Now we mentioned that around the world, the great meditative traditions, the

esoteric traditions, left maps of their paths of Waking Up. What is so astonishing here is

that, just as the many different models of Growing Up generally share the same basic

6-to-8 major levels of development, so the various meditation systems around the world

often present around 4-or-5 or so essentially similar stages of path of the Waking Up.

Again, some present more stages, some less; and all the surface features vary

considerably from culture to culture and often individual to individual. But as an

orienting generation, the world’s great wisdom Traditions often leave us fairly similar

maps of the path of Waking Up, and common to many of these maps are the major 4-or-5

central stages in the process of Waking Up.

 Without getting lost in details here—these are available in other presentations—

I’ll simply give a handful of examples from around the world showing the general

similarity of these paths of Waking Up.

First, a little technical item: let’s simply note that the stages of Growing Up are

composed of what are called structures of consciousness (the hidden maps, rules, and

regulations, the hidden grammar of each of the stages of Growing Up—such as, using the

simplified 3-level model, the structures of egocentric, ethnocentric, and worldcentric—

these structures tend to be those hidden maps that we have explored. All multiple

intelligences are composed of the fairly rigid structures of consciousness—and again,

these hidden patterns cannot be seen by simply looking within). But, the stages of

Waking Up are composed of states of consciousness—not structures, states—and states

include much more fluid things like altered states, flow states, meditative states, mystical

states, unitary states with nature, and so on—they are much more fluid, more flowing,

and—the biggest difference—they are directly experienced in a very obvious, very

immediate fashion—when you are operating from a structure, you rarely know it; when

you are hit by a state, you definitely know it. If you’re operating from an ethnocentric

structure of Growing Up, it’s that hidden grammar that you are following but don’t know

it—it really is hidden. But if you are meditating and you have an experience of universal

love with all beings, believe me, you know it—it’s very obvious, very clear. It is a 1st-

person, direct, immediate experience, often overwhelming.

Thus the major Paths of Waking Up all tend to focus on 4 or 5 major natural

states of consciousness, and these natural states—when entered consciously—become the

general stages in the path of Waking Up (we call these “state-stages” to distinguish them
from the “structure-stages” of Growing Up). Variations on these state-stages exist

around the world, but they commonly include, for example, the waking state, the dream

state, the deep dreamless state, the empty witnessing state, and the pure nondual or unity

state (that last state especially being the home of Enlightenment or Awakening).

Particularly as these become stages of meditation, they are often referred to, respectively,

as the physical or gross state, the subtle state, the very subtle or causal state, the turiya or

witnessing state, and turiyatita, the nondual or unity or Enlightened state (this is the

version common to Vedanta Hinduism, Kashmir Shaivism, and Vajrayana Buddhism,

although also found in Western schools of Neoplatonism, Sufism, and Kabbalah).

Thus, Evelyn Underhill, in her classic Mysticism, maintained that all Western

mystics go through essentially the same 4 or 5 major stages of unfolding: usually

following a preliminary awakening experience they move through a gross purification, a

subtle illumination, a dark night or infinite abyss, and a unity consciousness—or gross,

subtle, causal, unity. In the Eastern system of Mahamudra Buddhism, a well-known

teacher lists the major stages as: “identifying our gross state, then realizing directly that

state; identifying our subtle state, then realizing directly that state; identifying our very

subtle (or causal) state, then realizing that state directly”; with the ground of all of them

being ever-present nondual Awakened awareness—again, gross, subtle, causal, and

nondual unity.

Daniel P. Brown, the Harvard psychologist who was one of my co-authors in

Transformations of Consciousness, began his brilliant life-long study of the stages of

meditation by looking at 14 root texts of a school of Tibetan Buddhism, and after finding

6 major stages in all of those texts, compared those with the Buddhist Abidharma system,
Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and several Chinese and Western schools, and found an

essentially similar pattern of these 6 major stages. In the same book (Transformations of

Consciousness), we included Harvard theologian John Chirban’s study of a half-dozen

early desert saints of Christianity, and found 5 or 6 contemplative stages they all went

through—and these were highly similar to Brown’s (and Underhill’s and others’) overall

maps of Waking Up—all variations on gross, subtle, causal, witnessing, and nondual

unity.

As a final quick example of so many that could be given, the postmodern

American adept Adi Da maintains, “To Realize Most Perfect Divine Enlightenment, the

ego must be transcended through three distinct phases—first at the [gross] physical level

(the level of ‘money, food, and sex’), then at the subtle level (the level of internal visions,

auditions, and all kinds of mystical experience), and finally at the causal level (the

root-level of conscious existence, wherein the sense of ‘I’ and ‘other,’ or the

subject-object dichotomy, seems to arise in Consciousness).” The fourth phase for Adi

Da is the Realization of “Always-Already Truth,” the ever-present nondual Goal,

Ground, and Condition of all existence, high or low, sacred or profane, manifest or

unmanifest. Thus, gross, subtle, causal, (implicit root-witnessing), and nondual—all 5

general states. Now we certainly don’t want to pigeonhole all these meditative systems;

it’s just that these same 4 or 5 major states of consciousness keep showing up in

meditation system after meditation system, worldwide and throughout history. Again,

there are other ways to map this path of Waking Up, but this is by far one of the most

common and most widely spread.

 Part of the reason that there is such a similarity among these Paths of Waking Up

might have to do with the fact that many of the natural states of consciousness that are

entered with pure awareness or Wakefulness have roots in direct biological brainwave

patterns, and those are universally similar wherever humans appear—all humans, for

example, wake, dream, and sleep—and thus have the same core access to gross, subtle,

and causal realms—and those brainwave patterns seem to be universally similar in all

humans (trying to claim, a la postmodernist extreme “cultural relativism,” that Jews and

Hindus have different waking, dreaming, and deep-sleep brain states just doesn’t wash—

there are universal similarities here). Entering those states in full awareness, then, would

be expected to produce largely similar results for whoever did so—thus the

cross-culturally similar gross, subtle, and causal state-stages of the Paths of Waking Up

(and they all maintain, of course, that all of those states are grounded in the groundless

Ground or Nondual Being of ever-present unity consciousness—the Supreme Identity,

Godhead, the Great Perfection, which would therefore also likely be similar, in deep

features, worldwide, even though all of them would—and do—differ in surface features.

Thus, for example, the deep features of the brainwave patterns in the dream state are the

same for humans everywhere, although the dream contents differ from culture to culture

and individual to individual).

Now what we’re going to do here is particularly focus on the two highest states in

this overall sequence—the empty or transparent Witness and pure nondual Unity—

simply because everybody is generally familiar with the first three stages—gross/waking,

subtle/dreaming, and causal/deep sleep. But even though, in a certain special sense

(which we will see), these two highest states (Witnessing and Unity) are “ever-present,”
many people are not consciously aware of them. And yet they are, basically, the two

most important states, since they are responsible for the various forms of “Waking Up” or

“Enlightenment” or “Awakening”—these two states are the end sequences and

fulfillment of the entire Waking Up process.

So I’ll first briefly make just a few comments about the first three states

(gross/waking, subtle/dreaming, and causal/deep sleep)—just to see what we’re talking

about here—and then we will jump directly to the last two stages, the two highest stages

in the general Waking Up sequence, and set out a series of experiential exercises to catch

a direct glimpse of each, so we can see what’s involved—and also, how these differ

dramatically from any of the levels of Growing Up that we will also be exploring.

Sand then, starting with the very next section, we will go directly into the

experiential realizations….

Gross, Subtle, and Causal

The gross, subtle, and causal realms, as we noted, seem universally so similar

because in most cases the brain patterns of each state are similar in humans wherever

they appear. The waking state, the dream state, and the deep dreamless state are

essentially similar in humans worldwide (the dream state, for example, is 4-8 Hertz—or

cycles per second—of brainwaves in the brains of humans everywhere). But rarely do

people actually experience all these states in full consciousness, and therefore the

deepest, hidden “secrets” of these states remain just that—hidden. Again, early

developmental researchers found few people at these conscious stages because so few
people had actually taken up a training that would expose them to these states in a

continuous, conscious, aware fashion. Because, as we noted, what we have generally

found is that in any overall meditation sequence, as these major natural states are entered

in consciousness, they become actual stages in the overall meditative path (that is, they

are state-stages).

The general idea is that Awareness per se, or Consciousness, or Wakefulness,

starts out in a human being identified with the gross physical world—Wakefulness is

identified with the waking state. And if Wakefulness is trained, it can enter successively

and in consciousness the dream state, the deep dreamless state, the empty Witness (or

“True Self”) state, and finally the ultimate, nondual, “unity” state—a completely

“Awakened Wakefulness.” But in the meantime, not only the stages of Waking Up, but

all the stages of Growing Up, all start out in the lowest dimensions—the sensorimotor,

physical or physiological, gross realm—that is, the lowest, the stage-1 sequence, in both

paths. Wakefulness is identified with the physical waking state, and that’s all it can

directly recognize in full awareness.

Most of the Great Traditions identify the gross or physical state with insentient

matter—that is, with those items that are not alive, and a simple awareness of that

physical realm. (Of course, virtually all of the Traditions maintain that even “lifeless”

matter is a form or manifestation of Big Mind or Spirit itself—and thus “matter” doesn’t

lack Spirit, it’s simply the “lowest” level of Spirit.) But in any event, the gross or

physical realm is the realm of sensorimotor matter—all of those material objects, items,

and processes that you easily see with your senses everywhere around you. You are

already conscious of this realm, this state, in your ordinary waking awareness—which is
why this state is called the “waking state.” And your conventional finite self is already

largely identified with items from this realm—your physical body, physical needs and

desires (this is likewise stage-1 in the Growing Up sequence).

Now individuals will always be displaying some degree of growth in both

developmental sequences—some degree of Growing Up and some degree of Waking Up.

Everybody starts at square one in both sequences—so as a newborn, your fixed starting

identity is with the first stage of Growing Up and the “lowest” state/realm of Waking Up

(the gross/waking). We call this dual-growth situation the “dual center of gravity,”

because each person will always have a particular degree of growth in each sequence

(their “dual centers”). So they will have a general or average level of development in

structures or Growing Up (this is their “structure center of gravity”), and they will have a

general or average level of development in states or Waking Up (this is their “state center

of gravity”). And these two developments can be extremely uneven—you can be very

high, medium, or low in overall Growing Up, and at the same time, high, medium, or low

in overall Waking Up. You can be very high in one and quite low in the other—and vice

versa (and every combination in between). This is important to recognize, because it

means you can be quite advanced in mindfulness or in Zen training or in Christian

contemplative training, and yet remain quite low in Growing Up in any number of

multiple intelligences. And this, of course, is one of the main reasons that we want to

train them together.

But, we were saying, one item that will very likely start happening as you take up

a mindfulness-type of meditation (or in general, a practice of Waking Up), and you are
presently identified with the gross/waking state, is that you will start to slowly become

aware during dream states as well. Your Wakefulness will shift deeper—from just the

waking into the dream state also—so that while dreaming, you’ll be aware that you are

dreaming. You are starting to become conscious and aware of the subtle realm and all its

secrets.

Now this might happen to a relatively small degree, and only occasionally; or it

might happen big time, and you almost always start lucid dreaming most of the time. But

the point is that, in either case, your center of gravity—your state center of gravity—is

starting to expand (following that “transcend and include” increase of more wholeness,

more inclusiveness, more consciousness). You will start to notice that, for example, in

your waking state, you identified with a lot of items, most of which were indeed

gross/physical—you identified with your physical body, with your material possessions

(house, car, clothes), your relationships (especially their physically noticeable aspects—

looks, appealingness, sexiness, etc.), you likely identified with your money and finances,

your job, and so on. And yet in the dream state, virtually none of those are present—not

in anything like their typical form—and yet you notice that you are still you. There is

some sort of “I-ness” that remains the same “I,” even though almost everything that it is

usually identified with is gone—in the dream state, all the gross/physical items you

usually identify with are either not present, or exist in wildly different forms. But you are

still you, and you still feel that you are you. YOU are dreaming, the same YOU that will

soon be awake eating breakfast—a core “I-ness” remains the same.

As you start to notice this, and that awareness becomes stronger and stronger, the

stranger the whole thing might start to appear. You really do feel that you are the same
you in the dream state that you are in the waking state, but nothing else is similar—the

entire material universe has disappeared. Yet there is some sort of awareness, of

Wakefulness, of consciousness, that essentially remains unchanged in you, whether you

are “awake” or “sleeping”—in both cases, you are actually AWAKE. You are somehow

the same awareness, the same you-ness, the same I AMness, the same consciousness that

you are when awake—there is something so deep in you that it doesn’t matter whether

typically “awake” or “asleep”—it is one and the same and unchanging, this deep I

AMness. And this is a sense of self, this is a self awareness, that is very, very different

from the standard, waking-state, physical-body-identified ego. Something else is going

on here. What is that???

What that is, according to the Wisdom Traditions, is that you’re getting closer and

closer to your Real Self, your True Self, what Zen calls your “Original Face,” and a self

that every major Great Tradition maintains is ultimately one with Spirit—we saw the

Sufis call this your “Supreme Identity.” As we will continue to see (and soon directly

experience in person), this means your True Self is timeless and eternal, Unborn and

Undying; it doesn’t enter the stream of time but lives in the timeless Now or pure Present.

Zen says—and it means this absolutely literally—“Show me your Original Face (your

True Self), the Face you had before your parents were born.” The self you had before

your parents were born? Yes, and as I said, they mean that literally—that is not symbolic

or metaphoric; you had this Real Self of yours before your parents were born, before the

universe was born, before time itself—simply because this Supreme Self doesn’t enter

the stream of time at all, but is a timeless Now, an eternal-Present awareness—and as

your state center of gravity shifts closer and closer to this pure Witness (or True Self) and
the nondual “unity” consciousness (the oneness of that True Self with Spirit itself and the

entire universe), then the more that timeless eternity becomes obvious.

(And remember, “timeless” or “eternal” does not mean everlasting time—it

means a moment without time, a timeless Now or Present. As Wittgenstein put it, “If we

take eternity to mean not ever lasting temporal duration but a moment without time, then

eternal life belongs to those who live in the Present.” And the True Self is plugged

directly into this timeless Now, as we will soon see directly.)

Again, all of this might sound pretty “far out” or even goofy. If so, please hang in

there until we do the exercises that will directly put you in touch with both of these

highest states of consciousness, so you will at least be able to directly experience this

yourself and make up your own mind based on some real evidence. So until then—our

very next section—please hang in there with me.

As your meditation practice continues to deepen (and we’ll be going over the

actual instructions for that in just a minute), and you move into the next-higher

state-stage beyond the subtle—namely, that of the pure, dreamless, formless causal

realm—that shift in your state center of gravity continues, and as you enter the deep

dreamless state, a very subtle awareness will nonetheless still tend to be present, and you

will realize in a very delicate fashion that, once again, even though virtually nothing is

present in that state—it is a “dreamless, formless” state—YOU ARE STILL YOU. There

is still a very, very subtle degree of awareness or profound Wakefulness or pure

consciousness that is present—and you still feel exactly you, exactly the same I AMness

that you were when there were objects present. (Individuals who achieve this state-stage

show a distinctive EEG brainwave pattern when they sleep—they show significant delta
waves, characteristic of deep dreamless sleep, but with added alpha waves, which are

characteristic of the waking state, suggesting that both states are simultaneously

present—that is, there is a Wakefulness in the dreamless state.)

This dreamless formless state drives home the sense of a Self—and I’ll use a

capital “S” to start emphasizing this—a sense of Self that is indeed not dependent upon

being identified with any objects whatsoever; that instead is radically Free, Liberated,

Released, Emancipated—very close indeed to that Original Face that you have had since

before your parents, before the Big Bang, before time itself—and a Self that is Free of all

phenomena, including suffering, anxiety, fear, craving, lusting or loathing—and rather is

Open, Clear, Free, Transparent, Spacious, timeless I AMness—truly your Real Self, one

with Spirit, one with the Kosmos, one with the All.

Now the reason that we are moving through a brief description of these first three

states (gross, subtle, and casual) and will now move directly to exercises for experiencing

the two highest states, is that in those highest states, this prior, radical, ultimate Supreme

Identity and True Self is directly and immediately available and obvious. You will see

that they are, indeed, ever-present—they are actually fully present in you right now, in

this moment, and we only need to point to them for you to be able to recognize this and

see them. (And that’s what we’ll be doing in just a minute.)

Now, of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong—and much right—about

taking up a formal meditation practice and directly moving through all of these major

state-stages fully (including gross, subtle, and causal). And there are literally hundreds of

absolutely first-rate books on this topic, and in virtually all of the major Traditions, that

are available. Most towns and cities now have some sort of meditation centers and
schools of practice. (But I must warn you that you will not find any school anywhere that

is aware of both the stages of Growing Up as well as the stages of Waking Up, so please

be very, very careful about what you accept from their teachings. Of course, we haven’t

yet gone into any real details of the 6-to-8 major stages of Growing Up, but once we do—

soon—I think their profound importance will be become extremely obvious.) But, before

then, we are now going to move directly to the conclusion of this whole Waking-Up

process, and do some exercises right now to realize both the True Self or pure Witnessing

awareness—or pure mindfulness—and then the traditional highest state, that of Ultimate

Nondual Unity Consciousness, the Supreme Identity—the end result of the whole process

of Waking Up. And if you’ve never been exposed to anything like this before, I think I

can safely say, be prepared to be a little bit shocked.

So the next time we get together, we will start by immediately jumping into

exercises for a direct experience of this True Self, this pure Witness, this Original Face,

your real Condition. So this presentation has been the basic background “theoretical”

content; and the next session—and all of the following sections—will also be focusing on

direct, immediate, pure experiential exercises, so you will have a chance to check all of

this our directly for yourselves and see if it makes sense. So until then, Godspeed and

good luck. This is Ken.