Elon Musk
Consciousness as it is related to mind/body medicine, yoga, and other disciplines is more widely talked about today than it has ever been before. Quantum Physics, Quantum Biology, Neuroscience and Consciousness, are the subject of articles in newspapers and magazines regularly now. We know more about the brain now than we have ever known before. My own understanding of being conscious was about being alive and awake – aware, so to speak. Unconscious was for me related to the state of someone becoming unaware – not altogether there – after an accident or some other trauma. This understanding or lack of understanding, on my part, seems to have prevailed for most of my early life.
In college, when I took Psychology and was exposed to Freud’s theory of the unconscious, a different understanding of “consciousness” came into play. While Freud made outstanding contributions in the field of Psychoanalysis, his work was with sick patients. Consciousness means something completely different to me today. “Freud gave consciousness the quality and capacity to transform experienced activity into unconscious states, similar to how different forms of energy are interchanged in physics. It could also play a part in inhibiting and restricting certain thoughts from becoming conscious. It also served the purpose of transforming quantities of unconscious excitation into qualitative experiences of pleasure and unpleasure “(Freud, 1900; Hartmann, 1964). I’m sure that scholars in the field of human consciousness still learn a lot from Freud and his work.
Quite by accident last night, I was flipping channels and looked at a Ted Talk on Consciousness. This is why the whole matter of “consciousness” is on my mind. It was informative and the speaker brought humour to the presentation as well. Dada Gunamuktananda has trained in meditation, yoga and natural health sciences in Australia, the Philippines and India. He has been a meditation teacher of Ananda Marga since 1995 and has taught and lectured on meditation in New Zealand, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. (thespiritscience.net)
What was said here resonates with me and is more of what it means to me to be conscious today. He talks about our inner space and how we can access this. We can explore and, perhaps, reach all the frontiers of outer space but our real challenge is that inner space – our consciousness. I share this talk with you below and you can decide for yourself whether this also resonates with you. Enjoy!