Illumination was deliberately left obscure in Dancing to the Melody. Part of the reason for leaving the illumination concept obscure was that it did not seem to make much sense to bother inquiring into the nature of illumination in the absence of its purported effect, that purported effect being enlightenment. The idea was that enlightenment is an observable and the hypothetical cause of that observable is something I labelled illumination. I wanted to allow plenty of time for readers to observe the proposed observable before launching an inquiry into the nature of its cause or causes. If we cannot agree about enlightenment how likely is it that we can agree about its cause or causes? It seems reasonable that before we investigate the cause of something we should agree about the effect whose cause we want to investigate. If we cannot agree about what the label enlightenment refers to then trying to understand the cause or causes of enlightenment seems premature.

By now (November 2006) I know that the concept of enlightenment presented in Dancing to the Melody makes enough sense to enough people that it is worthwhile to launch an inquiry into the nature of the hypothetical cause, which Dancing to the Melody refers to as illumination. We can start simply by asking whether people who we regard as an enlightened seem able to reach any agreement whatsoever as to how they became enlightened.

Since I am using the term enlightenment as a technical term based on my book Dancing to the Melody we can include the idea that the sources we will agree upon as being enlightened will be sources that also agree. That is, they will recognise each other as being enlightened.

It is probably quite apparent to you, at least if you have much background in the ideas of enlightenment, religion, spirituality and suchlike, that this requirement is likely to be a stumbling-block to a wide range of organised religions. That problem is covered by the 1,2,3 notation developed in Dancing to the Melody. Illumination is 3. enlightenment is 2. The systems and organisations and so on that stumble in the face of this requirement of agreement provide some of the observational evidence for the category labelled 1. The implication of the label 1 is that they are aware of the existence of enlightenment - 2 - but do not themselves meet our criteria for actually being enlightened. Dancing to the Melody uses the term initiate as one of the suggested labels for that category. The idea is that a 1 - an initiate - has encountered enlightenment, or at least somehow come to believe that enlightenment exists or can exist, but is not currently enlightened themself.