Ever noticed how everyone around you used the word:

CONSCIOUSNESS

Huh? 

Don't you just hate when you don't know the crystal clear definition of this word!

Can I be totally honest with you? I always felt that:

What I know about consciousness is nothing more than Force-Fed knowledge thrown  into me, 

In other words: Your friends, colleagues, family members- ideas on consciousness slowly becomes part of your thinking.

Without you knowing about it(Seriously, it happens!)

Can you relate to it? Huh?

Admit it,

 we all know the feeling when a question sets off from your mind, But is then secretly dread into the deepest chambers of your heart.

But, guess what?

I went from being - "Sappy" I don't know anything to Let's dig a little deeper!

And, Boom!

After going through nights of Endless research & burying myself into books,

I have crafted this: ULTIMATE GUIDE 

Which will walk you through the whole process.

Answer all your questions.

 And, free you from those blood-curdling questions within you,

And, give you your "Rest-In-Peace".

So, let's get this show on the road!

CONSCIOUSNESS- When Did People Actually Came to Know About it?

It’s a subject which has been studied from the very first time about 15000 years ago, by the first yogi – “Adiyogi”, and till this day this subject is widely studied and researched in our present modern science.

 In the present scenario two distinct fields of modern science; Psychology & Neuroscience, have attracted a lot of research as well as studies on consciousness.

Well, as it always happens!

 The modern theories on Consciousness and the Ancient theories on Consciousness are opposite to each other.

So, what are those theories?

Let's begin!

Modern science vs Yogic science- their ideas on consciousness.

According to modern science:-

• Consciousness is defined as awareness, It is your ability to see, hear, smell, feel or use any other sense organ or just walk, talk or do any task with your mind or body.

• Modern science believes the more or less aware you are; the more or less is the level of your consciousness.

• “ sights, sounds, and other sensations of life as we experience it are generated by regions within the posterior cortex. As far as we can tell, almost all conscious experiences have their origin there”- said Christof Koch, chief scientist of the Mind Scope program at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Looking into his statement, we can justify that consciousness is generated by the brain, As the Posterior cortex is the back part of the cerebral cortex, which in turn is a part of the brain.

According to Yogic science:-

• Consciousness is intelligence beyond memory.

• Consciousness is the very basis of one’s existence, It is who we are.

• Consciousness can never be defined, it can only be experienced because that which is beyond memory is limitless and cannot be described through words.

• Body-mind & consciousness are different entities; In yogic science, the mind is not apart from the body, it is seen similar as to any other body part( hands, legs, nose, etc), so whenever I talk about the body, I include mind in it: Body-mind.

• Consciousness is always present, even under the absence of body-mind.

• Consciousness is apart from your body-mind, but it pervades and illuminates them.

What did the yogic science meant by - “Intelligence beyond memory is known as consciousness”  

Yogic science defines consciousness as: Intelligence beyond memory. To understand what did they meant by this statement, we need to understand:

How does the yogic science view memory & intelligence?

Memory

 Memory according to yogic science is not defined as what you remember or what I remember, yogic science views memory as a boundary that we make for ourselves and other organisms around us.

We can say this is one person and that is another person, just because one person embodied a certain kind of memory(body-mind) and the other person embodied another kind of memory(body-mind).

According to yogic science memory has 8 different dimensions:

1)Evolutionary memory

 2)Genetic memory

 3)Articulate memory

 4)Inarticulate memory

 5)karmic memory 

6)Elemental memory 

7)atomic memory

 8)Conscious memory

These different dimensions of memory are working daily, even now they are in action; let me explain:

• The color of your skin tone or the structure of your body is similar to your forefathers, even though you never saw them, the reason behind this is the Genetic memory carried on to you.

• You can walk with 2 legs and it is a very big achievement because it took thousands of years of evolution in a human body, to be able to walk with 2 legs and you are just able to do that because of the evolutionary memory stored within you.

Nowadays there is a myth that your thoughts are free, but it isn’t that way, your thoughts are just the recast of the memory you have within you.

 Your memory determines everything:

• The way you do certain work.
• The way you talk
• The way you think

With this understanding of memory, we can clearly understand the karmic theory; which says that do a good deed(karma) and you will get a good result.

What it meant to say was do a good deed(karma), so good impressions(memory) get stored in your body-mind, which would influence your daily life.

Now we have understood, what is memory according to yogic science & different dimensions of memory.

We can now move onto understanding:

How does the yogic science view Intelligence?

Intelligence

Intelligence according to yogic science is not the most important aspect, it is just a survival instrument.

 Whereas the present modern system has emphasized a lot into intellect to such an extent that they feel, intellect is the “most important aspect” and so there is more importance given to information rather than experience, as:intelligence cannot function without memory or information.

According to yogic science there are 16 parts of Intelligence, which are further taken into 4 categories, they are:

1)Buddhi

 2)Ahankara

 3)Manas

 4)Chitta

Budhi: Budhi is a discriminatory intellect, it is very essential for survival, because without it we would not know what to eat or what to not eat, how long should we stay in the water, etc.

Budhi works according to the memory of an individual being.

For example: Newborn infants don’t know what happens if they touch fire. The reason behind this that they do not have the memory which is needed by their Budhi to let them know that; if they touch fire, their fingers will burn.

Ahankara: Ahankara in the present time has been misunderstood as ‘Ego’, what it means is one's identity.

This aspect of intelligence is not given a lot of attention in the present time, but in the ancient period, this aspect of intelligence was given a lot of importance.

According to yogic science, the identity one makes for himself his intellect works according to it; for example:

People are ready to live or die for their nation, why! It is because they have identified themselves to their nation.

 If we take a look at any living organism on this planet, everyone tends to protect their identity for whatever it takes. Some of them have a family as their identity, some have money as their identity, some have food as their identity, which goes on and on.......

So, what yogic science believes is that a person must set his/her identity as a world citizen or a universal being, when he does that his intellect works according to it.

If all the citizens of the world do that; there would be no war, global peace would be the by-product of such an identity within people. After all, the wars are fought just for the protection or expansion of one’s identity, let it be of his country or kingdom or wealth, etc.

In yogic science, it is greatly emphasized to set your identity as a cosmic being because it is only then you can be one step ahead in experiencing consciousness.

Manas: Manas according to yogic science is a silo of memory, it consists of all the 8 dimensions of memory embodied by an organism.

Chitta: Chitta is beyond memory, it is unaffected by any dimension of memory.

 According to yogic science, that which is beyond memory is consciousness, therefore Chitta according to yogic science is consciousness.

Chitta is limitless, it has no boundary.

This is how yogic science views memory & intelligence.

 Now let us understand consciousness in a deeper aspect with the help of an experiment:

When we were kids, we have blown several soap bubbles right?...

 Soap bubbles are formed when we blow air through the soap, so basically, the aspects that lead to the formation of soap bubbles are:

1)Soap 

2)Air 

3)The skill required to blow the bubble.

When we blow a complete soap bubble:

How large the bubble is & the texture of the bubble can be viewed as the body of the bubble.

Now with another bubble near your bubble, you can clearly distinguish between them as this is my bubble and that is your bubble.

The reason you can do so is merely, just because of the shape of the bubble and its texture. You can now say that:

 The shape of the bubble and its texture is the memory of the bubble, whereas the air within the bubble is the consciousness.

You can classify this as one bubble and that as another bubble based on its memory ( texture & shape of the bubble).

Similarly, You can classify this as one person and that as another person by his/her memory (body and thoughts).

When we burst both the bubbles, the memory of the bubble(texture & shape of the bubble) vanishes, but the air within the bubble doesn’t vanish, because it cannot; now understand this concept carefully:

Both the bubbles which were characterized different based on their memory(texture & shape of the bubble), after they were burst the memory they embodied vanished, so the only thing left is the air, which they had captured before; But now we cannot say something like “my bubble’s air” and “your bubble’s air”, because the air is one, it cannot be distinguished.

Similarly what the yogic science meant to say was that:

 The memory embodied by you made up your body and thoughts. This memory is a boundary for you. When you go beyond your memory the only thing left will be your consciousness and the consciousness is universal (like the air in the experiment).

 Now we can clearly understand what did yogic science meant by: “intelligence beyond memory is known as consciousness”.

It just said that when we go beyond our memory which has taken whichever form( body, thoughts, etc) the only thing left will be consciousness, and consciousness is your true nature.

There is nothing like your consciousness or my consciousness, consciousness is universal (like the air in the bubble experiment).

 It is life itself and you are consciousness, your body-mind is just the memory embodied by you. Summarizing this experiment we can therefore come to conclusions that:-

Consciousness is apart from your body-mind.

Consciousness is the same for all organisms, we differentiate between them just because of the difference in the memory embodied. We are consciousness, our body and mind are just a part of the memory.

Going further with the conclusions on consciousness made by the yogic science.

I am going to present another experiment:

Along with a torch or any light source near you, put your hands in front of it; doing so you can observe the following things:

• Light falling on your hands does not originate from your hand; it just pervades and illuminates your hand.
• Light falling on your hand is apart from your hand
• Light is always present; even if your hand is there or not.
• Light is always present even if your hand is there or not, but you can only experience light when your hand is present.
• Light falling on your body is not limited to your hand; it is beyond the limits of your hand.

Now we get to know some basic information; you all might be thinking, why is he saying all these things?

Wait..... Let me explain!

The light in this experiment is our consciousness, whereas the hand is our body-mind.

When we substitute the word “Light” with consciousness & the word “Hand” with Body-mind. We come to certain conclusions about consciousness, which were proposed by the yogic science 15000 years ago:

• Consciousness does not originate from your body-mind.
• Consciousness is apart from your Body-mind
• Consciousness is always present, even if there is an absence of body-mind
• Consciousness is always present, but it can only be experienced through body-mind.
• Consciousness is beyond memory and so it is beyond body-mind.

This whole idea of consciousness is widely researched in modern science, whereas in India the study of Vedas, Upanishads, and all the other vedic texts began by understanding the true essence of consciousness.

 The teaching given by the Upanishads and the yogic science was quite ahead of its time.

Yogic science says a lot about the human form you have. According to yogic science, no other living organism on this planet except humans can experience consciousness.

 Yogic science does not deny the fact that these organisms have consciousness, it just says that their evolution is not up to the level which is needed to experience consciousness.

Yogic science says that the human body is the best instrument to experience consciousness, its sophistication & evolution is ahead of any other being on this planet.

Yoga as a whole is a science to align your geometry of body-mind along with the geometry of the whole cosmos. It is the science of Union.

Stay grateful for your existence & your evolution.

Namaste