What is Consciousness?

Consciousness is still one of the most mysterious and elusive ideas in both the scientific and philosophical communities, because it’s not a single idea that can be described using basic terminology. Like all words that represent ideas and concepts, the term “consciousness” can mean something different to each person using it, and based on the context in which they’re using it. One of the most fundamental ways that we miscommunicate without even realizing that’s what we’re doing, is by assuming that a word mean the same thing to everyone. The true meaning of a word is based on whatever image or idea formed in the imagination of the person speaking and using it to communicate an idea, and in the person listening and reformulating it in their imagination. We like to think that the dictionary gives us a standardized interpretation for words, yet this is still only meaningful for those who actually learn language from a dictionary, or who look up the definition of a word whenever its meaning isn’t clear. The dictionary states that consciousness is being awake and self-aware, yet we are also awake and self-aware in unconscious states of our dreams, though upon awakening and changing states, we can’t remember our dreams. Yet dreams, like all reality is created by our consciousness.

Consciousness can be more accurately described as a state of mind that produces the very reality that it’s then aware of. There are many different states of awareness and the realities they produce, so in the ultimate sense, these terms are relative to each other. What we call our reality is based on our state of mind, and varies in how it appears based on our state of mind. Humans all have what we call 3 aspects of the mind (3 aspects of one mind) which provides us with the means for classifying not only different fundamental states, but also as the different functions that are the natural behavior of that state, which exist simultaneously on three different dimensions (levels of awareness), which are all an interwoven part of a greater whole, and function as a single being while remaining somewhat unaware of each other. The subconscious mind is continuously active (never sleeps) and runs all of the biological processes of the body from the moment of conception until the death of the body. What we refer to as the conscious mind, which is attributed largely to brain function while we’re manifest in a physical body, doesn’t become fully active in terms of producing our thoughts, and the awareness we form of ourselves through our thoughts, until we reach puberty, yet we are fully awake and self-aware as children and to a certain extent, even as babies. Through hypnotic regression, we now know that even as a fetus still in the process of developing in the womb, we have a certain form of awareness, all of which are simply different states of consciousness that form different types of awareness.

What we think of as memory is the product of consciousness formed through our thoughts and is also based on our state of mind. This is very easy to understand when we simply realize that when we fall asleep (change states), the self-conscious (awake) mind is the only aspect of the mind that sleeps (loses awareness), while the subconscious remains fully active and therefore dominant, and continues to create an inner reality of experience through our dreams. We dream by moving in and out of different realities all night long, many of which are coupled with vivid sensations and intense emotions, yet as soon as we change states and move from a relaxed state to an active state, we steadily lose memory of our dreams. Usually, once we’re up and moving around for an hour or two, even the dreams we initially remember fade to the point that we can’t clearly recall them, and we completely forget our dreams. So we live in different types of realities formed on parallel dimensions (inner and outer) which, as we move from one to the other, we lose awareness of the other. Likewise, when we meditate, and we calm and subdue the conscious thinking mind, again making the subconscious dominant (because it’s always active), we can have all sorts of insights and realizations that are very clear and vivid as a form of direct experience, and as soon as we change states and move from inner awareness to outer awareness, they slip away and we have trouble remembering them. When frightened, scared, overwhelmed, or having a traumatic experience of some kind, though it’s intense and very vivid at the time we’re having it, as soon as it’s passed and we calm down and relax or change states, we forget the actual events that took place and only remember the feeling it gave us and the story that we began telling ourselves based on how we felt. It’s not the actual events that traumatize us, but what we tell ourselves about what they mean that traumatize us.

Because the aspect of our mind we call our conscious mind (awareness of the outer world) is our waking state and the aspect that seems to function through the brain, we tend to think that consciousness is a product of the brain and results from the material world. Yet consciousness is what forms the brain (and the whole body) which it then inhabits and operates from within. All biological life forms, including the human body and the brain, are designed and constructed out of primordial intelligence that has an archetypal pattern and self-organizing mechanism inherent in it, which constructs its own material body from a seed of encoded information. This level of consciousness literally constructs the body which it then inhabits while also performing all the automatic biological functions of the body, which are attributed to the subconscious (unconscious) mind. It’s called subconscious because it operates in the fundamental sense without our direct awareness, while also forming our initial conditioning and development in an automated fashion, laying the foundation out of which our self-conscious mind of verbal thought arises, takes shape, and begins forming our internal dialogue. The memory inherent in our subconscious, which is formed from conception till about five or six years old, which most adults have very vague or no memory of at all, can be tuned into and recalled in detail through various state of hypnosis, which delves into the memory instilled and maintained in the unconscious mind.

The subconscious mind, which is fully dominant up until the age of 7 or 8, then predominant from 7 to 14 (we develop in 7 year increments) establishes our formative conditioning which becomes the perceptual lens the developing self-conscious mind looks through to perceive the outer world, forming an awareness of it. How we perceive and interpret the outer world as a way of making sense of it and fitting it into what becomes our story about things, is a direct result of the subconscious mind which extends quite some distance outward from the body, forming the energy field that surrounds our body, is what we “look through” to perceive outwardly what remains hidden from us (we have no direct awareness of) inwardly. So what we call our outer awareness is actually a reflection of our inner world, formed as an archetypal model (paradigm) that allows us to experience the world shaped by our own consciousness. Because we’re unaware of the subconscious mind as our paradigm or mental model of the world, we don’t realize that it’s what’s producing what we call the outer reality that we’re then using to classify the self-conscious mind as being conscious and aware of.

This becomes easier to understand when we realize that our reality is formed through our perception of it, and our perception is formed through our paradigm, which acts as our perceptual lens. Our paradigm is shaped through our beliefs, memories, and values, which function as a coherent system where we can only see and cognitively recognize as being real, whatever matches our paradigm and can be explained, described, validated, or justified using it. Whatever doesn’t match our mental model as our belief system, we literally can’t see (recognize), and so it doesn’t exist for us. It’s only by changing our mental model (subconscious mind) that we’re able to perceive new and different aspects of reality, which of course were there all along, but we simply couldn’t recognize them. Again, all reality is a projection of our paradigm which is based on our state of mind as a vibratory frequency that creates a filtering system as a means of ordering and reorganizing the outer world to make it appear a certain way as the expression or vibratory match to our ingrained or programed patterning.

Our belief system forms a series of filters that serve to sort and edit all incoming information by comparing, contrasting, and relating the information to our existing memory base, only allowing in or being willing (able) to consider what matches it and can be logically, rationally, or reasonably incorporated into it in a harmonious and congruent fashion. The conscious mind, which is the part of us that judges, discriminates, reasons, and makes decisions regarding what to allow in and what to keep out, is based on our existing paradigm, making new information difficult to attain without editing it beyond recognition. For this reason radical or significant paradigm shifts are difficult if not impossible to produce, and evolution as a form of growth and transformation, which only comes by way of a paradigm shift (change in the vibratory structure of the mind), can be an arduously long and slow process. Many people, especially those who quit studying and learning after graduating from school, or quit engaging in new types of activities and begin living out of the same knowledge base for the rest of their life, fail to grow in the most basic sense, and live primarily out of their own opinions and the opinions of others that they accept an adopt as their own.

So when we look at consciousness in a broader sense by shedding light on it, we can conclude that it resides within the vehicle the mind which is shaped as a specialized field of organized information that both surrounds, encapsulates, and resides within the physical body, which serves as its vehicle for creating personalized versions of reality as a means of experiencing itself, and coming to know itself within and as a part of its own outer reflection. Consciousness is the primordial intelligence that forms all life and the life-force energy that activates it with a systematic growth process and animates it through a distinct personality. It’s the very information that becomes the building blocks for all of life, often referred to as the unified field of archaic ideas or the Akashic field of populated with ideas in their potential form and the memories produced by the personification of universal archetypes who create themselves as an entire reality which they also inhabit as a means of coming to know themselves through their own creation.

We know that energy and matter are equivalents of each other and therefore interchangeable. Consciousness is the energy which constructs its own outer world out of matter by oscillating through different states and degrees of consciousness. All of life, on all planes of existence, exist in a state of polarity as opposites that form extremes of the same thing, separated only by degrees of vibration. There are four primary states of matter: charged or electrified plasma (invisible energy field); gaseous (astral light); fluid (etheric); and solid (material body). Again, all are simply different states of the same thing vibrating at different rates and modes of consciousness. So the consciousness that charges or programs the outer field of light-matter, ordering and organizing it into a mirror image of itself, allows us to see, and therefore come to know ourselves in whole form. Archetypes are “whole” in the sense that they produce every aspect of both our inner and outer world, where they write their own story, design the stage necessary for it to play out in a congruent manner, and form not only the main character in their own story, but also form the entire cast, shaped as aspects of themselves. This is what Mythology is based on. It gives us a map of our own makeup and a system of classification that correlates states of consciousness with a personality, role and identity, and destiny as the type of story (outer reality) it naturally produces and lives out of as a means of self-expression, which is also self-creating.

The information contained in a seed is a code for a particular design, which is activated in an egg or womb by an invisible Life-Force energy that stimulates it, causing it to begin growing through a process of duplication and self-generation. It grows and multiplies (cellular mitosis) by absorbing and assimilating elements from the environment (earth, water, air, and sunlight), accompanied by a etheric hologram which serves as a form of spatial map for not only locating it within the greater body, but also acts to switch off some information in its genetic code, while switching on other information, causing the cell to become specialized as a certain type of cell necessary to become the heart, liver, or some other aspect of the overall body which it plays an intrinsic role in. The body is completely generated out of memory which serves as a blueprint for organizing, constructing, and animating it with activity by a mysterious invisible force. This same invisible force constructs it while also inhabiting it (exists as one with it) and gives it life as an expression of a specialized form of consciousness. The mind of the body, which is an invisible energy field shaped like an egg that extends several feet from the body, acts on the greater field of the World Soul to shape it while simultaneously interacting with it, gaining an awareness of itself in everything else. The consciousness of the body, which we are both aware and unaware of at the same time, is what produces the reality of the body as a mental projection.

Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Personal Transformation Coach, and Spiritual Teacher