Consciousness and Awareness

Consciousness and awareness. You will find a lot of metaphysical, philosophical and even medical definitions for these terminologies, even just by searching the Internet. In everyday use, we tend to treat these concepts interchangeably, but if you read a lot of esoteric texts there is a very thin, yet distinct, line that distinguishes between consciousness and awareness. It's a subject that I have been pondering on for some time.

I don't want to go into a long discourse here, so I will just use one of Master Choa Kok Sui's frameworks in order to describe my understanding of consciousness and awareness. In his book Achieving Oneness with the Higher Soul, Master Choa mentions that we should always be aware of both quantity and quality. As an example, he says we are all connected to our higher souls. That is a quality that is present in everyone. However, the degree of connection differs between people. One cannot compare a compulsive gambler whose spiritual cord may be the width of a strand of hair to a maharishi who has worked lifetimes to build an antahkarana that may be much wider than his head. The quantity of connection spells a big difference.

Relating our subject with the above paragraph, the soul is said to be energy with consciousness. Therefore, consciousness is a quality that is inherent in everyone. However, one's degree of awareness (quantity) differs with others. If we go with this definition, then it appears that consciousness and awareness are merely attributes of something. This leads to the question: quality and quantity of what? I would have to say that consciousness and awareness are attributes of presence.

As an example, we can look at the case of a drug addict on a high, who may be conscious but barely aware of his surroundings. We can say that "nobody's home" when we cannot get a coherent response from that person. Compare this to a military counter-sniper, who has been trained to be aware of anything out of the ordinary in the landscape that could signal the presence of an enemy sniper. Athletes call this "being in the zone" and such a heightened state of awareness makes one notice things and react to situations in a way that is not possible in normal circumstances.

On the other hand, when people refer to spiritual practices, we often hear the term "expansion of consciousness." In fact, many spiritual practitioners are highly expectant of 2012 precisely because of humanity's expected raising of consciousness. How do awareness and consciousness play their parts in one's spiritual practice?

I suppose one example would be that of an indigenous tribesman, one whose tribe has been in the deepest parts of some remote jungle and therefore has no idea of the amazing technological advances of the modern world. Within the tribesman's world, he is very aware and connected with Nature. The jungle holds no fear nor danger for him, because he has built his awareness up to the point that he and the jungle are one symbiotic unit. Yet this man would have no idea what a cellphone is and what it can do. Here you have highly attuned awareness but limited consciousness.

Then let's suppose a helicopter from a research institute flies over the tribesman's village, somehow lands, and all these white people with sophisticated equipment come out. To the tribesman's eyes, a monstrous beast of iron descended from the sky spewing "gods" from its belly before flying out again. The "tribal quality" of the tribesman's consciousness will make him interpret the technology he is seeing for the first time within the context of tribal knowledge, which does not encapsulate modern technology. So a helicopter suddenly becomes a beast of legend or something similar. If the tribesman somehow gets immersed in modern society, then he will start making sense of what he is seeing. His consciousness would have expanded and his awareness allows him to move within the newly expanded mental framework.

The cultivation of awareness is called dhyan in India, then the practice made its way to China as chan, until it finally reached Japan where it was called zen. Master Choa also mentions that one must raise the kundalini to the crown in order to register these different spiritual experiences.

But more than the progress gained in one's spiritual journey, the cultivation of awareness also has an important role to play when we die. In the book The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, the author asserts that awareness upon the time of death is of paramount importance. And the way to develop this awareness is by being aware even when one is asleep.

The process of going to sleep mirrors somewhat the process of dying, except that when we sleep we eventually return to the physical body and awake to the world we know. Most of us are not even aware we have fallen asleep and are dreaming until we wake up in the morning. Very few of us are aware or recognize when we are in a dream.

This is why in Tibet, they have a funerary text called the Tibetan Book of the Dead. A lama (priest) is supposed to read the instructions in the book to the recently deceased so that the person can successfully make his way through the bardo, or the in-between state after death. More often than not a recently deceased person is unaware that he has died, the same way we are usually not aware we are already asleep and dreaming. To the person who has not cultivated the ability to remain aware even while asleep, guidance upon death is necessary from a lama.

According to Master Choa Kok Sui and Dr. Earlyne Chaney of Astara, at the point of death the dying person will see a very bright light. It is important for the dying person to merge with that bright light to take advantage of this opportunity for liberation. The dying person must not be drugged, must not be distracted by crying or arguments about the inheritance or how to dispose of the remains. Any such crying or arguments should be done well away from the room of the dying person. Utmost concentration and awareness are necessary at this most important of events.

So you see, awareness and consciousness are not as cut and dried as we would think they are. Although my understanding of the subject may not be the best interpretation of this topic, hopefully it still helps all of us to peel away a further layer of truth as we climb further up in this spiritual evolution of ours.