Curious to know why a minimum of 7 lives for enlight. in case of sottapana. Looked but not found it explained. Also i guess that one would not know until one re-attained? But how would one know if this was the case or a first time? I ask because of weird dream had at first real experience of meditation at a Goenka retreat, actually a sequence of 5 related dreams during the course.

Hi & welcome to the DhO,

Take a look at my first post in this thread ("Here’s an interpretation, (...)": http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/1306528

Personally, I experienced a whole lot more than 7 "lives," but all of them were lived in the mind of this same flesh and blood body.

My response doesn't answer your question, but perhaps it will allow you to lay the question aside [1].

Trent

[1] http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.042.than.html