CONCEPT OF AWARENESS

Awareness is a relative concept. It may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception. It is analogous to sensing something, a process distinguished from observing and perceiving (which involves a basic process of acquainting with the items we perceive). Awareness or “to sense” can be described as something that occurs when the brain is activated in certain ways, such as when the color red is what is seen once the retina is stimulated by light waves. This conceptualisation is posited amid the difficulty in developing an analytic definition of awareness or sensory awareness.

Awareness is also associated with consciousness in the sense that this concept denotes a fundamental experience such as a feeling or intuition that accompanies the experience of phenomena. Specifically, this is referred to as awareness of experience. As for consciousness, it has been postulated to undergo continuously changing levels.

NEUROSCIENCE

Neural systems that regulate attention serve to attenuate awareness among complex animals whose central and peripheral nervous systems provide more information than cognitive areas of the brain can assimilate. Within an attenuated system of awareness, a mind might be aware of much more than is being contemplated in a focused extended consciousness.

(sourse: wikipedia)

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONSCIOUSNESS AND AWARENESS

There is a difference between consciousness and awareness. When you are jogging or running fast, you are aware, you know you are alive, and the road ahead, but you can’t feel anything other than running, think much, or see around. You are sharply focused on running. You can’t look left or right, by biological design. This is awareness.

When you walk slowly, you can enjoy the breeze, look around at people’s faces, see the emotions of street dogs, and the dogs on leashes, you can feel the morning water droplets on the grass, the greenery, the changing color of the sun. This is consciousness.

So, consciousness is the ability to comprehend the instantaneous bioelectrical and biochemistry of combined senses and mind-organ, thoughts, feelings, and observations. Awareness is a sharp focus on the road ahead and knowing how to complete the journey.

“Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience.”

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj