There are three states of the Name which look like stages from a temporal point of view but which are states from the timeless point of view of wisdom and glory. As stages, purification, illumination and union proceed from purification of the heart to illumination of mind in the heart, which opens to the union and ineffable openness of deification. As states, purity of heart, illumination of heart and mind, abide with deifying glorification in God’s reign of holy hallowing, residing with timeless peace in the uncreated light of the Name. Timeless states are temporal stages when viewed in time, but temporality is encompassed by timeless glory, which transfigures time, giving time its living intelligibility and meaning. Timeless states when reified as states are always hindrances but as translucent moments in the way of awakening, release the Name into liberation.
As stages, states are accessible gradually, but as states stages are simultaneous theophanies of wisdom and glory. The mercy of time enables stages to be realised gradually in time, but the grace of holy suddenness opens stages as timeless states of uncreated glory. Glorification is the key to temporal stages and to timeless states, because glorification in Christ is divine-human, therefore timeless and temporal, simultaneous and gradual. Elders handle many paradoxes as they help saints negotiate the timeless in time and time in the timeless, without fixating the timeless into a reified eternity or reducing time to vacuous relativism and nihilism. Reified states bind awareness, whereas liberating states are boundless.
As states, stages leap over temporal ways and means by abiding at centre in timeless glory, beholding the created lights of creation in the uncreated light of glory. Lucifer confuses the uncreated with the created, whereas Christ overcomes confusion to heal division. Antichrist apes Lucifer, but Christ restores confusion to communion and division to holy union. States as stages communicate stages as states, imparting holy co-inherence to both states. Stages release into states so that stages become states, transparently translucent to each other without causing dissipated dissolution, crystallising stages into states, by liberating stages as three stateless states of pure light, the uncreated light of the Name: purity, light and glory.