Who here is enlightened?

[YmirGF]

(Serious question.)

Deserving serious answers...

The reason I ask is, many people talk about what enlightenment is, how to get there, what it's like, that it is a true concept, etc.

Indeed they do, but the tragedy is that the vast majority haven't a clue and so they merely parrot the ideas and experience of others...

So if you consider yourself enlightened, I invite you to post here. Perhaps you could start by explaining what enlightenment is to you, how you achieved it, how you know you achieved it, and what it is like.

Hmmmmm. *Takes a long drag off his cigarette*

Enlightenment is a concept I toyed with while I was still trying to sort out my own inner evolution. For decades, it seemed to fit, but rather, I was trying to shoehorn my experience into preconceived notions of what I was supposed to be experiencing... Finally, about 10 years ago, maybe more, I settled on an idea called Creaturehood. Within the expanse of that concept, I was no longer limited by the ordinary understanding of so-called "enlightenment".

Unlike so-called "enlightenment", Creaturehood is interwoven with personality and is an open-ended concept. Individual personality is a cornerstone of Creaturehood and is something that never really fades away, rather, it is simply enhanced, often in quite unexpected and highly entertaining ways... It's a bit hard to describe... :biglaugh:

 

[ratikala]

dear pembura ji ,

An enlightened person would have the wisdom to say the perfect thing at the perfect time to convince people of her truth, wouldn't she?

no he , no she , ...ji :namaste

this truth belongs to no one partucular person but is realised by many .


the enligherned mind will say the perfect thing at the perfect time , it is simply that the unenlightened mind wont nececarily see it ,

however that thing said will permiate the un enlightened mind and will ripen when the correct conditions ocur ,
this may occur instantaniously , or may take years , then that person will realise the truth .

She might even have knowledge that if she shares, it will make it clear she is not of this world anymore.

surely it is the truth conveyed that needs to be realised rather than the status of the mesenger

the mesenger is simply the humble servant :namaste
Satyameva Jayati :namaste

 

[NIX]

By yanking them one-at-a-time out of their reality. Not by talking to them en masse about enlightenment and the red pill and such.

Generally they didn't yank people past a certain age. It tends to break minds... they couldn't just pull the plug. It would have killed them.

In my opinion, enlightenment is what happens when you get 'yanked' out of reality and put back again.

This pretty much describes my own experience. Though I would say I have experienced enlightenment- as I am referring (for the sake of this thread) to the prolonged altered state of reality I would more aptly call 'epiphany' - I would not say that I "am" enlightened.

IMEx the 'state of epiphany' is found as you are dislodged (or yes 'yanked') completely and suddenly from everything you have ever 'held to'/or 'held to be'. In the world but not of it, describes the experience quite well. Time melts away, every experience is heightened--or exponentially amplified- the sun is sunnier, the water wetter and deeper, the darkness darker, the grass greener- every thing surrounding you speaks- or is revelatory of other things. Strange and 'impossible' things appear to happen. It's like a sensory sensitivity symphony. The experience is no less than that of walking through an entirely new/different world. It would be hard to imagine that a person's whole world view would not be significantly altered (and extremely 'loosened') after 'coming back in' again- from this dislodged- or suspended - state between fixed reality points. Like student of X I know this as paradigm shifting. Funny that my religion is X.

I don't know if the state of epiphany can be sustained indefinitely. This is beyond (the scope of) my own experience/knowledge.

 

[maxfreakout]

I became enlightened ten years ago (i experienced the psychotic divine epiphany and retained the memory of it), ever since then i have been refining my ability to verbally express enlightened wisdom, and teach other people what enlightenment is all about. Now i can clearly explain what it means to be 'enlightened'. Every myth and religious story is an allegorical description of the process of "becoming enlightened", it is a major psychological transformation caused by divine experiences.

a major problem with this kind of discussion is people put 'enlightenment' on too high a pedestal, as if it is inherently unreachable by 'ordinary' people. There are evidently several 'enlightened' (ie transcendently re-programmed) people posting here.

 

[NIX]

Funny all the "10 years ago" mentions here. My own epiphany also occurred just about a decade ago.

 

[NIX]

I became enlightened ten years ago (i experienced the divine epiphany and retained the memory of it), ever since then i have been refining my ability to verbally express enlightened wisdom, and teach other people what enlightenment is all about. Now i can clearly explain what it means to be 'enlightened'. Every myth and religious story is an allegorical description of the process of "becoming enlightened", it is a major psychological transformation caused by divine experiences.

a major problem with this kind of discussion is people put 'enlightenment' on too high a pedestal, as if it is inherently unreachable by 'ordinary' people.

I totally agree with this. (though I might add that from my viewpoint, we are capable of divine experiences because we are divine beings)

Divinely ordinary. Ordinarily divine.
Now I am just tired. Back to bed for me.

 

[Desert Snake]

Turns out there quite a few' enlightened' people on RF! Who would have thought

 

[no-body]

Every being is already enlightened. Being enlightened means we have the option of believing we aren't enlightened and this idea that we aren't has spread through habit.

 

[LuisDantas]

By some conceptions, enlightement is hard no so much to achieve as to keep for more than a few seconds at a time. As others pointed out, it depends a lot on circunstances and logistical support from others.

Reminds me of a tale of Ananda realizing that having good friendships is half the way, and being corrected that instead it is the entire way.

 

[Student of X]

What is the state of mystical connectedness that you have achieved?

It's hard to say. Mystical states don't come with hard-and-fast labels attached. But based on my studies of comparative mysticism I would say I've achieved states comparable to classic ego-death, ecstatic rapture, turiya, union with the Divine.

What specifically did you do to achieve it?

I practice mysticism. My main method is comparativism.

"The origins of the discipline of religious studies in nineteenth-century Europe are not primary mystical or even religious. A highly developed secular sense is a sine qua non of the discipline and its social sustainability anywhere on the planet (hence its virtual absense outside the Western academy). I would like, though, to make a restricted and heterodox case that regarding the discipline as a modern mystical tradition could be useful in approaching the constructive tasks being explored in these reflections. In this, I am not suggesting that the discipline must or even should be read in this way.

Rather, I wish only to make the much more restricted, but no less unorthodox, case that some of the discipline's practices and practitioners (that is, those capable of forging a tensive mystical-critical practice out of the discipline's dual Romantic/Enlightenment heritage) can be read in such a way, and that, moreover, such a mystical-critical rereading of the discipline might be useful for the constructive tasks under discussion here, namely, the cross-cultural influence of religious systems toward a safer, more humane, and more religiously satisfying world.

Scholars of religion, it turns out, often have profound religious experiences reading and interpreting the texts they critically study, and these events have consequences for the methods and models they develop, the conclusions they come to, and even for the traditions they study.

Poetically speaking, gnostic thought recognizes that religious expressions function as symbols and, as such, are simultaneously true and false, that they both reveal and conceal. Reductionism and revelation lie down together here in a (post)modern form of what the Sufi tradition understood as the paradox of the veil (hijab), that is, the psychological and linguistic necessity of cultural forms that reveal the divine light (which is in itself beyond all representation) precisely by concealing it behind veiled symbols and signs."-Jeffrey J. Kripal

 

[F0uad]

In what way enlightened?

Do you mean if humans are a enlighten species?
Or religious persons?

 

[YmirGF]

In what way enlightened?

It's a tired, overused concept that all too few really understand. Those who do understand tend to not use the expression...

Do you mean if humans are a enlighten species?

Well, reality would tend to disprove that we are an enlightened species, LOL, though we do have a penchant for thumping ourselves on the back over how cool we are.

Or religious persons?

Sadly, for the pious, "enlightenment" has extremely little to do with religion. Religion is for those who don't want to get their "spiritual" hands dirty or who want to leave the spiritual "heavy lifting" to others...

 

[F0uad]

It's a tired, overused concept that all too few really understand. Those who do understand tend to not use the expression...

Well, reality would tend to disprove that we are an enlightened species, LOL, though we do have a penchant for thumping ourselves on the back over how cool we are.

Sadly, for the pious, "enlightenment" has extremely little to do with religion. Religion is for those who don't want to get their "spiritual" hands dirty or who want to leave the spiritual "heavy lifting" to others...

Well i understand the definition of the word and i know what it can refer to however there are so many things that we can called enlighten nowadays.

I wouldn't say that Humans are not a enlightened species at all your just generalizing since most of our population does want to peace and does live in peace with one and another this should off-course improve as we go further.

I didn't fully understand your last comment please clarify?

 

[YmirGF]

Well i understand the definition of the word and i know what it can refer to however there are so many things that we can called enlighten nowadays.

This is part of the problem. When I think "enlightenment", I think of the descriptions of various mystical states of consciousness. If one is going to bend the term to include various sociological issues, then the whole discussion gets muddy.

I wouldn't say that Humans are not a enlightened species at all your just generalizing since most of our population does want to peace and does live in peace with one and another this should off-course improve as we go further.

In some terms, yes, in other terms, no. In some ways we are still a backward little race that is fixated on navel gazing.

I didn't fully understand your last comment please clarify?

In short, religion will not necessarily lead to any kind of mystical "enlightenment". If the truth be told, dogmatic pursuit of ANY religion may indeed hold people back from the experience of inner evolution.

 

[Sir Doom]

(Serious question.)

Use whatever word is applicable in your worldview, be it enlightenment, moksha, nibbana, one with the universe, etc. I'll use 'enlightenment' for the rest of this post but mentally substitute in your own word as you read it.

Does anyone on this forum claim to be enlightened? If so, please post here so we can talk. I'd like to see who here claims to have reached enlightenment.

The reason I ask is, many people talk about what enlightenment is, how to get there, what it's like, that it is a true concept, etc.

So if you consider yourself enlightened, I invite you to post here. Perhaps you could start by explaining what enlightenment is to you, how you achieved it, how you know you achieved it, and what it is like.

I believe that some philosophical choices I've made set me ahead of the curve, so to speak. This sounds very arrogant, I'm sure. But from my point of view it seems that reality continually rewards my subjective view of it with positive results. This is as close to enlightenment as I can imagine. I don't think I'm unique in this trait, nor do I believe I have reached any sort of pinnacle in this regard as I continually improve, as I assume everyone does.

Its hard for me to articulate what choices I'm talking about. They are all really intertwined with each other and only the combination results in the effect I'm talking about. And it's always shifting anyway, since that is a key component to begin with. I don't believe that the choices I've made would necessarily work for everyone, though. So specifics aren't exactly relevant. Mainly, I think that taking active control of your personal philosophy is key to a rewarding life. Honesty with yourself is probably the most important. Beyond that I could really blather for pages and it would only be relevant to me personally with any regularity.

As for what its like... its sort of like being a normal human (which I obviously was for a long time) but you get to have a smirk 100% of the time and no one even asks you why. It feels like... victory. Movie reference intended.

 

[idav]

(Serious question.)

Use whatever word is applicable in your worldview, be it enlightenment, moksha, nibbana, one with the universe, etc. I'll use 'enlightenment' for the rest of this post but mentally substitute in your own word as you read it.

Does anyone on this forum claim to be enlightened? If so, please post here so we can talk. I'd like to see who here claims to have reached enlightenment.

The reason I ask is, many people talk about what enlightenment is, how to get there, what it's like, that it is a true concept, etc.

So if you consider yourself enlightened, I invite you to post here. Perhaps you could start by explaining what enlightenment is to you, how you achieved it, how you know you achieved it, and what it is like.

Although I have Gnostic Christian and Mahayana Buddhist leanings I am a bit fuzzy on what enlightenment is supposed to really entail.

Sometimes I get the idea that it is merely knowing the true nature of reality (which would make most members enlightened). We do seem to be in a sort of age of enlightenment but there are far more distractions these days.

I have given the idea of enlightenment bringing on omniscience but I don't think this is necessary nor is it practical in our state of being. In Christianity and Buddhism enlightenment is about your current status in relation to whether you are saved or will be able to transcend this material plain after death.

I do believe that anyone can attain enlightenment and would be equal to achieving theosis from a christian standpoint. I think that a Buddha or a Saint has achieved enlightenment but I don't see how one can know for sure (though someone like Saint Francis talking to animals is a good sign). It can be viewed as being in levels and a constant progression which can't be fully actualized until after death and becoming one with the cosmos so to speak.

I couldn't say if I were enlightened or not but likely not, (similar to Madhuri's answer) I am probably still too attached. Ironically knowing this is supposed to be in the steps for being able to break away.

 

[Penumbra]

I'm enlightenment. It's overrated. In fact in many ways it's awful. That's why countless beings create innumerable forms of ignorance.

Ignorance doesn't mean not knowing, btw. It means ignoring. It is an activity, not an absence of information.

Enlightenment does not imply happiness, freedom, charisma, popularity or even satisfaction. Stuff still sucks. Bliss is unavoidable. The mundane and transcendent are inseparable. Go figure.

There is no point in asking me what enlightenment is. As soon as ignoring stops, it's obvious. But any questions about it are just another form of ignoring. As is any attempt to 'attain' it.

So I am of no use to you whatsoever. Enlightenment is of no use to me either.

Carry on ... it doesn't actually matter whether you are enlightened or not. Much ado about nothing.

Sounds like your report differs from the others.

Are you sure you experienced the same thing?

 

[Penumbra]

Him what knows, won't tell ye.
Him who'll tell ye, don't rightly know.

- The Hillbilly Tao

Then we probably shouldn't have ever heard of enlightenment, because anyone who has experienced it wouldn't talk about it.

Instead, scriptures and religions are buzzing with people describing it, claiming to be it, etc. This thread has plenty of people proposing to enlightened now.

 

[Penumbra]

Deserving serious answers...

Indeed they do, but the tragedy is that the vast majority haven't a clue and so they merely parrot the ideas and experience of others...

Hmmmmm. *Takes a long drag off his cigarette*

Enlightenment is a concept I toyed with while I was still trying to sort out my own inner evolution. For decades, it seemed to fit, but rather, I was trying to shoehorn my experience into preconceived notions of what I was supposed to be experiencing... Finally, about 10 years ago, maybe more, I settled on an idea called Creaturehood. Within the expanse of that concept, I was no longer limited by the ordinary understanding of so-called "enlightenment".

Unlike so-called "enlightenment", Creaturehood is interwoven with personality and is an open-ended concept. Individual personality is a cornerstone of Creaturehood and is something that never really fades away, rather, it is simply enhanced, often in quite unexpected and highly entertaining ways... It's a bit hard to describe... :biglaugh:

What did you do to achieve creaturehood and what are the benefits of such a state?

 

[Penumbra]

dear pembura ji ,

no he , no she , ...ji :namaste

this truth belongs to no one partucular person but is realised by many .

the enligherned mind will say the perfect thing at the perfect time , it is simply that the unenlightened mind wont nececarily see it ,

however that thing said will permiate the un enlightened mind and will ripen when the correct conditions ocur ,
this may occur instantaniously , or may take years , then that person will realise the truth .

surely it is the truth conveyed that needs to be realised rather than the status of the mesenger

the mesenger is simply the humble servant :namaste
Satyameva Jayati :namaste

Do you currently identify as enlightened?

Surely the status of the messenger is important. If a poor person and a rich person describe how to become rich, I'll give more weight to the rich person's advice.

That's not to say the poor person wouldn't have knowledge either. It's just that the poor person would be talking about theory and the rich person would be talking about what she already did and the results were.