Dr. Andrew Newberg says that there are two kinds of enlightenment: enlightenment with a "lowercase e," which changes our opinions about the world, and Enlightenment with a "capital E," which changes our essence — that is, how we think about life, death, and God.

Capital-E Enlightenment is notable because of how people report the experience anecdotally, as well as how it changes the brain. If there is a sensation associated with this type of Enlightenment — such as seeing a light or color or hearing a sound — it is described as one of the most intense experiences that a person has ever had. And this intensity is reflected in the brain’s limbic system, which processes emotion, and in its parietal lobe, which organizes our sensory information to create sensations of time, space, and self.

When people experience Enlightenment, they frequently report losing their sense of self, and scientific analysis confirms that brain activity is driving this sensation. Though Enlightenment is typically associated with fervently religious or spiritual individuals like Mother Teresa or the Buddha, people from all walks of life can experience essence-changing events — sometimes just walking down the street, Dr. Newberg tells us. Similar experiences can be purposefully induced through the use of pharmacological substances like LSD or hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Philosophically, what does Enlightenment mean? According to Dr. Newberg, perhaps Enlightenment is like a pair of glasses: We are born into the world with bad vision until we experience corrective lenses. In this case, the "lenses" are being applied to our brain rather than our eyes.

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