Diving into Consciousness
As consciousness is such a fundamental part of discussing spiritual awakening, I feel it is important that I provide an overview of consciousness and the nature of consciousness, as I understand it. I hope this will also make it easier for those new to the concept of spiritual awakening to appreciate the complex nature of this phenomenon. That said, though we all experience consciousness, it is not an easy concept to unravel. It’s no wonder why philosophers and scientists alike have developed the phrase “the hard problem of consciousness” to describe the difficulty in explaining its existence.
Before we can really begin to talk about spiritual awakening, it is important to first recognize that we are ultimately trying to understand different states of consciousness through the lens of a subjective state of consciousness. This means that each person will be making sense of their reality with a unique cognitive and perceptual bias based on their subjective experiences of consciousness, as well as the cultural and social beliefs they currently carry. This is an essential concept to acknowledge, especially when it comes to the exploration of consciousness. It indicates that we are never able to be fully objective in our understanding of reality. When realized in its fullest one finds themselves embracing the concept of radical empiricism as described by William James in 1904. William James is considered the father of American Psychology and has had tremendous influence over Transpersonal Psychology.
Many disciplines study consciousness, including philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, religious studies, and schools of mysticism. Many factors, including your personal experiences, scientific, religious and spiritual beliefs, as well as how you are professionally socialized will influence how you make sense out of consciousness and reality itself. A person working in a psychiatric institution is often going to view consciousness very differently than an indigenous elder serving their community, an anesthesiologist prepping a patient for surgery, or a roboticist working on artificial intelligence.
The nature of consciousness is a topic of ongoing debate. Questions relating to the nature of consciousness pertain to the field of ontology (the study of being) in philosophy of mind. A popular view held within mainstream science equates consciousness to brain states, where consciousness is simply a biproduct of human brain functioning. This is sometimes connected to the philosophical perspective of materialism, whereby the fundamental substance of reality is considered to be matter. Medical materialism is the term describing this perspective when it is held by Western institutions of medicine and psychiatry. For decades medical materialism has been the dominant ideology within these institutions. In my experience, many people who study, research, and work in psychiatric institutions are not aware of how inherent this perspective is within the professions they represent, nor are they aware of the implicit bias and consequent oppressive practices that such an assumption on the nature of consciousness contributes. We will review this further in a future blog post.
Other perspectives on the nature of consciousness include idealism, whereby mind, rather than matter is seen as the fundamental substance of reality. Under this perspective matter and the material world don’t truly exist but are products of a higher mind creating something akin to a dream. This view tends to emphasis the mental or spiritual nature of consciousness. I hold a view on consciousness more akin to that of panpsychism, whereby consciousness is a fundamental property of all things, including matter. Consciousness compounds into higher orders and more evolved states, each contributing to a unique experience of reality.
In addition to various perspectives on the ontology of consciousness, the term itself takes on many different meanings depending on who you are speaking with. For example, consciousness may refer to a state of wakefulness as opposed to a state of deep sleep. Similarly, consciousness is often defined as a state of awareness, as when we refer to someone as being consciously aware of their surroundings, as opposed to unaware.
Consciousness may also be identified with the self, the mind, the psyche, or the soul. Consciousness is also understood as a territory or region with which we experience our self and our subjective reality. This is particularly true in psychology when mapping different structures of the psyche, such as Freud’s conceptualization of the Id and Ego (which has also accrued a wide range of definitions), or Jung’s exploration of individual and collective consciousness and unconsciousness.
These distinctions really describe an interesting feature of consciousness known as subject-object duality. The subject is the observer (individual awareness/self), the object is that which is being observed (the territory, or parts of the territory). Subject-object duality is the result of a sense of separation between a state of consciousness as an observer and a state as the observed.
In a state of consciousness known as pure or absolute consciousness this sense of division is no longer experienced. A person may come across this state during meditation, or other times when they are in flow. This state itself seems to take many forms, all similar in that the sense of self dissolves. In this state the observer is immersed with the observed, where the self and the territory become one. A good metaphor for this is of an individual drop of water falling into the ocean. What happens to the individual drop of water after it is immersed in the ocean? In this state, we find consciousness as a unifying fluid of all experiences and realities. Some traditions equate this state with God or the Absolute. It makes one wonder where the boundaries that define an individual’s sense of self begin and end.
In my own belief system consciousness ultimately exists as a unifying field of energy, where creation takes form from the creator, like that droplet of water emerging from the ocean, though never fully separated. After exploring its own individuality, it inevitably returns to the whole, immersing itself back within the ocean, into a state of pure consciousness…or at least something like that =-)
In this blog I will largely be relating to an understanding of consciousness as a spectrum, similar to the conceptual framework of consciousness as developed by Ken Wilbur. As we map out consciousness, and in turn various experiences attributed to spiritual awakening, we find that there are different levels of experience, each with its own unique features. These features may incorporate certain emotional states such as joy or fear, carry insights such as the interconnectedness of all things, or include content that are shared by multiple individuals or populations.
Western cultures have largely adopted a monophasic view of reality, whereby their worldview is almost completely based on a single state of consciousness. In the West, this state of consciousness would be seen as the everyday ordinary waking state and is sometimes referred to as the ego level of consciousness. A monophasic view of reality often leads to cognicentric bias, whereby primacy is placed on the state of consciousness that is predominantly experienced by any group. This cognicentric bias has had profound influence on mainstream medicine, psychiatry, and psychology within the West, as those states that do not fall within the “norm” are pathologized and misunderstood. This has led to a fundamental misunderstanding of various mental states, including psychosis.
Interestingly, while Western cultures seemed to place primacy on the more dualistic ego level of consciousness, many Western religions, esoteric schools, and Eastern traditions have historically placed primacy on nondual levels of consciousness. This too can lead to cognicentric bias, albeit from the perspective that the everyday ordinary is an illusion that must be transcended. This perspective approaches the ego as something undesirable that needs to be dissolved or destroyed. I have found this more radical approach to consciousness is itself dualistic and tends to pit a person against themselves in a way that leads to an endless spiral of guilt and shame.
Having lived through both perspectives, I now find myself taking on a middle of the road approach to consciousness and spiritual awakening. It is one that recognizes the value that exists across all levels of the spectrum of consciousness, including those unique to the human predicament. It is a perspective that honours the process of awakening as much as the outcome.
We are all part of a dynamic and vibrant ocean of consciousness that is always folding and unfolding in a cosmic dance. The stories that each of our individually unique drops of water, or shards of consciousness, experience are intertwined and interconnected, and there is tremendous meaning held within the experiences we have regardless of the level of consciousness we are experiencing. That meaning is for us to discover should we feel called.
As you read through this blog, I hope you find a deeper appreciation for the vastness of consciousness. I also hope you can appreciate your own unique perception of consciousness and the reality it perpetuates, while holding space for the realities of others whose perspectives and experiences may seem different or even paradoxical. Such is the nature of consciousness.
In the next blog entry, we will review the structure of the ego, as it too, plays an important role in spiritual awakening and spiritual emergency.
