"E", "A", "L" and other lies my father told me.

Enlightenment, Awakening, Liberation are words, first and foremost and only. (Just a little "eye-candy" when read, and "ear-candy" when heard - though only in some, not everyone.) They are not things, and can't be measured. They are at most, transient neural-firings sometimes resulting in little mouth-noises, and/or chicken-scratches upon some material (stone, papyrus, paper, email). Whether they "last" a moment or two or two thousand years, changes nothing regarding their intrinsic reality. They don't exist, because they can't be measured.

Thus, nobody is, nor ever was "enlightened", "awakened", "liberated" (or any of the other synonyms for same.) Nor is anybody any other particular "feature" you might care to name - such as intelligent, stupid, friendly, hateful, arrogant, angry, happy, or horny. Words can't be measured, only their effects can be, and the effects of anything, are not the same as the source of the effect. (A gunshot in the distance is one thing, the movement of air impinging upon my eardrum and nerve-endings resulting in quickly jumping up from my chair to look out the window is something else entirely - and countless things could result in that particular result.)

If it can't be measured by another man, then it doesn't exist for the other man - though, "something" may exist for the first one, but since he chooses not to describe it to somebody else, it remains - for all practical purposes - non-existent.

Thus, given the "acceptance" of the above, what are so many hundreds of thousands of humans doing, accumulating into small-ish groups and talking about those terms? How about: re-mapping their own and others' brains?