Another possibility is modern living has made us worse off spiritually, so we are not in fact reaching new, higher states, but rather have added many lower states we must now first pass through to get back to where the baseline used to be.
Shoot, I was too slow:
avoiding me now
look inside they said! screw that,
it's scary in there
so, just let it be
the world, others, the future,
that pustulous zit