What is Consciousness?

In this article I'am going to describe the western view of consciousness and the yogic view of consciousness. Furthermore, I will explain how the two differ and how consciousness is an all pervading energy that actually builds worlds.

In the traditional view of the West consciousness has been this awareness or experiencing of reality created by the brain and body. In the West there is a belief that the brain is supporting your experience of reality. It says that everything we see, feel, and experience through our five senses has it's origin or foundation with the brain. If the brain goes dead than consciousness goes dead and the thinking, feeling, perceiving, and experiencing you goes dead with it too. The foundation for this conclusion is based on numerous experiments where researchers and scientists alike fiddle with different parts of the human brain. They'll hook up electrodes to your prefontal cortex and zap a part and see how your consciousness is affected. For instance, lets say they send an electrical signal to a part of the brain and then the participant says that they feel, perceive, or experience a specific sensation then they draw a conclusion saying that the brain must control this type of conscious experience. If you take this part out then this person will not be able to have these certain set of experiences or they won't be able to function this particular way. In some ways they are correct in thinking that the brain controls our conscious experience of the world because in some ways it does affect how we perceive and experience the world around us. However, their view is limited. In the West we take on a materialistic view of reality which says physical matter is the basis of all reality. It is physical matter, the things that we touch feel and see that is real and anything outside this experience isn't. They say the consciousness, or the experience of consciousness is a bi-product of the brain. If you take away the brain then you take away conscious experience. But this view is shortsighted and myopic.

In the yogic tradition they view consciousness as the builder of experience and awareness. For instance it is the energy of consciousness or awareness itself that allows you to experience the world.

Conscious experience isn't controlled by the brain but rather consciousness itself has built the brain, the body, and all of reality. All of reality and the experience of reality, in whatever state of consciousness you may be, flows from nothingness or Brahman. In terms of conscious experience we still experience the world with the help of the brain but the brain doesn't build our conscious experience of the world, as materialists say, rather it mediates our experience of the world. To say that the brain is the foundation of all conscious experience of physical reality is circular logic. If the brain is the foundation of all conscious experience then how can we rely on it, or use it, to study the brain itself? It's like were using a tool called the brain to study the tool itself. It's like using a microscope to draw conclusions about a microscope. Consciousness doesn't build the brain but rather it builds the whole world. It's an energy that can plug into anything. It can plug into the human system and experience reality a certain way. The brain is simply a mediator that allows consciousness to experience a certain dimension of reality in a certain way. When scientists try to understand the brain and make claims that that builds our experience of reality it's like looking into a television and saying that the television builds the TV program your watching. It's not true though.

The television simply mediates the program that your watching just as the brain simply mediates the reality that you're experiencing.

In the yogic tradition they say that just as you experience your outer world, your physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts so also can you experience an inner world that is just as interactive. This is why some yogis go off in caves for years. They build their body and energies to a point where they no longer have interest in the outer world and their energies go completely internal. They don't need to use psychoactive drugs or plants to access the myriads of inner worlds that the human can experience. They simply train and tune their body in a certain way that allows them to access these worlds just like you would access a particular television program by fiddling with the antennae. Except the antennae is your body. In the modern world we experience reality in a very limited way because our bodies have been conditioned to only experience a certain bandwith of reality. Today, most of the modern world is disconnected from it's natural environment. The way we experience the world and our consciousness is determined by the way our bodies have been conditioned, or how we condition our bodies. In order to upgrade your experience of reality from your thoughts to your emotions to your physical sensations you have to recondition your body through spiritual practices. When you do this you become aware of the deeper realities and you can experience a wider bandwith on all levels.

Mainstream scientists claim that reality is only in the physical but that is only because they have accessed one state of consciousness. In other states of consciousness you can perceive different bandwiths of reality.

For instance, humans cannot hear as much as dogs can because the instrument we are using, our bodies, doesn't have that capability. However, a dog cannot experience certain realities that a human can experience. This is because our experience of reality is determined by the type of hardware we have. A human has a certain type of hardware to experience reality a certain way. A dog has another type of hardware to experience reality a different way. There are certain shamans who have consciously learned to access consciousness through other animals. They can experience reality through an animal and they claim that to be their spirit animal. Consciousness, reality, and the way that it functions is way more complicated, fascinating, and wonderful then many of us can imagine.

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