What Is Consciousness?
Updated: Sep 19
Consciousness is one of those words we use easily until we try to say what it actually means. We speak about being conscious, losing consciousness, becoming more conscious or living consciously. Yet none of these expressions necessarily tells us what consciousness itself is.
Yoga approaches this question in an unusual way. Instead of beginning only with a definition, it invites us to investigate consciousness through direct experience.
For a moment, become quiet and notice that you are here.
Do not think about yourself. Do not try to explain what you are experiencing. Simply become consciously present.
Notice the space around you. You may see objects, hear sounds and feel your body. You can become aware of something close to you or something in the distance. You can notice the whole space rather than focusing on a single object.
There is activity within experience, but consciousness itself can be remarkably silent.
This silence, presence and capacity to be aware begin to point toward something that is normally so close to us that we overlook it.
Consciousness is not another thing to observe
Most things we know appear as something we can observe. We can see a tree, hear a sound, feel a sensation, recognize an emotion or notice a thought.
Consciousness is more difficult to approach in this way because it is not simply another object alongside these things.
A useful analogy is space.
A room may contain furniture, people, movement, light and sound. Usually our attention goes to what occupies the room rather than to the space itself. Yet the space is continuously present and allows everything else to appear within it.
Consciousness can be approached in a similar way. Our attention is usually occupied by the contents of life — what we see, feel, think, remember, want and do. Consciousness itself remains almost unnoticed.
Yet when we become quiet and consciously present, there can be a sense of something more fundamental than any particular experience: an open, silent presence in which experience is taking place.
The analogy should not be taken too literally. Consciousness is not physical space. But the experience of spaciousness can help us turn toward something that cannot be understood simply as another object.
Consciousness is not another object within experience. It is the silent, living presence in which experience becomes known.
A silent and living presence
Silence is one of the most important clues.
Thinking is not silent. It produces words, images, meanings, associations and interpretations. Emotions have their own movement and energetic quality. Sensations continually change.
Consciousness itself does not need to produce commentary in order to be present.
You can consciously see without internally describing what you see. You can consciously listen without naming the sound. You can become aware of the surrounding space without thinking about it.
There is simply presence and direct contact.
But consciousness is not an empty or inert silence. It has qualities. It can become aware, distinguish, deepen, understand and reveal. Intuition and inspiration can also become available through it.
This is why describing consciousness only as “empty space” would miss something essential. It is better approached as a living silence or living field of presence — quiet in itself, yet capable of awareness and knowing.
In Practical Consciousness, this becomes something to investigate directly rather than a philosophical statement to believe.
We already know consciousness through its qualities
How can something so fundamental become recognizable?
One way is through its qualities.
In Practical Consciousness, seven natural qualities of consciousness are distinguished: awareness, discernment, deepening, understanding, insight, intuition and inspiration.
Awareness is perhaps the easiest doorway. The moment we consciously notice a tree, a sound, a sensation or something happening within us, awareness is functioning. There may be no need for words at all.
Then other qualities can become recognizable. We distinguish something that was previously mixed together. Observation deepens. Understanding appears. An insight reveals something we had not seen before.
These qualities are not considered achievements that we manufacture through practice. They are already inherent to consciousness. Practice makes them recognizable and allows us to use them more consciously.
This gives us a practical way into a subject that might otherwise remain very abstract. Instead of trying immediately to define consciousness intellectually, we begin to recognize its presence through direct experience.
Consciousness brings us into direct contact with reality
There is another important characteristic of consciousness: it can bring us directly into the present.
Thought can represent something that is not here. We can think about yesterday, imagine tomorrow or mentally travel to a place thousands of kilometres away while sitting in one room.
Awareness works differently. When we consciously become aware of something, we meet what is present directly.
Look at a tree and really notice it. Listen consciously to a sound. Feel the contact of your feet with the ground. Become aware of the space around you.
For a moment, there is no need to explain the experience.
You are simply here, in direct contact.
This is one reason conscious awareness can make experience feel unusually fresh. In a familiar environment, we may move through life largely through recognition, habit and thought. In a completely new place, awareness naturally comes forward and suddenly we see much more.
Consciousness brings us out of the representation of life and back into living contact with what is here.
From using consciousness to recognizing consciousness
At first, Practical Consciousness approaches consciousness very practically.
We learn to become consciously aware. We learn to notice where attention goes. We become capable of observing inner processes instead of automatically disappearing into them. Gradually we recognize discernment, understanding, insight and the other qualities of consciousness.
In this phase, it may seem that consciousness is something we use.
We use awareness to observe. We use discernment to distinguish. We use understanding to know something more clearly.
But yoga eventually turns the investigation around.
If awareness is a quality of consciousness, what is consciousness itself?
What is this silent presence in which awareness can move outward toward the world or inward toward our own experience? What remains when mental commentary becomes quiet? What is the nature of that which is present before we begin explaining ourselves and the world?
At this point consciousness is no longer merely a useful capacity.
It becomes the subject of yoga itself.
What begins as learning to use consciousness gradually becomes an inquiry into the nature of consciousness itself.
The yogic inquiry into consciousness
Different yogic traditions have described this deeper inquiry in different ways. Some emphasize the distinction between the changing processes of the mind and the Seer. Non-dual Śaiva traditions go further and identify consciousness itself with the deepest Self.
The opening statement of the Śiva Sūtras is strikingly direct:
Caitanyam ātmā — Consciousness is the Self.
This is not something that needs to be accepted as a belief. Within yoga, statements of this kind point toward something to be investigated and eventually known through direct experience.
That changes the nature of the question What is consciousness?
At first we may ask it intellectually and search for the best definition. Later we begin to recognize consciousness through silence, awareness and its natural qualities.
And eventually the question can become much more intimate:
What is this consciousness that is present here now — and what is my relationship to it?
This is where Practical Consciousness begins to open toward the deeper territory of yoga.
Not by adding another theory about who we are, but by turning toward something already present and learning to recognize it directly.
Explore Consciousness
The Consciousness course at Lilleoru is a practical exploration of consciousness and its seven natural qualities — awareness, discernment, deepening, understanding, insight, intuition and inspiration. Through direct observation and experiential methods, participants learn to recognize these qualities, use them consciously and begin investigating consciousness through their own experience.
