Chapter 6

 Chapter 6

Stages of Growth

“Perhaps life is not a test to be passed, but a journey through which consciousness gradually becomes wise.”

 

Different Beginnings

No two human beings begin life under the same circumstances.[1] Before we make our first choice, speak our first word, or form our first memory, life has already unfolded differently for each of us.[2]

One child is born into a home filled with safety, encouragement, and opportunity. Another enters a world marked by violence, neglect, or instability.[3] One possesses extraordinary intellectual ability. Another struggles to learn despite tremendous effort.[4] Some are born with chronic illness or disability.[5] Others enjoy robust health for decades. Some experience profound loss before they are old enough to understand what has happened. Others move through childhood with comparatively little hardship.

None of us chooses the circumstances into which we are born. Yet those circumstances profoundly shape the lives we eventually live.[6]

The family into which you were born.

The culture that surrounded you.

The opportunities you received—or never received.

The illnesses, accidents, friendships, losses, and unexpected turns that gradually became part of your story. These realities raise questions that have challenged thoughtful people for thousands of years. Why do lives begin so differently? Are these differences simply the result of chance? Are they entirely determined by biology and circumstance?

Do they reflect consequences extending beyond a single lifetime? Or do they serve purposes that cannot yet be understood from within our limited perspective?

Philosophical and religious traditions across history have wrestled with these questions.[7] Some appeal to divine providence. Others to karma. Others to chance, genetics, evolution, or social conditions. Still others conclude that no ultimate explanation can presently be known. Despite centuries of reflection, no single answer has achieved universal agreement.[8]

Questions about unequal beginnings are ultimately questions about justice, freedom, suffering, and purpose. They touch nearly every aspect of what it means to be human. 

For that reason, I do not begin this chapter by offering an answer. I begin by acknowledging the mystery. Only then can we begin exploring the possibilities.

 

Equality and Sameness

One distinction has become increasingly important within my philosophical framework. Equal value does not require identical experience. Human beings often confuse equality with sameness. We assume that if every life possesses equal worth, then every life should unfold in similar ways. Yet observation tells a different story. No two lives begin under the same circumstances. No two people receive the same opportunities, face the same challenges, or walk the same path. Difference is undeniable. But difference does not necessarily determine value. 

Within my model, every conscious being possesses equal intrinsic worth—not because of intelligence, wealth, health, achievement, social status, or usefulness, but because consciousness itself is valuable.

If consciousness reflects something more fundamental than biology alone, then every person participates in that deeper reality regardless of the circumstances into which they are born. That means a child with profound disabilities possesses no less worth than a brilliant scientist. 

A person living in poverty possesses no less value than a king. Someone who dies in infancy is not a lesser consciousness than someone who lives to one hundred. The journey may differ. The value of the traveler does not.

Perhaps we struggle with this idea because human beings naturally measure one another by visible things—success, ability, influence, beauty, productivity, or accomplishment.[9] Yet if the purpose of consciousness is growth rather than performance, those measurements may tell us surprisingly little about the true significance of a life. This perspective also changes how we think about fairness. From within a single lifetime, the unequal distribution of suffering, opportunity, and circumstance can appear deeply unjust.

Perhaps it is. Or perhaps we are attempting to evaluate fairness while seeing only one chapter of a much larger story. If consciousness extends beyond a single lifetime, then beginnings and endings may not represent the whole of anyone’s journey. Experiences that appear unequal within one chapter may exist within a larger context we cannot presently observe. That possibility should never be used to minimize suffering or justify injustice. On the contrary.

If every conscious being possesses equal intrinsic worth, then injustice becomes even more tragic because it harms something of immeasurable value. The possibility of a larger story does not lessen our responsibility to relieve suffering wherever we encounter it.

It deepens it. At the same time, it encourages humility. None of us fully understands another person’s journey. None of us can see every experience that shaped them or every purpose their life may ultimately serve. Perhaps one of the wisest responses is not to assume we understand another person’s story, but to recognize that every life may contain dimensions of meaning that are invisible to us.

 

Growth Is Not Linear

When we imagine growth, we often picture a straight line. Child. Adult. Old age. Beginning. Middle. End. We imagine moving steadily forward, each stage replacing the one before it in a predictable sequence. Nature rarely develops that way.[10]

Walk through an old forest after a wildfire, and at first glance you may see only destruction. Yet beneath the blackened ground, seeds begin to germinate. Some species require the intense heat of fire before they can release their seeds.[11] What appears to be an ending becomes the beginning of renewal. The same pattern appears elsewhere.

Muscles adapt to repeated cycles of stress and recovery rather than constant exertion.[12] Bones adapt to mechanical loading, becoming structurally stronger in response to appropriate physical demands.[13]

A river does not carve a canyon in a straight line, but through countless seasons of persistence.[14] Even our understanding grows unevenly. We accumulate knowledge gradually, but wisdom often arrives unexpectedly—through loss, failure, love, sacrifice, or experiences that could never have been learned from a book alone.[15]

Growth is often less like climbing a staircase and more like tending a garden. There are seasons of rapid change and seasons when nothing seems to happen at all. Beneath the surface, however, roots continue to spread long before new growth becomes visible. Perhaps consciousness develops in a similar way. Perhaps its journey is not a straight staircase leading from ignorance to enlightenment, but a series of stages—periods of learning, periods of reflection, periods of embodiment, and perhaps periods beyond embodiment.

If that is true, then what appears to us as a beginning may simply be the beginning of one stage, rather than the beginning of consciousness itself. Likewise, what appears to be an ending may represent a transition rather than a conclusion. Whether those stages include multiple earthly lives remains an open philosophical question that we will explore later in this book. For now, I ask only that we consider a simpler possibility:

What if growth itself is not linear? What if consciousness develops more like nature—through cycles, seasons, pauses, setbacks, and transformation rather than through one uninterrupted ascent?

If so, many of life’s apparent interruptions may not be interruptions at all. They may be part of the process.

 

Different Lessons

One idea has gradually become increasingly important within my own thinking. I no longer believe every consciousness necessarily comes into embodied life to learn the same lessons. Nor do I believe every consciousness begins from the same place. If growth is real, then growth itself implies stages. We do not expect every child to learn the same subject on the same day. A student first learns to recognize letters before reading books. Arithmetic comes before calculus. Each lesson builds upon those that came before it. The curriculum is not unequal because students are learning different things.

It is simply appropriate to where each student is in the learning process.

Perhaps consciousness develops in a similar way. Some questions may only become meaningful after others have already been explored. Compassion may require first experiencing vulnerability. Forgiveness may require first experiencing betrayal. Courage may not develop until fear becomes possible. Wisdom may emerge only after knowledge has repeatedly proven insufficient on its own.[16]

If consciousness truly develops over time, then expecting every life to serve the same purpose may be as unrealistic as expecting every student in a school to attend the same class. One person may spend a lifetime learning resilience. Another may be learning humility. Another generosity. Another patience. Another responsibility. Another may be learning the difficult balance between justice and mercy. This does not imply that any one lesson is more important than another. Nor does it suggest that people can be neatly categorized according to a single purpose.

Human lives are almost certainly far more complex than that. Rather, it suggests that growth itself may be deeply personal. This possibility also changes the way I think about comparison.

Human beings naturally compare their lives with those around them.[17] We compare success, intelligence, relationships, careers, wealth, health, and opportunity. We ask why another person’s path appears easier or harder than our own. But what if comparison rests upon a false assumption? What if two people are not enrolled in the same lesson?

If their purposes differ, then comparing their journeys may reveal very little about either one. A student studying algebra is not failing because another student is learning literature. Each is simply engaging with a different part of the curriculum.

Likewise, if consciousness develops through stages, then lives that appear radically different may not represent unequal value. They may represent different opportunities. Different questions. Different lessons.

This possibility should never become an excuse for judging another person’s stage of development or imagining ourselves to be “more advanced.” That would undermine the very humility this model seeks to cultivate. The only life we are truly responsible for understanding is our own. Whether this model ultimately proves correct remains uncertain. For now, it offers one possible explanation for why lives can look so different while remaining equally meaningful.

 

The Mercy of Timing

Earlier, I suggested that forgetting may itself be an act of mercy. The same possibility may apply to growth. Perhaps consciousness receives only those experiences appropriate for its present stage of development—not because truth is being withheld unfairly, but because understanding depends upon readiness. We encounter this principle throughout ordinary life. A child is not harmed by not yet understanding calculus. The child simply is not there yet. The lesson has not been denied. It has been deferred until a foundation has been built. The same is true in many other areas of life.

A young musician learns scales before attempting a concerto. A medical student studies anatomy long before performing surgery. A mountain climber trains on smaller peaks before attempting the highest summits. Each stage prepares the next. Attempting to skip the process often produces confusion rather than wisdom.

Perhaps consciousness develops in a similar way.

Perhaps there are truths that cannot simply be told because they cannot yet be understood. Information can be communicated. Understanding must often be grown into.

Think back to your own life. Have you ever reread a book years later and discovered meanings you completely overlooked the first time? Or returned to a conversation with a parent, teacher, or friend and suddenly understood advice that once seemed irrelevant? The words had not changed. You had.

Sometimes reality becomes visible only because we have become capable of seeing it. If consciousness develops over time, perhaps there are aspects of existence that become meaningful only after certain experiences have prepared us to receive them.

That possibility offers another way of thinking about mystery. Perhaps some questions remain unanswered not because there are no answers, but because we are still growing toward the ability to understand them. This idea should never become an excuse for intellectual complacency.

It does not suggest that we should stop asking difficult questions or become satisfied with ignorance. Quite the opposite. Curiosity may itself be one of the ways consciousness grows. Every honest question expands the boundaries of what we are capable of understanding.

At the same time, humility reminds us that understanding cannot always be forced. Some truths may require not merely more information, but a different person to receive them. Whether this model is ultimately correct remains uncertain.

 But it has gradually changed the way I think about unanswered questions. Instead of assuming every mystery exists because an answer is missing, I sometimes wonder whether some mysteries remain because consciousness itself is still unfolding.

 

Does Growth Ever End?

One question has returned to me again and again as this philosophical model has taken shape.

If consciousness truly grows, does that growth ever end?

We often imagine growth as leading toward a final destination—a point at which learning is complete, every lesson has been mastered, and nothing remains to be discovered. Much of life encourages that way of thinking. We graduate from school. We complete training. We finish books. We reach milestones. We naturally assume that every journey is moving toward a final state of completion. But the more I have reflected on consciousness, the less certain I have become that growth follows that pattern. Consider the universe itself.

The deeper science explores reality, the more complexity it uncovers. Galaxies continue to form. Stars are born and die. Evolution unfolds across billions of years.[18] Even our understanding of physics continues to expand with every generation.[19] Nature does not seem to be moving toward stagnation. It appears remarkably creative and dynamic. If reality itself is continually unfolding, why should consciousness be different? At present, I do not believe completion necessarily means the end of growth. Nor do I believe consciousness ultimately becomes identical with the Creator.

Within my current framework, the Source remains uniquely what it is. Consciousness may grow without limit while always remaining distinct from the Source from which it ultimately derives. That distinction has become increasingly important within my thinking.

Growth does not require becoming the Creator. A child may grow into a wise adult without ever becoming their parent. A student may surpass one teacher while never exhausting the possibility of learning. Likewise, consciousness may continue expanding without ever exhausting the depth of reality itself. Perhaps infinity is not a destination.

Perhaps it is an invitation. If the Source is truly infinite, then there may always be more truth to discover, more beauty to experience, more wisdom to cultivate, and more ways for consciousness to participate in reality. Completion, then, may not mean becoming everything. It may simply mean fulfilling the purpose appropriate to one stage before entering another.

Graduation is not the end of learning.

It is the beginning of a different kind of learning. The same may be true of consciousness. What appears to us as an ending may simply be the completion of one chapter before another begins. The journey continues. Only the destination changes. Whether this understanding ultimately proves correct remains unknown. For now, it offers the model that seems most consistent with a universe that appears endlessly creative, endlessly discoverable, and perhaps endlessly capable of giving consciousness new horizons to explore.

Between Stages

Childhood gives way to adolescence.

School gives way to adulthood.

Relationships begin and end.

Careers change. Families grow.

Even the seasons remind us that nature rarely moves from one state to another without passing through periods of transformation. We often focus on beginnings and endings because they are easier to recognize. Yet some of life’s most important changes happen in the spaces between them. The same question naturally arises if consciousness develops beyond a single embodied life.

What happens between stages?

Across history, human beings have proposed remarkably different answers.[20] Some traditions describe heavens. Others speak of spiritual realms. Some imagine places of learning, healing, purification, or rest. Others describe states of reflection before another stage of existence begins.[21] Still others remain silent, acknowledging that they simply do not know.

My current philosophical model leaves this question intentionally open. I do not believe we presently possess enough evidence to describe with confidence what, if anything, exists between one stage of consciousness and another.

Nevertheless, if consciousness truly develops through stages, then the transitions between those stages may themselves possess meaning.

After all, we already see this principle throughout ordinary life. Growth rarely occurs only during moments of action. Reflection often follows experience. Healing follows injury. Understanding frequently comes only after we have had time to process what we have lived through.[22]

Sometimes the quiet moments between chapters change us as much as the chapters themselves. Perhaps consciousness develops similarly, through periods devoted to experience, reflection, healing, recognition, and preparation.

Perhaps embodiment is one environment in which consciousness grows rather than the only environment in which growth is possible. If so, then birth and death may not represent absolute beginnings and endings. They may simply mark transitions between different ways of experiencing reality. Whether that possibility proves true remains unknown.

For now, I offer it only as a philosophical question ~ one that naturally follows if consciousness is understood as an ongoing journey rather than a single isolated event. The more I have explored these ideas, the less I have come to think of life as a series of disconnected moments.

 

My Current Model

After exploring the questions raised throughout this chapter, I find myself returning not to certainty, but to a framework that presently makes the greatest sense of the observations I have considered.

 At this stage of my philosophical model, I propose that consciousness develops—not randomly, and not identically, but through stages of growth that may extend beyond the boundaries of a single human lifetime.

If that possibility is true, then it follows that not every consciousness necessarily occupies the same stage of development. Just as students in a school do not all study the same subject at the same time, perhaps consciousness encounters different opportunities, challenges, and lessons according to where it is within its own journey.

Equal dignity does not require identical journeys.

Different beginnings do not necessarily imply different value. Different lessons do not imply greater or lesser worth. Rather, they may reflect the reality that growth itself is deeply personal.

I also find it increasingly difficult to believe that purpose can always be understood from within a single lifetime. If consciousness develops across stages, then some experiences may derive their meaning from a context larger than the one we presently observe. Certain questions may remain unanswered not because there are no answers, but because finite minds do not yet possess every perspective necessary to understand them. Within this framework, I envision the Creator not as assigning identical lives to every consciousness, but as relating uniquely to each one. If consciousness truly develops, then guidance itself may also be personal.

Different stages may require different lessons. Different lessons may require different experiences. The goal would not be uniformity, but growth. This model also encourages me to measure a life differently. I no longer believe the value of a life can be determined by its length, its comfort, its achievements, or its outward success. A brief life may profoundly shape countless others. A hidden life may cultivate extraordinary compassion. A difficult life may involve forms of growth invisible to everyone except the person living it.

If consciousness exists for growth, then appearances alone may reveal remarkably little about the true significance of a human life. Many questions, however, remain unresolved. One of the most important concerns embodiment itself. Does consciousness experience only one earthly life? Or might growth unfold through more than one period of embodiment?

At this point in the model, I do not believe that question has been answered. Neither philosophy, science, nor religion presently compels a single conclusion.[23]

For that reason, I intentionally leave the question open. It deserves careful examination on its own terms rather than being assumed too early in the investigation. The next chapter begins exploring that possibility. Not because reincarnation has been established, but because if consciousness develops through stages, it becomes a question that naturally follows. Like every part of this philosophical framework, these ideas remain open to revision. Their value depends not on how appealing they seem, but on whether they continue to explain the widest range of observations while remaining consistent with reason, evidence, and whatever future discoveries may reveal.

 

The Skeptic’s Challenge

“You continue proposing possibilities that cannot presently be tested. Different stages of growth may sound comforting, but where is the evidence? Couldn’t differences between people simply result from genetics, environment, chance, and history? Why introduce invisible stages rather than accepting the observable explanations we already possess?”

 

My Response

Observable explanations remain essential. Genetics matter. Environment matters. Culture matters. History matters. Chance matters. Nothing in this framework denies those influences. In fact, any serious model of human development must account for them. My question is different.

Do those explanations fully account for consciousness itself, moral development, and the persistent human search for meaning? Perhaps they do. Perhaps they do not. The existence of ordinary explanations does not automatically establish that they are the only possible explanations. At the same time, the existence of an unanswered question does not justify inserting an invisible explanation simply because it fits the philosophical model.

The model presented here asks whether additional layers of explanation might exist without replacing the observable ones. If genetics, environment, psychology, neuroscience, and culture can ultimately explain the phenomena being discussed, then those explanations should be preferred. If future evidence demonstrates that consciousness and its development can be completely understood through physical processes alone, then this framework must change. Until then, I regard stages of consciousness as a philosophical possibility, not an established conclusion.

I do not claim that different circumstances prove different stages. I do not claim that suffering proves a soul has chosen a particular lesson. And I do not claim that an explanation we cannot presently test should be treated as evidence.

I am asking whether the questions that remain—particularly the nature of consciousness, subjective experience, moral development, and meaning—might eventually require a broader framework than the one we currently possess. The possibility is not the proof.

  

Questions That Remain

• Do all consciousnesses begin from the same origin?
• Why do human lives differ so dramatically?
• Does growth occur only during embodiment?
• What determines readiness for the next stage?
• Can wisdom continue developing beyond physical death?
• Is completion the end of growth, or the beginning of another kind of journey? 

Looking Ahead

The next question is perhaps the most controversial in this entire book.

If consciousness develops through stages… does that development ever include more than one earthly life?

The following chapter examines reincarnation—not as an assumption, but as a philosophical hypothesis that must be weighed alongside competing explanations.

 

Reflection

Imagine standing outside time and seeing your entire existence rather than only this lifetime. Would you judge yourself by isolated moments…or by the direction in which your consciousness has been moving?

[1] Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, “Developmental Environments,” Harvard University, 2026, https://developingchild.harvard.edu/key-concept/developmental-environments/.

[2] Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, “A Guide to Developmental Environments,” Harvard University, https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resource-guides/a-guide-to-developmental-environments/.

[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “About Adverse Childhood Experiences,” March 2, 2026, https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html.

[4] Laurence Vaivre-Douret, “Developmental and Cognitive Characteristics of ‘High-Level Potentialities’ (Highly Gifted) Children,” Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 20, no. 4 (2011): 267–273, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3184407/.

[5] Megan F. Bell et al., “Chronic Illness and Developmental Vulnerability at School Entry,” Pediatrics 137, no. 5 (2016): e20152475, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2015-2475.

 

[6] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2019), https://doi.org/10.17226/25246.

[7] John Bowker, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

[8] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Divine Providence,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/providence-divine/.

 

[9] American Psychological Association, “Social Comparison Theory,” APA Dictionary of Psychology, updated April 19, 2018, https://dictionary.apa.org/social-comparison-theory.

 

[10] Ori Ossmy, “Chaos Theory and Child Development: Quantifying Nonlinear Pathways of Growth,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, published online June 29, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916261451880.

[11] Paul H. Zedler, “Fire Effects on Grasslands,” in Plant Disturbance Ecology: The Process and the Response, ed. Edward A. Johnson and Kiyoshi Miyanishi (Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2007), 397–439, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012088778-1/50015-7.

[12] Brad Schoenfeld, “The Mechanisms of Muscle Hypertrophy and Their Application to Resistance Training,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 24, no. 10 (2010): 2857–2872. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181e840f3.

[13] L. E. Lanyon, “Bone Loading and Its Effects on Bone Remodelling,” Bone 10, no. 3 (1989): 197–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/8756-3282(89)90020-0.

[14] U.S. Geological Survey, “Rivers and the Landscape,” Water Science School, June 6, 2018, https://www.usgs.gov/water-science-school/science/rivers-and-landscape.

[15] Susan Bluck and Judith Glück, “Making Things Better and Learning a Lesson: Experiencing Wisdom Across the Lifespan,” Journal of Personality 72, no. 3 (2004): 543–572. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3506.2004.00272.x.

 

[16] Heidi Igarashi, Michael R. Levenson, and Carolyn M. Aldwin, “The Development of Wisdom: A Social Ecological Approach,” The Journals of Gerontology: Series B 73, no. 8 (2018): 1459–1469, https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gby002.

 

[17] Zlatan Krizan, “Social Comparison,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology (2018), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.251.

 

[18] NASA Science, “How Did We Get Here? Tracing the Origins of Stars, Galaxies, and Life,” NASA, 2025, https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/science-questions/how-did-universe-originate-and-evolve-produce-galaxies-stars-and-planets-we-see-today/.

[19] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “Decoding Science: How Does Science Know What It Knows?” National Academies Press, https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/25303/interactive/.

 

[20] John Bowker, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

[21] Carol Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

 

[22] Nic M. Weststrate and Judith Glück, “Hard-Earned Wisdom: Exploratory Processing of Difficult Life Experience Is Positively Associated with Wisdom,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114, no. 5 (2018): 695–713, https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000146.

 

[23] Mariana Lenharo, “The Consciousness Wars: Can Scientists Ever Agree on How the Mind Works?” Nature 625 (2024): 438–440, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00107-7.