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Appendix IV
TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE AVATAR
By the time the fourth chakra begins to awaken, the mental body has become the predominant force of the individual. This is Piaget’s stage of formal operations, with the capacity for deductive reasoning and the manipulation of abstract ideas. The use of symbols, increased depth and complexity of social communications, an enhanced capacity for gratifying one’s needs and drives and gaining mastery of the outer world, all lead to great reliance on and respect for this advanced stage of evolution.
With our marvelous minds we can now accomplish through thought experiments that which took great energy to discover by the action of trial and error. But for the fifth chakra stage to become fully established, one must work through the challenge of the knot of the fourth chakra, which entails giving up our reliance on mind and the security provided by a false sense of a strong independent (and separate) self. This is a major turning point in the evolution of consciousness, one in which there is a marked qualitative change in our orientation to the outer world. To better understand the dynamics and significance of this monumental leap, let’s look at the work of Ken Wilber.
In The Atman Project, Wilber1 outlines in brilliant clarity about 20 stages of consciousness, from the level of matter to ultimate union
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