Consciousness

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What is Consciousness?

Consciousness is a continuous, unified, subjective state of mind. It lies mainly in posterior areas of the cerebral cortex. It is something like a mental screen where the brain continuously presents the information that we need to know all time to guide our behavior. But that does not mean that everything the brain processes ends up producing a conscious result because there is a lot of brainwork that we never discovered.

Consciousness, It’s Meaning and Elements

Where Does Consciousness Exist?

The thalamus has traditionally been considered the most important structure for making consciousness possible. But recently it has been shown that when a person is anesthetized, they can be unconscious even 10 minutes before the thalamus neurons are deactivated, leading researchers to suspect that this state of mind lies in the cerebral cortex.

It appears when the neurons of the cerebral cortex, especially those of its posterior part, are functionally integrated, instead of working separately, the neural circuits in the cerebral cortex work collectively, as a team. Some scientists believe that consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon, something that occurs as a result of brain function. They argue that it is simply a side-effect of brain function, like smoke from a fire or the noise of a car engine. Others believe that knowing the origin and nature of consciousness is only a matter of time and research.

The Collective Consciousness

We understand collective consciousness as the common moral attitudes and beliefs working as a unifying force inside society. This force is dominant compared to the individual mind. According to this theory, a group constitutes an entity that behaves like a global individual.

In all societies, collective consciousness is something common. It is not an individual condition, but a social one. As a social phenomenon, it is diffuse throughout society as a whole, and “has a life of its own.” It is through the collective awareness that values, beliefs, and traditions can be passed down from generations. In this way death doesn’t erase societal and cultural knowledge, this collection of intangible things, including the social norms connected to them, are cemented in our social institutions and exist independently of individual people.

The forces resulting from the collective consciousness are external to the individual. We, as individuals, internalize these forces and make the collective consciousness reality and reaffirm and reproduce it by living in a way that reflects it.

Expanding Your Consciousness

Among other things, expanding consciousness allows us to perceive the universe more clearly, and also to perceive ourselves better. Through expansion, we come to know ourselves better and understand more fully who we are and what we do here.

Human beings do not perceive reality in its entirety; we only perceive a part of it. This awareness causes many emotions and reactions. According to some philosophies, consciousness and awareness causes us to feel a host of emotions such as joy, sadness, fear, or suffering. Since we only perceive a part of reality, it is as if we are in the middle of partial darkness that prevents us from seeing the path clearly. For this reason, we collide with each other both subconsciously and intentionally.

The solution is to simply turn on the light of awareness and mindfulness. We have to learn to see more and see it much more clearly. Indeed, the more mindful we become, the better for our consciousness as individuals and as societies, cultures, and human beings.