How to decide whether it is true enlightenment or untrue? - Osho

There is a possibility of an untrue enlightenment. The ego can play the last trick: the ego can start pretending 'I am enlightened.' And it is so subtle that it is almost impossible for others to detect it, because you can talk like enlightened people very easily. Scriptures are available, you can cram them; you can repeat the Upanishads, the Bible, the Koran. You can analyse in such a subtle way, with such philosophical acumen, that it can be easily proved to others that you have attained. You can live a life according to people's expectations of how an enlightened person should live. If they expect that you should live naked, you can live naked. If they expect that you should kiss lepers, you can kiss lepers. If they expect that you should serve the poor and the ill, you can serve the poor and the ill. It is easy to manage.

That is the last trick that the ego can play upon oneself. One has to be very very aware at that moment, otherwise one slips back to the original place, one again falls to the same ground from where one was trying and trying hard to rise.

How to decide whether it is true enlightenment or untrue? The only decisive factor is: the absence of I. In true enlightenment, the idea of I simply disappears, it is not found. There is nobody to claim 'I am enlightened', there is simply nobody to claim anything. It is a pure nothingness, full of light, full of joy -- very spacious, it can contain the whole sky, but the 'I' is found nowhere, not even a trace of it. Then it is satbodhi, then it is true enlightenment.

Osho