beautiful. But the compound itself was very unimpressive. It was very utilitarian and practical, just three simple A-frame buildings, with no aesthetics at all. But somehow, everything started to click. The people were really nice. We went upstairs into a rectangular, attic-like room with slanted ceilings, and Charles Berner was there. He was sitting in a chair wearing all beige and holding a staff. He looked like a Buddhist and he looked like he knew what he was doing. That enabled me to make a decision right then to go with the program, to really try it and give it an honest chance. And I'm glad I did, because it completely changed my life.”

Jeff goes on to describe about how the enlightenment experience transformed his conscious reality and that he decided he wanted to learn everything there was to learn about the Enlightenment Intensive process. But at that time, says Jeff, there was no training program for giving Enlightenment Intensives. “So I made a deal with Charles. I said, ‘I’m not a joiner. I don't join things. I don't believe in following gurus or any of that but I really want to learn what you have to teach.’ So we arranged that I would come back and spend three or four weeks there, studying his tapes and all the stuff he was teaching at the Institute.”

Jeff followed through with that arrangement and returned to study with Charles. After learning all he could during his visit and training with Charles Berner he facilitated his first Enlightenment Intensive in the Santa Cruz mountains of California. It worked, Jeff recalls. “I don't know where I got all the confidence. It just was there, somehow. Later I realized that being in that role of the master (facilitator) is a different state of consciousness than any other. The role itself gives you the means to do it.”

JEFF WENT TO EUROPE �
A couple of years later Jeff went to Europe. While in London he found out about a growth centre called Quaesitor. It was started by Paul and Patricia Lowe. Jeff remembered that at that time they had the first group of Europeans there for a six month training program to become Humanistic Psychologists. “The training consisted of group leaders from America, mostly from Esalen, coming over to train them in Gestalt, Encounter, Bioenergetics and so on. So I said, ‘Why don't I do an Enlightenment Intensive for this group?’ They liked the idea, and took a fairly big chance with it because they had to really believe that this would be a good thing for these eighteen people.”

The Enlightenment Intensive that Jeff facilitated and the training they received at Quaesitor was successful. The participants went back to their respective countries like Holland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Norway where many of them started growth centres. Subsequently they invited Jeff to facilitate Enlightenment Intensives at their growth centers. Jeff recalls, “I did that for several years. More and more people asked me to come to their city to give an Intensive. So for months on end I was literally going from city to city, giving an Enlightenment Intensive every weekend, in almost every country of Western Europe.”

Jeff remembers the language barrier could be overcome by using translators, and letting people speak in their own language in the dyads. “I found I could give Enlightenment Intensives under almost any circumstances. I remember giving one on a boat on the Thames River once. The room was awful. It was freezing and wet and everyone was bundled up, but it still worked.”

MAY CAIRNS AND PATRICIA LOWE
The potency and awakening power of the Enlightenment Intensive was appreciated and respected by the small but growing personal and spiritual growth movement in Europe. May Cairns and Patricia Lowe both loved the Enlightenment Dyad process and Jeff taught them how to facilitate Enlightenment Intensives.

Patricia and May were both instrumental in taking the Enlightenment Intensive to India and to the Rajneesh movement there. May Cairns who was later called Ma Prem Arup, and Patricia Lowe, who was given the name Poonam became students and devotees of Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh. Rajneesh, who years later changed his name to Osho, became a world famous Indian guru with the largest personal and spiritual growth center in the world. People from scores of countries around the world visited his ashram and became his students.

When Rajneesh was first introduced to the Enlightenment Intensive and the WHO AM I Dyad Technique he liked it so much that it became a standard workshop for the thousands of Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh devotees and visitors to his ashram. May Cairns, aka, Ma Prem Arup began to regularly facilitate the Enlightenment Intensive at the ashram in Poona, India. Jeff remembers that she had a lot of personal growth skills, loved Enlightenment Intensives and had the personal power that it takes to give them.

RAJNEESH AND RAMANA MAHARSHI
In his book, The Seventy Two Hour Mirror, Jeff Love quotes Rajneesh as saying, “That question is very good. Ramana Maharshi used only that meditation. Through that meditation he attained his enlightenment, asking who am I? That was his whole yoga, nothing else. The meditation is tremendously powerful, but one should go as deep as possible. One should allow it to sink to ones innermost core. It should penetrate you like an arrow going on and on and on, and suddenly one day a moment comes as if you are drilling a hole and suddenly the drill has passed to the other side. It is a drilling exactly like that. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Go on drilling and then suddenly you see that you have drilled the hole, you have reached the core. And it is tremendously beautiful.”

Looking back Jeff remembers, “I feel really good about the Enlightenment Intensives I've given. They've really benefited people. Every once in a while I get a letter from someone, from somewhere in the world telling me about how much the Enlightenment Intensive helped. This feels good.”

And that my dear readers is part of the story about how the dyad process in general, and the WHO AM I Enlightenment Dyad Technique and the Enlightenment Intensive in particular, was spread throughout Europe and the world.