We’re also aware of the ego’s fundamental need for meaning and cohesion to a new level. Our identity merges with The Great Web of Life. Though the “physical” world doesn’t magically cease to exist, we realise the idea of physicality is itself relative to our perception, and that physicality rests in a deeper, more fundamental substrate. As a result, the sense that there’s a given, predefined world breaks down, and we see the world to be “psychophysical”, as Ken Wilber says. We tune into a broader, wider sense of self that is beyond thought and physicality.Īccompanying this experiential distancing from the mind is the realisation that mental concepts deeply influence and warp our experience of the world. Here we begin to drop our identification with the body-mind, seeing beyond the illusion that we are a separate person that lives behind the eyes and inside our head. It is the junction between the 2nd- and 3rd-tiers. This altitude is called para-mind, “para” meaning beside the mind, beyond the mind. Indigo, altitude 9, marks the beginning of our journey into these transpersonal levels. Here’s a visual summary of the four stages: each one links to a fundamental state of consciousness or stage of contemplative growth.these stages are transpersonal, and we have a “direct sense of wholeness” and “awareness of awareness”.

So to really reach them, 7 and 8 need to be active. While we might experience meditative growth, that doesn’t guarantee we’re embodying these stages. That might seem like an innocent point, but it’s crucial. The final point I’d like to make is that these stages come after altitudes 7 and 8. Most people are almost constantly lost in thought, absorbed in the senses and bound to the perception of physical matter and linear time. This gives us a vantage point beyond the senses. This means a more or less constant perception of the fact we’re aware and are experiencing life through sound, sight, feeling and emotion. At Altitudes 7 and 8, we intuit this at Altitudes 9 to 12, we perceive it directly.Īnd the third aspect they share is an awareness of awareness. This means a moment-to-moment perception that everything in the world is deeply interrelated and that we’re enmeshed in that wholeness. They also share a “direct sense of wholeness”. In fact, each of the stages is linked to a certain state of consciousness.

This is an authentic transition from ordinary mind, limited separate identity and broken perception into divine knowledge, supramental capacities and direct contact with Truth. That is, at these stages we establish a permanent home beyond our limited, conventional sense of self, of merely being a person living inside a body. The quote above from Ken Wilber reveals one aspect they all share: a transpersonal component. Let’s look at the features that the four 3rd-tier stages share.įeatures of The 3rd-Tier Stages of Human Development Only as a significant percentage of the population downloads them will we come to understand what they mean for technology, science, politics, culture, law, architecture, industry and so on. The collective manifestations of these levels (like industrialisation for the Orange altitude) are in a germination stage. Note that these descriptions are based on information garnered from individuals. In Wilber’s Integral Theory, for example, they comprise the 3rd-tier of human development. Models of human growth tend to group them together. I cover these four together for a reason: though each is unique, they have undeniable commonalities. Here we’ll look at the four altitudes or stages that follow those eight. This follows on from my article on the first eight of Ken Wilber’s altitudes of development, which is part of my Ken Wilber Series. But if history is a good basis for extrapolation, we can expect them to emerge in the mainstream in the coming decades, centuries and millennia.

At this time, just a tiny fraction of us operate from these stages. We’re going to cover the highest levels uncovered by researchers to date. We’re about to travel forward in time and glimpse what could be the future of human consciousness, using the stages of human development as our galactic guide.ĭozens of models that outline the levels of complexity in human beings reveal that the highest stages are self-transcendent and spiritual in nature.

The pathless highest updraft