How to Explain Spiritual Enlightenment
A disciple asked Master Sri Avinash, “How can I explain to others what spiritual enlightenment is?” His simple response makes it easy for us to understand how to explain this state that is beyond words.
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Nobody can know what spiritual enlightenment is until they attain enlightenment. Even one day before enlightenment, you won’t know what enlightenment is. You might know in words what it should look like, and if you have an enlightened Master you can witness what it looks like by the way they behave, the way they respond to things and how their perspective is. But it’s still foreign to you, really.
So if we don’t know what it is, then how can we explain it to our family and friends?
You can really only respond by sharing whatever you feel is appropriate. For example, you could say, “An enlightened person is somebody who feels light.” Or you can say, “Someone that is kind.” Or you can look for scriptural definitions like, “Someone that has merged from individual consciousness to cosmic consciousness.”
You can say whatever you like, but it’s best to choose something that’s appropriate to the person you are sharing with.
The easiest thing to say, and something that people can relate to, is probably that an enlightened person is happy all the time. And that means all the time. It doesn’t mean they’re happy most of the time, but sometimes they are not. All the time means all the time—every moment. Even if people are rude to them, they are happy. They don’t get nervous, they don’t get serious, they don’t get disturbed. Inside them there is always joy.
I like practical explanations that people can relate to. People can understand ‘happy all the time’, because they are happy sometimes, so they can try to imagine a person being happy all the time.