Suppose for a moment that there is a measurable achievement which we can grossly call “enlightenment.”
We can say that (1) Some people are enlightened, (2) some people are not enlightened, (3) enlightenment can be “lost” in a lifetime, (4) enlightenment can be regained in a lifetime, (5) enlightenment is measurable (by a statistical analysis on a person’s various brain activity, behaviors, physical wellness, etc), (6) that the main figure of enlightenment is a “lightness of being” or an ability to withstand trauma and stress, without psychological duress . . . Nietzche’s Ubermensch to some degree.
Now suppose we can assign two classes of enlightenment-
Class A: Trained enlightenment - given a society which encourages this enlightenment (meets all basic needs, encourages basic acceptance) that the statistical probability for enlightenment in a population rises, and many of those are therefore enlightened due to their existence in this population.
Class B: Spontaneous enlightenment - that an individual even in strife can achieve enlightenment. The pangs of imprisonment, starvation, violence, and so forth are not a clear psychological threat to this individual. They remain psychologically buoyant, able to continue through trauma without exhibiting post-traumatic stress disorder.
Supposing that this is a possibility - how?
If you refute such a concept, what is your alternative for the betterment of an individual?
The enlightenment associated with HInduism and Buddhism is not something I am seeking. Just wanted to get that out of the way up front, since it seemed like your version comes from those, or westernized versions of those. That said…Imagine you had a teenager who every time something Went wrong, mentally told themselves that this was the way it was Always going to be. They mess up in a sport, get rejected, blow a test, whatever. When something they don’t like happens they immediately draw the conclusion that this will Always happen. You intervene. You mention the time they did bad at X and then the next time well at X. One could call it a cognitive-behavioral intervention, so popular these Days. The teenager realizes that what they Think is a rule, is not a rule, and suffers less when bad things happen. So enlightment would be a state where one lacks all sorts of cognitive (taking this in a broader sense than in CBT) problems. Meditation, perhaps, eliminating the existence of much of the judgmental noise in the brain. We know that some thoughts can cause suffering and increase suffering. Even the most skeptical non-spiritual person has probably left behind some kind of mental virus and knows that step 1 is possible. Enlightenment is the idea that one can reach a state where all of these have been removed and or their fangs have been removed, since one detaches from them.
Minds also try stuff out and if something feels really good or offers a no longer torturing oneself state, the mind will be attracted to it. So spontaneous versions are possible. But unlikely to hold or be complete I would guess, unless we are dealing with reincarnated souls.
The age of Enlightenment, since the eighteenth century, has us believing reason walks in lockstep with progress. We all assumed the solution to infirmity, deficit, and bias would manifest, magically. Yeah, we found it for sure-a final solution, not flawless, but terminal-total war! Nuclear war is the baby of the Enlightenment, extermination and carnage. So, what is a nuclear bomb? It is a form of technology. One can only hold Illusions about technology, not a truth, such as ‘Enlightenment theory.’ So, ‘I’m Enlightened because I’m a shrink or a scientist’?
But, just because I know how to do something does not mean I know what it is I’m doing! Scientists and specialists create riddles that only expand the field of the unknown (think tiny science-subatomic physics). Hence, we have a conversion of principle, do we not, and this is not pessimistic? Save for, we no longer have positive and negative ideas. The starting outlay, with respect to the Enlightenment, is not progress, but alienation! This is what we start from. The only riddle needing a solution is the connundrum of technology, not technology itself, the fruit of the Enlightenment!
Thought, the broad definition and the goals ( removing ignorance and acquiring knowledge and wisdom) of the enlightenment are the same in different schools of Hinduism and western philosophy, still the adopted means were totally different.
Furthermore, in Hinduism, the term ‘enlightenment’ is used in very strict sense, for a particular state, while very loosely in western philosophy.
Secondly, In the west, enlightenment was the seen as a tool of logic and reason to be used against the Church and the state and had not much to do with spirituality.
But, it is just opposite in the Hinduism, though, it was based on logic and reasoning too, but had more dimensions and complex than that.
I think it’s a matter of perspective, which has become right within it’s own context, that expanded the Western notion of enlightenment,as a form of accommodation toward secularism, as proximately caused by the age of protest in the eighteenth century. That process is still ongoing, and the residual steps needed to attain personal enlightenment has to overcome the individual residual structural traces, which the initial burst has left in it’s wake.
It’s one thing to refer to the complex of variables which differentiated and formed new mixes of social determinants, and another to form qualified perceptions of how to bring them together into assimilated viewpoints.
Such an enlightened view, is still far from being understood, as the subtle elements of discerning the qualified state of mind from reference to authority stalled enlightenment on all levels. The embedded ambiguity of paradoxical contradiction in language, once understood ,may divulge the hindrances in unraveling these levels, and reinterpreting them in congruence with the rush of a excitement which overcoming values initially caused . People desiring of adopting nihilism have the same problem. The knots have not been sufficiently untangled.
Whether enlightenment can be learned, or, can be gained immediately, is not an either/or for most people. The few people who have had autonomic experiences of instant enlightenment, are few, although, there may be many more than can be ascribed from those, who had the opportunity to divulge them through their writings, East and West.