I’ve been thinking along these lines for a bit now…
What if enlightenment isn’t an a-ha moment? What if it’s just a series of a-hems? Stranger things have happened, right?
I was thinking of all the stupid, old-man things I’ve thought and/or muttered to myself in the last few weeks or months. I mean some of them are really profound! (Like, did I really think and/or say any of these things?) Am I really this brilliant? No, wait…
Enlightenment, if there is such a thing, really does not have to be a blinding flash of insight. A lot of the time I think it may be more the endpoint of a sustained, long-term effort at thinking things through, and adding things up. Sometimes it will make sense, and sometimes it may be that it does not, simply because there is not yet any language to describe it.
The greatest thoughts that have ever been may have gone unnoticed, simply because we don’t have a reference for thinking of that kind. What if that alien being came down, and all there was THIS lifeforms and THIS thought pattern. a) Would the alien even care (that is, if S/HE could related and b) if S/HE could relate, would it even register enough on a scale of universal importance to have that alien make a note of it and/or mention it to a neighbor?