Helpful reading: Qualia
There are 6 levels of being, or experience, or consciousness - however you would like to refer to it.
1. Survival
Left over from evolution, this is the driver of natural reaction.
- It is designed for one thing: staying alive.
- It is driven by fear, and is an ancient system hardwired into the human brain. It is always running in the background and still dominates mostâs reactions.
- Hunger and pain live here.
- It is why your heart races if you get cut off in traffic and why many chase wealth and status as if their very survival depends on it.
This is the âdefaultâ level, meaning a vast number are operating on this level most of the time.
Recognizing how this level operates, itâs motivators, can lead to manipulation by those with alternative goals.
2.Emotional
Once ones basic survival needs are met, emotions rise to power. This is the world filtered though feelings - desire, anger, jealousy.
The body no longer reacts to only physical threats, but to imagined ones as well. Social rejection, fear of failure, the brain pulls in past memories and trauma to try and keep safe by perceiving potential danger through recognizing patterns.
This system of the brain evolved through the earliest tribal cultures, where rejection from the group was a death sentence. It is a secondary form of survival instinct. It makes conformity and cooperation through emotional response a priority.
It is believed that most people spend their lives trapped between the first and second layers - survival instincts and emotional turbulence.
- decisions are reactions
- relationships are unmet needs and unspoken fears
- goals are distractions
Those here will find themselves driven by an unconscious fear of loss and need for validation.
The identity forms around these repeated patterns until it feels like it is a tragedy. It feels normal - the anxiety, the constant longing for more, the quiet fear of losing what little security it has.
This sounds like describing âthe human conditionâ, but is only within the first 2 levels of being. These levels are designed only for survival, not for fulfillment.
This is the âcrack in the wallâ. This loop cannot be escaped unless seen. There is something beyond this reactive world.
3.Intellectual
The world of logic and reasoning is where many believe that true freedom exists. It, however, also contains its own invisible trap.
Breaking free from the reactive emotional survival loop for the first time certainly feels like a type of enlightenment - for the first time the mind will observe and considers before it reacts. Logic replaces emotion. Emotions no longer dictate behavior, reasoning does.
Instead of feeling your way through life, you break it down into itâs components - cause and effect relationships can not only be understood but controlled.
The self draws a sharp line between it and itâs surroundings. âI think therefore I amâ becomes the mantra, and the external world becomes a place for the mind to control. It devises more and more clever ways to impose itself.
Achievements, titles and beliefs become the new foothold, replacing the tribal fear of the emotional mind with intellectual pride and status.
Modern civilization thrives here, and is built upon those who mastered abstract thinking. Science, medicine, technology - all products of reason.
Trap of Identity
The trap is sprung - the illusion of identity. The mind believes that reason is the summit, the apex. That logic is freedom, and by knowing enough it will finally quiet the restlessness of purposelessness.
Self referential thought takes over. The individual self solidifies. Thoughts spiral around identity, status, and future plans. Self-actualization becomes the only goal, to become something in the future. Reflection turns into rumination.
DMN
The Default Mode Network is the part of the brain engaged in self referential thought. It is most active when you are not engaged with the outside world - daydreaming, remembering, predicting, introspecting.
Intellectual thought becomes a suit of armor, separating the mind from the very world it seeks to understand.
Many get stuck here, led to meaninglessness, seeking answers, attempting to understand everything about the external in order to be comfortable separated from it.
The Trap Tightens
The rational mind excels at solving problems, but struggles with questions it cannot answer: Why do we suffer, what is death, where does consciousness start or end. Philosophy, psychology and existential science all press up against this same wall.
No matter how sharp the intellect, it cannot reason its way beyond itself.
Because reason feels like power, the trap tightens, the ego is strengthened, the boundary between the self and the world is sharpened, and the individual is locked into a belief that thinking is being.
Most who climb here stop. They build careers, identities, and lives on knowledge and skepticism. Mystery becomes uncomfortable, vulnerability appears weak. Emotions are always analyzed rather than felt, and connection is conditional on shared ideas.
The next shift cannot be reasoned to, and most therefore think it doesnât exist.
4.Empathetic
There comes a point where intellect exhausts itself, and being shifts not inward but outward.
The search for answers turns hollow, and no longer can satisfy. What rises isnât sharper thinking, but a change in perception.
The boundaries that once seemed absolute seem to dissolve, and the center of being shifts from the mind to the heart. A state where empathy is no longer a virtue to practice, but a natural response, derived from feeling deeply connected to the external.
Instead of viewing others as ideas or roles, they are recognized as reflections of the same essential experience.
Suffering stops being someone elseâs problem, success loses meaning if it leaves others behind. Decisions flow from connection rather than self interest.
Not a gathering of knowledge, but the dissolving of walls. A sense of belonging not to a group or tradition, but to experience itself.
5. Transpersonal
Transpersonal being is a state where the world stops appearing as a collection of objects, but as a unified field of experience. You no longer look outward, because you understand that there is no outside - no other.
There is only being, aware of itself through itâs countless forms.
A freedom from self reference, there is no identity to protect. As such, time dissolves and space holds no distance. The universe feels alive.
And for the first time, the mind will stop searching, as there is nowhere left to go.
6. Unified
The final state of being, called enlightenment by spiritual teachers, the distinction between self and universe disappears. Awareness remains, but without a center. There is no longer an observer, only observation. No experiencer, only experience.
This isnât an escape, it is the realization that the self was never more than a passing thought. The structure of identity, thought, fears and desires lose any meaning, as language itself belongs to the world of separation.
It is not an altered state, it is simply what remains when all other states fall away.
This is the sixthkind of being.
Fluidity
It is often overlooked is that reaching a shift does not mean that you will stay there.
These moments, like all things, pass. They feel permanent when they arrive, everything will seem to make sense when the boundaries dissolve.
But the mind, body, and world have a way of pulling us back. Life keeps moving - bills are due, arguments still happen. Itâs easy to slip back into self referential thought, to focus back on survival.
This is the nature of being. It cycles. It expands and contracts. This is the final, most subtle trap.
The Final Trap
Many who have glimpsed higher shifts start to mistake the memory for the thing itself. They wear their experience like armor, convinced that they have risen above the human condition. The ego quickly reforms, hiding behind inauthenticity. Faking detachment, ignoring anger, or masking their judgements.
Real being doesnât ignore the lower levels, it cycles through them again and again. The difference is how you move when you return.
- Do you react with fear or respond with awareness?
- Do you embody control or presence?
Can you carry only the memory into conflict, loss, or routine? Can you stay open, not only when it is easy, but when everything inside of you wants to close?
No practice can make you immune to being human. This isnât a flaw, it is the design. A reflection. Itâs not a straight climb, itâs a cycle.
Somewhere along the way it becomes clear, itâs not about reaching some final destination, thereâs no summit to climb, no place where everything locks into place. It is only the mind that believes in that certainty.
What actually unfolds is something far more alive and unpredictable.