Freedivers drop their weights to surface. Joy, it turned out, works the same way. At every level of joy there’s the same kind of crowd — people who outgrew “I’m okay, you’re not,” and who enjoy hanging out just as much. And I go: not bad. Let me drop a few more weights. And up you float.

People have been drawing maps of this ascent for thousands of years, from every direction. Tantra counts three bhavas, Gurdjieff spoke of the man-machine waking up, Maslow stacked a pyramid, Hawkins calibrated a scale of states. Lay the maps side by side and they line up. Different centuries, same territory.

The tantric map is the one I keep returning to. Three levels, and it’s honest about the starting point.

Pashu — the bound one. Lives by rules he never chose. Afraid of judgment, ashamed of desires, performs rituals for the sake of form. The chains are invisible threads: attention algorithms, other people’s expectations, the fear of standing out. Pashu sleeps and dreams a dream in which he’s certain he is awake.

Vira — the hero. Woke up and started acting: does things the way he feels, against the way it’s done. Experiments. Explores himself through practice — body, breath, altered states. Vira still twitches; there is still effort. But the direction is chosen.

Divya — the divine. No external rituals — everything happens from inside. Desires merge with reality. No “I’m trying.” Just being. Divya is what remains when the one who was achieving disappears.

A funnel, not a ladder. And the question is never which level you’re on. The question is which direction you’re moving.

Pashu becomes vira through one brave decision. One. Today. Vira becomes divya by letting go of effort. Trusting the flow.

The Reading List

Above divya, the maps run out of levels. What remains up there is a single sentence, three thousand years old.