What seven? It’s when someone is faithful, conscientious, prudent, learned, energetic, mindful, and wise. These are the seven qualifications for graduation that I make known after realizing them with my own insight. A mendicant who possesses these seven qualifications for graduation is qualified to be called a ‘graduate mendicant’. This is so whether they have lived the full and pure spiritual life for twelve years, twenty-four years, thirty-six years, or forty-eight years.”

Numbered Discourses 7.44 5. A Great Sacrifice Planes of Consciousness

“Mendicants, there are these seven planes of consciousness. What seven?

There are sentient beings that are diverse in body and diverse in perception, such as human beings, some gods, and some beings in the underworld. This is the first plane of consciousness.

There are sentient beings that are diverse in body and unified in perception, such as the gods reborn in the Divinity’s host through the first absorption. This is the second plane of consciousness.

There are sentient beings that are unified in body and diverse in perception, such as the gods of sublime luminosity. This is the third plane of consciousness.

There are sentient beings that are unified in body and unified in perception, such as the gods of universal beauty. This is the fourth plane of consciousness.

There are sentient beings that have gone totally beyond perceptions of form. With the disappearance of perceptions of impingement, not focusing on perceptions of diversity, aware that ‘space is infinite’, they have been reborn in the dimension of infinite space. This is the fifth plane of consciousness.