Do most people that attain enlightenment reach enlightenment through one radical mind shift or through incremental shifts?

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There are two components to spiritual growth. Level of surrender and level of perceptive responsiveness. If you have a high level of surrender, then you’ve done the work needed to separate your being from your small self. Any spiritual technique will naturally raise your level of surrender.

The other component is level of perceptive responsiveness. Level of responsiveness is increased through getting really emotionally invested in doing something you really love and want to do. Paying really close attention to stuff raises your consciousness.

How does this relate to enlightenment? Enlightenment, or non-duality, removes the perceptive distinction between subject and object. High level of perceptive responsiveness allows one to more readily sense that one’s self is illusory and doesn’t really exist.

But perceiving the illusory self does not actually make you enlightened. For that actual surrender is needed. Many atheists I’ve noticed have very high levels of perceptive responsiveness but cannot see the value in surrender. So they can never be truly enlightened because they simply will never take the necessary steps to get there.

On the other hand I’ve seen a few extremely high-functioning atheists who I consider to be enlightened, one of which is the illustrious Franklin Veaux. They have managed to find a method of surrender that doesn’t revolve around acceptance of spiritual reality or God. I greatly respect and celebrate any kind of enlightenment, materialist or not. But most materialists, even those who are sympathetic to Buddhism, seem to have the silly belief that mere rejection of spiritual reality makes one enlightened. Yeah have fun with that.

Sudden enlightenment, to me is really hard to separate from sudden neurological change. The problem with calling neurological ego death enlightenment is that it’s not something the being managed to find and create all by themself. It’s an experience of enlightenment, not an attaining.

Even if it has a very similar effect, separation of self and being, my experiences and learned understandings lead me to see this as like winning the lottery as opposed to getting rich on your own efforts. Being rich is great, but staying rich is a matter of experience and discipline. It is the same with enlightenment. Earned enlightenment is rare, amazing, and endlessly fascinating.