The East holds the longest tradition of enlightenment and in going beyond the brain. Here teachings on enlightenment have been passed on for thousands of years even before Buddhism and the Buddhism religion. The Bhagavadagita explains about enlightenment, and building on this tradition, the Buddha is known as the greatest teacher of enlightenment of all time.

While the Buddha set out to help people out of their suffering the tool or method to reach a state of liberation from suffering is enlightenment and as such enlightenment is the heart of Buddhism, which some teachers claim is not a religion but a universal truth and state of being.

In Buddhism, enlightenment can be explained as the liberation from our thoughts. Instead of being our thoughts, we shift perspective to watching our thought—we are observing our thoughts without identifying with our thoughts.

   Enlightenment is the liberation from thought identification to thought observation, and this is what it means for the brain to get out of its own way. Beyond the brain and its thoughts we experience that we are still there, and this experience is liberation—the experience of our true nature.

   To explain this, a mirror is often used as a metaphor for the mind, or consciousness. Our mind is an empty mirror in which thoughts occur as reflections. We are the mirror. Our thoughts, as reflections in the mirror, are our subjective self, or ego. By observing our thoughts we can see that these reflections come and go in the mirror, but when we watch closely we find something behind these reflections that is clear and stable. This is the mirror—our true nature. 

   Knowing our true identity, we can observe the reflections as they change from pleasant to unpleasant thoughts and back again, but since we no longer identify with the reflections we have now become liberated from them. This simply means that we are no longer controlled by our thoughts.

   We now control our thoughts, and can select positive and happy thoughts, instead of negative and unhappy thoughts. This is enlightenment and freedom from our thoughts, which leads us to the essence of our nature. This was what the Buddha taught, and all his 84,000 teachings can all be condensed into one line: Recognize your essence.[i]

This means that in essence Enlightenment is all about recognizing our true nature and based on this foundation we can get out of our suffering. The illusions of our ego is what causes us to suffer and thus our true enlightened nature can help us to get out of our suffering through making the right or wholesome choices that lead to right or wholesome actions.