A state for all stages

In Integral philosophy there are some core concepts: states, stages, lines, quadrants, and types. It will take a while to define these, but lets start with states.

You are already familiar with states. You have three major ones that happen every day: Waking, Dreaming sleep, Deep dreamless sleep. The thing that is common to all of these states is that they are temporary. You are not always awake, nor are you always asleep. Not only that, but the kind of sleep you are getting changes during the night, or from night to night.

So, states are the temporary form of your current consciousness. Their temporary, non-permanent, nature is important to remember.

Of course, there are not just 3 possible states. There are zillions. You can be in a state of meditation. Moreover, there are many different kinds of meditation that put you into different kinds of meditative states. You can be in a drug high, which is also a state. You can be in a state of depression, or elation. I am sure if you think about it, you can come up with many more types of states. Again, their unifying concept is that they are all temporary.

So, let me ask you a question.... If you take peyote and have a massively spiritual experience and see God or whatever your upbringing suggests you'd see, does that mean you are now at a high stage of spiritual evolution?

No!

Know why? The drug effects are a state, and they are temporary! Anyone can have a spiritual experience, through drugs or other means, but how do we tell apart those who are at different stages of spiritual evolution in the permanent sense?

The answer is in the question: Stages

Let's talk about physical objects to show this. Think of an atom. An atom is a stage of matter. Atoms can get together and form molecules. Molecules include atoms. The atoms get together and form something greater than themselves alone, and usually the molecule that they form is reasonably permanent. The molecule is the next stage of matter.

Molecules can form objects, like cells, if you have enough of them. Cells can form organs. Organs can form systems. Systems can form organisms.

These are stages of matter. They are manifestations of increasing complexity, and they are relatively permanent.

Evolution of consciousness, which people seem to equate with someone's "level of spiritual evolution" also has stages. Unlike states, once you reach a new stage of consciousness, it is permanent.

We'll talk more about these later.