First, a confession: I am not a fully enlightened being. Yet, I still know what enlightenment is like because, on my podcast “Awareness Explorers,” I regularly interview enlightened people. From the over 100 folks I’ve interviewed ranging from the Dalai Lama to Byron Katie, their reports of what “awakening” or “enlightenment” is like are remarkably similar. In addition, from their descriptions I’ve come to see that, occasionally, I have moments where I experience what they describe. By exploring their depictions of enlightenment, I hope to make it easier for us “normal” folks to recognize when we’re moving in a beneficial direction.
There are many ways to describe enlightenment, just as there are many ways one can talk about a rose. Yet, some ways are more useful than others. If you had never seen a rose, a scientist describing it as a photosynthetic process of nitrogen uptake combined with photon energy transmission might be technically correct, but it would miss the essence of “rosiness.” Similarly, when descriptions of enlightenment diverge into philosophical hairsplitting, it can miss conveying what the actual experience is like.
So, how do people who we think are enlightened (i.e. the Dalai Lama) or who publicly declare they are awakened describe their actual moment-to-moment experience? Well, I hate to disappoint you, but they rarely describe it as…