Acharya Prashant addresses the question of whether enlightenment is a personal experience. He explains that whatever can fall within the scope of experience is just an experience. The fundamental point to consider is who has all these experiences. If someone claims to have experienced liberation, salvation, or enlightenment, it is necessary to ask who had that experience. The one who receives all experiences, day and night, is the experiencer, and its name is ego (ahankar). The Self (Atma) does not have any experience because the Self is non-dual (advaita). Non-duality means there is nothing outside of it, no second entity. When there is no other, what can the Self experience? It is complete. For an experience to happen, incompleteness is necessary. The Self cannot have any experience because it is complete. The ego, on the other hand, has all the experiences because it is incomplete. Therefore, only that which is incomplete can have experiences. The way enlightenment is usually defined is as attaining completeness. This creates a contradiction: we are saying that the one who is incomplete—because it is having an experience—has attained completeness. This statement is inherently contradictory. You can have all kinds of experiences in the world, but you cannot have an experience of completeness or Truth. People come and say they have had experiences of Truth, liberation, salvation, or enlightenment. By saying this, they establish that they still have a long spiritual practice (sadhana) ahead of them, as they do not yet understand some fundamental things. Liberation is not an experience; one needs liberation *from* experiences. The meaning of spirituality is liberation from experiences, not the experience of liberation. The ego, being hungry, incomplete, and restless, thinks that if it gets a new experience, its restlessness might go away and it might attain completeness. All experiences happen only to the ego. The ego cannot experience Truth, because before the experience of Truth can happen, the ego will dissolve. There will be no one left to experience it. To say one has experienced liberation is like someone coming and telling you about their experience of death. Just as one cannot narrate their own death, one cannot narrate the experience of enlightenment. Spirituality is a continuous practice. It involves understanding the ego, entering one's own mind, and becoming familiar with one's own tendencies. This is called self-knowledge. Then, one must see, ask, and choose whether to continue with these tendencies or to rest away from them. Answering this question correctly is the spiritual practice, which must be done continuously, throughout life. Spirituality is a very simple thing; there is no place for storytelling in it. You have to ask yourself who it is within you that constantly seeks pleasure, who wants interesting stories even in the name of spirituality. That is the ego, the experiencer. Because you seek pleasure even in the name of spirituality, you are given entertaining stories.
