Higher Consciousness:

As a Fine Artist I Seek a Higher Consciousness.   I struggle with this meaning but here are some possibilities from many sources:

Definition & Meaning according to Merriam Webster

“Consciousness.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com /thesaurus/consciousness. Accessed 30 May. 2023.

Definition of consciousness:

as in "to be present"

as in "awareness"

as in "a state of being aware"

as in "a glaring problem that somehow has yet to penetrate the consciousness of the people that run this company."

 

con·​scious·​ness ˈkän(t)-shəs-nəs 

Synonyms of consciousness / Synonyms & Similar Words/ Relevance

• awareness

• attention

• mindfulness

• knowledge

• ear

• mind

• observation

• note

• eye

• cognizance

• notice

• observance

• perception

• heed

• advertency

• care

• advertence

• understanding

• consideration

• concern

• hyperawareness

• regard

• recognition

• hyperconsciousness

• thought

• discernment

• watch

• apprehension

• grasp

• advisement

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• neglect

• disregard

• unawareness

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1a: the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself

  b: the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact 

  c: awarenes especially : concern for some social or political cause. The organization aims to raise the                 political consciousness of teenagers.

2: the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought : MIND

3: the totality of conscious states of an individual

4: the normal state of conscious life/regained consciousness

5: the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes

 

Consciousness is the state of being aware of and responsive to one’s surroundings. It is also a person’s awareness or perception of something.

In psychology, it is the totality of sensations, perceptions, ideas, attitudes, and feelings of which an individual or a group is aware at any given time or within a given time span.

 

The Mystery of human consciousness:   How much do we know? (medicalnewstoday.com)

How does the human brain create consciousness, and why?

Scientists and philosophers have long struggled to explain how the brain generates conscious experiences. Some doubt whether the objective tools of science can ever get to grips with a phenomenon that is so subjective. Even so, researchers have begun to identify the changes in brain activity that accompany awareness, and they also have some fascinating ideas about why consciousness evolved.

 

How much do we really know about human consciousness?   Image credit: Oxana Pervomay/Stocksy.

How the brain conjures conscious awareness from the electrical activity of billions of individual nerve cells remains one of the great unanswered questions of life.

Each of us knows that we are conscious, in terms of having thoughts, perceptions, and feelings, but we are unable to prove it to anyone else. Only we have access to the mysterious essence that allows us to experience those thoughts, perceptions, and feelings.

In the 1990s, the philosopher David Chalmers described this inaccessibility to external, objective scrutiny as the “hard problem” of consciousness.

He proposed that an easier task for scientists to tackle would be its “neural correlates” — where and how brain activity changes when people have conscious experiences.

Apart from curiosity, scientists are most likely motivated to discover the neural correlates of consciousness in order to help diagnose and treat disorders of consciousness, such as persistent vegetative states and some psychiatric disorders.

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Three dimensions of consciousness:

Consciousness has several distinct dimensions that they can measure. Three of the most important ones are:

• wakefulness or physiological arousal

• awareness or the ability to have conscious mental experiences, including thoughts, feelings, and perceptions

• sensory organization, or how different perceptions and more abstract concepts become woven together to create a seamless conscious experience.

These three dimensions interact to produce our overall state of consciousness from moment to moment. For example, when wide awake, we are in a state of high awareness, but as we drift off to sleep at night, both wakefulness and awareness subside.

Awareness and physiological arousal return during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which is when vivid dreams are mostly likely to occur. But these sensory experiences are mostly disconnected from external stimuli and detached from the concepts that anchor us to reality while we are awake.

In a similar way, altered states of consciousness, such as those induced by psychedelic drugs or low oxygen levels, involve normal levels of arousal but disorganized sensory experiences.

These can include hallucinations of sounds, smells, or sights, but also synesthesia, when there is cross-talk between usually discrete senses, such as sounds that evoke visual experiences.

People in a coma, or under anesthesia, can have levels of wakefulness and awareness that are even lower than during non-REM sleep.

Meanwhile, in a strange hybrid state of consciousness known as unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, or a vegetative state, patients undergo daily cycles of sleep and wakefulness, but without showing any sign of awareness.

Despite spending long periods with their eyes open, they do not exhibit behavioral responses to external stimuli.

Some of these patients will recover limited signs of awareness, known as a “minimally conscious stateTrusted Source,” such as the ability to respond to instructions or follow a moving object with their eyes.

 

What is consciousness? | New Scientist

Consciousness: How your brain creates the feeling of being

By Anil Seth

Consciousness is, for each of us, all there is: the world, the self, everything. But consciousness is also subjective and difficult to define. The closest we have to a consensus definition is that consciousness is “something it is like to be”. There is something it is like to be me or you – but presumably there is nothing it is like to be a table or an iPhone.

How do our conscious experiences arise? It’s a longstanding question, one that has perplexed scientists and philosophers for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The orthodox scientific view today is that consciousness is a property of physical matter, an idea we might call physicalism or materialism. But this is by no means a universally held view, and even within physicalism there is little agreement about how consciousness emerges from, or otherwise relates to, physical stuff.

Neuroscientists have found important clues by looking at the activity of the 86 billion neurons – and trillions of neural connections – inside the human brain. One of the first questions they asked was which parts of the brain – of any brain – are associated with consciousness. For instance, you might instinctively assume that conscious experiences are more likely if a brain or brain region contains a large number of neurons.

Surprisingly, though, the human cerebellum – a sort of mini brain hanging off the back of your cortex – contains about three-quarters of the neurons in your brain but seems to have almost nothing to do with consciousness. One reason we know this is because some people are born without a functioning cerebellum, and while they experience some problems, a lack of consciousness is not one of them.

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Another definition I use: 

K440.

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Contact

Kind Regards,

HB (Barry) Strasbourg-Thompson BFA

Ladysmith, BC, Canada

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