Summary: I introduce what I consider to be (for me and, as far as I can tell, many others) one of the central issues of individual existence, consciousness. What is it? Does it exist or is it spacey clap-trap? If it exists does it exist by degrees of it exist? May we purposefully pursue consciousness? If we achieve a higher consciousness how are we transformed? This entry will (can only) be a start.
From Wikipedia we derive a general, non-esoteric definition:
The term consciousness has several different meanings, but is generally regarded as comprising abilities such as self-awareness and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. A thing that is conscious uses the term "I" to refer to itself. Some believe that the only conscious beings are humans, while others propose the possiblility of mammals having a more or less conscious feeling.In colloquial language, it denotes being awake and responsive to one's environment; what some call reactivity. This might contrast to being asleep or being in a coma. Usually most consciousness awareness is lost during sleep. However, some people can activate this awareness by using lucid dreaming techniques.
Human consciousness is generally regarded by most people as an self-evident directly perceived entity. However, consiciousness has been a great problem for scientists and philosophers. Philosophers distinguish between phenomenal consciousness and psychological consciousness. Some suggest that consciousness resists or even defies definition.
In particular, philosophers have asked "how do we know we are conscious?" and "how do we know other people are conscious?". It turns out that these are difficult questions, both to formulate accurately, and to answer.
One question is to what extent other primates, whales and dolphins, or grey parrots have consciousness. These issues are of great interest and controversy not only to scientists, but also to animal rights lawyers.
In the past the origin of consciousness was looked for in a soul separate of the body. This idea developed in many cultures. Some of these conceptions were first developed in ancient Greece, and later adapted to Christian ideas.
Today human consciousness is understood by many scientists as a function of the brain. This realization is based on the observation the fact that consciousness can be affected through chemical substances working in the brain and that often mental disorders cause changesi in consciousness. Human behavior is affected by conscious and unconscious processes (assumed to be displaced consciousness contents and instincts), whereby the dividing line is to be drawn with difficulty.[sigma]
The picture above represents a favorite Gurdjieff metaphor for human consciousness. In his system of thought we stand accused of attempting to drive the carriage and all participants (it is only the integrated whole in which each human is constituted at her/his most potent and spiritual; i.e., the complex of passions, body, mind and spirit, can- if constructed and instructed- participate in an effective quest for spiritual unity) . In this metaphor and his teachings we are accused of acting from (living life from the perspective of) only one of the positions in the picture (that of horses, or driver, or carriage) as opposed to acting in more unified fashion. Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and others claim that there are very real developmental steps which, if followed, result in an individual's progressive realization of unified functioning. These studies of human consciousness (this time of the esoteric sort) are said to be very difficult, requiring levels and forms of concentration not learned in an average school.
There are esoteric consciousness traditions, among them are those referred to by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. in the first half of the 20th century. Both referred to (see links in this paragraph) and endeavored to teach about the possibilities and methods for achieving a more unified individual consciousness.
Jacob Needleman describes both the consciousness and its consequences as follows:
The rationale that lay behind the conditions Gurdjieff created for his pupils, that is to say, the idea of the Fourth Way, can perhaps be characterized by citing the descriptive brochure published at the Prieuré in 1922:The civilization of our time, with its unlimited means for extending its influence, has wrenched man from the normal conditions in which he should be living. It is true that civilization has opened up for man new paths in the domain of knowledge, science and economic life, and thereby enlarged his world perception. But, instead of raising him to a higher all-round level of development, civilization has developed only certain sides of his nature to the detriment of other faculties, some of which it has destroyed altogether ...Modern man[base ']s world perception and his mode of living are not the conscious expression of his being taken as a complete whole. Quite the contrary, they are only the unconscious manifestation of one or another part of him.
From this point of view our psychic life, both as regards our world perception and our expression of it, fail to present a unique and indivisible whole, that is to say a whole acting both as common repository of all our perceptions and as the source of all our expressions.
On the contrary, it is divided into three separate entities, which have nothing to do with one another, but are distinct both as regards their functions and their constituent substances.
These three entirely separate sources of the intellectual, emotional or moving life of man, each taken in the sense of the whole set of functions proper to them, are called by the system under notice the thinking, the emotional and the moving centers.
It is difficult conceptually, and in a few words, to communicate the meaning of this idea of the three centers, which is so central to the Gurdjieffian path. The modern person simply has no conception of how self-deceptive a life can be that is lived in only one part of oneself. The head, the emotions, and the body each have their own perceptions and actions, and each in itself, can live a simulacrum of human life. In the modern era this has gone to an extreme point and most of the technical and material progress of our culture serves to push the individual further into only one of the centers[~]one third, as it were, of one[base ']s real self-nature. The growth of vast areas of scientific knowledge is, according to Gurdjieff, outweighed by the diminution of the conscious space and time within which one lives and experiences oneself. With an ever-diminishing [base "]I,[per thou] man gathers an ever-expanding corpus of information about the universe. But to be human[~]to be a whole self possessed of moral power, will, and the intelligence[~]requires all the centers, and more. This more is communicated above all in Gurdjieff[base ']s own writings in which the levels of spiritual development possible for man are connected with a breathtaking vision of the levels of possible service that the developing individual is called on to render to mankind and to the universal source of creation itself.
Thus, the proper relationship of the three centers of cognition in the human being is a necessary precondition for the reception and realization of what in the religions of the world has been variously termed the Holy Spirit, Atman, and the Buddha nature.
The conditions Gurdjieff created for his pupils cannot be understood apart from this fact. "I wished to create around myself," Gurdjieff wrote, "conditions in which a man would be continuously reminded of the sense and aim of his existence by an unavoidable friction between his conscience and the automatic manifestations of his nature." Deeply buried though it is, the awakened conscience is the something more which, according to Gurdjieff, is the only force in modern man[base ']s nearly completely degenerate psyche that can actually bring parts of his nature together and open him to that energy and unnamable awareness of which all the religions have always spoken as the gift that descends from above, but which in the conditions of modern life is almost impossible to receive.
