The four stages are Buddhism at its most unromantic. Awakening is not one binary event but a sequence, and each stage is defined by which of ten specific fetters have permanently dropped: the stream-enterer loses the self-view, doubt, and attachment to rites as ends in themselves, and is guaranteed full awakening within seven lives. The once-returner has one human life left; the non-returner none; the arhat is finished. What makes this unusual among mystical systems is the specificity — it is a claim about permanent, checkable changes in a person, not a peak experience — and it is why the question of who has attained what is handled so carefully in monastic culture, where claiming attainment falsely is one of the four offences that end a monastic career on the spot.