My first reaction was LOL this concept has blinded many people…The key question is why people ask this question! And there is one esoteric truth! If you answer in whatever way, the question is not helping anymore! It is thus about finding the root of the question. So far my humble idea about this first question.

Now the second one: am I enlightened ? That is a crazy question, more crazy than the first one. If I say yes, you ask me to prove it, so best to say no, no fuzz, no expectations.

Let us look into the first question from some more perspectives.

The question of enlightenment has been asked for centuries. Each tradition, each master, has answered in their own way. What emerges is not a single definition but a mosaic of perspectives pointing to something at once immediate, elusive, and profoundly human.

Jiddu Krishnamurti once remarked: Enlightenment is not in the hands of time. It is not “I am ignorant but if I do certain things I will come to enlightenment.” Spiritually, time is not necessary. For him, awakening is not a goal but an instantaneous seeing, beyond effort or progression.

Osho described it in his own uncompromising way: Enlightenment is not a desire, not a goal, not an ambition. It is a dropping of all goals, a dropping of all desires. It is the state where you are left absolutely alone, nothing to know, only consciousness itself turning back to the source.

The Sufi poets and saints spoke through images of light. Rumi reminded us: You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop. And al Hakim al Tirmidhi taught that the heart, polished by divine light, shines like a mirror until all lights become one light, and the mystic is immersed in a luminous unity.

U G Krishnamurti turned the whole idea inside out: there is no enlightenment to attain, only the end of the search and the fall of the seeker into the natural state.

For Meister Eckhart, the German mystic, the words were radical: The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. In his vision, enlightenment was nothing less than the erasure of separation itself.

Ramana Maharshi, sitting quietly at the foot of Arunachala, expressed it with great simplicity: The greatest obstacle to enlightenment is the belief that you are not already enlightened. You are awareness itself. When all else falls away, pure awareness remains, and that is the Self.

Alan Watts, in his playful way, showed the paradox: Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is. It is a special kind of enlightenment to see the ordinary as uncanny, improbable, and wondrous.

What unites these voices is their insistence that enlightenment is not somewhere else, not something to acquire, not an achievement of the ego. It is a recognition, a homecoming, a dissolving of boundaries between self and world. Sometimes it is described as light, sometimes as awareness, sometimes as unity. But always it points us back to what is already here.

Perhaps the truest answer to the question “What is enlightenment?” is that no definition will ever capture it. At best, these words are fingers pointing at the moon. The seeing itself must be one’s own. Therefore I stay with my own approach. Wondering what the answer would bring on this question, probably each answer above for most of the people is blinding.

Perhaps the most valuable answer to what enlightenment is would be this. Look and see for yourself. The rest are fingers pointing at the moon, helpful until the looking happens, silent once it does.

Am I?

Most masters answered it with paradox or silence. Ramana Maharshi would smile and say, there is no one here to be enlightened. U G Krishnamurti would laugh and declare, the whole idea of being enlightened is nonsense.

Meister Eckhart might answer: if I were enlightened, it would not be I but God shining through me. Osho often turned it around: ask yourself if you are asleep, not if I am awake.

Alan Watts reminded seekers: if someone says, “I am enlightened,” it is like someone saying, “I am humble.” The very claim contradicts itself.

So the wisest response may be not yes, not no, but a gentle refusal to play the game. Enlightenment is not a badge, not an achievement, not something one can own. At best, it is a disappearance of the questioner.

The real answer is always the same: look not at me, but at yourself. That which asks is already what it seeks.

Shunyam Adhibhu