When we dealt with the blog series of the secrets of life  the 5 levels of consciousness already appeared. I only did not explain them as such. In the STIR community I prepared a series of minors around consciousness. If you want to go profoundly into this matter or add to it from your own expertise, I advise you to become member of the STIR community.

Note: some confusion exists about the usage of the words “Consciousness” and “Awareness”. For me “Awareness” gives meaning to the sensory registration of inner and outer impulses (ie au, it’s hot!). “Consciousness” is the in depth interpretation of the complexity of multisensory impulses into the rational of understanding (ie It’s hot. It hurts, I know where it comes from, why, what it does to me and how to deal with it etc).

Consciousness level 1: growth
When we are conceived and subsequently born as a new member of the human population we grow physically through feeding. When we reach a point of maximum growth we enter a state of readiness to multiply. As a species we follow the traditional growth patterns of life in nature.

But the physical part is not all that grows. The many senses of our existence need to learn to interpret our surroundings to continue living a life. So our awareness grows through a learning pattern of experimental interpretation. Our perception enhances itself through repetition. We are triggered and informed by multi-sensory interaction between our inner awareness and needs with outside stimuli. In this way for instance a baby will find a breast to feed when it is hungry or cry when the breast is not there.

We grow in awareness and potential understanding when we sum up experiences through exercise. They may break through into our consciousness when they reach self aware reflective processes. We learn to interpret emotions, physical development, spirituality through rational thoughts. This is all part of growth too. It represents the level and experience we develop in interpreting impulses. This is extremely complex and the level of reliability of what we interpret needs continuous correction.

The following TED talk shows us how easily we are tricked just by interpreting colors alone. Just imagine what happens when we evolve the complexity of combining all our senses. We need to try to determine what is real, how it affects us (for instance “what can I eat?” or “what is safe?” and “to what extend can I trust my surroundings and myself?”), and how we use this interpretation for your own welbeing and sustainable development.

When we understand that we can be tricked by our own mind we can also learn to distinguish manipulation of reality that tries to influence us. Here is an interesting example about the true size of Africa in relation to the other continents. What political benefit do you think the USA or Europe would have over history to use the “traditional” but wrong perception of size of the Northern Hemisphere over the Southern?:

Con you imagine by now what level 2 consciousness brings us?