The philosophical nature of consciousness

The nature of consciousness is to express life. Maharishi defined life as "the light of God".

So, from a Vedic perspective, the philosophical nature of consciousness is to express the light of God.

Philosophers have been interested in consciousness for a much longer time than scientists. From a philosophical perspective, there are several different answers to the question - what is the nature of consciousness?

However, before looking at the philosophical answers in detail, you may like to check out the article on the broader question of what consciousness means.

The philosophical approach to consciousness

Philosophers try to answer questions about the nature of consciousness - what kind of entity is it? Is it real and if so, what is the nature of its reality? Is it fundamental to life or is it a by-product of certain kinds of biological organisation such as found in human brains? Can a machine ever be conscious?

In humans, consciousness expresses itself through a mind and a mind requires a body. Mind and body go together.

Then it gets tricky. You or I can perceive our own thoughts and feelings but they are "inside" ourselves, inside our minds. They are mental objects not physical ones and are a completely different kind of thing from a physical object. No one else can perceive your thoughts directly (although some mystics and yogis have claimed to be able to do it and some people who are very close in their relationship also say they sometimes unexpectedly find themselves thinking the same thing at the same time) but anyone can in principle perceive a physical object, subject only to it being within range of their senses.

So, in considering the philosophical nature of consciousness, I can ask an important question. Are your thoughts real? I know mine are because I experience them directly. However, I can't perceive yours directly (usually!) even if you say you have them. I can, if I have the right equipment to hand, measure changes in the way your brain functions when you say you think and that's real. But that doesn't make me certain that you actually are conscious like me! 

Do you really have a subjective life of your own? You could be a cleverly designed robot but not necessarily a conscious thinking person like me. How can I know the truth?  I can poke you and you can squeal but, unless I am telepathic, I can't know for certain if you really are conscious of the poke! 

Life would be terribly lonely if I were the only real person. So I make assumptions, based on a sense of empathy. I am not terribly empathetic with a rock, but I am with other people. So I tend to assume that all the other people I meet are as real as me and have their own inner lives, private and real to them in the same way that my inner life is private and real to me.

Taking this to be true, it seems that we all live our lives in both a shared physical world and a private mental world.

To these two worlds we have to add a third world which combines features of both - the shared social and cultural world. I can participate in society to train, for example, to be an architect. Based on what I have learned from others, I can develop my own ideas, create plans and organise the construction of a new building. 

Thinking like this, I can see that the reality in which I live, encompassed in my own consciousness, is complex, involving: my own private mental life of thoughts, ideas, memories and feelings; my shared social and cultural experiences and beliefs and the many different objects in the physical world. It would seem that my consciousness, within which all this reality is reflected, is equally complex. 

The mind-body problem

We have five senses through which we can see, hear,  touch, smell and taste physical objects, and we build up memories and knowledge of things, events and processes which appear to exist in a real physical world which is mirrored in the ideas I carry in my mind - ideas which have their reality in a mental world existing within my own consciousness.

Of course, I have had to learn many ideas about the physical world through my social interactions with others - parents, siblings, friends, teachers and colleagues. These interactions are moderated by language which has both physical and mental characteristics (sounds, gestures, signs and meaning). Language enables me to share my thoughts and feelings with others and supports the reality of the social and cultural world. 

Nevertheless, it is clear that the nature of the physical world, as described for example by science, is completely different in kind to the nature of mental and social events. In the conscious life of humans and likely the higher animals, perhaps also for all living things, one kind of reality - the physical world - is connected to another kind of reality - a mental world of experiences, memories, ideas and knowledge through a mix of characteristics in a social and cultural world. 

The actual experience of “red”, for example, is a completely different kind of thing  to the particular wavelength of visible light that it is associated with, or to the physical and chemical changes that take place at the back of the eye when the red light is received, or to the changes in the firing of neurons in certain parts of my brain which might “correlate” with my experience of the colour red. And I only know it as "red" because I have been taught the word through my social interactions.

If the mental and physical realities are as different as they seem on close inspection, how is it possible that the mind can interact with the body?

This philosophical puzzle is called the mind-body problem. In relation to the scientific understanding of consciousness it has been called “the hard problem” of consciousness. Science can map the correlation between mental experience and brain function alright but how can we explain those connections?

If we can't answer that then we can't properly answer the question - what exactly is consciousness? And, what exactly is the nature of reality?

To see how scientists approach the correlations between mind and body from physical measurements alone, visit the page on the science of consciousness

Different philosophical approaches

Different philosophical systems approach this problem in different ways:

The materialist or physicalist approach which underpins modern science takes the physical world to be the primary reality. Consciousness is therefore seen as an emergent property of highly organised and complex biological systems.

The idealist approach treats mind as the primary reality - either the mind is held to be a kind of subtle substance or else everything is thought of as being made of knowledge forms of one kind or another. In this approach, the physical world is an appearance only.

The dualist approach says that the world is in fact made of two completely different kinds of substance. One is material (or physical) which occupies both time and space - and from which all physical objects are made and the other is mental, manifest in time but not at all in space, from which minds are constructed. The problem with this approach is that there has to be a mechanism for these two utterly distinct components of the world to interact.  

The panpsychist approach says mind and body are equally real and every physical entity has an outer nature (the physical part) and an inner nature (an associated mental state).

Whichever approach is taken, the philosophical answer to the question "what does consciousness mean?" involves solving the mind-body problem.

A fourth world

Maharishi made clear that the Vedic tradition speaks of a state of transcendental consciousness, which he also called "pure consciousness".

This is a state of consciousness in which thought itself has been transcended. That means that the experiencer rests silently in their own essential nature, awake but not experiencing thought. If we can call it an experience, it is one of pure wakefulness alone.

This experience, to the one who engages with it, is a very real and self-sufficient state of existence. In fact, Maharishi also called it a state of pure existence or Being. Because it is consciousness itself, existing quietly in a pure and silent state, it self-evidently exists and is therefore, to the one who is open to it, real and not imaginary.

The nature of this state appears to be completely different to the nature of both mental activity and physical existence - and different also to the nature of the social and cultural world.

Thus we now have four worlds to contend with not three!

• The physical world
• The mental world
• The social & cultural world
• The transcendental world. 

Could there be a fifth world?

Maharishi's teaching, both theoretically and pracrtically, makes clear that transcendental consciousness, the state of being that underpins the transcendental world, also underpins all the other worlds. The experience of pure consciousness becomes a doorway to an enlightened world.

In the normally experienced waking state of consciousness, we can experience objects of different kinds: mental objects such as thoughts; physical objects such as animals or plants or buildings; social and cultural objects such as scientific theories, musical compositions, words, books, cathedrals, schools etc. In every case, a self is at the centre of the experience and mind and senses are used to create the experience. 

Pure consciousness is the essential nature of the self and consequently, the essential nature of the mind, the senses, the body and of all experience. The yogic process of Self-realisation unfolds the reality of this connection is stages:

• Stage 1, gaining the experience of the transcendental world, the essence of all states of consciousness and the basis of all knowledge.
• Stage 2, stabilising this experience of transcendence whilst engaging fully in the experiences belonging to the other worlds. 
• Stage 3, establishing higher states of consciousness in which the Self, the transcendental essence of all states of consciousness becomes a living and permanent reality. 
• Stage 4, living life in enlightenment - a fifth world of Enlightened Living.

The Vedic understanding of the philosophical nature of consciousness

Thus, the Vedic Tradition encompasses a full and complete knowledge and understanding of consciousness including all its various states and associated worlds.

By revealing that the essential nature of the self is in fact transcendental and identical with the abstract state of pure existence, the philosophical nature of consciousness is shown to be Being itself, the well-spring of all aspects of reality, absolute and relative.

Not only that, the tradition provides time-tested methods for the full development of human consciousness and the meaning of life.

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