Intellectual and Spiritual Awareness:  As we first encounter the material world upon our birth we begin our journey in the universe by evolving through a series of intellectual levels of understanding.  This is a growth process that results from responding or reacting to those physical things that enter our field of perception.  In other words, how we think about ourselves and the world is structured for us by what we bump into in the physical environment.  Our responses and the pictures growing in our minds are very primitive in the beginning but slowly grow into more complex conceptual structures as we gain more experience with the environmental givens in the universe.

Our First Level is the most primitive, of course, and is characterized as a struggle to survive, to maintain our continuance in this physical environment we suddenly find ourselves in.  This develops in us a sense of separateness.  We learn to manipulate those things surrounding us for our own needs.  Our motivation is to protect ourselves and seek sustenance as a separate being.  Our sense of separateness evolves in response to our struggle for security; to be secure from those fearful things external to ourselves.  This is represented by our struggles through early childhood.

Once a reasonable level of security and self independence is achieved we start to go into the Second Level of sensual gratification.  Once our life is protected a bit, then we can concern ourselves with self indulgent forms of pleasure.  Associated with this second level of development is food and sexual activity.  This can also be thought of as the hedonistic level.  This is represented by our emotional and intellectual struggles up through adolescence.

The Third Level of intellectual development we evolve into is connected with ego enhancement in terms of power, control, and mastery over people and things.  This is represented by our growth into adulthood of self reliance in the form of learning occupational skills and a blending into the social fabric.

Most of humanity is connected with, or stuck in, these first three levels of development.  Most of physical and intellectual energy is located there.  People justify their lives in terms of survival, reproduction, sensual gratification, and power and mastery over the environment and over other people.  This reinforces our sense of separateness.  Most human activity in the Western world is done in the service of these first three levels of being.

The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh growth levels of being are in terms of other kinds of psychic spaces and ways of organizing the universe in our minds and understanding what's happening.  At this stage we begin to listen to what the universe is telling us through the process of inquiry and investigation into the processes of the universe rather than exploiting materials for personal gain.

The Fourth intellectual Level of growth is concerned with compassion, empathy and love.  It's a spiritual transcendent state that begins to move and expand our consciousness outside of our ego-centered selves.  We begin to move from a sense of separateness to a sense of connectedness with others and with things.  This is a place where--although we still see and experience each other and things as separate--we start to experience a sameness, i.e., that what is happening to you is happening to me.  We start to realize we're all just different manifestations of one consciousness.  It must be remembered that this movement into the fourth and higher growth levels results from our cumulative experiences in the material world and that we could not have reached the fourth level without experiencing the first three levels.