How do people know if someone is enlightened? Are there tell-tale signs? Are there things to be wary of? Would it be possible to identify this via neuroscience means?

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You really can’t.

There’s a reason it’s so difficult to believe in a higher power. You can’t understand anything that’s truly bigger than yourself, your brain simply lacks the ability to. You can only guess at whether any one particular human is more spiritually advanced than you, because you literally can’t understand, in a profound sense, what it means to be more advanced. If you could, then you’d be more advanced yourself.

So instead we look at proxy personality traits to ascertain growth. If someone seems more patient, or wise, and we envy those traits, then we see them as more spiritual / enlightened than us. You may or may not be right but you since you can’t really understand what it’s like to be them, you can’t really tell what their level is like.

On the other hand, you can easily see when someone is not operating at a high frequency. If you can predict their thoughts and actions with a high degree of accuracy, then you can fit an entire model of how they think in your head. We even have a part of our brain dedicated to this, it’s how we employ tactics like deception or persuasion.

But because we really don’t have a map, and we really can’t see inside other people’s brains, then we can’t know for certain.

There is a lot of literature out there describing the “enlightened state.” After lots of meditation and having many such experiences myself, I’ve come to understand these things as neurological phenomenon and not necessarily spiritual in nature. True ego death is not anything you’d want to experience. The ego is a part of your brain and is part of what makes us human. I’ve went through periods where I could not speak or form complex thoughts.

You can have certain experiences through psychedelics and they can even help fix / heal your mind, but it won’t make you any more conscious. Becoming more conscious is a multi-lifetime effort and there’s not a lot you can do to make it go any faster.

I conceive of enlightenment as an ‘inflection point’ in the evolution of consciousness. The self dissolves into awareness. You can reconstitute it if you want but if you don’t it just fades into the background. Instead of acting on the basis of your self by pursuing goals, you simply exist.