 106. Meditation |
The Seven Stages of Life
Franklin Jones States:
The inevitable stages of psycho-physical growth, spiritual evolution, and ultimate divine awakening that are the potential for all human beings. THE FIRST THREE STAGES OF LIFE are the stages of basic physical, emotional and mental development of our ordinary human functions and capacities. Most people, even great leaders and geniuses, never go beyond these stages of human maturity. THE FOURTH STAGE OF LIFE is marked by true or profound psychic awakening – not mere sensitivity to psychic phenomena, but profound awakening to the inherently devotional disposition of love in relation to the Living Divine Reality, Person, and Spirit. Historically, the fourth stage of life has been exemplified only by great Saints and devotees of the Divine in the esoteric sacred traditions. THE FIFTH STAGE OF LIFE is the stage of Yogic, Spiritual ascent and cosmic mysticism beyond ordinary earthly awareness, and its exemplars have been the rare accomplished Yogis and Mystics of the Spiritual traditions of East and West. THE SIXTH STAGE OF LIFE, rarer still in the global history of human awareness and culture, is the stage of the transcendence of both physical and Spiritual awareness and experience, from the "Point of View" of Consciousness Itself, the Transcendental Reality. Its principal heroic explorers have been the intuitive Sages of the Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and other Oriental traditions. THE SEVENTH STAGE OF LIFE is the stage of Most Perfect Spiritual, Transcendental, and Divine Self-Realization, or the Realization of absolute Freedom, Happiness, and Love-Bliss, no matter what physical or psychic conditions arise to attention, or even whether any conditions arise at all.
Only the very greatest God-Realizers in all of human history have Incarnated this degree of continuous Identification with the One Unconditional Divine Reality, in Which the Realizer "Recognizes" all arising phenomena as non-separate modifications of that "Bright" Consciousness or Reality. True knowledge is always power.
-Franklin Jones
The path of yoga is divided into four stages, each with its expression. Achieving a certain power, the yogi (student) know that he has successfully passed the tests of one of the four stages. Emergence of the characteristic powers is evidence of the scientific structure of the yoga system, wherein delusive imaginations about one's "spiritual progress" are banished: proof is required. Spiritual masters warn devotees that unity with spirit should be the sole goal, not the possession of powers, the merely incidental "flowers" attained along the sacred path. May the eternal giver be sought. Not his phenomenal gifts.
-Yogananda
God not reveal himself to a seeker who is satisfied with any lesser attainment. The striving student is therefore careful not to exercise his phenomenal powers lest they "arouse" false pride and distract him from entering the ultimate state of purity. All action then are performed without "karmic involvement."
-Yogananda
Conventional religions like to think about the physical universe from the point of view of the PHYSICAL SELF. Therefore, conventional religion wonders about "WHAT COULD HAVE CAUSED ALL OF THIS AND ME" and from such conventional wondering, the myth of the creator-God is developed. But the idea of a CREATOR GOD only justifies beliefs that CONFINE one to SEPARATE SELF and conditional world, SPIRITUALITY goes beyond wondering and TRANSCENDS the SEPARATE SELF and the conditional world.
-Franklin Jones
And everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, of fathers, or mothers, or wife, or children, or lands. For my namesake shall receive a hundred-fold and inherit everlasting life.
