Chapter Four – Systems 4 (Experience: awareness and consciousness)

All living systems process (matter/energy – information), must process, in order to endure (maintain relative health – live). As such, all living systems receive (some form of matter/energy – information), process, and produce reactions. This process/flow of receiving, processing, and producing reactions is the experience of the system; and what all systems experience is the matter/energy (information) that is received and processed by that particular system.

Whatever the organism receives and processes is what the organism is aware of. In this general definition we see that awareness is tied to the matter/energy (information) received and, more importantly, processed within a system. Following from this, we also see that what the system is aware of is the particular matter/energy (information) which the system is able to process (if a system is unable to receive and process it, then we cannot say that it is aware of it).

So from this we understand that all life is aware (of one thing or another, or many). A single cell is aware of the stuff it is processing, it is aware when it is low in the stuff it needs to process for health, and it even sends chemical signals to other cells to send the stuff it needs. Plants are aware of the nutrients they need, are aware of the position of the sun in the sky (and we see the reaction of this processing in some flowers which turn to keep in line with the sun). Even a computer is aware of the keys you are pushing on the keyboard, and you can tell because you see the reaction of letters appearing on your screen.

Technically speaking a system is aware of what it is processing; and as to process a system must receive and produce reactions, we can look at these things to develop knowledge as to what the system is aware of. You have probably noticed that as all living systems, from single cells to human beings, are aware of what they are processing, awareness (in this basic general definition) has nothing to do with our experience of mind. With development of the brain (sensory cortices, frontal lobe, language areas, etc) humans, and many other mammals, have the ability for consciousness, which gives the physical body/brain access to mind.

While related, consciousness is something a little different to awareness; you can think of consciousness as an evolution of awareness. So all organisms with consciousness are aware, while not all organisms that are aware have consciousness. To be conscious, to have consciousness, an organism must have some form of brain, have collections of neurons that produce representations of sensory/emotional information. Whatever is being represented within the (processing) brain is what the organism is conscious of. It is in this processing of the body/brain which we find the crossover from the physical aspect of our existence to the mental world we all inhabit.

Our experience of mind is all we really have; and what we know of the physical world, the world of sensory and emotional information, we know only though what we experience within mind. While mind is tied to the physical world through brain/body, it is best thought of as a separate world (plane of existence). Although the two worlds are both part of the underlying existence, and as such are shaped by such universal principles of existence as cause and effect, there are some rules which govern one plane while not the other. One example is that of the laws of physics; obviously this principle applies in the physical world, you would be rather foolish to ignore it and jump of a large cliff. Yet in the mental world such laws do not apply; we can easily imagine flying, and many people have dreams in which they fly (some choosing to fly while conscious of their dreaming). Another example is that of time, in the physical world time flows in a direction (past – present – future), again we would be foolish to try to ignore the march of time in the physical world. While in the mental world the laws of time do not apply; we often jump between the present moment, thought of the past, and dreams of what the future could hold.

So consciousness is the same form as awareness, just different in degree. While awareness is found in all biological (physical) systems, consciousness is found in systems with specific clusters of neurons (we call brains). Consciousness is generated by our (physical) body/brain and it gives us access to the mental world (which both operates by the same principles of universal existence as the physical world, and also operates by laws different to that which govern the physical world).