The third stage, of Spiritual Death, is not of course the end of the process. After you have been integrated, made your mind positive and refined, and ‘died’ spiritually, the question arises – ‘What is there? What is left? What comes into being?’. What comes into being, in Sangharakshita’s system of meditation, is a new being, the new you – a new being based not on selfishness, but on wisdom and compassion. That new being is the Bodhisattva. So the meditator is reborn (not literally, of course, but metaphorically) as a Bodhisattva. He or she becomes something quite new, quite different. Instead of being driven by ego it is the Bodhicitta that comes through you: this is the stage of spiritual rebirth.

Read and listen to a comprehensive set of explorations of the Bodhisattva Ideal.