“In all stages of learning, high, middle, and low,
may I understand just by hearing, thinking and seeing” from the Tibetan Book of the Dead

    Learning does come in stages, and I'm not referring to grade school, middle school, and high school.   
    Our first stage of learning begins when we are born, if not before. We learn about the physical world around us from the information supplied by our senses. We learn that certain shapes represent specific objects. We learn where certain sounds and scents come from. We learn what certain things feel like. We learn what is hot and what is cold, what is wet and what is dry. We start to learn to associate the sounds our parents are making with objects and start learning to repeat those sounds. This stage doesn't end when we stop being babies, but it does get reduced and replaced to some degree by the second stage. 
    In the second stage of learning, we begin to learn about things we have never seen through other people telling us about them. We may have never seen a bear, but someone can show us a photo of one and describe it's behavior and we have some idea of what a bear is, even if we have never seen one. Of course, if no one shows us a photo of a real bear and we learn about bears from Yogi Bear cartoons, we have learned a falsehood. That, unfortunately can happen with this type of learning. 
    The third stage of learning, in the intellectual sense that is, comes when we start learning abstract ideas like negative numbers.  This is learning about things that are theoretical and may or may not be true, but we can't observe them directly, so we have to use our imagination. 
    Those are the stages of physical and mental learning, but what about spiritual learning? It too has stages. Those stages could be divided a number of ways, but let's keep it simple and stick with three.
    In the first stage of spiritual learning, we learn those things that are common knowledge among our people and we get this learning from our parents, friends, and later from ministers of the traditional churches. This would include the basic knowledge that a God or deity of some kind exists, that a spiritual level of life exists and that we have a soul. Beyond this, we learn certain rules of behavior, morality and ethics that we are told must be followed if we hope to have an afterlife in heaven. 
    A small number of us grow beyond that stage and look for more. They find it in the beginning teaching of spiritual schools and in books written by spiritual teachers, or spiritual students. In this stage we learn that the awakening of our souls and the development of our spiritual side is not a passive activity accomplished just by attending church and praising Jesus or Buddha. We have to work on a regular basis to awaken our souls, to grow our spirit just as we worked for many years to grow our minds, and to, with the help of God, unite the parts of our being into one so that we can experience true immortality. 
    The third stage, which may not happen until after we have left the physical world, is where we learn the complete truth of our nature, the nature of God and the nature of the universe. Some of this can be learned in advanced classes in a reputable spiritual school, but is never put in books available to the general public. Some of it, you will learn only from direct contact with higher beings, beings of Light, and from direct knowledge of God.
    So you may wonder, why tell you about this advanced training when you can't just get it from a book? Because I don't want anyone to think they have completed their spiritual studies and spiritual growth simply because they have reached the second stage and because I want to encourage people who are serious about spiritual growth to join a spiritual school.