What is 'Enlightenment'? Options

[Shawn]

It's certain that enlightenment means different things to different people, and so I'm curious what it means to other people, and also to throw out a few questions to provoke thought.

Is Enlightenment an experience, process, realization, way of living, or what?

Is Enlightenment a multi-faceted word that is context-dependent and relative, or are there absolute truths that are invariably associated with any type of Enlightenment?

What are the 'truths', if any, that would invariably be realized/experienced thru Enlightenment?

Is Enlightenment an all-or-none experience (AHA experience) or is it a gradual accumulation of wisdom?

What is the relation of Enlightenment to mystical experience?

Please note that the above constitutes a partial list and is not meant to exhaust the range of questions that could, and should, be asked.

Personally, I believe the statement, "We are the Universe conscious of Itself", is on a par with Buddha's "All that we are, is the result of what we have thought" from the opening of the Dhammapada, and that both constitute part of a collection of truths that are invariably experienced during what I think many would call Enlightenment.   The task at hand, though, is to clarify this notion of Enlightenment to the best of our abilities thru mere verbal communication.  Is anyone up to this challenge?

[numinoso]

There is also a mathematical proof why God can't be absolute. It's number theory. The only way out of this proof would be to say that God is beyond numbers, but if you want to take that way I'll prove to you that this leads to saying that God is beyond anything, which would make him nothing. (A superset that contains all subsets also has to contain the content of these subsets.)

So, if God would be absolute he would have to contain all the numbers. But, the numbers are infinite. So God can't contain them all.

That means that the infinite is only a possibility, a logical projection. You can extend this projection easily from numbers to all the other things. Which would mean that the absolute can't exist in reality, only in potentiality.

However, it's understandable that humans who perceive a glimpse of God notice that he is so much bigger than they that they believe him being absolute. It's as understandable as believing the surface of the earth is endless, as long as you explore it by walking.