LEVEL ONE
I don’t know about you, but I read them the same way a devout would read the Bible or the Quran: as gospel. It was written; therefore, it had to be true. This is the first level of perception. When confronted with an experience, we begin by reacting to it, with the body, mind or some combination of the two.In the first level, the experience itself is flawless. The book is comprehensive, the movie is complete, and the person you talk to is perfect. At this level, we are easily influenced by the permanence and immutability of the stimulus. When our parents said something to us, it had to be correct; it had to be good advice. When a history textbook said that Shivaji was good and Aurangzeb was bad, that had to be correct as well.
LEVEL TWO
Beyond this basic understanding of the world, we begin to question the experience itself. Maybe the book was flawed, or the movie had terrible plot-holes… Perhaps, the person giving us advice is as confused as us.At this level of understanding, we begin punching holes into theories, books, people and everything that isn’t the Self. We realize that textbooks are flawed because of their own skewed viewpoints, we understand that people have their own vested interests, and that movie-scripts are often written by idiots. At this level, we begin trusting our own previous experiences and the cumulative derived wisdom from those.
We pitch our opinions against those of another. “I think that the eagle could have flown to Mordor and dropped the ring into the fires of Mount Doom”. “I think that Genesis is a bad idea, because I believe in the Big Bang, in evolution, and in scientifically proven concepts”. “I think what you did was really shitty”. Our teenage and early twenties are often about this level of understanding.
LEVEL THREE
After we have spent enough energy fighting with the world, we wonder why we perceive the world in a particular way. What are these lenses through which we observe the world? How do we build our own personal rules?With a third-person-insight into the prevailing conditions of the mind, we dissect not only why we act the way we act, but also why others act the way they do. In books, movies and works of art, we understand why we perceive a plot-hole where others (including the writer) possibly do not.
It is at this level that I think we are truly incapable of intense hatred or passion. If it can be explained, one can do away with a primal emotional reaction. We begin to see the code that governs this dysfunctional world, and keeps it stuck together in this precarious way.
At this stage, we are far less susceptible to intense life-changing moments. But we become Zen-masters, who can control the flow of water and the motion of the Moon. At this point of balance and peace, the will has a real shot at controlling our own actions.
Note: These levels of understanding are infinite: each subsequent level offers a unique, defining insight into the machinations of the world.
