I have read many authors over the years who are considered enlightened. Here are the names of some that come to mind; Siddartha Gautama, Patanjali, Bodhidharma, Rumi, Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Gopi Krishna Paramahamsa Yogananda, George Gurdjieff, Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Sivananda Sarasvati, Hazrat Inayat Khan, Ram Das, Uppaluri Krishnamurti, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Osho, Eckhart Tolle, and Sadhguru. Most of these people have died, but Eckhart Tolle and Sadhguru are alive and personable.
Siddhartha lived in India around 600 BCE and became enlightened. He was raised in luxury, with all the pleasures one could want, but was dissatisfied with the suffering he could see. When he was twenty-nine, he left the palace and, for six years, lived as a traveling ascetic. He studied under various teachers but did not find a way to eliminate suffering. When he was thirty-five and determined to defeat suffering, he sat beneath a large Bodhi tree (Sacred Fig Tree) in Bodh Gaya in silent meditation, vowing not to leave until he found the way. Then, on the forty-ninth day, he thought he found it and, for forty-five years, traveled northern India, proclaiming the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and so on as ways to eliminate suffering.
It is claimed that Siddhartha became a Buddha, the highest state a human can attain, but how would you know a Buddha if you saw one today? There is great confusion about the characteristics of the Buddha, but according to Buddhist texts, his body will possess the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks of the great man. Some markers are tall and well-proportioned, with broad shoulders and arms extending below the knees. He is beautiful on all sides with a golden complexion. His body smells of sandalwood, and his breath is like lotus blossoms. His voice is appealing, harmonious, and captivating. The enlightened are happy, serene, kind, compassionate, tolerant, understanding, insightful, humble, open-minded, emotionally stable, have inner strength, and are not self-centered. Another source says the signs for recognizing an enlightened person are profound presence, compassionate wisdom, transcendent joy, unconditional love, and intuitive knowing. Some say they have insight, awareness, and spiritual knowledge, which frees them from suffering and the cycle of rebirth.
It goes on, but there is little validity to such things since a Buddha is neither a man nor a woman and enjoys a body of light. They have extraordinary perceptions and know past, present, and future. They can hover, float, or fly about and get this; they have the astonishing ability to be in multiple places simultaneously. They do not live on the earth but are incredibly compassionate and loving to serve the people and creatures of the earth. Their mission is to show the way to abandon suffering and mortality for the immortal state of bliss. Arise to that state today, and the world will know very quickly. The YouTube video would go viral in minutes.
India is known for wandering ascetics and spiritual teachers, and many are alive today, just in the city of Varanasi. In 600 BCE, the earth was deep into the Dark Age of the Kaliyuga. It was an unfortunate and terrible time to be alive because people were ignorant, horrible, and brutal, just as they are today. A sad feature of the Dark Age is that no enlightened being appears on the earth to save the people when urgently needed. During that time, many made the claim. Some claimed to be saviors or messengers of heaven, but no, they were not. They did not teach or follow the Heavenly Path. Siddhartha would have had to live two thousand years earlier, like the Rishis of the Rigveda, who became Buddhas late in life. There are two hundred or so in the ten mandalas of that text. Siddhartha was not like them. His system to become a Buddha free of suffering did not work, and not one person in 2500 years has attained the heavenly state. Siddhartha was not a Buddha but an open-minded thinker like those mentioned at the beginnintra to consider.
To become pure and shiny results from cutting off to go in a different direction to be apart from suffering there. For comparison, enjoy the act of giving and singing for the cause to draw in the nose to be apart from those to express.