What is Consciousness?

Posted On January 17, 2017 / Written by Dr. Linda Gadbois

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 words 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. 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.

So 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 according to our state of mind. We have what we call 3-minds (or 3 aspects of one mind) as a way of classifying not only different fundamental states, but also as the different functions that are a 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 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, doesn’t even become active as individual thought that forms our concept of ourselves and the world through our own thinking and perceiving until adolescence, yet we are fully awake and self-aware as children and as a baby, and even as embryos still in the process of developing in the womb, all of which are simply different states of consciousness and different types of awareness.

What we think of as memory is the product of consciousness and is also state based. 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) – making the subconscious the only aspect that’s still active and therefore dominant, and the only aspect creating reality. We dream by moving in and out of a variety of realities all night long with vivid and intense sensations and 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 vividly recall them, and we completely forget our dreams. So we live in whole realities as parallel dimensions that we’re basically unaware of in our waking state. 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 form, 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 because of it. It’s not the actual events that traumatize us, but what we tell ourselves about what they mean that traumatize us.

Because what we call the conscious mind (awareness of an outer reality) is our waking state, the aspect that’s largely a function of the brain, and what forms our identity as our body and the outer material world, we tend to think that consciousness is a product of the brain and the result of the material world. Yet consciousness is what forms the brain (and the whole body) that it then acts to operate. All life forms, the human body and the brain, are designed and constructed out of primordial intelligence as information that has a self-organizing mechanism inherent in it that constructs life-forms from a seed of encoded information. This level of consciousness literally constructs the body that it then inhabits and performs all the natural and automatic biological functions of the body, which are attributed to the subconscious mind. It’s called subconscious because it operates fully without our direct awareness, and forms all of our conditioning as a form of training and development, laying the foundation out of which the self-conscious, brain aspect of consciousness as thinking in verbal terms as a form of internal dialogue begins. This memory, from conception till about four or five years old, which most adults have very vague or no memory of at all, can be tuned into and recalled fully through various state of hypnosis, which delves into the memory of 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 as 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 projects onto the environment, or forms the energy field around our body (extending several feet away) that we literally use by looking through it to perceive outwardly what remains hidden from us (we have no direct awareness of) inwardly. So what we call an outward awareness is actually a reflection that’s allowing us to see what’s in us as our mental paradigm. 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 perception of the outer world is based on our paradigm as a belief-system, where we can only see and cognitively recognize as being real, whatever matches our belief-system, and can be explained, described, and validated or justified using it. Whatever can’t or doesn’t match our belief system (model), we honestly can’t see, and so it doesn’t exist as real to us. It’s only by changing our mental model of the world (subconscious mind) that we’re able to perceive new and different aspects of reality, which of course were there all the time, but we simply weren’t cognitive of 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 reorganizing the outer reality to make it appear a certain way as the expression or vibratory match to our ingrained or programed patterning.

Our belief system also acts as our primary mental filter, which edits all incoming information by comparing and contrasting the information to it, only allowing in or being willing to consider what matches it and can be logically, rationally, or reasonably incorporated into it. Because of this editing feature of the conscious mind, radical paradigm shifts can be difficult if not impossible to produce, and evolution as a form of 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 (as all natural evolution is). Many people, especially those who quit studying and learning after graduating from school and live out of the same knowledge base for the rest of their life, fail to grow at all in the real sense of the word, 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 it in this light and from this perspective, consciousness has as its vehicle the mind as a specialized field of information, and the mind has the physical body as its vehicle in order to express by creating personalized versions of reality within what we call the material plane. Consciousness is the primordial intelligence that forms all of life and the Life-Force Energy that activates and animates it with a systematic growth process and personality. It’s the very information that becomes the building blocks for all of life, that’s often referred to as the unified field of archaic ideas or the Akashic field populated with ideas in their potential form and the memories produced by all minds as the personalized expression of those universal archetypes that creates experiences out of the reality they create. We know that energy and matter are equivalents of each other and therefore exchangeable. Energy as consciousness is the same thing as matter, but in different states as 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. So the consciousness that charges or programs matter, organizes it into a living form that self-expresses forming an outer projection as a reality that’s actually an inner reflection. All forms as archetypes have an inherent story in them as the reality they naturally produce through activity of some form, which is what Mythology is based on. Mythology is a system of classification that correlates states of consciousness with a personality, identity, and destiny as the type of story (outer reality) it naturally produces and lives out of as a means of self-expression that’s also self-creative.

The information contained in a seed (a code for a design), is activated by an invisible Life-Force energy that stimulates and causes it to begin growing through self-regeneration by duplicating itself (cellular mitosis), by absorbing and assimilating elements from the environment (earth, water, air, and sunlight), accompanied by a etheric hologram as a form of spatial map that not only locates the cell within the body, but also switches 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 that it’s an inherent part of. The body is completely generated as a construction, organization, and living entity out of a mysterious invisible force. This same invisible force then inhabits it (exists as one with it) and gives it life as the mind. The mind of the body, which is an invisible force that both surrounds and encapsulates the body while permeating it, forms an egg shaped energy field that extends several feet from the body, interacting with (while ultimately producing) the outer environment in which the body forms its experience of living through an outer 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 projection.

All reality as we know it is a creation of the mind and consciousness. All matter is organized into various forms and given life as varying levels and degrees of consciousness. It’s only through consciousness that we experience ourselves within the outer world of what we call reality. The outer world is formed (or reformed) as a reflection or creation of the inner (invisible) world. The subconscious mind, the level of consciousness just below direct awareness of the conscious mind, is the perceptual lens we look through that makes the outer world take on the appearance that it does. The same outer reality appears different to every mind that’s perceiving it. Perception is a personal creation as the unconscious projection of the individual mind. Out of a universal consciousness comes the individual consciousness as an archetypal matrix that forms one possible variation out of an infinite number of possibilities. The universal consciousness exists in a state of infinite potential, in which one possibility is expressed an made into a 3-D virtual reality by the individual mind, which by turning off some information while turning on other information, forms a specialized function in a greater living whole.

So consciousness is not a product of function of the brain, although the self-conscious aspect does arise out of the brain as a brain-function that’s really a state of consciousness operating through the brain to regulate and animate the body through the spinal cord, nervous system, endocrine glands, and major organs of the body. Consciousness is the universal intelligence as vibration that structures all matter as a dense aspect of itself into a living form as an avatar that creates a dynamic living matrix that we call the objective outer reality. Consciousness in various states as a dynamic interwoven system of vibratory frequencies all interacting in the same living matrix, is ALL there is. Everything in the material world is contained within the Universal mind as its creation. All of reality exists only through our ability to perceive it and conceive of it through our mind. In this sense, perception truly is reality.

Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Personal Transformation Coach, and Spiritual Teacher