Is enlightenment an illusion?

With the word 'Mukti' Hindus are quite familiar.
It means freedom in Hindi/Sanskrit.
My question was about the Sanskrit word for 'Enlightenment'?.
I dont know of any word that really means it.

Material pleasures are true!

LOOK HERE!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha
http://www.answers.com/topic/moksha

Actually, I wanted to suggest that he was right in his discrimination between the two, not suggesting a contradiction.

But if he, like you say, in fact doesn't discriminate them...

It appears that there are quite a lot of people who "realised the "Self" but not "God", in the sense that they realised the inner causality of the psychophisical system, and therefore became free of the psychophysical conditionings related to the exterior by placing causes of one's own inner processes in the exterior and conditionally reacting to them.

The realisation of "God" would be a "second phase" when that freed psychophysical system then becomes connected consciously with its larger causality that transcends the body (psychophysical system).

Of course, the two could apparently happen simultaneously, WHEN the second phase comes first.
That is, when the higher level of causality is (at least partially) realised before one realised the completion and complete maturation of the psychophysical system.

Then, different, even violent reactions can happen, because, the system is "rearanged" from, not its immediately higher metalevel, but from the metalevel even above it.

So, we can have people who have realised the "Self", but not "God", and people who have "realised "God", but not the "Self", and while in connection/union with the higher transcendent causality, have not yet completed the intermediate level of completion of their psychophysical system.

Ideally, one who has "good karma" (one who is very close to psychophysical completion of the inner unconditioned causality of that system) comes in contact with the even higher causality, and the two processes of realisation appear as one.

However, even these people often don't know many things about the psychophysical system and its unconditioned causality (or about the precise structure of the conditionings that must be transcended and how to transcend them), and therefore cannot give really "scientific" advices to other seekers, just idiosynchratic ones, that work only with people with similar "good karma" (so they also give idiosynchratic, in essence external advices about how to get that kind of "good karma" without knowing the inner structural meaning of that "good karma").

This is because their realisation of the "Self" was not done by the way of (complete) "jnana" or full knowledge of the structural nature of the system.
Like those alcoholics who stopped drinking, but don't know exactly what structural changes happened in them that made them stop and what they actually did for those changes to happen.
So they give advices in connection to the things they tried in order to stop, instead of really know inner structures and giving advices based on precise structural knowledge.

And if anyone wondered, the above is "not entirely" based on theory...

What about "Kaivalya"??? KK
http://www.holisticonline.com/Yoga/y...a_kaivalya.htm
http://www.geocities.com/advaitavedant/kaivalya.htm
http://www.lifepositive.com/Body/yoga/sutra.asp

KK has shed adequate "light" on the word.

Still, here are some words... from the vedas and upaniShads and puraaNas...

they all mean "the Light of the self" or the "shine of the self" from which the word to denote the "process" of enlightenment can be derived.

आत्मज्योतिः, आत्मवर्चस् , आत्मवन्हि, आभा, आत्मभावः, स्वराट् , स्वभा, स्वभावः, स्वप्रकाशः, स्वरुचम् , स्वचित्ति, त्विषीमत् , ज्ञानोद्दीप्तः, प्रादुर्भू , विश्वार्चि, ब्रह्मज्योतिः, ब्रह्मरश्मिः, पीताभास्वती

......... and so on. I can add some hundred more, the purpose has already been served. KK has given you enough to chew on.

The word "kratu" क्रतु in the Rgveda specifically means "enlightenment" as one of its meanings.

All this is thousands of years earlier than aadi shankara, BTW.
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Here's a quote from Ramesh Balsekar's book "The Ultimate Understanding" He was once the President of the Bank of India, who became a devotee of the Mahajnani Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Influenced by Maharaj he began teaching others in 1982 & to date has wrote over 20 books & is now considered by some to be a Master of Advaita.

"Hui Hai (Great Pearl)explains "Sudden Enlightenment" as a means of getting rid of conceptual thinking. Enlightenment, he says, is just the apperception that enlightenment is not anything to be obtained or attained by "Anyone" in other words, there really is no seeker as a subject nor any enlightenment as an object to be attained because "duration" in which everything "exists" is merely a concept. Enlightenment is just the apperception that we are what we have always been (Consiousness spatially extended in duration, in phenomenality; Consciousness not so extended in space-time, is our noumenal identity), that nothing at all has "happened", that nothing CAN happen because duration (without which nothing can happen)Has no veracity. KK

Hakuin's Song of Zazen
What is there outside us? What is there we lack?
Nirvana is openly shown to our eyes.
This earth where we stand is the pure lotus land!
And this very body, the body of Buddha.

Didn't Buddha say "Samsara is dukkha (misery,suffering) Nirvana is Shanti (Peace). But Samsara & Nirvana are not two."

The sage Huang Po said:
"There is no difference between sentient beings & Buddhas, or between Samsara & Nirvana, or between delusion & Bodhi. When all such forms are abandoned, there is the Buddha."

Can a living person be said to have attained Moksha?
I thought it applied only to a deceased person.
Gautam Buddha--did he achieve Moksha under the Sacred Pipal?. Or as it generally said in Hindi--he obtained Gyaan (Wisdom).

It is said that Liberation/Moksha/Mukti/Awakening is only possible while we are living in human form.
To achieve this is to be a JivanMukta!
http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/archi...er/018144.html
http://www.shastras.com/summaryofved...anmuktiviveka/
KK

Till you achieve it is an illusion and when you achieve it others will say it is an illusion

The Search for Enlightenment

an article from Yoga Journal that I received today....different views on what "IT" is....

The Search for Enlightenment

Traditionally, the goal of spiritual practice has been to attain enlightenment, but is that what today's seekers are really after?

By Colleen Morton Busch

"Anna Ashby wears a headset and looks warmly into the camera to include the thousands of Siddha yogis watching around the world as she guides us into the aisles of the cavernous Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco. Ashby, a yoga teacher in the Hatha Yoga Department of the Siddha Yoga organization, then leads us in 20 minutes of breath-centered stretches--doing her small part to prepare us for the journey to spiritual awakening.

As we return to our seats for meditation, Ashby reminds us to connect to the ground through our sitting bones as best we can in the uncomfortable red-velvet chairs. By the time the 10-hour intensive is drawing to a close--after Ashby's brief hatha yoga sessions, meditations, talks, and more than two straight hours of ecstatic chanting with Siddha Yoga's spiritual leader, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda--many attendees have drifted into the aisles again. They raise their arms and open them wide to their teacher, inviting a direct transmission of bliss, love, and higher consciousness..."

Nice and balanced article !

YogaGal, thanks for posting it !
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So being enlightened means that this person is released from the cycle of rebirth. IS that correct?.
A question--how do we know a particular person is enlightened or not?.