Q&A: How Does Awakening Unfold? In Stages?

The entire process reflects how much of the assumptions about reality (untruth) have been ‘scraped away,’ and how much of reality as it truly is has been recognised. It is a journey from ‘I know what I am’ to ‘I don’t know what I am.’

Let’s start with a description that points to what reality is, so we can keep it in mind when naming the ‘stages’ that reflect this reality’s recognition. In the italicised text below, I will refer to you by your true identity, or no-identity, as ‘being’ itself, and to the person you believe you are as ‘person.’ You may as well replace ‘you’ with ‘I’ as you read the next two paragraphs.

All there is is you. You are the primordial being, a presence untouched by anything at all, not by space or any dimensionality, nor by time, nor by anything within space-time. No category can wholly determine you, not even ‘real’ or ‘unreal,’ ‘existence’ or ‘nonexistence,’ ‘something’ or ‘nothing.’ Space-time and everything within it is itself an arising of you — an apparition or dream made entirely of you. You dream an infinite number of dreams. One of them is the dream about the person you believe you are, who lives in a world.

This dream arises as a theatre of awareness. The entire dream, with all its content, is nothing but the primordial being — you. There is no separation whatsoever, not even in the slightest, between you — the primordial being as the dreamer — and the dream that you contemplate as the play of being a person and their world. Believing you are a person living in the world, you are asleep to yourself and utterly immersed in dreaming the dream of being a person.

Recognition, or awakening, reflects how much of your reality is recognised for what it truly is, leaving no assumptions untouched. This process begins when you start wondering if what you believe about your reality is true, i.e., whether what you believe reflects an immutable ‘real’ that exists independently of your believing. You start with the most apparent assumptions and identities, such as ‘I am Artur, and I am this and that.’ And you go on from there.

There are different classifications of stages that reflect this process. Here’s one I am most familiar with — the three stages of immersion in reality (samāveśas) of Kashmir Shaivism.

1. Ānava-samāveśa — Here, you begin to question and see through the identity you hold as a person with specific beliefs about themselves. You realise you cannot, at your deepest core, be this person you have believed yourself to be, because ‘you’ change every time your beliefs about this person change. Who, then, is the unchanging experiencer of this change? Here is a post that delves deeper into the inquiry of self-identity at this stage.

2. Shākta-samāveśa — Having realised you can’t be defined by these changing ideas, you delve deeper. You discover your nondual nature by realising that you are the awareness itself; you and your world are inseparably ‘no-two.’ You are ‘palpably’ the cosmos made of yourself. Yet, what are you, really? Here is a read that explores the ‘everything’ aspect of being.

3. Shāshāmbhava-samāveśa — You keep wondering what you are, and everything you’ve discovered about yourself is also revealed as nothing at all, the primordial being at the heart of all that is. You are both the cosmos and that which appears as cosmos. The cosmos is a dream, and you are both the dreamer and the dream. You also realise that you are not confined to this dream alone; you are infinitely all possible dreams. Here is more writing that explores the ‘nothing-everything’ nature of being.

When fascination with your discoveries subsides, curious attention turns toward intimacy with the heart of the mystery of you — the impenetrable source being that is not ‘experience-able’ yet fully ‘be-able.’ That is to say, it cannot be an object of its own contemplation, but rather, it’s that which contemplates itself as everything, as the shining of awareness, with the ‘shiner’ remaining unseen in all the ‘shining.’ Yet, this impenetrable origin and the creation are indistinguishably one. Wherever you poke with your finger right now is both the source and its creation.

This description is really just a poetic expression of the poignancy and the beauty of the mystery, highlighting the impossibility of conceptually penetrating it or knowing it as anything other than pure being. The appreciation of reality as pointed out in this description can be attributed to the 3rd stage or perhaps extended into a 4th stage, if you will.

The process of recognition can be presented in many ways and does not necessarily unfold in neat, progressive stages. It may announce itself as it does, without adhering to any predefined expectations set by a ‘rulebook.’ These particular stages and their progression represent one tradition’s method of providing guidance through the natural process of shedding beliefs and falling into truth, as well as a way of capturing patterns in how being returns to ‘knowing’ itself in its fathomless truth.

At the end of it all, when asked ‘What are you?’, all you can truly say is ‘I don’t know.’