Dr. Frederick Lenz (1950-1998), known to his students as Rama, taught several hundred Americans an unusual blend of spiritual practices for 20 years. It was a combination of insights and techniques shared by Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Hindu Vedanta and Yoga, and Native American mysticism. These were implemented through a unique approach to living in the modern world, and built upon a foundation of meditation and mindfulness. It was all directed towards enlightenment.

Enlightenment means the dissolution of the finite self into the infinite mind, but how is that actually done? It is quite a long and complex process. Rama explained to us, in detail, how the process works, with its many interdependencies and stages.

This book consolidates the material contained in 120 audio tapes he recorded into a single book. In these talks Rama teaches this pathway to enlightenment, carefully breaking down the steps and how to do them in our modern world. While many of the things he taught can be found in spiritual books, many cannot, and none all in the same place.

The book is full of extended quotes from these tapes in which he discusses each part of the enlightenment process in depth. As the title of the book says, the idea is to let Rama speak directly to you.

If you sit down and meditate in the morning, you will be filled with happiness, and that happiness will last you all day. Then, in the evening, you’ll meditate again and you’ll wash away any of the debris you picked up during the day-wrong views, that sort of thing-that can lead to unhappiness. You’ll be filled and flooded with a different kind of happiness, the happiness of the evening. Then you’ll be happy all night. Meditate in the morning and wash away anything you picked up in the dream plane. It’s a cycle, the Enlightenment Cycle. It’s based on meditation.

The role of the teacher is to make sure that the practice is pure, that is to say, that the methods are taught properly. By giving proper empowerments and by guiding the student, you make sure that they really are going into the planes of light and they’re not fooling themselves. Because the astral and the astral dimensions are not places of great happiness necessarily. As I said, they’re just like journeying to another country….

Then the rest is up to the light. As you go into the light, it will cause you to become happier and happier. Each day, you will gain a deeper happiness, a more subtle or perhaps a more profound happiness, and that happiness will free you from the desire-aversion cycle or syndrome.

It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It’s better than it sounds. And it’s such a simple thing that people miss it. It’s worth your while to sit, to practice meditation-if happiness is one of the important things in your life.

When there is no self, there is Enlightenment…. The longer we can stay in the thoughtless state, the more the obscurations are washed away, because when we stop thought a tremendous amount of energy is released. That energy purifies the mind….

So if you want to become Enlightened… you have to clear up your mind completely…. We do it a little at the beginning, and then more and more, and then eventually it consumes us, literally, until there is no self, there is only light.