Sabbasava Sutta
The far reaching need to focus on the Fourfold Supernormal Reality (Cattāri Ariya Saccāni) is very clearly pointed out in the Sabbasava Sutta:
“The ordinary person uneducated in the Dhamma thinks, ‘Did I exist in the past? Did I not exist in the past? In what form did I exist in the past? From what form to what form did I change in the past? Will I exist in the future? Will I not exist in the future? In what form will I exist in the future? From what form to what form will I change in the future? Do I exist now? In what form do I exist now? From what form did I come to this form? To what form will I go from this form? By thinking in this way, one arrives at one of six views:
(1) I have a “self.”
(2) I have no “self.”
(3) I perceive a “self” with “Self.”
(4) I perceive “not self” with “Self.”
(5) I perceive “Self” with “not self.”
(6) It is this “self” of mine that thinks, feels, speaks, acts, and experiences the consequences of good and bad acts. This “self” of mine is permanent, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, it will endure as long as eternity.
This set of speculative views is called the thicket of views, the wilderness of views, the contortion of views, the vacillation of views, the fetter of views. Fettered by this fetter of views, the uneducated ordinary person is not freed from birth, ageing, death, grief, lamentation, pain, depression, and exhaustion. He is not freed from suffering I say.
The supernormal individual who is well educated and skilled in the Dhamma and discipline understands how to think, what to think, and what not to think, and so he thinks:
(1) This is suffering
(2) This is the cause of suffering
(3) This is the cessation of suffering
(4) This is the way leading to the cessation of suffering.
When he begins to think wisely in this way, three fetters are broken in him:
(1) Personality perspective (sakkāya diṭṭhi)
(2) Cognitive dissonance (vicikiccā)
(3) Heteronomous morality (sīlabbata parāmāsa).