Traditionally, enlightenment is seen as a supreme state that is very difficult to attain, requiring a lifetime of rigorous practice, discipline, and aspiration. We here of tales such as the story of Gautama Buddha who renounced life as a prince in an idylic (and fantasy; the whole story is as heavily mythologised as any fairy tale) world free of suffering and illness (didnt ehe ver catch a cold himself?) and left his wife and young child to live the life of a renunciate and spend many years of spiritual striving and physical austerities in which had prepared him psychologically and spiritually, finally sitting for three days in constant meditation under the Bo Tree (Enlightenment Tree, the sacred Fig Tree), after which he was totally enlightened and liberated.
Later mythology obscured Siddharta Gautama's human atatinments by placing him in the realm of teh Divine. According to Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddha was born enlightened, and his quest for enlightenment was only a "skillful means" to guide and instruct others, however this may simply be a later mythologisation and apotheosis, just as some Sufis identified Mohammad with the cosmic logos (see some of the books of Henry Corbin for example). Interesting as this may be from a theological and transpersonal psychological (in terms of Jung's archetype of the Self) perspective, it does not throw more light on the subject of enlightenment.
Interestingly, Sri Aurobindo also spent three days in constant meditation (using a Samkhyan-type technique taught to him by a yogi called Lele, about whom little is known) , after which he had attained the state of Brahman, the realisation of the silent Self.
For Ramana Maharshi, the experience was relatively mild, it constituted a simulated near-death experience. This would indeed indicate that he was already enlightened; there was only the slightest veil obscuring his divine nature. Meher Baba had another of meetings with spiritual sages, who helped him to realise his divinity
The concept of the Intermediate Zone indicates that Enlightenment may actually be more common than this, and it is not Enlightenment, but Liberation (burning away or transmuting all the lower desires, samsaras, and kleshas) that is difficult.
Enlightenment thus seems to involve a number of stages by which the samskaras and kleshas are removed. and if the poerson is already very highly spiritually evolved, this sort of experience may not be rare, and may involve only the most trivial-seeming contact with a Sage. Arunachala Ramana achieved enlightenment just through looking at a picture of Ramana Maharshi, although he didn'yt even know Ramana at the time.
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