it is not mere awareness and wakefulness
is not the ability to think and reason about the objective world
it is not brain activity because the once brain-dead report having it
it is not just in the brain but in every cell; it is omnipresent and non-local
We can neither raise consciousness nor can we lower it, as we will explain it here by helping you expand your consciousness on what consciousness is in a broader sense. The expression of “raising consciousness” usually denotes raising awareness, which you can and should raise indeed. In Virtuology, we use that expression to denote raising the level of consciousness or raising own frequency. We also use alternative terms for it, such as consciousness calibration and virtufication. By “virtufication” we mean to emphasize the role of virtues in raising your consciousness.
It is not a light subject to articulate but it is very light to incorporate and, above all, it is essential for lasting and profound well-being, so bear with us till the end. You can’t expand and raise your consciousness unless you stretch your mind, which might require some effort on your part. Stretching your mind may not be all fun and games, but it is surely rewarding. One thing is certain, the rewards will be much greater than the energy invested in acquainting yourself with the whole subject matter.
Virtuology is the science of virtues and consciousness devoted to the study of the influence of virtues on happiness and success.
Virtues are constructive modes of consciousness.
The story of the consciousness is one of mystery, controversy, personal triumphs, adventures and near-death experiences. None of us can perceive consciousness per se since we perceive through consciousness. Clearly, it is impossible to look at something while looking through it. Can you look at the eyes while looking through them? Can you look at the binoculars while looking through them? You might, but only partially; never entirely and essentially. Along the same lines, no one is able to fully grasp consciousness, truly define it, or pin down its essential properties, which is why consciousness has been forevermore a subject of spiritual, philosophical, psychological, scientific, medical, and moral speculations, as well as a conduit of some know-it-alls’ vanities and delusions.
The totality and the complexity of consciousness can never be fully grasped and articulated due to the limited nature of human perception and articulation, and because of the inherent disparity between the limited human perception and the limitless consciousness. We are yet to meet an enlightened, humble individual who could put the totality of consciousness into words. Even though some might claim to know what consciousness consists of, we should bear in mind that consciousness is more than the sum of its parts.
Human perception is indeed limited, as well as subject to optical illusions, but as it turns out, consciousness isn’t. We can be conscious of things we don’t perceive, but not the vice versa. Since consciousness and perception are not the same, it is impossible to perceive something limitless with limited means. Our senses are good for awareness but not so much for consciousness.
The answer to the question of what consciousness is depends on who you ask. Scientists, doctors, academics, priests, gurus, philosophers – they all have their own quite different understandings and definitions of the consciousness. There are many among them out there who are brave and humble enough to admit that they don’t really have the true answer to the exact whatabouts and whereabouts of consciousness. Whether consciousness is located in the brain, or someplace else, or in every cell of the body, or beyond the human body, or in ether, or everywhere at once, and whether consciousness could be defined, we will leave it up to you to decide it for yourself. But most importantly, we will get you to rise above the limitations of the mind and its definitions, so as to harness the power of the higher modes of consciousness (higher than your current one) for your wellbeing and prosperity.
As Wikipedia puts it, despite centuries of analyses, definitions, explanations and debates by philosophers and scientists, consciousness remains puzzling and controversial, being the most mysterious aspect of our lives. As such a complex, mystical, multifaceted and ambiguous concept that eludes any universal definition, the most appropriate way to explain it, might be to elaborate on what consciousness is not.
Let there be no confusion, consciousness is not the same as conscience, which is linked to morality and defined as a sense of right and wrong that urges one to act morally, leading to feelings of remorse when one commits actions that go against own moral values, as well as to feelings of decency and integrity when actions conform to such norms.
To make it clear, let’s take the discoveries of modern science on consciousness through thorough studies of those who have woken up from the coma and those who have experienced a near-death experience, as well as those who had an out-of-body experience under the influence of psychedelic agent.
You can have intelligence without consciousness (e.g., AI), but you can’t have consciousness without intelligence. A low level of consciousness is the reason for a low level of intelligence and creativity in a person. By raising consciousness, intelligence and creativity raise too. In other words, by virtufying yourself, you get more intelligent and more capable to construct your reality as you wish. The fact that robots have no consciousness, no conscience and no procreative capability suggests that consciousness is more tied to creation than to plain awareness and intelligence.
In dreams, coma and altered states of consciousness (hypnosis, trance, etc.), our consciousness only moves to another dimension of reality. People who woke up from coma reported that while in coma, they were aware of their surroundings, that they could hear sounds and voices, and even feel sensations. Some described it as being trapped inside their own mind or within their body, while some others had referred to it as living in an alternate reality. Being under heavy sedatives had surely some bearing on their understanding of what was going on, which is why such accounts had long been taken as hallucinations, but with all the advanced research and technology, they now take a whole new meaning. Nevertheless, the scientists of the day are pretty much in the dark when it comes to understanding consciousness.
There is no universally accepted theory of consciousness. To most philosophers, the word “consciousness” connotes the relationship between the mind and the world, whereas to spiritual or religious pundits, it usually connotes the relationship between the mind and God. In any case, it is regarded as a relationship that extends beyond mere awareness and beyond the abilities of the brain organ.
Social psychologists view consciousness as a product of cultural influence, having little to do with the individual. According to them, consciousness is tied to the whole society or network, rather than to a person. For instance, different languages, religions and reality-shows formulate and express reality differently, which leads to differences in the perception of reality and in mentality, and therefore of consciousness. The same event is perceived and interpreted differently not only by people of diverse cultural backgrounds, but also of diverse demographic segments of populations (such as different age groups, races, sexes or income) and, mostly, by people of different levels of consciousness.
No one quite knows what to make of the consciousness but that hasn’t prevented many of us from trying to define it. According to Wikipedia, consciousness at its simplest is “sentience or awareness of internal or external existence”. However, do not limit yourself with the incomplete dictionaries’ definitions that reduce consciousness to sentience, awareness, wakefulness, alertness and such, rather become familiar with the broader concepts of consciousness:
– Yuri Saalmaan
UW-Madison psychology and neuroscience professor
– Princeton University PEAR Study
– various sources
– Max Planck, Nobel laureate
– Einstein’s colleague, the renowned physicist prof. John Wheeler
– Advaita Vedanta
In light of all that, we don’t intend to reduce consciousness to any definition for you. Most we can do is point out what it is not and that it is much more than mere awareness, as it is commonly defined and understood, or at least that when we are talking about consciousness in the context of virtuology, it is not meant as mere awareness.
What we refer to as consciousness is the omnipotent matrix out of which form arises, a common submatrix to all physical existence, consisting of high-frequency fields of energy, the irreducible stratum of all that exists, a subtle dimension of who we are, which, as a source of all creation and knowledge, is commonly shared by everyone and so is the “stuff” that bonds and unites us all into oneness, giving us the sense of union.
All those things considered, consciousness can’t be reduced to a mere individual state of awareness, wakefulness or a sheer biological phenomenon, but also not to a brain activity. If we take all the aforementioned, rough definitions that consciousness is a primordial cause, matrix, a force, and a fundamental feature or source of creation, then it cannot be reduced to the human brain activity, as it is commonly done, because the brain is just a receiver and processor.
The new picture of reality will take a long time to put together. As it is, it always takes time for any advances to be embraced by people at large, as the sluggish masses can’t keep pace with the advanced groups, and are often inclined to keep the status quo and so rather rebuff any progressive ideas. But this should not concern you, now that you are in the know.
Don’t waste your time. The sooner you acknowledge the consciousness for what it is rather than what it is not, the quicker you can start living by it and enjoy the harvest. So, stay put and open yourself to the new paradigm explained here that will set the conditions in your inner world for a breakthrough in the outer world, raising to a new level of existence with the lightness of being, with pure joy, love, peace and freedom.
“I don’t believe that consciousness is generated by the brain. I believe that the brain is more of a receiver of consciousness.”
“The brain does not create consciousness, but consciousness created the brain.”
“Consciousness exists independently and outside of the brain as an inherent property of the universe itself. The brain does not create or produce consciousness; rather, it filters it.”
Most likely, you have already convinced yourself that often you are better off following your heart and intuition, and here you will find out what else you can use as a guide in life. Therefore, if you do not want to be further misled by the wrong guidelines, that is, if you want to always make the right decisions, find the best solutions, find the correct answers, and get the greatest ideas, then read on because you will discover a way to do all that, yet another organ beside your heart and gut.
Its basic job is to receive input and provide the appropriate output. According to an operating system, CPU processes the basic operations that drive a computer and it is responsible for interpreting most of a computer’s commands. What is an operating system to CPU, to the brain it is the mind, most of all the subconscious mind – it programs the brain what to do. The four primary functions of any processor, including the brain, are to fetch, decode, execute and write back.
Computers are made by humans to serve humans and so they resemble humans. CPU is made to resemble the functions of the human brain and possibly to do better. Computers are faster and more precise, while humans have more creativity, prioritization ability, storage capacity and nuance in accessing memories. Also, the brain is ten times more energy-efficient than a computer. It requires less power than a light-bulb. The point is, just like the CPU, the brain also does not create information, ideas, solutions or memories, but only processes them.
Nowadays, the available artificial intelligence is evolving at a higher speed than the average human brain, which makes it dangerous because of its lack of consciousness and conscience. This is why it is crucial to combine technology with virtuology.
“Consciousness is not in the body; the body is in Consciousness. And you are that Consciousnes.”
– Dan Millman
As a processor, the brain filters everything through the prism of its existing neural paths – beliefs, ideas and interests, which makes it hard to realize the truth and easy to keep illusions. The brain itself is not interested in truth, it does not care about justice, enlightenment, education and such, but merely in substantiating and strengthening its existing neural pathways (created by the thousands of neurons that were triggered by the repetition of previous thoughts and emotions), which makes it then less relevant for truth-seekers and innovators.
The brain in and of itself has no means to distinguish truth from lies – there is no such thing as a lie detector inside our brains. For the brain, it is true what it already knows and contains. Anything new that opposes the existing neural pathways, i.e. information, is simply not true to the chemistry of the brain, because it does not fit into neural pathways. By the end of this chapter you will find out what else works like a lie detector in your body and so be equipped to recognize the truth at all times. So, stay put and rejoice in anticipation of that. It is a revolutionary finding that is a game-changer.
The traditional scientific notion, which many uninformed people still hold today, was that electrochemical processes in the brain led to consciousness, that all of our conscious states were caused by neurobiological processes in the brain. However, that link between the brain and consciousness no longer stands, because over and over again it has been demonstrated that those brain processes don’t go on after death, whereas consciousness does. We know now undeniably that the brain is “just” a processor and not a manufacturer of thoughts, ideas, memories, mind and all the other derivates of consciousness. This knowing is scientific and spiritual in equal measure.
The resuscitated patients describe conversations people had, clothes people wore, events that went on and even conversations they had with the beings on the other side, as well as their whole life flashing before their eyes and feeling of bliss, all while they were in fact flatlined and had no brain activity as measured per monitoring devices. These numerous brain-dead, out-of-body experiences tell us undoubtedly that consciousness is no brain activity. There is no doubt, it does interact with the brain now and then, but is definitely not produced by the brain.
When it comes to consciousness and brain, science can only confirm an association, not causation. Consciousness is indeed an autonomous entity, independent from the brain and its activities such as awareness, alertness and wakefulness.
Since consciousness is not a brain activity, it is clear it is not located in the brain, and as a matter of fact, neither it is found in any other particular organ of our body, which is why consciousness is said to be in a twilight zone – a conceptual area that is undefined, intermediate, or mysterious; a surreal region, where things that do not make sense seem to do so. Consciousness is also said to permeate every part of the universe. However, its omnipresence suggests nonlocality of consciousness.
If your consciousness is stuck in your head, you have a problem. That is, if you reduce your consciousness to the faculties of your brain, you reduce your potential, and so will you never harness its actual power and will always be very limited in manifesting a wanted life.
The lines between your fantasy and your reality will blur only when you take consciousness out of the confines of your head and expand it beyond the limitations of your brain-driven understanding. It doesn’t matter that your brain can’t fully grasp consciousness nor that you don’t understand how it works, because it is only important that you give wings to it so that it can take you to the heights from which you can have a better view of the world and your life so that you can know better which path leads where and which way is best for you to get where you want to go.
When it comes to psychedelics and psychoactive medicines, there is “psychedelic renaissance” taking place, while its propagators are riding a wave of latest scientific discovery about consciousness and its mechanisms. In an effort to get to the roots of our current understanding of consciousness and to bridge the gap between spirituality and science, in recent years there has been much new research of psychedelics and psychoactive substances, such as LSD and Ayahuasca in relation to consciousness, abiding strictly to scientific rigor.
When it comes to the other phenomena termed as Extrasensory Perception (ESP) or sixth sense, concerning the alternative meanings and values of consciousness, bear in mind that a large proportion of the reported cases of ESP occurred while the percipients were in an altered state of consciousness. As you know, ESP is perception or reception of information not gained through the five physical senses but sensed with the mind or with the sixth sense. It denotes psychic abilities such as intuition, telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance, foresight, precognition and retrocognition.
However, the research in altered states points to other variables as well, which are essentially more significant for developing ESP, such as a congenial atmosphere and virtues.
Many people, especially in the scientific circles, take the ESP phenomenon as esoteric and therefore don’t take it seriously, or perhaps simply because they do not understand it. We will not expound this topic but simply indicate that it is about accessing the higher, collective, universal consciousness within a unified field, as Einstein called it, or what Tesla called ether, Carl G. Jung the collective unconscious, or Akasha in Hinduism.
So, it is not that your thoughts or mind have the power to manifest reality, as it is commonly claimed, but it is the consciousness, which is at the root of them. That explains why mind power doesn’t always work for you.
Your power doesn’t come from your mind or thoughts but your consciousness. Your thoughts and mind don’t have the actual power to create; consciousness does. They are just mechanisms of consciousness. You can change your mind and thoughts all you want, you can focus them and use your intelligence all day long, but to no great avail if the source, your consciousness, is not altered and raised. Yes, with mind work you can make many beneficial changes (mostly short-term) but not the transformation. A change only modifies the old, whereas transformation discards the old in order to fully embrace or create the new. A breakthrough and transformation occur only with the leap of consciousness, and not by mere thoughts or mental effort. We cover the topic of transformation in the Virtuology book and course.
Poverty is also just a symptom – of the lack-mentality, victim-mentality, slave-mentality and of not taking responsibility as well as not practicing (enough) generosity, to name a few (it depends from person to person). In other words, poverty is a symptom of debilitating modes of consciousness, as every other problem is. However, the source of all the underlying problems, as well as the solution, lies even deeper, in the subconsciousness or cellular memories, which we explain in the Virtuology book and course. Most of the relief and aid programmes are just coping mechanisms, not solutions.
The mind is a liar. It tells you mostly lies that derive from its limited perception of reality. Pure consciousness, on the other hand, it knows only truth. Consciousness is not a mechanism of mind, but the mind is a mechanism of consciousness. The mind is just one of the many mechanisms of consciousness. Awareness is of the mind, whereas consciousness is not, but if consciousness is either altered or raised, it clears and empowers the mind. While our mind is subject to duality (constructive or destructive thoughts and beliefs), our consciousness is prone to nonduality.
Our limited and often delusional mind has no capacity to grasp the consciousness, so in its capacity it will further divide, because our intellect is like a knife, slicing things into pieces, embracing reductionism as a way of knowing, falsely believing that by examining or understanding the parts, it can understand the whole or the source. But this reductionist deconstruction leads to a misunderstanding of the whole consciousness because any whole is much more than the sum of its parts.
By intellectualizing, you are prone to look into different parts of something, pros and cons, and so take each piece away from context and neglect its relationships with other pieces to which it is intricately connected. This is not to say that you then have absolutely no understanding of the whole ensemble. Those who claim full understanding of something by breaking it into fragments and trying to put it back together again should reconsider.
Having said all that, the mind itself is a very powerful mechanism of consciousness, particularly the subconscious mind. It is in charge of our beliefs and thoughts, which shape our view of the world and reality. The function of the mind is to create coherence between our beliefs and our reality. The physical expression is the consequence of the mind’s program — the program comes first, the physical expression second. The mind can both help us and hinder us, depending on how much we allow our ego to be in charge of it. Ego leads to ruin when it acts as our leader or advisor instead of as a security guard.
Apart from having various planes of consciousness (subconsciousness, consciousness and superconsciousness), we also have different states of consciousness (deep sleep, dream, wakefulness, alertness, attention, caution, transcendental, cosmic, divine, unity consciousness, along with those termed as altered, alpha, theta, confused, depressive, hallucinated, sleepwalking, coma, delirium, disorientation, denial…), and different mechanisms of consciousness (mind, attitude, intelligence, memory, awareness, perception, conscience…), as well as different modes and levels of consciousness, which are the subject here, as they determine the level of success and well-being each of us achieves.
• you switch to another plane of consciousness
(subconsciousness, consciousness and superconsciousness)
• you alter a state of consciousness
(deep sleep, dream, wakefulness, alertness, transcendental, cosmic, divine, unity consciousness, along with those termed as altered, alpha, theta, confused, depressive, hallucinated, sleepwalking, coma, delirium, disorientation, denial…)
• you raise a level of consciousness or raise to a higher mode
(mindsets and emotions; virtues and flaws)
• you expand a mechanism of consciousness
(awareness, perception, mind, attitude, intelligence, memory, conscience…)
We explain how to make the most out of subconsciousness in our Virtuology book and course, but now let’s see how understanding consciousness better helps you harness its power for your ends. Integrating consciousness into everyday life is mostly about expanding it and raising its modes.
As virtuology doesn’t only tell you what you should do to achieve success, health and well-being, but also how to do it, so it offers a specific gizmo – a tool for raising your consciousness to higher, constructive and potent modes, which is called the scale of consciousness.
The scale of consciousness, which is shown on the right, was compiled by a team led by physician and psychiatrist Dr. David R. Hawkins, using kinesiology method. It is a calibration or virtufication tool, showing which modes of consciousness have more constructive power in the context of the attraction field.
Important: all the modes of consciousness that rank above 200 on this scale are constructive virtues, whereas all the ones below 200 are destructive flaws.
The more above 200 you are, the more you are tuned in to your soul, whereas the more below 200 you are, the more tuned in you are to your ego. In other words, the more you listen to your ego, the lower is your level of consciousness and well-being.
The higher your consciousness mode is on the scale, the stronger its attraction field and power are to attract and manifest positive living conditions. Constructive modes of consciousness have constructive power, and the destructive ones have destructive power. This means that when your consciousness is at a high mode of, say, gratitude, love, joy, or peace, then you are likely to attract the conditions for well-being, as opposed to the modes of consciousness such as fear, worry, anger, and such, which attract negative conditions.
Each mode of consciousness on this scale has its own grades, which is why some same modes are ranked differently.
For instance, love and unconditional love, do not have the same value. Likewise, full and partial responsibility do not rank the same. So, take these rankings conceptually and broadly and not as absolute values.
The point is to understand that the path to well-being is raising own consciousness and that the path to well-being is paved with virtues. The more you stay at higher modes of consciousness, the more well-being you have.
We suggest taking context into account. This scale refers to the attraction field. Therefore, if you disagree that some virtue ranks inferior to another one, take the context into account.
For instance, love can rank the highest in another context, but in the context of the attraction field, it doesn’t. Thereby, if you want to have a great relationship with someone, you will achieve more with cultivating love than, say, with practicing faith. But if you want to attract someone, the fact that you love a person it will not attract her or him to you.
However, regardless of the context, cultivating virtues is always more constructive than cultivating flaws.
The calibrated levels of consciousness are measuring the prevalence of illusion and not reality. The levels primarily denote the resistance to one’s actual reality. Therefore, don’t look at this scale as a hierarchy of virtues and flaws, but as a map or chart or path to enlightenment and to freedom from suffering.
Throughout the day your diverse modes of consciousness go up and down countless times, as you are a bit in the mode of love, joy, compassion, courage, relaxation, gratitude, as well as in fear, worry, anger, frustration, pessimism, skepticism, greed, criticism, grief, guilt and so forth.
At the end of the day, the sum of all your positive and negative modes amounts to your average mode of consciousness or, in other words, your level of consciousness. The more positive your various modes of consciousness throughout the day are, the higher your level of consciousness becomes.
An analogy may make this clear. Those who prefer rap music and those who prefer classical music have different levels of consciousness and are therefore people of a different caliber. Highly spiritual, developed and cultivated beings are unlikely to have a taste for harsh and badass rap or hip-hop beats and rhythms. Likewise, brute and unrefined individuals are unlikely to have taste for subtle spiritual and classical music and literature, so you will never see gangsters chanting a mantra or singing gospels, nor reading Dostoyevsky, let alone the Vedas. It is because everything, including music and literature, has its frequency, which corresponds to caliber or level of consciousness.
Frequency is key. Frequency defines matter and it alters it. Your consciousness emits a frequency. The frequency you consciously emit is what matters, as it affects matter, above all your body and everything you materialize and manifest in your reality. Every living cell in your body is conscious and can be addressed with the frequency of your consciousness.
Thus, on the whole, taking all aspects of being into account, all people are indeed valuable in equal measure. If they are not as valuable as some others in one area, they might be more valuable in other areas of life, so overall value is the same – each of us has the value of one. Regardless of the level of consciousness or caliber, everyone has the same amount of power, but that power can be either constructive or destructive, which is in proportion to the level of one’s consciousness. Rising or calibrating own consciousness is advisable in order to increase own constructive powers, inner peace and general well-being.
As your consciousness level raises, so does your constructive power and freedom. Your vibration or frequency is higher as you are at the higher modes of consciousness (love, compassion, joy, peace…) and that manifests conditions for lasting success and general well-being. The higher the level of our consciousness is, the easier it gets to grasp the truth necessary for achieving goals.
As you are very much aware, the most successful and prosperous people are not necessarily the most educated or most intelligent ones, neither are highly-educated and intelligent people by default successful and happy. We all have faced the type of situations in which we got frustrated because someone, who was allegedly less intelligent than we are, got ahead while we fell behind. This generally happens to those who rely on their intelligence and skills, not so much on their virtues, so they do not cultivate them to the extent that is necessary. Once again, by virtues, we don’t mean necessarily the goodness or righteousness, but all kinds of virtues, such as resourcefulness, enthusiasm, optimism, joyousness, perseverance, resilience, faith, confidence, love, authenticity, enterprisingness, proactiveness, self-initiative, self-discipline, courage, open-mindedness, and others.
Virtuology doesn’t only tell you what you should do to raise your consciousness, but also how to do it. It provides you with a precise system that you can rely on to get you to achieve all your goals. It is a psychophysiological program specifying how to harness the power of your consciousness and virtues to solve any problem, find the best solutions and answers, make right decisions and choices, get great, useful and profitable ideas, boost your morale, optimize your habits and be the architect of your destiny. This program that mobilizes all of your psychophysiological powers (mental, emotional and physical ones), offers a specific gizmo that you can turn to in every situation and count on it to make a needed transformation – a tool for raising your consciousness to higher, constructive and potent modes – the scale of consciousness
When attempting to understand the meaning of consciousness to make the best use of it, we invite you to expand your consciousness so as to view it in terms of the value of its modalities for your empowerment and progress. Different modes of consciousness provide you with different benefits or detriments. Constructive modes of consciousness lead you to constructive decisions, ideas and solutions, whereas destructive modes do the opposite. Therefore, it is imperative to ensure that own consciousness is calibrated to “play high notes”.
Continue reading about how to raise consciousness in our module on Virtufication:
Further insights on consciousness can be found in:
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