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148
Hermann Kuhn
APPLICATION
as intensely as when we were trapped in the dense emotional cocoon of the first level.3 If we do not put significant effort into progressing further, our stay in the fourth stage may last eternally.
The rise to the fifth stage (desavirata) only becomes possible when a strong and dynamic desire for further development exists that is also transformed into action. Only by consciously directing a significant part of our life-energy towards inner growth, the karmic stagnation of the fourth level can be broken and tilted towards the higher stages.
The attempt to orient our life along the Five Freedoms4 helps to set further development in motion. Yet in contrast to a wide-spread interpretation taking a purely formal vow to practice the Five Freedoms is not sufficient to cause the transfer of our consciousness to level
five.
5 - The rise to the fifth stage (desavirata) accelerates our
progress towards liberation significantly in comparison to any of the preceding stages. While on the fourth level we reached clear mental insight into the world
3 This often manifests as the conviction that we are progressing well
on our path to liberation, as a smug, self-satisfied contentment with the stability with which we seem to develop, as a tendency to observe rather than to actively shape our life, as a preference for ritual and symbolic action over the efforts needed for gaining real understanding or meeting challenges and as a reluctance to define higher goals.
Yet in reality this is stagnancy. What is lacking are the sweeping breakthroughs, the dynamic unfoldment of higher stages, the pronounced transition into far more comprehensive levels of our being. Though we might well gain insights in this static phase, we basi
cally are unwilling to raise sufficient energy for further growth. 4 see 'FIVE FREEDOMS'
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