Today, advertisements everywhere herald alpha and theta brainwave training, out-of-body experiences, various meditation systems and other nonsense that has become a booming field of commerce. As John White correctly noted, “the enlightenment industry has become big business.” Enlightenment is not a “lucky glitch” in a deprivation chamber or texting God during a meditation session. It is simply the perception of life that makes it complete! It is a full-fledged life, and not the life of another follower of the path of the blue chariot, who has neither a man, nor a family, nor a normal job - nothing at all except a yoga mat. In this case there is no talk of liberation and enlightenment. It’s more like a person frightened by life, completely or partially unsuccessful in this life and huddled in another Shelter. Enlightenment cannot be in any Refuge, since any practice and guru are nothing more than new attachments. And any attachment, as we know, is an obstacle on the path to enlightenment. On the one hand (for various teachers and gurus) it is an industry and an ordinary job. On the other hand (for their clients) it is a liberation neurosis, or, more simply, a desire not to solve one’s problems, but simply to get rid of them. Those. go into enlightenment, as in that very story about the sugar man who went into the sea and dissolved there. They only forget that most of the enlightened people known to mankind lived to a ripe old age. It is not surprising that meditations end only with numb legs, and “happy glitches” after half an hour are overshadowed by affairs in this reality. It is worth paying attention to the fact that even the Buddha did not catch his enlightenment while sitting in a yoga center or group - he had to leave the seminars ascetics for this... Because enlightenment is a deeply internal process. And few will receive it if they start sitting under the Bodhi tree today. Because it’s not about the wood or the methods, but about the internal mental work.