Enlightenment is knowledge of reality, not a decorative spiritual experience.
It concerns the recognition of the true Self and the correction of the fundamental error by which awareness is mistaken for a finite person.
In that sense, enlightenment is a change in understanding that transforms the meaning of experience rather than a passing altered state.
Most confusion begins by equating the "I" with the mind-body complex. From that position, fear, dependence, fragility, and incompleteness dominate the search for meaning.
Religious consolation may soften this, but it often leaves the basic error intact. Vedanta aims higher by resolving the error itself.
Enlightenment is the recognition that the Self is not bound by location, dimension, attribute, or biography.
What is real is that by which all experience is known. Once this is understood, questions about separateness, fullness, and identity are reconfigured at the root.
After recognition, the world is no longer carried as an adversarial burden. It is seen as appearance within the same reality that one is.
The practical result is not withdrawal from life but freedom in the midst of it.