9、Dimension of Consciousness

Almost every nation and every country has the war that feudal society replaced slave society. Various human wars, various human wars against aggression, and even certain wars brought by human aggression, are the actions taken by humans in order to achieve the reasonable and perfect world order that they think. This is the good of human nature, or the good that some people take advantage of, and also the good that is easy to be taken advantage of by some people.

Because many aggressive wars take the good thoughts as their slogan, or the initiators think they are doing the good. For example, the propaganda or idea for Japanese war of aggression against China is to ‘build greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere, implement benevolent governance, and establish benevolent land’. The Japanese militarists also thought they did the good thing, and the good thoughts were just one goal. If our direction is A, the principle of good thoughts or the ideal is B, the way from A to B is the process of doing the good humans think. For example, ‘life for a life, a debt paid in full’, which is China’s most classic justice, and also the most basic method of doing the good.

In the Chinese classical philosophy, the best, the most ideal, and the most appropriate way of A–B is referred to as ‘Tao’. Lao-Tzu’s ‘Tao Te Ching’ is about the description of ‘Tao’, and ‘Buddhist texts’ takes ‘Tao’ as ‘Du’, which means crossing the river. There is a little description about it in Hinayana, and there are a few people that can achieve the perfect state. And Mahayana refers to the world beings, to achieve the perfect state of relief.

Actually, for people, many profound truths are seemingly out of reach and illusory, because our thinking pattern is very narrow.

A family, an enterprise, a city, a country, and an earth are actually a system. The relation between people, human and society, human and nature seems to be independent, but actually mutually connected with mutual influence.

People, as individuals, bustle about every day in order to satisfy their own desires. The consciousness of others that vast majority of people can understand, only including a few loved ones, and even he himself, we call the ability to understand other people and surrounding people as a dimension of consciousness.

Reading, especially reading literature books, is to communicate with different people. Even watching movies and TV, listening to stories are a good way to get into the dimension of consciousness of others and understand others’ structure. Most people just go over the story plot or see the handsome boy and the beauty when watching movies, watching TV, reading a novel. Actually, most movie directors and novel authors want to use this way to express an intrinsic way of thinking, which is the real intention of the author.

In real life, the dimension of consciousness determines a person’s success and social status. In a certain sense, the dimension of consciousness is the psychology research object and is the psychological activity of others. But I hate to use the concept of ‘psychology’. Because it is brain rather than heart that conducts thinking to produce feeling. Strictly speaking, it has no direct relationship with the heart. So I hate to use this word. The ‘reason’ is the rationality or the truth. Within a certain time and scope, ‘reason’ is relatively stable and constant, but the consciousness and ideas of people always change, so I also hate to use the word ‘reason’ to express the concept of consciousness.

The consciousness I understand is in constant change, with uncertainty. But in spite of uncertainty, it also changes within a certain scope and is not beyond this scope.

Everyone’s consciousness is like the light of a flashlight, which can only brighten the nearby place of a few square metres. What people can think of is the things within a few square metres, not beyond this scope. The things that people can realise are those within a few square metres. When a person responds to a thing, he will only find the answer and the way out in the small circle.

Actually, the language, expressions, clothes, words, and actions we are exposed to every day are used as a kind of method to express thoughts and feelings of people. They are ways, means, representations but not purpose. The reason why I promote psychoanalysis is that it can tell people the real driving force behind the behaviour of people, or the real intention or purpose of people’s behaviour. Buddhism tells people should have ‘supreme wisdom and sammasambuddha’.

I think that it is the Buddha that tells people to understand the real purpose behind the behaviour of people, but not to be confused by appearances. Because the real aim of people may be buried in the subconscious, and the party himself does not know the real aim for him to do that. But he is controlled by the real purpose all the time.

Maybe there are a lot of people that don’t agree with me. They don’t know their purpose. Do you really know what you want to do?

According to the basic theory of psychoanalysis, the consciousness of people is the thing that is able to enter the man’s consciousness, which is just the tip of the iceberg, but the real iceberg is buried under the sea. It is unfathomable and unattainable. That is the real purpose of human behaviour.

What is the main body of the iceberg? It is composed of two parts.

1. Human animal’s impulse is ego, and this force is the dominant force. It is the most fundamental factor for all behaviours, which means the indivisible consciousness at the bottom, and it is the most fundamental human consciousness, which means the person’s true intention. I think people often can’t perceive the consciousness at the bottom. That is the animal unconsciousness.

2. Rational part can be regarded as super-ego. Where does super-ego come from? It is the deposition of all things that a person has experienced in his whole life in the brain, the deposition in subconsciousness. That is to say, it is experience subconsciousness.