Seven stages of enlightenment

 We have written this as per our own understanding. Most of the points are from the book supreme yoga / yoga vasistha, by swami venkateshananda. A disiple of swami sivananda very enlightened modern time sage. This book was recommended by my sister. We recommend it to all the serious seekers, this book is written as a dialogue between lord Rama and the sage vasistha in the assembly of his fathers court when dispassion and delusion besieged the young lord rama. Most of the books that are written recently by advanced aspirants have the same points mostly, thus the points are not limited to this book only.

The birth of desire in humans to understand the self is the first stage.

This desire is the seed or root cause of the entire manifestation, but in relation to spirituality it is the wanting to know the self. Wanting to know WHO AM I? This desire will end with the understand that I AM THAT, we can add in place of THAT{what I think I am, or what I understand that I am, or I AM BRAH-MA, a illusion meaning I am not different from the entirety}

Between the two major situations (happiness and suffering) in any ones life, suffering triggers this feeling or desire more than happiness towards the quest of understanding the problems of life.

The soul is forever seeking bliss, and happiness is the closest it can attain in everyday life situations is the sensual pleasures as it is mostly looking outwards. Thus in happiness it will never have the desire to want to know WHO IS ENJOYING as it is busy enjoying, which is its primary desire (seeking to experience of bliss of peace). Sorrow being the opposite of happiness, is not liked by anyone of us, and we do everything in our power to deter it, instead of ignoring it, we put all our effort and energy into thinking of ways to remove it, in the bargain we are continuously stuck with the experience, actually all these effort makes us sink deeper and deeper in sorrow as actually trying to negate it, we continuously think about it. Thus the experience!

We communicate it with all we come into contact or interact and they in turn remind us of it when we meet. Our intention is to find a solution but the way we adopt is continuously engaging our senses with it thus we cannot come out of it. 

Ultimately giving up and surrendering to the almighty. This giving up is actually nothing but a change of thought from attachment with sorrow to sublimation or surrender knowing fully or having full faith in the love and power of the supreme god, this changes the thoughts and the feelings and the trap of thoughts we had set ourselves in. Remember thoughts are the cause due to breathing, the more we are in stress the faster we will breathe. 

Guidance from mother nature was actually taking place continuously during the period of suffering in the form of visions, guidance from elders learned people including the books on every topic on the suffering all around us, but we were engrossed with our own thoughts experiencing pain, completely occupying our mind, with the ego that we can ourselves solve it with our own intelligence or that we are helpless and there is no one who will help us we go into a depression, little did we know that all that was required was change of thoughts.        

Now begins the second stage, which is actually, analysis or enquiry with a different perspective of a third person, just like looking from outside. Most of us enlightened people will forget the experience and get on with our daily life. But the spiritual aspirant (we normal people) will try to enquire. This usually starts with the question WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO “ME“? HOW CAN “I“ ENSURE THAT IT WILL NOT REPEAT IN THE FUTURE?

The search for everything related to the situation begins with every caution not to become trapped or experience the same situation again. Slowly these questions change and we ask WHAT IS SUFFERING? WHAT MAKES “ME” SUFFER? WRONG WHAT DID “I” DO WRONG?     

As the mind is occupied with these questions during our wakeful state, dreaming and sleep continuously it creates a new habit. We start to wonder why am I NOT suffering now when I am thinking about the same thing continuously. If we look carefully we will see that even though the mind is completely occupied with the details of sufferings, the experience of suffering is absent this is due to detailed description of the state is not reaching up to the memory and emotions level, thus consciousness is just replaying the situation with words from memory directly. The reason is simple we now are thinking about the entire incident or experience as a third person! The perspective is different it is as if we are observing from outside, this along with the restrained gross sense organs gives us all the answers with respect to only external things, but intelligence is not satisfied.

Since these topics are so much occupying our mind we relate or see these in relation with every thing we are doing in the present as well as in dream sleep. Now the internal realm is awakened to the query, this is where we find the root cause of all the problems. This is the beginning of spiritual journey.

Many of us may not become conscious of this in the beginning, it will be as if a brain wave has occurred, or a flash of imagination, things begin to fall in place, sequence of events are becoming clear, analysis takes on a permanent role in our lives, all natural deeds are analyzed, mind stays on one topic as in concentration (beginning stages of meditation.). THERE COULD ALSO BE reverse situation, delusion of what to accept and what to reject these may cause confusion; the only solution to this is seeking advice from the learned and more experienced persons in our society. Or changing the thoughts.

When they ask a direct question [FIRST ANSWER WHO IS SUFFERING?] Co-relating everything with external things first and does not find a answer (it is the normal habit), thus contemplates further, as the fear born from the experience of situation is fresh in the memory, this is the driving force for enquiry, not finding the answers it searches the memory this is the beginning  of internalizing oneself or purifying the memory. The access to deeper levels of memory from previous births is possible now. Not finding the answer we may go blank or sink deeper in depression. Totally engrossed with these we come to know that we have detached from both internal and external needs of the body/ mind / and soul, thus we become aware that, if we keep the consciousness occupied with something more important than daily life we cannot suffer or enjoy anything (single pointed), THIS REALIZATION IS THE FIRST TASTE OF PURE BLISS OR PEACE. 

The above state is when our mind becomes subtle and starts looking at subtle things related with everything in life (we go into the deeper levels of feelings). We find that we can co-relate with everything in Mother Nature to find answers to daily life situations as long as externalization is in progress with single pointed enquiry. THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THIRD STAGE. We quickly understand that if we externalise we are no different from all normal humans, we suffer and enjoy things just like them and during internalising we are free from most of the sufferings and enjoyments coming from outside. But the new found bliss of peace is so wonderful that we give up the attachment to sense pleasures and craving. We tend to seek solitude and deeper contemplation. This journey from gross to subtle opens us to the realm of feelings and energy; this is when the truth of oneness is revealed. The cosmic wisdom is revealed to us

This is when we transcend into the 4^th level, here all duality ends. The 5^th level is freedom from the three modes of nature. The 6^th level is the undifferentiated reality. It is from here we come back to the zero level of normal humans just to confirm the understanding and reaffirm ourselves. This is very necessary as giving up all that we achieved in our sadhana and getting trapped in worldly pleasure is possible. We try to help all, as we really know that we are really one so we are really helping ourselves. The success in enabling each human we guide confirms this truth. Now the self-knowledge is spontaneously experienced. The final stage (7^th stage) is beyond mind and feelings. We have cannot described these levels as joy of experiencing as the experience will be limited to our understanding and bliss of peace will be lost.