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The 7 Steps To Enlightenment
The Simple Path To Awakening
States are free, but stages are earned
— Ken Wilber
The Difference Between States & Stages
To understand the seven steps that lead to enlightenment we first begin to understand the difference between “stages” and “states.”
The stages of human and subsequent spiritual development offer us a way to measure our growth or human maturity.
In the West, during the 20th century, there were a number of developmental psychologists who created some very clear and useful models of the stages of human development.
Among them are:
Jean Piaget
Lawrence Kohlberg
Carol Gilligan
Abraham Maslow
Jean Gebser
The models of these theorists can be generally said to follow the same developmental pathway:
An ‘ego-centric’ stage [followed by]
An ‘ethnocentric’ stage [followed by]
A ‘world-centric’ stage
Like all developmental models, these stages follow in succession.
The completion of each stage is necessary to develop into the next one.
For example:
In the English language, you must know words before you can make sentences, and sentences, before you can create paragraphs.
It is impossible to go from words directly to paragraphs.
It is the same with stages of development … whether human or spiritual development.
States are different from stages.
While stages of development have been extensively studied in the West, it is in the East that states have been most radically understood.
In particular, the East has focused on spiritual or mystical states of consciousness.
What Is A Spiritual Or Mystical state?
A spiritual or mystical state is the present-tense realisation, to varying degrees, of profound and intensely-felt freedom.
These higher states are inherent to the human body-mind. And, much closer than one might think!
Therefore, it is possible for them to be triggered at any time.
In fact, states can be experienced at any time by anyone.
There is no necessary prerequisite to experiencing or deeply intuiting even the highest of mystical or spiritual states, including the enlightened state.
Profound spiritual states can also be brought about by:
Meditation
Devotional practices
Self-Enquiry
Yoga
Fasting
Prayer
Sex
Satsang
Darshan
Exhaustion
Near-Death Experience (NDE)
Brain Injury
Illness
OR:
For no reason at all!
Nevertheless …
How the state is interpreted and understood will depend on the stage of human and/or spiritual development one has achieved, or is currently in.
Additionally, the stage will determine whether one is able to stably abide in that higher state.
The difference and relationship between states and stages is that of the difference and relationship between perception and perspective.
At the stage of human development of a child, they will have a child’s perspective of any of their perceptions.
A child’s interpretation of what they perceive will be limited by their stage of human development, i.e. the development stage of their perspective.
An adult’s interpretation of what they perceive will in most cases be a more comprehensive understanding reflecting a higher stage of human development — or a higher human development of perspective.
When we go beyond merely human developmental stages and into spiritual developmental stages the way in which stages determine our understanding of any state becomes even more important.
The late Suzanne Segal in her book, Collision With The Infinite: A Life Beyond The Personal Self, tells of her sudden and complete loss of all sense of separate self while waiting to catch a bus in Paris.
She remained in this state for the next decade until her death.
The complete loss of the sense of separate self, or ego-death, is a much sought-after state in many religious and mystical traditions, especially those of Advaita Vedanta and Zen Buddhism.
However, for Suzanne Segal, this was an intensely unpleasant state.
So much so that she was driven to the edge of complete insanity.
Her mind just could not make sense of or interprete what had happened to her.
Simply put, Suzanne Segal’s current developmental state did not allow her to understand or interpret this state of continued bodily existence with absolutely no sense of a me.
In fact, at the end stage of pregnancy, about to give birth, she was driven to the brink of sheer madness by the thought:
She screamed in horror to herself:
“But WHO is going to give birth to this baby?!!!”
It was only after years of psychotherapy and counselling from a Zen Buddhist Roshi that she recognised her state as one of profound freedom and was able to abide happily in it for the rest of her life.
Societies, Cultures, Philosophy, & Zen
It is not just human beings who progress through stages of development.
Societies and cultures can also be in varying stages of development — human and/or spiritual development.
This accounts for the very different ways in which cultures, societies, and, religions have accounted for spiritual or mystical states.
Depending on the culture, society, or religion, experiencing a spiritual or mystical state could have one called a madman, a criminal, a political radical, or a saint!
For the last three decades, Western philosophy has intensified its consideration of the relationship between stages and states.
Postmodernism, or Post-Structuralism, has argued that we have moved past Modern notions of hierarchies and grand narratives; in other words, stages.
Rather, postmodernism points to networks and rhizomes as better reflecting the world.
Of course, networks and rhizomes are much more similar to states than any hierarchy of stages.
We can also see this tension between stages and states in Zen Buddhism.
Zen Buddhism has two different paths:
The path of gradual enlightenment (stages).
The path of sudden enlightenment (states).
For centuries, these two paths have been arguing for the correctness of their particular path.
The play between states & stages can also be seen in those Eastern spiritual traditions and practices transplanted to the West, particularly in Neo-Advaita-inspired teachings.
Generally, the Western Neo-Advaita teaching is some form of:
The practice of Self-enquiry is sufficient. This practice will uncover the inherently real & natural state. It is enough to abide in that revealed state.
No practice other than Self-Enquiry is needed.
No effort to achieve any developmental state, whether human or spiritual, is required.
It is enough to abide in that state. By abiding in that state any necessary developmental stages of the body-mind will be achieved or moved through, naturally & without effort.
By abiding in the intuited always-already Real state that any developmental stages if necessary will be completed effortlessly; as effortlessly as one digests food.
Often proponents of the Neo-Advaita approach will point to the realisation of Sri Ramana Maharshi as a teacher who suggested that self-enquiry was sufficient and that any effort to achieve higher stabilising stages was unnecessary.
However, it is important to remember the cultural context in which Ramana Maharshi taught.
India has over 4500 years developed a spiritual culture that has as its primary goal — via its strict societal imperatives — the development of the human maturity necessary to qualify for any true spiritual practice, such as self-enquiry.
This human maturity allows the perspective to not only recognise and interpret any state brought about practice, but to also to potentially abide stably in any higher state.
It is safe to say that Ramana Maharshi — before suggesting any practice — could assume at least this level of human maturity in the vast majority of those who came to him.
Is An Enlightened Psychopath Possible?
Well … sort of.
Anyone at any time can intuit any state whatsoever. Including the state of enlightenment.
This is because the enlightenment state is both natural and inherent to us.
As the Zen Buddhists say: Enlightenment is ordinary mind.
Therefore it is possible for anyone — even someone with extreme psychopathologies and/or developmental aberrations — to intuit the state of enlightenment.
However, it is suggested by the relationship between states & stages that a person with such psychopathologies would not be able to truly recognise the enlightened state nor would they be able to stably abide in that state.
Instead, what seems to happen is that they swing wildly between the intuited higher state and maladapted psychopathic states.
There are many examples of people throughout history who may fit this description.
Charles Manson may have been one of them.
This may explain his reported charisma and how that charisma was able to convince others to do terrible and abhorrent deeds.
It may also explain why some of Manson’s seemingly insane utterances when placed against those of enlightened sages and saints often share a very disconcerting similarity!
This complication in the human stages of development combined with a deep intuition of higher spiritual states may explain the oft-reported anti-social behaviour of some self-proclaimed spiritual teachers.
Ken Wilber: The ‘Einstein of Consciousness
There is another option beyond choosing between states & stages.
That is, a focus on the interface between states & stages.
This approach does not pit states and stages against each other but rather points to their interdependence.
It helps to give one a much clear idea of why both the stages of fully developed human maturity AND the stages of higher spiritual development are both necessary.
The transpersonal philosopher and writer Ken Wilber has made this interface between stages and states his life’s work.
Ken Wilber was 23 years old when in 1973 he published his first book, Spectrum of Consciousness.
This book became a best-seller and still sells well today.
The book also made Wilber very famous.
People such as
President Bill Clinton
Al Gore
Deepak Chopra
Richard Rohr
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins
All spoke of the great influence that the book had on their lives.
Soon, Wilber was being called, “the Einstein of consciousness” and would become a thought-leader in the field of Transpersonal Psychology.
In Spectrum of Consciousness, Wilber maps into a spectrum (or stages) an integration of many different types of mysticism and Western psychological approaches.
Aldous Huxley, the author of A Brave New World, had attempted a similar mapping of spiritual development across many religious traditions with his 1945 book, The Perennial Philosophy.
The great Indian mystic, Sri Aurobindo, also developed a similar integration of a variety of mystical stages and states.
Wilber was in agreement with Mahayana Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta in believing that reality is ultimately a nondual union of emptiness and form.
However, most importantly …
He believed that the form part of the equation of form/emptiness was subject to development over time.
This opened the door for Wilber to develop a schema of stages of spiritual and mystical development.
Wilber pointed out the difference between Waking Up and Growing Up.
Wilber said that while there had been thousands of years of creating methods and practices for waking up in the East, the developmental models and practises for growing up (i.e. achieving full human maturity) had only been discovered in the West in the last 150 years.
It was this interface between the states of waking up and the stages of growing up which became Wilber’s Integral Theory.
Integral Theory offers a developmental model in a single framework of the journey from archaic consciousness to ultimate spirit (i.e. God or Ultimate Reality).
Today, Wilber’s Integral Theory has been taken up not only by those with a spiritual practice but also by many companies and even governmental agencies.
Wilber’s guiding principles of Integral Theory are:
Evolution or development occurs by transcending and including, not by erasing what came before.
For example, the evolution to the developmental level of a single-cell organism did not wipe out molecules but included them into a greater order of complexity.
This pattern of evolution and/or development occurs with all phenomena.
Rational thought does not eliminate emotion but includes it into a greater developmental level of consciousness.
Industrial societies did not wipe out agriculture but transcended agriculture into greater levels of efficiency and prosperity.
Human or spiritual development requires that we include and integrate all previous stages into something greater, not by wiping out the previous stage.
Wilber has acknowledged that he was very much influenced in his formation of Integral Theory by The Seven Stages of Life as taught and communicated by the late spiritual teacher, Sri Adi Da Samraj.
Adi Da’s Seven Stages of Life offers a much more succinct model of the human and spiritual evolutionary process necessary to any kind of spiritual development or practice.
The Seven Stages That Lead To Enlightenment
What is the total process of human growth?
This schema of The Seven Stages of Life starts with birth and moves through seven stages all the way to enlightenment.
It is offered here as a guide that may be of help to anyone who wishes to understand a stages/states approach to spiritual practice.
The fundamental points are:
All human life develops potentially in seven stages.
The first three stages are the stages of human functions: i.e. the physical, emotional & mental.
The Fourth Stage is the stage of feeling-surrender as the sense of separate-self to Source, God, or Mind & marks the start of spiritual life.
The Fifth Stage is that of spiritual ascent into the mind & psyche, and may include mystical experiences of all kinds.
For some this can be a rather brief stage depending on the degree of psychic material held by the person.
The Sixth Stage is that of ego-death, or the transcendence of mind & the sense of separate self.
This stage can be experienced, often quite easily, as a state (not recognised or stabilised by the achievement of a stage) convincing one of the non-necessity of growth through stages.
The Seventh Stage is that of full enlightenment
Though there are seven stages of natural human growth represented here, most humans stop growing in the first three stages.
Most humans remain complicated in the first three stages of life and do not even successfully complete the first three stages.
These complications or stunting of our natural growth through the first three stages shows itself, according to Adi Da, in dis-functionality (often manifested in extreme forms as addictions) in three primary arenas of life:
Money
Food
Sex
If one’s energy and attention is captured by those three arenas of life, if one has not realised a natural, easy and non-addicted functionality in ALL those areas of life, one will not have the free energy and attention necessary to even begin a spiritual practice.
The first three stages of life usually take up the first 21 years of a person’s life:
First Stage (0–7): Individuation
Child successfully individuates from the mother.
Child enjoys conscious relatedness to all others and Nature.
Signs of the completion of the first stage of life: individuation, socialisation, cooperation and sensitivity to Nature.
Second Stage (7–14): Socialisation
Development of sensitivity to etheric energy to existence, to others and to Nature.
Development of socialisation or optimal relationship to others via a feeling-sensitivity to the etheric dimension and one’s effect on others.
Signs of the completion of the second stage of life: can associate responsibly, positively and relationally with others.
Third Stage: (14–21): Integration
Adaptation to the psychic dimension of existence.
Development of the will, the thinking mind, and the psyche.
Signs of the completion of the third stage of life: fully prepared physically, emotionally, ethically, psychically and mentally, and with enough free energy & attention (not caught up in “money, food, or sex) to enter into real spiritual practice.
The Spiritual Stages: From The 4th Stage To Enlightenment, Or ‘Open-Eyes’
These first three stages are the stages of human growth which prepare us to take up the 4th stage or the beginning of the stages of spiritual growth.
This movement from the 3rd stage (the completion of human maturity) to the 4th stage (the beginning of spiritual growth) is the primary crisis for most of those who wish to begin spiritual practice.
The 4th stage is foundational for the spiritual stages that follow.
The 4th stage is the practice of feeling-surrender as the sense of separate self to your higher power, to Consciousness, to Awareness, to Source, to Reality, to God.
It is not to identify one’s self as Source, Consciousness, Awareness, Reality, or God; rather, it is to feelingly surrender one’s body/mind and sense of separate self to Source, Consciousness, Awareness, Reality, or God.
The 4th Stage is a devotional practice of God apart referred to in Hinduism as Bhakti.
The 4th Stage is the necessary foundation stage of the 5th, 6th, and ultimately the full enlightenment of the 7th stage of life.
It is important to note that it is the body/mind that is the medium of spiritual transformation not merely the mind.
As one feelingly-surrenders body/mind and the sense of separate self ever more deeply, one begins to show emotional and psychic signs which may open up one’s psychic dimension.
The 5th Stage is the realm of shamans and shamanistic practices.
The 5th stage may be a very brief stage for some people depending on the degree of psychic material to be surrendered.
The 6th Stage is when one realises their identity with Source, Consciousness, Awareness, Reality, or God, AND now purified through the feeling-surrender of the body/mind and the sense of separate self can now RE-cognise their true identity and abide as That stably.
The 7th Stage is the overcoming (or growing out of) the error of the 6th Stage which is to identify exclusively as Source, Consciousness, Awareness, Reality, or God at the exclusion of the world of appearances.
In the 7th Stage of life, both one’s self AND the world are RE-cognised as Source, Consciousness, Awareness, Reality, or God.
The 7th Stage is Sahaj Samadhi, or Open Eyes, in which …
EVERYTHING is RE-cognised as nothing but the Radiance of God.
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