Notice another very important point. In certain types of psychological and spiritual training, you can be introduced to a full spectrum of states of consciousness and bodily experiences right from the start—as a peak experience, meditative state, shamanic vision, altered state, and so on. The reason these peak experiences are possible is that many of the major states of consciousness (such as waking-gross, dreaming-subtle, and formless-causal) are ever-present possibilities. So you can very quickly be introduced to many higher states of consciousness.

You cannot, however, be introduced to all the qualities of higher stages without actual growth and practice. You can have a peak experience of higher states (like seeing an interior subtle light or having a feeling of oneness with all of nature), because many states are ever-present, and so they can be “peek”-experienced right now. But you cannot have a peak experience of a higher stage (like being a concert-level pianist), because stages unfold sequentially and take considerable time to develop. Stages build upon their predecessors in very concrete ways, so they cannot be skipped: like atoms to molecules to cells to organisms, you can’t go from atoms to cells and skip molecules. This is one of the many important differences between states and stages.