The Truth About Spiritual Enlightenment | Truths, Distortions, Fakes
What exactly is enlightenment? What is the point of spiritual enlightenment?
Hello, Jason Cain here and welcome to the Ancient wisdom modern mind blog and today I would like to share my view on spiritual enlightenment and the truth about enlightenment and gurus claiming enlightenment .
Buddhist monks, Hindu yogis, modern spiritual teachers, all use the term spiritual enlightenment – but are they speaking about the same thing?
In this article I will explore what spiritual enlightenment is, both the traditional definition as well as from a modern perspective.
There is a lot of confusion about what is enlightenment, and equally there are also a lot of fake gurus claiming Enlightenment. My purpose here is to eliminate some misconceptions, and to discuss how we might know and enlightened being if we meet one or at least how to weed out a few of the fakes.
Original Definitions
The traditional concept of enlightenment comes from the spiritual traditions of India – notably the various schools of Yoga, Vedanta and Buddhism – and denotes the highest state of spiritual attainment. The end of the path.
But the term "Enlightenment," actually came from the intellectual movement which began in England in the seventeenth century, this movement represented an "illumined" intellectual skepticism to traditional beliefs and dogmas, in contrast to the supposed dark and superstitious beliefs of the Middle Ages.
The term later became associated with various schools of Indian philosophy, Yoga and Buddhism, and is now a general term for spiritual illumination or divine knowledge in all the religious and spiritual traditions.
Some of the terms used for spiritual enlightenment, given by different schools of thought, are:
Buddhism — Nirvana, Liberation, Awakening, Cessation, Realization of the Atman identity.
Yoga — Liberation (moksha, mukti), Realization of the true self (Atman), Release, Aloneness (kaivalya), Union (yoga), Perfection (poorna).
Vedanta — Self-realization, Self-knowledge, Jnana (meaning knowledge of divine reality).
All these traditions have several points of disagreement when it comes to defining the “metaphysical nature” of enlightenment. However, at their root they all seem to agree on at least three points:
Every occurrence of enlightenment has come after the mind has been stilled.
It involves transcending the ego/mind.
It is permanent (cannot be lost once attained).
As you can see, the expectations are high.
There are also similarities between this concept and what is called the Holy Spirit or the experience of “Unification or Sanctification” in Christian Mysticism, and “union with God” in Sufism, but exploring those is beyond the scope of this article.
Modern Conceptions
No one knows how many enlightened beings live around us, and becoming enlightened doesn’t make you stand out, it doesn’t make us radiate, it doesn’t give us a golden color. But it does change your perception of reality.
Nowadays there are many people who judge themselves to be enlightened, and for 99% of those enlightened gurus, one of the following will be true:
They believe themselves to be more advanced on the path than they actually are.
They confuse the traditional definition “full enlightenment”, with emotional or intellectual realizations.
They consider the traditional definition of enlightenment to be mythical, exaggerated, or impossible. Unable to fathom even how to reach it, they redefine liberation according to their level of experience.
Their a fake guru, who uses enlightenment as their meal ticket to wealth and fame.
There will always be people in one or more of the first three (3) categories since the ego is a master of deceit and there are many milestones on the way, before deep and permanent transformation happens, and as we grow and experience small awakenings, self-delusion also simply starts to drop away.
These milestones or “awakening” – are emotional realization and the ego/mind will have many of these awakenings before final enlightenment/liberation.
The real problem is people in category “d”. These fakes willingly distort the essential meaning of enlightenment. Perhaps they have confused certain genuine awakenings along the way with full liberation, and have judged themselves to be enlightened.
But in order to “make this self-styled enlightenment work” for themselves, they need to redefine enlightenment in terms of their own personal story, so that it matches their level. And then they can either say that “enlightenment is a step in the journey or they redefine enlightenment.
Gradual or Sudden Enlightenment
Many of the traditions mentioned above agree that enlightenment is already here and now, and that it is our true nature – or the true nature of reality (note these words “THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY” because I will come back to this very important phrase). It is not that we have to achieve enlightenment or become enlightened, but rather we need to remove the obstacles to its expression.
So it was not so much that the ego/mind becomes enlightened, but that we become aware of THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY, by dissolving the ego/mind reality.
And this is where we often miss the one simple gaping hole in the fake guru story. One of the first things the fake guru will do is to establish their credentials by telling you about how they became enlightened and how this experience felt. The corner stone of their story is rooted in an emotional explanation of enlightenment, but what we over look is that enlightenment is about changing our awareness of a pre-existing reality and not about how the human ego/mind felt or feels.
We often get carried away by a charismatic personality that can spin a good story and this hooks our emotional human ego/mind into acceptance and we overlook the most obvious flaw in the gurus story, and this is the idea that “THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY” is outside of human reality, and thus outside the emotional supplication of how one feels.
The fact is that no enlightened being can tell you about when they became enlightened, and this is because their enlightenment was a gradual process that grows unnoticed, and when the being is finally realized then all experience from this point is within a state of enlightenment or from the Atman’s/spirits prospective.
For example can you tell me when you first realized you were a human? No, you only know that you are human and you can calculate this realization as being maybe your birth or maybe your earliest childhood memory.
This is the same situation with the enlightened, one day you simply realize that you are no longer human, and this word human is very important. Because the first true enlightenment is a deep soul awakening or you could even say, an an alien awareness stirs and peering into a human world, and smiles silently.
The ego is dead, you are no longer bound by your humanity. You are reborn, but since your birth was also a death or a slow transition from a limiting awareness into a new alien awareness you cannot really say when did I die? You simply or you suddenly realize you are awakened.
Since the human is dead, an enlightened being cannot tell you stories of how their life was full of sadness or suffering before their enlightenment, they can only remember the bliss of transition, a bliss that would have grown slowly after decades of effort, decades of detachment, disintegration, and transcendence.
The fake guru will tell you stories of their depression or unhappiness that transformed into enlightenment, this is the classic salesman pitch where you are walked from their past suffering or your suffering, and which only they can guide you towards freedom from this misery. The salesman takes you from the island of their pain and on a journey away from this pain which is also your pain, and towards the wonderful secret island of enlightenment which will free you from your own personal pain.
The promise is enlightenment without effort, without transformation. Can you imagine if say heaven was filled with all the people you now known, would it still be heaven or would it simply be a new human home.
Enlightenment is a Direction, Not a Goal
If enlightenment really is not for everyone, is it only for monks? I would argued that a monk has less chance of achieving enlightenment because religion stunts their growth, and ask yourself how many enlightened monks are their? If being a monk was the key to enlightenment then most monks would become enlightened. But this is not the case and in fact the opposite is the case, most religions are formed around an enlightened individual.</p>However, whether you’re a monk or a layperson enlightenment is extremely rare.
When this truth becomes clear about how elusive and rare full enlightenment is, many people feel discouraged, frustrated, or demotivated. The amount of effort involved is so great, and the time requirements are so considerable, that many conclude that “enlightenment is not for them; since they could never practice like past enlightened masters”.
All of these issues come up when we think of enlightenment as an inflexible goal, but these problems can also disappear the moment we make a small adjustment in our mindset.
What is this adjustment? To look at enlightenment as a direction, rather than an end goal.
A goal is not always meant to be reached. It often serves simply as something to aim at.– Bruce Lee.
This attitude also avoids the following problems: (a) feeling that you are not good enough, or worthy; (b) feeling frustrated with the slowness of your progress or the size of the road ahead; (c) wanting to give up; (d) watering down the original concept of enlightenment.
Once you regard enlightenment as a direction, your journey is much gentler, and much less attached to the ideal. You are able to better enjoy the journey itself, without anxiety, and grow towards liberation in a more organic way. It also becomes less likely that your spiritual search will negatively interfere with other aspects of your life or that you will fall victim to the fake guru.
Putting Things in Perspective
In many religious traditions, spiritual teachings are quite rigid and lock the ego/mind into an idealistic path, you could even call this an algorithmic loop that has a sequence of instructions that are continually repeated until a certain condition is reached. But since enlightenment is so rare and elevated, this idealistic loop also becomes a hindrance.
There are likely a thousand significant milestones that can be experienced before full enlightenment, and many of these are life-changing. Acknowledging these “mini-emotional and intellectual realizations” can help keep the seeker motivated and on track, but by locking yourself into an idealistic belief, worshiping a guru or following any single religion, you are also locking out any possible random developments, and have effectively blocked your own evolution.
The wild yogis, ascetics and past masters that we may compare ourselves to were free from idealistic and religious constraints. But are they a random evolutionary development, or does enlightenment need to be free from a restricted reality so that we can finally see “THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY”. Many of us are encumbered by our own ideals and beliefs, we are serious amateurs, but very few of us are willing to practice like those masters.
And while very few people are ready to put in the effort and sacrifice to become enlightened, most people can benefit from putting in some effort and arriving at a point of mental freedom. For the great majority of seekers, going from emotional turmoil to a more blissful, more focused, and more meaningful life is reward enough.
Hope this shines a light on the whole enlightenment story, and I encourage you to explore and lean about yourself and to continue meditating, and if you have the time then let me know in the comments about your understanding of enlightenment.
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