So What’s this ‘Consciousness Thing’ Everyone’s Taking About?

‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.’ What does it mean? Has it got anything to do with consciousness?

I wonder if you’ve ever heard of Carl Sagan. The guy was the world’s first mainstream media super scientist capable of breaking down complex ideas for common folks like you and me.

Well, he once said, ‘if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.’ Now, you can have multiple meanings out of it. But let’s not get into that.

In our modern world, one seemingly universal notion is this: consciousness is one of the most important and perplexing areas of philosophy.

That’s it? Did you just try to bring it up as a mere part of philosophy and end the whole discussion right up there? Wait up!

Consciousness is a very popular term today, and there’s no doubt about it. Many people in many different ways use it to mean many different things.

So, who’s right? I’ll tell you what! Forget everything, finding out what’s important isn’t important at all. What’s important is what is right – not who is right.

While there’s certainly, at least, a hint of impression in some people’s minds – a whole bunch of individuals in this world still don’t have any idea what the evolution of consciousness actually means – or consciousness simply for that matter.

Even the ones who somehow believe in the theory of evolution, don’t actually believe in the possibility of the evolution of their own consciousness. This is something very interesting to think about.

It’s becoming more and more obvious to most of us, for those that live in a culture of secular materialism that as our technological capacities are developing at a faster rate – our ethical, philosophical, moral, and spiritual development, on the other hand, seem to be progressing real slow.

We could even say that our species have been facing an evolutionary crisis in relation to our moral development. And I think part of the problem is – we just really don’t know how to think about the problems we have. There’s no clear context that can help us make sense out of our human experience to think for the better.

How on earth did we arrive in a situation like this? We’ve evolved so much and we’re still stuck in our own heads? Where did we lack?

When we think about evolution, which means a development in time, through time, or over a period of time – we always tend to think it’s something that’s happening somewhere outside of our own self. We think evolution happens out there. Oh how you think it’s true, but hey, that’s not it. Is it really that difficult to accept the fact that evolution is happening in here – inside you?

Let’s take a reference from the cosmological evolution. We know the universe was born around 14 billion years or so and has been evolving over time with light, energy, matter to life and to consciousness and to who knows what.

With the beginning of the universe such a long time ago, the process of development was initiated that has been continuing to develop over time ultimately leading up to this moment. The cosmos itself is in the constant process of development from the lower levels to the higher levels of development which we all have always been a part of. And that’s not hard to understand, hard to believe, hard to accept, or even hard to imagine. Is that?

Now if we take an example of human development, we can talk about the evolution of our own species in relation to the ideas of the evolution of cultures that we have. You see everything is in a continuous process.

Not only have we evolved physically – but culturally, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and in ways we don’t even realize – over a long period of time.

We know that if we were to go back 2000 years ago, the cultural context we’d be living in would be very very different. Yet, we tend to take these developments for granted just as an ‘idea’ or a concept that somebody doctorates in. This whole idea of the development of human beings or any other species is so true yet so new to most people.

The way most of us tend to think about our experience often unconsciously or consciously presumes a static universe and the static world and even a static human context.

We are NOT Static. Nothing is Static.

No matter how educated we are, we tend to neglect the fact that we’re in the hands of change.

We used to think we were always like this. Deep down inside – we still think we’re at the center of the universe. It’s time we ditched this idea and made a shift in our consciousness. The moment we accept change – we further unlock the doors of evolution in a new way. Look at our past, we’ve always been changing for good – never being aware of the fact that we were changing. But now, it’s time to take this change to a conscious level.

This is not something we can imagine or conceive of with the mind. The mind can only be confused. It’s about time we transcended the limitations of our minds for good.

Let the consciousness rise, not the mind.

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