The Enlightened Idiot: Guidelines for Fundamental Personal Development through Spirituality and Self-inquiry

“I lay down because of a very painful ‘knot’ in my stomach. The pain became so intense that I curled up in a fetal position to endure it.

I cried out something like: ‘Holy mother, help me!’ I have no idea where that came from.

Suddenly, I ‘stood’ at the beginning of a round tunnel, like the undulating inside of a ringworm. I heard a pulsating hum and saw three scenes in succession.

[...]

Then I realized that I might be in the ‘tunnel with light at the end,’ an archetypal image for dying!

I recoiled from it, because I didn't feel like dying yet.”

The memory of this near-death experience prompted the author to undertake self-inquiry. After nearly three years, this led to an unity and enlightenment experience. In this book he describes his challenging and sometimes provocative observations as a self-inquirer and life coach, hoping to offer support to readers interested in personal development.

This book consists of three parts:

The (Long) Way to Self-Inquiry* describes why we are motivated to begin self-inquiry and the difficulties we encounter in doing so. This part concludes with concrete tools to begin with self-inquiry.

The second part, *Tools for Self-Inquiry*, provides various frameworks and tools to carry out self-inquiry.

Finally, *Concepts and Deepening* discusses commonly used concepts in the world of spirituality and self-inquiry.

Idiot: from the Latin idiōta, which comes from the Old Greek ἰδιώτης (idiōtēs, 'uneducated; layperson'), which comes from ἴδιος (idios, 'oneself, private, separate')