© 2012 Jeanne Siaud-Facchin
© 2012 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| The Day When | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 61 — Winter 2012 | Quiz Maxien n°11 The Answers 8 to 18 (updated) |
What madness to want to try to define consciousness! And how can we talk about “full consciousness” if we do not first mention simple consciousness?
We use this term conscience so often. It is so familiar to us. “_You are not aware of your actions!”, “Be a little aware of what you are doing!”, “He was not aware of his condition” are sentences that we pronounce almost mechanically. In court, jurors are called upon to express themselves in their “soul and conscience” and we all know the role of conscientious objectors… Deep down, we have the feeling that we understand this notion of conscience well. But do we really agree on its meaning, much more subtle than it seems?
Consciousness is a continuous and unstable process. It is constantly changing through the processing of internal and external information, which is continuously re-evaluated by the previous state. Previous state that readjusts to new stimuli “It’s always the same while being different”: this is how our consciousness of being could be defined, which defines our identity. The core of the self is built according to the principle of the common denominator: it is the irreducible entity that makes what we are can only be ourselves. Everything that will be lived, felt, perceived, will be done by combining new experiences around and from this core. It is something both perceptible and elusive: “I feel that it’s me”, _but how can I define this perception that I have of myself? The certainty of being oneself can only be validated by oneself. No one can say: “I know it’s you.” Nor even as Jean-Louis Aubert sings: “That, that, is really you. You can feel it, you can feel it’s you.” This only expresses what the other perceives… of us. And he perceives it through what he is… In short, I am me, you are you, each at home! Knowing that we live what we live…
This opens up another avenue of understanding. The idea that consciousness would be this capacity to know the reality of one’s experience and to know that one knows it. A reflexive knowledge in short. The one that would allow us to have clear access to what is happening: there, now. Outside and inside ourselves. With this capacity, reserved for humans, to have this mental perspective that allows us to observe that we are conscious. A sort of meta-knowledge: the knowledge of knowledge. If I am sad or happy and I am aware of my emotional state, then I have the knowledge, the awareness of my state.
In his book, Everything That Didn’t Interest Freud, the essayist and doctor Philippe Presie states that consciousness comes to children around the age of 5. He evokes the poetic idea of a “leap of consciousness” when the child integrates the notion of death, as a possibility for others and for himself. This would thus be his first awareness of his own existence. And before the age of 5, he would be fully conscious and therefore without consciousness. Let me explain: the small child lives every experience fully. Without observing himself living it or having an internal dialogue about his experience.
The famous English pediatrician Winnicott speaks of “just being”. An important nuance of translation to introduce the dynamics of what is happening. Not a static state. Often, during meditation protocols, this image of the little child who “is” is used. Quite simply. And our intention in meditation becomes that of finding this lost state of just being, full awareness of being.
Another possibility, another angle of approach. Consciousness can be understood as this privileged, sought-after, intense moment, where we deeply feel ourselves to be, to exist. The notion of “optimal experience”, introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, highlights this extreme concentration on feeling. A feeling that excludes any other perception. Centered on self-perception, self-consciousness reaches its maximum: necessarily ephemeral but as an experience that invites us to renew this unique sensation of feeling intensely existing, of feeling intensely present - to ourselves and to the environment. All while remaining fully aware of the state in which we find ourselves. With the dense joy of this state. A joy in ourselves to which we are then fully connected.
Consciousness can be understood on several levels. Intuitively, we know this. Just as we know that consciousness can take several forms. Diffuse, fuzzy consciousness is this intermediate state between wakefulness and sleep. Or the state we are in if we wake up suddenly or if we are pulled out of a daydream. This state where we lose the spatiotemporal contours of reality while still remaining connected to it. This state is at the origin of the difficulties falling asleep suffered by those who are afraid of losing control, of abandoning themselves to a modified state of consciousness over which they will no longer have control. Because sleep or, more precisely, dreams are real moments of modified states of consciousness. A consciousness that no longer takes into account the contingency of our ordinary reality and which creates an extraordinary world and experience. In the true sense of the term. A modified state of consciousness which is also the one sought by taking various substances: alcohol, drugs, medications, various chemical products…
How many indulge in these experiences that quickly become harmful addictions to experience states of consciousness that distance them from everyday reality, that make them live moments without limits and without borders, beyond the body, beyond words, beyond reality. In an exacerbation of emotions, sensations, bodily experiences. In moments that create the illusion that everything is possible or that we are all-powerful. That reality fades away. That pain calms down. That suffering subsides. That doubts, uncertainties, fears find their resolution. Chimeras, of course, but intense life experiences certainly. Experiences that it seems impossible for us to access without these lures of the brain. It is often mentioned, when we talk about meditation, that the objective would be precisely to reach these modified states of consciousness. This was undoubtedly true for the current of transcendental meditation, but it is not the case for contemporary meditation. We can experience surprising moments in meditation. These moments where we lose the notion of linear time, the notion of space, where we feel ourselves living in synchronicity with others and with the world. But this remains an experience among others and especially not a sought-after experience. This is not the object of meditation.
The idea of hyperconsciousness seems to me much more interesting to approach than the principle of modification of the state of consciousness. Hyperconsciousness is first of all a biological reality. The brain has a parallel neuronal network, which is juxtaposed to the basic network. A double circuit. The first is this circuit of interconnected neurons in our brains which, according to their functions and the nature of the task to be accomplished, will activate to give us the means to act and react. The connections are established according to a known model, at least in part, and follow predictable trajectories. Hyperconsciousness operates according to other laws. Its system is integrative and simultaneous. As if, instantly, the entire brain “lit up” and produced a flash of light. A cerebral hyperconnectivity, in short, but which borrows singular circuits. And which opens up to an immense lucidity, about oneself and about the world. Like a concentrate of hyperperception of oneself, which produces a hyperconsciousness of the universe reflecting itself in oneself. The whole universe at the center of oneself. Isn’t this what Freud or Jung wanted to express with the oceanic feeling or the feeling of the great whole?
Hyperconsciousness is based first on hyperesthesia, that is to say on the capacity to exacerbate all of our five senses in our capture of the world: seeing beyond what can be seen, hearing further than what is perceived, feeling more strongly than what is experienced. A sensory “hyperconnection” to the world. It is this notion that I designate by the term hyperconsciousness when I evoke the intersection between sharp intelligence and emotional hyperreactivity. Hyperconsciousness colors our way of being in the world, of perceiving it, of feeling it. And of experiencing ourselves. With this perception so intense that it can become painful, but which gives this incredible awareness of being alive, present, fully engaged in life.
Hyperconsciousness, through intensive focusing on the perceptions of the five senses, allows you to stay in touch with yourself to mobilize your energy and internal resources, without being overwhelmed by emotions, without being drawn into the whirlwind of thoughts, just there. A pure moment of mindfulness meditation. Where everything is clear. Limpid. Obvious.
Intuition, this immediate, dazzling understanding, is the product of hyperconsciousness. This consciousness beyond ordinary consciousness will allow an entire underground neural system to set in motion to give us an answer, sudden understanding, the unexpected solution. But which cannot be explained because the paths taken cannot be activated in the field of consciousness. Intuition does not take ordinary highways. Its path has no known markers, at least not by consciousness. Because it is not a “magical” knowledge, which would come from elsewhere. It is a functioning of the brain which gathers, in an instantaneous chemical precipitate, a series of data, knowledge, skills, the speed of assembly of which cannot be accessible to the slower paths of ordinary consciousness. And this is the whole ambiguity of the intuitive process: often correct, precise, original, it does not manage to justify itself, to argue itself. And often loses its credibility.
So, often, intuition is silenced. Our world is like that. Without proof, no truth is possible. What a waste! The day when man can accept that what escapes consciousness is not only unconsciousness but can also be a powerful and effective hyperconsciousness, a whole part of our lives will become accessible.
Hyperconsciousness sharpens our perception, our understanding, in an expanded, connected field. In hyperconsciousness, consciousness is no longer analytical but immersed. Meditation accompanies us on this journey where consciousness, finally full, illuminates an entire field of consciousness until then plunged into darkness. Awakening one’s consciousness means getting closer to the hyperconsciousness which gives access to a buried truth. A truth about oneself, for oneself, for humanity. A level of consciousness, definitely higher. Which, you see, is very different from a modified state of consciousness. We could also call it metaconsciousness.
Does the brain create consciousness? I like to raise this question with very philosophical overtones and which at the same time puts science face to face with its limits. A question that recalls that of the chicken and the egg. Can we in fact reduce consciousness to our neuronal activity alone? Can consciousness be the predictable product of brain chemistry? Or of a particularly elaborate electrical circuit?
I will be careful not to answer this question. Philosophers and scientists of all stripes and from all universes have been debating it for centuries. What interests me is the notion of emergence: consciousness as an emergence of the functioning of the body, mental and emotional combined, and which goes beyond the limits of our bodily functions, whatever they may be. This consciousness which gives us this subtle sensation of being oneself. A sensation which is sometimes fleeting but very real, which does not accommodate rational explanations. Even if this self-consciousness could not exist without the body.
Consciousness escapes the brain, escapes those who want to reduce it to function, escapes the nets of science, however sophisticated it may be. And that’s a good thing!
Does consciousness then bring us closer to the concept of the soul, an indefinable entity of which, however, we all have the intuition: “soul” to designate that which escapes? That which belongs neither to the body, nor to the mind, nor perhaps even to the spirit. Or even the “Soul” like the Self with the capital M of psychoanalysts. Desire to designate the unspeakable, the intimate. The subtly personal which, as on a vertical axis, connects us to heaven and earth. In the sense of the most concrete, the most material to the most subtle, the most elusive. The very meaning of “spiritual”. Without any religious connotation. The spiritual in its own essence. Can pure consciousness be the soul of today?
Extract from How meditation changed my life, by Odile Jacob
Jeanne Siaud-Facchin
| The Day When | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 61 — Winter 2012 | Quiz Maxien n°11 The Answers 8 to 18 (updated) |