The progressive stages of enlightenment have some focus on rebirth, which is not limited to incarnation. The successful completion of first three stages can lead to favorable rebirths, where a person experiences a pleasant existence through the cellular cleansing of the past. Prior to attuning success with these stages, a person is still considered restricted or chained to conditions of the mind on some level of consciousness.
Prajna in Sanskrit means wisdom, which is insight into the true nature of reality. Early stages of enlightenment address the key issues of dissatisfaction or suffering related to living from the Non-Self, where there is challenge to grow and evolve toward the supreme essence found at the core of all living beings. Emptiness or knowledge without the ability to discern is experienced by the Non-Self. Final stages of enlightenment is achieved with total consciousness around impermanence (Nirvana), which is an acceptance that change is inevitable. Acceptance by the soul at the highest level to experience this one truth brings to the surface its own pure essence, which is Divine Love.
During the first three stages, one is entering the stream of pure consciousness, taking a test drive toward the ultimate goal. This instills the core vibration of existence that is necessary to reach the aim. One small taste helps the body, mind, and spirit know the potential that comes with the effort.
They may experience one or two lifetimes moving through the initial stages as they learn the complexities of non-duality at the soul level. While moving through the first three levels, they may choose to complete the teaching in death, or their heavenly afterlife, and have the choice to become a non-returner to the physical world.
Nibbanna refers to reaching the ultimate spiritual goal with movement toward enlightenment. Reaching higher levels of consciousness means
a person is moving away from cravings. They are ‘fastening vana,’ which indicates a fastening or stitching together the previous generations, destinies, and the stations of consciousness passed down through the lineage. This is sometimes a lengthy, arduous process of purification taking place over several years or lifetimes. The seed of awakening must already be planted in order to manifest the wisdom needed to reach higher
levels of consciousness. During the first three stages, a person can experience extreme rising and falling of energy as they release the residual energy contained within the soul dimension.
Nibbana is not pre-determined and can take effort or occur spontaneously. An awakening can be induced during an event, sometime traumatic, or occur as a natural transformation whose time has come with the personal effort toward growth and enlightenment. The awakening seed opens in a bliss-filled moment of discovery as the energy within rises. During a moment of upward flowing energy, a person experiences the death of that part of themselves which manifested cravings, suffering, harsh conditions, and limitations.
Nibbanna is freedom found in accepting the truth of certain realities, along with the release of conditions. This might be realized as true forgiveness and the surrender that comes with consciously letting go of the past. There is a natural and a causal occurrence that is not planned or organized. Cause prevailed or uncaused is a determining factor related to responsibility. The dimension of human energy, referred to as the Causal Body or the Willful Body, is the human dimension where free will is maintained as an expression of one’s being. Willful actions are causal energy that solicits a response from the Universe under the Law of Karma and Law of Action. Nibanna can be described as actions that are uncompounded, not-put together, or unintended.
Dissolving of aggregates is the death of lower-self energy. A rebirth can occur during incarnation as the death of the old self creates a new 
architecture of spirit. An awakening can be experienced when the spirit is no longer willing or able to handle the emotions contained within. As the spirit releases the residue of emotions, channels open to a new flow of light-filled energy. Peace follows when the mind no longer forms assumptions, and innocence is returned along with complete personal sovereignty. Without manifestations of the mind influenced by the residue associated with the past, an illuminated consciousness rises to fill the channels of human energy. In other words, the heart opens fully to Divine Love.
The final stage of enlightenment is called nirvana. Nirvana is the earliest and most common term used to describe the goal of Buddhism. The literal meaning is blowing out or quenching. It is the ultimate spiritual goal, and attainment of this level of enlightenment marks the release from the process of rebirth. Nirvana has two types, nirvana with some remainder or nirvana without a remainder. Liberation from cycles of rebirth is the highest aim in which there is no abiding in Nirvana. Someone who has reached the highest level can choose rebirth to help liberate beings by teaching the path toward enlightenment.
Freedom from the mind is freedom from suffering, most often achieved through mental focus that comes with the practice of meditation. 
Attaining a state of mind free from addictions, cravings, limiting beliefs, restraining conditions, false notions, and misaligned behaviors, is a release from the burdens of the heart and a conquering of living without suffering. Freedom through understanding (prajna) represents the final release signaling the end of the cycles of birth and rebirth.
Nirvana carries the synonym of ‘deathless’ or ‘death free,’ referring to a condition where there is no true death or true birth, no coming into existence, nothing that carries conditions and therefore no limitations of space and time. The end of suffering is experienced during an event or as part of the process of awakening. The verb nirvanizes is the act of making the experience of enlightenment unlike any conditioned phenomenon.
The journey through nirvana is not a separation from reality, more the process of release from unhealthy soul attachments to become calm with life with an ability to remain even-tempered during intense situations. Nirvana has been described in negative terms, in that some feel metaphysical speculation becomes an obstacle in reaching the goal of enlightenment. While on the journey toward transformation through conscious discernment, a person can cease to feel positive emotions such as happiness and joy.
Nirvana can refer to an overall state of balance under the conditions of space and time, which is the goal of transforming human energy. Moving through the stages of enlightenment involves the practice of divergent thinking, or a free flow of thought unbound by limitations imposed by analytics. True nirvana is freedom from restrictions, infinite consciousness, and a type of absolute sovereignty where all light is free to move in order to expand and shine. In a state of nirvana, one makes no assumptions.
Instead of avoiding or eliminating duality, nirvana is truly a reference to harmonizing opposites. Without opposing elements, there is no movement, only an absence of energy. When opposites are in harmony, 
energy is free to flow in the most natural movement. Like a river that cannot obstruct itself, nirvana could be considered more a state of mind than a state of being. When opposites are harmonized, the opposing forces disappear or seem non existent. Enlightenment is a person reaching the exact middle point of duality, which to many would seem like an absence of polar opposition free from dualistic conceptions. Some people develop the mindset they will only work in the light. This represents an attachment void of reality, where the individual has lost self-awareness. The goal is not to stay in the light or the dark, but instead to find the center. Enlightenment is living life in the grey where opposites have found harmony, balance, and peace. The metaphysical speculation on reaching nirvana can present paradoxical views on the process of enlightenment.
The stages of nirvana include one level attained in life and one in death. Nirvana in life is general and imprecise, while the stage experienced in death is specific and precise. Take the life of a person who has attained nirvana. They still have a body, a name, an identity, and a way of being in the world. Nirvana at the time of death is a completion to the process that included a practice in life, manifesting once there is no energy left to sustain the physical body.
A residual energy of nirvana can remain with the soul. The remnant of nirvana is carried in an imprint like a partial system or container that holds the wisdom achieved during the incarnation. Final knowledge is carried in the system that was not eliminated, held in the five senses that were not destroyed by death. The ‘nibbana element’ is a reference to the residual energy cooling, which means no residue remains and all thirst has been extinguished. Since nirvana at death cannot be explained, nibanna cannot be fully analyzed or expressed.
To reach nirvana, there is a fire that must be extinguished. The fuel for the fire is a group or cluster of elements that drive cravings. All
metaphors would point toward the fire of passion as being for the good from a Vedic perspective. Unhealthy cravings of the soul draw forth a valuable life lesson. A thirst for knowledge, growth, and wisdom must be what drives a person toward an awakening. Reaching nirvana means some understanding around the lack of an abiding self without permanence is realized. Enlightenment involves a human mind removed of all delusion, which is ignorance or avoidance of reality taking form.
Letting go, surrendering, acceptance, the end of suffering, a mental place without corruption, peacefulness, a living death, emptiness, the most natural state, non-threatened, completion, all describe nirvana. As Dr Marcel Vogel once described, enlightenment is realized by, ‘breaking the bond between the Lower Self and the Higher Self,’ Freedom from conditions and any form of self-imposed sufferings nirvana, the final stage of disconnection from unhealthy soul attachments, a mind free from limitations, human energy channels filled with light, and the realization of an awakening known as enlightenment.
Bhikku Bodhi once stated, “For as long as one is entangled by craving, one remains bound in samsara, the cycle of birth and death; but when all craving has been extricated, one attains Nibbana, deliverance from the cycle of birth and death.”