Four Levels

[stardustpilgrim]

There are at minimum 4 levels. The second level is like a shadow, or a mirror, it's the world of experience. Plato described it well. Our heads are fixed so that we cannot turn around, we only see shadows on the wall of the cave. A shadow is two dimensional. Kant described it also. He said we only know our own perceptions, we only know phenomenon via our own perceptions. Say there is a tree. The tree is behind us, we only know the shadow of the tree. The tree is the 3rd level. So for Kant the 3rd level, and above, is the noumenal world. There is an opening at the top of the cave that let's sunlight in. The Sun is the 4th level. So light, 4, enters the cave, hits an object, 3, and casts a shadow, 2. We perceive only the shadow, 3L is reduced to 2L. So what is 1L? 1L is the verbal, or written description of 2L. The word is the least-real. Now, all this occurs every minute. 2, 3 and 4 are all vertical. Time is the horizontal movement of events and experiences. So the horizontal and vertical form a cross. So 'what we are looking for' never occurs in time. 'What we are looking for' is always vertical, outside of phenomenal experience. 2L, 3L and 4L, are always now, above, vertical, outside of time. No amount of horizontal gets us to vertical. Plato's hero escapes his bonds, is able to turn around and see 3D, and he climbs up out of the cave and sees the Sun, 4L. He goes back into the cave to try to tell the others about 3L and the Sun, but they think he is mad. IOW, he takes what he understands from Level 4, what he now IS, back into the cave. They don't understand. The vertical is accessible only now, in the present moment, never in the future, this is why "no amount of rubbing 2 bricks together will make a mirror". So, also, there is the nonduality of 2L and 3L. There is the nonduality of 2L and 3L and 4L. Is there a 5L? Yes. Is there a 6L? Yes. But they are likewise vertical, accessible only now. Most people live in 1L, verbalizing about shadows and reflections. We can only see the level we are on, and below. We can't see what's above (or what's more internal), except in rare glimpses. This is so much so that we cannot even conceive that there IS a next level upward. IOW, whatever level we are on, or have experienced, we consider THAT'S the Whole, that's the meaning of discontinuity of levels, it's the nature of the quantum universe. It's like, again, having an immovable 'head', each level, you can't see what's behind you (what's above you). Accessing each level above is a matter of speed of vibrations, IOW, having the corresponding level of energy, the frequency is always higher each level upward. And our ordinary 'I', what we usually say I to, cannot go above level 3. Each level above is experienced as yet-more-real. You do not understand anything unless you see that these levels exist, at least the one above you. So the lower level cannot know to higher. To know the higher you have to BECOME the higher. That means your level of being must change. The higher knows itself, and what's below.

[stardustpilgrim]

The OP got long and my battery was dying, but this is a kind of extension of the OP. According to the Hermetic aphorism, as above, so below, and the principle the Macrocosm and the microcosm operate from the same laws, man also has these corresponding levels. So we have a basement, a first story and a second story. Some people get conditioned into living in their basement, and don't know there are two stories above. The basement of negative emotions is dark and damp, has spiders and snails and snakes, this is our reptile brain, the brain stem and spinal column. It's the world of fight or flight (or freeze). It's the dog eat dog world. It's the survival of the fittest world. The floor above it is the mammalian brain, the limbic system, the world of emotions. Even Darwin wrote about a next stage, where it's helpful to cooperate and help others so as to pass on our genes. The floor above this is the neocortex, or forebrain. It allows man to abstract, to represent stuff in the world, via symbolic language, to be able to collect information via language and pass it down, so everyone doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene invented the word meme, for passing on information through language, IOW, through culture. Without language, we are one generation away from the stone age. This is one reason I'm a 'believer' in paper-books. We could have a natural catastrophe that obliterates the mass production of electricity, and computers and e-books. Computers and e-books could of course hold their data, but if not accessible, it's useless. Just incidentally here, Noah's ark had three levels, look it up, these correspond to our basement-reptilian brain, the mammalian brain, and the neocortex. This is why Gurdjieff called man a three-brained being, man is three-storied (reptiles have one brain, mammals have two brains).

Gurdjieff called the 3 brains, our functions. But all this is still only level 1 and level 2 of the OP, 1L and 2L. Gurdjieff made a distinction between the functions, and consciousness. Yes, we are conscious, in our functions, but consciousness is more inward, the ability to turn outward or inward. We can in a sense turn around, inside ourselves, to level 3 (freeing our fixed head, Plato's allegory of the cave, and being able to look 'behind' ourselves (or above), so we can see more than just shadows and reflections. And this turning corresponds to metanoia, of the Esoteric Christianity thread. And this turning also corresponds to the finding of level 4, sunlight, not just shadows or the objects which cast shadows. So, again, L1, L2, L3, L4, are vertical, stacked, as it were, one upon the other. We have to in a sense, walk upstairs from the basement to the first floor, and then from the first floor to the second floor (some people live mostly in the basement, some people live mostly on the first floor, some people shift from floor to floor). But we can live a perfectly OK life, be perfectly happy, from the 2nd floor, the ordinary mind, this is all nature gives. Anything above the ordinary mind, has to be "self"-chosen, sought. So what corresponds to 'sunlight', L4 and above? This is the Sanskrit word dvadasanta, from the one review I read of what this one guy said is spoken of in 50 and 51 of the 112 Meditations, the Vigyan Bhairava Tantra.