THE FOURTH STATEWhat is the fourth state of consciousness?
What is the fourth state of consciousness? Bailey Guilloud explains the four states: waking identity, dreaming and goal-setting, deep sleep, and the fourth, which witnesses all three. In it there is no efforting or chasing a strategy, only the understanding that you already are what you want to achieve. She says the state is rare, that meditation is the practice, and that separateness is an illusion.
Hosted by Bailey Guilloud · The Fourth State Podcast
Bailey Guilloud describes it as a space of deep surrender where you understand that everything you wish to achieve is already within you. There is no efforting, no goal setting, and no stories, only here-now pure consciousness that witnesses the other three states.
The waking state (your identity, habits, and stories), the dreaming state (imagination and goal-setting), deep sleep (no thoughts and no witnessing), and the fourth state, which witnesses all of the others.
Bailey offers a thought experiment: what if, for one day, you could be in a space where you no longer try and you understand that you are everything you wish to achieve? She describes the fourth state as surrender, with no need to follow a strategy, an identity, or what works for others in your industry.
Bailey places goal-setting and limitless-possibility thinking in the second, dreaming state, where the goal is something you are reaching for. In the fourth state you witness the vision without identifying with it or telling yourself “I need to do these goals.”
Bailey says it is very rare and takes practice, and that meditation is how we practice getting to a space of no mind. Watching your thoughts is part of witnessing, but the fourth state goes beyond that.
She says wanting to belong is one of the deepest human yearnings and that feeling separate or misunderstood is an illusion that keeps us weak. Surrendering to the idea that we are one is part of remembering your power.
Spirituality, manifestation, and mysticism, Meditation and embodied practice
A 12-minute solo teaching. Bailey notes that the people who lived in this state every day can be counted on fewer than ten fingers, and that what most people call witnessing, watching your thoughts, is only a first level.
Transcript of The Fourth State Podcast episode “The 1 Core Truth All Spiritual Lessons Help You Remember: The Fourth State of Consciousness” with host Bailey Guilloud, lightly edited for readability. Learn more about Bailey’s work at fourthstate.net.
There are 4 states of consciousness. And the fourth state of consciousness refers to this space of being where you understand that everything that you wish to achieve everything that you desire is within. This is a simple truth that is illustrated in all spiritual lessons. Every spiritual lesson that you have ever had is bringing you back to this understanding, that you have everything that you need. That you are complete. That you are, one with not only the world, but one with consciousness. You are witnessing your own experience.
And how do we get to this higher level of consciousness? How do we understand that we have everything that we desire? There's no more effort, there's no more goal setting. There's no more trying to make it. There's no more trying to follow a specific strategy or a specific way that you should be. There's only this understanding that you remember your full power. The problem is that when we're on this journey of self-discovery, while you're becoming more conscious, while you were reaching this fourth state of consciousness, there are so many stories from our past, from our conditioning, from different experiences that we even watch in our day-to-day life, what people are wearing, what people are saying, how to be a certain way, how to follow a certain strategy.
And the fourth state is this deep surrender that you can remember your true self. It's the state of pure consciousness. And in order to get there, Let's look at the 3 states before. The first state is this I am this waking state. This is where we're remembering kind of all of our life. Right now I am recording a video. Right now, you are listening to a video. Right now, you know, you can think about what you've dreamt about, what your goals forward are, what is happening in your life. I am a woman. I am, you know, what I what I am doing right now, my identity, my habits, all the stories that I've fed myself, and that is state number one.
That is just the first part of consciousness of who you are, what your past was. Understanding on a conscious level what you are and what you're doing. The second state of consciousness is this dreaming state. This is where you imagine and you create. This is also the literal dreaming when you're at sleep at night where you are literally emerging these wild worlds from complete darkness from completely sitting still and being in your own restoration. All of these ideas come up. And when you wake up in the morning, you don't question those dreams, you're like, okay, yeah, that was a crazy dream.
That was just some imagination. Where I was playing this role and I was being this character. And the same thing goes for your imagination. You can daydream, right? Where you don't need your body to be involved in that. This is a purely imaginative illustrative way of thinking. I imagine I'm a billionaire. I imagine that I am in the most love that I've ever been. I imagine that I reach this certain amount of qualitate, quantitative wealth or influence or visibility. You can dream about these spaces. This is the second state of consciousness.
This is very, you know, when we think about goal setting and thinking of your limitless possibility. A lot of this is in this dreaming state where you see it as something that it is not something that you are, it is something that you're reaching for. It is something that you were imagining. And the third state of consciousness is this deep sleep, this deep restoration where your mind is not online. Your mind is not really there. It is, it is, there's no thoughts. And there's no witnessing. There's nothing to have an understanding of what's happening.
Your body is resting. And when you wake up, you understand, okay, I had a great sleep from what your body told you, but not from what your mind told you. And the fourth state of consciousness is witnessing all of these things, witnessing the deep sleep. Oh, I woke up and I am feeling good. Witnessing the dreams. Oh, interesting. I have this vision for who I meant to be. I have this dream. I have this subconscious thought of who I am meant to be and how I'm meant to illustrate my art into the world. You are witnessing that.
You're not identifying with that. You're not saying, I need to do these goals. I need to do this thing. The fourth state of consciousness is this deep surrender that everything is exactly the space that it should be. There's no efforting. There's no trying. What if for one day, You could be in this space where you no longer try. Where you understand that you are everything that you wish to achieve. You are everything that you desire. And it's all about remembering. Like I said at the beginning, every single spiritual teaching is trying to illustrate, trying to help you remember that you have everything you already need.
There's no more efforting, there's no more needing to follow a strategy, needing to follow an identity, needing to follow a specific style, needing to follow what has been working for the people in your industry, but remembering that you are a very unique conscious soul here to remember and here to witness your power. There's no stories involved in it. There's no visualizations involved in it. There is just here now consciousness. Pure consciousness. And it's very rare to reach this state, by the way. This is not something that, you know, I said, you guys try it out.
Try it out, but when we're talking about people living on a day-to-day basis with this, we're talking about the enlightened ones. We're talking about the most enlightened people in the world and we can count those in less than 10 fingers. The people who truly walked this earth and remembered their power and remembered that they were not their stories. They were not their dreams. They were not this voidless body experience that is deep sleep, but they were the witness. They were the consciousness above that above witnessness.
There are levels of how much you can witness yourself too. You can have this, I believe it's called, Preception. Where I'll put the word here, where you in psychology, you watch your thoughts. And this is something that people describe as the witness, watching your thoughts, watching when you notice that you get angry, watching when you notice if you're feeling insecure, watching, when you notice that your body is telling you an intuitive message. That is part of witnessing, but this witnessing that I am talking about goes beyond that, goes beyond the stories, that are no longer there. Goes beyond the needing, that is no longer there, beyond the achieving, beyond everything that is just surrendering.
And like I said, you can count on 10 hands, 10 fingers. How many people have lived a life like this? And this is what we're doing in meditation. We're practicing this. This takes practice. This takes an understanding of how to get to a space of no mind. I'm not, when you're, when you're trying to get to higher levels of consciousness, to this fourth state of consciousness, to this cosmic, collective, consciousness, where you are above, you know, what generally the world is collectively consciously thinking. You're above that.
You on a cosmic level. This is a way higher level of witnessing. Where you're not only witnessing the evolution of humanity, the mind of the modern man, you are witnessing the collective mind of existence. You are witnessing from beyond the stars from beyond what is happening on a day-to-day basis, beyond what is happening in your world. But you are understanding that you are one. Not just with the universe, not just with consciousness, but you are one with everything. Beyond just, you are one with your community. You are one with what your purpose is beyond, and that's where a lot of us are stopping.
We're stopping at, I am one. I'm building a community. I'm one with my community. And we have this deep sense of wanting to belong. This is one of the deepest yearnings of a human being. I want to belong. I don't want to feel alone. And a lot of the time when we think about depression, it's that we felt misunderstood. We feel like we don't belong. Like we are separate. We create this illusion. This is an illusion. Being separate. Is an illusion. And it's not going to ever break us. It's not going to destroy us. It is keeping us weak.
It is keeping us from achieving, from recognizing, from a surrendering to this idea that we are one.