How can an enlightened person know so much if thoughts cease?

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Enlightened people can banish their thoughts, and operate in stillness. Or they can start thinking again and operate normally. Meditation on the thought process reveals that the electrical activity of the brain can be more or less organized. When they are not organized, then it does not feel like thought. Concepts are still whirling around, but they’re not moving through the vocalization process so they never reach full conscious awareness.

The scientific term for it is the Default mode network. Meditation makes conscious defocusing, thus turning the network on, more generally available. The enlightened more or less have it on all the time, turning it off only when it’s practically needed to do so, such as when I play ping pong.

Thought focuses the brain on the thinking, deactivating the network. Ceasing thought doesn’t mean the brain stops operating, it just means that focus isn’t turning the default mode network off all the time.