Something many of my adolescent peers have told me about are their out of body experiences. They detail being able to observe themselves from a distance and say that it was incredibly unreal to exist outside of their given physical perspective. Some say they traveled as far away from themselves as they could, while others say they waited to see if they could experience the out of body phenomena and be conscious in their body.

I can't attest to the honesty of my friends--let's hope I've made good ones--but I will admit that hearing such stories have made me think about where it is that we exist. What exactly does it mean to exist amongst other people? Do we understand our limits within time and space? Are we who we think we are, or what everyone else projects? Perhaps we're all and none of it, let's investigate.

Physicist Michio Kaku has devised three "levels" of consciousness. It may surprise you to find what he includes in the category of level three. He talks firstly of a thermostat, giving it about "one unit of consciousness" as it senses the temperature around it. He then talks about a flower, which has around "10 units of consciousness" as it understands temperature, weather, humidity, and even gravity.

So what is level one? A good example would be the nature of a reptile. They "understand their position in space." They have to lunge towards other creatures to eat and watch out if the same is tried on them. Level two can be exemplified within mammals. Mammals "understand their relationship to other organisms" as they perceive and develop emotions, and create social hierarchies.

Finally, Kaku places human consciousness at level three, as we "understand our relation to time." The ability to imagine the future, creating possible avatars of ourselves in any situation within our brain and choosing which one to act out is consciousness like no other.

Kaku presents the idea that higher forms of consciousness come about as we understand our positions in relation to other beings potentiated, and even higher forms can come once we acquire such knowledge and can image a future, which can be used to try to better the community.

As the most advanced forms of conscious beings (we know of), it's possible that we developed such a wide perceptual imagination because we don't exist solely within our skin. If even flowers exist not alone, but as organisms that must interact with sun and water, what is the extent of our interactive nature as social creatures that we exist?

Psychologist Dan McAdams, for example, suggests personality exists on three interconnected planes, the lowest being our basic trait makeup (every individual's unique proportion of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, etc).

The second he attributes to personal goals, defense/ coping mechanisms, values, beliefs, and concerns, which mesh with the environment and collaborate with the individual to form an identity perceived by themselves and the people around them. The third level is one’s life story, one’s telling of their own life to themselves from the perspective of their conscious interpretation of the predated actions to their current reflection and future thought.

If our personality can be theorized as a structure which sees an identity interacting with the world around it, is it fair to say the bounds of one's existence reach beyond their skin and bones? We know all too well that our problems usually stem from the world, and not ourselves, who's to say the rest of us isn't a bargain with whatever isn't us?

In his book The Myth of Mental Illness, Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz presents an interesting critique of the clinical practice, claiming that patients don't usually have problems in and of themselves but simply have a problem with being itself.

Think about what contributes to one's seeking for therapy. Is it possible it is their own nature? Absolutely. But what about a dying parent? Or a cheating spouse of twenty years? A recently incarcerated relative? Loss of a job? No social life? Bad eating or sleeping habits? What about more than three of those at once? Szasz argues that what often drives people mad is that the life they live, independent of their own body and mind, is what prescribes a visit to Dr. Freud.

If we did not exist within the bounds of our social system, beyond our mere selves, why else does it have such a direct explicit impact on our psychophysiological nature?

Perhaps it is that with more consciousness comes a larger burden, more suffering, a magnified experience of the concept of anxiety. The existential answer to human nature is that it is within such pain that redemption is found. It is very likely all of you know this already.

The temptations of life present a choice, either living with responsibility and very little enjoyment in meaning, or vice versa. We could all stay in our parent's basement till 40. It'll be easy, but it won't be fulfilling.

We could also attempt to live Elon Musk's life, which would be the opposite of boring, and the opposite of easy. To go from South Africa to Canada, to Stanford, to UPenn, to SpaceX, to Tesla, it's not as simple as typing "from South Africa, to Canada, to Stanford, to UPenn, to SpaceX, to Tesla."

But we've all heard it before. "Pick yourself up by your bootstraps!" Well, I'm here to tell you what to expect. Not everyone is equally situated. If we're free, nor will we die equally enriched. However, everyone's life is rife with pain, anxiety, and suffering.

You know that 1% you hate so much? Their parents, children, lovers, and friends all get sick, have surgeries, cheat, get cheated on, lie, and die. Human is human. What are we to do, if we can't buy our way out of suffering?

Bear the load, knowing that there is something you can take beyond death. This life is a test of your character. It's all in, this is going to kill you. Everything you know will, at some point, be space dust. However, while you're alive, while you've got a life to live, people around you, while you exist wherever you do, know that you are outside the bounds of time. The concept of character does not change with death.

Does goodness itself end with your death? If not, who says good deeds cease to exist because humans do? Who says your character changes because you die? This is what the concept of Heaven was intended for. There is a Hell to be afraid of, but there is a Heaven to work for no matter where you live or where you exist. Heaven can exist anywhere we decide to put it. It is merely a matter of actuating where you can live. Can you be a friend? A compassionate friend? A friend to life? And live, expecting nothing, and die?

Imagine your influence on society. If you chose to pathologize your life, what if everyone else did? Society is nothing if an individual stands like a mountain that allows changing seasons to sway nothing but surroundings. Society degenerates and falls apart not by some mysterious accord, but as each and every individual chooses to go to hell with all that they could master and adopt. We exist as ourselves, and as ourselves, we are the larger community.

As a community, we must know what we can do. Perhaps we mustn't do it, however, expecting something for ourselves. Then perhaps we embody the purest concepts--goodnees indeed--which exist outside of time, and live beyond it within us. Even for a moment, it means eternity. Perhaps consciousness is a gift to those who are expected to give, to bear, to suffer, and of course, to die.

You'll have to anyway, why not give all you've got to everything and everyone, I mean everyone, who demands or doesn't demand it?

Someday, none of it will exist.

But today, tomorrow, and even the day after our death, we'll have been good. Because we live amongst, against, with, and for each other, we have a duty to do just that: live.