Consciousness being fundamental to our Existence as all creation emerges out of it and merges back to it. It is the eternal Cyclic of creation-sustenance–merge (sristi-sthiti-laya) triplet. It relates to Experiences that we commonly associate with ourselves such as thoughts, feelings, images, dreams, body. Derived from a Latin word “conscious” means con- together and Scio- to Know. Consciousness which is synonymous with awareness exceeds our organs, sense, brain and even our ordinary thoughts, it is present in latent manner in the materialistic world and is the basis of our religious emotion (Miśra, 1998)
In the Indian approach consciousness is known as prajñā /cetanā., In the body the sensory and motor organs (gnannedriyās and the karmendriyās)
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It is gross in form when in wakefulness (jāgrat), subtle in dream (svapnā) and causal in deep sleep (suśuptī) states. The fourth state turīyaḥ is called as pure consciousness (Saraswati, 2002b).
Vedās are the fundamental texts of “consciousness studies” as they evolve techniques for individual involution of human growth towards perfect freedom as also those for transformation to build ideal social orders working in time with all living and non-living beings of manifest consciousness.
Consciousness is not just the conscience, or the contents of the mind, but is the biological phenomenon permitting to survey the feelings, thoughts, and feelings of our mind. Consciousness is an elaborate rite of passage into these feelings, thoughts an knowledge that makes us humans (Ramamurthi, Gopal, Mohan, & Rao,
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Humans are social animals who prefer to live in Group and share common goals, beliefs, behaviors and attitudes. An Every individual living in this world has his or her own consciousness and collective consciousness sometimes also known as collective knowing is a result of a Group activity. This is more recognizable in many settings- in relationships, classrooms, communities, groups and organizations. French sociologist Émile Durkheim coined the term collective consciousness in the 19th century. Human beings acting independently are made to act in concert with each other due to the existence of Strong Motivations.
Psychologists and Social Scientists agree the existence of strong parallels between the psyche of an individual and that of the society. Wilber in his book Sex, Ecology and Spirituality:“an individual human being and its socio cultural environment evidence the same basic structures of consciousness (correlation of micro and macro),and further, these same basic structures can be found in the evolution of the individual and the species....”. The collective and the personal go hand in hand. They arise and develop
Chapter 4 discusses the several states of consciousness: the nature of consciousness, sleep and dreams, psychoactive drugs, hypnosis, and meditation. Consciousness is a crucial part of human experience, it represents that private inner mind where we think, feel, plan, wish, pray, omagine, and quietly relive experiences. William James described the mind as a stream of consciousness, a continuous flow of changing sensations, images thoughts, and feelings. Consciousness has two major parts: awareness and arousal. Awareness includes the awareness of the self and thoughts about one's experiences. Arousal is the physiological state of being engaged with the environment. Theory of mind refers to individuals understanding that they and others think,
As there are many different schools of Buddhism, each with different principles, there are also many different views on consciousness. First, we'll turn to the "Consciousness-Only School" also known as Yogacara Buddhism. According to the Consciousness-Only school there are eight parts of the consciousness. The five sense-consciousnesses, those related to the senses. There is the sixth consciousness, called the sense-center consciousness, that which forms our conceptions. The seventh is called the thought-center, the consciousness related to will and reasoning. And the eighth consciousness, called the storehouse consciousness. The storehouse consciousness basically "stores" our past experiences. The consciousness are in a constant state of change, the seed is constantly being influenced by the inward flow of perceptions, and the seed itself influences the perceptions (Chan 371). This train of thought is most similar to the existing model of cognition and memory encoding.
Underlying each of these claims is the theme of the unification of body and mind into a state of consciousness which greatly facilitates clarity and order in one's awareness. Through the deep periods of rest achieved during levels of transcendental consciousness, t...
Consciousness is a very common and much used word used to describe the condition of being awake and aware. In other words, being conscious means responding to the environment, in contrast to being asleep or in coma. But in philosophical terms, consciousness is defined as the state in which humans are able to clearly distinguish between themselves and all other
I will commence by defining what makes a mental state conscious. This will be done aiming to distinguish what type of state we are addressing when we speak of a mental phenomenon and how is it, that can have a plausible explanation. By taking this first approach, we are able to build a base for our main argument to be clear enough and so that we can remain committed to.
Renner, T., Feldman, R., Majors, M., Morrissey, J., & Mae, L. (2011). States of Consciousness. Psychsmart (pp. 99-107). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Let the stream begin. Some body, some things, life and me, communicated the idea to talk now, not to leave it, to stay, and face up to the past, the places, the people, the pain, the many reasons why I left my home and family, all those years ago, to become a drug addict, an alcoholic, a wanderer, move nomadically from house to house, year to year, to live inside a prison, real and imaginary. I met hell. I met the devil. I met them both inside my head. I found out the hard way that humans could easily imagine evil. The path forward comes from the push to write and to deal. Yes, I felt happy in between the miserable spaces. My family helped me to survive and still do now, even more so than before. Without them, I would not exist, for in the darkest moments I realised that they kept me breathing. I want the virtual picket fence, ideal partner, children and career. They may or may not eventuate. Now as I regroup, look upon me with sober, straight and clear eyes, I can have anything. I walk to a lake, to sense nature, to allow the anxiety to live on these pages, to take shape, and mould into a form that speaks atonement.
"Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness." Encyclopedia of Consciousness. Oxford: Elsevier Science & Technology, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 26 April 2011.
The consciousness is an integrated group of experiences that require unity of two kinds, the experiences must have the characteristic of a singular subject and the consciousness that the said subject possesses regarding represented objects must be unified. The first requirement regarding experiences and consciousness seems trivial but according to Hume, for instance, what singles out a group’s experiences into an individual’s is the association with one another in a rather appropriate way, what he referred to as the bundle theory, not the presence of a common subject. The need for a subject however is derived from straight forward considerations like: representations not only mean something but they mean it to someone, and representations are nit handed down to people but to be considered so, sensory inputs have to be processed by a rather integrated cognitive system. Kant was exceedingly conscious of both points. He however called unity of consciousness both the consciousness and apperception unity. Regarding the unity of consciousness, Kant asserts that people are no conscious of single but of a great many experiences at a particular
Eastern enlightenment religions have been gaining popularity throughout the western world for the past few decades, with many people attracted to a "different" way of experiencing religion. As with many other enlightenment religions, Buddhism requires disciples to understand concepts that are not readily explainable: one such concept is that of no-self. In this essay I shall discuss the no-self from a number of modern perspectives; however, as no-self is difficult to describe I shall focus on both the self and no-self. Beginning with psychological aspects, and neurophysiological research on transcendental meditation, I shall discuss the impact of modern brain science on our understanding of the self and transcendence. Next I will outline the relationship between quantum physics and non-locality, as this gives a western scientific explanation for no-self. Returning to the original source of Buddhism, I will briefly outline the discussion between Siddhartha and Vaccha regarding atman, then discuss the mind and no-self and their relationship to liberation. Finally I will summarize a few issues that the western mindset may face approaching this topic.
All the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy admit in thinking of the soul as not only immortal but also as endless. The reasoning of the materialists like Charvakas amount to this that, however consciousness is unseen in external objects, it develops i...
“Consciousness is defined as everything of which we are aware at any given time - our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions of the external environment. Physiological researchers have returned to the study of consciousness, in examining physiological rhythms, sleep, and altered states of consciousness (changes in awareness produced by sleep, meditation, hypnosis, and drugs)” (Wood, 2011, 169). There are five levels of consciousness; Conscious (sensing, perceiving, and choosing), Preconscious (memories that we can access), Unconscious ( memories that we can not access), Non-conscious ( bodily functions without sensation), and Subconscious ( “inner child,” self image formed in early childhood).
Jung proposed that in addition to every one of us has ego and personal unconscious, we also have a deeper structure in our psyche known as collective unconscious (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). The collective unconscious stores hidden but present memories of human kinds and even the ancestors of human (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). It also represents the thoughts and feelings about something those shared by all human beings because we are all evolved from a common past (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). According to Jung, collective unconscious is universal and its nature is the same within each individual (Jung, 1981). Moreover, collective unconscious cannot be developed by a single individual but it can be passed along through heredity and is born anew in every creature (Jung, 1981). The collective unconscious also contains the pre-existent forms which are th...
Two of the four coordinates that are completely opposite from each other on this theoretical framework include “Individual” and “Collective.” According to classical theory, “Individual are the patterns of social life which are seen as emerging from ongoing interaction, and Collective are the patterns of social life which are seen as the product of existing structural arrangements” (Appelrouth...
In general, individual cannot be built without the continuous outpouring him or her into the society for understanding his or her position and identity. It is impossible that an infant is able to figure out he or she is a human being before he or she has the conception about “human being.” A man cannot know whether he is smart or not without comparison with other men. Therefore, all information about an individual must be obtained from other individuals in one society. The biological process of being a social individual is the time when the individual interacts with an outside social environment in both physical and emotional ways. The reason why an individual has to touch and output outside environment is the incompleteness of society. That is, there is no society which does not base on human beings because society is not a biologically extraneous phenomenon, and the society must be shaped by activities of every individual. With the continual establishment of the relationship between every individuals and social world, the existence of society become real. In short, the broader social world is the product of the activities of human