Introduction
This reflection is about consciousness and what sort of consciousness matters to me and to the world. It is an example of how sometimes we strain to find the coherence we sense intuitively is available, within a framework that keeps confronting us with difficulties and incoherence.
Reflection
‘Consciousness’ is knowing things. It is not necessarily the act of thinking, though it includes that. I mean ‘consciousness of’—‘being aware of’. Things which are not conscious things cannot ‘be aware of’. This separates the world into two distinct spheres: that which knows and that which does not. That which knows also knows the world. The unknown world does not exist. Only when it is known does it exist. When the world exists it includes the conscious things which have enabled its being. ‘Consciousness’ can be part of anything which has the facility to be aware of part of the world which itself does not have that facility or ability. (Consciousness of consciousness is a different consideration, and not one I am engaged with here). A stone has no consciousness whereas a mouse does. The mouse does not have consciousness in any, what we would call sophisticated, way, but its awareness of the stone enables the stone to ‘be’, as a consciously perceived thing, and that makes both the mouse and the stone part of the ‘consciously-based world’.
As for ‘subconscious’. I used to like the idea of floating around in a Jungian dream world—it is still appealing, but is it relevant? Maybe it is, but for the moment, to me, it isn’t.
I say it is not relevant because it does not matter. I mean that in this way. I have just taken a cake from a shop counter and slipped it in my pocket. I barely knew I was doing it. What does it matter? I did it! I have always disliked snakes, I don’t know why, there must be something in my subconscious framework that causes it. But what does it matter? I don’t like snakes! It might be interesting to find out why I stole the cake, or why I don’t like snakes, but if there is nothing of these things that is immediately obvious, or which I can make coherent, why bother with them? There may be subconscious frameworks which, if brought to the surface, might change me, maybe for the better. At the same time, they might be misleading, difficult if not impossible to interpret or verify, and might well, because of the complexity involved, falsify the ‘trail’. I’m not saying that subconscious discovery might not be valuable to some, but I would sooner avoid the potential ‘red herring’. ‘Conscious awareness’ of the world is just that—‘conscious awareness’. It is not, in the simple sense that is necessary, ‘subconscious awareness’. Although this is tricky, I think, because low level mouse-awareness might be little more aware (on some scale) than human subconscious awareness. And it is important how conscious the thing is which is conscious of this awareness. I am not sure about this. There is, of course, a question over what is ‘conscious’ in the sense of whether we may only occupy a small ‘sliver’ of what is available within the whole possible range of consciousness. But this is not what concerns me. What concerns me is that what we do have, a consciousness, brings into consciousness (sliver or not) that which it is consciousness of. Without this activity, I am at a loss to find any reason for the world being.
Many people do not bother to think of consciousness in this way. They are more concerned with what it is for us to be conscious (I think), and I am more concerned what effect being conscious (whatever that is for us) has on the existence of the world. It is a question of perspective only. I think you could say that. You see it from ‘me’; I see ‘me’ from outside me. But, as Hume reminds us, it’s all very well to philosophize in the abstract, but when it comes down to it, if we are to remain sane, we must live in the ordinary world of everyday.
Again, I think this is the same for ‘rational’ and ‘coherent’. We may talk of ‘irrationality’ as people thinking irrationally (‘even when they think consciously’) and this is not at all what I am thinking about. The way people act within the overall remit of ‘conscious’, as I have described, is not something I am concerned with in what I have been saying here. For me, consciousness is rational because it forms part of the rational sequence of the world which is in the permanent relation of before and after—the B series. Nothing is outside this framework, and so nothing is irrational; even people’s irrational, subconscious or unconscious behaviour is part of this rational sequence. I am concerned, first, with understanding the situation we are in, before concerning myself too much with our own individual state (though, on the Humean principle, this, of course, concerns me too).
We are in a coherent form now—perceiving, being aware—but, when we die, we lose our coherent individuality, we become essentially incoherent in respect of how we now understand ‘coherent’. So the coherence of being me becomes the incoherence of not being me. The coherence of knowing that I am, becomes the incoherence of not knowing (that I am). I have, through experience, been set against meditative method. But, in the morning, waking, half asleep, mentally I am at my most productive—I am writing this at just such a time. So, of course, I understand the value of the sort of inner quietness that meditative method can bring about. I have used it myself, though as a method of reducing worries and not of trying to sort out the puzzles of reality. I have found, so far, that loving contact, with another, known or unknown, sometimes even inanimate, has been my route forward. I suppose I rather doubt the capacity of my mind to do too much unless it is able to encounter that which it is trying to come to terms with—the world beyond myself. Perhaps I should think more of Whitman’s example ‘I loaf and invite my soul’.
Comments
The attempt here to prize open the tight-wedged clam which contains our sense of consciousness, succeeds in one way, fails in another. It succeeds in that by making the distinction between ‘myself’ and what is not myself it manages to work out a way that these two features of existence can together form something meaningful. It fails because it does not manage to consolidate on this or press it further. It loses its way when the distraction of the meditative process intrudes. Sometimes it is particularly hard to think ‘through’ something—it is knotted, or complex, or not easily seen—and sometimes the distracting influence of the world provides the mechanism for an insight or revelation. Sometimes, as here, a latent disposition takes control and steals the energy that is needed to find the light. This is a good lesson.
