Most people look upon enlightenment—whatever the term means to them-as remote, exotic, and unattainable without extreme effort. Enlightenment is the state a Tibetan Buddhist monk may reach after decades of mediation, or a yogi performing esoteric practices in a cave in the Himalayas. Yet if you strip away the Eastern esoteric context that has become attached to the word “enlightenment,” whatever it is must be a state of awareness. You can’t be enlightened and not know it. (Or if you don’t know it, you must have slipped into this state of awareness very, very gradually.)