The wanting mechanism-enlightenment phenomena mess

     A reader asked how you know if you are enlightened.  He pointed out that many depressed people have lost all wants and desires, but they are not enlightened.  The reader also wondered how enlightened people can survive without desires.  My answer is pasted below.

     Your question is very apt and spots a hole in my essay.  You have to set aside the wanting mechanism to experience satori, a glimpse of enlightenment.  People who are fully enlightened are essentially born that way.  Full enlightenment is a genetic oddity, not a result of great effort.  The enlightened do have wants and desires even if they do not feel their own egos.  Their egos are hidden to them.

     We all need an ego to survive.  Perhaps I should add a paragraph or two to further explain this, but it is complex and contradictory, and so far I have not been inspired to wade into that mess.  The brain finds a way for the body to survive, enlightened or not.  The brain is like a plant; it changes shape, form, and function to continue life, like a vine growing around an obstacle to reach the light.

     In my opinion "enlightenment" and the feeling that you are "enlightened" is an ego trip.  Those who think they are enlightened have become pretentious and delusional.  Rajneesh thought he was a great thinker because he was so spaced out, but he was wrong about almost everything and driven by personal ambition and greed.  He was full of energy and light, but that does not equal wisdom and virtue.  Enlightenment in the Eastern sense of the word is a rare brain phenomena, not a "spiritual" phenomena at all because there are no spirits.  As U.G. Krishnamurti said, "There is no one there to tell you that you are enlightened."

Christopher

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