In that case Level 1 is the level we experience as we dream, and which persists in hypnagogic experiences.
Level 2 is the most basic level of waking consciousness: that is *mere awareness*. A child experiences this when he is too tired to take any interest in anything. He may be on his way home from a party but he gazes blankly at the passing world. If you were to ask, 'What have you just seen?' he would reply, 'I don't know.' His consciousness is merely a mirror reflecting the outside world. Nietzsche once said that we envy the cows their placidity, but it would be no use asking them the secret of their happiness for they would have forgotten the question before they could give the answer. This is Level 2.
At Level 3 consciousness has become self-aware but it is still dull and heavy - so heavy that we are only aware of one thing at a time: everything seems to be 'merely itself', utterly without meaning, and your own reflection in a mirror seems to be a stranger. This is the level that Sartre calls nausea.
Level 4 is the normal consciousness we experience every day. It is no longer too heavy to move: it has learned how to cope with existence yet it tends to think of life as a grim battle - possibly a losing battle. Consequently it tends to sink back easily towards Level 3 and to find experience meaningless and boring.
So far the one thing the levels all have in common is a basically *passive* attitude towards life and experience. At Level 5 this ceases to be so. This is a level that I have labelled provisionally 'spring morning consciousness' or 'holiday consciousness'. It is characterized by that bubbling feeling of happiness we experience when life suddenly becomes more interesting and exciting and all kinds of prospects seem to be opening up in front of us. Quite suddenly caution and doubt disappear; life becomes *self-evidently* fascinating and delightful. This is the feeling that Hesse's Steppenwolf experiences as he tastes a glass of wine and is reminded of 'Mozart and the stars'.
Level 6 could be labelled the 'magical level'. It is what happens to a child on Christmas Day, when everything combines to make life seem wonderful. Or imagine the consciousness of two honeymooners on their wedding night looking down from a balcony on to a moonlit lake, when the dark shapes of mountains in the distance. In such states we feel a total reconciliation with our lives. 'For moments together my heart stood still between delight and sorrow to find how rich was the gallery of my life,' says Steppenwolf. Problems seem trivial; we see that the one real virtue is courage. Consciousness has become a continuous mild peak experience, what J.B.Priestly calls 'delight'.
Level 7 is Faculty X - Toynbee's experience on Pharsalus, Proust's experience as he tastes the madeleine dipped in tea. There is an almost godlike sensation: 'I had ceased to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal....' This is more than a peak experience: it is an odd sense of *mastery over time*, as if every moment of your life could be recalled as clearly as the last ten minutes. We suddenly realize that time is a manifestation of the heaviness of the body and the feebleness of the spirit. We can also see that if we could learn to achieve this condition of control permanently, time would become, in a basic sense, non-existent.
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