When searching Quora entries under "enlightenment," I find an amazing number of answers by writers claiming to be enlightened. Is enlightenment really so common today, or are we mistaking any kind of "spiritual experience" for the real thing?

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The problem is that enlightenment can be defined in two different ways that completely change how you approach it. I call these the ‘long’ way and ‘short’ way.

Long interpretations key the achievement of enlightenment with the end of existence as a human-level being. In a long interpretation, every single act you make and every word you say is a manifestation of samsara. It takes many many many lifetimes to slowly grind samsara to a halt. Slowly as the lifetimes accumulate, you simply say less, do less, accomplish less, and in general wind down your Earthly presence.

Short interpretations have you doing it all in the space of one lifetime. You do purpose-directed meditations to achieve specific insights, to not ‘wind’ down your being, but to reach out and grip the spinning top, bringing it an abrupt halt.

‘Shortists’ will accuse the ‘longists’ of not being really interested in the topic and not actually trying to understand enlightenment. Longists will point to the shortists’ impatience as signs of ego that will prevent them from ever reaching enlightenment while they still hold on to it. Both have valid points.

Anyone you see, anywhere, claiming enlightenment is a shortist, unless you meet them in Asia and they’ve been attached to an established spiritual discipline and other people also verify that they’re enlightened. (maybe a few moved over here, I dunno) No longist would ever have reason to claim enlightenment, even if they were. The determination of enlightenment is best left up to other people. To a longist, it’s just a bunch of words, saying whether someone is or isn’t doesn’t actually change anything, so why bother.

A shortist seeks to demystify enlightenment and bring it into the realm of the immediately achievable. For justification all you need is to point to the Buddha saying that it was, in the Mahasatipatthana sutta. Any spiritual idea in Buddhism or indeed anywhere, can be investigated and understood. Why not enlightenment?

A smart, motivated individual can reach a state that feels impressively similar to what’s called nonduality. This is a fairly well-understood state, because a lot of people have meditated enough to achieve it. In my opinion, it’s not at all that difficult to achieve, I feel like I can bring a motivated individual to this point in a few months if everything lines up right.

Now, is this state permanent? It can be, in my opinion, but isn’t automatically. People wind up holding onto it for dear life and it winds up being a kind of ego all on its own.

I’m clearly a shortist, but I appreciate the longist point of view, their sense of restraint, and happily welcome them and their ideas into the spiritual fold. I think there’s a lot of things we can learn from them.

But if you asked me which perspective I use more often, which I believe is correct, it’s the shortist one, with the caveat that shortist enlightenment, nonduality, needs to be reframed from the ultimate in human achievement down to a relatable level. Almost to where it shouldn’t be considered to be the same thing as longist enlightenment.