a definition of consciousness from a transpersonal perspective that embraces roots from the world's spiritualities
Consciousness -- a transpersonal definition
Consciousness, historically, is the Way of Being .. it is undefinable .. it is what gives birth to everything and to which everything returns.
consciousness - a way of being
There are correspondences to the word 'consciousness' in every spirituality and religion of the world.
Consciousness is seen defined in the Bible .. the word is YHVH, the Hebrew Tetragrammaton .. the meaning is in the First Commandment .. and in Christianity, it is the original meaning of the word 'god'
The old German "gotte" .. from the Sanskrit roots hub and emu .. describes Consciousness. The literal translation of gotte is that which sacrifices itself to everything and to which everything is sacrificed.
When Rome got hold of gotte, they equated it with their personified Deus. The name God transferred into English from the old German and the meaning translated from the Latin ...
and the funny thing is that Rome could not rationalise this with the First Commandment .. and so, YHWH was dropped .. and a patriarch was elevated to supremacy ..
YHWH is the present continuing tense of the verb 'to be' .. "I AM in the continuance of my Be-ing" .. pure consciousness
as YHWH is the continuance of Be-ing, it is the fire that burns, but does not burn itself .. the Knower that can never know .. or be known .. just as pure consciousness can be known, but it is impossible to have knowledge of it.
In Chinese Philosophy, conscious is defined as the Tai-Chi, the interplay of Yin and Yang .. the Tao. But, the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao
"First there was the Eternal Tao
the Tao gave birth to One
from one came two
from two came three ...
In the Veda's, it is Rudra -- but not the present interpretation -- it was Rudra who gave birth to the Trimurti (Trinity or Triad)
firstly Vishnu ..
then ... Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.
Consciousness IS
Consciousness IS; it can only be known and described by separating one's self from it .. when it ceases to be consciousness by becoming the experience, the act of experiencing and the experiencer experiencing the experience.
From this, descends the "ten thousand other things" -- and from the "Guiding Light of Lao Tzu", written many, many evolved generations ago ..
The Great Form has no sign
Tao is hidden and has no name
Yet only Tao excels in contributing to achievement
(41 T'ung I)
and
Tao gave birth to One;
Two gave birth to Three;
Three gave birth to the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things carry Yin and embrace Yang.
The two primordial breaths blend and produce harmony.
(42 Tao Hua)
Consciousness and semantics
For the mind to pursue the intellectual (or cartesian) process of trying to define layers of dimensions of consciousness is to create a semantic thought-form to use to study other semantic thought-forms called consciousness.
The problem is that every time a thought-form called 'consciousness' is created, it becomes a living emotional entity that coverts the true meaning of the word.
If consciousness is a continuum of harmonics of Yin and Yang, how can it reveal itself in layers if layers are the product of an intellectual process?
Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse
to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it.
- Raistlin Majere