Consciousness and Awareness

The result that people striving to make life meaningful in the world reach after arduous journeys is usually love. However, the word where the differences in the meanings we attach to words are perhaps most evident is love. Perceiving conditioned selfishness as love is one of the fundamental misconceptions. Being able to love a being independently of our own existence is possible with a high level of awareness and mature consciousness. To what extent can loving a cat or dog we keep in our own home be perceived as love for animals? In this article, based on my own thoughts, I wish to open a window of thought for you.

Is it possible to understand love without freeing ourselves from the feeling of ownership? Where does ownership or possession begin, and where does it end? Perhaps it is possible to understand the temporary ownership of a good or property, but what determines the limit of one living being belonging to another? I believe that the answers to these questions must be sought in the correct understanding of consciousness and awareness. Otherwise, all loves can turn into a small and calm sea of sadness amid the noise of fears, anxieties, and storms raging in our world of thoughts.

Consciousness is a state that requires a high level of awareness. However, consciousness also consists of various layers. The influence of past experiences and a priori knowledge on the formation of consciousness cannot be denied. However, it must also be acknowledged that the barriers created by past experiences can hinder the transition to a higher layer of consciousness. This is because the majority of past experiences form the thoughts encoded by the brain. Whether these thoughts are right or wrong is beyond the scope of this topic. However, these thoughts influence our preferences and behaviours in some way.

Perceiving the world we interpret through our perceptions independently of these thoughts creates an awareness that breaks down the walls around consciousness. This stage, where a person becomes aware of their own consciousness, is a prerequisite for subsequent stages of consciousness. Today, the capitalist way of life's compulsion to define everything in terms of material equivalents seems to have driven some people to seek the reality of humanity and human beings. The journey of philosophers (which I include Jiddu and Osho in) to understand the world and humanity invites people to move away from the constraints of capitalist society and search for their own reality.

The next stage of consciousness is the formation of consciousness about the world. At this stage, we become aware of our place in society and the world, and a collective consciousness is formed. Nevertheless, there are obstacles that make the formation of this consciousness difficult at this stage. It must be acknowledged that very few people succeed in this endeavour. Others fall into the trap of ideologies, which Marx defined as false consciousness, and religion falls into the same category as these ideologies. When thought associates its own reality with these beliefs, it falls into the trap.

However, at this point, science also attempts to examine, research and understand the world and humanity with impartial curiosity. By its very nature, science does not attempt to dictate anything to humanity within the limits of its consciousness or to impose anything on it. If it did, it would be no different from false consciousness. By science, I mean pure knowledge, unadulterated knowledge; free from prejudice, values and beliefs. For example, scientific knowledge cannot be produced on one's own subjects under the guise of nationalism or religious identity. Because then, impartiality is fundamentally lost.

Therefore, a difficult task falls to humanity. Can the responsibility and awareness of self-understanding be developed in the ethics of science? Here, humanity must first shed its ideological, religious, and ethnic identities. The vast majority of people who embark on this path remain on it and cannot go further. This is because people strangely fall into the traps set by ideology and beliefs, remaining imprisoned by their value judgements and the thinking that supports them. The emotion that people at this stage call love cannot go beyond being a conditional sentimentality limited by social norms.

Just as the concept of pure evil is difficult to define, so is pure goodness. Just as it is impossible for an evil act to be motivated purely by evil, the same is true for goodness. Motivation does not necessarily have to be based on material gain. It can be very diverse. In short, the concepts of good and evil only make sense within a defined framework. When you remove the framework from your mind, the concepts of good and evil lose their meaning. It is certainly not easy to rebel against social norms and say that goodness is meaningless. Nor is it correct. Because whether our behaviour is labelled good or evil should not be our concern.

To reach this high level of consciousness, one must abandon their habits. These habits can be anything from a material object to a way of life. After separating their habits and the false consciousness created by social norms, people begin to look at the world (and, of course, everything in it) with a different consciousness. After this stage, explaining the path a person has chosen in terms of good and bad is no different from evaluating that path with social norms or beliefs. Becoming independent of value judgements is an important step in expanding the boundaries of consciousness.

Beliefs appear to be a real source of fear and anxiety. Although it may seem easy to get rid of them, as religion and ideology are generally the most well-known, distancing oneself from beliefs, large and small, is something that very few people can actually achieve. From this point onwards, cosmic consciousness begins to develop, and the individual takes their wholeness with the world to a higher level, beginning to form a wholeness with the universe. This wholeness requires not consuming energy in any way against the functioning of the universe. The energy consumption caused by the pursuit of pleasure beyond vital needs is, based on the second law of thermodynamics, the stones laid on the path to depletion.

Where does the individual begin? This is a very important question. Without answering this question, it is impossible to raise the level of consciousness first to collective consciousness and then to cosmic consciousness. Collective consciousness is never thinking the same as society and acting according to their values. This can be explained briefly as a sense of responsibility. Perhaps the point where our beliefs are most rigid and which we can never overcome is formed by the relationships we establish with our immediate surroundings as individuals: spouse, relatives, mother, father, siblings, etc. I am not talking about rejecting these relationships; I am simply trying to explain that these relationships are an obstacle to achieving a higher level of awareness and consciousness. To put it briefly, we can never free ourselves from the meaning these relationships hold for us. Perhaps what led Nietzsche to the idea that humans can never be free was our dependence on these relationships and experiences; I don't know.

Attaining cosmic consciousness is a subject that transcends many people. To achieve this, one must first internalise the oneness with the universe. This is not as easy as it sounds. It requires overcoming the fear of death, which lies at the root of human fears. Goethe said, ‘A person who cannot account for their 4,000-year history is a person who lives only for the day.’ In my opinion, even 4,000 years is insufficient. To attain cosmic consciousness, one must be able to account for our 4.5-billion-year-old world. This accounting cannot be done through knowledge alone, but only through a state of consciousness. Because no matter what we do, no one can account for such an immense burden at the level of knowledge. This endeavour to reach this state of consciousness has been humanity's greatest struggle, especially in the last 3,000 years.

I am slowly coming to the end of my writing. As long as humans cannot define their dependencies, no matter how much they observe, they will not be able to see themselves. They will only be faced with a network structure consisting of a web of relationships. To consider freedom in such a ridiculous context as being able to do whatever one wants is completely incompatible with the content of this text. The moment the observer becomes the observed, one must see the network of relationships that limits them.

The next step is to move to a stage where these networks of relationships are no longer an obstacle, as required by the level of consciousness. Otherwise, wanting to break free from these dependencies on the one hand, while imprisoning oneself in them on the other, creates conflict. The solution to this conflict is either to remain on the side of those dependencies and live happily (!) with the current level of consciousness, or to overcome those dependencies and reach a level of consciousness where one understands that the reason for human existence in the world is love. To escape this conflict arising from the difference between reality and thought, the individual must either surrender to their thoughts or continue their search for reality. Without either, the person remains in limbo.

As an individual, a person is first responsible for the maturity of their own consciousness. Escaping this responsibility often leads the person into longer periods of uncertainty. Uncertainty increases conflict. It is possible to resolve conflict not by distancing oneself from love, but by distancing oneself from dependencies. True love emerges when there is no conflict and requires a high level of awareness and consciousness. Freeing oneself from dependencies does not mean removing people from one's life entirely. Of course, as social beings, we will have relationships, but without creating dependencies.

This article is entirely an experimental study on human beings and their perception of reality. I would like to emphasise that I do not wish to venture into fields of study in which I do not have sufficient knowledge.