Cambridge, MA. The other day someone asked me, “Is enlightenment compatible with Christian faith?” It was at an interreligious gathering where I had just spoken on my experience of encountering Hinduism in its various forms, and surely my questioner was thinking of enlightenment as a decisive event in the lives of Indian spiritual figures: for example, the Buddha, who suddenly realized that he needed to abandon the life of a prince, and fled in the night, yet who also then devoted years to distracting penances before sitting beneath the tree and suddenly, finally, waking up; or the scholar/sage Sankara, who suddenly realized in an instant that the truth of Reality was the truth of his own self; or Ramana Maharshi, just over a century ago, who as a 16 year old boy had a sudden death experience that made him begin to experience the world in an entirely simple, utterly different way.
I think there were two components to the question I was asked: First, is it compatible with Christian faith that someone have a sudden, radical change in life, a single mind- and life-altering experience, insight? Second, can a Christian who experiences enlightenment have that irreversible unitive experience, realizing all reality to be simply, entirely one?
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