Read Psychology for Dummies Online
Authors: Adam Cash
Tags: #Psychology, #General, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #Spirituality
Psychology for Dummies (10 page)
Consciousness is an elusive concept. We know it’s there, but it’s hard to put our finger on it. My consciousness exists in my inner voice and my awareness of myself, my surroundings, and my experience. But, I’m typically not aware of numerous mental processes, bodily sensations, and things going on in my mind. For example, I don’t usually hear my heart beating as I’m walking down the street, but I can hear it when I try to hear it. When I become consciousness of something that I was unconscious of, I become aware of it.
One of the best ways to think about the psychology of consciousness is to think about absence of consciousness. A coma is a state of extreme unawareness or lack of consciousness. A person in a coma is essentially disconnected from the world around her. She may be aware of her own mind and body, and she may even know that she’s in a coma, but as far as outside observers are concerned, she’s unconscious.
I once heard that the entire idea of vampires and the undead came from medieval observations of dead bodies. I don’t exactly know why people were digging up dead bodies, but when they did, they found that their hair and fingernails had continued to grow. Sometimes, the bodies would utter a deep groan when someone moved them. What was going on? Scientifically speaking, hair and nails continue to grow for a short period of time after death, and the groaning sound could have been caused by leftover air in the body’s chest cavity passing over the vocal chords when the chest was compressed. But medieval grave robbers attributed life to the bodies based on these observations. They attributed the cause of these phenomena to conscious action and deliberation of the dead person, not reflexive byproducts of phy-siology and anatomy.
Consciousness, as elusive as it is, can be pinned down in at least three ways:
My subjective experience of my own awareness.
Have you ever had a dream in which you knew you were dreaming? Really, you were aware that you were asleep. Being aware of my own awareness involves realizing or being aware that you are either awake or asleep.
Other’s observations of my deliberate actions.
One of the most important features of consciousness is that it mediates our behavior. Sometimes we act impulsively and reflexively; we don’t think about what we’re doing, we just do it. Other times, there’s a step of conscious deliberation, an act of will, before acting. In that case, you are consciously analyzing what you are going to do. Willful acts are a signal of conscious awareness. We attribute consciousness to acts of deliberation and intention. When someone does something willfully, we assume that he is conscious.
Electrical measurement of my brain’s electrical activity.
Consciousness can be observed physiologically, in addition to behaviorally, through the measurement of brain activity. Different EEG (electroencephalogram — a special machine that measures the “brain waves” or electrophysiological activity of the brain) measurements of electrical activity in the brain correspond to different levels of observable consciousness.
Planes with faces; pets with agendasBelieve it or not, children’s cartoons represent a challenge of sorts to our concepts of consciousness. How? Everything in a cartoon is a conscious being, from toasters to trees to animals. One of my favorite cartoons was about a family of airplanes, Poppa Plane, Momma Plane, and so on. Each of the planes had its own little personality. The attribution of human consciousness and traits to inanimate objects is called
animism.
Most of us are pretty sure that machines and plants don’t possess consciousness, but what about animals? I know plenty of pet owners that swear that their little buddy has deep thoughts of his or her own. They get pretty upset when I suggest that little Scruffy is just a bundle of routines and reflexes, acting without conscious deliberation. “Should I bury this bone here or over by the garage?”
People have been trying to deliberately alter their consciousness since the beginning of human history. Human beings have used meditation, religious rituals, sleep deprivation, and numerous other means to alter their levels of everyday awareness.
Stanley Krippner identified over 20 states of altered consciousness. One of the more common states is dreaming (see the “Arriving at Work Naked: Dreams” section later in this chapter). Some of the more intriguing altered states of consciousness identified by Krippner are
Rapture:
An intense feeling of overpowering emotion, experienced as pleasurable and positive. People have reported experiencing rapture after sex, ritualistic dancing, religious rituals, and the use of psycho-active substances.
Meditative states:
Minimal mental activity that includes reductions in mental imagery (the pictures “inside” your head) brought on by meditation, yoga, or even prayer.
Trance states:
An alert but very suggestible state. An individual in a trance is focused on a single stimulus and oblivious to much of everything else going on around him or her. People in trances sometimes report that they feel “at one” with the world. Religious rituals, chanting, hypnosis, brainwashing, and even music can induce trance states.
Daydreaming:
Rapid thinking unrelated to an individual’s current environment. Daydreaming can often result from boredom, sensory deprivation, and sleep deprivation.
Expanded consciousness:
Increased awareness not typical of everyday experience and awareness. People try all kinds of ways to “expand” their consciousness from using drugs to sensory deprivation. There are four levels of expanded consciousness:
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Sensory:
An altered experience of space, time, and other sensory phenomena.
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Recollective-analytic:
An experience in which individuals develop novel ideas and revelations about themselves, the world, and their role within the world.
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Symbolic:
Identification with a historical figure or famous person accompanied by mystical symbols such as having a vision of a crucifix or an angel.
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Integral:
A religious and/or mystical experience usually involving God or some other supernatural being or force. The person usually feels merged with or at one with the universe. This state has sometimes been called
cosmic consciousness.
Krippner and other experts believe that very few people are actually capable of attaining this level of consciousness.
