This is season two, episode seven, What is Consciousness? - Journey to Neville Goddard. 

To understand the nature of consciousness and how to evoke it is vital to understand Neville and adopt his worldview. The purpose of today's episode is to trace through different definitions of the word consciousness, sort out the misconceptions and arrive at some sort of an authoritative, demonstrable and practical definition of the word. 

So this journey is going to take us from the colloquial notion of the word consciousness to something that you could call more official in terms of the philosophical and psychological definitions, to then make a shift to what we call esoteric information. And I'll explain that... to finally arrive at our goal, which is Neville's concept and use of the term consciousness and how it is put into action. 

Well, let's start out with the colloquial meaning. In daily usage, the term consciousness denotes the average common waking mental state. Is that not how the word is used even among scientists and in casual conversation? However, it is agreed among diverse sources that this colloquial usage is very inaccurate. Why? Because the normal average common waking mental condition among people is almost entirely subconscious. Here's A quote from C.G. Jung, first chapter of Man and His Symbols. 

“Part of the unconscious consists of a multitude of temporarily obscured thoughts, impressions and images that in spite of being lost, continue to influence our conscious minds. A man who is distracted or absent minded will walk across the room to fetch something. He stops, seemingly perplexed. He has forgotten what he was after. His hands grope about among the objects on the table as if he were sleepwalking.”

Alright, so there's a trivial and uncontroversial example that we don't walk around all the time with clear consciousness. And I just gave that example to point out that the use of the word ‘consciousness’ in everyday speech is really misleading. 

Well, let's move on to the world of modern philosophy and modern psychology and see if the official definitions are going to move us forward. In modern philosophy of mind, ‘consciousness’ denotes experiencing in a broad sense. So if there is an experiencer, then there is by definition consciousness. If you think about it though, there's trouble with this definition. The fact is that experience can take place in an unconscious state, obviously because we have dreams. So for example, there's no doubt that people subjectively experience dreams, although you could not call that a conscious experience because the conscious mind is asleep. Nor is there any doubt that for example, a dog has mental experience. And yet we would not say that any dog is considered to be conscious. 

So we'll go back to the eminent authority CG Jung. And here I'm relying on the explanation of Jung's metaphysics by Bernardo Kastrup. Kastrup, having read and re read Jung's collected works several times, has discerned the Swiss psychologist's position with regard to consciousness. Jung did agree that consciousness was in fact, just as modern philosophy would have it, experiential in nature. But he further specified his definition as follows: Consciousness has three attributes according to Jung: 

*	First of all, volition - there has to be willpower present. 
*	Secondly, network of associations to lend meaning. In other words, you have a network of associations to understand your position in the world when you have a conscious experience. 
*	Three, the re-representation of contents. That is you say to yourself, I know that I have this or that thought. I know that I have this or that emotion. 

Jung himself would acknowledge shades and nuances in this. So he would say, for example, 

“Between ‘I do this’ and ‘I am conscious of doing this’, there's a world of difference. There is a consciousness in which unconsciousness predominates [and one in which] self consciousness predominates.”

So as promising as this seems to be an authoritative definition that covers all possibilities, I really don't think that this marginal acknowledgment of self awareness on the part of Jung really moves significantly beyond what we call ‘apperception’ - in other words, knowing that you have thoughts or knowing that you have emotions. 

This is simply what we call re representation of contents (that was part of the definition), as I say, mere apperception, simply knowing that you know something or feel something. And Kastrup himself describes this component of Jungian consciousness as what he calls meta-cognition, “a meta-cognitive experiential process that inspects, interprets and evaluates”... it's self reflective and introspective. And that, according to Kastrup and Jung, is supposed to represent consciousness -- where you have a self reflective moment that is characterized by introspection, analysis, interpretation. 

So there we have an expression of the pinnacle of thought in the world of modern philosophy and modern psychology: that is their idea of consciousness. 

Well, there's always the possibility that Bernardo Kastrup misrepresented Jung's position, but I doubt that because as I said, he read and reread the collective works several times. And he's not a sloppy thinker. But also, I can confirm that, having ardently searched in the Jung material, for example, in Man and his Symbols, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Jacobi's The Way of Individuation and so on, I could not find any definition or description of the practice of consciousness beyond the mundane concept that “I'm aware that I have thoughts, I'm aware that I have feelings.” 

Now, at this point you might be thinking, well, modern psychology has progressed and there's something called mindfulness. And here's the definitions: “A mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment while calmly acknowledging one's feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations.” Or, for example, “mindfulness is awareness of one's internal states and surroundings.” 

No, these definitions simply indicate that there's a gulf, there's a wide gap, there's a chasm between knowledge that is developed in ordinary life and knowledge that comes from esoteric sources. So this is a watershed moment when you have to accept or at least entertain the idea that there's a difference between the knowledge that is developed in ordinary human institutions, churches, science, universities, and so on, and something that we could call esoteric in nature. What does that mean? It means that, and I'm quoting here, esoteric influences differ from the ordinary life influences 

“because first they are conscious in their origin. This means that they have been created consciously by conscious men for a definite purpose. Influences of this kind are usually embodied in the form of religious systems and teachings, philosophical doctrines, works of art, and so on. They are led out into life for a definite purpose.” 

Well, I was quoting Gurdjieff from the book In Search of the Miraculous. I won't dwell for now on the issue of esotericism, but just point out that in that quote that I read, obviously they're using the word ‘conscious’ in quite a different sense either than the colloquial sense or the technical definition given by Jung and Kastrup.

In the official definitions from philosophy and psychology that we were discussing, whereby consciousness has the elements of volition, and a network of associations, and the re representation - the metacognition - that has to do with introspection and analysis and interpretation and so on. In other words, apperception, “I know that I have this thought, I know that I have this feeling.” Well, all of that, categorically, from the esoteric point of view, is subconscious. 

This is what took me a long time to understand. 

Now, here I'm recalling Kastrup's description: “a metacognitive, experiential process that inspects, interprets and evaluates” -- or self reflective introspection. All right, all of that is entirely from the esoteric point of view, subconscious. 

And that is the point of view that Gurdjieff had when he was speaking to Ouspensky in 1916, when World War I was raging. Ospensky would complain and say, well, you know, there's different classes of people. After all, we're not all machines. There's savages and then there's the intellectuals and the artists. And Gurdjieff says, right now, as we speak, there's millions of people slaughtering millions of other ones -- the killing fields of World War I. Where are the intellectuals? Where are the savages? It's all the same. 

In another conversation, Gurdjieff says, look at these people sitting around us in this cafe having these various conversations. In many cases the people become so vociferous, so identified with their political arguments, that of themselves, nothing remains. There's just the emotional argument. There's no entity, there's no consciousness whatsoever that's residual in the person's mind. 

Therefore, in the state of mind that Kastrup and Jung would call the normal state of waking consciousness, Gurdjieff would say, that's the state in which people write books, live out their lives, kill one another, participate in murderous political movements, et cetera, et cetera. 
Well, this is exactly why Gurdjieff says, and here I'm quoting again, “no definitions can help you in this case, and no definitions are possible so long as you do not understand what you have to define. And science and philosophy cannot define consciousness because they want to define it where it does not exist.” 

So I did cover this before, back in the first episode of the whole podcast series. It's called how to Approach Awareness of Being. So here what I'll do is cut and paste the section where I talked about it and where I drew your attention to a PDF resource. Here we go back to season one, episode one, just a three minute excerpt:

So back to this point about the word consciousness and the concept of it. Now I really think there is something to the message in many esoteric schools where they say that this kind of information only comes to you by direct instruction. The crucial thing to understand is that awareness of being is not thought. It does not consist of words or concepts or feelings. It's the faculty of mind that is able to witness the entire contents of the psyche in a given moment.

You might Find useful a PDF that I'm going to have posted in the show notes. It's a set of quotes from an author who is rather obscure. His name is Dr. Rolf Alexander. He was connected briefly with the Fourth Way, but he studied in Tibet in the early part of the 20th century. He fully understood the whole concept of awareness, of being, self remembering, self consciousness in the moment. And this is the way I learned it when this exercise of his was read to me. So I'm going to pass it along to you now. You could be asking, well, doesn't Neville himself cover awareness of being and explain it?

And he does. He talks about the name of God as given in scripture as I am. And he also goes into the detail of what experiencing I am is all about. I think it's necessary to understand exactly what the I am is all about. It's not merely saying the words. I am saying the words is sort of a pointer to the experience, but it's not the experience itself. Now here I'll give you a direct quote from the exercise that I was talking about. 

So the author is Dr. Rolf Alexander and he says: “At first you may be able to hold the consciousness together for only a minute or two before it breaks apart again like a ball of quicksilver and rejoins the subconscious. If you consistently practice this exercise in self awareness on every possible occasion, however, a permanent integration of the consciousness will result and you'll be able to remain in a state of self awareness for as long as you wish to do so. Remember, consciousness itself is wordless. The moment words are thought of consciousness disappears. Words are subconscious symbols, but consciousness is an extremely alert state of vivid awareness.”

And it has nothing to do with words. So that's the end of the excerpt from episode one. 

What I'm going to do is include a link to that PDF that I mentioned in the show notes for this episode. And as well I'll give you links to the works by the students of Gurdjieff who give absolutely the best description and instructions on self remembering, the true sense of consciousness. This will include works by Dr. Rolf Alexander, whom I mentioned in that excerpt, also by Rodney Collin, who was Ouspensky's student and who wrote a particularly detailed and brilliant account of what we call self remembering. 

So to recapitulate our talk so far: we've talked about the colloquial notion of consciousness, the official versions from modern psychology and modern philosophy, and then a transition to esoteric information, quoting from Uspensky's record of the lectures of Gurdjieff as well as their students. 

Well, this brings us to Neville Goddard. And you might well ask, well, what makes him so special in comparison to these other authors that I've been quoting from? 

Well, first of all, Neville conceives of consciousness in exactly the same terms, that is, a state of awareness, of being that is separate from the conditioned state. The Biblical instruction is “I and my father are one,” but “my father is greater than I”. In other words, I'm aware of myself in a certain conditioned state, but I'm also aware that my power of awareness, my faculty for awareness of being is greater than my conditioned state. 

So there he's exactly in accord with the esoteric instructions on personal self remembering. What really sets Neville apart from these other authors is that he is the true idealist. He's the one who takes the idea of mind, consciousness, God, and takes this idea to its logical conclusion. Man's entire existence, his whole universe, is nothing but mentation. It's all mind, it's all psyche. And the other authors simply don't go there. They believe in a material universe with which mind somehow interacts. 
Curiously enough, it is Neville's viewpoint that is the most consistent with scientific evidence itself. So my conclusion is that Neville takes the prize. He's the one that has the best metaphysics, the best personal psychology, the best sense of purpose and the conduct of life.