The Conscious Self
The most urgent issue we humans face is how we conceive ourselves --whether as complex lumps of matter guided by the so-called blind, meaningless laws of nature, or as creature who, although physical are also imbued with something more: consciousness, mind, will, choice, purpose, direction, meaning and spirituality, that difficult-to-define quality that says we are connected with something that transcends our individual self and ego. Every decision we make is influenced by how we answer the great question: Who are we?
Laszlo, Houston, Dossey: What is Consciousness?
Ego, Self, and Soul
Where does our identity reside? Is it in the body, the unique biological self? We say this is my body. But is it our identity? We have an ego that describes the personality to an extent. It is the part of us that engages with the material world. We have a brain and nervous system where it is said the mind resides. And from here our intellect and feeling selves are expressed. And then there is the soul, perhaps the invisible essence of us. But do any or all of these constitute our identify? Are these the sum of me?
What of consciousness? We are conscious (self aware) beings. Where does consciousness (the conscious self) begin and end. The relatively new science of consciousness, somewhat of a blend of quantum physics and out-of-body paranormal experiences (and so much more) sees consciousness as eternal and inviolable. We would describe our soul this way. But soul and consciousness are not really synonymous.
What is consciousness, then? Consciousness is not coterminous with the brain. Consciousness is beyond the brain. It is something that is fundamental to all of reality. It is the source from which all else emerges: space, time, physical reality --from subatomic particles to our multidimensional universe. It is actually difficult for our brains to grasp the idea of consciousness in this way. We are limited in our physicality to say much else. Language is an insufficient medium to explain "All That Is." We call it God or divine or transcendent. The best that we can intuit is that consciousness is mind beyond space and time.
Useful Resources
There are no limitations to the self. We think that the self must begin or end someplace. There must be a fence around it. A yard of identity in which you can feel safe.
[T]he brain transmits rather than produces consciousness.... The transmission theory can account for phenomena that are anomalous for the 'production' theory. If the brain only transmits and does not produce consciousness, consciousness need not cease when the brain is inoperative. Consciousness experience beyond the brain is no longer esoteric: it is possible and comprehensible.
[I]n everyday waking consciousness, human beings are explicitly aware of only a fragment of the scope of consciousness. Self-development is necessary to deepen one's understanding of the nature of consciousness and reality. Deep consciousness offers an invitation to explore what it means to exist. Perhaps.
Shared Consciousness
One Mind - One Soul
The conscious self exists at birth and it continues after death. But because we are tied to a linear idea of time, which implies beginnings and endings, we cannot conceive of what comes before or after what we think of as our own birth and death. In fact, in our highly technologically dependent society, the lines between life and death have become blurred. On the one hand, we debate at length about when life begins and, on the other hand, there is an increasing ambiguity about what marks the moment of death.
Life in many ways is a lonely sojourn. In this modern era, humanity is cut off from a larger consciousness that is transpersonal, universal, collective, and infinite in space and time. The feeling of separateness haunts us and feeds on an underlying emotional state of fear and apprehension. We feel separate from our source of being, from our own conscious selves or higher-self truth, and from the natural world with which we share this earth. It was not always this way, and intuitively we know this.
Humanity has separated itself from the natural world and, in the process, has placed itself at the pinnacle of all life. We grant soulhood (consciousness/self-awarness) only to our own species. We see animals and all other life forms as inferior. But in fact all things have consciousness and a "soul-nature." Not even the larger life forms but even cells or the smallest particles as yet known to man have a consciousness and a self-hood. In fact, even things that we consider lifeless, i.e. inanimate, have a consciousness uniquely their own. There is consciousness even within a nail!
Consciousness is not only the domain of humanity. Self or soul is not a thing of measurement, nor is it necessarily something that suddenly arrives and then disappears. It is eternal. We are eternal.
[Noted physicist Erwin] Schrödinger recognized...that although there are billions of apparently separate minds, the view that humans have of the world is largely coherent. There is only one adequate explanation for this, he wrote, 'namely the unification of minds or consciousness. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind.'
There are as many kinds of consciousnesses as there are particles, and these are combined in infinite fashions.
You are not a forsaken offshoot of physical matter, nor is your consciousness meant to vanish like a puff of smoke. Instead, you form the physical body that you know at a deeply unconscious level with great discrimination, miraculous clarity, and intimate unconscious knowledge of each minute cell that composes it.