Seven Stages of Life - by Adi Da edited by Chris Tong and modified by Charles Rentz (article from: http://www.adidaupclose.org/introduction/seven_stages.html#secondstage)

1. Introduction

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What is the total process of human growth? What is the fullest extent of our potential? Avatar Adi Da Samraj offers a framework of seven stages of life, which represents His Wisdom on the entire spectrum of human possibility. He has systematically described not only our physical, emotional, and mental development, but also all the phases of Spiritual, Transcendental, and Divine unfolding that are potential for us, once we mature in ordinary, human terms. This unique schema, which proceeds from more familiar stages of human development to the ultimate phases of Divine Enlightenment (most likely over the course of multiple lifetimes), acts as an implicit reference point. It is an invaluable tool for understanding how we develop as individuals, and also for understanding how the Teachings and practices proposed by the various schools of religion and spirituality fit into the entirety of human potential.

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The first three stages of life are the stages of ordinary human growth from birth to adulthood. They are the stages of physical, emotional, and mental development. Ideally, they would occur in three periods of approximately seven years each (until approximately twenty-one years of age). But this ideal seldom occurs.

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Most individuals who reach adult age show some growth in the first three stages of life. In most cases, though, that growth is not complete — there is incomplete growth in some or all of the first three stages. Some people are what might be called "chronic first stagers", or "chronic second stagers", because they remain centered in the first (or second) stage of life even from one lifetime to the next; their egoic patterning includes mechanisms that keep them locked in that stage of life and resistant to further growth (e.g., having a disposition of "first stage and proud of it"; finding ways to surround oneself with people who "enable" the continuation of one's immature patterns; etc.).

There is a time to be an infant, and a time to be a child, but if we become neurotic as infants or as children, then we become chronically dependent. We express our self-contraction through fear, separation, and the search for immunity or release.

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2. Stage one: individuation

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The first stage of life is the process of adapting to life as a separate individual, no longer bound to the mother. Most important for the first stage child is the process of eating, and learning to accept sustenance from outside the mother's body. In fact, this whole stage of life could be described as an ordeal of weaning, or individuation.

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Ideally, the first stage of life occurs and is fully completed in the first seven or so years. This is a time of tremendous physical growth as well as an enormous amount of learning; one begins to manage bodily energies and begins to explore the physical world. Acquiring basic motor skills is a key aspect of the first stage of life: learning to hold a spoon and eat with it, learning to walk and talk and be responsible for excretion. If the first stage of life unfolds as it should, the separation from the mother completes itself in basic terms. But there is a tendency in most human beings to struggle with this original individuation, or to not accept its necessity. The result of such resistance is that, by the age of seven or so, we are left with a chronic (usually lifelong) feeling of being separate from the source of life and support. Note that this feeling of separation from the food source is an overlay on top of (or extension of) the original feeling and activity of separation that is the ego itself: the self-contraction.

3. Stage two: socialization

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Between the ages of five and eight years, we begin to become aware of the emotional and relational dimensions of existence; how we feel and how others respond to us emotionally becomes of great importance. This is the beginning of the second stage of life, the stage of social adaptation and all that goes with it: a growing sense of sexual differentiation, awareness of the effects of one's actions on others, a testing of whether one is loved. These are all the natural follow-ons to the individuation of the first stage of life. Adi Da points out that in the second stage of life, children naturally develop their psychic capacity and their sensitivity to etheric energy. For this reason, children should be encouraged to feel that they are "more than they look like" — they are not just their physical bodies — for the sake of their future Spiritual growth. The second stage of life is the primary stage of socialization, involving moral or right relational development. The socialization to which we are referring is based on feeling-sensitivity to the etheric dimension and one's effect on all others, rather than conventional socialization or worldliness. The full process of growth in the second stage of life is frustrated if we become locked in patterns of feeling rejected by others and rejecting and punishing others in return.

4. Stage three: integration

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In the early to mid teens, the third stage of life establishes itself. The key development of this stage is the maturation of mental ability — the capacity to use mind and speech in abstract, conceptual ways — together with the power to use discrimination and to exercise the will. On the bodily level, puberty is continuing (having begun during the later years of the second stage of life) with all its attendant bodily and emotional changes.

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The purpose of the third stage of life is the integration of the human character in body, emotion, and mind, so that the emerging adult is a fully differentiated (autonomous), sexual and social human character.

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The third stage of life includes not only integration of the parts of the body-mind (body, emotion, and mind), but also integration of self and world. Thus, in the first stage of life, one becomes aware of (and learns how to satisfy) one's own needs. In the second stage of life, one becomes sensitive to (and caring about) the needs of others. In the third stage of life, one develops the conceptual, problem-solving skills that allow one to come up with creative, intelligent solutions for balancing one's own needs and the needs of others.

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4.1. Dysfunction in the first three stages of life and how to outgrow it. If the process of growth in the first and second stages of life has proceeded unhindered, then the integration of the third stage of life can take place in a natural manner. If, however, there have been failures of adaptation in the earlier stages — a chronic feeling of being separate or unsustained, or chronic feelings of being rejected or unloved, and consequent difficulties in relating happily to others — then the process of integration is disturbed. Unfortunately, this is the case for most individuals.

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Thus, in most people, the process of the third stage of life becomes an adolescent struggle between the conflicting motives to be dependent on others and to be independent of them. This adolescent drama tends to continue throughout adult life. It is one of the signs that growth has stopped, that the work of the first three stages of life was never completed: the conflicted individual is not fully integrated. This is the case with most of us.

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Because the ideal of growing into a fully mature adult in the third stage of life happens so infrequently (especially in contemporary culture), most people are "adult" in age, but not maturity. We can identify large numbers of people who are "adult first stagers" and "adult second stagers". For example, adult first stagers are narcissistic and pre-relational. Many are capable of functioning in the world, and therefore necessarily must develop ways of interacting with others, but only as "objects"; they only take other people into account to the degree that those others serve or threaten their own needs.

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In the context of reincarnation, someone who has matured fully in the first three stages of life in the past lifetime has a predisposition to do the same — to recapitulate that development — in the next lifetime. In contrast, a person can be a chronic first stager, stuck in that phase of development lifetime after lifetime, and creating environments and values (e.g., a fixation with and over-valuing of self-reliance) in each life that serve to enable, reinforce, and perpetuate their first-stage pattern.

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So if one is stuck, how does one begin to grow again? One certainly can find all kinds of conventional help — psychotherapeutic help, conventionally religious help, conventional education, etc. — for one's liabilities in individuation, socialization, and mental development. But this help is not provided with the "bigger picture" of the seven stages of life in mind. These forms of help tend to turn development in the first three stages of life into a lifelong (or even multi-lifetime) effort, rather than merely the beginning of a life dedicated to realizing one's fullest human potential.

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The ideal way to begin to grow again is by participating in a living culture of spiritual practitioners, that understands and rightly nurtures each stage of development. Anyone, at any age, can begin the process of understanding and transcending the limitations of his or her growth in the first three stages of life and in all the stages of life that follow.

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4.2. The first three stages of life appear to be the necessary foundation for the later stages of life. The first three stages of life as the "foundation stages", because the ordeal of growth into human maturity is mere preparation for something far greater: Spiritual Awakening, and ultimately, Divine Enlightenment. This greater process begins to flower in the fourth stage of life on the basis of a profound conversion to love, the natural human development after individuation, socialization, and mental development. If, as often occurs in this or that spiritual tradition, one tries to "skip ahead" to spiritual development without first having fully established the human foundation for it, one will tend to use the spiritual practices as a means for dramatizing one's human shortcomings: yogis who becomes good at escaping from this world into other astral worlds because they are not capable of functioning or relating to others in this one; "holy men" or "holy women" who develop miraculous powers for the purpose of showing off and getting attention or "love", to compensate for their unconscious feeling of not being loved; shamans who use their highly developed psychic and etheric capabilities for "black magic"; and so forth.

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PLEASE NOTE that Phase 2 Pre-Enlightenment would be here between stage 3 and 4. The sections 4.1 and 4.2 above explains the necessity of this phase. This is the phase which virtually all people are in denial of due to fear of seeking inward, caused by: past wounds, personal judgments, unconscious belief systems, and familial, societal, cultural, and governmental conditioning. Basically, most are unaware of how unconscious ego-mind is dictating the course of our lives leading to a confused and fearful global collective. (For guidance on transcending and working through Pre-Enlightenment click HERE.)

5. Stage four: Spiritualization

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Even while still maturing in the first three stages of life, many people devote themselves to religious practices, submitting to an ordered life of discipline and devotion. This is the beginning of establishing the disposition of the fourth stage of life, but it is only the beginning. The real leap involved in transitioning to the fourth stage of life is one that very few ever make. It is the transition we associate with saints: nothing less than the breakthrough to a Spiritually-illumined life of Divine contemplation and selfless service. How does such a life become possible? Only on the basis of a heart-awakening to the Divine that is so profound that the common human goals — to be fulfilled through bodily and mental pleasures — lose their force.

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For that reason, it is strongly recommends that young practitioners do not engage in sexual activity until their growth in the first three stages of life is sufficient to enable them to make the transition to the fourth stage of life, which is ruled by the awareness of, and communion with the Divine Being. The joy of God-Communion vastly exceeds the pleasure of sexuality, as one deepens in one's practice of it. But if one becomes addicted to the pleasure of sex first, after that point, one may never again be able to free up enough energy and attention to even find God, let alone practice God-Communion to the point where the binding force of sexuality is naturally transcended (whether sexual activity is still engaged or not) by the joy of God-Communion. This is the ideal sequence in life; but of course, many of us begin our spiritual quest later in life, and have to deal with the task of overcoming the force of habit associated with our self-absorbing addictions to money, food, and sex. The longer we have lived a life given over to bodily and mental self-indulgence, the more difficult the task of transcending the force of habit later on — the necessary prereqisite for the transition to the fourth stage of life.

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We have mentioned that the fourth stage of life is a Spiritually-illumined life of Divine contemplation and selfless service. Both elements are necessary. We often point to people who have devoted their lives to helping others and call them "saints". They are good people, no doubt. But they are only saints — that is, in the fourth stage of life — if their selfless service is, first of all, to God, and only then to others; and that on the basis of awareness of and communion with God. True saints are Spiritual Realizers, not merely moral human beings.

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The purpose of existence for one established in the fourth stage of life is devotion, a moment-to-moment heart-intimacy with the Spiritual Reality. That intimacy is tangible and ecstatic, and it changes one's sense of reality. Everything that appears, everything that occurs, is now realized to be a process full of Spirit-Presence. This new vision of existence is given through Spirit-Baptism, an infilling of Spirit-Power described in many different religious and Spiritual traditions. The source of Spirit-Baptism is almost always a Spiritually Awakened Master (either in this life or a past life).

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Even though the fourth stage of life represents a profound and auspicious advance beyond the foundation stages, in the "big picture" of the seven stages of life, it is only the beginning of truly Spiritual growth. The primary presumption of (and primary error made by) someone in the fourth stage of life is that God and the individual personality are inherently separate from one another. God is the Sublime "Other" with Whom one Communes and in Whom one may become ecstatically absorbed at times, even to the point of apparent union.

Nevertheless, such raptures pass, and one is left with the continuing urge for union with the Divine Beloved. The individual being is still a separate ego, still searching, even though the goal of seeking is Spiritual in nature.

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These days, with globalized access to information about all the world's religious and spiritual traditions, many spiritual seekers presume they can just read about a particular esoteric practice, take it up, and grow spiritually. However, in reality, all such esoteric practices require a certain level of maturity of the practitioner as a prerequisite —  if there is to be any real growth or awakening. So, either one must already have that level of maturity upon becoming a devotee of a spiritual master, or one must develop that maturity in the beginning stages of practice, if one ever is to grow beyond the beginning stages of practice.

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At the beginning, you must break through the limit of the first three stages of life and move on to the fourth stage of life, which is a profound transition that very few have made in human time. Basically all of humanity is at school, and the fourth stage of life is the next transition. Therefore, this transition is most profound and requires great preparation. Thus, you must humanize yourself to a significant degree before you take up practicing stage four. Without this Divine Impulse to Realize, this impulse to Samadhi, religious life becomes rather conventional and socially oriented. It is organized around the first three stages of life.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj

6. Stage five: higher spiritual evolution

The fifth stage of life could be described as the domain of accomplished yogis or saints — individuals involved in the pursuit of Enlightenment through mystical experience (such as the vision of the "blue pearl", the vision of Jesus Christ), or the attainment of psychic powers. But it is important to note that, just as exceedingly few religious practitioners fully Awaken to the Spiritual Reality in the fourth stage of life, even fewer would-be yogis or saints become fifth-stage Realizers.

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The important difference between the fifth stage of life and all the stages of life that precede it is that awareness on the gross physical plane is no longer the normal mode of existence. Rather, attention is steadily engaged in subtle realms, that is, dreamlike or visionary regions of mind.

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The phenomena of the fifth stage of life arise as a result of the further movement of the Spirit-Current, now in the higher regions of the brain. In the fifth stage of life, the Spirit-Current moves from the ajna chakra through and beyond the crown of the head, and attention moves with it. At its point of highest ascent, the Spirit-Current triggers the yogic meditative state traditionally called "Nirvikalpa Samadhi" ("formless ecstasy"), in which all awareness of body and mind is temporarily dissolved in the Divine Self-Condition. Even though it is temporary, such an experience marks an enduring change in one's being. It is now clear that the individuated self in any limited form whatsoever — physical body or "spirit" or "soul" — has no eternal existence or significance. Only the Divine Condition of absolute Freedom and Perfect Happiness truly exists. Once the Divine Condition has been glimpsed in the state of "formless ecstasy", one's relationship to embodied existence is entirely different. One begins to see the body as a rather arbitrary, even humorous phenomenon.

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Even so, a limit on one's Realization remains. Nirvikalpa Samadhi, the culminating achievement of the fifth stage of life, is not a permanent Realization. It is, rather, a fleeting experience. At some point, bodily consciousness returns, and so does the ache to restore that boundless Bliss, free of the limitations of embodiment. What goes up must come down. For all its profundity, fifth stage Nirvikalpa Samadhi is held in place (while it lasts) by a subtle stress, performed by the ego. It is the ultimate fruit of the yogic strategy to escape the body by directing one's awareness upward into infinite Light.

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Let it be understood that higher mystical experience and the achievement of profound meditative states in the maturity of the fourth and fifth stages of life are not prerequisites for ultimate Divine Enlightenment.

When all necessary aspects of stage five are realized, a great conversion has occurred in the body-mind. One is no longer susceptible to the fascinations of visionary experience, even when such experiences arise. Neither is one moved to direct one's attention up and out of the body into the infinitely ascended state of "formless ecstasy". Rather, the "tour" of mystical experience has been revealed to be simply more of the futile search to be Perfectly Happy via egoic fulfillment. The pursuit of mystical satisfaction relaxes, and the devotee is then easily drawn beyond all habits of identification with bodily states and even beyond identification with the subtle mind states of the fifth stage of life, into the pristine, sixth-stage understanding of Reality as Consciousness Itself.

7. Stage six: awakening to the Transcendental Self

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In the sixth stage of life, one is no longer perceiving and interpreting everything from the point of view of the individuated body-mind with its desires and goals. One stands in the Transcendental Position, Awake as the Very Consciousness that is the Ground of all that exists. In that position, one stands as the "Witness" of all that arises, even while continuing to participate in the play of life. While life goes on like a movie on a screen, one sees the greater import of Existence and the non-necessity of all that arises. This is the beginning of what Adi Da calls "the ultimate stages of life", that is, the stages of Identification with Consciousness Itself.

Historically, the most prominent among the great sixth stage Realizers have been the Hindu and the Buddhist sages, and in some cases, the Taoist sages, who eschewed the fascinations of experience — physical or subtle — from the beginning. These great Realizers turned away from the enticements of "money, food, and sex" in the first three stages of life, as well as from the attractions of devotional (fourth stage) rapture and yogic (fifth stage) mysticism. Instead, the sages of the sixth stage of life have traditionally contemplated the freedom and purity of Consciousness — to the degree of Realizing that Consciousness Itself, eternal and prior to any mortal form or temporary experience, is our True Condition, our True Self.

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But even deep resting in the freedom of Transcendental Consciousness is not Most Perfect Enlightenment. An egoic stress is holding this Realization in place, as was the case with the fifth stage Realization of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Sixth stage practice and Realization is expressed by turning within, away from all conditional objects and experiences (including the energies and the movements of attention of one's own body-mind), and concentrating upon what is felt to be the Source of individual consciousness. Thus, the root of egoity is still alive. The search still remains, in its most primal form. The sixth stage of life is the search to identify with Pure Consciousness prior to and exclusive of phenomena.

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From this point on, the Condition of Consciousness Itself becomes the Position in which one Stands, and from that Position the sixth stage of life will arise. In the "Perfect Practice", one is no longer practicing from the point of view of the body-mind and its faculties. Now, devotional turning to God or Divine Nature takes the form of simply "choosing" to Stand in that Position (rather than the ego-position) — inspecting and feeling beyond the root-tendency to contract and create the self-identity called "I".

8. Stage Seven: Divine Enlightenment

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The seventh stage of life is release from all the egoic limitations of the first six stages of life. Remarkably, the seventh stage Awakening is not an experience at all. The true Nature of everything is simply obvious. Now the Understanding arises that every apparent "thing" is Eternally, Perfectly the same as Reality, Consciousness, Happiness, Truth, or God. And that Understanding is Supreme Love-Bliss.

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No longer is there any need to seek meditative seclusion in order to Realize Identification with the One Divine Reality. The Ecstatic and world-embracing Confession, "There Is Only God", is native (and therefore effortlessly perpetual) to one who enjoys the State of "Open Eyes". Consciousness is no longer felt to be divorced from the world of forms, but Consciousness Itself is directly understood to be the very Nature, Source, and Substance of that world. And so the life of the seventh stage Realizer becomes the Love-Blissful process of Divinely Recognizing, or intuitively acknowledging, whatever arises to be only a modification of Consciousness Itself.

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In the seventh stage of life, it is obvious that no aspect of the body-mind-self is necessary, and all of it can be happily "sacrificed" — released to the Divine — so that one's Divine Identity may be restored:

The seventh stage of life is described as having four phases:

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1. Divine Transfiguration

2. Divine Transformation

3. Divine Indifference

4. Divine Translation
    

In the phase of Divine Transfiguration, the physical body of the Realizer is Infused by Love-Bliss, and he or she radiantly demonstrates active Love, serving the Awakening of others.

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In the following phase of Divine Transformation, the subtle or psychic dimension of the body-mind is fully Illumined, which may result in extraordinary powers of healing, longevity, and the ability to release obstacles from the world and the lives of others.

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Eventually, Divine Indifference ensues. Divine Indifference is a spontaneous and profound Resting in the "Deep" of Consciousness, Blessing the world directly from the Heart-Place, rather than Working outwardly to effect benign changes.

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Divine Translation is the ultimate phase of the entire process of Awakening — the Outshining of all noticing of objective conditions through the infinitely magnified Force of Consciousness Itself. Divine Translation is the Destiny beyond all mortal destinies, from Which there is no return to the conditional realms.

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The experience of being so overwhelmed by the Divine Radiance that all appearances fade away may occur temporarily from time to time during the seventh stage of life. But when that Most Love-Blissful Swoon becomes permanent, Divine Translation occurs and the body-mind is inevitably relinquished in death. Then there is only Eternal Inherence in the Divine Domain of unqualified Happiness and Joy.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj has described the unfolding Mystery of the seventh stage of life through the homely image of crocks baking in a furnace:

When you place newly made clay crocks in a furnace of great heat to dry and harden the crockery, at first the crocks become red-hot and seem to be surrounded and pervaded by a reddish glow, but their shape is still defined. Eventually the fire becomes white hot, and its radiation becomes so pervasive, so bright, that you can no longer make out the separate figures of the crocks.

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This is the significance of Divine Translation. At first conditions of existence are Transfigured by the inherent Radiance of Divine Being. Ultimately, through Self-Abiding and through Divinely Recognizing all forms, in effect all forms are Outshined by that Radiance. This is the Law of life. Life lived Lawfully is fulfilled in Outshining, or the transcendence of cosmic Nature. In the meantime, cosmic Nature is simply Divinely Transfigured, and relations are Divinely Transfigured by the Power of the Divine Self-Position.

8.1. A new Possibility for humankind. The seventh stage of life is an entirely new possibility for humanity, uniquely Revealed. The Awakening to the seventh stage of life transcends the entire course of human potential and all the conditional structures of human existence — gross, subtle, and causal. The seventh stage of life is Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization, or Most Perfect Divine Enlightenment — absolute Awakening from every trace of identification with the sense of being a "separate self" in any dimension of existence.

The seventh stage of life is not "seventh" in the sense of "following" the first six.

The seventh stage of life Is Beyond and Prior to the first six stages of life.

The seventh stage of life has nothing to do with "stages" of life.

The seventh stage of life Is simply the Perfect Self-Demonstration of the Divine Reality-Truth, the Truth of the Divine Reality-Revelation. . .

The Always Already Self-Presence of Reality Itself Is the Secret upon Which right and true practice if founded.

8.2. Enlightenment is not about dwelling in any of the potential experiences of the first six stages of life. Enlightenment can be viewed as transcending the entire structure of the human being and of the conditional reality—gross, subtle, and causal; therefore, transcending both the urge to "have" experiences and the urge to "exclude" experience. The non-egoic seventh stage of life is radically distinguished from the first six stages of life, which have an egoic basis:
 

The first six stages of life are nothing but egoity — "self"-distraction, "self"-meditation, stimulations (whether peripheral or internal) of the brain and the nervous system. None of that has anything whatsoever to do with Reality (Itself) and seventh stage Divine Self-Enlightenment. The first six stages of life may have something to do with what is conventionally (and egoically) conceived to be the purpose of human existence — but the first six stages of life have nothing whatsoever to do with Reality Itself, or Divine Self-Enlightenment, or Most Perfect Realization of That Which Is Always Already The Case.

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