BECOMING ESTABLISHED IN THE FIRST STAGE

 
During the first stage of unfolding knowledge there is a far deeper conviction about spiritual realities than is possible through the usual understanding of the worldly man. However, even this conviction is not unshakeable. It bestows only a mild and wavering degree of divine knowledge. The pilgrim has now only started on his spiritual journey and must face many trials.

While becoming established in the first stage, many aspirants are unable to cope with the ordeals they encounter as inner sight is opened. Whatever the pilgrim encounters here is for his good, and if he has a master's guidance he need not fear that he will be lost, although at the climax of the first phase (Tariqat), which is the fourth plane, the one real danger of risking a fall does occur through possible misuse of the extraordinary powers associated with this plane.

During this first phase the aspirant is disengaging himself from enmeshment in the material realm of action, and ascending to the realm of energy. This is accomplished through the gradual dissolving of the multitudinous desires which chain his consciousness to the material world.

Although the individual is now constantly dependent upon the finer realms of energy, mind and divine consciousness, even while immersed in the realm of matter, still he cannot live freely in these realms because of his continued enslavement to the gross world.

Moreover, he cannot receive in any appreciable measure the renewal which divine consciousness would pour into him, due to the resistance offered by the entanglements of the dense material plane upon which he lives. Nevertheless it is these divine radiations, meagerly felt though they be, which enable the matter-ridden mind to face suffering and make the effort to rise in the higher realms of energy and mind.