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How Would a Real Enlightened Person Live?
The history of withdrawal into wisdom from shamanism to modernity
Suppose that personal enlightenment is possible in this world, meaning that you could be a genius not just about technical matters, such as mathematics or playing a musical instrument, but also about the human condition.
How would such an enlightened person act, or how should we expect such a person to live?
Ancient enlightened countercultures
Of course, it would likely depend on the content of that elevated vision of ultimate truth, and religions and philosophers have disagreed about what that content might be. While there are similarities between these traditions, and even some overlap between Western and Eastern conceptions, it’s not as though the world’s religions and philosophies have been identical.
Indeed, there’s been disagreement precisely because some genius would be required to figure out life, the universe, and everything, and genius is rare. So even if there were some ultimate truth of life’s basic condition, there would be plenty of half-truths and confusions, too, and sorting the insights from the red herrings would itself require an enlightened standpoint, which again would be rare.
