Enlightenment in fiction

Because my last blog was about the Throne of Yord, a character who can defeat and be defeated by characters that seem paradoxical due to its specific weakness to enlightened characters, I wanted to make a blog explaining enlightenment and how it seems like it should work in a versus context to me.

Enlightenment is a theological or spiritual idea that our consciousness are usually bound to a lower state of reality and that we are not fully aware of everything happening around us. We are like people asleep. Enlightenment is defined in a spiritual context as "full comprehension of a situation." Different religions and religious traditions define it differently but even within secular philosophies the idea is sometimes brought up, although usually more as analogy than a literal state of being.

As enlightenment pertains to ones mental faculties, it may seem connected to intelligence however that seems to depend on how broadly one defines intelligence. It seems that enlightenment is more of an extension of wisdom or even ones senses than ones knowledge. Someone being conventionally unintelligent but enlightened is a trope, while in certain contexts of the words even an all-knowing character may be unenlightened. A character may know every fact in the multiverse and still not comprehend any of its meaning, an example of this would be someone like Brainiac from DC who gathered all information from the multiverse and still could not be freed of the chaos within himself. Conversely someone like Saitama from One-Punch Man seems simple-minded but is strongly implied in design, personality, and story to have attained enlightenment.

In a versus context enlightenment seems by definition to suggest the character would have enhanced wisdom, that being not being restrained by personality defects like impulsivity, vengefulness, arrogance, temptation and so on, as well as potentially percieving events happening on higher planes of reality. In fiction it can often give other powers as well; most often things like flight, energy/light projection, telepathy, higher plane existence, etc. but such is not necessary.

So how to tell if a character is enlightened? Well the most obvious way is if the verse itself tells you. If someone or something in a verse says x character is enlightened; then assuming the statement is a credible one (not for instance said by someone trying to decieve that person) then that should be an indication. Obviously a verse can have whatever criteria for enlightenment it so chooses. 

But what if the verse doesn't say its criteria? Well that's when it gets a lot more subjective. These are the criteria I would suggest to look for and why. Generally having multiple of them is a sign the character has attained enlightenment

1: The character is depicted with the halo, which is the traditional artistic depiction of a person being either enlightened, holy, or both.

2: The character demonstrates immense wisdom and insight, especially if in spiritual matters. As an enlightened character is heavily connected with wisdom, one who shows great judgement and discernment, and overcomes ones own personality defects is a sign of enlightenment.

3: The character can directly percieve the highest plane of reality in the verse (assuming it has multiple planes of reality.) Such seems to be identical with the definition of enlightenment. This is especially true if its metafictional/absolute awareness, which would be a form of awareness that would be maximal in all of fiction, and/or if the awareness is something "attained" by the character by a shift in perception, rather than just a natural ability of the character.

4: The character demonstrates or gains supernatural powers purely from their wisdom or a change in their perception of the world. Generally speaking a change in ones perception would not grant one superpowers unless the verse gives a special reason for this to be the case. As such to gain such powers may be seen as a sign the character has attained a special awareness.

5: The character has trained through or undergone a process similar to a real world religious practice meant to give enlightenment, as this can be seen as the author giving a reference to real world enlightenment beliefs.  

You may wish to also consider if there is contradicting evidence; whether the character acts in unenlightened ways such as being bound by negative emotion, or if there exists phenomena that the enlightened can not percieve, although I am unsure about this as it seems like the verse could just have a quirky view of enlightenment and that shouldn't be held against it per se.