Those are fantastic questions.

How does one know if one has reached enlightenment?

How does one know if another has reached enlightenment?

The answers to these questions have a significant amount of overlap, however, they are critically different enough to warrant some amount of focused response on each. Suffice to say, you'll have more to work with to figure out if you're enlightened as you have access to your own inner thoughts, whereas you do not have access to the inner thoughts of others.

How does one know if one has reached enlightenment?

Typically, there is some kind of extraordinary event and that event often involves some sort of “surrender”. For some, it happens while seated in the lotus position, meditating, like Buddha and many others of the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. The typical narrative involves the dissolution of the self along with an experience of what one might call “Cosmic Consciousness” in which one’s mind is all there is, i.e. there is no body. The consciousness simply exists in a state of pure, total awareness.

I think that’s perhaps one "flavor" of "enlightenment experience" but it is not the only experience that is an enlightenment experience. I will explain why.

If we look at Christian and many other religious depictions, we often see things we call “halos”. Let’s look into that a bit more. That sounds a lot like auras and auras gets us into the “human energy signature” conversation as scientists would be more prone to articulate it. The human energy signature is something that is known to science. Personally, I explain this based on the fact that our bodies, our blood, the air we breathe…it’s all just atoms with electrons orbiting them. Based on electromagnetism, we should expect those electrons to induce a subtle magnetic field around us. Typically, electrons flowing through a wire are a lot more orderly than the electrons orbiting the nuclei of the atoms in our bodies, so one might expect the magnetic fields created by coiling a wire to be much stronger than the human energy signature.

According to the Hindu tradition, the human energy body, aka the subtle body, has 7 primary energy centers they call “chakras”. According to the Qigong tradition, there are secondary and tertiary energy centers or points of interest that correspond to specific locations on the physical body.

Essentially, humans are born with the bottom 3 chakras activated. They are red, orange, and yellow. The heart chakra is green. The wisdom chakra in the throat is blue, the third eye chakra is indigo, and the crown chakra is violet. The crown chakra is also active and serves as somewhat of a cumulative dashboard indicator of the lower 6 chakras.

My understanding of what enlightenment is may differ from how some understand it, but I think anyone with all 7 chakras active is “enlightened”. The 7 chakras create the 7 colors of the rainbow which merge into white light.

This is what allows the enlightened to escape the reincarnation cycle and ascend to “heaven” which is, in my understanding, a dimension that exists beyond the apparent “ceiling” of our physical reality: light speed. This is why aliens are said to be interdimensional and UFO/UAP sightings have light anomalies as part of the reported events. Survivors of near-death experiences talk about going towards the light. They talk about how the light felt like unconditional love. We have enlightenment, illuminati, kether, and many more terms that all point at light.

So, what if the next “dimension” or as I prefer to say “density” of existence is one in which beings there have no physical bodies but rather have bodies of light? If angels and aliens are described as ‘beings of light’, it would make sense that aliens and angels are basically “cosmic upperclassmen” who have already “graduated” the stage of development in which human beings find themselves by achieving enlightenment, dying a physical death, and then ascending to that next density of existence. This would also make sense as science has a lot of trouble dealing with light, particularly the wave/particle duality and light speed. It would make sense if light was a ceiling of sorts for this density of physical existence.

If that thought process is correct, then it would make sense that an enlightened person would actually be somehow different, and verifiably so. This is the case, although verification brings its own baggage to the party.

Science knows that animals like birds and sea turtles navigate great distances each year with uncanny accuracy, using no advanced technology like maps or compasses or GPS like humans would tend to use in order to navigate so precisely. Scientists figured out that animals have a flavo-protein in their eyes called “cryptochrome” which means “hidden color”. Essentially, cryptochrome enables these animals to sense magnetic fields visually. This ability tis not limited to non-human animals.

Check out these links below:

https://hecshunting.com/about-hecs/how-animals-see-humans-wearing-hecs/

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1364

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9842609/

Some humans have unlocked magnetosensitivity/magnetoreception. If you think about it, hippies are prone to say that they can see people’s auras and hippies like psychedelics. Given the study linked above on LSD, that makes sense to me.

I don’t know that LSD is the only pathway to unlocking magnetoreceptive vision. I imagine near death experiences or siddhis could do that too. Siddhis are, in my understanding, what the Hindu tradition calls certain “powers” afforded to those who have earned them and activated the third eye, i.e. claircognizance, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, etc.

Some evidence seems to suggest that the enabling of magnetosensitivity is not dependent upon being under the present influence of LSD. It seems there may be a permanent residual effect, meaning that completely sober people who haven’t touched LSD in 40 years, may still, 40 years later, be able to see people’s auras.

Someone who has magnetoreceptive vision should be able to visually identify enlightened beings. I believe this is one of the reasons that Native American Medicine Men and indigenous shamans engage in certain psychedelic practices. I think Medicine Men in particular are able to do what they do by visually assessing the aura of the patient, and they do it via the laogong qigong palm energy center. That’s right: palm reading isn’t totally BS. It all depends on whether or not the reader has magnetoreceptive vision.

This doesn’t exactly answer your question, however, it moves the football up the field so to speak. Now it’s just a matter of finding people who can read auras. In my mind, that means going to hippie festivals and looking for the right people unless you happen to know someone with a legit Medicine Man. That, or do a bunch of psychedelics until you can see auras yourself. Then you’ll have your own guru radar on-board so to speak.

Some other useful info for identifying enlightenment:

Whenever higher chakras are activated, it is called a “Kundalini Awakening” in the Hindu tradition. This is what Jesus was referring to in Matthew 10:16 with the serpent comment. Kundalini means serpent in Sanskrit. Kundalini Shakti, in the Hindu tradition, is a special bit of spirit energy (prana, qi/chi/ki, mana, ruach, scalar waves, the etheric, etc.) that typically lays dormant wrapped 3.5 times like a coiled up SERPENT around the root chakra. When higher chakras are activated, that serpent of spirit energy rises up through the “spine of the spirit body” to the height of the highest chakra being activated. Assuming my encapsulation of enlightenment above is accurate, then Kundalini Awakenings would also be worth your time to study them.

Dr. Lee Sannella M.D. wrote a book called “Kundalini: Psychosis or Transcendence”. It is excellent as it was written by a clinical physician. If you check it out, don’t skip the Appendix written by Itzhak Bentov. If you get that far, I would definitely recommend checking out Bentov’s book “Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness” and, again, don’t skip the Appendix. When I bought that book, I bought it just to read the Appendix but the whole book was face melting.

Essentially what readers of those books would learn is that there seems to be a somewhat consistent set of “symptoms” that people experience with what they called the “physio-kundalini syndrome”. One common thing reported by people who have experienced Kundalini Awakenings (higher chakra activation processes/events) is that it felt like their body was on fire from the inside. Some say “electric fire”. Personally, I describe what I felt as “intense pins and needles sensations throughout my entire body”. Some people experience involuntary body movements. I experienced some involuntary “mudras” which are just hand poses. Specifically, I was driving when it happened and for the 10-15 seconds while it was happening, I remember being unable to grasp the steering wheel because it hurt really bad to try to do so, like a really bad charley horse or muscle spasm or something. The fiery descriptions given by people connect beautifully to the ideas of the “fire of the Holy Spirit” and “baptism by fire”. It also fits perfectly with the etymology of pyramid, i.e. fire(pyra) in the middle(mid).

Some people do not experience that “sacred fire”. Some experience more orgasmic sensations. Some experience significant pain. For some, the process may be short and sweet. For others, it may last months. Some experience visions different from the aforementioned “Cosmic Consciousness of total awareness”. George Washington describes such a vision in his journal which is worth checking out as an example. The variations of experience make sense as each mind/body/spirit complex is unique, but on the other hand, it makes sense that many people would experience similar things.

I do like Wim Hof's breathing technique. I learned about it listening to him get interviewed by Jordan and Mikhaila Peterson years ago. It was effective. I found it helpful as a "warm up" to meditation. It is like exercising your 4 wheel drive system on your Jeep or pickup truck once a month. If you don't do that, it will get out of proper working order and when you need it to work right, it will fail you. Our bodies have these emergency mode protocols. It's like intermittent fasting, ice baths, saunas, etc. We should subject ourselves to extreme conditions occasionally and keep those protocols in proper functioning order.

In short, the guru and the charlatan will come into conflict over what the truth is. The guru could debate the charlatan but the charlatan is a charlatan so they're likely to use underhanded debate tactics like logical fallacies and gish gallups and whatnot. The guru could refuse to debate the charlatan but the charlatan would use that as a tacit admission of defeat. If they did debate, there's a reasonable chance the both sides would call one another charlatans, prideful and egotistical.

An onlooker might think both are prideful and egotistical, disagreeing with them both, and preferring his own set of ideas.

Ultimately, objective truth is objective truth, so if the guru is correct but others dismiss him as "not receptive to the ideas of others" or "prideful and egotistical" or whatever they want to say about him, that's their opinion of him and not necessarily an objectively factual assessment of him.

I think this nicely ties back to the whole "judge a tree by its fruits" thing. We won't really know until we explore.

Ultimately, if someone says they have truth to offer, you won't know whether or not they're full of shit until you've explored what they have to offer, and oftentimes, done the necessary prerequisite scholastic work/research/learning to understand that truth in any meaningful capacity.

I should point out that the first chunk of "narcissist", i.e. "narcis", and the spiritual accomplishment called "gnosis" can sound EXTREMELY similar if pronounced so. Specifically I'm thinking of an English omission of that R in narcis, i.e. "nahhcis". That same set of sounds could work for gnosis.

I find this interesting because I can imagine that many who have achieved Gnosis have been accused of being a narcissist. Likewise, many legit narcissists would falsely claim to have achieved Gnosis.

You don’t enter the spiritual path perfectly balanced nor do you have to be so to discover things hidden to most. Also it would probably be good to keep in mind how Wim Hof got started with his practices. His wife committed suicide and battling the cold gave him the strength of will to not follow her down that same path. Also his breathing method while similar to others is distinct and would be disingenuous to call by any of the existing names. By giving it his name he is taking responsibility for the results of following his method as opposed to other methods.

Not all gurus operate the same, but if a person is a legit guru, they should have no problem managing to meet the demands of their biological vulnerabilities. Some aspect of their modus operandi would lend itself to such an income.

If they're someone like Eckhart Tolle or Sadhguru or Gopi Krishna, they might earn some money from selling books or speaking engagements. If they're someone like Bentov, Tesla, or Da Vinci, they might earn money by their genius inventions and ability to understand the universe in ways others do not. If they're someone like a Buddhist monk, they might simply be content with whatever is donated into their donation bowl each day.

I like applying an economic lens to such things. For example, Dr. Robert Gilbert's time is very valuable as the things he teaches are in high demand. He has a lot to teach but only so much time to allocate towards various endeavors. He understands the value of the material he teaches and of his own time, so, to scale his ability to educate people, he has paid online courses that people can choose to sign up for. I have no problem with someone earning an income by selling access to video lectures especially when he gives away a lot of information for free in interviews and on his own site.

I am prone to think that it is ideal for a legit guru to have passive income streams set up like books or courses because that frees the gurus time up to work on other books, other courses, etc. Ideally, eventually, proceeds from such income would be more than enough to handle the guru's own needs and the excesses can be put towards other pursuits like establishing centers for spiritual growth, charitable organizations, schools, etc.

Real gurus shouldn't need to resort to shenanigans to fund themselves. If they really have something legit to share with mankind, they should be able to get a following of supporters willing to voluntarily offer value in return for value received from the guru. This can manifest in many forms.