This is an answer to the question Is spiritual enlightenment permanent? on Quora.

Interesting question. Instinctively, I’d say that it is not permanent. You need to do something to keep up enlightenment.

But heuristics has proved me wrong. I became enlightened in my late teens, haven’t done much about it since then, and still am enlightened.

I’d like to explain it like this. Enlightenment is a choice. You choose to disregard yourself. This choice will effect all other choices in your life thereafter.

Therefore, if you perceive enlightenment wrong, you might think that you need to do all those other choices to keep up the enlightenment, hence, not seeing enlightenment as permanent. But those choices are just sheer deductions of your earlier choice: to accept enlightenment.

But shouldn’t it be able to change one’s mind? It should be perfectly possible. Perhaps someone has. But such action will probably never find its way into the Great Books of History.

I have revalued my decision about being enlightened. Several times. But always, when it has come down to that initial choice I made twenty years ago, I cannot change it. Trading ego for divinity and nothingness is the right thing to do every day of the week.