Transcription
This video is inspired by a video I saw today by someone on YouTube called PsychoMath. So, if anybody has seen their content, you might recognize what I'm doing here.
In this video, he describes the higher levels of thinking. Level 9 to him on his scale is the highest. And when he reached describing level 9, he had a little bit of difficulty and actually is willing or was willing in the video to have anybody who spent more time there describe it in a more concise manner.
So we'll start with first person. The thinking of somebody who is within first person thinking sees others as essentially objects within the world that they interact with. They don't understand that somebody has a thought and a reason for their thoughts or the reason for their actions. They just see the person and then make judgments based on their perception of the person at face value.
So he gave an example which was pretty funny. This guy wants to smoke in this guy's house and this guy, we'll call him Bill and this guy Steve. Bill says, "No, you can't smoke in my house. I don't like that. Please don't smoke my house." If Steve was at first person thinking, he would just see Bill as annoying, wrong, not cool, and essentially his enemy. He doesn't understand that Bill has his own thoughts and his own reasons for desiring a no smoke environment in his household. Steve just believes that it's totally cool to smoke. We know that Steve probably has his own reasons. But say Bill was in first-person thinking, he would also just see Steve as someone who smokes and objectively to him, he's an enemy as well. He's in the way and breaking the rules of his household. And from Steve's perspective, he's in the way and not letting him smoke. There's really no more depth. So from the first person perspective, the first person thinking perspective, Steve just sees Bill. There's no more depth than that. Bill is in the way. He's really annoying and there's no no more depth to any potential understanding of Bill's motivations.
Second person thinking is where a person can understand or knows that somebody else thinks differently than them. There's no further extrapolation from that point. For example, Steve understands that Bill has his own thoughts about smoking. It's not just that Bill doesn't like smoking as if he's an object in the world like a brick wall preventing Steve from walking through it. In a metaphorical sense, he's a person with a thought about smoking and doesn't want Steve smoking in the house. Because there's no further thinking after this, no further cognition, it still doesn't lend itself to any sort of empathy or compromise. Steve just knows that Bill thinks differently than him, but he still doesn't agree and he will choose he will choose what he wants to do regardless. So if Steve is conditioned and believes entirely that smoking in a house is totally fine, there's no real way that Bill will convince Steve that it's not okay to smoke in his house. He'll still choose to do it anyway and still see Bill as wrong.
Third person thinking is where somebody can think about somebody else's thoughts. So in this scenario, Steve can actually think about Bill's thoughts. Steve can think about Bill thinking about Steve and Steve's desires. Vice versa, if this was the other way around as well, Bill is able to think about Steve thinking about Bill and what Bill wants. So they know why they want what they want. So Steve would know why Bill doesn't want smoking in the house and Steve will assume based on their conversation that Bill also knows why Steve wants to smoke in the house. So they can understand each other from a thinking perspective. They understand each other's thoughts. They don't just look at each other and see either a brick wall like an object preventing them from what they want. And they also don't just look at each other and see someone who has thoughts. They see somebody and they see somebody's thoughts. They see that person's thoughts. They can at least extrapolate based on the conversation what kind of thoughts they have. They can understand each other but they can still disagree. But because they can think about each other's perspective, this is when empathy arises. So now compromise is possible for them.
The fourth person thinking is when you extrapolate out further. So to function relatively well in society. I feel like third person thinking is essentially a must. It's so that you can have empathy with others. You can compromise. You can understand their point of view. But in order to form your own opinions about the world and develop your own style of living, fourth person thinking is necessary. So now Steve can think about his own thoughts and his own thinking in relation to other people. He can think about himself in relation to other people and other people's perspectives. He sees a whole world of possible ways to live. So he could be like this Steve in an argument with this Bill based on his thoughts about smoking. Or because he doesn't like the thought of that, he can decide to be a different Steve. So he's capable of choosing with greater clarity who he wants to be. He could be any type of Steve he wants. He could be interested in any type of thing for any type of reason. And he understands that it's just like that for everybody else. They could be interested in anything for any kind of reason. They could have any belief for any kind of reason. And based on conversation and deduction, you can reason out through this level of thinking why someone thinks the way they think. And you can have not only empathy, but you're capable of choosing whether or not you would like to also live that way. So you're not just indoctrinated into any belief system because of fourth person thinking. You can think about thinking, you can think about perspectives and you can choose which type of thinking and which type of perspective that you would like to have in life.
The thing about fourth person thinking is that it leads to overthinking and it leads to analysis paralysis. Steve could sit in a room for hours thinking about what kind of Steve he wants to be. He could think about his life ad nauseam. He could think about what kind of career he wants, what kind of people he wants to be around, what kind of goals he has, what kind of money he wants to make and why he want he could think about what kind of morals he wants, what kind of political affiliation if any that he wants. And this right here is the doorway. Fourth person thinking is the doorway into the higher levels of awareness.
So at this point from this description, all of these levels are just levels of what you could call thinking. After this, you become meta-thinking. You enter into metacognition. So you essentially step out of your own thinking. And I'll show you that in the next level.
So now in fifth person thinking the crucial doorway into this level of thinking is that the realization that I am not my mind. This is when an individual such as Steve realizes that there is actually an observer that is capable of observing the thoughts of Steve. Just like how you can observe the feeling of your own hand, you can observe your own thoughts. You can observe your own emotions. You can observe your own belief systems. So from fifth person thinking, it's not actually thinking. It is observation. It is awareness of thought. So the observer that is within all of us can observe the body, the sensations of the body, the thoughts in the mind and the emotions and the thoughts of everybody else's thoughts. So anything that occurs within the mind can be observed and you can participate essentially in life from this observer state. The mind happens and I can pay attention to it. The mind, it doesn't even have to be labeled as my mind. And you don't say I am the mind. You say the mind happens and I can pay attention to it. So if an emotion of anger arises, you can let it pass. And through practices of meditation and mindfulness, this is what you learn. I can choose to identify with anything arising within the mind. Anything that arises within the mind doesn't necessarily have to take our attention. We don't have to give it anything. We don't have to give it our energy. We don't have to give it our attention. We can let it pass.
This observer is universal. All people are the observer. But they are identified with form. So before at the lower levels particularly there is an observer here but Steve for all intents and purposes is so hypnotized by being Steve that he has forgotten all other levels of awareness of self-awareness and so forth throughout the other levels of person thinking.
The next level after this which is in the video he described as level nine but it is six person thinking. He didn't have an image for it and he didn't have a clear way of describing it but is essentially the I. It is the I. It is no longer the observer. It is the I. It is the beingness that includes and is part of and encompasses the observer, the personage, the identity, the form, the thoughts, the emotions, the feelings, the sensations. There is a beingness, a feeling of your own being that exists at all times. Behind the observer, the person, the person's thoughts, the person's thoughts about thoughts, the person's emotions, desires, beliefs, there is an I. Some people call this the I am, but all that's necessary in terms of languaging is I. I am implies that you're about to identify with something. There is just an I. There is just beingness. There is just awareness. All things are taking place within awareness itself. Watching the mind become simply being. This is why there are books and talks and people who give lectures on things like the power of now, be here now, the simplicity of just being. If there was nothing to observe or to be aware of, there would be awareness. There would still be awareness. Even if there was no observer, this was gone. There would still be the awareness that all of this happens within.
Now thinking is completely useless and counterproductive. So this is why I say at this higher level, at these higher levels, it's not necessarily thinking anymore. It is awareness. It is being aware of thought. The mind thinks constantly. 90% of the time you don't actually have to engage in any of it. Thinking is a useful tool. You can point the mind in a direction in order to interact with the world, set goals, and achieve those goals. But you don't actually have to think majority of the time. And one of the greatest examples for how much you don't have to think is every time someone gets into a car, turns it on, puts it into drive or reverse, pulls away and starts driving. All of that happens subconsciously and you don't actually have to think about any of those motions after say the first year of driving. Once you learn and once the repetition has embedded those patterns of behavior into your subconscious mind, you no longer have to think about it. You just drive. You can do any other thing while you're driving. Listen to music, a podcast, some people talk on the phone. You're allowed to do hands-free calling in many places without it even being illegal. So, you can do all types of things while you're driving and you're not thinking about it. The same thing is true for essentially all other aspects of life. You just believe that you need to be identified with form in order to exist. That you need to have a thinking inner monologue in order to actually function. But you don't. And with a practice of meditation and a practice of mindfulness, of resting in this state, you begin to realize that everything takes care of itself. There's really no need for an active participation in majority of your life. This is how you get things like the sayings, "There's nowhere to go and nothing to do." "There's nobody here but me." This is all taking place in my own awareness and there's no separation between me and everything or everyone else because it's all happening as one awareness. It's all one happening. So there's watching the mind but then there's also simply being.
So at this point you were watching the mind. At this point you're simply being. You can observe yourself say when I wrote this I could observe myself writing these words and I could observe my mind thinking about the words to write. Then I could be aware that I am able to observe. So that brings us into this state of awareness, the state of I-ness. It can take a little bit of practice, but you start off by observing, say, the sensation of your breath. You notice that it's happening within your awareness and you can observe it. You start off by observing the emotions that arise. You notice that they arise within your mind and you can observe them. Then you go a little bit further and you wonder to yourself, you pose the question, "What is it that is being aware that is placing its attention on observing these phenomena?" You can get stuck in a thought loop of trying to find who it is, but there is no who. There simply is awareness. And it can be placed almost like a flashlight. You turn a flashlight on in the dark, a pitch black room, and you point it around the room. You can shine it on any object and pay attention to it. You can look at it. In that sense, the awareness can do the same thing. The awareness is like a flashlight and you can move it around the darkness of your mind and point it at any form, at any thought that arises. You can pay it attention by pointing that awareness in that direction. You can see where the irony comes from because at a certain point in spiritual development, thinking is completely counterproductive. There's no reason to think. It is actually a huge waste of your energy and time if you take spiritual practices seriously. So that's a logical clear description of the higher state of cognition or self-awareness.
To describe what it's actually like. You can become aware say in meditation in the middle of sleeping that you simply are awareness and there are no forms within that awareness but you still are. This is what God is. When people describe God, it is all pervasive. It is all things. It creates all things. It gives life to all things. All things are within it. It is through all things. Everything exists because of it. Nothing can exist outside of awareness. Nothing can exist outside of the I. At all times, there is the I behind everything that you experience. You are actually the I. The thing that you believe is you is actually just a collection of habits and thoughts that have coalesced into what we call the ego or persona. And through practice, you can step back and relinquish your investment in these thought forms, in these habits, in this ego until you can abide in this state of I-ness.
It's a lot easier to be identified with the observer than it is to be consistently identified with the I. This would be a state of complete peace and enlightenment. When someone has relinquished all identification, they rest in this peaceful state. You can much more easily throughout your day through practice be the observer of all things than you can be the I because when you become the I, there is no more identification. The ego and the persona are very sticky and they want your attention. You have given your attention to the ego and the persona for so long that relinquishing it enough to become disidentified completely takes a long time.
Living from the perspective of fifth and sixth person thinking or cognition or self-awareness, my personal preference is an adjustment because everything that you believed in previously, everything that you took seriously, which is yourself, no longer has the same pull. And you can pretend and you can sometimes even get sucked back into old habits, but you're never fully engaged in that old paradigm. It doesn't have the same weight or stickiness or, you know, juice that it used to. And there is sort of a natural detachment from the regular world, the world of forms, because no longer does everything in the forms actually matter.
When you reach the point of awareness where you know that it's all forms coming out of and dancing within the formless, dancing within the awareness, it's essentially a dream. If you become lucid within a dream, no longer are you afraid of the bad guy or the monster or engaged in the argument you might have been having. You suddenly snap out of caring, out of taking it so seriously. And when you reach these levels, the same thing happens in real life. It is almost a one:one ratio of what a dream is. Reality is a dream. And one day you will wake from the dream. You can become lucid within the dream if you'd like through practices and you can reach these stages. But one day you will wake up and because of that understanding, you no longer need to take life so seriously. You no longer actually feel compelled to take it so seriously.
And for a little bit within these transitions, especially from fifth to sixth or fourth to fifth, it can be very destabilizing. I've had experiences where I know that I am all there is and everything is arising within the I. When you know that all forms including your family members, your friends, your own body, your own thoughts, your own beliefs are just forms arising in the formless through direct experience. You can get lost in them through habits, through the persona because it comes back. You still have the persona you had before you had these experiences, but they're not as sticky and you're not as lost.
If everyone's a dream character, if I'm a form out of the formless, including everybody else, why am I still here? And why is that still important? And the Buddha would say it's because there is still a desire for becoming. There is still a desire for the forms. And it feels like I'm in a padded cell with a hologram machine that is showing me my own projections at all times. And there's no separation between me and those projections. My thoughts influence the world. And the world is perceived by my persona. And I have to disengage from that persona in order to not continue to perpetuate different projections. It's a game of unhooking yourself, unplugging yourself from the holographic matrix that is reality.
And right now at this stage personally it's the balance between enjoying the dream and disengaging from it because you know that there is no satisfaction to be found here. You'll always be on the treadmill, the hedonic treadmill of setting a goal, having a desire, reaching it, and then the ego, the persona will want another. And because you've reached these stages, you can observe it. You can see those desires ebb and flow, rise and fall like waves on the ocean. And the only thing that makes sense to me now is to engage in work such as this that keep me focused on those truths. And if it helps other people, then that's a bonus. If they turn out to be more than simply dream characters, and they actually do need to be unstuck just as much as I do, then I'm glad for it.