Daniel Ingram wrote:

https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-vi-my-spiritual-quest/70-around-the-world-and-finding-home/wobble-and-fall/

Is this true of the other stages of awakening?

I believe it's a joke, i.e. if you're only an arhat on retreat, you're not an arhat.  The real test of realization is how it holds up in the chaos of daily life, etc.

It doesn't sound like a joke when Daniel describes it on video.
https://youtu.be/EbJiy6EJLsI?si=pvljQ7BXA_rUMIMr&t=5326

The link is cued to a few seconds before the quote. You can back up father if you want more context.

As far as I can tell Daniel uses this statement to justify his experiences as those of an arhat, and that when that state beomes permanent he felt justified in calling himself an arhat. I don't think Daniel's claim about being an arhat is based on realization, it is based on a perceptual shift that was at first ustable and then became permanent. 

1:27:29 in the video: 

When your experience of being is like this permanently you are an arhat. Before it becomes stable you might experience temporarily maybe on a retreat.

So are the other stages of awakening like this? Can you experience them temporarily, before you fully attain them and they become permanent?

"When your experience of being is like this permanently you are an arhat."

Ugh! This "permanent" thing  seems kind of ... off. 
Annica. 
"being like this" also is off because ... Anatta. 


"In and of itself" thisness is a master of ... gone. A goat is a master. She eats grass and shits marbles. 

"When your experience of being is like this permanently you are an arhat. Before it becomes stable you might experience temporarily maybe on a retreat."

ugh ugh ugh dear friend Jim I would suggest you "relax" less and Note More, as this kind of thinking causes Dukkha. Which is not a bad thing at all because you can note it and fuel the awakening. 

How can there be an Arahat person if there is Anatta in all observed exoerience? 
Annica makes sure to rip a new one in the very idea of a person who got awakened!  
Ignoring this is Dukkha. 

Best wishes to you Jim! 

... and of course excuse my rumbling!  

p.s,. No, im not an Arahat. Hence, how could you know? Well, I don't know!  

Thanks for the greater context.  I would amend what I said, not a joke perhaps but still seemingly chracterizing Daniel's experience at that time as an unstable or temporary experience vs stable realization. 

Realization AFAIC = insight = perceptual shift.

Retreat is basically just tantamount to intensive practice conditions.  And when practicing meditation intensively, people often experience interesting perceptual effects, some of which fade, and some which, in the case of genuine insight, stick around. 

So yes, glimpses are possible.  And often before we gain stable attainment, we do have prior more minor glimpses.  This is just a general characteristic of meditative progression though, not specific to any one stage of attainment. 

If an arhat slips out of that state sometimes it only validates my question - I want to know which stages of awakening you can experience impermanently.

I am not expressing my views on what an arhat is, I am explaining Daniels and U Pandita's. I have no reason to doubt Daniel's experience. I don't have my own definition of what an arhat is or any reason to favor any particular definition as being most the practical, but I am aware Daniel disagrees with the pali canon on this subject. 

Daniel said:

1:27:09

Initially Daniel said it was unstable. Then he describes it as stablizing where he said "... I still have to this day 17 years later."
I am interpreting 17 years as "permanent".


I don't have any reason to doubt Daniel's experience, and he is using Sayadaw U Pandita's definition of arhat.
He has had this way perceiving reality for 17 years.

If a realization would satisfy this definition of an arhat there would be no point to saying someone is an arhat only on retreat. The first time they experience it even if it was unstable, that would be the realization.

In some cases a perceptual shift is permanent, like when you see it's a duck or a rabbit



But what Daniel was talking about was not stable. He had to make a strong effort at practicing to make it stable.

So I don't think realization is a good way to describe it. In my way of thinking a realization is something that once you realize it you don't unrealize it. What Daniel is describing is a perceptual shift but not a realization. 

If you look at how Daniel defines stream-entry it is also not a realization. Daniel defines stream-entry based on attainments in meditation.

https://vimeo.com/372228348

I think what Daniel is saying is that you can have any kind perceptual shift or epiphany or realization or satori or kensho or insight, but if it doesn't have those effects on meditation it isn't stream-entry.

I don't agree with this definition, but I don't have any thing to offer myself. I think that there is a clear way to identify it, is a good quality lacking in many ways of defining stream-entry, I just don't see the connection to ending suffering or realizing anatta in those meditative attainments.

All stages of awakening are permanent.

We do perceptual exercises in order to change deeply imbedded unseen cognitive models and as a result we get a cooling down of affect.

All perceptual changes are impermanent, they go back to being the way they always were.

One doesnt walk around seeing 3Cs or non duality - whatever that is suppossed to mean.

One walks around relaxed, affectively unentangled, the heart gets out of all conceptual models of me and mine as well as not me and not mine, and it goes back into the rib cage where it belongs to do the job that it is suppossed to do rather than inject itself where it doesnt belong.

​​​​​​​This relaxation response is all one gets to keep. And it is beautiful, rational, sane .... at last!!

A sutta that explains this wonderfully is atthinukopariyayo sutta. Roughly translated as The Criteria sutta.
​​​​​​​Perhaps the only sutta which gives an explicit criteria of the attainment of the Arahant.

Jim, it's really important to not take that sentence out of context. Here's the whole section containing that quote and then next section. I think if you read it again, you'll see that your question is answered.

(Let's see if the formatting copy/paste overs, if not it's easier to read via the links.)

Wobble and Fall – MCTB.org

Speaking of contraction, an hour or two later, this pristine and oh-so-right way of perceiving started to break up and that clean space began to shudder, and then, before I knew it, it was gone. Reality had re-tangled. I had no idea why. I didn’t realize what was going on when it re-tangled, but the effect was glaringly obvious, and the cause would slowly become more obvious: my reification and subtle grasping at something that you would think is ungraspable, but, until one really gets something in the depths of that ungraspability, that “Holy shit, this is it!” reaction can totally derail that otherwise exquisitely clean perceptual mode. Because of this not-so-subtle attachment to detachment, I was back to states and stages and cycles and very subtle yet mind-bogglingly annoying duality. It was like having my heart broken by my one true love, like watching my best friend be murdered, like having my greatest treasure stolen, like the world collapsing into war and chaos before my eyes.It felt like the worst thing my mind ever did, and my mind has done some pretty bad things. I did everything I could not to panic, but some degree of panic set in anyway. I was terrified I would never get it back. This derailed my practice for maybe an hour or two, and then, remembering what had gotten me there in the first place, I pulled it together, went back to core assumptions (six sense doors, three characteristics), started practicing again, powered up to total sensate comprehension again, and, relatively shortly thereafter, it flipped over, everything righted itself, the knot untangled, fundamental perceptual identification and division stopped, and it was okay, actually much better than okay: I was satisfied! Then, an hour or two later, it happened again, a shudder, a wobble, like a top spinning off-kilter as it begins to slow down, like a mud clot thrown into a clear, still reflecting pool, like some destructive warp in space caused by a bizarre alien weapon in a sci-fi movie.Shortly thereafter, during a meeting with Sayadaw U Pandita Jr. about my practice, and while I was in the synced mode of attention, I said simply, “Cycles, stages, powers, experiences: they all come and go on their own,” and then I just smiled. He looked at me and said with a huge smile directed to the nun sitting next to me, “Did you hear what he said!?” like it was the most beautiful and important thing in the whole world, which it was to me at the time and still is.So, the pattern went on, every few waking hours, for almost a week. Heartbroken, everything screwed up, cycles, stages, Fruitions, jhanas, formless realms, all utterly dissatisfactory. Then, after an hour or two of good practice on just what was happening: flip, wonder, amazement, happiness, rightness, satisfaction, centerlessness, effortlessness, immediacy, and peace. Then, an hour or two later: wobble and fall.It is because of that week of gaining and losing that pristine centerless clarity that I can tell you for certain that the perfectly synced way is better, vastly better, and the other way, by comparison, totally sucks, despite how impressive all the stages and states and all that may seem. The difference is simply huge. Those days of alternating between the two radically different modes of perception made the meaning of fundamental suffering abundantly clear, with that period of practice driving the point home with sickening regularity every time the pristine mode would break apart. Somewhere in this phase, Sayadaw U Pandita, Jr. gently said to me, “You know, some people are arahants only on retreat.” Those terrifying words galvanized whatever else in me had held back.

Vimuttimagga, The Path of Freedom – MCTB.org


After just less than a week of going through what felt like a sequential emphasis during the distorted periods on the four foundations of mindfulness, first physical sensations, then aspects of vedana (the degree of pleasantness, unpleasantness, or neutrality of sensations), then mental qualities and thoughts, then finally attention itself, in that order (no idea why), it felt like everything converged in some complete and total way, flipped over, and that was it. This shift contained the deep and abiding realization that it was never not that way, that even the most screwed-up periods had been as they were even when they seemed that they weren’t.I had barely done any teaching or writing in the few years before that retreat, frustrated as I was by an understanding that felt very close but was not quite there. Just after the thing synced up for the last time, during an interview with the Sayadaw, I mentioned this lack of teaching and said that I had thought about teaching again, and he looked me square in the eyes and said simply, “Good.” Then he told a long story about some monks in Burma and then at the end as a summary of the clear moral of the story said, “And that is why you shouldn’t go around saying you are an arahant or have powers,” and again looked me straight in the eye.There were only three people in that room, the faith-follower nun, him, and myself. I clearly have not followed that second piece of advice, but then again neither did he, as he demonstrated powers on that retreat and clearly considered himself an arahant and would speak about it so clearly that it couldn’t possibly even be called veiled speech despite him never using the actual word.I should mention something here about Sayadaw U Pandita Jr.: it was just great to have someone who wasn’t impressed or intimidated by my abilities, but instead just kept his eye on the prize and stayed gently focused on that. He was perfectly fluent and comfortable with map theory, fluent and comfortable with deep concentration, didn’t seem to care about the powers except as a diagnostic and teaching tool, and had an apparently unflappable steadiness to him in the face of all my descriptions of the wild and varied territory I found myself in during that retreat. My best advice: if you can find a teacher at that level, study with that one. There is much to be said for devotion to those worthy of devotion, which unfortunately is a pretty small number of teachers, but if you find a good one, an honorable one, an impeccable one, then devote yourself to that teacher by studying well, listening to and applying what they say, and practicing with everything you have, as it is likely to pay off.All these years later the field has never destabilized again, the wobble never recurred, and things never un-synced. I knew when it happened that my vipassana quest was over. I had the answer I sought, and it has held up, event after event, challenge after challenge, cycle after cycle. There have been many interesting ways this insight has percolated through old patterns and relative issues. There have been many interesting shifts of perspective that have arisen from that integration process. However, getting that core insight in the first place is really the key point, the thing that made the difference I was looking for, and so hopefully this book will help inspire that in you, assuming you don’t already have it, as you just might, and if you do, good on ya! I give great thanks to the thousands of practitioners over the millennia who have preserved and transmitted these teachings for those of us living today. May we do our best to live up to their standards and find ways to continue to realize and transmit the dharma to those who come after us.Thus, the answers are in Part One, as Part One states—in the initial, formal vipassana instruction—to be very clear about all sensations and to perceive all sensations arise and vanish. That is the high dharma that somehow hundreds of pages of this book come down to. It is that simple, at least from a vipassana point of view. That is the profound beauty of the dharma of the Buddha: it is excellent, straightforward, explainable, doable, immediate, based on very simple, clear hypotheses that are testable even early on in experience and continue to hold up all the way through to the end.That is the story, at least as far as fundamental insight goes. Since then, there has been much more to learn about the first two trainings, particularly morality, the whole scope of relative skillful living in the world, and optimizing value and meaning, which, as I said, is an endless and limitless undertaking. There is much to relate on that front beyond what is recounted here, but, for the time being, this is hopefully enough to convey multiple practical dharma points, chief among them being that, while deep insights can be attained in this lifetime, and they beat the pants off not having them, each of the scopes of the three trainings shouldn’t be absolutely counted on to perfectly illuminate any of the others, even though they are definitely interdependent. All three trainings of morality, concentration, and wisdom are worthy of deep attention, study, and practice throughout our mortal, mammalian lives.

I like the question and I like the responses! In the overall, it's not clear. That's a good thing. 

I think each full insight cycle is irreversible. These achievements are accumulated. All the expectations around it defined in various books are culture specific and context dependent. Often they were monks as opposed to lay people, householders. 4 achieved cycles should be the only measure. All the other crap is bunk, conditioning, rights and rituals.

Thus the quote is referencing that in the retreat context, arahants can achieve the ideals set by a book. Off retreat, it is not textbook and absolutely defined. Relax from the rights, rituals and dogma. Be.