What Is Enlightenment? Signs of an Enlightened Person

AVAlexander Volchek

Is a clairvoyant person enlightened? What does “enlightened” mean? Someone whose perception has only a light side? I used spiritual people as an example. The same example applies to studying or observing anything at all. Now I will ask you another question: whom would you find it more interesting to meet and interact with—an enlightened person by the criteria you described, or someone with a thousand times more energy, with the ability to amplify your energy a thousandfold? “But there are scientifically proven things. Why not rely on those?” What is a scientifically proven thing? I have raised a very interesting question for humanity. It is a very interesting subject: the illusion of enlightenment, whom people consider enlightened. How do you determine whether someone is enlightened or not? What is a spiritually right person or a spiritually wrong person? How do people usually see them, Olga? How do you think people usually see an enlightened person?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Well, I don't know how people see them, but to me, it is someone who has somehow come closer to who they are. I don't know how to put this now—

AVAlexander Volchek

But how would you identify that in someone else?

OSOlga Stolyarova

I don't know. I would rely on my own feelings. I wouldn't explain it to myself through thoughts; I would check it against what is happening within me.

AVAlexander Volchek

Name someone like that in the world. You have probably read a lot, watched films, seen people. It doesn't matter whether they are dead or alive. Name that person. Let's leave out very major figures enshrined in religion, though you can name someone from there too. Go ahead.

OSOlga Stolyarova

The first living person who came to mind was Sadhguru, for example.

AVAlexander Volchek

Sadhguru, for example. You consider Sadhguru enlightened. Why? What aspects, what circumstances support that? How did you determine it for yourself?

OSOlga Stolyarova

I generally thought it was someone who had rid themselves of their ego, for example, someone who was perhaps devoted to serving people.

AVAlexander Volchek

What does “rid themselves of their ego” mean? What is that?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Someone who acts toward other people exclusively out of love. Perhaps someone whom I am near or watch and, through some aspects of my own perception, feel that there is a great deal of love in them and that everything they do comes from love.

AVAlexander Volchek

That is certainly not a bad description—or rather, a good description—of an enlightened person. Imagine you had somehow even identified that in someone. Now I will ask you another question: whom would you find it more interesting to meet and interact with—an enlightened person by the criteria you described, or someone with a thousand times more energy, with the ability to amplify your energy a thousandfold?

OSOlga Stolyarova

The second option. It seems like ground for my own development. As for the energy of love, when I say “the energy of love,” I feel I have some approximate understanding of what that could be.

AVAlexander Volchek

You said that the person has worked through their ego. Could someone who has not worked through their ego know the energy of love more deeply than someone who has?

OSOlga Stolyarova

I used to think not, but it seems that perhaps they could, in some respects. I used to wonder how a person could express love, convey that energy and live through it. It seemed as though the ego interfered with and blocked that expression. So I don't understand how someone with an ego can live from love. Those seem contradictory to me.

AVAlexander Volchek

Why do you now think they can?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Since I began interacting with you, engaging with your content and listening to what you say, my overall perception of life and the world has been changing very significantly. In some respects it has already changed, including on this point. I used to think that an enlightened person was, roughly speaking, all light, someone who did only good. Love, light and things you might call “positive.” Someone who conveyed only the positive. I thought an enlightened person lived only with positive aspects.

AVAlexander Volchek

And in this case, by “positive,” you mean socially positive aspects, correct?

OSOlga Stolyarova

It seems so, yes. If I understood correctly, the fact that I can explain something to myself automatically means it is some social aspect. So probably yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

That is the subject. There is a reason I am asking these questions. Some time ago, I was sitting with friends, and they gave examples of people—gurus, teachers or people they considered enlightened in terms of their state. One person said, “I was near this person and felt goodness coming from them the entire time I was with them.” That prompted a very interesting thought about making a video on this subject. How do you actually assess your impression of one person or another? Do you assess it through what you feel with them in your physical body, your emotions or your state of mind? Or do you perceive the causes and effects that unfold around this person over a long period of interaction with you, or even a brief encounter? You assess something, look at something they did or did not do while with you. There are things that it is right not to do at a particular moment, rather than the reverse. Imagine you have gone on a trip to a holy place, for example, and approached a holy person so that they can touch you and bless you.

But that holy person sees that they should not do this. For your life, the right thing is not to touch you. If they touch you, a certain aspect of your perception will change, for example, and you need to remain in your current perception. Could that happen?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Well, it could.

AVAlexander Volchek

So they did not take that particular action. You go away and say, “What strange people. They did absolutely nothing.” But if they explain it—look, if they don't explain, you will say they are strange. If they do explain, you will say, “Now that is power. Yes, that is power. What tremendous power!” It turns out that assessing other people's state always involves descriptive aspects, certain parameters. Someone says, “This person is the right one because they have spent a hundred thousand hours in meditation.” Or, “This person is the right one because they were born with a particular surname, into a particular family.” There are countries and religions that do not allow for the possibility of a powerful spiritual being incarnating in a person in, say, the United States. There are teachings that believe exactly that, that also say a person must be born into a particular family. Some believe the person must leave and live somewhere specific. Others believe they should not live within society. Others say, “They must live within society.” Some say, “When they die, we will assess the events of their life and decide whether they were a saint.”

For example, in the Orthodox Church, I think sainthood is granted after fifty years or so, if I am not mistaken. There is some waiting period. As for that person having been a saint and the events that made them a saint, do you truly believe in and know those events, or do you believe at the level of your ego? By what criteria did you determine it? How did you establish it? If many saints are recognized only after death, it follows that many people alive now are saints too, but you do not perceive them that way because no particular ribbon or designation has been attached to them. Or you talk about conveying love. What does it mean to convey love constantly? How do you define love? Someone spoke kindly to one person and raised their voice at another. Is raising your voice love or not? How do you tell? We understand perfectly well that love can include a raised voice. Love can include a restriction, yes. Love can include punishment. Of course, when you need to save someone, you often clearly need to raise your voice to save them.

OSOlga Stolyarova

Well, yes. I usually look at it through ordinary moments in life, an everyday situation or a conflict. That is always how I look at it. If someone raises their voice—

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, but that is in a conflict. It all depends. There are situations where you need to raise your voice so that the person's inner being hears it at the level of energy. The main question is not whether they raised or lowered their voice. What energy were they acting from? What state were they acting from? If they acted from a state of raising their voice, a state of manipulation, that is one thing. If they raised their voice out of love to reach the person's inner state, to contain the person's harmful energy at that moment and transform their ego-computer, that is something completely different. There are questions that cannot be resolved.

There are questions that cannot be resolved within a certain range. And what does it mean for a raised voice to be bad or not? How did you determine it was bad? If someone shouts, why is that bad? How did you determine that? Through the other person? If it causes them pain? But what if it causes that person pain because they have become completely lost in lies and falsehood? Of course it hurts when their falsehood is diminished, transformed. Of course it hurts; it will be painful and difficult for them. They will be in a state of stress because this person causes pain to other people. I am not saying this to instill that opinion in you, but to illuminate how we are or are not truly able to assess other people's level of development, spiritual development and spiritual perception. By what do we judge them? What are we highlighting? How, then? And what is pain? You say that if someone causes pain, they are not enlightened. Imagine an enlightened person sitting in meditation, a yogi, for ten hours. People burst in and start beating them or doing something to them, and they somehow put up a defense.

And that defense causes pain to another person. Some yogis might say, “That is impossible. They would not put up a defense; they would die on the spot,” or something else. But suppose they can cause pain to someone else by defending themselves. Of course. Mm-hmm. If it happens naturally. Perhaps I have given a very complicated example. If they are protecting someone—if they are defending themselves—then they can. Or they cannot. What does “enlightened” mean? Someone whose perception has only a light side? What is that? Someone who sees broadly? Is a clairvoyant person enlightened? Is someone who perceives very broad ranges of inspiration, intuition, imagination, clairvoyance and clairaudience enlightened or not? Or does having those abilities in no way mean that they are enlightened? What is “enlightened”? Of course, we will speak differently in different traditions that use this word, with different approaches and different ways people perceive things. You gave the example that an enlightened person conveys love toward other people. You did not say that they do not do bad things. You said they convey love, I believe. Yes. Next, what is love? There is the question of your perception of love, because you will still anchor this in what love is.

Whether you like that love or not. That is a very important point. Again, why did this question arise when I had guests? It is always interesting to look at what happens when you interact with someone. I have an endless series of interactions with different people. With some, I am quite tense, even very firm in my approach to communicating and talking. With others, I am in a state of such pure hearing and perception, of complete harmony and hearing the spiritual worlds. In terms of perception, you are only in those spiritual worlds. Why does that happen? Why? We need to ask that question very seriously. Why does it happen? Or can someone play a particular role? If you sit in a temple and meditate for hours, you can probably play a particular role. Mm-hmm. A role specifically: remember that role and maintain it precisely. If you have an enormous, varied flow of social interactions and participate in social life, where there is manipulation, deception, threats and falsehood directly connected to your life, including earning money and your health, you may experience very different states of perception, especially if you have taken on a great deal of responsibility.

Whether you should take on that responsibility is a different matter. But if you have taken it on, of course you will inhabit different layers of perception, different—different layers of thinking. With some people, a state of broad perception never opens up. It never opens up, never. There is ordinary, everyday interaction with them. You do not have to sit down with everyone to enter spiritual perception, spiritual practices, a meditative state together and explore worlds together. Someone has just come to our house to repair some windows, or windows and doors. They came specifically to do a particular job, and they will be paid for it. That does not mean you need to sit down with them and enter spiritual perception, right? Immediately. You can deal with them honestly. Imagine they did the work badly. They did it badly. What should you do? Pay them or not? “You did the work badly. We agreed I would pay you if you did it well.” You don't pay. They say, “I believe I did the work well,” and start creating problems. What do you do? What is love? A person hears enlightenment and calm where they want to hear them.

Or where they really are present. Why do people look at one person and say they are powerful and good? You look at Sadhguru and say, “To me, he is enlightened.” Others look at Sadhguru and say, “Lies, deception.” These people inhabit different worlds: worlds of supposedly spiritual experience, or spiritual experience, as well as worlds without spiritual experience. What do they judge by? What are they looking at, what are they perceiving? On that same day, I had a discussion about someone I had once spoken with. My acquaintances said, “We don't think this person perceives anything,” and expressed an opinion. What opinion did they express? An opinion about one aspect. Imagine someone like Sadhguru, whom you mentioned. You consider Sadhguru a powerful person. Let's suppose you do. Someone else was sitting in my home in the same way and said—this wasn't about Sadhguru; it was another person—“We're not really sure.” Not sure about what? What are we comparing? What range are we comparing?

What are we comparing against? Are we comparing divine light, or a person in an incarnation conveying particular things? What are we comparing? Our own feeling while we are near them? But at what moment? What did they want to show at that moment? Were they interested in making you feel good, or were they interested in carrying out the tasks destined for them? Those are different things. You will agree there is a difference between wanting, for example, to convey a particular state in a video that the viewer wants to receive, and conveying what you consider necessary to convey at that moment. Notice how different that can be, even with a video. The video may have been made so that the person speaking can come to realize and work through it over time. Or a group of people has encountered it, or many people have encountered it and need it. Or people will need it in the future, rather than now. Or this person is sharing information so that some people will notice just how terrible and inauthentic content can be. That is their mission. How can you judge from the outside whether this person is good or bad?

What we are assessing is very important. There was an interesting aspect to that meeting: one person said about the person I was showing them, “I completely disagree. I don't like this person,” and even gave reasons why. Those criteria were not evidence of anything to me, because they concerned social life and were unproven. Another person looked and said, “I don't know this person.” They looked and said, “They don't seem light to me either. I have some negative feelings.” Perhaps you had negative feelings because, when you looked at them, you saw yourself. What were you looking for in those feelings? How capable are you of truly assessing which level of that person you looked at? What did you look at in them? If you are a seer, you can look at certain areas that are not positive. Within human perception of the spiritual world, there are things that are very difficult to perceive, very difficult indeed. What did you see? Perhaps some incarnation of theirs?

Perhaps you saw some incarnation of theirs, or some very specific states they inhabit. There is something in the Vedas—probably in the Vedas; I will read it now. There is the goddess Kali, the goddess Kali. We will show a picture of her in the video, what she looks like. A goddess in Hinduism. A goddess. Notice that; it is very important. This is a higher hierarchy, a basic distinction for a human being. This is not an enlightened person; it is a goddess. The concept of enlightenment does not apply there. Look, this is important: “Kali is a fierce form of Shakti and appears in mythology as a destroyer of demons. Kali's wrath is so terrible that it threatens the existence of the world.” Mm-hmm. At the same time, notice, you see that she destroys demons. Yet apparently she also destroys the world. “Kali is worshipped by many cults and religious movements. She is the changing aspect of nature that leads to life and death.” There is a reason I am showing you this: it is simultaneously a state of both dark and light manifestation, a manifestation of different states at once. People are in direct, complete connection in meditation, meditating on this goddess not to conquer the world. No. To find themselves.

To connect with God, with the true God. Let's leave it at that. Let's leave it at that. With the divine world. Mm-hmm. No particular one. With God as something that is not a single expression of the material world. When you say, “Which one?” you reveal very clearly that there is a material world and, within that material world, a God of the spiritual world. That is why you ask, “Which one?” That is why, automatically, “Which one?” As a materialization. But you will never be able to materialize the spiritual world. No sayings, words or details can describe the goddess Kali. You can describe the head she holds in her hand, or her standing, dancing on her husband. A very strange picture, right? When we identify someone as powerful or weak, enlightened, wise or ignorant, what are we looking for? In enlightenment, are we looking for someone who can read thoughts, who describes the past and the future? Or are we looking for someone who leads us toward perceiving ourselves? What are we conveying? Everyone describes extraordinary features. Everyone. Everyone is constantly describing features of the spiritual worlds, interesting aspects. I am even reading a serious work at the moment, one regarded as quite serious. Even there, a great deal of the fantastical is described, a great deal.

Things people perceive as a fairy tale. I do not see them as a fairy tale; they are natural. But what is described is a fairy tale: someone rose from the dead, was born, appeared or read thoughts. A great deal of the fantastical is described for people, emphasized very strongly. It is used to show that someone understood something or came to believe something. Through that. Meanwhile, there are people who simply have that state within them; they are connected to it. Somehow, that mechanism works inside them. There is a desire to know, an insatiable desire to learn the truth, an insatiable desire to understand that there is something more to everything happening around us. When I was growing up, I did not have that desire to know—or if I did, I don't remember it. Although I now have a completely different perception, a different hearing, and live entirely from the understanding that the spiritual world exists and the material world is within it, I did not have that then. Yesterday, someone wrote a question on Telegram or somewhere, or Instagram: “Alexander, I watch you a lot, but when you talk about other lives or karma, some strange state switches on inside me.

“But there are scientifically proven things. Why not rely on those?” What is a scientifically proven thing? Scientifically proven what, exactly? What you have studied? What you liked? The scientists you chose? Do you know that an enormous number of scientists disagree with one another? An enormous number rejected something, then accepted it. They accepted it, and it turned out they were wrong. They conducted a study, and it turned out the study was incomplete. Yet for some reason, the scientific world does not predict or see a great many things that happen, major events that happen. And understanding those major events—a sound, normal account... There are too many accounts in the scientific world. Too many accounts in the scientific world. Too many, interpreting entirely different ranges from a scholarly perspective. Why does someone develop a sense that this isn't it, that you cannot describe their inner state through your scientific perspective? Why do I have this state? Me specifically, not someone else. Me. Why are different people born into the same family with the same genes? What genes are you talking about? The same ones. You may describe how different sequences changed somewhere, how something else changed. But that is an abstraction.

Different people in terms of sensations, emotions and hearing. Why does one person feel a thirst to profit from other people, while another feels love for people? Why does that happen? What is it?

OSOlga Stolyarova

How do you study anything, then? I immediately have the question: it seems as though everything needs to be questioned, perhaps. Or, more precisely, not questioned, but not everything people convey should be believed. What do you rely on, then? Fear immediately comes up for me, and I sit there thinking, “If this isn't certain and that isn't certain, how do you live in a world with so much uncertainty?”

AVAlexander Volchek

How would you like it to be?

OSOlga Stolyarova

How would I like to live?

AVAlexander Volchek

You want everything to be known. You want things to be the way you like them.

OSOlga Stolyarova

I want to live in harmony with what is happening.

AVAlexander Volchek

You want to live the way you like. You said, “I don't really like the fact that bad things exist. Why does it happen that way at all?” You said that in all seriousness.

OSOlga Stolyarova

Well, I just—

AVAlexander Volchek

The essence of distrust. The essence of distrust is that you want to live the way you like, the way you want. You personally. But ask twenty people, and those twenty people will have different wishes, overlapping in some places but generally different. Whose wishes should be chosen: yours or person number seven's? Balance. Now you will talk about balance. But there is no balance. From one perspective, for a person, for their mind, balance does not exist. Beyond the mind, there is balance. Nine people are healthy, and one is seriously ill. Is that balance? Why not? It is balance. We spend hours trying to calculate the number of years of life. That is balance. An amazing balance! But the person who is ill will say it is not balance: “Let everyone be a little ill.” You cannot balance the system that way. There are too many circumstances, patterns, ages and different spaces. How will you balance it?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Well, things probably have to happen the way they have to happen. That is how I would think about it. If my wish wasn't chosen, all right, if that is what is needed, what can you do?

AVAlexander Volchek

But you won't like it.

OSOlga Stolyarova

I won't like it, but I will probably simply accept it. I won't like it, but okay, all right.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, but you won't like it. The very fact of “I didn't like it” means there is no acceptance. Where you have acceptance, there is no “I liked it” or “I didn't like it.” You understand perfectly well that, if you are in acceptance, there is no question of liking or disliking it. If you didn't like it, you can observe that state from the outside, be in observation, but not in acceptance. Because acceptance contains no “I liked it” or “I didn't like it.” From the outset, acceptance plainly has no concept of whether you liked it. There is the question of analyzing what is happening.

Analyzing what is happening. What is really happening? We are already exploring what an enlightened person is, or what a person with powerful energy is. I have raised a very interesting question for humanity. It is a very big, interesting question for humanity. People are always looking at different aspects, at different people. This is a serious question. A big, serious question.

OSOlga Stolyarova

What should we look at, then? And do we need to look at anything in this regard?

AVAlexander Volchek

Absolutely, one hundred percent! You need to determine your actions in life, what to do and whom to listen to.

OSOlga Stolyarova

Mm-hmm.

AVAlexander Volchek

What to study, what to follow. You need to act, it would seem.

OSOlga Stolyarova

Well, yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

Again, this matters. You constantly encounter other people and ask whether this person is good or bad, whether they convey interesting things or uninteresting things, whether they are powerful or weak, whether to listen to them or not. Constantly. It is not even about YouTube, courses or programs. It is about interacting with the different people around you in general. You need to pay attention to this so that you can draw the right conclusions about what is truly right and what is really happening. Someone close to me recently told me that I think too highly of myself as a father.

I asked, “Why?” They said, “You talk too much about being a good father.” Perhaps it had something to do with a reel I posted on Instagram. There is an interesting question here: why does the person say that? Why do they say it at all? They want to belittle me. They are not truly helping by saying it. They want to elevate themselves and avoid falling. Why does the person say it, and what do they mean by good and bad? Can we determine what a good or bad father is at all? Can that be determined?

OSOlga Stolyarova

I don't think so.

AVAlexander Volchek

How could you determine whether someone is a good or bad father? How do you intend to measure it? People count the time spent together. But if he is working, he may not spend time with them. What is a good or bad father? Is it a social action, or what he instills in the child? He may spend time with the child and make their life a nightmare. Could that happen? Easily, of course! He can spend any amount of time with the child. The only thing we will arrive at, the only thing we will arrive at, is his own actions at a particular moment. How does he relate to these people as a human being? How does he relate to others? A good father is probably one who conveys something through his own actions, and the child experiences how he interacts with other people. When he is with the children, what does he convey? Does he convey the truth? Does he try to understand causes and effects, to see patterns, to understand the truth? Or does he live by certain mechanisms? Yesterday, I was at a school meeting, and the teacher said that if your child comes home and you ask how things are, and they say, “Good”—

—you ask, “Why good?” You can live in a state of illusory perception, asking, “Why good?” Simply carrying out that assignment. Or you can ask nothing at all and bring goodness to the child, simply stroke their head in the right way, understand them and bring them love. Many things affect what follows: how you look at them, how you look at other people, how you make decisions concerning this child. It is very complicated. So what is good or bad? My sister once said something very interesting. We were discussing my interactions with someone, and she said it was impossible, impossible. She had been involved in the discussion for a long time and had listened to hundreds of hours of material on the subject. She said, “If I am asked that question, I never answer it, because it is impossible to answer.” You need to be deeply immersed in the context, and also independent within that context, to understand anything. Independent within the context. That is not easy at all. You also need to understand the context and be able to see causes and effects, in order to understand, for example, people's relationships: how friends, partners, spouses, children, parents and teachers relate to one another.

You need to be deeply within the context and see very clearly. So when people come and say about another guru or person, “I liked this person,” or “I didn't like them,” you need to understand the context: why the person says that, what they are putting into it internally, what they meant at that moment.

OSOlga Stolyarova

So, ask yourself that question without trying to answer it, or...?

AVAlexander Volchek

No, why? You need to answer, ask and search. Let's not drift into abstractions, Olga. You are looking for a solution, as though you want to find a clear set of particular actions. It does not exist. There is too much involved. We are raising a great many things here. This is just a discussion for forty minutes or however long, to give you a new body of material that you can continue to observe, keep beside you and use to look at yourself. What did I hear today on this subject? How and where do I perceive different people? Why did I think that, or why do I think it now? Have I ever asked myself whether it could be different? How do I see it? How do I really see it? What is really happening? Really. If I do not know the answer, I need to tell myself, “I don't know the answer.” Admit that fact to myself: I don't know the answer. One of the big problems in people's lives is that they don't admit to themselves, right from the outset, that they don't know the answer. Simply acknowledge it calmly and be calm about it. I don't know the answers to thousands of questions.

I simply don't know, and that is all. Moreover, there is no good or bad in whether you know or don't know. The most important thing is not to deceive yourself. The subject we are discussing today—gurus, people who tell us things—you mentioned Sadhguru at the beginning. This is a subject for your own observation, your own attention. That is very important. I used spiritual people as an example. The same example applies to studying or observing anything at all. Even simple things, such as close relationships with another person: how I perceive them, why I perceive them that way, and on what basis. Can you imagine the enormous range of ways people can be perceived? I can simply look at you and know your name. Or I can look at you and constantly interact from a state of seeing and understanding you as a person, in terms of what you described, the knowledge in the book: that a person has past lives, and you see much more broadly who they are. For you, “Who are they?” will be a social question. Some awards need to be attached to them.

It is not about awards. Awards have no significance whatsoever. In human relationships, an award has no significance. They do not, and never have. So the question is: can someone be enlightened if they have never received any awards anywhere?