Usually people live in two states of consciousness: one is sleeping and the other is so-called awakening. In addition, there are two states of higher consciousness, but they must be achieved through practice. These two higher states of consciousness are called self-cognition and true knowledge.
Sleeping is a passive state of pure consciousness. It is a low state of consciousness. The reason why it is called a low state is that any animal with a mind will dream.
When dreaming, all the spirits of a person are moving inward without direction. Because people have never observed the inner world, that is, the Taoist meditation and introspection, which is the spiritual activity that sinks into the inner world after silence of awareness. In sleep, there is no logic, no order, no cause and effect, and it is also affected by physical factors, such as the body being oppressed and the body lies in a cold place. Very strange, isn't it? Pure consciousness can form scenes, causing you to be in it without knowing it. Most of these experiences are not remembered by the body or mind, or briefly pass traces like meteors in memory, without beginning or result, so when you wake up, you can only remember the short pictures, which will disappear with time.
The second level of consciousness will only come when people are awake. This is a normal state of working, talking, imagining, etc. We call it a conscious life of awakeness; in fact, it should be called waking sleep.
When people are awake, their dreams will not disappear. People still maintain all the state of sleep when they sleep; it is just that the mind has subjective choices for consciousness, coherent thoughts and body initiatives. Sometimes people have a feeling, that is, the experience in front of them has a feeling that they have experienced before. It is just that awake consciousness dominates because of the initiative of senses, desires and emotions. The initiative distorts the disorder of dreams and forms a cognitive experience and knowledge of things since ancient times, which makes it impossible to realize dreams when awake. In other words, the dream disappeared, but the dream still exists. It's like in the sunshine, the stars and the moon are invisible but still there, and you can't see the darkness during the day, but the darkness still exists. The consciousness of these dreams will affect our thoughts, emotions and actions, so there is a distinction between sensory cognition and rational cognition.
So the state of awakening is actually a sleep state, an active-conscious sleep state, so the ancients have always told us: people must awaken themselves when they live in illusions. Buddhism says that our understanding of this world is illusory, like dew and lightning. Taoism says to look inward and awaken your true self. Although its literal meaning should be understood, few people understand its true meaning.
The question now is: How can people wake up?
Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism have been teaching humans how to understand the real world, how to transform into butterflies and get rid of illusions, how to forget themselves and leave this shore and reach the other shore, and how to accumulate good deeds to move towards the path of soberness.
Psychology of consciousness points out that only when a person can realize that he is sleeping can he be said to be on the way toward awakening. If you don’t realize that you are sleeping first, you will never wake up.
Therefore, the words "meditation" and "forgetfulness" are to turn one's awake consciousness into the sleep consciousness, or combine it with the sleep consciousness, that is, do not have any thoughts when waking up, which is what we often hear about, such words such as "forget the mind, forget the mind, and be far away from the mind". It means actively entering the sleep consciousness, and actively entering the sleep consciousness must actively give up the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind in reality, enter the disordered and illogical sleep consciousness, and finally wake up from the sleep consciousness. In short, only by entering the sleep consciousness first can you realize that you are sleeping, and only by seeking in reverse can you awaken yourself. Therefore, Lao Tzu said: "It is clear without seeing, and it is accomplished without doing. It is the movement of Tao." The "reverse" here is not "return".
In your sleep, you can’t eat a sumptuous banquet no matter what, you can’t find a toilet no matter what, and you can’t win anyway when fighting, because your consciousness is imprisoned, and your senses and body are in a passive state.
In fact, the so-called awake state is also imprisoned. Although the senses and emotions are actively carried out, they are still limited by the non-fact truth seen by the eyes, the non-fact truth heard by the ears, and the wrong emotions arise from the wrong judgment of the mind. These are almost the same as the state of sleep consciousness. The Buddha's delusion of Ananda's "understanding the mind and seeing the nature" in the Shurangama Sutra perfectly explains the wrong perception of this so-called awake state of consciousness.
The two low-level consciousness states and the four high-level consciousness states can be simply performed:
In the first sleepy state, the senses disappear, but it seems that they live in reality, so it is impossible to distinguish the truth. Even if we have some real perception or feeling, it is confused with dreams. In this state of sleep, we cannot distinguish between dreams and reality.
In the second state of awake sleep consciousness, we are in relative objectivity. That is, relative consciousness. Relative consciousness produces the concept of distinction, and there are binary mind consciousness such as good and bad, good and evil, length and short. The binary cognition forms habits and group consciousness, which forms knowledge of the world and various emotions such as good and evil, and forms a self-shackle consciousness. It is like buying an Apple phone to show your identity, but you put yourself in the cage of your identity and sell your kidneys. As we continue to achieve our goals, as things become more and more artificially divided, people will fall into a deep sleep and cannot extricate themselves, so there is a saying of "Dharma-Ending Age".
In the third state of self-cognition consciousness, we can know the whole truth about ourselves.
In the fourth state of true consciousness, or in the state of objective consciousness, we can know the entire truth of each thing, and thus recognize the real world, which is the sober state proposed by Zhuangzi, which is free and free. Therefore, Zhuangzi used "dream butterfly" to educate the public.
The third and fourth consciousness states are too far away from us and must be achieved through practice, while the fourth consciousness state can only be achieved or enlightened after reaching the third self-cognition.
When we are sleeping, we can have a momentary relative consciousness. In a relative state of consciousness, we can have a momentary self-cognitive consciousness. However, if we want to maintain a long-term self-cognitive consciousness rather than just a sudden emergence of inspiration, we must make up our minds to seek, just like working until we are selfless and persevering in our studies. That is to say, the number and duration of self-cognitive consciousness depends entirely on our review and introverted exploration of ourselves.
