 Spirituality as a whole program must also self-destruct for you to return to the natural state That's right. It's a good segue into jumping into the stages that is as Frank just described to you in these short stages. That is this fifth stage transcending the entire paradigm of spirituality itself that very natty state the natural state so We'll go ahead and pull up towards this long definition of the stages first and a brief Entry into that. We're just going to mention that each stage has three levels. There's the more intellectual There's the experiential and the realized and it's important to be sincere and honest with which level you are at with each stage So let's go ahead and have Frank kick us off with the stages to find long Okay, let's do it. So Before I go into the stages, I just want to remind people that all those stages are just references Just like the code that I read nothing can No labels can touch This But during the path it's very valuable to have stages I mean help myself and a lot of people and if you look at a lot of different research About the different stages of waking that people go through like Warsaw Jeffery Martin or even the third about our four path model or there's the models that are, you know Advocated by people like Dana Ingram or whatever tradition that you're in there's always going to be some kind of stages in there Except for the really radical non-door teachers but usually people do go through different stages among filming and The stage what we're gonna talk about if you really want to match it you can match it to any school any tradition and it will make sense Stage number one is ego state stage of separation Basically, you're identifying yourself with this character inside the meat soup your sense of identity or sense of self is behind the eyes inside the head Or somewhere in the meat soup you're a contracted You're separated from the rest of the environment. There's a huge gap between the subject and the object Okay, second stage you have the awareness and consciousness face This is where I was a 95% of mainstream spiritual teachers talk about it Tell you to abide in awareness They tell you that you choose self is awareness or abide in consciousness or witness observer, whatever The reason for that is because After you see to that the ego is an illusion that it's just a fabrication You have to move your sense of identity to a larger ground after you have more spiritual openings and glimpses and Then you sort of disidentified from the ego and now your identification is with this new ground of awareness and consciousness Now this is a very vast Infinite spacious field, but there's still an observer here There's still someone that's observing the ego and the next step is to unplug even that to dissolve even the observer to be aware of awareness To witness the witness observe the observer And if you can't witness anything or observe anything you can still Disidentified from it. You can still objectify it and You realize that the observer is just actually more solidify sensations in the field of experience. That's taking credit for Nature or the universe at first it was the ego taking credit for it You have this huge block of solidity like a marble taking credit trying to take credit or infinity and then Awareness trying to take credit for infinity So now your new identification is awareness and the reason people ask you to abide awareness. It's not This is a very important point. It's not to create a new identity of awareness and be like I am awareness I mean that is the better more spacious identity than the ego, but you're an identity After you unplug different awareness you dissolve even the observer You move into the third stage is which is what I call the God stage This is the infinity stage, you know the creator being Christ consciousness Ottoman big self true self love The universal mind and this third stage is what I call the pinnacle of Spirituality the pinnacle of spiritual experiences anyway, maybe not the pinnacle of spirituality but the pinnacle of human and spiritual experiences and A lot of people think this is it which it could be I mean every stage is completely in of itself Don't get me wrong every single stage every aspect of the jewel the multiplicity of jewel of enlightenment is complete So we're not really making a hierarchy. It's more like Horizontal anyway at the start at the third stage we identify with the Godhead With the universal mind, but there is still a very subtle very subtle Identification because even at this point at this stage the separation Hasn't been completely dissolved so you feel like you're merging with the divine as long as there's merging There's still very subtle sense of duality So that's why I want to make a very clear distinction between you as a separate person Experiencing the divine versus just the divine recognizing itself Universe fucking itself versus you trying to fuck the universe There is a big distinction there anyway So after the third stage we move on to nothingness after expensive. What do we get we did contraction? This whole process is about expansion and contraction after you expand to infinity You shrink down from the big bang to the big crunch down to the singularity of nothingness emptiness Nirvana non-being or Brahman death non-existence So basically three and four are two sides of the same coin so at this phase You have this very nabulous sense of self total loss of identity Where the third stage you go around saying hey, I am God In the second stage you're hey bro. I'm consciousness. Don't you get it? Spirituality I am consciousness and the third stage you ice up consciousness. No, I'm God And the fourth stage you Total loss of identity you have this really big nabulous sense of self that you can't define it off And this is kind of like the stuff that Buddha talks about the emptiness the originations Where you Disidentified from even God consciousness because if you can be aware of God consciousness if you can experience God consciousness It's still an object within your field of experience that you can still Disidentify and objectify and make it not self and not this not that so we're doing self inquiry along the way, right? And after this phase you slip it to the natural state now This is very very tricky because stage three and four a lot of people would get stuck in a stage thinking This is it which again, I completely understand because I've been there and again each stage is complete But there's more to the picture. There's more to the fast different jewels of enlightenment the nothingness face If you can still experience it's very subtle sense of law sense of self so to speak There's still an experience there if there's an experience you can still witness it I've checked it back on it and after you disidentify and Disembent all the previous stages spontaneously you move to this fifth stage Like I'll shoot no self or the natural state the town So this stage not only Transcend all the other stages include some as well because the only way to truly embody something is to Disidentify from it if you let go of it it becomes yours even more fully and All the previous stages all the experiences all the mind blowing especially had that can be experienced even more fully paradoxically without the experiencer in the middle and This is the whole process is to dissolve the center point if you want to boil this down to the I Guess the microscopic level it's all about dissolving sensations and the last piece of sensation to get Disolved from solidity to emptiness is usually somewhere in the center in the head Before it was in the body, but then you keep shredding shredding shredding And it was in the head even if this last little bit of speck of sensation is as tiny as an atom It's still going to project itself onto a new ground and the smaller this atom is the bigger this ground is To get to a natural state you have to dissolve not just the ego But the background as well The background that gets created from the separate state and say oh even though my identity is this tiny little thing here That I can't even find it's in the middle of my experience. That's you're gonna Hang on to some sort of a ground some sort of a source like Brahman or like Godhead and very subtly He's thinking to think hey, I am from I am Godhead. This is just the Godhead. This is why I did shantay um Let that out. No, no, no, we'll get you out of shantay later, but this is what I said If realizing true self of no self, it's like perceiving the world without the eyeball Because the eyeball can't see itself. They can see everything else. So if you really truly recognize no, so You're not gonna be of experience or even see the no self. If you still have this sense of hope I'm looking for the cell but I can't find it. Oh, it's infinite. That's still not true No, so there's true no self There's nothing you can say about it, but the eyeball that nothing to be said about can see things and the manifestation of this What it sees You can describe and there's infinite levels to the manifestation Um If that's finding out your true self Uh An eyeball that can't see itself another analogy that similar is a mirror versus no mirror first you have a source you perceive the world as Denominance arising and passing out of a mirror the mirror could be any ground that you encounter in the path To the consciousness awareness or the God mind But after you truly dissolve separation If the ego is gone, so is the so is the mirror. So is the sword. So is the ground So you have to deconstruct even the background You have to do self-increate with the cell the small cell with the ego and then you have to do self-increate with the big self You have to do self-increate with the God mind But to do that you first have to access the God mind You have to access and identify with something before you can disidentify from it So all that's why all these different paths have to be sort of Go through you go through each one of them and then you just identify for them But by disidentifying from you actually disappear into them. If you disappear into them, you actually manifest them even more fully So they're only reflections, but no mirror at the end. There's only manifestation There's no unmanifested There's no source no background the unmanifested is just something that you imagine Because how can there be something that's unmanifested if it's non duality If this is one thing, right? There's only the manifested There's no mirror That's the answer to the Zen koan. What is the sound of one hand clapping? That's that that's the answer to that koan That's actually the koan There's actually this daymaster or maybe I think he was reading some uh some poem or some koan that he student wrote And for his student was writing about oh man, the mind is like a mirror I have to shine the mirror and everything just coming in and out of this buddha mind This natural mind, but then after that he realizes wait a second this mirror this buddha mind is also just a construction And then he said there's no mirror Okay, that was a little Thank you There we go. Thank you a little presentation All right before before we go on I just want to say one more thing If you find the stage the stage is very complicated Just remember one thing this whole spiritual path is about one thing The solution of the conditions that makes up the separate self the more you dissolve The more glimpses of reality which is formless it's open up And all the mystical experience that you experience are just a byproduct of This realization itself is not an experience And the separate self both disappear without the subject There won't be an object even the object that is God consciousness eventually dissolves And there's just this The absolute normie Now you're free to put on different lenses of perception as you see fit Yeah, so basically the entire spiritual path if you find this whole map too complex Just remember that the whole process is the solution of the separate self and its condition. That's it The more you dissolve the bigger opening you're gonna get That's why the stages of awareness and God and nothing that's whatever, right? um, so if the Separation is completely dissolved when the subject in the center is completely vanished. So is the background the background is also going to vanish So it's not like there is really ultimately no difference between ego awareness infinity and it's all the same They're just different with configuration and solidity of sensations, which we're going to talk about in a bit what sensations are But perfect