The Conscious Clan (Part 2/2)

Creative Consciousness

photocredit © Elena Mozhvilo

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

〰 C. G. Jung 〰

Awareness Lost in Translation

From spring 1957 until June 1961 Carl Gustav Jung spent his final years reflecting on his life and work. The result is his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

In the final chapter on Life and Death, Jung writes:

“The phenomenon of dictators and all the misery they have wrought springs from the fact that man has been robbed of transcendence by the shortsightedness of the super-intellectuals. Like them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness. But man’s task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.”

The use of the words conscious and unconscious as demonstrated here in the writing of C.G. Jung, one of the grandfathers of contemporary psychology, set an avalanche in motion, in which we are still caught up today, struggling to make sense of it all.

I am not questioning the contents of Jung’s statement! He is absolutely correct. I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment and meaning behind the words, which are still valid, and even more urgent now, 60+ years after they were written.

What I am picking up on is the implicit sense of the terms conscious and unconscious. That consciousness and unconscious were chosen as key terms for the discipline of psychology, the study of the psyche, is unfortunate.

The original terms in German are Bewusstsein (= the state of knowing) and Unbewusstes (= the state of not knowing). The German adjective bewusst (as used in this context) means aware. Accordingly unbewusst means unaware.

The English consciousness, by contrast means a state of deep knowing and unconscious is the absence of deep knowing. The precise meaning of Jung’s words were distorted in the process of translation.

At first glance it looks like a minute detail. Almost irrelevant. One translator nitpicking at the choice of words of another. But in this case, a relatively minor decision has had a huge impact.

It was one of those archetypal butterflies flapping its wings in Küsnacht, on the lake of Zurich*, setting in motion seismic shifts in collective human Consciousness.

(*the translator couple Richard & Clara Winston lived in Vermont but spent some time in Switzerland during the period of the original writing of C.G. Jung’s memoir, so I presume they met the great man himself.)

Given the far reaching influence of Jung’s work on the emerging field of psychology, the small but significant difference between awareness and consciousness has been hugely amplified.

When neuroscientists are talking about consciousness they actually mean awareness.

Aware means

• watchful

• vigilant

• alert

• perceptive

Conscious means

• mutually aware

• deep knowing

• with thorough internal knowledge

A fundamental term which links aware and conscious in their common usage and implicit meanings is to know. Both awareness and consciousness are forms of knowing.

Knowing means to

• perceive

• understand

• recognise

• be able to distinguish

• identify

• have knowledge of

• have learned from experience

These three words::: knowing, aware, and conscious can be used interchangeably in many situations and contexts ~ giving the impression that they carry the same meaning, as if they can happily stand in for each other. That’s correct, but only sometimes and in certain situations.

In specific contexts, however, the gap in meaning opens up, almost like a black hole in the universe, and causes an endless storm of befuddlement, followed by inevitable disorientation.

That's what happened here, in the field related to the human physical mental and psychological organism. This might explain a lot of the confusion around the use of the term consciousness.

Human Consciousness

photo credit © Matt Collamer on Unsplash

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

〰 Max Planck 〰

Nescient, Omniscient, Prescient & Episcient

In last week’s wordcast we have examined some definitions of consciousness as a general phenomenon. A common definition accepted by scientists, mystics and philosophers throughout the ages is that consciousness is the universal source of all life.

Many independent thinkers and researchers from the most diverse disciplines and backgrounds have come to the same conclusion. Everything is consciousness, the universe is consciousness, life is consciousness.

This perspective brings up a new question:

where does that leave us as humans?

What is our relationship to consciousness?

In her book Health as Emerging Consciousness healthcare researcher Margaret Newman (1933-2018) explains that “persons as individuals, and human beings as a species, are identified by their patterns of consciousness.”

This sounds a little abstract… What are ‘patterns of consciousness’? … until Newman pops the vital statement that changes everything: “The person does not possess consciousness – the person is consciousness.”

If you are firmly settled in the humans-have-consciousness paradigm this might be a challenging suggestion. It may sound like a whacky New Age, newly invented ‘esoteric’ idea.... 

Nothing could be further from the truth. The definition of Consciousness as the source of everything and humans as part of this unity is the most ancient and consistent understanding of who we are and the world we live in.

It is embedded in all indigenous cultures and explains our profound inseparable connection with nature. Our current difficulties to understand this principle stem from centuries of indoctrination of the myth that humans were placed onto this planet to control and subdue nature, as if we are an alien species —  (and if we continue along the same groove, that's exactly what we are becoming...)

I am consciousness? You are consciousness? We are consciousness?

What does it mean to be consciousness?

The way I can best explain it to myself is that consciousness is like water. Imagine one enormous cosmic ocean called ‘Consciousness*’. Everything is made of the same stuff ~ corals made of water, turtles made of water, schools of fish made of water, algae, dolphins, starfish, crabs, plankton, everything made of droplets of water ~ including our galaxy, the Milky Way.

*to distinguish between the different uses/definitions of this term, Consciousness in the sense of ‘being Consciousness’ rather than ‘having consciousness’ will be written with capital ‘C’ from now onwards.

Within this cosmic-Consciousness-ocean, planets are drops of planet-Consciousness, dogs are drops of dog-Consciousness, the trees in the olive groves around our house are tree-Consciousness, and humans are drops of human-Consciousness.

When we accept that we are Consciousness, a new language to describe the different experiences of mental states we used to call conscious, unconscious, and subconscious will help us to deepen or understanding and live our way into re-knowing this ancient truth.

The old terms fit the concept of having consciousness. They no longer make sense in the understanding of being Consciousness. We need to replace them with equivalent terms ~ and some new ones! ~ to understand what’s going on in our minds. Surprisingly, some such words already exist in the English language:

Nescient [from Latin ne = not + scire = to know] means ignorant, unaware, unwilling to know. This is a good word to to use for parts of ourselves which we don’t yet know. Nescient can be used instead of unconscious and subconscious.

Omniscient [from Latin omnis = all + scire = to know] means having knowledge of all things, possessing infinite knowledge. This term applies to Consciousness in general rather than any individual human (unless they are in a state of total unity with the source).

Prescient [from Latin pre = before + scire = to know] means foreknowing, having knowledge of events before they take place. This is a useful word to describe intuitive hunches, inklings, presentiments, premonitions. It refers to a channel of human Consciousness which is not accessible to rational thinking.

Episcient [from Greek epi = upon, above, near + Latin scire = to know] means having additional knowledge above and beyond what you think you know. This is a neologism. It refers to inner or ‘higher’ knowledge which may be triggered by becoming aware of an actual event.

Nescient, omniscient, prescient and episcient are not ‘states of consciousness’ in the familiar sense as defined in psychology. They are ways of knowing to which we all have access at all times. They may lie beyond the horizon of our everyday awareness, and a big part of the reason for their inaccessibility is that we have no words for our diverse channels of knowing 〰 until now!

Buddha Consciousness

photocredit © Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

The Buddha taught that consciousness is always continuing, like a stream of water.

〰 Thich Nhat Hanh 〰

Scientious, Parascientious, Transscientious, and Ultrascientious

Understanding ourselves as Consciousness-beings (rather than human beings who have a consciousness/ or occasionally lose it, as the case may be) opens up a completely new field of possibilities of self-knowing. As soon as your inner world is no longer divided into higher and lower spheres, supra- and subliminal areas, all perceived inner boundaries drop away.

The Consciousness that I am is individual ~ in-divisible ~ and so is yours.

Does that mean, anyone can suddenly step into a blissful state of inner oneness, just be redefining our terms? Not quite. But it may be a good start.

When Margaret Newman says the person is Consciousness, that’s not just wordplay. It’s not about the familiar ‘unity of mind-body-spirit.’ It's not the same as 'spirit having a physical experience' either.

This is of a completely different order. The concept that we are 'Consciousness having a human experience' sounds deceptively similar, yet it triggers a far more radical shift in awareness and requires a drastic reorientation.

You are Consciousness implies for example that you and your whole life are one entity. If everything is Consciousness, and everything is made of the same stuff as the universe itself, then your inner and your outer world are one. They are not ‘parts’ of you. Everything you experience is an expression of your Consciousness.

The vital difference between Being Consciousness (BC) and having consciousness (hc) is that BC is alive, while hc is not.

Every expression of BC is a living creature. All expressions of hc are objects ~ things you can either have or lose.

BC is our direct lifeline with UC (Universal Consciousness) ~ hc keeps us in the nescient state of mind of being separate.

The awareness of this ‘eternal truth’ enables us to tap into what the Buddhist’s call our ‘Buddha-nature’ ~ the essence or basic nature of all sentient beings, embedded in universal Consciousness.

I’m not suggesting that this experience can happen simply through a rational flick of a switch from one definition of ‘consciousness’ to another. And this is not the place to explore how individual human expressions of Consciousness might grow into this potential.

Here I am only sharing an alternative worldview, which is more compatible with life in the Symbiocene than the destructive concepts of the Anthropocene, which have been sold to us as ’scientific truths’ throughout the past centuries.

This new (ancient) way of seeing the world and understanding ourselves and our environment is a process. It is an invitation to enter the learning curve towards living in symbiogenesis with our own nature.

For the path towards a new living knowledge of who we are, I have created a few verbionts to identify and understand experiences and phenomena for which our fragmented worldview doesn't yet have the words.

Following on from the list above, here are some neologisms formed from the old English scientious combined with a range of Latin prefixes.

Scientious [from Latin scire = to know] This word actually existed in Old English and died out in the 1600s or so. It literally means knowledgeable. It refers to a quality of being guided by knowledge. I am reintroducing it here in the more specific sense of following your own knowing. This adjective may also be also useful to avoid confusion by replacing parts of the Anthropocene definition of conscious. To this end, we redefine scientious to describe a state or quality of being aware of one’s own Consciousness.

Parascientious [from Latin para = alongside, beyond + scire = to know] knowing accompanying factors, having knowledge of coincidental information, which cannot be explained by the rational mind. This is a neologism and can refer to forms of knowing you receive via instinctive messages, intuitive hunches, associations, random comments or actions of others, or any other synchronous (apparent) outer events.

Transscientious [from trans = across + scire = to know] a transferred knowing of a situation or event. This is a neologism referring to forms of knowing which you don’t recognise in yourself, while parts of your Consciousness are transferred into external situations or onto other people. (In psychology this form of knowing is called transference or projection).

Ultrascientious [from ultra = beyond, very + scire = to know] a superior knowing or recognition of a situation or event. This is a neologism referring to forms of knowing through extreme sensitivity to a particular situation or event. Ultrascientious can express itself in hyperawareness, hyper vigilance, or an extraordinary perceptiveness of details related to inner or outer events.

The mystical truth that ‘there is nothing but consciousness’ must be experienced in order to be truly understood.

〰 Amit Goswami 〰