Five Levels Commentary
An Inquiry
Fred Weiner
3/4/20242 min read


I sit with my morning coffee thinking about Bill’s blog post (If You Were A House …)
where he offers a practice—“if, and only if, it speaks to you,”
a welcome, inclusive courtesy for those not drawn to practices,
perhaps having practiced in many goal-orientated ways without satisfaction for years—
where one empties the mind as much as one can,
then invites the five levels of consciousness to come into the field of awareness
either all at once or singly,
giving them space to unfold whatever it is they want to unfold.
The first thing that happens is that some of the great teachers I have met—
either in embodied form or through books or digitally—show up in a stately sequence.
Nisargadatta, Paul Brunton, HH The Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram,
Ramana Maharshi, Rupert Spira, Amoda Ma, Anandamaya Ma and others—
drop in as semi-tangible moments shining forth Presence.
Each brings its own flavor of the one truth,
linked mysteriously to a sense of deep, undefinable, felt
silence.
Next comes the intellect trying—and failing—
to identify which of the five levels this very curiosity of mind inhabits.
Is this the first floor person hoping to understand the mystery that somehow includes him
but is utterly beyond his ken?
Is it the spiritual self revealing it’s earthly sources?
Feelings of peace and apperception of a deep silence
accompany these inquisitive, coffee-enhanced moments.
Eventually there’s not much happening
aside from a most welcome peace and quiet,
until another question surfaces:
If there are indeed five levels of consciousness we humans live in and as,
what, in this “practice,” is the observer of them?
Isn’t consciousness itself the ultimate observer, as awareness? offers the thinking mind.
An answer comes as an image:
Someone stands on the dock staring at a huge ocean liner being untied from it’s moorings.
They continue to watch as the giant ship slowly makes it’s way out to sea.
Eventually, it reaches nearer and nearer the horizon, until it finally disappears from view,
leaving them and the vast, empty ocean, alone.
Maybe this image represents the practice itself,
where the tendency to quickly, almost automatically identify with the contents of consciousness,
claiming it as “my experience,”
fades to nothing,
leaving consciousness as the mystery,
and the self.