Okay, I guess I'll rise to the bait just a bit. There are plenty of spiritual teachers and followers who love to say that there is no such thing as enlightenment, that this is as good as it gets, that there is nobody here and nothing to do, meaning that no sadhana, effortless or not, is worth doing.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used say, "Knowledge is structured in consciousness," by which he meant that each person lives in some subset of the seven (or eight) states of consciousness that he described. And by "state of consciousness" he meant a style of functioning of experience. Consciousness itself, the true Self, the Absolute, has no style of functioning, and does not change. But the separate and imagined self, which is how most of us function (that is, within the first three states of consciousness), having grown up in a stressed world, changes all the time, in many different ways.
So when anyone talks of subtle aspects of consciousness, such as self-realization or just simple awareness, we are heard by people living in some specific level or state and their words are interpreted according to the structure of reality that is true at that level.
For those of us not on a spiritual path, or who have given up our spiritual paths, life is truly as good as it gets. And for those of us living in Oneness, fully recognizing the Absolute consciousness while functioning in the relative, life is also truly as good as it gets.
But these two truths couldn't be more different!
The truth of the separate self is limited, unreliable, temporary, and frequently unsatisfactory. The mind and ego are not our friends, and we cannot help having a certain faint anxiety much of the time. Even if we feel that searching for happiness doesn't work, we can't help searching.
The truth of a fully functional person (5th state of consciousness or higher) is quite different. Life is seen as a beautiful and perfect play within a reliable framework of pure consciousness. Problems have disappeared, and joy seems to arise within a field of perfect peace.
Knowledge of life is structured in our actual experience of it.
