No one can possibly declare another one enlightened. It’s an absurdity.

If you need to confirm your enlightenment with a teacher, you are not enlightened yet. It’s as simple as that. The teacher may confirm self-realization, as well as any number of realizations and experiences which follow, but it’s impossible to confirm enlightenment, because by the time of enlightenment, you’re completely alone. You can’t be seeing a teacher in your teacher no longer. That’s kinda his goal, that you no longer do.

Authentically enlightened can recognize each other when in their teaching role, and they can also recognize fakes, especially when they talk about themselves and their experience and perception of life. For example, I can tell you that Osho was enlightened, Ramana was enlightened, Papaji was enlightened. But it’s not a declaration, that’s just information for you. They wouldn’t care one bit to be confirmed by anybody at all, including Gautama Buddha, just like I wouldn’t care one bit to be confirmed by either of them or anyone else.

Enlightenment is a hundred percent personal matter. It only concerns you, it does not concern how other people see you. Whether you see someone as enlightened or not is mostly up to you, and it’s largely inconsequential. Only your own realization is of any value to you, not someone else’s. And enlightened ones only matter to the extent they can help you make it and they can help you deepen it, but it’s also true that once you make it, every person can deepen it if you let them. Enlightened are just much more effective in doing that than others.