Consciousness
Along my spiritual path, I have often read and heard about Consciousness and its importance. However, I found out that this term is often used without clearly knowing what lies behind it, and, as often, things that are not well understood or defined become somewhat mysterious.
There are plenty of definitions of consciousness from philosophical perspectives, and science and neuroscience have also reached some conclusions about it. Here, I want to share what I have discovered and understood about Consciousness and how it actually differs from awareness. Consciousness is crucial to our existence, and once demystified, it became a central focus of my spiritual development.
First, let’s define Consciousness. In general terms, the definition of Consciousness is the state of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings. It is often associated with awareness and wakefulness, but we will see that it is actually quite different.
The etymology of the word Consciousness is quite interesting. It comes from the Latin cumscientia. The prefix cum means ‘with,’ and scientia means ‘to know.’ So, it essentially translates to shared or common knowledge. I think there is already something very interesting here: the fact that, unlike what we might think, consciousness is not something exclusively individual.
Another important thing to consider is that Consciousness also encompasses an intuitive understanding of good and evil. So, it is somehow tied to the notion of self—the Self that experiences reality. Essentially, Consciousness makes us the subjects, the main characters, of our perceptions and feelings.
Let’s go a little further and delve into a crucial distinction I would like to make: awareness versus consciousness. They are not the same, but how can we distinguish between the two?
Let’s consider the various forms of life that we are all familiar with and that we all suspect have some sort of consciousness or awareness. Are plants conscious of themselves? What about bacteria?
From a biological standpoint, these entities have awareness, which means that they respond to stimuli in their environment. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are conscious. We know that these lifeforms are mostly governed by chemical reactions, which are essentially automatic, making these entities mostly react to changes. Now, complex defense mechanisms in very primitive forms of life indicate the presence of perception, which, as we saw earlier, is a component of awareness.
What about animals? They are a much more evolved form of life that lives beyond chemical responses to changes. Animals are aware of their existence relative to other animals. Their sensory perception is far more advanced to the point that a primitive form of self is present. In essence, we could say that at a biological level, we deal with awareness, while consciousness seems to have something else to be a step beyond that.
Going back to humans, something peculiar about us is that we possess what is called an Ego. Ego is again from Latin and means the I, that part in us that says I am. I think that the ego somehow is, or acts as, an interface between our biological aspects, what we receive from Nature, and our spiritual or Divine aspects.
To summarize consciousness and awareness, plants exhibit awareness, animals show self-awareness, and humans possess consciousness.
However, we should keep in mind that we are dealing with a spectrum here and that this hierarchy is merely for simplicity and clarity. Finally, I suggest that the level of consciousness is ultimately related to the individual and the self and that the assertion of the self correlates with the level of consciousness.
Let’s talk a little bit about a unique attribute of consciousness: free will. I think it is one of the most profound aspects of consciousness, but what exactly is it? It is the ability to make choices freely, free from any apparent constraints, but also ultimately making choices that could go against our own nature.
So, let’s ask ourselves: do animals have free will? Wild animals operate largely on instinct and survival, which does not allow them to express free will. Domesticated animals, however, exhibit behaviors that can suggest a limited form of free will influenced by their interactions with humans. Anybody who has a pet at home or who often interacts with domesticated animals knows that they are quite different. They are capable of choosing, for instance, food that they like versus food that they don’t like or a certain toy rather than another.
This particularity of domesticated animals comes from the fact that they live in a human-shaped environment that bears the mark of human consciousness. This environment allows them to raise their level of self-awareness close to consciousness and thus exhibit free-will-like behaviors.
But if the level of consciousness of animals rises when they are in close proximity to humans, I wonder what could raise the level of human consciousness? Humans have something beyond their biological nature—a divine part that enables consciousness and raises its level. It is this divine aspect in us that allows us to transcend basic biological imperatives, make choices freely, and envision a higher level of existence.
Talking about Consciousness requires us to talk about the unconscious.
Exploring the unconscious, I discovered how important our sensory perception is. Without sensory perception, we are surrounded only by the unconscious, a chaotic field of thoughts and ideas of unknown origin and nature. Our Consciousness acts as an ordering light projected within the unconscious.
Our ability to focus our attention on something by raising our senses narrows and intensifies Consciousness, allowing us to process more deeply aspects of the unconscious and transform them into knowledge.
This production of knowledge, using our consciousness to produce knowledge from the base material of the unconscious, is the premise of our creative power. It is this mechanism that allows us to create and ultimately sets us apart from the animal kingdom.
Because of this creative power, we can conceive that we possess something more than just our biological nature, something also capable of creation — the Divine —and that our Consciousness has to do with this part of us.
Finally, I find it interesting that the Divine is something that humans have in common. So, thinking back to the definition of Consciousness as being “knowledge in common,” we now understand that consciousness is also “common divine knowledge.”
In summary, I hope to have been able to explain, in relatively simple terms, how I understand this complex phenomenon of consciousness. It’s more than just awareness and self-awareness. It is, for one self, the ability to order our experiences and thoughts, and have free will, and it also is, for the entire humanity a common connection to something greater.
This is why Consciousness seems so important in spiritual development; it simultaneously is our unique link to the Divine and our connection to the rest of humankind.
