How do enlightened people know that they are enlightened?

Home - Quora Link

It took me years of careful study, consideration, and meditation after I’d learned there was this thing called enlightenment, for me to realize that I possess it. Then once I figured it out, it took another few years to actually learn how to integrate and relate that knowledge to others.

In so doing, it revealed to me a very important aspect of what it means to exist. Knowledge is not the same as being. Yet we experience being as forms of knowledge. I was enlightened before I learned what enlightenment was. If enlightenment is a real thing, then people can be enlightened without having the knowledge of it or what it means.

If someone is enlightened without knowing it, then they are going to make decisions and engage with the world the same way as an enlightened person does, just they won’t be influenced by the whole spiritual literature regarding it.

When I learned what enlightenment was, that it’s this way of existing where there isn’t a limited agent doing things, and learned what that meant, that ego does not get in the way of decision making, and learned how to get there, through the process of surrendering aspects of self, I tried to apply the understanding.

When I tried to apply the understanding, I found it ridiculously, almost stupidly easy. “Oh yeah, that’s how that works.” This understanding that it takes most people many many many years to even make a small dent in their ability to actually apply this stuff.

I talked to a meditation teacher one day who said that when he started asking people how long they could maintain the state of calm when meditating, most answers were in the seconds. Meditative calm is my default state.

Why then did it take me years to have the realization that I was already enlightened? Well, in a word, misinformation and ego. People who aren’t enlightened are quick to paint enlightenment in a way that makes it impossible. Figuring out exactly what enlightenment was, reducing it all down to a single essence, is what took the years of study and exploration. I would find some interesting spiritual aspect written about and I’d spend some time diving in to explore it, only to find it doesn’t really go anywhere.

And people who are enlightened, well since enlightenment doesn’t mean that you’re immune to ignorance, often say conflicting and just flat-out wrong things. Understanding that saying wrong things out of ignorance doesn’t mean squat about your relationship to ego was tough to wrap my head around. You can’t know what you don’t know. You need to look deeper to ascertain confirmation of essence.

I think most people who are enlightened probably never bother to try to even explore spirituality long enough to come across enlightenment literature, much less devote the kinds of thought and study I did to understand it. They’re happy simply using the fruits of their state, ignorant about the gifts they blissfully possess. It’s the extremely rare kind of enlightened person that not only wants to understand it, but to try to bring it to others.

Which is why Buddhism is so amazing.