The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement I think, therefore I am. He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects increasing fragmentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being at one and therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is. Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate other. You then forget the essential fact that the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is. By forget, I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self evident reality. You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience however does it become liberating. Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. In Hinduism, it is described as a divine transcendent experience. Sometimes it is described as a sudden, transformative moment of awakening and other times it is seen as a more gradual process of being liberated from the bondage of the mind. In terms of paths to enlightenment, different schools of yoga and philosophy prescribe different routes. For instance, classical Advaita Vedanta promotes Jnana yoga as a way of attaining enlightenment through spiritual study, whereas Bhakti yoga pursues enlightenment through devotion and the worship of God. Many yogis and gurus agree that enlightenment is not really a state that we have to reach because, in a sense we are all already enlightened. Therefore the goal of the spiritual journey is to uncover what is already there