I think you're creating a false dichotomy between meta-thinking and mere reflex, when in fact most conscious thinking is neither of those.

My understanding is that a hypnotized person is very focused on the hypnotist and suggestible but can otherwise carry on a relatively normal conversation with the hypnotist. And certainly an unhypnotized chattering person is still conscious, aware of the context as well as the subject of their speech. You may find the speech dull and tedious, may even call it "mindless" as insult, yet it's honestly impossible to dispute that there's an active human mind at work.

I don't think we're far apart. My claim isn't that Level 1 is "mere reflex". It's that language can produce effects at a level that operates independently of (and sometimes in opposition to) conscious evaluation. The hypnosis example is just a clean demonstration of that separation.

Whether LLMs are useful models for studying that level is an empirical question. They're not conscious, but they do learn statistical regularities in language structure, which may be exactly what Level 1 is optimized for.