I heard a piece of news this morning, announcing that since July 2019, the United Nations General Assembly has established April 5th as the International Day of Conscience, aiming to promote a culture of peace through love and consciousness.
Automatically, the thought brought to my mind the question: how do we decipher this abstract and vague concept in a balanced way?
I've made repeated attempts to establish within myself a map and some reasonable boundaries for this term, and firstly, I believe it's essential to differentiate it from its younger sister, referred to as consciousness. Often they are used interchangeably as if they were identical twins. In dictionary definitions or those found on Wikipedia, consciousness seems to deal primarily with religion, philosophy, sociology, and psychology, while awareness is associated with physiology, biology, and neuroscience.
Consciousness (from the Latin conscientia), according to Wikipedia, is a cognitive process that provokes emotions and rational associations based on an individual's moral philosophy or value system.
In common terms, consciousness is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a person commits an act that conflicts with their moral values. When viewed from a religious perspective, consciousness is linked to an inherent morality in all humans, to a benevolent universe and/or divinity. The free encyclopedia then continues with various humanistic approaches throughout different periods of history.
Awareness denotes a particular cortical state characterized by a special, individual sensitivity to internal or external stimuli, marking an awareness of one's own person and the surrounding environment.
Awareness represents an aspect of brain functioning, hence a nervous phenomenon, characteristic of organisms possessing a well-developed central nervous system, becoming progressively more complex as phylogenetic development progresses and reaching its maximum degree in humans with the emergence of language - an essential phenomenon that contributed to its development.
I don't see a clear difference if both are cognitive processes and are based on a value system, what sets them apart?
Then, does only humans benefit from consciousness?
Is ethical behavior exclusively ours?
As Darwin discovered, any animal living in a group eventually submits to the laws of morality, to the golden rule which says: do not do unto others what you would not want done to yourself.
This is masterfully highlighted by Frans de Waal, the renowned biologist and primatologist, who became notable in the scientific community through studies on the behavior and social intelligence of primates (Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved-2006).
So morality does not belong solely to humans. Then consciousness is a term that does not concern only us...
And perhaps religion has abusively asserted itself in helping us metabolize morality effectively in society. Maybe its role is more subtle, insufficiently understood for thousands of years.
De Waal also says that "in terms of anatomy, physiology, and neurology, we are not really more exceptional than, let's say, an elephant or a platypus in their own way.
Even the so-called distinctive signs of humanity, such as war, politics, culture, morality, and language, may not be entirely unprecedented.
For example, different groups of wild chimpanzees use different technologies - some fish for termites with sticks, others crack nuts with stones - which are passed down from generation to generation through a process similar to human culture. Given these discoveries, we must be very careful not to exaggerate the uniqueness of our species. It seems that our ancestors did not pay too much attention to this aspect, contrary to anthropomorphism, and that is precisely why we lack a word for it. I will call it anthropodenial: blindness to the human characteristics of other animals, or to the animal characteristics within us."
(a short excerpt from Discover, a publication that in 2011 placed him among the 47 most important scientists of all time)
Working with oneself, self-becoming, healing on any level of being, I believe, is based, among other things, on an initial understanding of these two terms and then the refinement of the perceptual chemistry of their meanings.
It undoubtedly depends on personal search, on the need for answers, on an individual psychic structure, and obviously, the answers do not fit into a simple definition or into an isolated study subject.
I warmly invite you, on its day, to configure consciousness in your own way within your inner economy.
I would also like to add at the end, the two terms, as they appear in the vision expressed by the mystic and contemporary poet Richard Rudd, the author of the Gene Keys.
I resonated with his description from the first read.
Consciousness: an aspect of consciousness unique to each form of life.
In the case of human beings, consciousness can be divided into three main layers, although in reality, all three form a single consciousness:
-physical consciousness,
-emotional consciousness,
-and mental consciousness.
At low frequency levels, human consciousness is imprisoned in the human body - physical consciousness remains rooted in survival and fear, emotional consciousness remains stuck at the level of desire and drama, and mental consciousness remains a victim of comparison and judgment.
As the frequency increases throughout the being, consciousness becomes more refined and moves from the level of the local environment to that of the cosmic environment.
Physical consciousness becomes divine presence, emotional consciousness becomes universal love, and mental consciousness transforms into peace and wisdom.
Awareness: represents all that exists.
As Source and Creator of reality, it is indivisible, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent.
Consciousness does not necessarily involve or require consciousness. It is the foundation of all that is: Being and Non-Being.
And a crowning explanation from Rudd, which I found incredibly simply put, in lexical notes this time by Sergiu Celibidache:
"Consciousness - an absolute, unconditional experience of strong light."
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