In October, I gave a Stages in Consciousness talk at the Science and Nonduality conference. Here is the talk synopsis.

I was introduced by Rick Archer of Buddha at the Gas Pump fame. His talk had preceded mine and, on agreement, ran partly into the break between our talks. This meant people where still transitioning in and out as my talk began.

My opening reference to Rick’s style is because he read his large talk to cover the content while mine was unrehearsed. I had a lot to cover so also rolled quickly.

There where 8 concurrent tracks at the conference with different talk times, so there was a fair bit of coming and going from other talks. Every time the back door opened, the hall noise spilled in. While that was mostly at the beginning and during questions, some people flitted from talk to talk also.

A video crew had been assigned to our room but evidently due to volunteer no-shows and equipment problems, we lost our crew just before Rick’s talk. Happily, a friend stepped forward with a decent camera and shot both our talks. I’m very grateful for that.

The camera is on a small travel tripod so shot at a low angle. It’s also recorded by the camera mic so you get some speaker boom and room noise making it less clear. But you can mostly hear the questions at the end.

Rick joined me up front for questions at the end as we’d arranged, to share the early lunch for questions.

I was expecting just a few minutes for questions and indeed, we got a 5 minute warning when the lunch break began at the end of my talk. I was thus a bit aggressive in responding. I was surprised to discover later that questions went on for almost half an hour. Finally, the crew cut us off.

On comparing to other systems of stages: Most I’ve seen are more detailed versions of a specific subjective process like of kundalini or the initial awakening or a healing process. As I mentioned in questions, what I was looking for was the underlying process behind this subjective variation in different traditions. I lean on Vedic terminology but the model is based on the lived experience of many.

On Youtube

Audio version:

Slides used in the talk (PDF, 59K)

An ideal scenario would give time to unpack the key qualities and distinctions of each stage more. But it was a decent summary. I explore more key points here.

The Key Posts tab has links to more detail on the specific stages described. (on the right)

Some of the other subjects mentioned:

Samadhi

Samyama (samadhi with intention)

States of consciousness

Shadbhava (6 houses of Ayurveda)

stages of witnessing,  witnessing vs awakening

Gunas in awakening

Kundalini S...