The next workshop will take place at Ashram Bamidbar in Shittim from 01/06/2011 - 04/06/2011 - Details bellow

?The Enlightenment Intensive – Who Is In

In 1986, Charles Berner created a new revolutionary technique to enable people to experience enlightenment. Berner practiced Zen and meditation for many years and repeatedly encountered the same difficulty with most of his students. Only a few of them experienced a “Satori”: a direct experience of true nature”, or an experience of awakening as it is sometimes called.

He noticed that people who had a hard  time making progress did not know who  they were, and people who made rapid progress knew who they were. Those who thought they were a mind or a personality or a body progressed very slowly. Because his students had not experienced a Satori they did not even know what they were looking for.

Berner developed several techniques and experimented with many others but the percentage of his students who had a breakthrough remained very small. He was very experienced with Zen, Self Inquiry, Yoga and Advaita Vedanta but these paths required many years, and he wondered if Western people had the required patience to wait for the first realization.

In the afternoon of a spring day he suddenly had an idea. Berner decided to unify two different techniques. The work with a koan (A Zen method), and the dyad communication technique that his wife Eva created to help couples to work on their communication skills. The workshop was created in a Zen Seshin format: An intensive practice over a several days.

He informed his students about the creation of a new workshop, but did not provide any information about it. He set up a large tent in the desert and provided for food and water for a few days. He expected that it would take 5-10 workshops to see initial results. By the end of the workshop over 30% of the participants had experienced a Satori. (An awakening experience)

Berner was amazed. Although well versed in many different techniques of meditation, in his 20 years of leading workshops and teaching he had never seen anything like it.

Over the next years Berner led 77 workshops as he polished the workshop. He experienced with different durations and variations of the Enlightenment Intensive as it came to be known and qualified new leaders. By 2009 over 600,000 people in 25 countries have completed the workshop.

One of the versions of this astonishing workshop was created by the enlightened Master Osho. He began with the original workshop and added his active meditations, improving on the extremely effective version created by Berner.

I have seen it happen in over 50 workshops and Jivan who has been leading it for many many years in hundreds. It is like a miracle, when suddenly this tremendous breakthrough occurs and seekers who have been practicing sometimes, all of their lives realize their true nature and experience what it is like to be a living Buddha if just for a short while initially.

The ongoing practice roots this realization until it becomes a daily part of my life and my very being.