What Actually Enlightenment is?

We often heard the terms enlightenment, liberation, salvation, Mukti, Moksh, and the list of words goes on. What does it actually mean? Does something like this really exist or can be experienced? Before continuing the article, I want you to turn your perspective to complete zero so that you won’t feel any difficulty understanding a new perspective.

NOTE: In this article and in other future articles, I won’t tweak the Hindi words according to English. For example, people turn Shiv to Shiva, Ram to Rama in English. I don’t understand the concept. What if your name is Harsh in Hindi, and in English, I would call you Harsha. The gender will be changed. It’s totally absurd for me to understand. Shiva is the name of Goddess Parvati, Lord Shiv’s wife. So in my articles, I am not gonna do that. Continuing…

meaning of enlightenment

In Hindu scriptures (4 Ved and 18 Puraan), enlightenment or Mukti is referred to the state of oneness with the universe. It is referred to as the dimension where the being is “Out of Questions”, which means he/she gets to know everything about this universe and the possible questions one can have about life. Now he/she realized that the whole universe is inside him/her. So anything that ever happened to this universe, that record is also there and they have access to it.

That’s the reason that many enlightened people recall their past life. Even they can tell about someone else’s also because that someone is also a part of the universe. Enlightenment brings consciousness within you. Consciousness is simply the awareness of your actions, thoughts, and surroundings.

Believe me, not even 98% of the people on this planet are conscious. Consciousness took realizations and experience to come into action. Few people get it by experience, few get it by sudden realization like Vivekanand.

What vivekanand said?

Ohh, I just recalled an event of Vivekanand when he was delivering his speech in Chicago 1893, he said, “How is it that I don’t remember anything of my past life? This can be easily explained. I am now speaking English. It is not my mother tongue, in fact, no words of my mother tongue are now present in my consciousness, but let me try to bring them up, and they rush in. That shows that consciousness is only the surface of the mental ocean, and within its depths are stored up all our experiences. Try and struggle, they would come up and you would be conscious even of your past life.” Interesting na!

You can read the Works of Vivekanand from HERE.

Then a question arises, “How to get enlightened? How to get consciousness? Which method to follow? Before that, let me tell you the possible ways to get enlightened as described in our scriptures. Only meditation or Yoga is not the only path.

paths to get enlighten

There are 4 major paths to follow to get enlightened, let me explain them in short:

1. Bhakti Marg: It is path of devotion. The being surrender himself/herself towards the supreme energy or say God.
2. Yog Marg: It is path of Yoga(physical one) and meditation. We often referred it as spirituality. The last element of Yog Marg is Samadhi.
3. Gyaan Marg: Its is the path of gaining knowledge from Ved, Puraan, Guru and ofcourse the mother nature. Knowledge makes you realise about the consciousness.
4. Raj Marg: It is the path of doers. Who takes responsibilities of realtions, society and country to work for them without expectations. Karmyogi are often referred to the path of Raj Marg.

So it’s not necessary to meditate to get enlightened. You can achieve the same level by reading Ved and Puraan also. These 4 paths or Marg consist of 112 paths within them out of which Buddhism is one of them. Buddhism comes to the category of Yog Marg.

I don’t want to bombard your memory with a lot of information in a single article. So it’s done for now. Hope you got an idea about enlightenment and the paths to reach that level. Your queries will be welcomed and answered in comments. See you in the next post 🙂

If you wanna know more about it, you can follow my Personal Instagram. I often share stories about such topics.

You must read our previous posts: How To Stop Getting Hurt?, How Resilience Breaks Your Physical Limits?, How To Stop Overthinking?