Karma - The Mechanism: Stage 07 Apramatta Virata

7 - From the seventh level (apramatta virata)

onwards karmic manifestations (limiting themes of life) cease to overshadow our consciousness. Though we still experience them, we are so thoroughly established in the perception of our greater potential that they are unable to unbalance us.

More and more clearly we now perceive the mechanisms by which our consciousness forms our environment. We see how our emotions, desires and our attachments to ideas, concepts etc. act like magnets that attract the conditions in which these longings can be physically expressed. We begin to use this insight creatively to structure perfect circumstances for our growth. In a most natural and automatic way this environment is in complete harmony with the Five Freedoms. All our being now orients towards unfolding the fantastic potential of our consciousness we sense within.

We reach the seventh level as soon as the perception of our serene and distant self becomes more constant. We accelerate this process when we consciously decide to maintain our superior, peaceful perception of the seventh state instead of succumbing to the limiting emotional attachments that characterize the lower levels.

We experience the seventh stage of development in two phases:

1. The first phase of the seventh level is basically a transition-period during which we stabilize the perception of our serene and sovereign self that began to unfold in the sixth stage. Yet on our current level the stability of this perception has a far more assured, profound, superior character than on the sixth level.
   This first phase is characterized by rapid oscillations between level six and seven until we get used to the far more intense energies of the higher stage. For a maximum of 48 minutes we remain in level seven and then fall back to level six. But here we also only stay for a short time before we ascend again.
   We experience this as a constant alternation between rising excitement for the new dimensions we sense opening and doubt and worry that hold us back. The excitement draws us up, while doubt and worry (i.e. manifestations of our lingering fondness for the familiar themes of lower levels) hold us back.
   Fear and worry what an expansion of consciousness might do to us and how our social environment would react is only a residue of past attachments that soon dissolves completely. The path to freedom from all karmic restrictions is never characterized by mounting anxieties, but only by the dissolution of all our fears and also by ever growing assuredness, confidence and insight.
   While in this phase, we are unable to experience any of the higher gunasthanas.
   
   
2. Once we enter the second phase of level seven, we are caught by a sweeping current that pulls our consciousness up into ever more comprehensive stages of development. Where before we needed effort to reach the higher levels, we now are carried by a surge of boundless energy.

The transition between the first and second phase takes us through several stages:

• First we reduce the intensity of the four main negative emotions - anger, pride, dishonesty, greed - by realizing that they really affect only limited areas of our life. We recognize e.g. that anger we feel towards a particular person or situation does not need to influence our entire feeling of life. We compartmentalize this anger, look at it dispassionately and then dissolve it by consciously raising above it.
• In the second stage we experience an extraordinary acceleration of our thoughts. Thousands upon thousands of thinking hours become compressed to mere seconds, to mere flashes of mental images. Our thinking and intuition merge into one. Towering consequences build on each other in our awareness, but with a precise grasp on reality as clear as never before.

Within (a maximum of 48) minutes we reach dimensions of consciousness entirely unimaginable on lower levels. Yet the higher we go, the more natural and comfortable we handle the fantastic features of our consciousness that now unfold.

• As we rapidly comprehend more and more of reality, we recognize the real origin (adhikarana) of any restricting circumstances and the cause of our tendency to choose limiting actions and instantly remove our bonds to them. We dissolve all attachments that impede our upward path, leaving parts of reality that kept us confined before.

We reach this second phase as soon as we relinquish our attachment to the four main negative emotions and cherished, but obstructing action-mechanisms of the lower levels.

After we went through these preparatory stages, the second phase of level seven offers us two paths for further progress:

1. The suspension of karma - On this path most our remaining karma recedes into a latent, inactive state. Since up to gunasthana eleven inactive karma does not obstruct progress, we become able to experience the character of the higher stages. The path leads via level 8, 9 and 10 to level 11.
   Yet we are unable to maintain this stage and have to go back to lower levels. The ascent beyond level 11 is blocked as long as the existing latent karma (i.e. our inactive emotional attachments to experiences on lower levels) obstructs further advancement.
   It is not required to experience level 7 to 11 sequentially. We may e.g. bypass all these levels to get a feeling for gunasthana 11 and then later go back at will to explore any of the levels we sidestepped.
   
2. The dissolution of karma - On this path we dissolve our remaining karma once and for all. It bypasses level 11 and leads via level 8, 9, 10,  12 and 13 to level 14 and then to ultimate freedom. Though initially this may take us only up to level 11 until all our residual karmic attachments to levels 8 to 11 are dissolved, this path is the sure way to freedom from all karmic limitation.

In the seventh and higher stages pleasure and pain - as we knew them on the lower levels - still manifest as the respective karmas mature. Yet these feelings now hardly attract our attention. We presently are far more in touch with our own eternal character that was merely suppressed by our attachment to karma. With intense joy we feel radiant bliss nearby that attracts us far more than any pleasure or pain the lower stages might offer.

As we follow the path of 'suspension of karma' that takes us rapidly from level 7 to level 11 and down again, we may at will stop at any of the gunasthanas we want to experience more closely. An analogy would equal this to a circular subway-system that gives us the option to get in or out at any particular station.

From the seventh level onwards we are far more in control of our fate than ever before. We may at any time choose to dissolve our final emotional attachments to karmic limitations and to proceed to level 12 and finally to ultimate freedom.

But we also have the choice of temporarily going back to stage four or five (though never to stage 1, 2 or 3), if we feel that the experience of particular events or emotions in these stages may enrich our scope of life and be necessary for our further progress. During our return to these (emotionally far denser) levels we may lose much of our previous higher insights until only a vague memory remains. Yet our time on the lower levels is limited. After completing the desired experience, we automatically raise again to the higher level we came from.