WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS

The subject of this article is  about something that involves everything we experience, namely….what Is consciousness?

William James once wrote that the discovery of precisely what is consciousness will make all other scientific discoveries pale by comparison. Taken from a special report by World Science

THE HARD PROBLEM – WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS

In sci­ence, plen­ty of prob­lems are hard. But per­haps just one is so grue­somely try­ing that sci­en­tists them­selves have termed it, well, “the hard prob­lem.” How does con­scious­ness arise—the liv­ing, aware ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing?

Some the­o­ries hold that it comes from, or is even iden­ti­cal to, elec­tri­cal and chem­i­cal pro­cesses known to un­fold in the brain. Oth­ers say it arises else­where: in some even sub­tler, yet-un­dis­cov­ered brain pro­cesses, or per­haps a mind-stuff quite dis­tinct from the brain—some call it a soul.

Few on ei­ther side claim to have fi­nal an­swers. But they of­ten ar­gue pas­sion­ately over who’s at least in the right play­ing field.

TESTING PROPOSITIONS
Now a group of re­search­ers has be­gun a study that they say might set­tle the is­sue. “We can ac­tu­ally test this, and put and end to all these de­bates,” said Sam Par­nia, a crit­i­cal care doc­tor at Weill Cor­nell Med­i­cal Cen­ter in New York.

Par­nia has spent years stu­dying re­ports that some car­di­ac-ar­rest pa­tients keep hav­ing clear, dis­tinct thought pro­cesses af­ter they’re clin­ic­ally dead and de­tect­a­ble brain ac­ti­vity has ceased. Pa­tients com­monly re­count these men­tal ex­pe­ri­ences, which of­ten in­clude see­ing a light at the end of a tun­nel, af­ter be­ing re­vived.

Parnia and colleagues aim to put these re­ports to a test: spe­cif­ic sounds will be played to such pa­tients, and they’ll be asked to re­call the sounds af­ter re­viv­ing. If they do, it would con­firm the ac­counts of thoughts with­out brain ac­ti­vity—sup­port­ing the claims that “con­scious­ness is a sep­a­rate, yet un­disco­vered sci­en­tif­ic ent­ity” from the brain, Par­nia wrote in a pa­per in the the April 23 ad­vance on­line edi­tion of the re­search jour­nal Med­i­cal Hy­pothe­ses.

CRITIQUES
The study “looks like an in­ter­est­ing pro­pos­al,” wrote Da­vid Chal­mers, a phi­los­o­pher and di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Con­scious­ness at the Aus­tral­ian Na­tional Un­ivers­ity in Can­ber­ra, Aus­tral­ia, in an e­mail. If the claims are con­firmed, it would “pose an in­ter­est­ing chal­lenge for sci­en­tists to ex­plain,” re­marked Chal­mers, au­thor of sev­er­al books on con­scious­ness.

But it probably would­n’t set­tle the most bas­ic, long­stand­ing dis­pute: wheth­er mind and brain are dif­fer­ent things, Chal­mers added. For in­stance, even if pa­tients’ claims are ver­i­fied, they “could be due to as­pects of brain func­tion­ing dur­ing car­di­ac ar­rest that are not cap­tured by the mea­sure­ments” Par­nia is us­ing, Chal­mers wrote. These mea­sure­ments are tak­en by elec­tro­en­ce­pha­lo­gram, a tech­nique in which sen­si­tive elec­trodes at­tached to the head rec­ord elec­tri­cal brain ac­ti­vity.

TRIALS AND PROTOCOLS
Par­nia said the tri­als be­gan on a pi­lot ba­sis in Jan­u­ary at two U.K. hos­pi­tals with 10 pa­tients; he aims to ex­pand the study to oth­er coun­tries and re­cruit over 1,000 pa­tients.

Per­haps the most strin­gent test in the study is al­so the one that ad­dresses the most ex­tra­or­di­nary no­tion. Crit­ic­ally ill pa­tients some­times re­port “out-of-body” ex­pe­ri­ences in which they feel they have floated out of their own bod­ies and are watch­ing them­selves from above.

Mark well: Par­nia is not test­ing wheth­er pa­tients gen­u­inely feel their minds have floated away. He wants to test wheth­er the minds ac­tu­ally do float away—a con­tro­ver­sial idea to say the least. His team plans to place pic­tures stra­te­gic­ally around pa­tients’ rooms where they’re vis­i­ble only from near the ceil­ing. Pa­tients would la­ter be asked about the im­ages. “Thus, the claims of con­scious awareness and out-of-body ex­pe­ri­ences will be tested in­de­pen­dent­ly,” he wrote in the pa­per.

FOR OR AGAINST AN “OUTRAGEOUS” VIEW?
He ad­mit­ted some would find the idea out­land­ish. A study pub­lished in 2002 found that just elec­tric­ally stim­u­lat­ing spe­cif­ic brain ar­eas could trig­ger an out-of-body-like ex­pe­ri­ence—ev­i­dence to some that the sensa­t­ions are il­lu­so­ry.

Dan­iel Den­nett, di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Stud­ies at Tufts Un­ivers­ity in Med­ford, Mass., wrote in an e­mail that he’s nev­er seen ev­i­dence that the events are an­ything more than hal­lu­cina­t­ions. The ex­pe­ri­ments, “if con­ducted with scru­pu­lous care,” will surely con­firm this, added Den­nett, a phil­o­so­pher who is al­so au­thor of sev­er­al books on con­scious­ness.

Yet, said Par­nia—in de­fense of the op­po­site view—pa­tients have ac­cu­rately re­ported events in their hos­pi­tal rooms that oc­curred dur­ing out-of-body ex­pe­ri­ences, while they were clin­ic­ally dead. “If we get 200 peo­ple, and all claim to have an out-of-body ex­pe­ri­ence but none can iden­ti­fy the im­ages, that would very much sup­port the idea that this is a false mem­o­ry,” Par­nia said. “If on the oth­er hand, 200 peo­ple iden­ti­fy these im­ages… then we’d have to ac­cept that may­be hu­man con­scious­ness, as bi­zarre as it may sound, could be non-local to the brain.”

Tag: What Is Consciousness

Definition of Consciousness

We can diligently and carefully search the web to find many of what l call “standard definitions of consciousness.”  Here are a few examples of such definitions of consciousness, with critiques.

SOME  STANDARD DEFINITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

An cognitive state
This makes the assumption that consciousness is tied to cognitive functions and thus much of what plants and animals experience would be considered unconscious.

A feature or force of life
Some Vedanta traditions see consciousness this way. Certainly some form of consciousness is a universal feature of life, but what does that really tells us? If bubble gum sticks to a wall, does that define the stuck-to wall?

The state of being aware
This is a very redundant definition. Awareness can be called consciousness and consciousness can be called awareness. It doesn’t really tell us very much. It offers no deep insight into what is the nature of consciousness.

Alert perceptions
To be alert is to be in a state of feisty awareness, which again doesn’t tell us very much.

Awake and self-aware
A living organism can be sentient, or present to its surrounding, and grounded in a time and space framework/reference without necessarily being self-aware. Does self-awareness really define the full spectrum of what is consciousness or in its absence, unconsciousness?

Higher order awareness
This is tied to a mix of cognition, self-awareness, and being awake or in advanced levels of consciousness – including having greater inner peace and heightened, clear and brilliant perceptions. But what give us the hubris or vain authority to be so selective in this  elite view of consciousness?

By-product of neuron firing
This reduces consciousness to various physical mechanisms. This implies certain organisms which do not have such neurons then do not have consciousness. Nevertheless they are sentient and aware, unlike rocks.

HOW TO GO  BEYOND THIS STANDARD LIST
We could go on with this standard list and related critiques. Keep in mind that with a valid definition we must ask:

a) Does it give us an objective, trans-personal, outside-ourselves point of view of consciousness itself?

b) Does the definition of consciousness have practical, proving and valuable applications?

None of the above seem to meet these tests for me.

MOVING TO AN ALTERNATIVE
Thus I’ve evolved an alternative definition of consciousness. This came to me after an inner experience as a teenager when, subsequent to a high fever, my left-brain shut down and I was thrown, outside of my mind, into a wordless and oceanic, connected and whole experience of consciousness. What I learned from that experience is the following definition of consciousness. It is one that yields revolutionary implications and also vast practical applications – mainly for the healing ourselves (as when we fall prey to consciousness illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, and diabetes) and the healing our planet. Such applications are  really the acid test of definition, understanding or theory of consciousness.

Alternative Definition
The alternative as well as extended definition is as follows:

Consciousness forms a potentially universal relationship of connection in nature.

This includes our own human nature and the nature of the world around us. Imagine consciousness underlies the thin surface appearance, the illusion of a world  fundamentally composed  of hard, separate, mechanically-acting, math-defined physical forms or “matter.”

Imagine thus that the underlying oceanic consciousness is at the real depth core of nature, of everything existing in the cosmos. We really never experience anything outside our consciousness so anyone who tells you this is far-fetched are themselves out of touch with their own inner consciousness. They are locked into the surface appearance. In my experience,  consciousness really forms nature’s ultimate and primordial essence and quintessence. Because “laws” are what “connect” events (as in the laws of cause and effect or the laws of action and reaction – including billiard balls bouncing off each other) then consciousness so defined as above suddenly underlies the taproot foundation of all connections in nature an thus of nature’s laws. This means that consciousness forms the authentic and abiding “principia” of nature, contrary to Newtons core thesis in his Principia Naturalis Mathematica or his “laws of nature as mathematical.”  Math symbols do expertly abstract separation and therefore cannot truly point to what connects nature in its essence – namely consciousness. Newton very abysmally and foolishly lost sight of this simple common sense. He was self-engrossed, bedazzled by his own newly invented calculus.  This critique of Newton’s vision may seem harsh, but I must beg to differ. We do need to revisit his old, stale, moldy premises, the ideology of his that took root to form our modern world. It is a vision that is now failing to work and falling apart. We do need, quite urgently, to make some vast and revolutionary inner shifts in our visions. Then we can uncover or bring out more fully out (as when we water seeds), nurture and discover the underlying laws of consciousness, life, and connection – rather than of the mechanical, death-delivering, math-defined, separative patterns that now almost totally predominate our prevailing industrial/commercial/material worldview. We need to re-structure our collective consciousness from the ground up or from its 17th century crumbling foundations. Why? Because those foundation stones has mislead a building process of the Industrial Revolution. That metaphysics has yielded a failing medical system, helpless in the face of pandemics, and focused on surface symptoms plus  misdirecting us towards a disintegrating, dying parade of living ecologies. These are not minor problems or crises. We need to thus face the root inner cause of global pollution, global warming and a more massive destruction of life and consciousness on our earth than ever before, and which is proceeding at ever faster and faster paces.

Going Past Current Definitions
Lame definitions of consciousness will not help us on this score or to extricate us from the larger, self-created problems of our modern world. They fall short in giving us the simple needed insight to  turn around our major looming planetary trends, derivative of an extraordinarily and extended loss of wisdom.

For more information on such a philosophy and definition of consciousness – and its implications  – visit http://www.raw-wisdom.com

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS DEMONSTRATED

MORE THAN JUST A THEORY
A theory of “what is consciousness” generally consists of an outline image in our minds that supposedly points to something  real in the world on this subject matter. All our words and symbols are just inner pointing tools to something. Theories are organized ways of orienting or pointing our awareness to things in our world and in relationship to each other. Thus to demonstrate that a particular theory or set of ideas actually points to something systematic, real, valuable and predictable becomes an event.

THE HARDER PROBLEM
Consciousness, however, represents potentially such a vast-touching -upon-all-the-world phenomena that its exploration can take a trillion different confusing directions. Everything we know is something we know in our consciousness.  And sophisticated and intricate theories may only point to some relatively narrow or ivory tower vistas of a part of that whole. These can result in a variety of entanglements of mind which miss the whole point of seeing “what is consciousness” in its full essence. Or one can easily fail to fathom a truly inner-mountain-peak vantage point of this unified and vastest of arenas for knowing.  Adeptly using high abstractions (universal concepts) in a philosophy of consciousness and states of consciousness may thus give but the deceptive appearance of having latched onto this transcendent highest view with some mastery. This is the harder problem in dealing with “consciousness.” However this is easier to be said than attained. An acid test is whether that proposed theory or definition of consciousness can actually help anyone enhance their consciousness or resist the slippages into consciousness diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Otherwise the theory is  just so much  disingenuous jibber-jabber.

TACKLING CONSCIOUSNESS
One highly effective way to get past this “harder problem” is having again an authentically high overview and not a personal or cultural, conceptually-biased orientation. this means looking from above the pointing paths of all concepts because touches everything. This is as if one must look at consciousness from above the entire left/right brain divide which is a superhuman feat.  The left-brain conceptualizes. It forms outline images as pointing tools or the world of ideas as Plato referred to this.  It uses these ideas to separate elements of consciousness and thereby to focus one’s attention. The right brain does the opposite. It helps us unpoint and unfocus. It looks at things as a whole or connectively and non-conceptually or intuitively. Sometimes what is called “right-brain” ends up dominantly functioning in the left-hemisphere of the brain and visa versa because these are two forms of consciousness that are tuning into dominantly by one side or the other, rather than physically bound. One verbalizes and philosophizes with concepts and the other cannot and has no inclination or need.  Here I consider myself to have an advantage in overviewing this study of a trans-split-brain view. This is simply because first I was trained in dominant left-brain skills as a philosopher and math prodigy and experienced the exact opposite, a radical left-brain meltdown causing a brain polarity shift to right-brain or connective consciousness dominance. This was similar to what happened to Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard brain scientists who had a stroke that also shut her left-brain down.  It allowed her, and myself similarly, to  visit the internal highways in unusual ways – and from what I consider again a seeing from a higher vantage point. This didn’t mean that when I later returned to using  familiar words and comfortable sentences – speaking English or German or Chinese or Hebrew – that then I discounted the importance of words. I did not abandon the dominantly verbal/mathematical approaches of the west in favor of a solely non-verbal, intuitive, vague or right-brain dominant mysticism – as with indigenous shamans . On the contrary, I sensed the huge and profound need to bridge these two worlds. It seemed now that I had a gift, and could do so with an impersonal, conscious and intentional approach.

BREAKING GROUND FOR A DEFINITION
Ultimately I came to some unique conclusions about truly what consciousness is, and resulting in  the following definition and theory which I consider of priceless value for the development of a higher consciousness and a conscious mind.  When one enters the raw world of consciousness there is no such thing as a “theory.”  Theories only exist when right and left brain consciousness is severed. When I try thus to state this in so many words – but not really needing those words -  it may make little or no ripples with others at first if my language of expression is not translated.  It is like writing a physics formula on a blackboard and about how to create an atom bomb  – and without first explaining how to apply the formula. The formulas appear meaningless and insignificant – just white marks on a dark blackboard – except to a person who knows the vast implications and pointing paths of those symbols. The responsibility then remains to demonstrate the value of what is created by those symbols (and here for the making of not bombs but  integral healing of life and consciousness within ourselves and throughout nature).

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
With this said, let me now offer a definition of consciousness that shakes the foundations of the western worldview – the matter/energy math-defined vision. Imagine that  consciousness forms a potentially universal relationship of connection in all of nature.

Just as chocolate makes up the permeating “essence” of a chocolate bar,  it is another discussion to show that this consciousness also and thereby forms the penetrating, defining and universal essence of nature  (and not mathematical relationships or the  postulated microscopic atomic/subatomic model as what should be centrally focused upon). This means that at the core of nature there is a dance of consciousness and unconsciousness, of connection and separation, rather than a dance of matter and energy defined mathematically. This one idea, theory or definition thus has the potential to change the whole of our vision of nature.   Or when adopted, it can change the heart and soul of the collective view of what is nature and the functioning of our cosmos.

A third discussion is how this same consciousness can permeate nature to higher and lower degrees. The greater permeation or concentration manifests in  life. This means that living organisms, rather than machines brought into being by math-designs, thereby represent nature’s core essence to be elicited or brought out to dominate natural terrains – rather than machines and what is mechanical.

Some philosophers may not at all be open to this kind of thinking about consciousness.

In their minds, they may think it is far more rational and flattering to view the essence of consciousness as tied to higher-order skills in human beings – include self-cognizance  triggered by human brain neurons.  Everyone can define consciousness as they choose, with resulting limited foci. The defining words I use point to a larger and highly revolutionary vision. Here consciousness is not seen as something small, special and proprietary to  human brain cells but as arising out of a universal cosmic terrain from the core of all of nature.  This may shatter the view of the Renaissance, namely of humans being so special.

This view also came to me via a dissolving of the functions of my left-brain conceptual faculty – leaving behind attachments to such flattering conceptualizations.

The foregoing definition still can for a long time remain meaningless until examples are given of how it applies. The applications are powerful.

Note that we really want to know 1) what best brings out consciousness or maintains, nurtures, supports and raises that consciousness and 2) what does the opposite or takes away, destroys, corrupts or lowers consciousness, and how and with what procedures we follow this divide.

AT THE FOUNDATION OF LIFE
Above we referred to a close link between consciousness and life.  Here we refer to, among other things, the sentience and awareness of all living creatures, not just higher order brain skills. It is this awareness that manifests with life and among millions of species as a common denominator. Let us therefore think for a moment of life as the concentrated expression and presence of consciousness. This means living organisms are expressive containers for what brings out the connective essence of nature (consciousness) and rather than machines (per the math-based vision of nature) reflecting nature’s essential laws. So what is the first sign of this special presence of consciousness coming out of the core of nature? Life per se.

Organic life brings forth also certain distinct common features. In fact when an organism remains alive will it retain its connected wholeness. It will display on the surface or as seen in a silvered mirror what I would  call the “badges of organicity.” These are  thin outer signs of  the more important full depth-inner presence of depth-connectedness.

These outer signs include the solar radiance of a flower’s pedals, the rings of a tree, the organic-in-form branching veins of a leaf, the swirls of sea shell, and so on. Again organic forms show off  these beautifully attractive badges when they are reflective of a more deeply present connected whole via living consciousness.

Consider the possibility that consciousness again lies at the foundation of that depth-connectedness which keeps all living forms alive.  Therefore when an organic life dies, it then predictably loses both  the outer organic badge, the whole appearance on the surface,  and its more important inner-depth consciousness or fuller connectedness with. Trigger this undoing of life with a bullet or surgical knife or sword -  cut a living organism progressively into parts – and again it dies. There are exceptions, as the hard form of shells displays the organic badge longer until time it’s elements dissolves into its surroundings.  Ultimately the body’s flesh separates into parts or “falls apart.” It turns to dust in earthen graves. The inner consciousness once connected it more deeply within, and to the world around it as well. Now it is no longer present. This is but a first step in demonstrating  how this theory, definition and understanding  functions in nature. Next we need to visit what are tell-tale signs of any rising, eliciting and support of the presence of  consciousness – and derivatively life?

MORE EXAMPLES OF HOW AND WHY
Here are a few more genres of examples. We can discuss the details in future blog post.

A) Water elicits life and consciousness
Water’s essence in the mechanical/math-based/atomic worldview is H2O. In a life-centered worldview it establishes the connective relationship to elicits life and consciousness from every seed – and detoxifies, purifies, and helps re-establish life and raise consciousness in ourselves. There are several ways of demonstrating how water so function, and in this context why it brings out the rainbow, forms bubbles, rounds the sharp/oppositional corners of rocks, puts out fire, and so on.

B) Fire destroys life and consciousness
This is works on the same principle in reverse. This is why various states of inflammation are acute harbinger of later chronic illnesses,  when inflammation is not healed. The effect is a lowered state of inner health, wholeness, connectedness and overall awareness. When a person is angry, or their emotions are inflamed, the This is why largely uncooked,

C) Love elicits life and consciousness; hate and fear the  opposite
Love establishes an emotional connective relationship. Hate and fear do the opposite. This is why an angry person is not well aware of their surroundings, another persons feelings, etc. Anger and fear inflame emotions and bring on fiery adrenalin . Love guides us to connective oneness with what is loved. Hate and fear brake us away from that connective oneness in our consciousness.

D) Money corrupts consciousness.
Money mathematizes awareness. The lusting for money makes a marriage with the mechanical worldview.  This lowers consciousness, brings us into deeper states of illusion and corruptions of consciousness – where illusion is the falling apart of the integrity of the essence consciousness, its awareness of connective oneness. A money-centered society thus traps others in countless deceptions. It  puts everyone in competitive opposition to each other. It elicits fiery friction and feeds on fears and addictions to move an economy “forward.” It does not integrally evolve our human consciousness, the essence of our being, and the key to our evolution.

E) Chemicals harm Life; pollute the environment; upset the ecology of the whole planet, cause species to die
Take a random and large mix of chemicals, to test not individual separate chemicals but the underlying math-based order, and the mix will kill and destroy all of life and consciousness in the compost heap. The compost heap is symbolic. It is were a large and random mix, in fact all plant life forms can decay to form the building materials of all other plant life forms in an endless and integral circle of unity. The philosophy of chemistry, the math-based worldview, clashes and thus when widely and deeply applied will destroy life and consciousness in nature. This is why we have an epidemic of species dying.

F) Surgery, radiation and chemical drugs – chief tools of allopathic medicine – fail to truly heal consciousness ailments .
We see this with the health epidemics of cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. To reverse these ills both in ourselves, and on a culture-wide basis, involves a true and revolutionary global mind change – a moving to a different essential vision of what is the core  of nature, and our innermost being. It sets us on a different course to healing rather than ills. A true global mind change thus first heals our consciousness and its relationship to our mind’s understanding of the world, then emotions, body, and being in this world or to all that surrounds us each day of our lives.

What Is Consciousness?

The question of what is consciousness is not at all trivial nor ordinary. For example, you can walk into a department store, go to the sports section and find a pair of skies. Or you can go to a library and find a book specifically about glass lamps. But where do you go to find what is consciousness or even just a book that truly describes what consciousness is?

NON-PHYSICAL & EVER-PRESENT
Consciousness isn’t something you can simply wrap your hand or mind around. It is not physically contained. No matter what we are engaged in, somehow consciousness is to a degree present. It is part of everything we experience. Does that mean it has no specific identity whose knowledge we can master?

CRITICAL QUESTION TO ANSWER
It has been my experience that this riddle can and must be solved. It becomes critically importance to know the answer when suffering from a variety of “consciousness diseases” - such as those evidence by neuropathy, lack of circulation where the bloodstream fails to carry consciousness to our cells. We see this also with diabetes and atherosclerosis. A diabetic will thus step on a nail and not necessarily feel anything. Someone who has had a stroke similarly has part of their brain or related body part no longer feeling. A sense of consciousness is lost. Alzheimer’s patients have this especially with certain brain functions. With metastatic cancer a given  illness spreads unnoticed to destroy life. Actually most all chronic and systemic diseases have some inner component that involves a recession of consciousness.  Thus knowing and understanding  exactly and precisely “what is consciousness” may be the single most important and vital of all question to answer in our times. This is why even Nobel Laureates in physics, chemistry, and biotechnology have fallen prey to Alzheimer’s disease. Somehow physics, chemistry, and biotech disciplines  have not yielded optimal answers to our key and central question.

PANDEMIC
Note also that consciousness diseases are very much pandemic in our times. This is powerful evidence that we are far afield in  our inner knowing of what is consciousness really and thus how to help support, nurture and retain rather than lose and hinder its presence.

SOLVING THIS RIDDLE
In my own life, I have come to certain powerful and clear conclusions on this critical question and not based on borrowing secondhand from the ideas of others I know or have read about from the distant past. This is not gathered from any ancient tradition such as  Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, shamanistic or other alternative views. Rather my breakthrough view came about via a rare left-brain meltdown. This allowed me to peep through a small hole to see our world “in a raw” or in a conceptually-stripped way – a view chronicled in my bio at www.raw-wisdom.com/bio. What I most deeply learned is that consciousness forms a potentially universal relationship of connection in all of nature. It is thus distinctively not an exclusively human attribute or possession, especially not of just our brain and brain neurons. This phenomenon of consciousness then internally unifies or forms the binding-together connective essence of our entire world! What a statement this is to make. This profound view also differs from the vast cultural assumption that has been promoted since  the 17th century that supposedly  matter and energy postured in time and space and described or defined mathematically forms the essence of nature. I find this not to be true but a surface illusion. This view spearheaded the Industrial Revolution and the distinctiveness of our modern world.

AS A NATUROPATH
As a naturopath, I have  applied a very different root understanding of nature and ourselves to help reverse consciousness diseases. The effectiveness of this reversal becomes a true litmus test for a real definition and also real (and not imagined or academic or philosophical or faith-based, or spiritual-tradition concocted) understanding of “what is consciousness.” Otherwise our theories are but self-gratifying nonsense that fail to liberate the conditions of impeded consciousness. Understanding “what is consciousness” when grounded in substantive objective reality forms thus a vast revolution in impersonal and true understanding – a revolution  in our whole vision of what is nature’s essence or the essence of the entirety of the cosmos we live in.

Knowing  thus “what is consciousness” can have some of the most profound and powerfully revolutionary effects on the whole of our lives.

Can there be a science of consciousness that is real and substantive – with practical applications – rather than a mystical, feel-nice discipline that really leads us nowhere?

Obviously there can be such a thing when consciousness is an incredibly vital component of our daily lives. How can we master this consciousness and as more than a whimsical art?

DIABETES
For example, at the foundation of diabetes is a stark consciousness disease. We call it neuropathy. It manifests when a diabetic steps on a nail and can’t feel a thing. Understanding consciousness as a science could help us dramatically heal diabetes (which is presently considered  incurable). We see this potential reflected in Gabriel Cousens’ new program that actually helps reverse diabetes within just 30 days. He applies consciousness principles.

METASTATIC  CANCER
Spreading and unnoticed cancer can reflect a consciousness disease. A person who understands consciousness could then help another and oneself overcome this scourge. I discovered this when I worked with Charlotte Gerson to help many patients reverse metastatic cancer conditions.

ALZHEIMER’S
Alzheimer’s disease is still another consciousness ailment. Just dispensing  wonder drugs generally doesn’t work. Quite seriously we then need a different kind of understanding and science.

A REAL SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Thus if the presence and absence of consciousness is strikingly real for healthy and ill persons, then the knowledge thereof can help reverse our ill states of consciousness. First we need to know exactly “what is consciousness” to begin with.

MASTER KEY
I have tried to outline a certain powerful definition. Prior to grappling with this, it may be helpful to forgo any personal arrogance that assumes “consciousness” is merely a human attribute. Imagine instead that consciousness forms a a potentially universal relationship of connection in and throughout all of nature.  Imagine also that this allows various microorganisms to have sentience. Imagine lastly that this consciousness co-habits with its opposite or  unconsciousness. Exact knowledge of this “co-habitation” or how the two interact, can help us heal ourselves and revolutionize our personal lives and overall culture.
For more in depth discussions  the reader is invited to visit other blog posts under the categories of consciousness and raw wisdom and to visit www.raw-wisdom.com