How many enlightened people are there?

[tinkerbell]

Originally Posted by Angela

All of us. We just don't all realize it yet.

Angela, I love this.

[starman007]

Originally Posted by Erock

I've thought about this before, and I've come to the conclusion that there are probably more enlightened people then we think in the world. I'm guessing that once a person becomes enlightened they simply disappear into the background, telling very few people about their state, and living very humble lives. With everyone else in the world trying to stand out, it's probably very difficult to notice them. The few that are famous are only famous because people have found them and questioned them endlessly (I'm thinking of Tolle here).

Do you guys agree with me? How many enlightened people do you think are alive today? A few hundred, a thousand, more? I'm curious as to people's estimates on this.

Erock

we stay in the back ground because humanity is kaotic and war prond we need to seek out each other . the history of man is of reacuring violants and this they dont understand ,and how to aviod it

[jokerman]

I will venture a more literal (albeit not necessarily more truthful) answer: in the thousands.

I doubt more than a few thousand living beings are fully enlightened (Buddha level) in the "technical sense", which as I understand it, is the ability to see through the illusion of duality in real-time, as opposed to merely conceptually.

I estimate only in the thousands, because I think it is a rather difficult attainment requiring many years of dedicated practice, similar to becoming a proficient musician or surgeon. I imagine there are many more semi-enlightened people than this (many of whom are mistakenly believed by others and/or themselves to be fully enlightened), but relatively few who have attained an ultimate insight about the nature of self, perception, and reality.

[Mitalp]

The mind is nuts! An enlightened person would never take a conversation to this level. We're wondering what enlightenment is, who is enlightened, each person has a different perspective of what it is. The truth is each and every one who expressed their idea, or an idea the got from someone else enlightenment is is WRONG! None of us know what enlightenment is, because we're too busy sitting here, using our minds to conceptualize what we THINK it is, instead of experiencing it. One will only know what enlightenment is, when one experiences it.

As for the topic of this thread, it's impossible to ever know how many enlightened people there are on this planet, for we don't even truly know what enlightenment is, though you may THINK you do...lol, and no enlightened person will ever admit they are, that would just be a reference to ego. We shouldn't be so concerned with how many enlightened people are on this planet, we should be more concerned with how we can reach this thing called enlightenment. As I see it, here we're just using enlightenment as a topic of entertainment, like we do just about everything in our world today.

Anyhow, it was lots of fun to see the different responses people had, there were some very profound responses.

Though I can't tell you what enlightenment is, I truly believe living your purpose is the only way to enlightenment.

[yamizi]

Originally Posted by Calisto

No one is as enlightened as His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. Yet he does not claim to be enlightened. The Dalai Lama says he's "just a simple monk" with no exceptional wisdom to impart. "Others are always making too much of my words," he says. "People are too serious. All the time, too serious."

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Hmm...if HHDL said he's not enlightened, how do you know he is? Or it's just on your wishful part that he is enlightened?

[jokerman]

Originally Posted by Mitalp

...no enlightened person will ever admit they are, that would just be a reference to ego.

I beg to differ. Why place that limitation on an enlightened person, that they're not allowed to talk about it? Why would an enlightened person, who may very well be interested in helping others reach the same insight, withhold the fact of their attainment? Just because they have transcended identification with the personal self, does not mean they lose access to it, and are incapable of referring to themselves as people, with personal histories, memories, thoughts, emotions, egos, etc.

Obviously, the description of enlightenment is not the thing itself, but this does not obviate the need to convey as clearly as possible (within the limitations of communication) a realistic path towards attaining that indescribable insight. Who else can do that but an enlightened person that is upfront to their students about what they've achieved and how they got there?

[Buttercat Apocalypse]

Do you guys know Steve is enlightened? I am enlightened for that matter. If you define "enlightened" as "being able to sense in feelings and not just facts one's connectedness with all that exists". Eckhart Tolle defined it as "resting in the state of felt oneness with being". Anyone who has felt true happiness is capable of being in this state. I think it's an important milestone to learn how to intentionally get there. After that - the levels of consciousness "love" through to "enlightenment" - are different levels of integration of this feeling-realization in one's life. I believe there may be a point where you no longer need the human body to learn, where you "shed the body like the snake sheds its skin" as Maharshi put it. Perhaps that is what "enlightenment" as the final human state refers to.

Not so mystical when you put it like that huh?

[Poiesis Hagakure]

enlightened strikes me as does the word power... even its definition is relative. the definition IS the relative difference between people. you have to have someone who is not enlightened to have someone who is enlightened. enlightened supposes that there are those in the dark. just like those with power are defined by those who are powerless to stop them. but i believe that angela is right. we are all enlightened. some are in touch with it at times, some more often, some not as much, some not at all. i think it is indisputable though that we are all capable of being so. we all have being still, and just being, within our reach.

[m18pak]

I do not think Eckhart Tolle is enlightened.

[Judge]

Originally Posted by Erock

How many enlightened people do you think are alive today?

The question can never be answered.

Because you are asking the wrong question.

Judge

PS........Actually my answer is too vague.

You're looking for something you already are........but as no one wants to be god, then we will continue to ask the question......

[Parthon]

I'd say about ten thousand, up to about fourty thousand. People who are enlightened stand out, but today's society doesn't celebrate those kinds of achievements.

As many people have said, the bigger question is: Are you enlightened?

For me, enlightenment is being able to create a profound area of peace and joy. Being able to sense the oneness of everything in the present, and that nothing else exists. Releasing the attachment to your mind, body and spirit, and just be in the moment as pure awareness. Connecting with everyone and everything everywhere all at once, and feeling the intense presense of love all around you.

[liveforsnow2288]

Originally Posted by Angela

All of us. We just don't all realize it yet.

Bingo

[Mitalp]

"To be enlightened is simply to be absolutely, unconditionally intimate with this moment. No more. No less." - Scott Morrison

[Groundless]

Originally Posted by Erock

Agh. I hate you guys but I love you guys. I definitely see the error in my question. For those that are curious, this is where it originated from:

Page 115, I Am That:

Questioner: Still there must be some way of making out who has realized and who has not. If one is indistinguishable from the other, of what use is he?

Maharj: He who knows himself has no doubts about it. Nor does he care whether others recognize his state or not. Rare is the realized man who discloses his realization and fortunate are those who have met him, for he does it for their abiding welfare.

I got from this that there are a lot realized men who don't disclose their state or haven't met anybody who cared. This is why I got to wondering how many there are.

Erock

The question is really: Who is "I"? Is "I" really different than "you" I went through a period of reading I am That - fantastic book.


Wei Wu Wei said "we are dividuals, not individuals" he also went on to say

"Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent
Of everything you think,
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself -
And there isn't one"

Oh heck, a huge bunch from Wei Wu Wei:
THE WEI WU WEI ARCHIVES

2. Tao, or The Way It Is
I - as 'me' - am whatever is perceived and conceived as 'you': 'you' and 'it' are what is perceived and conceived soever.

There is no 'I', no 'you', no 'it'. We are the perceiving and conceiving which as perceptions conceived are then so-labelled as objects.

'We' as such, as any 'thing', as any factual object, are not at all.

Therefore there can not be any such thing as an 'I' perceiving and conceiving. Since there is not any entity to be cognised, there can not be any entity to cognise. This is why cognising can not be cognised, and this is why cognising - 'Mind' in Buddhism, 'Consciousness' in Vedanta, 'Tao' in China, 'the Holy Spirit' in Christianity, any of the names of 'Allah' in Sufism, are just symbols whereby the phenomenal manifestation of 'cognising' may be indicated in a spatio-temporal context.

If, in our spatio-temporal context, we are to 'speak' among our mutually apparent 'selves' on the noumenal level of this understanding, each of us would speak from the knowledge that each 'other' had no existence but his appearance in the mind of each, which ultimately, as 'I', is not plural, which is not singular either, but the conceiving of which in split-mind is necessarily multiple.

In practice this means that whatever conception A has of B, C has of B, B has of B (his 'self') is all that B is or could be at that moment of 'time'. There can be no entity to be anything other than conceptual at any moment of time, for there is only cognising and neither cognising nor cognition can have an 'ens'.

A conceptual objectification in mind is that only and no sort of factual 'thing', no example of which has ever existed other than as an appearance in a spatio-temporal context in what is called 'mind' or 'consciousness', which are symbols for the cognising process, itself a conceptual manifestation in imagined space-time.

Symbols themselves have no 'ens', and it is idle to seek for anything conceptual that could express what is cognising, for cognising cannot cognise what is cognising, since no 'thing' IS cognising.

Why is this so? It is so because cognising seems to occur in what is conceptualised as space-time, which is to say that it manifests in spatio-temporal extension, which implies that its objects can be visualised in 'space' and have duration in 'time', the whole of which conceptual processes are what we have to describe as subjective functioning - the subjective functioning of cognising itself.

Cognising, like the other five faculties of sentience, is in fact a dualistic expression of consciousness, of being conscious, which is the prajnatic aspect of dhyana. As conscious-ness it is phenomenal, as dhyana it is noumenal. As the latter, phenomenally regarded, it is unconscious.

Therefore what-we-are noumenally does not appear (is not phenomenal), and so is referred to negatively as unconsciousness, no-mind (Buddhism), or deep-sleep (Vedanta).

Nothing further can be said, for all 'saying' is expressed cognition, i.e. is dualised as subject/object conceptualising by means of the relativity of opposing and interdependent counterparts. Apart from that, all that ever was, ever is, ever will be, is pure undivided noumenality, apperceiving, entirely spontaneous, phenomenally transcendent and indescribable in dualistic terminology.

Certainly available, this apperceiving cannot be produced or acquired by any means whatever subject to space-time limitations, but the basic reason for this we can guess, which is that it is what we are, all that we are, and, being it, we cannot possibly know it subject to the limitations of the dualised process of objectification.

[marty]

Lester Levenson - Release Technique, aka Sedona Method, creator

[brendannz]

I think what Steve Pavlina means by "one or zero" is that your consciousness is everything, and so there isn't really any state which others can reach, and you don't reach. It's only you who can be enlightened..

So maybe only you can define enlightenment..

As well, with the "you or none" maybe also, that your connection with other people is a symptom that you are enlightened and your disconnection with them ie. "they are enlightened, and I am not" is a symptom of unenlightened.

Just a thought.. As well, if you seek enlightenment, I think the journey is the enlightenment, and the destination isn't really a place that exist..

But since it's one or zero, and I'm not the one, you're the one, you're going to have to term 'enlightenment' yourself..

As well, since the Dalai Lama is not to be taken seriously, please don't take me seriously either..

[Foresta Gump]

Hello Erock

The answer to your question of how many enlightened people there are world-wide, is 2 men and 1 woman.

Canada has cornered three people world-wide.

I can give you proof!

You sound like one of them!

Foresta Gump

[Wombels]

Most do not wish to expose themselves because they might get nailed, although it would not concern them as much, they rather remain a Pole beyond presence, like a watchtower only seen by those who seek to question and recall.

Humble they became before enlightenment, otherwise they could not have understood the hate around making them to remain amongst those suffering in and because of hate.

To remain silent amongst, might make some to appear in way’s of understanding of your own, because they chose you too witness, when they allow you to do the Same, :-)

Enlightened souls lingering in the physical are not to be found in a state of aliveness or dead, they simply are, therefore also create that understanding these state simply don’t exist other than by interpretation of those who are limited.

[zack637]

Very good thread.

[Mato Kinze]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

The answer to the original question can only be one or zero.

...or 42....

[Dave Mahar]

Originally Posted by Erock

I've thought about this before, and I've come to the conclusion that there are probably more enlightened people then we think in the world. I'm guessing that once a person becomes enlightened they simply disappear into the background, telling very few people about their state, and living very humble lives. With everyone else in the world trying to stand out, it's probably very difficult to notice them. The few that are famous are only famous because people have found them and questioned them endlessly (I'm thinking of Tolle here).

Do you guys agree with me? How many enlightened people do you think are alive today? A few hundred, a thousand, more? I'm curious as to people's estimates on this.

Erock

Hey Erock. Your description of people like me is bang on. Yes I disappeared into the background and live a modest life. Of course I don't broadcast my experience like Tolle or Byron Katie. I see they are famous and making money, but I wonder what there message is. As the saying goes "The Tao that can be described is not The Tao". In my opinion and experience the only way to get to heaven, enlightenment, is thru the gates of hell. All the biggies like Buddha, J.C., Ramana Maharshi have gone thru hell and reading about Tolle and Katie them too.
Zen seems to be the only one that purposely puts you thru the hell that is required to get where it is you want to go.
I don't believe most people are willing to go thru hell to get to heaven and like to have a leader to hold their hand on a joy filled path.
More important in my view and available to everyone is mind control. Even when one has the third eye the mind can be a wild beast. Having been an atheist of course I looked at religion and stumbled across Norman Vincent Peale. Wow! you mean I can control my thinking! This control I now have over that wild emotion driven beast has added even more joy to the experience.
Ther are currently Christian preachers who have swiitched from sin to a form of mind control stressing joy of livlng and rejection of negativity. The best one is Joyce Meyers who stands up and tells it like it is with brutal frankness.
Anyway, if somebody wants to discover me I'm open to it. Maybe we could come up with another line of balogny and and charge big bucks to come and hear my line, or write books filled with balogny and get on Oprah.
I wonder if Spinoza had the third eye?
Dave Mahar

[Judge]

There is only one moment, one now, one presence.

So there is only you.

All the other people you see are projections of the one consciousness and as there is only one consciousness, then there is only one you.

You are that consciousness.

How many enlightened people are there?

There are none, for there is you and all your projections including the idea that other people are enlightened.

Judge

[sk8joyful]

Originally Posted by Erock

if one becomes enlightened, then there are no people and we are all one so there couldn't actually be more then one enlightened individual
however I wanted the question answered from a non-enlightened perspective and I would say, from that incorrect perspective, that there are at least a couple hundred enlightened people (but they aren't really people) on the planet.
Erock

the 'enlightened'? "aren't really people on the planet." - so why
was this > How many enlightened people? thread started?
and
how are such supposed people, different from other people?, as far as healing , and further human developments...

[Foresta Gump]

Good post jokerman

I agree, however, it is not wise for an enlightened person to let others know they are enlightened, because to many expectations would be brought upon them. Others would assume their own logic is better, thus denying the enlightened one of her/his truth. It's called "Jealousies of the intellect"

The Enlightened person knows intuitively that their answers are indisputable, undeniable in logic.

Enlightenment is indescribable insight, a high consciousness/awareness, a oneness with their Lord and Heavenly Father. The enlightened one is contented and mentally balanced in life, and has learned to live happilly and effectively on less than the necessities of life.

Enlightenment is experiencing one mind-set to another many times, growing and progressing from living both their dual opposites of their nature.

An Enlightened person can help the world with just their mind alone.


Foresta Gump

[Parthon]

I love the Post Foresta, it also highlights why so many enlightened people don't go out of their way to express it.

It's a personal experience, and it's not something easily given to others. Even more so, if you say you are enlightened, you are questioned about it, perhaps even assaulted about it. Life is challenging enough without people asking "Are you*really* enlightened?" On top of that, being enlightened doesn't mean all your problems are solved, you still have a body and your awareness is still tied to your personal existance in this moment, so you still have to live life, earning money, paying rent/mortgage, looking after your family, all the usual stuff. You see the truth, but that just changes how you relate to everyone and everything. It's changes your purpose and your intentions, but it doesn't change your circumstances.

But I do thank those that have come forth to share their wisdom. They have done much to raise the consciousness of humanity.

[12aven]

i guess it depends on if they move onto another phase or if they stay here and let the tides of fate or the uni-verse take them along to do what happens
i've read books about a group of men in the indian wilderness in the early 1900's that had the abilities of christ who followed his rules, they may have moved onto another phase though

[Foresta Gump]

Hello Parthon

I clicked onto your name and guess what? I saw your tree, I also read your personal growth journal. It's a good idea to write a journal, it reveals much about one's self for historical purposes and reminising moments in time.

Thankyou much for the vote of confidence in appreciating my post, it's nice when someone mentions something good about someone else's post. I encourage you to always continue doing so, because it feels good to spread truth around that puts smiles on one's face. Smiles travels miles, look, theres the word 'mile' in between the two s's 'smiles'.

This thread was inviting, challenging, informative, educating, humorous, entertaining, and the greatest of all is the sharing of voices.

Foresta Gump

[northstarbird]

Seriously, We can only find enlightenment from with-in our own self. I can not teach it to another.( i wish I could) I suppose it comes down to free will. Sad, yes. Hard to let people go, yes. But, Hope I can. I hope for all to face themselves and desire to be awakened. Seek and you shall find. scary, lonely the road is but redemption is found on the way. And a living example i try to be, tho i am but a child.

[David21]

Maybe enlightenment is not what we think it is. The Dalai Lama is said to be the most enlightnened man on Earth yet he would claim that he is just a humble monk.

Maybe enlightenment is just about finding happiness, no more, no less. In this world, happiness would be the equivalent to this 'enlightenment' that so many believe exist in that they are both very very rare. Very few of us are happy to the core. Maybe that's all enlightenment is? How knows?

[Parthon]

It would be great if enlightenment is happiness, but it's not, and even then, it's not the point. To be happy is to be comfortable. People who jump out of aeroplanes aren't happy. They might be exhilarated, scared, and ecstatic, but I'm not sure happy would be the right word, but I would definately call them living.

Even after enlightenment, you still have to deal with your every day life, and life in your every day world. That's what makes it challenging. How can you bring joy, peace and contentment to washing the dishes, taking out the garbage or cleaning the toilet? How can you be content with cleaning the toilet just because you know it has to get done.

As Ram Dass once said, "If you think you’re enlightened, spend a weekend with your parents."