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.
Stages of Development
I previously wrote about cognitive development. I recommend reading that article before this one. I also recommend reading the article called Faith and Doubt, which describes stages of spiritual development.
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 this article, I will use Bill Harris's terminology, which is based on the teachings of an ancient Zen master named Tozan. Tozan described five stages of enlightenment, known as the Five Ranks of Tozan. The first two stages are pre-enlightenment, which were covered in previous articles.
The Third Rank of Tozan is the stage commonly referred to as enlightenment. But as you will soon see, it's not the end of the road. There are two more stages after it. People in the Third Rank of Tozan think they have arrived, and they may get stuck there for many years. As with all stages, if you stay there too long, it becomes another place of stuckness and stagnation.
I entered the Third Rank of Tozan 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 an end. As Zen master Genpo Roshi says, the Fourth Rank of Tozan feels like a fall from grace.
Several years of suffering in the Fourth Rank of Tozan 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 doing shadow work, I began my transition into the Fifth Rank.
The Witness Perspective
A kensho is a shocking experience of stepping out of your ego for just a moment. It feels like an eternity because the experience is outside of normal space/time. We call this the Transcendent.
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 permanent state of witnessing, which 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 the universe.
The goal of mindfulness meditation is to witness your body, thoughts, emotions, and everything in your environment. If you meditate long enough - typically for decades - you may experience enlightenment. I used Holosync meditation to accelerate the development of the Witness.
When I was in the Third Rank of Tozan, 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. This is like the experience that Eckhart Tolle describes in The Power of Now.
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 Rank of Tozan came to a natural, but rather abrupt and painful end.
The Fourth Rank of Tozan 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 into hell because that's where we do our shadow work.
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 Rank of Tozan (enlightenment), you suddenly find yourself sitting on the bleachers, just observing the game. You get to watch the game and all the players 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 called You 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.
So 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 Rank of Tozan. The main difference between pre-enlightenment and the Fourth Rank 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.
This is where karma catches up with you. Your ego is really no worse than it was before. In fact, it's 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 Rank of Tozan 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 you-know-what. 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 karma keeps piling up.
In the Fourth Rank of Tozan, 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.
The Fourth Rank of Tozan
Most of the good spiritual teachers in the world (not the New Age phony teachers) are trying to help people transcend the ego and get to the Third Rank of Tozan. There is very little information on further development after enlightenment.
In the Fourth Rank of Tozan, you realize there's 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 run towards it instead - like a paramedic or a firefighter. The greatest desire of the person at this stage is to serve others and alleviate suffering in the world. They embody the Bodhisattva or Christ consciousness with great compassion. It's important at this stage to find a way to serve in the world. I did this by becoming a life coach.
I also benefitted from doing Gamma Compassion, which is a binaural beat track made by Centerpointe Research Institute. It contains gamma wave frequencies, which increase one's ability to experience compassion. Other benefits include reducing the risk of Alzheimer's disease and increasing the ability to lucid dream and OBE.
The Fourth Rank of Tozan can last for as little as a decade or as long as forty years. It depends, among other things, on how quickly you can integrate the shadow. See the article, Non-Dual Perspective.
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, 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 Rank of Tozan. Now your task is to integrate both perspectives.
The Fifth Rank of Tozan
The Fifth Rank is the integration of the ego and the Transcendent. It's 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.
The perspective of the Fifth Rank includes the soul, not just the ego-personality. You sometimes see beyond your mortal life. This enables you to create a big picture perspective of where you've been and where you are going. You see how the suffering of this lifetime is simply an opportunity for soul growth that is preparing you for the future. Everything is about your soul's purpose.
You appreciate the value of every experience of life. This gives you great peace, equanimity and wisdom that is not experienced at any previous level. Each day is a new adventure as you live in the present, while maintaining a perspective that includes the eternal.
You know there cannot be good without evil or joy without sorrow. This isn't just a concept. It's your everyday experience of life. You have the awareness to choose your emotions and other experiences of life. Sometimes you choose to experience certain types of suffering because you see the value in the experience and how much can be learned from it.
An example of this is the person who chooses to work on a difficult relationship rather than withdrawing because they see the value of doing the work. They don't do it out of fear or codependency. They choose to engage fully in the relationship for the sake of soul development.
Another example is the person who chooses to go through the pain of repentance when they realize they've done something wrong. This is a different response from the normal reaction of the ego that tries to deny, defend or downplay the wrongdoing. The person in the Fifth Rank is grateful for having been shown how they went wrong. In fact, they pray for such great realizations.
It's also different from the response of the person in the Third Rank of Tozan who might say, "Right and wrong are concepts in the mind, not Reality. Everything is perfect and whole the way it is. It's all One."
That sounds very lovely, and it certainly is the way a person at that stage sees things (I've been there). Thankfully, people who are blissed out in the Transcendent don't usually cause much trouble because they are just floating around in the Witness state, and it's a temporary phenomenon.
The Fifth Rank includes the line on the paper, which has disappeared for the person who only sees the paper. We are mortal. We make mistakes. We need to make changes. We can make those changes after we come back to the ego-personality, which is where we engage with life and do our work.
Ego Development
One of my post-enlightenment experiences was falling in love with the ego. It is simple-minded to judge the ego as "bad." The ego is what human beings are working on at this time in history, and it needs a lot of work to become healthy and mature. I write about this in Soul Development.
You can benefit from having a healthy ego at any stage of development. An unhealthy ego is hell, which is why people want to escape from it.
As you might imagine, the Fifth Rank perspective is quite rare. The teachers I know who teach from this perspective are Ken Wilber, Genpo Roshi and Hal & Sidra Stone.
In review: We've gone from being cathected (stuck) in the ego (pre-enlightenment) to being cathected in the Witness (Third Rank of Tozan) to coming back to the ego, but with a permanent ability to witness (Fourth Rank) to integrating both sides and experiencing wholeness (Fifth Rank).
Next article: Non-Dual Perspective
Here's a meditation for expanding consciousness.
Be well,
Diane Linsley
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