Stages of Enlightenment
by Diane Linsley
Spiritual teachers attempt to describe enlightenment because it
gives students the idea that there's something called enlightenment,
and it's a wonderful thing to pursue. Otherwise, why would you
meditate for so many years?
Of course, words are never adequate to describe an experience.
If you've never tasted a strawberry, it won't matter how well the teacher describes what it tastes like. You won't know until you eat one yourself.
The stages I describe in this article are universal stages of spiritual development. I use Zen terms to describe them because I first learned them from a Zen teacher. If you are a Christian, you can replace the Zen words with Christian words. For example, you can replace the word Transcendent with Grace.
These stages are not just theoretical. I've coached several people who had already experienced the first three stages and were confused about what had happened to them. They didn't have anyone they could talk to who understood. Having this map was very helpful for them.
Stages of Spiritual Development
Spiritual development is closely related to cognitive development. You may want to read that article along with this one. I also recommend reading Faith and Doubt, which describes how doubt plays an important role in the process of enlightenment.
Ken Wilber has written extensively about these subjects. Integral Meditation provides a good overview, along with exercises to help you shift your perspective. I also enjoyed The Simple Feeling of Being, which contains beautiful passages for contemplation.
In the Zen tradition, the stages of enlightenment are depicted in the Ten Oxherding Pictures. They were also described by an ancient Zen master named Tozan and referred to as the Five Ranks of Tozan. This is the system I'm using in this article.
The first two stages are pre-enlightenment. The third stage is what most people mean when they talk about enlightenment. Then there are two more stages after that.
The majority of people in the world are in the first two stages. The first stage is when you are stuck in the relative (material) world with no great interest in spirituality. The second stage begins when you become a serious spiritual seeker. If you seek long enough, you may get to the third stage.
People in the third stage think they have arrived, and they may get stuck there for many years. As with any stage, if you stay there too long, it becomes another place of stuckness and stagnation.
I entered the third stage in late 2009. It lasted for one year, and it was everything I hoped for and more. There is a certain detachment that comes from being cathected in the Witness position, which makes it very compelling and wonderfully blissful because it separates you from the suffering of the ego. So I was quite distressed when it came to a sudden end. As Zen master Genpo Roshi says, the fourth stage feels like a fall from grace.
Several years of suffering in the fourth stage was enough to convince me that there was more to enlightenment than blissing out in the Transcendent - although that was my preference at the time. After many years of persevering on the spiritual path, which included doing lots of shadow work, I began to move toward the fifth stage, which is the integration of the relative and the Transcendent.
The Witness Perspective
The second stage of enlightenment is characterized by spiritual practice with the occasional spiritual experience, which is called a kensho in Zen. A kensho is a shocking experience of stepping outside of your ego for just a moment. It feels like an eternity because the experience is outside of normal space-time. This place, which is not a physical place, is called the Transcendent.
A Christian might call this an experience of grace. It has also been described as universal love or oneness. Such an experience may occur when you are engaged in spiritual practices like praying, reading the Bible or attending church. But it can also occur in everyday life when you least expect it. Ken Wilber says, "Enlightenment is an accident, but meditation makes you more accident-prone."
A good metaphor is the shutter of a film camera. The shutter opens for a brief moment when you take a picture. At this moment, light enters the camera, exposing the film. A person may have many kenshos or brief flashes of enlightenment before the shutter finally opens and stays open permanently.
From the moment of your first kensho, you become an avid spiritual seeker with a burning desire to have more of these experiences, which ultimately culminate in enlightenment (the third stage). This is the stage of witnessing that transcends the ego. The ego is still there, of course, but your perspective is now cathected in the Witness position, so you no longer experience the ego as "I". Ego boundaries have dropped away, and you now experience "I" as the oneness of everything.
A Christian might experience the third stage as a profound knowing that they are saved by the grace of God. You don't just say you are saved or hope you are saved. You absolutely experience it to such a degree that your old self (the ego) is dead as a doornail. You live in a state of bliss that is indescribable. You feel a great compassion for all human beings, and you want them to be saved, too.
When I was in the third stage, I didn't feel like Diane. I simply witnessed Diane. I really couldn't say anything about myself because using the word "I" didn't make any sense.
The first few weeks were pretty strange. I mostly wandered around aimlessly, seeing Diane and everything around her through new eyes. For the first time in my life, I was free of my personality and all the beliefs, judgments and limited perspectives that come with the ego.
I felt like I was living in a different world from everyone else. I saw through the illusion of the relative world and how people suffered over things that no longer had the power to upset me. From my new perspective, only the Transcendent was real because that's where my sense of self was cathected.
One year later, after the Witness was integrated, the third stage came to a natural, but rather abrupt and painful end.
The fourth stage has been called the dark night of the soul. The reason it hurts so much is because, having once tasted the Transcendent, going back into the relative world is hell. But we must go back because that's where we do our shadow work. For the Christian, this is the stage of sanctification.
A Metaphor for Enlightenment
Ken Wilber uses this metaphor for the stages of enlightenment:
Normal life (pre-enlightenment) is like playing a sport (basketball, football, tennis - take your pick) without conscious awareness. This is what you've been doing all your life. You take the game seriously, and you suffer because things don't always go your way. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. You are in competition with other players, and sometimes you get hurt. You try to figure out the rules of the game, but the rules keep changing, and you can't control the game. So you suffer.
In the third stage (enlightenment), you suddenly find yourself sitting on the bleachers, just observing the game. You get to watch the game and all the players, including yourself, from a safe distance. From the bleachers, you see everything with a new and broader perspective (the Transcendent). Wow! This is amazing. Your eyes have been opened, and there's so much to see.
Best of all, you are safe on the bleachers. That person who is out there on the field is not your True Self. You wish you could help those poor people who are suffering in the illusion of the ego. You want to show them the way out of suffering. You want them to join you on the bleachers so you can all enjoy watching the game, instead of taking it seriously and creating suffering.
You try to tell people about the bleachers, but nobody believes you. "Bleachers? What bleachers? I don't see any bleachers." They give you suspicious looks. You know they secretly think you are crazy. Well, that's okay. They are living in illusion. You know better because you have experienced the ulitimate reality - the Transcendent.
Then one day, wham! A ball from the game hits you as you are sitting there innocently on the bleachers, minding your own business. And it hurts! That wasn't supposed to happen. You've gone for so long without feeling egoic pain that you've forgotten what it feels like. Next thing you know, you are back on the playing field.
"What? I'm not supposed to be here! What's happening to me?" You try to get back to the bleachers, but you can't. Welcome to the fourth stage. The main difference between pre-enlightenment and the fourth stage is now you know there are bleachers. You sat on them for a whole year. You can't deny their existence. But for some reason, you can't find your way back.
Your ego is really no worse than it was before. In fact, it is better in some ways. But it hurts a lot more because you now have a high level of awareness. You see the dysfunction of your ego like you never saw it before, and you have no idea how to fix it.
The third stage gave you a break from your ego - a nice, long, blissful vacation in the Transcendent. But now you have to do the dirty work. And it's a big pile of garbage! You can't just walk away and say, "The ego's not real, so I don't have to deal with it." Until you deal with it, the garbage keeps piling up.
In the fourth stage, you see all the work that needs to be done, and it feels overwhelming. The temptation is to run away and bliss out like you used to, but for some reason that doesn't work anymore. You realize that suffering in the relative world is real. And since you feel the suffering so intensely, you want to do something about it.
The main purpose and ultimate outcome of this stage is to develop compassion and learn how to serve others with less ego. It is only at this stage that you can truly love your neighbor as yourself because you have experienced being one with everything, including your neighbor.
The Fourth Stage of Enlightenment
In the fourth stage, you realize there is no escape from suffering. Since you have so much awareness, you don't only feel your own suffering, but also the suffering of other people.
Bill Harris says that a person wouldn't be able to endure this much suffering if they hadn't developed the ability to witness during their time in the Transcendent. Initially, it's normal to run away from the intense suffering by trying to go back to the bliss state.
Eventually, you give up this tactic - but only when you develop the skills you need to cope with life more resourcefully.
When you have the skills, you stop running away from suffering, and you run toward it instead - like a paramedic or a firefighter. The greatest desire of a person at this stage is to serve others and alleviate suffering in the world. It is essential to find a way to serve.
Here's another metaphor: The ego's perspective is like a straight line drawn on a piece of paper. The line represents linear time. The ego only sees the part of the line it has already experienced and is now looking back on, although it can imagine what might happen in the future if it keeps traveling in the same direction.
An experience of the Transcendent is when you see the paper (the background on which the line is drawn). At first, you only get a momentary glimpse - a kensho. Your first kensho is shocking because it undermines the ego's belief that the line is reality. After many such glimpses, your perspective finally shifts to the paper for a prolonged period of time (enlightenment), during which you become very familiar and comfortable with this new perspective.
Then at some point, your perspective shifts back to the line. But you don't forget what you learned when you were experiencing the paper. Imagine the frustration of being stuck on the line again. That's the fourth stage. It is very humbling. Now your task is to integrate both perspectives.
The Fifth Stage of Enlightenment
The fifth stage is the integration of the ego and the Transcendent. It is like the apex of a triangle where the ego is in one of the lower corners of the triangle, and the Transcendent is in the other lower corner. The apex at the top of the triangle is a new perspective that transcends and includes the other two.
I think of the fifth stage as the perspective of the soul. You know yourself as a human being who has an ego, but you are not the ego. You haven't lost track of the ego (that was the third stage), but the ego doesn't bother you like it used to because you've done a lot of shadow work. To the degree that you have integrated your own ego voices, other people's egos cease to be a problem.
Your ego is still being transformed into a healthier map of reality. However, this ongoing transformation is free from that pesky feeling of trying to get somewhere that you had in the second stage. It's more like watching the map transform itself as you live your daily life.
You do your spiritual work because it is joyful. You're not trying to prove anything to anyone. Change happens naturally at the right time.
You have a big picture perspective of where you've been and where you are going. You see how the suffering of mortality is an opportunity for soul growth. This gives you greater peace, equanimity and wisdom than you experienced at any previous level. Each day is a new adventure as you live in the present, while maintaining a perspective that includes all time.
You know that there cannot be joy without sorrow. You have the awareness to choose your emotions. Sometimes you choose to experience certain types of suffering, such as grief, because you see how much you can learn from it.
You might choose to work on a difficult relationship, rather than withdrawing, because you see the value of doing the work. You don't do it out of codependency. You choose to fully engage in the relationship for the sake of soul development.
You forgive others quickly and don't hold grudges. When you make a mistake, you repent quickly and forgive yourself without wallowing in shame. This is a different response from the normal reaction of the ego that denies, defends or downplays the mistakes of the self and exaggerates the mistakes of others.
It's also different from the perspective of the person in the third stage who is floating around in the bliss of having been saved. The perspective of the Transcendent is perfection. Salvation is a Transcendent experience. It is absolutely real, but it happens outside of linear time. We still have to live our mortal lives as long as we are here.
Genpo Roshi says, "When we take responsibility, there is no fear." I think this quote describes the fifth stage better than anything else I can say about it.
Zen masters call both the Transcendent and the relative world "illusory." Paradoxically, they also call them "equally real." This paradox helps us see that they are two sides of the same coin. Neither exists without the other. The goal is to integrate both sides and live from this higher perspective.
Conclusion
In review: We've gone from being cathected (stuck) in the ego (pre-enlightenment), to being cathected in the Witness (third stage), to coming back to the ego with a permanent ability to witness (fourth stage), to integrating both sides and experiencing wholeness (fifth stage).
Next article: Non-Dual Perspective
Here's a meditation for expanding consciousness.
Be well,
Diane Linsley
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