In this post I am happy to include excerpts from: ONE TASTE, book penned by Ken Wilber, whose brilliance I admire very much. His over 32 books are translated into 34 languages, dealing with topics of psychology, philosophy, politics, ecology, sociology, ecology, mysticism and spiritual evolution. And, based on what I have been 'allowed' to See/Know/Feel within my deepest interiority, the She Who Stands in the Center of Holy Fires of Exalted Wisdom, bears witness to the fact his words - with regard to the post-enlightenment stages - are not the 'last word'. He is still writing and maybe will have something more to say with regard to the Final Samadhi / non-biological Soul's Liberation.
"The stages of adaptation leading from causal/nirvikalpa/nirvana to nondual One Taste (or sahaja) are knoown as post-nirvanic stages, of which three or four are usually given. There are several variations on on these stages, but they all center around constant consciousness, or the unbroken access to witnessing awareness through all three states--first as plateau, then an adaptation--and then the disappearance of witnessing into nondual One Taste--first as peak, then as a plateau, then an adaptation.
Once One Taste has been stabilized as an adaptation, the post-enlightenment stages unfold. These are said to result in bhava samadhi, ot the complete bodily translationof the human into the Divine; or, alternatively, "the complete extinction of all things into the dharmata"; or, another alternative, the achievement of a permanent light body. (See The Eye of Spirit for a discussion of post-nirvanic and post-enlightenment stages of development.)
The post-nirvanic stages (the essence of Mahayana and Vajrayana, which do not merely embrace Formlessness--nirvana--but integrate that with the entire world of Form--samsara--to result in pure nondual One Taste) have always make sense to me; and based on my own experience, I can testify to the existence to of constant consciousness and One Taste, both of them as prolonged and recurrent plateau experiences, sometimes lasting uninterruptedly 24-36 hours (although, in one case, constant consciousness persisted day and night for eleven days.). Neither is a permanenet adaptation in my case, but there are several teachers I have met who, I believe, are in such, and the literature is replete with them. All of these post-nirvanic stages inherently make sense because they are, after all, simply the stages of adapting to nonduality (the stages of integrating nirvana and samsara, Spirit and manifestation, Emptiness and Foorm). Morover, with the EEG data now being gathered by Alexander and others, we seem to have hard corroborating evidence that such stages do in fact exists.
But the pos-enlightenment stages have never made much sense to me, nor have I ever met anybody who who was believably at those stages. Those stages, as they are described, have always struck me a a holdover from magic--they always include items such as one's body going up in light, being able to perform ectraordinary miracles of transformation, etc.--none of which has any credible, reproducible evidence. As for the notion of "the extinction of all things into the Dharmata," this sounds indistinguishable from jnana or nirdoh--a regression from One Taste, not a development beyond it. I am not saying these stages do not exist; I am saying that, compared with all the other stages that the traditions offer (and that I briefly outlined above, including the post-nirvanic stages), the post-enlightenment stages have the least amount of evidence--possibly because they are so rare, possibly because they are not there."
I admire Ken Wilber's brutal honesty, his assertion which I second wholeheartedly, that: " "Soul" has come to denote, in this feeding frenzy of translative grasping, not that which is timeless in you but but that which most loudly thrashes around in time, and thus "care of the soul" incomprehensively means nothing much more than focusing intensely on your ardently separate self. Likewise, "spiritual" is on everybody's lips, but usually all it really means is any intense egoic feeling, just as "heart" has come to mean any sincere sentiment of the self-contraction." +
"...but authencity always and absolutely carries a demand and a duty: you must speak to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you.
Alas, if you fail to do so, you are betrying your own authenticity. You are hiding your true estate. You don't want to upset others because you don't want to upset yourself. You are acting in bad faith, the taste of bad infinity.""Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any relalization of depth carries a terrible burden: Those who are allowed to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate it to others (that is the ultimate meaning of the bodhisattva vow). And therefore, if you have seen, you simply must speak out. Speak out with with compassion, or speak out with angry wisdom, or speak out with skillful means, but speak out you must. And this is a terrible burden, a horrible burden, because in any case there is no room for timidity."
