there is a kind of dialectic between the lower and the higher states: Lower states can be instrumental to the acquisition of higher ones. You will find similar ideas in the contemplative traditions: Jesus meets the devil while spending forty days in the desert; you have the “dark night of the soul” as a recognized state in contemplative Christianity; and Tibetan Buddhism is full of monsters you must face with equanimity to realize they were really aspects of your own empty, luminous consciousness all along.[138]