The distinction between nirvikalpa samadhi as a temporary state and sahaja samadhi as a permanent realization is treated in Advaita Vedanta as one of the most consequential points in the entire tradition, because it separates an extraordinary meditative achievement, real and valuable but reversible, from the tradition's actual soteriological goal, a change in self understanding so complete and stable that it persists through ordinary waking activity and does not depend on withdrawing from the world into formal meditation at all.
Some teachers within the tradition, including figures associated with the modern neo-Vedanta revival, have emphasized that a practitioner can, in rare cases, move directly to a stable, non-meditative realization without passing through repeated cycles of nirvikalpa samadhi, treating the formless absorption state as a common but not strictly necessary stage on the path rather than an indispensable prerequisite. Because nirvikalpa samadhi is, by definition, a state without differentiated content, first person accounts of it are necessarily reported only after the fact, by a mind that has returned to ordinary functioning, which is part of why textual descriptions of the state converge on its effects and its aftermath more than on any content experienced during it.