Il Risveglio/en

Awakening is the axis-theme of the entire hermetic and initiatic tradition documented in this wiki. Everything that the other pages describe — alchemy and magnetism, magnetic lodge chains, Arcana Arcanorum, IAO, four bodies, Evola and Reghini's Hermetic Tradition, Fedeli d'Amore, Mystery of the Grail, Kremmerz and the Osiridean Order, Crata Repoa, Cagliostro — are different paths toward a single goal: the awakening of man from the ordinary sleep of samsaric consciousness. Evola's book from 1943, The Doctrine of Awakening, is the key text that sets out the framework: original Buddhism not as a confessional religion but as a virile asceticism of liberation, an Eastern-Aryan translation of the same initiatic science that the Hermetic Tradition expresses in alchemical language, and which the Paret School practices today in its works.

📿 Le tre pagine della presenza

Presence runs through three complementary axis-pages of the wiki, to be read as a single movement:

1. Presenza Integrale™ — the neurological-corporeal dimension of the School (Cariche protocol, Reference Point, Stop, Hara). The integrated state of the neurological part
2. La Presenza (tradizione ermetica) — the hermetic-initiatic dimension: presence in the texts of UR-KRUR, in Reghini, in Giudicelli, and as the hermeneutic key of all techniques of true hermetic work
3. Il Risveglio — the dimension of fulfillment (Evola, Doctrine of Awakening 1943): the passage beyond presence into the realized state

It is said in the tradition that he who is in presence already has one foot in awakening.

I. The sequence: presence → awakening → beyond

The fundamental formulation is: Awakening arises from presence and goes beyond. The sequence has three moments:

1. Sleep — the ordinary human condition: identification with body-emotions-thoughts, dispersion in external reactions, mechanical stimulus-response sequence, lack of a stable center. Buddhism: moha (delusion, blindness); Hermeticism: Saturn-lead (unworked matter); esoteric Christianity: the "sleep of the Sleeping Beauty" or the sleep of the disciples in Gethsemane.
2. Presence — the first concrete step. Beginning to be present to oneself. No longer blindly identifying with the contents of consciousness but observing them. In Pali Buddhism: sati (self-remembrance, mindful attention, mindfulness) and sammā-sati (right mindfulness, the seventh element of the Noble Eightfold Path). In the School: "being there", "being present", "watching". In Kremmerzism: "the guard of the heart". In Gurdjieff: "self-remembering".
3. Awakening — the step beyond. Presence, maintained and deepened, becomes the realization of a consciousness broader than the ordinary one — sidereal awareness in Evolian terminology (cf. section V), bodhi in Buddhist terminology, Great Work in Red in alchemical terminology, reunion with Atman-Shiva in Hindu terminology. This third moment goes beyond ordinary presence because it is no longer "an I that is present to itself" but a universal consciousness that recognizes itself.

II. Evola's 1943 book: context and thesis

[VERIFIED] Julius Evola publishes in 1943 with Laterza (the same publisher of The Hermetic Tradition 1931 and The Mystery of the Grail 1937) the book The Doctrine of Awakening, the first of Evola's books translated into English (Luzac, London, 1951, and then Inner Traditions 1996 trans. H. E. Musson). Evola states in his autobiography The Path of Cinnabar that the book "pays a debt I owed to the doctrine of Buddha", which had had "a decisive influence in helping me overcome the inner crisis I experienced immediately after the First World War".

The main theses of the book:

1. The original Buddhism of the Pali scriptures (Sutta-piṭaka, Majjhima-nikāya, Dīgha-nikāya, Samyutta-nikāya, Aṅguttara-nikāya, Dhammapada) is not a devotional religion but a virile asceticism of liberation
2. The Aryan nature of the doctrine (title of ch. 2): the term ariyo in the Pali texts is not racial but spiritual-aristocratic — it designates a "class of the elect" who practice the discipline of liberation, opposed to the mass of puthujjana (common men)
3. The Buddha (Prince Siddhattha) was a kṣatriya (warrior-royal caste), not a brāhmaṇa: his asceticism is virile, combative, sharp — not sentimental, not devotional, not pietistic
4. The doctrine of Awakening is fully applicable today by anyone who has the vocation: it is not Eastern folklore but universal initiatic science
5. The Western traditions — Hermeticism, alchemy, Neoplatonism, Italian Hermetic Tradition — describe the same path in a different lexicon

III. Two complementary paths: dry (Doctrine of Awakening) and wet (Yoga of Power)

[VERIFIED] The preface to the 1996 edition clarifies the book's place in Evola's work:

"While in The Yoga of Power [published in 1949, six years later] Evola had indicated a "wet path", the path "of affirmation, assumption, use and transformation of the immanent forces that are liberated until one arrives at the awakening of Shakti, which is the root of power of every vital energy and especially of sex", in the Doctrine of Awakening he indicates a "dry path", an intellectual approach of pure detachment. Some have thought of these paths as opposites, but Evola explicitly declared them "equivalent, as far as the ultimate goal is concerned, provided they are followed through to the end, even if one may be more suitable than the other for certain human types" [...]. Doctrines that have indicated different paths to reach the same goal, namely the deconditioning of the human being, the enlightened awakening".

Key point for the cluster: awakening is the sole goal; the paths differ by temperament:

• Dry path (Doctrine of Awakening, 1943) — intellectual, of pure detachment, reserved for cold, lucid, kṣatriya temperaments. Example: original Buddhism, Zen, certain lines of Stoicism, Neoplatonic apatheia
• Wet path (Yoga of Power, 1949) — participatory, of assumption and transformation of vital energies (especially sexual, Shakti), reserved for warm, energetic, vīra temperaments. Example: left-hand Tantrism, Taoist internal alchemy, certain Kremmerzian practices (see Kremmerz e Ordine Osirideo Egizio), some lines of the Dionysian mysteries

The two paths are equivalent if carried through to the end. Frequent error: choosing a path by temperament and despising the other, or mixing them without order. The Paret-ISI-CNV School — like much of the Italian tradition — operates predominantly on the wet path (Kremmerzian, magnetic, participatory) but integrates elements of the dry path as a corrective (presence, detachment, self-analysis).

IV. The structure of the book

The book is in two parts for 19 chapters:

Part I — Principles (7 ch.)

• 1. Varieties of Asceticism — typology of ascetic paths and placement of Buddhism
• 2. The Aryan Nature of the Doctrine of Awakening — the term ariyo as a spiritual-aristocratic category, not racial; synthesis of the thesis
• 3. The Historical Context of the Doctrine of Awakening — the Indian environment of the 6th century BC, the decline of Brahmanism, the emergence of the kṣatriya opposition
• 4. Destruction of the Demon of Dialectic — the Buddha's renunciation of metaphysical disputes (the "fourteen indeterminate questions") as an act of operative silence that cuts through the sterility of speculations
• 5. The Flame and Samsaric Consciousness — the nature of ordinary consciousness as a flame (santāna, "current") that feeds on its own consumption: the metaphor of fire-thirst (taṇhā) that nourishes itself on its own satisfaction
• 6. Dependent Origination (paṭicca-samuppāda) — the doctrine of the twelve nidānas, the causal chains that generate and maintain samsaric consciousness
• 7. Determination of Vocations — who can undertake the path: the category of "vocation" as a precondition (not who wants, but who is "called")

Part II — Practice (12 ch.)

• 8. Qualities of the Warrior and "Departure" — the initiate as a warrior (yodha, vīra) who leaves the ordinary condition
• 9. Defense and Consolidation — moral discipline (sīla) as a platform (not as an end in itself)
• 10. Rectitude — the integral rectification of behavior (body, speech, mind)
• 11. Sidereal Awareness: The Wounds Close — see section V of this page (central chapter)
• 12. The Four Jhānas: The "Radiant Contemplations" — see section VI
• 13. The Formless States and Extinction — the four arūpa (formless) states and nirodha (cessation)
• 14. Discrimination Among "Powers" — psychic powers (siddhi, abhiññā) and the warning not to confuse them with the goal
• 15. Phenomenology of the Great Liberation — the phenomenological description of nibbāna
• 16. Signs of the Incomparable — the attributes of the realized Buddha (uttamapurisa, "supreme man")
• 17. The Void: "If the Mind Does Not Break" — the doctrine of suññatā (emptiness) as final liberation
• 18. Up to Zen — the Chinese-Japanese continuation of the doctrine (authentically Buddhist line, distinct from devotional Mahāyāna)
• 19. The Ariyas Are Still Gathered on Vulture Peak — closing: the current availability of the path for those who have the vocation

V. "Sidereal Awareness" (ch. 11) — the practical heart of the page

[VERIFIED] Ch. 11 — Sidereal Awareness: The Wounds Close — is the practical heart of the book and the point where the theme-page of the wiki finds its most precise formulation.

"Sidereal" means: of an astral nature, lucid, cold as a star. Sidereal awareness is the quality of a consciousness that observes without being involved, like a star radiates without being touched by what it illuminates. It is presence that becomes awakening.

The specific techniques that Evola extracts from the Pali texts (Majjhima-nikāya 62, Aṅguttara-nikāya 5.96, Dīgha-nikāya 22) for the realization of sidereal awareness are four:

(a) Mindful breathing (ānāpānasati)

[VERIFIED] "From a pure bodily domain, we pass to the psychic domain, and formulas such as these are used: 'I wish to inhale feeling joy, I wish to exhale feeling joy'; 'I wish to inhale feeling the mind, I wish to exhale feeling the mind'; 'I wish to inhale gladdening the mind, I wish to exhale gladdening the mind'; 'I wish to inhale concentrating the mind, I wish to exhale concentrating the mind': and the same for relaxation. Finally, mindful breathing is practiced with other contemplations and states [...]".

Key point: breath is removed from automatism, made conscious, placed before oneself: "placing oneself before one's own breath and one's own breath before oneself, experiencing the breath essentially as prāṇa, as the vital force of the body". Breath becomes a device of presence — exactly as in the practices of tripartite breathing and the three cinnabar fields (Boyer), albeit in Buddhist language.

Decisive quote from Majjhima-nikāya 62 (118) and Aṅguttara 10.60: "even the last breaths cease consciously, not unconsciously". The key point of the entire asceticism: it is about being conscious until the last moment of life, including one's own dying (cf. La Doctrine du Corps Immortel section III on the philosophical death as a test).

(b) Contemplation of the body (kāyānupassanā)

[VERIFIED] "Contemplation of the body and all its parts, with the coldness and precision of a surgeon at an autopsy. The canonical formula is: 'Behold, this body carries a scalp, has hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, tendons, bones, marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, stomach, intestines, membranes, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, lymph, tears, fat, saliva, mucus, joint fluid, urine'."

The purpose is [VERIFIED] "always the same: to disidentify, to create detachment: 'This is me, this is my body, it is made thus and so, composed of these parts, of these elements'." An exercise of surgical coldness that is not contempt for the body (a frequent error of Christian ascetic interpretations) but objective recognition of one's own composition: "I am this"; but also "I am not only this". Sidereal awareness arises from the space created between the observer and the observed.

(c) Contemplation of the four great elements (mahābhūta)

[VERIFIED] "For the third exercise, the body is considered as a function of the four 'great elements' present in it. Whether in movement or at rest, the ascetic must consider the body he carries as a function of these elements: 'This body consists of the earth element, the water element, the fire element, the air element'."

Decisive historiographical point: [VERIFIED] "For ancient man, in reality, the 'great element', mahābhūta, was not considered simply as a 'state of matter', but rather as a manifestation of cosmic forces like the elements taught by the ancient and medieval Western traditions". The four Buddhist elements are the same four alchemical elements of the Western Hermetic Tradition: earth (solid body), water (humors, fluids, Boyer's lunar body), fire (vital heat, mercury of the breath), air (breath, pneuma, Boyer's aerial body).

The human body is a node of the golden cosmic chain (cf. Athanasius Kircher SJ alchimista e magnetista section V) — individual participation in the universal.

(d) The progressive cessation of reactions ("the wounds close")

Key point of the chapter title. With the progressive practice of sidereal awareness, ordinary emotional reactions (the mind reacting to every stimulus like an open wound that bleeds) cease spontaneously: the wounds close. Not through repression (suppressed emotions return worse) but through cicatrization — the conscious observation of a phenomenon is already its overcoming.

The principle is homologous to the Kremmerzian "guard of the heart" (watching over affections without being caught by them) and to Evola's warning in The Hermetic Tradition on the black work: lead must be recognized, not removed, and from recognition arises its transmutation.

VI. The Four Jhānas as "Radiant Contemplations" (ch. 12)

[VERIFIED] Ch. 12 presents the phenomenology of the four jhānas — the four stages of deep meditation. Key terminological point from Evola:

"The term jhāna is translated by some as 'self-deepening' (Selbstvertiefung), a rendering that should be remembered: indeed, in the disciplines we will discuss, we will be dealing with a descent through successive purifications and simplifications into the deepest levels of one's own being, where, in the common man, we find the realm of the subconscious. We therefore traverse the same path marked by the hermetic and alchemical maxim: 'Visita interiora terrae, rectificando invenies occultum lapidem, veram medicinam' [Visit the interior of the earth, by rectifying you will find the hidden stone, the true medicine — the VITRIOL formula of the Rosicrucians]".

Decisive convergence noted by Evola in a footnote: "See our work, The Hermetic Tradition'" — Evola himself declares in 1943 that the Buddhist jhānas are the hermetic work of 1931. The alchemical VITRIOL (descent to the center of the inner earth + rectification + discovery of the stone) is the Buddhist practice of the four jhānas in Western language. The two traditions are the same tradition in different lexicons.

[VERIFIED] Fundamental methodological warning from Evola against passive interpretations: "Less felicitous [...] is the translation of jhāna as Versenkungen ("sinkings") and even worse as "trance" or "raptures" because the normal meaning of these terms is exactly the opposite of what we are dealing with here. The term "trance" immediately makes us think of the state of a "medium", a passive state of subconsciousness, of subpersonality and obsession, while Aryan asceticism is characterized by superconsciousness, full activity and self-consciousness. Similarly, the term "rapture" implies an idea of ecstatic passivity and has a mystical-religious flavor, neither of which has much to do with the states we are dealing with here".

Critical point: Awakening is not a state of trance, it is not dissociation, it is not loss of self, it is not devotional ecstasy, it is not "going away". It is super-consciousness: full active presence on a plane broader than the ordinary one. The difference is clear:

• Trance / mediumship / somnambulism — below ordinary consciousness: consciousness attenuates, subliminal contents emerge, the person empties
• Jhāna / Awakening — above ordinary consciousness: consciousness strengthens and clarifies, the person is more awake than in daily waking, not less

This point is vital for the School: do not confuse awakening with mediumistic phenomena (which the School recognizes as real but places below the level of initiatic work). The "magnetic lodge chain" (cf. Le Catene Magnetiche di Loggia) can produce mediumistic phenomena and initiatic phenomena — but they are two different states, distinguished by the quality of presence.

Schema of the four jhānas

1. First jhāna — vitakka (discursive reflection) and vicāra (examination) are still present, accompanied by pīti (joy) and sukha (happiness) born from calm
2. Second jhāna — vitakka and vicāra cease (the mind stops): pīti and sukha generated by concentration (samādhi) remain
3. Third jhāna — pīti also ceases: sukha (subtle happiness) remains + full sidereal awareness (full sati) + equanimity (upekkhā) + clear comprehension (sampajañña)
4. Fourth jhāna — sukha and dukkha (the polarities of feeling) cease: pure awareness-equanimity (upekkhā-sati-pārisuddhi) — pure consciousness purified by awareness-equanimity

Beyond the four jhānas open the arūpa (formless) states: infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither-perception-nor-non-perception. And beyond: nirodha (cessation) and nibbāna (extinction). See ch. 13 of the book.

VII. Awakening in the other traditions of the wiki cluster

Awakening is the single theme that runs through all the already published pages, in different lexicons:

Hermetic-alchemical tradition

• Evola e Reghini e la Tradizione Ermetica — the work in three colors (black/white/red) is the transmutation sequence that leads from lead (sleep/death/identification) to gold (awakening/life/universal consciousness). The philosophical death (Nigredo) is the first "awakening": the initiate realizes his own sleep and "dies" to his ordinary identity
• VITRIOL (Visita Interiora Terrae...) — the formula cited by Evola himself as equivalent to the four jhānas: rectificando (rectifying) = bhāvanā (development, cultivation of awareness); occultum lapidem (the hidden stone) = bodhi (enlightenment)
• Kircher and the light-magnet — the Celestial Magnet that attracts all things is the same goal of Buddhist awakening, in Jesuit-Hermetic language

Magnetic and lodge tradition

• Le Catene Magnetiche di Loggia — the chain is a device for producing a collective awakening: the operators enter together into a state of intensified awareness. It is a means; the goal is the individual awakening of the participants
• Alchimia e Magnetismo — the doctrine of the "occulta vis" is the magnetic counterpart of Awakening: "recognizing the unique force that operates in everything" is the same as "recognizing the nature of consciousness" in Buddhism
• La Massoneria Mesmerica — Mesmer wanted to heal bodies; but many of his somnambulists accessed states that bordered on Awakening (true visions, knowledge beyond the normal). The difference was the lack of a systematic doctrine of Awakening to orient the experience

Operative tradition

• Il Lavoro sui Quattro Corpi dellUomo — the "solar body" is the seat of Awakening: it is the body that Buddhist, alchemical, and magnetic practice simultaneously constructs
• Il Respiro Tripartito e i Tre Campi di Cinabro — Buddhist mindful breathing (ānāpānasati) is the same practice as Taoist-Italian tripartite breathing: a device of presence that becomes awakening
• IAO — the initiatic vowel-formula is the name of Awakening in the Mediterranean tradition: I-A-O as three phases (the spirit descending, union, the spirit ascending, similar to the three alchemical colors)
• Arcana Arcanorum — the 4 degrees 87°-90° of Misraïm are four phases of Awakening in 18th-century Masonic language
• The Doctrine of the Immortal Body (Giudicelli 1988) — the Immortal Body is what remains after complete Awakening: pure presence without mortal matter to sustain it
• Le Filiazioni dei Riti Egizi — the Egyptian rites are collective paths toward Awakening: the "death of Osiris" of the candidate and his "resurrection" as Horus is a ritual formulation of the same experience that Buddhist Awakening describes in psychological formula

Medieval Italian tradition

• The Fedeli d'Amore — the love-Unique Woman is a device of awakening: the initiate does not "fall in love" with the ordinary woman but awakens to Divine Wisdom (Sophia, Pistis Sophia, Beatrice). Cecco d'Ascoli: "Therefore I am She" — the exact formula of non-dualistic Awakening
• Il Mistero del Graal secondo Evola — the Quest for the Grail is the same as the Path of Awakening: the knight and the monk make the same journey. The Grail is what is found upon awakening. Wolfram's "Stone of Light" (lapsit exillis) is the same that is found "by rectifying" in VITRIOL, that is found at the bottom of the red work, that is found in the fourth jhāna

Magnetic-Egyptian tradition

• Kremmerz and the Fraternity of Myriam — Kremmerz speaks of "dormancy of human faculties" (samsaric sleep) and "awakening" — the same framework as Buddhism, in 19th-century Italian Marian-Egyptian language
• Cagliostro e il Rito Egizio — Cagliostro's "physical and moral regeneration" is an 18th-century formulation of Awakening

VIII. "Presence that goes beyond": technical note

A subtle and decisive point for those seeking operationally. Ordinary presence (being attentive to oneself, remembering to exist while doing something) is necessary but not sufficient for Awakening.

There exists a closed presence — the initiate concentrated on himself, attentive to his own reactions, but still identified with his individual self. It is a first level, indispensable, but it is not yet Awakening. It is what Gurdjieff calls "self-remembering" and which alone is not enough.

Awakening is presence that opens, goes beyond itself and recognizes that the consciousness that observes is not "yours" — it is a universal consciousness that operates through you. Buddhism: anattā (non-self, emptiness of the individual subject). Vedānta: Tat tvam asi (You are That). Hermeticism: the initiate is the Mercury of the cosmos, not a personal mercury. Esoteric Christianity: "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Paul, Galatians 2:20). Kremmerz: "the I that is no longer I".

The passage from closed presence to open presence is the key point — and it is not mechanical. It requires:

• time (years of practicing closed presence)
• discipline (sīla, organized ethics, ordered life)
• occasion (a crisis, a pain, a beauty, a lodge chain, an inner journey)
• vocation (the "call" that Evola speaks of in ch. 7 — not all are called to this, and self-deception is serious)
• a hand (a master, a living tradition, a community of practice — the Paret-ISI-CNV School for those inserted in the Italian line)

VIII-bis. Rubedo as presence, illumination as a further step

A synthetic formulation that articulates the key point of the page ("Awakening arises from presence and goes beyond") in the alchemical lexicon of the Italian Hermetic Tradition and puts it in dialogue with the contemporary lexicon of Stephen Wolinsky.

Rubedo as "man present to himself"

The red work (rubedo) of hermetic alchemy is not — as a reductive reading would suggest — the simple transmutation of lead into material gold. It is the state of consciousness of the accomplished initiate: the man present to himself in a stable, integrated, self-conscious way. The royal purple, the red color, the "rising sun" of alchemical texts are iconographic formulations of this vigilant state of consciousness.

[VERIFIED] Evola in KRUR 1929 explicitly uses the formula of the King-Master: "not with that [appellation] of 'Saint', but always with that warrior one of King, is designated by the 'Sons of Hermes' he who has been reintegrated by the Art: always a King, a crowned being and a royal color — Purple — is encountered at the symbolic end of the work".

Key point for the cluster: the man in red of the Hermetic Tradition is substantially identical to:

• the man present to himself of contemporary work (Wolinsky and the current of recognition)
• the bodhisattva of Mahāyāna Buddhism (a completely vigilant being, master of his faculties)
• the Christian King (Christ in his "cosmocrator" aspect, Sovereign of hearts — not the suffering Christ)
• the Pure Awareness of Kashmiri Pratyabhijñā (consciousness that recognizes itself as such)
• the watcher of the Paret School ("he who is awake while others sleep")

This identity — the man in red = the man present — is the key to correctly reading hermetic alchemy: it is not material alchemy (seeking gold in the laboratory), it is not merely literary allegory (speaking of substances to signify states of mind), it is a technical description of a state of consciousness actually attained by initiates who actually existed.

Illumination as a further step: the beyond of rubedo

On rubedo one might think of closing the path. This is a mistake. Rubedo is the last state of the path that is measured in the initiate as a person. Beyond rubedo there is illumination — the beyond of Awakening, the further step where the person itself dissolves into universal Consciousness.

The difference is subtle but decisive:

• Rubedo / man in red / presence — there is still a completely vigilant individual subject. The initiate is King — but it is an individual King who exercises his reign. It is the closed presence spoken of in section VIII of this page: an I that perfectly remembers itself, no longer in ordinary trance, perfectly integrated — but still an I.
• Illumination / pratyabhijñā / full awakening — there is no longer a separate individual subject. The "King" recognizes that his royalty is not his: it is the royalty of universal Consciousness that manifests through this particular body-mind. The Tat tvam asi of Vedānta ("You are That"), the Therefore I am She of Cecco d'Ascoli (cf. I Fedeli dAmore section VI), the "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" of Paul (Galatians 2:20).

Key point for the cluster: the Hermetic Tradition (Evola, The Hermetic Tradition 1931) describes the complete path: from lead (sleep) to gold (rubedo, man in red) through the works in colors. But the last step — illumination proper, non-dualistic recognition — is not codified in traditional alchemical language, because it is not the object of an operation: it is the recognition of the accomplished initiate that the consciousness that operates is not his, it is Consciousness that operates through him.

This is why Evola — not by chance — publishes in 1943 the Doctrine of Awakening after the Hermetic Tradition of 1931: illumination requires another lexicon (the Buddhist one) which the European alchemical tradition had left implicit but not fully developed. The two Evolian works are complementary: the HT describes the construction up to rubedo (man in red), the DA describes the beyond (the illuminating recognition).

The levels of reality in Wolinsky: present but not central

Wolinsky does not ignore the intermediate levels of reality — the body, vital energy, thoughts, emotions, the archetypal, the collective. In his Way of the Human (3 volumes, 1999-2000) and Quantum Consciousness (1993) he describes with precision a hierarchy of levels that the practitioner traverses on the path toward recognition.

The Wolinskyan levels — variously named in different books — are in summary:

1. Body (level of the senses, biological instincts, physical sensations)
2. Mind (thoughts, emotions, ordinary identity, False Core and False Self)
3. Essence (the Reichian-Jungian "essential self", what remains after the dissolution of the False Self)
4. I Am (the pure feeling of being, before any qualification: the "Sat" of Nisargadatta)
5. Collective Unconscious (the Jungian collective unconscious: archetypes, transpersonal dimension)
6. Not-I-I (pre-individual consciousness, not yet identifiable as "I")
7. Void of Undifferentiated Consciousness (Undifferentiated Consciousness, Citi of Pratyabhijñā, the ultimate goal of recognition)

Wolinsky recognizes all these levels and teaches specific exercises for each. He does not neglect them: he knows they exist, he knows they must be traversed. Marco's phrase that originated this section is precise: "Wolinsky speaks of the levels of reality and says we must not neglect them".

But they are not as central as in the Hermetic Tradition

The difference with the Hermetic Tradition is not that Wolinsky ignores the levels — it is that he does not place them at the center of practice. Specifically:

• Hermetic Tradition — practice is the work on the levels. The initiate dwells in each level for years — building the lunar body, refining the aerial body, developing the solar body. The levels are the very substance of the work. Rubedo is