Consciousness
Are we fully conscious of what we are doing or are we going through life walking in the fog and conscious only of what is close to us?
We know that consciousness is important but don’t expect the dictionary to give you a clear description. For more than 300 000 years the life of the Homo sapiens was centered around their vision. Their consciousness was limited between red and violet. In the past two centuries we used instruments to make us conscious of the infra-red, the ultra-violet, the microbes and the galaxies. We ventured even further. We assumed the existence of particles so small that we will never be able to see them. Our instruments are telling us about their weight, their speed, their electrical charge… These measurements became the base of our consciousness of those particles. Some day, a new experiment could make us discover the presence of a different ‘thing’ and it is this ‘thing’ that behaves, sometimes, like a particle…. or two. Our consciousness may have to change.
There is also a way to get conscious that does not rely on measurements. A mother could “know” why her child is crying without a need for explanations. You may know that somebody is lying to you. You could feel safe or in danger without clear justification.
Human’s history is the history of consciousness. 2000 years ago we were conscious of belonging to a tribe or a small village in the forest. Later we became conscious of belonging to a country or a religion. Today we belong to a civilisation such as “The East” or “The West”. We have not yet reached the level where we are Homo sapiens before anything else. We should keep in mind that we all come from the same Big Bang that got divided into matter, dark matter and dark energy. Somewhere along the way a ‘group soul’ could have appeared that was divided into individual souls.
Human consciousness is very limited
We are not directly conscious of heat. This is how we get blisters.
Animals know what food is good for them and what is not. We don’t have that possibility. Imagine that we could see what is detrimental to our health just by looking at our food, in the store or in a restaurant! No need for explanations. We would “know” what gives cancer. Catching up with animals in some domains would transform our life.
“The key to growth is the production of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.”
To survive, our ancestors made tools to go hunting. In the past two centuries we made machine to expand the mechanical energy that we can produce. We made farming machinery and the world’s population got multiplied by 10. Today we are trying to use Artificial Intelligence to amplify our thinking. The next step may be to amplify our consciousness.
There is hope:
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
Albert Einstein
We can get conscious of our consciousness and it is not very difficult. Let’s assume that we make a mistake in our calculations. To look for the mistake is to question our thinking. We think about our thinking! The same process can be applied to consciousness. We can amplify the limited consciousness that we have and get some more. To solve a problem is to become conscious of its solution. The purpose of education is to increase our level of consciousness. We do it by learning the solutions that other people have worked out.