Stop for a moment and ask yourself, what is consciousness?
If you’re wakeful, aware, cognizant or sentient, you have it. If you have a sense of self, sensibility, feelings, emotion, ego or subjectivity, you have it. Being aware of an external object, the ability to experience or to feel, having a sense of selfhood or something within oneself, and the executive control system of the mind, describe it fairly well.
It is present in new born babies, all the phases of growing up, being an adult, getting old and the moments fading into death. It can suffer, be afraid or sad. It can be happy, curious or enlightened. It can be distracted or confused. It can be inquisitive or thought provoked. Some questions on the topic of consciousness include, can it exist in the after life, is there reincarnation, are out of body experiences real, does free will exist, can artificial intelligence have it, and is it even a real thing?
Sometimes consciousness reacts before a person can think about it, and other times it prevents the reaction. In the course of a day it’s not unusual for a person’s consciousness to move through all kinds of waking, sleeping, and altered states. Dreaming is a type of consciousness. Lucid dreaming is being aware of yourself dreaming. Meditation and hypnosis can be used to achieve even more types of it. Consciousness can contemplate it’s past, present and future. It can ask the big questions and search for answers. It can calculate possible out comes to a situation and execute a plan. It’s a fluctuating process that can bounce around within many different thoughts in an intricate dance. Language is an invention for the purpose of conveying the concepts that manifest from it. There is an intimate familiarity when experiencing it, that can be equally as strange and mysterious, especially when trying to define it.
Consciousness is susceptible to hallucination from all sorts of possibilities like drugs, illness, hot and cold temperatures, and the lack of sleep, water or food. It can be altered by disease or injury. It’s in the center of serious issues like, how do you asses consciousness in comatose people and at what point does a fetus develop it? Great efforts go towards curing consciousness altering conditions like, alzheimer’s disease, obsessive compulsive disorder, down syndrome, bipolar disorder, autism, post traumatic stress, and schizophrenia.
Self-conscious is someone’s undue awareness of self appearance or actions. The subconscious are processes in which one is not fully aware of, but it influences one’s actions and feelings. Emotion is generated from subconscious parts of the brain. Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired. Instincts are inborn complex patterns of behavior that are performed without being connected to a memory or prior experience, and is an expression of innate biological factors. There are unconscious functions that controls certain body processes, like the heart beat, digestion and sexual desire, although it is possible to influence these things with consciousness. Unconscious can also mean incoherent, unaware of or existing without self realizing. In the medical field, consciousness is assessed by how alert a patient is to time and place.
The word consciousness is derived from Latin, conscious. It’s also related to conscientia, but the original meaning for this more resembled what we refer to as conscience these days. Conscience, the faculty by which we know right from wrong. In the 17th century philosopher’s began to use conscientia in a way that shifted towards a more modern idea of what consciousness means. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Consciousness, the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind. Samuel Johnson’s celebrated Dictionary (1755), Conscious, endowed with the power of knowing one’s own thoughts and actions.
By the 20th century definitions had evolved. Conscious, having inward knowledge of, aware of, having the use of one’s faculties. The state of being mentally awake to one’s surroundings. A persons awareness of their own thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations and environment. Consciousness in psychology: A comprehensive state of awareness of the mind to stimuli from the outside world and to emotions and thoughts from within the individual.
In his 1890 work, “The Principles of Psychology,” William James explored the concept of consciousness as an uninterrupted sequence of thoughts and experiences. Although James did not explicitly coin the term “stream of consciousness,” its widespread adoption in literary criticism and theory can be traced back to its application in describing the essence of his ideas within the context of his book.
Cultural anthropology studies the phenomenon of consciousness and its varying characteristics in different cultures. The sociology of human consciousness emphasizes the importance of language, collective representations, self-conceptions and self-reflectivity. Psychology embraces all aspects of conscious and unconscious experience while connecting it to biological processes. Neuro and molecular biology have made significant advancements in understanding the emergence of consciousness through the brain.
Across the spectrum of fields and disciplines there are many thoughts on what consciousness is, but at best they are all just stating aspects of it. Even the most credible sources seem to be just describing details of what it might be. None give a satisfactory definition. At a fundamental level, no one really knows where it comes from, what it is made of or how it works. Explaining it needs more than what a traditional definition can offer.
Understanding the diversity of perception is challenging in itself. Imagine how many different perspectives someone has in a life time. That alone is perplexing. Then imagine all the people in the world, now include throughout history, then consider all of the other biological life. That’s a lot of different perspectives, but yet the one thing that is the same and there throughout all of it is consciousness. Add the possibility of life else where in the universe, and now it has become unfathomable.
Consciousness is on the receiving end of our five senses, but is it just a biological process receiving stimuli, or is it something deeper? In popular belief, consciousness can be distinguished by two main categories, dualism and materialism. Dualism is the belief mind is separate from body, and materialism also known as monism is the belief that consciousness can be explained through biology. These two conflicting beliefs bring on what is known as the mind-body problem, which is the examination of the relationship between mind and matter, and the relationship between consciousness and the brain. Scientifically speaking, if you believe consciousness is something more fundamental than biology, the (TAD) would probably rank it as a type three theory.
Throughout history the topic of mind and body has been broad, and to this day it remains one of the biggest mysteries to be solved. Related philosophies extend back as far as the Avicennian, pre-Aristotelian, and earlier Asia India. It’s probably safe to assume, people before recorded history were thinking of these topics too. The soul, believed by many to be the incorporeal essence of a living being, shows the popularity of dualism. The English word soul, is derived from Old English sáwol. First modern use dates back to about the 8th century.
“The soul is the essence of our being, the source of our individuality and uniqueness.” Carl Jung (1875-1961)
“The soul is the eternal and immutable part of us that continues to exist beyond our physical life.” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
“We cannot prove a priori the immateriality of the soul, but rather only so much: that all properties and actions of the soul cannot be recognized from materiality.” Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
“The eyes are the windows to the soul.” William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
“The soul is the seat of our deepest emotions, the source of our creativity, and the wellspring of our humanity.” Rumi (1207-1273)
The English word spirit, from Latin spiritus, meaning breath, expanded into broader meaning and connotation. It’s often used metaphysically to refer to consciousness or personality. There is a common theme relating to a non-corporeal substance, contrasted with the material body. It also refers to a subtle substance, opposed to a physical material.
“Spirit is the force that animates all living beings and connects us to the divine.” Deepak Chopra
“Spirit is the light that guides us on our journey, the inner compass that shows us the way.” Paulo Coelho
“Spirit is the fire within us, the inner flame that drives us towards our purpose and destiny.” Oprah Winfrey
“Spirit is the energy that flows through us, the source of our passion, creativity, and vitality.” Eckhart Tolle
“Spirit is the eternal and indestructible part of us that survives beyond our physical existence.” Wayne Dyer (1940-2015)
While a very high percentage of the world population has and does believe in dualism, modern science leans towards materialism, making this point of view the prevailing paradigm. However, the large number of dualists lends itself to some credibility and this shouldn’t be over looked. Plus, even though science is very credible, it still falls short when attempting to explaining what is receiving the experiences that the brain is creating. Within the community of people that have dedicated their lives in trying to figure out what consciousness is, there is a growing feeling that it’s going to take a new way of thinking to bring us towards a worthy understanding. Consciousness deserves more scientific investigation and philosophical conciderstions.
Consciousness is not going to let us off easy when trying to come up with a final definition. Our (RH) starting point is just as mysterious as our destination. The Unified Field and consciousness will be the two book ends of reality for the (RH) we are getting ready to embark on. Although, the question of just how fundamental consciousness itself really is, will remain, and this brings us back to the mind-body problem.
We should hope a better understanding of consciousness would come out of a (TOE), but we also shouldn’t wait until then. Figuring out the mind-body problem and solving the mystery of consciousness are more big questions to be added to the list. Instead of pursuing an answer to consciousness after our search for (TUF), it only makes sense to include the study of consciousness as part of the agenda and its process along the way. This means we are setting out to answer two big questions at the same time, a (TOE) and Consciousness (C).