Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V

      "Before we proceed, let me get one last, ugly, technical issue out of the way. This will not be pleasant. Those of you in the audience who have some drugs, now would be the time to take them." Everybody laughed. I also saw several people reach into their pockets.

     "I and many of my colleagues use the term 'subtle' in two different ways. Recall that for the Vedanta/Vajrayana, the overall subtle realm actually refers to everything in between the two end limits of matter (gross) and formless (causal). Vedanta does this because meditative experience discloses that the three basic realms (gross, subtle, and causal, with their corresponding energies) are all that is required to support all of the levels of consciousness: at one end is the densest limit, the material realm with its gross bodies and material energies; at the other end-limit is the formless realm with its causal body and causal energy (the finest energy of all); and in between is everything else--all the various levels of emotions, feelings, mind, higher mind, and so on--because they can all be supported by the vast subtle body and its subtle energy. Of course you can subdivide this if you want, but Vedanta and Vajrayana maintain that these three great realms--gross, subtle, and causal; or Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Dharmakaya--cover the important bases. (They add two more: the ever-present Witness, or turiya, and the ever-present Nondual, or turiyatita/Svabhavikakaya, but those simply use the energies and realms already present and do not substantially add anything new; e.g., the ever-present Witness simply witnesses all realms and energies, and does not itself contain any; and the Nondual--or Svabhavikakaya--integrates everything that is present, and is not some other or separate realm).

     "So, we were talking about the meaning of the word 'subtle.' In the first and most technically correct sense, the subtle can contain all of the levels between the gross and causal: if you have 5 levels between gross and causal, then the overall subtle contains those 5 levels; if you have 12, then 12. As we saw, the Vedanta itself uses 3 basic levels between the two end-limits of gross and causal, and therefore the overall subtle includes those 3 in-between levels: it includes the prana-mayakosha (the emotional-sexual level, or--to switch to SD--beige), the mano-mayakosha (the levels of the mind, which include, roughly: purple, red, blue, orange, green, yellow, turquoise), and the vijnana-mayakosha (or higher mind, which includes coral/psychic and subtle). And right there you can see the second way that we use the term 'subtle,' namely, as the highest level of the overall subtle realm. And obviously, the subtle realm and the subtle level are not at all the same (the subtle level is only one of many levels in the subtle realm)--which is part of the terminology problem.

     "Now, here is where it gets interesting, especially when it comes to human development: we believe that the evidence and research strongly suggests that, in an infant, the three great states are given as actualities, but the levels/stages themselves are given only as potentials. Thus, an infant wakes, dreams, and sleeps--it therefore has fully available the three great states (and the three great realms--gross, subtle, causal). But an infant does not yet possess, in any actual fashion, the levels/stages of, for example, blue, orange, green, yellow, and so on. The potentials for those levels are present--not as fixed or predetermined structures, but as morphogenetic potentials that unfold according to contingent realities in all four quadrants. [See 'A Summary of My Psychological Model,' especially note 24, posted on this site.]

     "So what happens in human development appears to be this: while the individual is cycling through the three great states roughly every 24 hours, in the waking state the various levels/stages of consciousness developmentally emerge, thus becoming permanent traits, acquisitions, or stages. Thus, as the child develops, first the magical stages or waves develop (purple to red); then the mythical stages develop (red to blue); then the rational waves (orange to green); then the integral waves (yellow, turquoise); then the third-tier or super-integral waves (psychic, high-subtle). The stages, as stages, evolve in that flowing order simply because each stage, as a stage, must build upon its predecessor--each transcends and includes--just as cells transcend and include molecules, which transcend and include atoms, and so on. The components of one stage become the sub-components of the next, which is why actual stages cannot be skipped (any more than you can go from atoms to cells and skip molecules). Thus each wave becomes more and more inclusive, until the entire Kosmos is embraced in conscious identity (nondual). Of course, none of those levels/stages of consciousness emerge as rigid rungs, but as fluid and flowing waves of increasing awareness.

     "I should also mention that in reality we have the existence of levels and lines, or waves and streams: many independent developmental streams moving through these great waves, so that a person's actual development is not linear at all. But for this example we are only focusing on waves/stages of consciousness, on the one hand, and states of consciousness, on the other, just to make a few points.

     "We add one more technicality: these waves/stages are not Platonic archetypal givens but Kosmic habits inherited by morphic resonance and formative causation (in the RH dimensions) and by prehensive unification (in the LH dimensions): they first emerge as creative, nondetermined novelty, but are subsequently laid down as morphogenetic grooves inherited by subsequent development, so that yesterday's a posteriori becomes today's a priori.

     "The leading-edge of creative novelty is, in today's world, somewhere around yellow, which means that the deep features of the memes from beige to green have already been laid down as Kosmic habits--and the earlier the meme, the more set and determined it is. But the features of yellow are today still largely unformed; they are still congealing at the leading-edge of evolution, a leading-edge that, as always, is wildly chaotic, frothy, turbulent, novel, and ferociously unforeseeable, a creative frisson of Spirit's Eros bubbling up from infinity in ways that nobody, including Spirit, could (or would want) to foresee.

     "On the other hand, this means that in today's world, many of the deep features of memes up to around green are relatively set and 'predetermined,' not by timeless archetypes but by morphic resonance from past creative novelties now settled into habits. Of course, even though the general patterns (or morphogenetic grooves) of these holons are handed to us by Kosmic karma, all of the actual contents, concrete features, and expressions of these habitual patterns are determined by relative, culturally contingent factors in all four quadrants. Moreover, when those deep patterns themselves were first becoming Kosmic habits, they were also four-quadrant events: at no point are any features of these waves disconnected from intersubjectivity. (For an extensive discussion of the inheritance of the past and its relation to the spectrum of consciousness, see Kosmic Karma, the tentative title of volume 3 of the Kosmos trilogy, forthcoming. Short summaries of this are given in sidebars I and J.)

     "Okay, let's return to our main topic and look at the various types of altered states available at each of the major stages (levels, memes, waves) of development. Of course, today we are limiting our discussion of states to the great natural states of waking, dreaming, sleeping, nondual. We are not discussing non-natural or induced states, such as drug states, specific meditative states, hypnotic states, trance states, visionary states, shamanic states, and so on. As I briefly said earlier, most of these non-natural states are not freely available to everybody; they have to be trained or otherwise induced. But the interesting point is that all of those induced states are nonetheless variations on the three or four great states of gross, subtle, causal, and nondual. For example, if you are having a shamanic experience of enhanced sensorimotor perception--colors are brighter, sounds are sharper, the world is brilliantly alive with vivid impressions--you are having a variation on waking-state consciousness, because you are still primarily oriented to the gross realm, even if enhanced. But if the shamanic experience deepens and you are ushered into visions of the upper realms or lower realms, you are having a subtle-state and subtle-realm experience (because you are no longer oriented to gross objects; you are instead perceiving subtle objects, bodies, beings, energies, forms, visions). Likewise, if you are doing holotropic breathwork, and you suddenly find yourself existing as vast formless awareness, you are having a causal-state experience. This is not to say that all these different, specific, nonordinary states can be reduced without remainder to the three or four natural states, only that, once you have worked out the relation of natural states and natural stages, much of the opaqueness of this relation of states and stages dissipates, and you can more easily construct integral models that include the incredibly important truths of both states and stages.

     "So what I would like to do at this time is very briefly run through a typical course of individual development and look at the various types of states of consciousness (gross, subtle, causal) available to each of the major stages of consciousness (levels, memes, waves).

     "An infant at the magical-purple meme has acquired that meme as a permanent acquisition or competence, which means that the deep potential of the purple wave (inherited not as Platonic given but as Kosmic habit) has actually emerged and taken on concrete form and content, shaped by all four quadrants (including especially the social and cultural backgrounds: there is a pluralistic dimension built into every holon. Thus, the purple meme of a Chinese infant and an American infant would share only a few deep patterns and features--the deep morphogenetic grooves of Kosmic habits--but not very many surface patterns and features. Of course, there is a spectrum of the spheres of influence of LH prehensive inheritance and RH formative causation, stretching from patterns that individuals alone inherit from their own past, to patterns inherited by families, by subcultures, by cultures, and by universal cross-cultures [see sidebars I and J]. In this discussion we are focusing on the small handful of patterns--such as purple, red, blue, etc.--that evidence suggests are cross-cultural, but if you are a diehard relativist and insist that the only significant universals are those in your pluralistic meta-theory, then you can take these as patterns evidenced by some people in Western culture. Our main point is the relationship of any sort of stage, however conceived, with any sort of state, however conceived. So we are following what happens when a stage emerges in a psyche that also has access to various states.)

     "As the purple potential stably emerges, the infant has more-or-less permanent access to that purple structure or stage as an actual (not potential) wave of consciousness. But the infant also has access to various subtle and causal states (because it dreams and sleeps). Thus, the purple-stage child can have an authentic subtle-realm experience and causal-realm experience, but the content of those experiences will be colored in large part by the stages that have developed (in this case, beige, purple, and beginning red, as set in their AQAL context).

     "Accordingly, the infant's consciousness would NOT contain actual elements from the higher stages--it would not contain, e.g., the logical syntax of orange (and research consistently shows that it does not). We just saw that the deep patterns of the higher stages--up to around green--are potentials inherited by the infant as Kosmic habits. But those higher stages, as stages, must actually emerge and develop, taking on form and content as molded by AQAL space. Thus the infant has direct access to subtle and causal states, which are already present, but NOT to higher stages, which must unfold and build upon each other in actual manifestation: an atom cannot bypass molecules and go directly to cells, because the Kosmic habits have already laid down the deep grooves of that unfolding as layered sediments in prehension and formative causation.

     "Likewise, the dream world of an infant whose center of gravity is purple would not contain elements from blue, orange, or green stages--for those do not yet exist as actual entities. Rather, the infant's dream world would contain magical elements (beige to purple), because those have already emerged and taken concrete form (based on all four quadrants), and they would therefore invade dream states as 'day residue,' and would also form most of the signifiers that the dream state uses to express its subtle realities. Also, the infant's dream world--particularly as the infant reaches ages 2-4--would also increasingly contain emerging mythic elements (red and eventually blue), because those are the level/stages that are now crystallizing out as permanent acquisitions (and thus becoming part of the concrete contents of the waking and dreaming landscapes). Finally, the infant's dream world might also contain various archetypes or collectively inherited images (or deep Kosmic habits); however, as Jung pointed out, archetypes are 'forms devoid of content,' and thus, as I would put it, they only pick up content from the existing AQAL matrix, which means that their actual elements will be supplied in part by the stages and contexts that have already emerged in the individual. So even 'archetypal' material reverts to the developmental and interpretive AQAL scheme we are presenting.

     "Next, notice there is also sense in which we could say that a child at the magical stage might have a type of peak experience of a mythic stage (but not any stages higher than that). Precisely because it is the next stage of development, the mythic can indeed be 'peeked' into, since it is already starting to form and take on actual characteristics, so it can be an 'Ah ha!' experience (I'll give some examples of this in a minute).

     "So an individual can have an altered state or peak experience of an emerging stage, but rarely of a stage beyond that. Thus, as the mythic wave begins to crystallize, it can be experienced in waking states, in dream states, and in many altered states. Accordingly, a waking-state child at the purple-red meme could have an altered state or peak experience of a blue-mythic meme (in addition to any subtle and causal altered states; but not higher stages--not orange or green or yellow, etc.). But as the child develops permanently to the mythic/blue stage, he or she would no longer have peak experiences of those particular mythic structures, simply because they are now permanent acquisitions in consciousness (i.e., they are no longer an altered state but an ordinary state). People often ask why a person can't have, e.g., a conop altered state, and the answer is, you can! At age 5.

     "To say it one last time: Can a magic child have an altered state or peak experience of any stage higher than mythic? Not as far as we can tell. The mythic wave, being the next wave to emerge, is already starting to form and crystallize, and thus it can be experienced in both the waking and the dream state (and certain 'peek' experiences), since it is already taking on actual forms and elements and beginning to build upon the magic stage (in prehension and formative causation). But stages higher than the mythic are still potential at best; the child can still experience the general subtle realm and causal realm in various states--in dreams, for example, in deep sleep, and in various peak experiences--and, most importantly, those will be interpreted by the stages at hand (in their particular AQAL setting). But a magic (purple-red) child cannot experience, say, orange rationality or green pluralism, since those have not begun to crystallize out, and, as always, actual stages cannot be skipped. A preop child cannot have a peak experience of a formop thought; a stage-1 moral child cannot have a stage-4 moral idea. A preop child's waking and dreaming world consists essentially of only those waves that have developed or are just beginning to do so: thus, a preop/magical child's dream state would consist of archaic, magical, and beginning mythic elements (beige, purple, red, blue), while all the higher levels/stages of the general subtle realm--in this case, orange, green, yellow, turquoise, coral/psychic, and high-subtle levels--would remain as morphogenetic potentials in the overall subtle, 'forms devoid of content.' And, as we saw, only the forms up to around green have settled in as Kosmic habits of any significant density (and formative causation); beyond that, the deep forms themselves are still their formative phases, which does not mean that those higher spaces are not available, only that their morphic patterns are still at play at the chaotic, frothy, insanely creative edge of evolution's dance.

     "Okay, then, is this clear to everybody?" Hazelton asked. "Oh dear. Well, let's just push on and see if this helps." Hazelton cleared her throat. "Let's take individuals who are at, say, orange. And once again, let's ask what states and what stages are available to them?

     "Their waking state and dream state will contain elements of all the levels/stages that have actually emerged in their own case, as well as elements of the next level about to emerge--green, in this case. That means that their waking and dreams can contain archaic elements (beige), magic elements (purple), mythic elements (red-blue), rational elements (orange), and some emerging green elements. That's clear, yes?"

     A student in the audience asked out loud, "Dreams can be rational?"

     "Oh, yes, some of them. Wake these people up--wake most adults up--when they are dreaming and they will often say things like, 'I was thinking about what to buy at the grocery store tomorrow.' Of course, their dreams also contain magic and mythic elements, since those have also emerged. However, these individuals will not experience, in their dreams or in their waking state, any actual elements from higher stages. But they can experience the general features of higher states--the subtle and the causal, just as a child can experience the subtle and the causal, since everybody wakes, dreams, and sleeps.

     "Thus, with regard to states, a person whose center of gravity is at the orange stage can have:

     (1) A peak experience of the next higher stage, in this case, a green stage (this is often experienced as a genuinely overpowering peak experience or 'eureka!' experience--in this case it might be a eureka experience that 'There are multiple realities and pluralistic truths in world! Wow!').

     (2) A peak experience of various subtle or causal states, such as a temporary experience of gross-nature mysticism, subtle-deity mysticism, and/or causal-formless mysticism (although he or she will interpret them largely in orange terms. We will return to this idea in a moment).

     (3) Any nonordinary states that are peak extensions of the three major realms (such as a drug experience where one identifies in a paranormal fashion with any past actuals, such as experiencing an identity with all atoms, all plants forms, all animals; identification with a nature spirit; a re-experiencing of the birth trauma, etc.)

     (4) Any induced states (such as meditation). Of course, in this presentation we are focusing on items 1 and 2, since the essentials features of the relation of states and stages can be gleaned from those, but these other states should not be overlooked in any integral cartography of consciousness."

One Last Clarification, with Due Apologizes

     "Here's another terminology mess, and I'm so sorry about this: we saw that we can use the word 'subtle' to refer to both the subtle realm (everything in between gross matter and causal formlessness) and to just the highest level or stage of the subtle realm, which I will refer to here as 'the high subtle.' Well, it's worse: we usually subdivide the high subtle into what we call the psychic and the subtle. Oh dear, not enough words to go around, huh? Well, it made sense at the time." The audience laughed.

     "Here's the source of the difficulty. When many of the members of IC were pioneering studies in these higher states and stages--and given the paucity of information about these higher realms in our culture--they had to coin various new terms or neologisms for these higher realms. And I don't have to tell you what the editors of books and journals think about neologisms--they hate them. So these researchers tried to make a few neologisms cover as many bases as possible. So, for example, they used the word 'subtle' to refer to a state, a body/realm, AND a level: the subtle state, the subtle body, the subtle level. The problem, of course, is that those are not the same things at all (e.g., the subtle level is only one of 3 or more levels in the subtle realm). Oy vey, the headaches here.

      "In fairness to the original researchers, they themselves knew that a subtle state was different from a subtle body, which was different from a subtle level. The qualifiers were the words 'state,' 'body,' and 'level'--clearly different things. But most people understandably saw the word 'subtle' and took all three of those items to be the same thing. Well, we are in the process of going back and cleaning up all this terminology. In particular, 'subtle' and 'causal' should really be used for states and realms, and not for levels, since that causes the most problems. But until there is a widespread agreement on how to use those terms, people will continue to use the old terms; if so, please remember, for example, that the subtle body/realm and the subtle level are quite different beasts. At the orange level you can have an experience of the subtle realm and the causal realm but not an experience of the subtle level or the causal level, okay?

     "All right, here's the last major glitch in this terminological nightmare, and then we can move on. Where the overall-gross realm intersects the overall-subtle realm, you can have an experience of oneness with the entire gross realm --we call that the psychic, or the Over-Soul, the World Soul, the Eco-Noetic Self, and so forth. It is a state that can become a permanent stage acquisition, which means it can become permanently conscious. Thus, in this (old but still used) terminology, the psychic stage is the stage after turquoise and before the highest stages of the subtle (thus, as stages: yellow, turquoise, coral/psychic, subtle level, causal level). I know, I know, we will have to clean up the terminology at some point! But these realms and stages are real phenomena, whatever we call them.

     "There's a simple way to remember this. We already understand that everybody, even infants, have access to the gross realm in waking consciousness, the subtle realm in dream consciousness, and the formless realm in deep-sleep consciousness. Yes? That's simple enough. Now, the ultimate peak experience in each of those three realms is to experience a oneness with that entire realm, yes? The experience of oneness with the entire gross realm is a type of nature mysticism; the experience of oneness with the entire subtle realm is a type of deity mysticism; and the experience of oneness with the causal realm is a type of formless mysticism. (And, of course, nondual mysticism is a union of all of them.)"

     A student yelled out, "But does that mean that even children can have spiritual experiences of all three of those types--nature mysticism, deity mysticism, formless mysticism?"

     "Of course they can," Hazelton replied. "Children experience them as temporary states, not permanent traits, and they are interpreted by their particular stages (in their particular AQAL matrix), but there is significant evidence of children having all three or four of those great spiritual peak experiences. That's another topic, dear soul, so perhaps later, yes? [See Sidebar D: 'Childhood Spirituality'].

     "Now, we simply call the experience of oneness with the entire gross realm--the experience of nature mysticism--we also call that the psychic, or the Over-Soul, or the Eco-Noetic Self, and so on. We call it 'psychic' instead of 'gross' at this point because it really is moving beyond the gross altogether, and so we wanted to give it a name that reflected its increasingly noetic character--'noetic' means 'consciousness-related,' yes? With psychic states, it is increasingly understood that the world is not merely physical, it is psychophysical. So we often say, instead of gross, subtle, and causal states, that a person can have psychic, subtle, and causal states--it basically means the same thing, but when we say 'psychic' instead of 'gross,' we are emphasizing the highest of the gross realm experiences--namely, a oneness with the entire gross realm, which we call psychic. When that psychic state becomes a more-or-less permanent acquisition, we call it the psychic stage (which means that the person's center of gravity, or proximate self, has transformed from the turquoise-centaur to the Eco-Noetic Self or Over-Soul).

     "Okay, to summarize what we have so far: a person at virtually any stage of development can have a temporary experience of a gross/psychic, subtle, or causal state of consciousness, because those are all variations on the three great states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. But for those temporary states to become permanent traits, those states have to be converted into stages by sustained development, yes?

     "Here's a final example that might help." Somebody yelled out, "I doubt it," and we all laughed, including Hazelton.

     "Oh dear. Okay, let's take somebody--I tell you, this states and stages thing is really easy if you can get over the terminology--the messy terminology is just a remnant from that idiot who did The Atman Project, but never mind. Anyway, let's continue the examples and take somebody whose center of gravity is at, say, turquoise. What states and stages are available to those at turquoise?

     "Well, just as at all previous stages, they can have an altered state or temporary peak experience of the gross/psychic, subtle, and causal realms (which might include temporary experiences of nature mysticism, deity mysticism, and formless mysticism)--because, again, they wake, dream, and sleep. But once they develop to the next stage--namely, from turquoise to the psychic/coral stage--then they would cease having psychic peak experiences: they would permanently be at the psychic stage; they would now have permanent access to the state of nature mysticism--they would more or less constantly experience themselves as the Eco-Noetic Self, the Over-Soul that is one with the World Soul. They would be the Over-Soul as continuously as, say, somebody at orange is more-or-less continuously the egoic-rational self.

     "Is this getting any clearer?" A few people nodded their heads yes. Annoyingly, Kim was one of them.

     "Okay, so what would happen if that person then developed from the psychic stage to the subtle stage (meaning the high-subtle, or the highest stage in the subtle realm at this point in evolution)? Two things would happen: (1) for the most part, they would stop having subtle peak experiences (because they now have permanent and continuous access to even the upper reaches of the subtle as it has unfolded so far, and therefore they are permanently accessing the overall subtle realm--they have objectified the subtle realm--so there is no need to have any subtle peak experiences--the overall subtle is now an ordinary state, not a nonordinary state). And (2), they would often lucid dream at night. Why? Because they have made the overall subtle realm conscious at this point, and thus the entire dream state would remain conscious as they entered it each night. Their self would be one with subtle Deity, more or less permanently. Their self-sense would now be Divine. Their self would continuously be one with the God/dess....

     "What would be left for such a soul? Well, they could still have a temporary peak experience of the causal state/realm, namely, a peak experience of formlessness--an altered state or peak experience of the Godhead beyond God, the limitless Ursprung form which both God and the soul emerge, the great Kosmic Void or pure Emptiness that is the groundless Ground of All. (And although we are not mentioning it very much in this summary, they could also peak experience the Nondual, or the union of Emptiness and Form, since that is based on ever-present or always-already awareness.)

     "But if they continued their development from the high-subtle into the causal itself, then they would generally cease to have causal peak experiences, because they would permanently have access to the great Emptiness that is the Source and Suchness of the entire World--not merely as a temporary satori, but as a constant consciousness. And this also means--do you understand why?--that each night when they entered the deep dreamless sleep state, they would remain aware."

     "Why?" somebody yelled.

     "Well, dear soul, because they have made the entire causal realm conscious, and thus they cease 'passing out' whenever they enter it. Okay?

     "So what is the overall pattern here? It's very simple, yes? All of the states--waking, dreaming, and sleeping--have now become permanently conscious waves, and thus all of their potentials have become actualized. The result is Awakening or Enlightenment by any name--again, not just a passing satori, but a permanently conscious realization. But these are not potentials that were predetermined, pregiven, and merely lying around, already formed, awaiting discovery by unearthing or digging. They are potentials that were co-created all along by the unfolding AQAL matrix as it creatively unfurled in the frothy, chaotic, formative, dynamic, nonpredictable dance of evolutionary happenstance. When various occasions emerged in their undetermined potential space and began to take on concrete forms and contents, those forms that were repeated on numerous occasions began to settle into Kosmic habits available to all subsequent holons, inherited forms that had originally emerged in a creative and nondetermined fashion, but were then handed to the future as a given inheritance of the past (a future that will add its own creative moment, and then itself pass into the given past).

     "Of course, I am presenting here a highly idealized and absurdly abstract account: nobody actually scoots through the spectrum like that, cleanly turning all states into permanent traits. There are numerous levels and lines involved, so that some lines might be highly developed while others lag far behind: actual development is a messy, chaotic, turbulent affair, unfolding in an AQAL space whose determinants are largely and inherently a mystery. I am simply outlining some of the abstract milestones of development, insofar as they can be determined, in order to suggest some of the more important features of states and stages in general. Likewise, when somebody starts lucid dreaming, it might only be once or twice a month; same with lucid sleeping; and these might very slowly increase in frequency over the years and decades--you don't simply go from nonlucid to lucid once and for all! The point is simply that, on balance, the more one evolves through the spectrum of consciousness, the more 'enlightened' and 'awakened' one becomes, because the states and stages of one's own being become increasingly transparent, released from a subjective identity and eased into the Mystery that is their inherent radiance.

     "If a person achieves this type of transparency or Enlightenment, does that mean growth has stopped in his or her case? Not at all. Not only is there a great deal of translative learning that will still occur, the causal itself continues to creatively bring forth more subtle states, which can eventually become stages. For example: imagine a thousand years from now. What we now call 'the high-subtle wave'--namely, the general stage between psychic and causal--will almost certainly have differentiated into several more stages. Really, the manifest game of development and evolution is endless. But once one has sufficiently mastered the general waves of consciousness that are present in the world today, then one can more easily step off the cycle altogether: the causal 'stage' is not merely or even mostly a stage; it is rather the ever-present ground of Emptiness that is equally present at each and every stage of development. It is simply that, at the highest stages of manifest development, one can experience the causal not just in temporary altered states, but as a permanent acquisition, so that Emptiness pervades all Form, rendering the Kosmos transparent, as all knowledge fades into Mystery and all certainty dissolves in the radical Openness of this and every moment. Spirit then is no longer a drive-by shooting but an ever-present shimmering in the heart of all that arises."

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V