Henosis Foundation.

In Location 2, Layer 1 can be the default layer, although it is more typically Layer 2. Location 2 probably has the greatest range of access across the layers of any location. Allowing one to access deeper layers without compromising access to shallower layers makes Location 2 something of a sweet spot on the continuum that allows Finders to experience a great degree of depth in Fundamental Wellbeing while remaining effective in the world. 

Layer 1

When subjective experience is centered in Layer 1, the activity of the mind will predominate moment-to-moment experience.   In some cases, a Finder can work on distancing themselves from Layer 1 by focusing their subjective experience into a deeper layer and thereby experience a largely or completely silent mind. However, in most cases, Layer 1 is readily accessible in Location 2, as is the case with other earlier locations. Therefore, typically Finders in Layer 1 of Location 2 will experience some self-referential thoughts, along with a mix of positive and negative emotions. At Location 2 these are much less likely to be identified as personal versus as “just arising” in a more impersonal way. They also are more likely to dissolve spontaneously and rapidly. 

In Location 2, this is often the result of the experience of Layer 1 being integrated with, or experienced from, deeper layers. This, in turn, involves a degree of distance from Layer 1, which also produces a sense of distance between mind and self (e.g., “I am not my thoughts”, “I am not the thinker”). In other words, subjective experience is centered in a deeper layer and is watching the processes at Layer 1 happen rather than being embedded within them, resulting in mental activity feeling more impersonal and spontaneous. This means that it typically feels more equanimous and spacious than in Location 1. 

Fewer negative emotions tend to arise the further one deepens into Location 2, until the internal experience is largely or entirely positive. Memories also tend to arise less because there is an increased focus of attention on the present, and because the past is no longer valued as defining the sense of self.

By the time someone reaches Location 2, a change in sense of self is very noticeable, typically involving a dramatic reduction in or elimination of the conceptual, narrative-based sense of self. This change relates in part to association with the qualities of Layer 2 or deeper, rather than with the personal sense of self that is produced at Layer 1. The personal self has a smoothing function that normally makes distinct processes/parts of the mind appear unified, or as part of a single coherent self. When the association with this sense of self falls away, the smoothing function also falls away, and the distinct parts appear less integrated and related. This can be very apparent by the time someone reaches Layer 3.

Location 2 Finders will often comment that at times, they fall back into their old sense of self, and this often relates to aspects of Layer 1, which has a quality of self that feels more individualized and personal than other layers at this location. Finders often assume this is something to go beyond, but it is just the nature of Layer 1, and if subjective experience is centered there, this quality of a more individualized or personal self naturally arises. Returning to Layer 1 perceptually for its functional properties can be appropriate and practical at times. And, in a fluid system where a Finder has access to more than one layer, access to Layer 1 does not need to compromise access to the deeper layers.

Layer 2

Layer 2 is highly accessible in Location 2 and is very often the layer people land in when they transition to Location 2. Layer 2 is one of the classic Location 2 experiences that is described in spiritual literature and is regarded by many as the end of the path. Consequently, most Finders in Location 2 really root in here and never go beyond it. 

The dominant quality of Layer 2 is the sense of all-containing spaciousness (emptiness, expansiveness, space, nothingness, openness, and so on). In Location 2, this is a nondual experience of Layer 2—that is, the perception of separation between subject (observer) and object (observed) is dissolved—and so it feels as though one is indistinct from the space in which everything arises and, deeper into the layer, that one is indistinct from the substance of everything arising as well. 

For some people, this location and layer can feel lonely at first, because it feels like there is only this one thing. As the experience of a personal self is left behind, a sense of meaninglessness or starkness can also accompany this layer, and it can bring with it changes in or loss of motivation. These experiences usually do not last, but people can go through periods that are challenging as they become accustomed to this state. 

Unlike Layer 1, which can have a quality of personal and individuated self (even in Location 2, somewhat paradoxically), the quality of self in Layer 2 and later is impersonal. The sense of a localized, distinct observer/subject is no longer present. Instead, everything is just arising as one field of experience—because of this nonduality at Location 2, especially beyond Layer 1 and the shallow end of Layer 2, there is no sense of distinction between the objects of experience, the experiencer, and the process of experiencing. It all seems to unfold as one.

Deeper into Layer 2, there is an association with the substance of its spaciousness as one’s true nature, which is also experienced as the essential nature of everything. Subjective experience becomes progressively centered on Layer 2’s central qualities like spaciousness and emptiness, increasingly highlighting the impermanent and relative nature of other aspects of perceptual experience, like thought, emotion, sensation, and so on, which seem to come and go, all contained within the properties of Layer 2. 

Things are seen with more distance and objectivity, and one typically becomes less reactive. The downside of this is that it can be a great place to escape the mind and disassociate from psychological conditioning. This is usually what’s meant when people speak about “spiritual bypassing.” Deepening away from Layer 1 may remove it from one’s subjective awareness, but that does not mean it stops operating. This essentially leaves the conditioned psychological tendencies that reside at Layer 1 to function unsupervised, which may not lead to optimal life outcomes.

It is possible to move fluidly between Layers 1 and 2 (and 3 and 4) as is most appropriate for the moment at hand. And, there is often a degree of natural integration that happens with Layers 1 and 2 in Location 2, allowing Finders to experience deeper peace than is normally experienced at Layer 1 while remaining optimally functional in the world. 

Layer 3

In contrast to Layer 2, which has the qualities of spaciousness and emptiness, Layer 3 feels like a profound fullness. Rather than feeling as though it contains everything like Layer 2, this feels as though it pervades and infuses everything—all objects and experience. Initially, as one deepens through Layer 2 into Layer 3, it can feel as though the emptiness becomes infused with fullness.

Layer 3 is highly accessible in Location 2. However, it remains relatively rare for Finders to reach Layer 3 persistently. When they do, it is often taken to be end of the path in terms of deepening further into Fundamental Wellbeing. 

Finders who reach Layer 3 in Location 2 often develop a natural fluidity between Layer 3 and Layer 1, sometimes even minimizing access to Layer 2. This allows them to maintain a high degree of functionality within the mind while simultaneously being able to sink in to deeper peace and stillness. 

There are many ways Layer 3 can show up, especially in Location 2. The experience of it can go in the direction of deep stillness and peace, which can have very little affect and appear similar to Location 4, or the experience can be infused with joy, love, or even a sense of sacredness or divinity, which might appear more similar to Location 3.  

Layer 3 is probably the vastest of all layers to explore subjectively. Deep into Layer 3, it will feel as though it is the substance of everything. On the more shallow end, Layer 3 feels more like an essence or presence infusing experience, as though it pervades but is simultaneously independent of everything. It feels untouched and untouchable. It can also be perceived as have a quality of innate intelligence, beyond that of the linear conceptual mind.

Quite deeply into Layer 3, its field-like presence can feel dense, even like a thick liquid—although not everyone experiences this. When it shows up this way, Finders report perceiving what seem like patterns of energy that interact with the environment and other people, like ripples that then influence or determine their responses.

At the deepest reaches of Layer 3, it feels like a centerless, all-pervading field or presence without limits, flowing through and as everything. Inside is the same as outside—it is equally present everywhere. There is very little sense of an individual self left at the deepest centerless reaches of Layer 3, but fragments of the self that formally constituted the complex individual sense of self can still rise into awareness. These are typically viewed as something to release or go beyond. 

There is a deeper quality of stillness at Layer 3 than at any preceding layer, and the stillness/silence feels as though it pervades and encompasses everything. Simultaneously, it also feels as though it transcends everything, or is somehow more foundational, real, or permanent than anything else. 

There is another type of presence/being at Layer 3, which feels deeper or more real than anything previously experienced. It can be described in ways such as “an experience of raw being”, “pure beingness or isness”, “timeless presence pervading everything”, “the ground of being”, “the foundational aliveness or life in everything”, and so on.

Layer 3 is sometimes described as the foundation or source of manifest existence, like the ground of being. Because it is undifferentiated and formless, the only way the symbolic mind can conceive of it is as unmanifest, pure potentiality. Subjectively this may be experienced as a field of infinite potentiality because it is formless and unmanifest, yet feels profoundly full and like the source underlying all differentiated existence. It feels like it is everywhere—there is nowhere it is not—yet it is not localized anywhere and it does not have spatial dimensionality, so also feels like it is nowhere. 

Some people will experience Layer 3 as light, using descriptions such as “the clear light of being (or consciousness, or awareness).” When this is the case, one way it can be perceived is as an all-pervading, unmoving, luminous field that is both the source of experience and which experiences everything.

Layer 4

Layer 4, the raw experience of existence itself, is rare and difficult to access from Location 2, and it is nearly impossible to stabilize. It is essentially the home layer of Locations 4 and later, and experiences of it in earlier locations tend to be partial and temporary. When it is accessed, it is usually mixed with other layers, typically the deepest portion of Layer 3. Because one is generally unable to fully deepen into it in earlier locations, it tends to be experienced as a mystery or unknowable. An exception to this appears to be fluid, late location Finders who find their way back to Location 2 after previously more fully deepening into Layer 4 in later locations. 

Layer 4 will initially be sensed as an even deeper stillness or silence than that of Layer 3. This deepest stillness brings with it a loss of dimensionality and seems flat or stark when compared to the richness of Layer 3. This quality is so noticeable that Finders who experience it often use these terms when referring to it, such as calling it “the Flat Absolute”. 

In contrast to Layer 2, there is no sense of a container. The experience of it does not seem like it happens in anything. It is total and complete in itself. Similarly, there is no longer any sense of an essence pervading everything like in Layer 3. There is nothing arising from or within it. It has no content and no distinctions—there is only existence itself, which is complete and total as this moment.

The full shift into Layer 4 is the complete and final dissolution of any sense of separation, and therefore of individual existence or self. Nothing appears to have individual existence of itself. Distinctions begin to fade into the flatness, which happens increasingly the further out in locations one goes. The experience of everything is reduced to raw sense data and it feels as though it is all just existence unfolding spontaneously. This final dissolution of separation tends to be realized in a partial way until Layer 4 can be stabilized, which typically requires being in Location 4 or later. 

In earlier locations, it is common for Layer 4 to be experienced as an unknowable or a mystery. This is partly because one is unable to deepen into it and stabilize in it, and partly because it cannot be known objectively—or even subjectively in the usual sense. While in Layers 2 and 3 there is the subject of experience (and usually objects as well), in Layer 4 there is neither the perception of subject nor objects. 

Deeper forms of Layer 4 are typically only experienced temporarily in Location 2 and often do not allow someone to be functional while they last. When it is only touched upon temporarily, it does not necessarily feel as though it is not a state because the sense of individual self remains partially intact in earlier locations. Layer 4 is then experienced in the context of there being a self-existent experiencer that entered and left the experience.