A Map of Consciousness: Iteration 1

I am presently very much occupied with seeking to understand the structure of consciousness. That is, I am trying to make sense of the various levels and states of consciousness within individual beings, especially human beings, and how the consciousness of individuals may interact within larger fields of consciousness. My hope is to come to a more unified understanding of human experience and behavior, especially with regard to religion, spirituality, group identity, and politics.

This is a work in progress. It is my own model. I refer to ideas of other thinkers, but I am incorporating them into my own perspective. Where I am not satisfied with existing terminology, I introduce my own terms.

This map is a proposal that I expect will change, hence Iteration 1. I am fairly sure of some aspects of the structure and have major uncertainty about others.

Consciousness

I use the word consciousness broadly to refer to whatever it is that lies at the core of experience. As you read these words you have the experience of doing so. You know you are reading, and hopefully you are understanding what you read—or you are having the experience that you don’t understand much of it. In any case, you are aware of the experience, which is an inward, subjective participation in this particular moment and event in your life. It is an interaction in which you are aware of yourself and the world outside yourself, but it is finally a mystery. Even if we understand all the physics, biology, neurology, psychology, etc., we are still left with inward, subjective experience which finally simply is.

I equate consciousness with spirit. My thesis is that consciousness is fundamental to reality, that all things (Being, the Creation) and the nothingness from which all things arise (the Source and Ground of Being, the Creator) are all manifestations of consciousness/spirit. Related terms are awareness, knowing, experience, perception, intelligence, feeling, sensation, cognition, presence, and so on. All these terms point back with varying nuances to the same mysterious, underlying quality of reality that is common to all of them. To be—to participate in the web of being—is to participate in a web of experience, and I am using the term consciousness to refer to what might be called the fundamental field of the experience of being.

I suggest that what I call primal consciousness is present in and constitutes all things. This does not mean that all things experience the level of consciousness that we humans experience. I shall use the deliberately redundant term conscious awareness to refer to the sort of consciousness we humans experience in our normal waking state. This is consciousness that is, or at least can be, conscious of being conscious. Less complex beings presumably experience consciousness in less complex ways.

Cutting-edge science and philosophy seem to be increasingly focusing on the terms information and knowledge (information verified by experience) to make sense of reality. Some scientists and philosophers theorize that all information is physical, and that the universe is ultimately pure information.[1] From this perspective, then, consciousness might be defined as the interaction of information. But information for whom? Many religious and spiritual traditions would call it God. This works if we can stretch our understanding of God to encompass all of reality. Many secularists would call it the universe. Whatever we choose to call it, we can see reality as a dance in which reality experiences itself and evolves to become ever more aware of itself.

When consciousness manifests in material being, a fundamental polarity seems to arise: everything that has an outside also has an inside. This gives rise to the distinction between objective and subjective. If we think of every physical thing/being as a bit of materialized consciousness/spirit, then its outside is what is presented to the objective awareness of other such beings and its inside is its own subjective experience of being. The two are not separate, although they are often separated in concept. Such separation is conceptually useful but must be understood to be artificial. There can be no outside without an inside and no inside without an outside. The inside and outside are perspectives of the same manifestation of consciousness. The inside is the conscious experience of the thing/being, and the outside avails the thing/being to interaction with other things/beings. When consciousness interacts outwardly it is called relationship.

Holons and Evolution

My map stands on an evolutionary understanding. The concept of holons is essential to that understanding. Arthur Koestler introduced the term holon in 1967 in his book The Ghost in the Machine. A holon is something that is both a whole and a part. For example, an atom is an identifiable whole, yet atoms are parts of molecules without ceasing to be atoms. Atoms and molecules form a vast range of things including planets and cells. Cells form larger living organisms which, in turn, form social groups, etc., all of which are holons. It’s holons all the way up and all the way down.

Evolution can be seen to be a process of simpler holons combining into more complex holons. At the Big Bang, the universe was pure energy–VERY hot. As the universe expanded and cooled, much of the energy condensed into elementary particles (quarks, leptons, bosons) that combined into a plasma of subatomic particles (electrons, protons, neutrons), which then formed mostly hydrogen atoms with some helium and traces of a few other elements. From there, gravity pulled the elemental atoms and molecules together into stars that became nuclear furnaces to fuse hydrogen into heavier elements. When the larger of these stars used up their fuel, they collapsed which, in turn, triggered supernova explosions, generating even heavier elements and blasting them into clouds of dust that would eventually birth new stars. After billions of years, this process produced our sun and our planet. Eons of bombardment by objects from space and the activity of volcanoes, plate tectonics, and weather slowly created environments here on Earth with the far-from-equilibrium conditions necessary for auto-catalyzing chemical systems that could eventually coalesce into single-cell life. From there, natural selection and extinction events produced six major waves of increasingly complex and diverse life. But it doesn’t stop there. Species developed social behaviors that resulted in schools, flocks, herds, packs, families, tribes, nations. etc. At each stage along the way, new holons emerged from the complexification and combining of older holons.

That is not to say that all things are self-aware or sentient in the same way as we humans. Simple holons have simple consciousness. For example, the physical “laws” that govern the behavior of elementary particles can be regarded as the expression of consciousness at that level of complexity. More complex holons have more complex forms of consciousness. At each higher level of holon, new complexities and properties of consciousness emerge relative to the consciousness of the constituent holons.

Human minds have emerged from eons of evolutionary complexification of many layers of holons. In our experience, so far at least, human consciousness is unparalleled in its capacity to understand (acquire knowledge) and think about reality and ourselves, but that does not mean that our consciousness is fundamentally different from that of other things—more complex, yes—and different in the details of structure and function—but very much part of an evolutionary continuum. The kind of complex, self-aware, cognitive consciousness that we humans experience seems to be relatively new as an emergent phenomenon here on Earth, but that emergence has resulted from complexification of something that reaches back to the beginning of existence and even beyond that.

Integral States of Consciousness

Different spiritual traditions and teachers identify different sets of spiritual states and stages. Because Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory has been pivotal in my own development, and because the Integral models have been synthesized from a wide variety of historical and contemporary sources, I have used an Integral model of states of consciousness as a starting point for my own map of consciousness. I say “a” model rather than “the” model because the Integral understanding of states is not compatible with a fixed list. One’s state of consciousness is the total configuration of consciousness one is experiencing at any given moment, so states of consciousness are transient and quite varied. States can, however, be classified into broad categories such as “waking, dreaming, sleeping, altered, nonordinary, and meditative.”[2]

The model from which I begin pops up in various Integral contexts, especially discussions of spirituality, and identifies five states of consciousness: Gross, Subtle, Causal, Witness, and Nondual.[3]

Briefly and more or less according to Integral Theory:

• Gross consciousness is our ordinary waking state.
• Subtle consciousness is experienced in the dreaming state.
• Causal consciousness is experienced in deep dreamless sleep in which we lose our sense of self and fall into identity with the source of being.
• Witness consciousness is the root experience of awareness, that which observes all that is experienced. (A nice circular definition!)
• Nondual consciousness is the experience of unity with all things/God.

I am interested not so much in states as in structures (levels, types, modes) of consciousness, and I adapt the model accordingly, coming up with some terminology of my own to emphasize what I think important. I see the gross state to correlate with a level of consciousness I call formal, and the subtle to correlate to a level I call relational. I think it is necessary to add the subconscious as another such level of consciousness. That may seem strange, given that the subconscious by definition is not available to our normal conscious awareness, but I shall argue that the subconscious is substantially conscious at its own level. I also think that causal, nondual, and witness are better classified as perspectives rather than states, as I shall explain in the next section.

Primal Consciousness

I have argued that consciousness in its most basic form is fundamental to reality. I call this primal or universal consciousness. It is the fundamental stuff that is complexified through increasingly complex levels of holons to emerge as increasingly complex consciousness. This universal primal consciousness pervades every dimension, aspect, and manifestation of reality—being and non-being, existence and non-existence. Everything and the nothingness from which everything arises are all immersed in this consciousness and participate in it.

This primal consciousness is the stuff of deep mystical experience. It is always present, but we humans are normally too occupied at the complexified, evolved levels of our consciousness to be aware of it. Occasionally, however, whether through deliberate spiritual practice or by shear accident, our minds may quiet enough to be aware of that level of awareness, even if only fleetingly. It is an experience that is at the same time profound and entirely familiar.

I take the causal, nondual, and witness of the Integral model to be, not states, but perspectives rooted in the primal level of consciousness. Causal awareness looks back toward the nothingness that is the source and ground of being and experiences itself to be that source and ground. Nondual awareness looks out toward the diversity of being and experiences itself to be inseparable from all that is. Witness awareness is the experience of I AM, the experience of self as infinite Self, the experience of I AM between and encompassing the causal and the nondual.

Note that these three perspectives correspond closely to the three persons of my ontological interpretation of the Trinity. They are how that Trinity is experienced in consciousness.

Creator — Causal
Creation/Christ — Nondual
Holy Spirit — Witness

These perspectives do not stand on their own as either states or stages of consciousness. They are perspectives inherent in the fundamental consciousness at the core of all complexified forms of consciousness. (Note the bands of color rising up through the entire diagram.) Causal, nondual, and witness awareness are not higher stages that one must strive to reach; they are ever-present perspectives that one must allow into awareness.

Human Personal Consciousness

The complexified consciousness of any holon is shaped by the specific parts and processes that constitute that holon. The complexity of the inside and the outside of the holon are bound together. That is, the holon’s experience of consciousness depends on its physical structure. This means that our human experience of consciousness cannot be separated from the rest of our being. Our experience of consciousness is shaped by and contained in our bodies and our brains.

This is an important principle for understanding the spiritual journey. Often the journey has been seen as progress upward through an other-worldly spiritual realm. I know that was true for me earlier on. The goal was to leave the body and world behind and to rise in contemplation to find enlightenment and union with God on a purely spiritual plane. That is a very attractive myth, and one that has supported spiritual growth fairly well for many centuries, but it is a myth in need of adjustment. Consciousness happens in our bodies and our brains, and that’s where we experience the spiritual journey. The different places we seem to visit on the journey are, at least mostly, different aspects of our own consciousness.

In the map diagram, the curved dashed lines represent the boundaries of an individual human being. The bottom is open to show connection to universal primal consciousness. The top is open to show constituent participation in higher levels of holons. The side boundaries have gaps to indicate permeability. The outside world interacts with our consciousness through sensory perception. We can also consider the possibility that our inner consciousness can interact directly with other beings and levels of reality through what I call interpersonal consciousness—also often referred to as transpersonal phenomena or mystical connection—but that is an open question.

Human consciousness emerges from the complex functioning and interaction of at least dozens of neural structures. Depending on how granular we want to be in distinguishing the components of consciousness, the number of possible combinations is large. But, models are meant to clump large variation into useful groupings. I find the three-tier model of Subconscious-Relational-Formal quite useful. This model correlates well with the three brain complexes identified by triune/tripartite brain theories.[4] It also correlates well with the types of intelligence I discuss in Honest to God.

I shall discuss the three levels of human consciousness here only briefly. I hope to expand the discussion in future blogs.

The Subconscious

It seems that most of human cognition is subconscious, that our conscious awareness is the tip of the iceberg of consciousness and that the bulk of it happens below the surface. I use the concept of the subconscious to mean all the structures and processes that comprise perception, motivation, behavior, and cognition below the level of personal conscious awareness. The subconscious is an aggregation of many different neurological structures and processes, and how unified those components may or may not be in their operation is beyond our normal perception. Neurological and psychological research are slowly revealing how it all works, but there is much yet to be learned.

The subconscious does a lot. It handles the things we don’t “consciously’ control, like breathing, cardiac function, digestion, and sleep cycles. In coordination with the endocrine system, it is the source of instinctual urges like hunger, thirst, sexual appetite, fight-or-flight behaviors, aggression, pain avoidance, pleasure seeking, dominance and submission behaviors, and parental behaviors. It handles the details of voluntary movement and coordination. The subconscious also manages the early stages of perception by doing a lot of pattern recognition, filtering, and basic interpretation so as to present our conscious awareness with intelligible information. Quite importantly, the subconscious manages which outputs from all the various parts of the brain and nervous system get passed to conscious awareness.

But is the subconscious really conscious in its own right? There is much evidence from psychological research to suggest that it is. This evidence comes from a variety of sources including hypnosis, split-brain and brain injury studies, and studies of multiple-personality and other dissociative disorders. It appears that what I am calling our personal conscious awareness rests on broader and somewhat independent layers of consciousness that our conscious awareness cannot directly access or control.

Relational Consciousness

Relational consciousness, as I use the term, is a big topic. It is the center of emotion and social intelligence, which I show in the diagram as a purple oval overlapping from the subconscious into formal consciousness. Relational consciousness arises in the middle of the brain and is in the middle of most of our conscious awareness. It is the seat of the ego and the personality.

Relational consciousness is present and active in the waking state. It is most apparent in the dreaming state, when formal consciousness is largely inactive and does not obscure it.

Relational consciousness is subject to less direct awareness and voluntary control than formal consciousness. It is where social intelligence operates, and it is very much about relationships and qualitative correlation. That is, relational consciousness operates primarily by association and analogy, which is consistent with the pattern-recognition capacities of basic neural networks. It recognizes how things are alike and different and extrapolates its understanding of things it knows to similar things with which it is less familiar. Relational consciousness can be extremely sophisticated at making such correlations. I call this associative cognition. Metaphor, symbolism, and poetry arise from such associative processes. Relational consciousness is the level from which individuals participate in the shaping of myth.

Relational consciousness is where kataphatic mystical experience happens. Kataphatic mysticism involves perceived content, as opposed to apophatic mysticism in which the experience is absent of content. Kataphatic mystical experiences include visions, auditions, spiritual visitations, and other psychic phenomena. Many people rarely if ever have such experiences, but others have them frequently.

Intuition is the bubbling up of subconscious awareness into the periphery of relational consciousness via sensations, feelings, and impressions.

Formal Consciousness

I adapt the term formal from Jean Piaget’s Formal Operational Stage of cognitive development, which normally occurs between the ages of 11 and 15. It is characterized by the emergence of abstract thought, deductive reasoning, and metacognition (thinking about thinking).

Formal consciousness has to do with awareness of form and the rules associated with form. It is where rational cognition happens. Language, a formal system, also happens here. Formal consciousness enables us to engage in critical thinking and science.

Notice that I place formal consciousness at the top level of human consciousness. It stands evolutionarily and functionally above relational consciousness and the subconscious. Some other models flip the order or are vague about it. This is because causal and nondual consciousness are often seen as spiritually higher states. They are, indeed, spiritually profound perspectives, but evolutionarily ancient and fundamental. Creation is about reality (God) becoming aware of and understanding itself, and formal consciousness is the cutting edge of that evolution.

Formal consciousness pretty much happens only in the waking state, although sometimes also in vivid dreams.

Trans-Human Consciousness

As already stated, we humans are holons composed of many types and layers of constituent holons. As holons, we also can be constituents of higher-level holons. The prime example here would be social groupings like families, local communities, ethnic and cultural groups, and political entities (cities, nations). All of these have identities and patterns of awareness, cognition, and behavior that exceed those of the individual humans who comprise them. The recently emergent phenomena of broadly available education, mass-media, the internet, and social media seem to be intensifying and accelerating the evolution of these higher-level holons, often with disruptive effect.

Interpersonal Consciousness?

I use the term interpersonal consciousness to signify the direct sharing of conscious content between the interiors of holons or between holons and non-material spiritual beings without communication by exterior means. This can be called psychic or spiritual connection or communication and includes telepathy and channeling. The question is, does it ever really happen and, if so, in what forms?

This is a VERY important topic that I shall address in a subsequent post.

[1] On this subject I highly recommend The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity by Bobby Azarian (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2022).

[2] Ken Wilber, A Theory of Everything. (Boston: Shambala, 2001), 53.

[3] I draw the model in this specific form from Reflections on The Future of Christianity by Rollie Stanich, companion booklet to the 2 DVD set by Ken Wilber and Thomas Keating, The Future of Christianity: A Startling New Vision of Hope or the 21^st Century (Integral Life, Inc., 2008).

[4] Triune Brain Theory was developed by Paul McLean, M.D., in the second half of the twentieth century and became popularly known through Carl Sagan’s book Dragons of Eden. It is controversial. Some of McLean’s experimental research does appear to have been faulty. However, most of the criticism seems to come from evolutionary biologists who insist that the parts of the human brain that McLean associated with reptiles and lower mammals are, in fact, substantially different from the brains of those animals. The other criticism asserts that we do not have three separately functioning brains but one integrated brain. I have not studied these controversies in any depth, but, as far as I have looked into them, it seems to me that the critics selectively oversimplify the theory to make it easy to refute in a black-and-white manner—but there is a lot of gray there. Of course reptilian brains and the brains of other mammals have evolved along different trajectories in the millions of years since the common ancestors we humans share with them—but we do share common ancestors, and the brains of those common ancestors are the source of the brains we have today. Furthermore, the three brain complexes do appear to have undergone major development during the evolutionary stages identified by the theory. Of course we have only one brain–but experimental evidence shows that different parts of the brain are more involved than others in different types and levels of brain function. Most importantly, we humans can be distinctly aware of different levels of brain function. We have the experience of gut, heart, and head, and those experiences are distinct enough that we can experience them to be in conflict. Triune Brain Theory may not be rigorously accurate in detail, but its general perspective is extremely helpful in modeling the evolution and structure of human consciousness.

© Copyright 2025 John Speers