Lesson 8.
Conscious Existence
In a way, consciousness is always there, underlying
thought. Be it in the waking state or in the dreaming state,
everything we experience is experienced in and by consciousness. All
our thoughts are located inside consciousness. Consciousness is like a
cinema screen on which the film of our existence is being projected.
It is always there in the background. Therefore it is always nearby,
it is so obvious an experience that it is difficult to define it. As
Pascal would have said, the word consciousness is so basic that wanting
to define it only serves to obscure its meaning. All existence
is the object of our reflection inside the consciousness we have of it.
Consciousness is the starting point of our
definition of human being with respect to other forms of existence.
Man, it would seem, has the privilege of consciousness. But of what
consciousness? Can consciousness have many forms? What does it mean
“to be conscious”? Must one consider consciousness a human attribute?
In order to define consciousness, is it enough to oppose Nature’s
unconsciousness to human consciousness? Would consciousness not rather
be something pertaining to all things living? Is consciousness a
specific act or a knowledge existence would have of itself?
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A. Consciousness, a mark of humanness.
First of all, does being conscious mean to think,
in the sense that man is a thinking being? A classic approach to
consciousness consists in considering it a mark of mankind and to
oppose the status of human consciousness to the realm of things or the
realm of animals. In what way does being conscious distinguish man
from animal? What is so specific about human consciousness?
To
answer this question we might begin with recognising in Nature
several degrees among the various forms of existence. Based upon
ordinary experience we can distinguish four degrees in Nature:
1°
Minerals merely exist as such in a certain structure. We would
find it a little difficult to allege that they would have any sort of
awareness. The stone has its given shape, which it sustains against
the work of erosion; its existence in this form appears inert to us and
lacking consciousness. I don’t detect in it the tremor of a life. I
cannot communicate with it. For me, a vigilant observer, it is a mere
object. A thing, that’s all.
2°
Plants, on the other hand, exist and feel; they contain a
kind of vegÉtative life in the sense that we do not detect in them any
principle of motion. Nevertheless it has been shown that plants are
not insensitive, particularly to sounds in their surrounding.
Something manifests in plants and not in minerals, and this thing is
life. Yet does this allow us to speak of consciousness? How can
this basic degree of sensitivity be defined with respect to human
consciousness?
3°
Animals exist, feel and know things; they have some memory and can work
out a few very elementary connections. Their cleverness or their
sociability can be astonishing. It is hard not to credit them with some
degree of consciousness. Not a human consciousness that is. If
animals have consciousness, then it is ruled by basic needs and
conditioned by instinct.
4°
Man exists, feels, knows and, should we say, above all, knows that he
knows. Man expresses all degrees of consciousness; in addition human
consciousness is doubled by self-reflection. If consciousness is cum
(with) scientia (science), then consciousness is indeed
specific to humans. It is because it is a knowledge characterised by
knowing itself that one identifies it by extension with consciousness.
Man is not only conscious in the sense that an animal is conscious; he
has an idea of himself, he knows himself through a representation of
himself which he construes with concepts and he knows himself by means
of concepts. The concept is the general idea and the
representation is the web fabricated with the concepts.
Yet what does it mean to know your self through
consciousness? Is it thinking that distinguishes man from the rest of
creation? The idea of a gulf between man and Nature, as a result of
the emergence of thinking, is very prevalent in Western culture. For
Pascal, consciousness is the equivalent of thinking (la
pensée), which shows us the limits of our existence: “The greatness
of man is great because he knows himself to be miserable. A tree has
no knowledge of being miserable”. A tree can form no idea of what it
is, it is content with merely existing. A man sees himself and
therefore measures himself, first of all with respect to his body;
realising his bodily limitations, he discovers his own finitude, hence
his misery. Without an idea of finitude, man would have no awareness
of finitude; then man would not feel miserable in a universe which
surpasses him in all respects. Yet,
paradoxically, the knowledge that
reveals misery is itself greatness. “Thinking makes the greatness of
man”. Hence this paradox sheds a light on the ambiguity of thinking:
thinking at once takes the mind out of the inertness of an existence in
ignorance, and throws it into the limits traced by its own
representations. Man is his own thoughts. “I have no difficulty
conceiving of a man lacking both hands, feet, head… but I cannot
conceive of a man without thoughts: it would be a stone or a brute.”
Facing a nature which seems unconscious – according to this
interprÉtation of Nature – man has the privilege of consciousness and
must therefore know to make use of it. If our condition condemns us to
thinking, then we are also condemned to rise by means of that very
thinking, and for that very reason: “All our dignity therefore consists
in thinking”. Conversely we ought to add that our lack of dignity is
also in thinking. Our existence is nothing other than what our
thinking will have produced. I am my thinking and my thinking makes me
what I am. We could retain this idea as one of Pascal’s most important
ones: that the essence of man is his thinking.
In this analysis man is radically opposed to
Nature. Since we do not find in Nature creatures that, like ourselves,
would of their own ability be inclined to gain knowledge, we conclude
to a brutal opposition between man and Nature. Man exists aware of
himself, while Nature is content to exist without self-awareness.
Thus
we can, along with Hegel, oppose immediate existence to
mediate existence. Plants or animals exist in themselves,
immediately as a single block, because they have no representation of
what they are. As mind man has in himself two degrees, he exists
doubly. He exists and he knows that he exists through representing
himself in some manner; he beholds himself, he exists for-himself.
Things only exist in-themselves. Existence in-itself is
immediate and non-reflected, while existence for-oneself is
mediated and reflected. Therefore when one comes across a conscience
in Nature other than man, then it will be of the immediate sort. Were
it reflected, it would be so in a language using concepts. I
could then discuss with my dog and he would be able to answer me!
Immediate thinking however remains at the level of feeling, images or
memories, it has not yet been conceptualised; it is immersed in and not
yet distinct from Being. It is not yet reflected, able to become aware
of itself. Hegel does not consider that there might be at the heart of
Being an original self-awareness. He considers self-awareness to be a
by-product.
Thus Hegel calls self-awareness the formation
of a consciousness, which, referring back to itself, makes possible a
knowledge of oneself based on immediate awareness. This can take place
on a theoretical level in the sense that man, through
introspection, attempts to describe himself, and detects within himself
the meanderings of the human heart. He discovers that he is a
subject and what subjectivity means. Self-awareness however
is also formed through practical activity, since when man transforms
the world of objects he introduces into it something of himself and
hence recognizes himself in his doing. When I move into a new room, I
turn this at first alien place into my own interior. I taint it with
my own consciousness. Thus interiority envelops exteriority and
changes it in its own image. Man’s interiority (the for-itself,
position of the thesis) etches its stamp on his exteriority (the
in-itself, position of the antithesis) and the result contributes to
the formation of self-awareness (position of the synthesis). Here, in
the formative process of self-awareness, we see an illustration of
Hegel’s dialectics; this is a highly systematic way of
exposition, a logical process following the mediation of the three
terms thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Self-awareness is here the same
thing as self-knowledge. It is a result of the process of
reflecting on oneself within the framework of temporality. This
process is a very gradual genesis, a mediation starting out from
immediateness. This genesis begins very early since Hegel himself says
that “the little boy throwing pebbles into the water and admiring the
rings formed on the surface, is in fact admiring a work in which he
enjoys to watch his own activity.” To consider an act in this
self-referral manner shows that the ego is already full-grown
and has placed itself at the centre of its world or of a world it
intends to appropriate. Self-awareness is in the making.
Does this mean that it is late when man’s child
gains a sense of self? Yes, and one could verify this experimentally.
A child does not start out saying “me, me”. At the stage when he moves
indifferently and without attachment from one activity to the next, he
is not in the position of an ego centred on itself. At this stage he
refers to himself in the third person, using “he” or his first name.
His identity is not yet established, his consciousness is as yet
undifferentiated. The ego is not yet present. However there is
already an I, the child speaks already. This means that there is
within him a thinking activity, which has begun to discriminate things,
to name them, without for this reason positing himself at the centre as
a sovereign self. As Kant says with much lucidity: “the child that
already knows how to speak fairly correctly, begins only later (maybe a
year later) to say I; before this he speaks of himself in the third
person (Charles wants to eat, walk etc…); and it would seem that for
him a light has suddenly been lit when he starts saying I; from that
day onwards, he never reverts to his former manner of speaking. Before
he only felt himself, now he is thinking himself”. Effectively, in
feeling there is immediacy, the immediacy of sensation and
sentiment. In thinking on the contrary there is a representation of
the self, one that weaves a form and yields an identity. The idea of
the self arises against an undifferentiated background, according to
the way in which the child situates itself. The child’s early thoughts
sow the first seeds of duality, opposing what is mine to what isn’t,
distinguishing between self and others and with this one the comparison
with others. It is at this stage that the total break with the
immanence of the little human animal takes place, the child becomes
aware that he is an ego, a person, in the sense that he
is a unique person who stays the same through time, and therefore
identical with himself.
The passage from childhood to manhood mimics, in a
progressive genesis, the structural distinction which separates the
different realms of Nature and particularly the separation between
animal and man. At first the child, in the manner of all animals, is
one with Nature; he makes a break through opposing his own self to what
is not his own self. Here we get a clearer picture of what constitutes
the specificity of human consciousness, the arising of a duality of the
subject (the self) and the object (the non-self);
this because it is this duality that the awareness of the
ego is gradually built up. You do not find self-awareness in animals.
Mostly animals put their collective consciousness (the herd, the tribe,
the hive) before their individual consciousness; the animal is only
dimly aware of himself and his consciousness is unable to form a
representation of its own existence. In this meaning, he exists, but
he doesn’t know that he does. As soon as his sense of self forms, then
too the I emerges through defining itself. It crystallizes into
somebody.
B. Approaching the field of consciousness.
To be conscious is to be a conscious subject. But
it also means being awake and experiencing something. Let’s try to
clarify what actual experiencing is. This will help us see what
a fact of consciousness is.
“I am aware” is an expression which in one stroke
refers to a collection of events that appear in the field of
consciousness. I am aware implies that I perceive the light outdoor,
the noise in the room, a thought crossing my mind, a tummy-ache, a
desire and so on. Everything presenting itself to me in this way is an
experience of my consciousness. The apparition of an experience
is similar to light shed on an object, a luminous spot which would
symbolise the light of Consciousness. Understood in this way, the
field of consciousness has many features. First of all it has
boundaries, since I cannot be aware of everything. It is relative to
my looking at this or that object worthy of my attention. I pay no
attention to what does not interest me. I feel I am its owner since it
is where my experience is written. A field also has its own geological
structure, and in the same way the field of my consciousness contains
strata relative to my past experience. From here we can study the
characteristics of conscious experience.
1)
To better understand the characteristics of conscious experience, we
shall begin with considering the most important property of
consciousness: all consciousness is intentional. One calls
intentionality the property of consciousness such that it always
presents itself to us, when we are vigilant, as
consciousness-of-something, that is directed towards an object which is
its intentional design (goal, purpose). The vigilant subject takes its
structure from its relation to its object. In perception I am
conscious-of this door slamming, this cloud in the sky. When desiring,
I am conscious-of what I desire. When imagining, dreaming, my
consciousness becomes an awareness of images. In love my feelings are
directed towards the object of my love. When judging, my consciousness
becomes consciousness of judgement and so on. In other words, any
experience had in vigilance is a consciousness pointing at an object.
It follows in particular that man always thinks of himself from the
standpoint of his motivations, in connection with a kind of
finality with respect to the goal he seeks; it also follows that we
judge others according to their intentions upon acting. Phenomenology
describes consciousness with this discovery as its starting point,
intentionality being its central thesis. In experience Husserl
distinguishes the ego cogito, the thinker, the conscious
subject, from the cogitatum, what is being thought, the object
of consciousness. “States of consciousness are referred to as
intentional. The word ‘intentionality’ means nothing other than this
fundamental and general property of consciousness to be consciousness
of something, to carry, as cogito, its cogitatum in itself”.
Subject and object form a totality which is thus given at the same time
in the experience of vigilance. A duality is there which structures
experience. When underlining the duality one finds in intentionality
one says that consciousness is an ek-stasis in direction of the World.
Indeed, to be conscious of something takes me out of myself and pulls
me towards the object. Vigilant consciousness is naturally extrovert.
2)
Conscious experience is also characterised by immediacy. When
I am afraid, there is no distance between myself and fear, I am
immediately aware of my experience; that is experience is given without
a distance. I do not need to deduce what it is I am aware of, since it
is immediately there. On the contrary, to admit of unconscious
phenomena, one has to use deduction and say for instance that the
nervous manners of this speaker stem from his unconscious. One can
never observe the unconscious; one only observes what is given in
consciousness. The unconscious cannot enter the domain of
consciousness, it is hidden, or else it would not be unconscious. Our
immediate experience is always conscious, or pertains to the field of
consciousness. The immediacy of experience also explains the painful
character of feelings. When I am sad, my sadness is wholly
there in my experience, there is no distance between myself and my
sadness. Affectivity takes place in this direct relation of oneself to
oneself that consciousness carries within itself in the immediacy of
its experiences.
3)
Not only that, but experiences are also characterised by inwardness.
Here the word ‘inward’ could not be understood in a purely spatial
sense. When we say that experiences take place inside, we mean that
they are always marked by the seal of a Presence to itself of
consciousness. An experience is real for us only because it
constitutes, together with our other experiences, the stream of
inner life. This inwardness easily allows us to situate ourselves
with respect to things in the world. Things appear to exist in a
manner that does not admit of this interiority which constitutes a
conscious subject. In interiority our relation to ourselves is
established, namely intimacy. Our inner stream of experiences
can have greater or lesser density, greater or lesser emptiness,
according to the degree of presence or absence to itself of the
subject.
4)
Experience is characterised by subjectivity. This word must not be
mixed up with the previous term. We say that experience is
subjective. This means that it cannot be observed by witnesses from
outside. Had that been the case, we would be in the exact situation of
objectivity, the very one science is looking for in shared
experiences. Experience has this unique characteristic that it is
originally given to one person only. Peter and Paul may both state
that the sky is red, but Peter cannot enter Paul’s consciousness to see
what he experiences and vice versa. Common sense, under the influence
of scientific tradition, uses the word “subjective” not without
suspicion as regards the content of experience. “All this is rather
subjective…”. This negative seal, this suspicion towards subjectivity
is rather characteristic of our scientific knowledge which gives
precedence to objectivity, that which can be observed, measured. Yet,
even if our knowledge gives precedence to objectivity, as subjects, we
are subjectivity. Life is subjective, as are all the qualities
given in experience.
5)
The subjectivity of experience also implies personality. We say
that experience is subjective, meaning that it takes place as a
personal history, and contributes to construe the identity of the
conscious subject. Ordinary language easily distinguishes between what
is “personal” and what isn’t. In what is personal there is a tight and
intimate connection between the ego and certain things, which are like
the bricks building the personality. The word personality by
extension refers to the complex structure of the conscious subject, the
psychological structure that characterizes individual identity. It is
of its own nature that experience becomes part of the history of an
individual; in a way all experience appears in the field of
consciousness and, far from being anonymous or impersonal, is marked
with the seal of the ego.
6)
The experience that takes place is marked by temporality.
Thinking is not a fixed thing, but an extremely rapid and mobile flow.
Vigilance is a stream of consciousness in which experience keeps
transforming itself to take on different aspects. It would be
impossible to reconstitute the innumerable ideas, images and
perceptions following one another in us in the course of just a few
minutes. Our thinking is often agitated and concentration is not our
most frequent state. In vigilance, restlessness constantly tosses us
about, and this way it generates thoughts. Contemporary philosophy
acknowledges this fact, while insisting on the temporality which is
immanent to the field of consciousness. Experience takes place inside
psychological time and we always exist with respect to time.
This means above all that change is not an appendix to consciousness,
something added from outside: the self is in the making, because
our thoughts and experiences all take place within us in time. The
subjective modes of desire and of passion are temporal. There could
not be a vigilant consciousness without a preservation of the past in
the form of memory. Perception and memory can not be separated.
Neither could there be consciousness without a push towards the future
in the form of a project. And neither could there be consciousness
without the possibility of one’s attention being put on the present.
7)
The field of consciousness does not confine itself to being a screen
facing a hallucinating consciousness, projected on the screen, thrown
towards the objects. In vigilance I am aware-of-something, but I also
retain the possibility of detachment from this or that object; there is
in consciousness’ witness the essential aspect of being available. Not
only is all awareness awareness-of-something, but at the same time, all
awareness is also self-awareness. Attention is the ability of
consciousness to transit from one object to the next, without
consciousness ever being able to really stick to any one object.
Voluntary attention is called concentration. Involuntary
attention is proper to a floating quality of consciousness, which
entails that one allows oneself to be caught up by an object. For
instance if a pleasant music reaches my hearing, and if I am not
entirely absorbed by what I am doing, then my attention will be drawn.
We then say that the field of consciousness is optional. There
we find the origin of consciousness’ freedom with respect to the
objects of the world, the flame of attention. Consciousness is
consciousness-of-itself and at the same time consciousness of
something; this means that it is originally a Presence belonging
to itself. It is not just drawn to the objects.
C. Vigilance and Lucidity
We have just located some of the important
characteristics of the field of consciousness that allow us to clarify
the meaning of our original question. To be conscious, according to
our own everyday experience, is to be vigilant; and to vigilance
pertains all the qualities which we have just considered. If being
conscious is to be vigilant, then what exactly is vigilance?
1)
Vigilance is the waking state’s essential attribute. The waking state
must be understood with respect to two other relative states of
consciousness, which are sleeping and dreaming. Let’s consider the
moment when we fall asleep. To begin with, our awareness continues to
busy itself with the surrounding world, with its noise, its scents, its
contacts. The world is then the place which draws our attention, and
therefore towards which our awareness is directed. By falling asleep,
our relation to the outside world changes, as does our relation to our
body. While our muscles shiver, our body relaxes and bouts of images
occur to us. We lose sight of the World and dreaming begins.
Consciousness is still intentional, but now it makes its way towards
the fictive realm of dreaming, from being conscious of things it
becomes conscious of images, while remaining conscious-of-something.
What is striking is that the activity of thinking continues in the
absence of a subject who would be aware of the world, that is, in a
state of unconsciousness. This is a lesson we must retain on the
nature of awakening: awakening is not related to thinking activity.
It is precisely at the moment when thinking gets at its most active,
and even unbridled, that we are most deeply sunk into unconsciousness.
Agitated thinking does not mean a lucid consciousness, quite the
contrary. Contrarily to a commonly held opinion, to be intensely awake
does not mean “thinking a lot”. On the contrary, it means allowing
oneself not to be distracted by useless thoughts which would alter the
Presence and our own presence on the level of perception.
Yet in sleep the collapse of vigilance is even
deeper than in dreaming. Throughout the night in a cyclic manner we
sink into a deep drowsiness, which will allow the body to regenerate;
that is we sink into deep sleep, which is void of thoughts. If
awakened in this state, we feel very heavy and passably thick. One
must always complete the cycle of sleep. This torpor from deep sleep
teaches us something else as well: in this state, the self disappears.
The sense of self can only appear if a thought manifests; in the
absence of thought, there is no sense of self. This means that the
sense of self does not exist in any durable way. Stranger still, we
find that this state is rather pleasant, it is the one in which we are
most peaceful and relaxed. Even an unprepossessing face recovers a
certain beauty when asleep, which it owes to the calm of sleeping
awareness. Thus we say “I have slept like the blessed”. Here is yet
another idea we shall have to come back to: the self spends its time
awake searching for happiness in the objects of the senses, and oddly
it is precisely when the sense of self vanishes that there is a
blissful appeasement. In addition, if thought is thus abolished every
night, this means that consciousness is not always intentional.
Consciousness regularly returns to a non-intentional form, withdrawn
into itself and without thoughts.
2)
When vigilance gets established on exiting sleep, intentionality once
more unfolds and consciousness is once more
consciousness-of-something. It comes out of itself, of its intimate
rÊtreat into sleep, and is flung into the network of the world, this
web its weaves with all its world-oriented thoughts. We call the
natural attitude the manner in which consciousness finds itself in
this state.
We know what vigilance is in this state. It is a
kind of alertness in front of peril. One has told us time and again
“be vigilant!” and this mean “take heed”, and this exhortation is how
we normally understand vigilance: a kind of warning which refers to our
responsibilities. So to someone asking us: “what does it mean to be
conscious?” we would naturally answer: to beware, to be careful, to
mind our responsibilities, not to be unconscious and make mistakes or
idiocies. This implies that in the waking state, awareness is from the
beginning a moral awareness, that the sense of duality in which we live
is immediately interpreted in terms of good and evil.
Vigilance is consequently the very ek-static
condition of consciousness, because in vigilance consciousness is
pulled out of itself towards the world. By coming into vigilance,
consciousness takes up the position of the natural attitude; it then
tends to posit reality in external objects. In vigilance I feel
thrown into a world which precedes me, which is not mine, a world in
which I must find my way and my place. This world immediately creates
a tense tangle of musts. “I must be careful”, “I must do this…I must
not do that” and so on. I feel responsible with respect to the world,
put in the position of a watchman because I am vigilant. My
wakefulness is also watchfulness. We should note here that the word
vigilance is itself understood as a call to order, as if there were
a constant need for a spur to maintain the vigilance of consciousness,
lest it fall asleep.
Consequently the nature of vigilance is rather
consciousness-of-something than a consciousness-of-oneself.
Effectively it pertains to vigilance to pull consciousness towards a
world in which I lose sight of what I am. What matters is the call of
all our musts to order directed at the world. The result is that in
vigilance, I forget myself in favour of the world. Vigilance tends to
peg consciousness to the world. It is not enough to “be conscious” in
order to know oneself, since consciousness spontaneously pulls us out
towards the world. Watchful tension also narrows the field of
consciousness. In fact, when one mimics the attitude of someone on the
alert on spontaneously adopts the posture of someone on the look-out
for possible enemies, one frowns as if in effort, and consciousness is
reduced to the object of its worry. It is no longer spontaneously
aware of itself, but thrown beyond itself, stuck at the level of
object-awareness.
3)
Is this the only form of consciousness at our disposal? Is it possible
to be at once vigilant and self-aware? Perhaps the harassment of
vigilance is not the highest form of consciousness? Let’s suppose for
a moment that our attention remains fully awake, yet without
tension. Not vigilance in the ordinary sense of the word, but a
passive vigilance, which is neither an alertness on pins and needles
nor at the other extreme a semi-stupor, a dozing consciousness. There
exists a state beyond vigilance in which consciousness finds a balance,
a state we call lucidity. Lucidity is a waking state in which
the attention is fully alive, a calm, present and relaxed attitude. It
emerges when the attention, instead of being swallowed up by the
external, becomes simultaneously aware of both the external and the
internal. The lucid awareness is like a lantern on the threshold of a
house, at once aware of the exterior and the interior, it is
consciousness in the position of a witness. This is the state we refer
to as lucidity. It is a constant observation which is sustained in the
midst of a feeling of being. It is consciousness placed in freedom and
openness, without presuppositions; it is consciousness welcoming its
perception of now. If vigilance is above all looking out,
lucidity is at once looking out and looking in. Lucid awareness does
not rÊtreat inwards, a slip into sleeping unconsciousness. Neither
does it fall out into the world and the oblivion of feverish activity.
It is wholly itself all throughout activity. In this state
consciousness, having turned into a witness, carefully observes all
that takes place. An external event, an emerging thought, a worry, are
immediately noticed. A full attention to the present experience allows
one to see what this thought is actually bringing, its background.
Also, in action lucid awareness involves the agent unreservedly,
without allowing him to slip away. Hence he gives to each thing its
due share of attention and does nothing carelessly. If I am walking in
the wood and that my mind is elsewhere then there is a risk I stumble
on a branch. I miss out on the pleasure of walking and on the feeling
of being in the wood, I am elsewhere and not really here. I am
lost in my thoughts, I am split, I am not really present, while
lucidity implies investing oneself into each moment without shying
away; it is one with the Presence which gives life to the present.
When lucid, the intellect is identified with
seeing, it becomes the act of seeing, it becomes a witness to what
is taking place inside the field of consciousness. It acquires the
position of an observer. In this state of restful alertness the mind
is particularly lively and intelligent. Lucidity allows one not
only to discover all the diversity of changing experience, but it also
enables one to see the complexity of the self, how quickly the mind
takes on a different shape as it wraps itself now in one thought, now
in another. It also has us welcoming other people’s presence without
prejudice, it makes us receptive. It is in this open state that I may
experience arrogance, shyness, grace, affection, and also
aggressiveness, stupidity, equivocation and so on, anything that can
present itself to lucid seeing. So far we have paid very little
attention to what other people have expressed. Carried away by daily
vigilance into the sea of our concerns, we end up with only a skin-deep
idea of other people since these are mostly judged with respect to
their momentary usefulness to ourselves. Could we only put the tension
of vigilance within brackets, while preserving the same degree of
self-awareness, we would also be able to listen to what other people’s
presence is trying to express. Only a wide and profound consciousness
could teach this, and not the narrow and limited consciousness we
experience in vigilance. Then it is necessary that consciousness
maintains this state in which its vision is directed both inwards and
outwards.
Nevertheless, when we say that vigilance is the
condition of man in the world, the ek-static condition of
consciousness, it does not follow that man’s thinking would be as
confused as an animal’s. In man it is reflection which through and
through structures vigilance, and not mere thinking activity.
Reflection involves me in the world through my projects, my desires, my
expectations, my fears, prejudice and so on. When we say of someone
that he is thoughtless this means only that he does not make an
intelligent use of his own thinking capacity. It does not mean that he
doesn’t think, that he does not have a certain representation of the
world. The world of my vigilance is the one I represent to myself, it
is my world. Is vigilant thinking genuinely “immediate”? No. It is
permanently influenced by the mediation of the natural attitude.
Becoming vigilant, I posit the relation of subject/object, I posit that
I stand face to face with a real world, I think within the framework of
a very sharp object/subject duality, that which draws the line between
myself and others. Conceiving of a reality outside the self is typical
and natural of thinking in the waking state.
Hence we need mind our wording when affirming that
philosophy must take us from the level of immediacy and thoughtlessness
to that of a mediate reflection. Common sense is far from being
altogether immediate! Were it so, it would be void of prejudice; in
reality, beyond any philosophical culture, common sense rests on all
the presuppositions of spontaneous attitude. This is why it is
difficult to pretend that vigilance presents us with “the immediate
data of consciousness”, because what we believe to be given without
mediation is in fact already mediated. Thus when I think of myself as
thrown into a world which precedes me, I uncritically accept as a
starting point a state which is in fact the result of vigilance. In
reality, in my waking state representation of the world I have
construed it as external, in front of me and real. I have also
construed myself as one with my body which has a place in this world.
This construction does not take place in the sleeping state and it is
different in the dreaming.
Husserl calls transcendental attitude the
position of the philosopher who puts the natural attitude within
brackets, in order to examine its suggestions, and in order to describe
how consciousness construes its object. He calls this attitude that of
the impartial witness. We shall call vigilance the
natural attitude and lucidity the transcendental attitude. We
shall say that in fact the access to the transcendental attitude is via
lucidity beyond vigilance. Where then is the difference between a being
who is conscious in vigilance and one who is conscious in lucidity?
Let’s say that lucidity is a unified consciousness, while
vigilance is a consciousness marked by duality. Lucidity does not mean
that one judges, rates, condemns or approves. It is simply a matter of
seeing, seeing what is there. This is being lucid. This is the
penetrating vision, or insight. Presence has its own
language and this language says that which is. For instance other
people express what they are, especially when they do not control
themselves or try to “make a good impression”. If our inner core is
quiet, then it is this Presence which will be speaking to us. This
impartial observation that does not judge is lucidity. It is easier at
first to exert it with respect to Nature, since we already look upon
Nature without condemning it, then we can look at man and finally at
ourselves in this way. All things can be observed with a free and
loving eye, with an eye that has not already decided what should be
there, but which merely wonders at the world it is little by little
discovering. This does not imply a distance from facts. It implies
receiving the presence of that which is. Lucidity is a “constant
observation of everything, of every thought, feeling, action, as and
when they arise”.
Our way of looking at things is mostly very
different from the lucid way of looking at the same things. Our
prejudiced approach to things and beings acts as blinkers. We do not
pay attention to ourselves, we only see what is of interest to us, and
we are as distracted away from our self as we are fascinated by the
object. When peril peaks, our vigilance is sharpest, yet only with
respect to a specific object and not in a wide and total manner. We
only rarely reach this state of observation in which we are fully aware
of what is going on within us and around us. In addition, most of the
time we are not even entirely vigilant, but slip into a sort of
drowsiness using all kinds of strategies of flight and compensation.
We find no opportunity to raise our vigilance to the level of lucidity,
one in which the self-awareness of a witness is at last achieved.
However it is possible to apply one’s attention to daily life and to
become more aware of what we are, and at the same time be conscious of
the experiential situation in which we are. This is a fascinating
study area and also entirely new, it is the field of knowledge of
the self.
* *
*
We
have given an answer to our question: what does it mean to be
conscious? Lucidity is doubtlessly a human privilege. To be
conscious, in the highest sense of this term, means to be lucid. In
the sense of vigilance, it means to look at the world carefully. Man
has a vocation: to live in full awareness of the self. It is his
birthright to live in full awareness. The maturity of self-awareness
is the other aspect of being fully present to the world.
In
fact to say that man is “thought” is not enough. It is not mere
thinking which raises us above the status of animals, and thinking is
not wakefulness. It is self-awareness which is the elevation specific
to mankind. Man is by nature able to reflect a high value of
consciousness. He is not destined to live within the narrow frame of
vigilance (ordinary human life), and even less so at the different
unconscious levels beneath consciousness (the life of an animal or a
plant).
Yet
this answer is so paradoxical that it creates almost more problems than
it resolves! It forces us to be more specific as to what should be
understood by self-awareness. It requires us to say what
self-awareness’ specific identity consists in. Also, we do not know if
thought is a simple, and not a composite, phenomenon. We would need to
show to what extent thinking actually belongs to us and examine if in
fact it is really ours.
* *
*
Home
© Philosophy
and spirituality, 2003, Serge Carfantan. Translated by
Catarina
Lamm
