On Consciousness and Beyond | An interdisciplinary Approach to Consciousness and Intentionality

On Consciousness and Beyond

Evangelos Legakis – An interdisciplinary approach to consciousness and intentionality

An interdisciplinary Approach to Consciousness and Intentionality

Evangelos Legakis UID: 3035165603

[email protected]

BSTC6083 The concept of emptiness and Prajñāpāramitā literature Class led by: Ven. Hin Hung

Masters of Buddhist Studies Hong Kong University

Essay Date of Submission: 14/11/14



For the last few decades, consciousness has been in the forefront of

neuroscience as well as in the forefront of religious doctrines for further investigation.

Indeed it is a vast subject, thus more specifically, what I will investigate and convey is

the interdisciplinary correlatives between the scientific perspectives and that of Buddhist

teachings. In regards to science, I will include neuroscientific perspectives without this

constricting this essay to include other point of views that originate in different

disciplines but nevertheless integrate well with science, such as psychological and

philosophical perspectives. In regards to the Buddhist doctrine I will refer to fundamental

principles of emptiness (Suññata) and dependent co-arising (paticcasamuppāda) to

exemplify notions of experience related to consciousness. Passing through these

contradictory disciplines in the past but cooperative at present, and taking in account

important philosophies of science and Buddhism to explore “consciousness” in its broad

and complex view, I will offer a perspective on what can be reasoned as ‘essence consciousness’. “Intentionality”, on the other hand, “is that property of many mental

states and events by which they are directed at or about or of objects and states of

affairs in the world” (Searle, 1983, p. 1). Intentionality as a term linked to ‘being

conscious of something’, was first introduced by Franz Brentano in his famous book

‘Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint’ in which he explains that every mental

phenomenon has an object that is directed to. “Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although

they do not do so in the same way. In presentation, something is presented, in

judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire

desired and so on. This intentional inexistence is characteristic exclusively of

mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We can,

therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena,

which contain an object intentionally within themselves.” (Brentano, 1874, pp. 88-89)

On the other hand, based on Searle’s viewpoint, I will treat intentionality on two

accounts, firstly as the complementary and inherent element of general consciousness,

since Buddhist doctrine and philosophical investigations are using extensively this term

to connote directedness of consciousness as firstly Brentano proposed; and on the



second account I will refer to intentionality as not deriving from or related to

consciousness.

The term “consciousness” is derived from the Latin con (with) and scire (to know)

as well as to be aware of and be responsive to one’s surroundings. Very similarly to this

connotation, in the Buddhist canon the term for ‘consciousness’ in Pali is ‘citta’ which is

derived from the root citi, and means to cognize, to know. In Abhidhamma it is used to

signify bare awareness but also elsewhere it means consciousness in general. In

addition to this term there are other two terms ‘mano’ and ‘viññāna’: the former is used

when it functions as a sense-faculty and the latter to connote again elementary

awareness. (Karunadasa, 2013, pp. 51-52). We see that from the Buddhist perspective

as well as from the more general linguistic perspective that ‘consciousness’ means to

be aware of something, which is inclusive to ideas and thoughts since these are being

treated as ‘objects of the mind’. “Consciousness” therefore, in the general perspective

can signify one’s ability to know and perceive and also to be aware of. However, from

my perspective, although Buddhist and much of science use the term ‘consciousness’ to

signify ‘awareness’, it should not be confused with that term. It is quite common to use

these terms interchangeably to signify one another and does create a vicious cycle

when one tries to explain what consciousness is by using the term ‘awareness’, and

vice versa. Moreover, It should not be confused with what conscience stands for, which

has the much more specific moral association to knowing when one has acted or acts

wrongly according to specific laws and regulations. I will not delve into this latter term

but instead will focus on few more terms that need elucidation and be included in this

investigation; these are ‘perception’ (or perceptual meaning), ‘interpretation’, and further

deductively to those are the terms ‘sensation’, ‘stimulation’ and ‘information’. Hence, I

feel it is necessary to bring more light on these terms before I delve deeper in any other

analysis on consciousness itself.

Information, in linguistic terms, is the ‘facts’ that are being afforded or learnt

about someone or something. This implies and at the same time supports the nature of

information is interdependent and causally transmitted from point-to-point. As we shall

see, this is associated with impermanence and the law of dependent co-arising, two

basic doctrines in Buddhist philosophy that will be of a main focus in this essay. Due to



its impermanent nature, occasionally where is relevant, I will be referring to information

as ‘information-flow’ since it signifies a flux in time and space. To note here that by

‘facts’ I mean the data that is not necessary to know beforehand or to be learnt at all,

but nevertheless it is there to be experienced. It is important to mention further that

information is an attribute or a faculty of an ‘elementary form’ that comprise from the

very minute and immaterial forms - including mental faculties such as thoughts and

‘thoughtforms’ - to the most gross and heavy material ones. Regarding elementary

forms I will have a thorough analysis from the Buddhist perspective, and as for the

scientific point of view we can view the elements as the atoms and sub-atoms that

comprise immaterial and material forms.

Information-flow is transmitted from point-to-point and at times it stimulates

neighboring or distant objects or subjects. Stimulation, according to Day R. H. (1969), is

the “electromagnetic, mechanical, and chemical impinging on the receptors that carry

information about the external environment, the internal state of the organism, and the

organism’s activity” (p. 2). A lot of psychologists and philosophers, not to mention

neuroscientists as well, claim that the faculties of the senses, being stimulated and

triggered, are for perceiving but also to feel and to sense our inner and outer

environments. A great psychologist Gibson J. James (1996) mentioned, “sensory input

and sensations are not necessary for a drive but that the pick up of information is. The

information is what counts but the sensation is incidental (p.142). Also he very correctly

supported that senses can be seen as channels of sensation as well as systems for perception. In his book ‘The senses considered as perceptual systems’ he additionally

mentions that the senses are also for detecting information from our inner and outer

environments. This is an important note and we can easily accept this notion that we

can detect or even intuit information from our surroundings and ‘inroundings’ dependent

on our abilities to do so. (‘inrounding’ signify the inner world of an organism and is a

term I am bringing. Inner-outer space is questionable and arguable since any organism

is a part of its exterior world. Here, I will be using the inner-outer concept in practical

terms to signify the inside and outside compartments of the organism’s physical/material

‘body’). There is immeasurable incoming information bombarding the receptor cells of

the human organism, and any organism, that in one way or another, this information-



flow is received, decoded, interpreted, and transmitted as a response. Gibson (1966)

gave a linear explanation how a perceptual meaning comes to be: From the

environmental source (Information-flow) there is the physical law (Medium of

Information Transference between sense organ and sense object) and the stimulus

invariant (Stimulation/Sensation) that triggers a psychological resonance (sense

consciousness) and hence we acquire what is accounted as perception (perceiver’s

perception/interpretation/understanding/knowing) (p.244) (comments in brackets are of

my own for which there will be elucidation by reading throughout this essay). In this

linear perceptual meaning we clearly observe how perception is quite dependent on

stimulation, moreover on the environmental source. This co-dependence of phenomena

is exemplified in paticcasamuppāda (dependent co-arising) as we shall see further

down as well. Further to this perceptual meaning, Gibson expressed two other types of

perception alongside to the general perception, the one is economical perception that is

“the ability to avoid distraction thus, to concentrate to one thing at a time, and

accomplish as much as possible” and the other one is mediated perception that is

perception through the information by another subject (p. 286) e.g. I can see a car

passing by behind a person and thus I let him/her know not to cross the street right now;

here the person perceives the car through my information. Moreover, Gibson (1966)

gave a peculiar but very interesting explanation on perception that there is a sensation-

based perception that is information based on the senses but also there is information-

based perception that is information not based on the senses. (p. 266). The latter

corresponds to sense organs with passive receptors that respond each one to its

appropriate form of energy and the former correspond to active perceptual systems,

which can search out the information in stimulus energy (Gibson, 1966, p. 2). He stated

that there is perception without sensation to occur because stimulus information-flow

can determine perception without having to enter consciousness in the form of

sensation but it enters in the form of information (Gibson, 1966, p. 3). Thus he

distinguishes sensationless from informationless perception, the former is a

sensation-based perception that is information based on the senses and the latter is

information-based perception that is information not based on the senses; I interpret it

that the primary refers to the general perceptive path as for the latter is the information



that can bypass the conscious-organ-sensation and leap directly onto the perceptual

cognizable systems. There should be perceptions, or in Helmholtz’s terms a conclusion,

that are registered in unconscious domains of the mind, but nevertheless, it does inform

and support the organism of different states. Helmholtz, a famous psychologist,

philosopher and physicist, said that “Still it may be permissible to speak of the psychic

acts of ordinary perception as unconscious conclusions, thereby making a distinction of

some sort between them and the common so-called conscious conclusions […] these

unconscious conclusions derived from sensation are equivalent in their consequences

to the so-called conclusions from analogy” (in Treatise on Physiological Optics, Vol. III,

3rd Ed.). Gibson clarifies that this ‘unconscious’ state does not mean that perception

can arise without stimulation of receptors; it just means that the sense organs of

perception are sometimes stimulated in such a way that they don’t trigger conscious

processes. He further stated, “The active observer gets invariant perceptions despite varying sensations” (Gibson, 1966, p.3), and he continues explaining that

one perceives a constant object by vision, and all other senses, despite changing

sensations of light and other corresponding to the senses, sensations. “The hypothesis

is that constant perception depends on the ability of the individual to detect the

invariants, and that he ordinarily pays no attention whatever to the flux of changing

sensations” (Gibson, 1966, p. 3). This implies that reality depends on the ability of the

perceiver to distinguish the variable stimulations and manifest a subjective or objective

reality out of myriad impermanent probabilities. Here, once again we clearly see the

impermanence of nature, what Buddhist philosophy is in support of.

The above information gives a good explanation of the perceptual meaning from

the psychological and scientific perspectives including passive and active variables.

From another point of view that of philosophical investigation, Merleau-Ponty (2002) in

one of his books ‘Phenomenology of Perception’ he gives another point of view that

“Sensationalism 'reduces' the world by noting that after all we never experience

anything but states of ourselves” (p. xvii). This suggests that a sensation has a two-way

path. It is an inward informative function as much as it is an outward expressive

function, both being informative and edifying for the organism’s growth. The Buddhist

doctrine on the other hand speaks about sensation in a threefold way that somehow



supports the above psycho-philosophical theory. Sensation, in Pali is named vedanā

(which is the second aggregate and also the sixth link on the twelve-factored formula of

dependent co-arising); it is also translated as bare sensation, but also has two other

important meanings that are very relevant, that is to feel and to experience. At the

dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, (2003) we find that vedanā is

translated as “the psycho-physiological faculty of experiencing sensations”. This

indicates that vedanā incorporates mental and bodily sensations for experiencing.

Boisvert (1992) noted this interpretation too: “the Pali Text Society Dictionary agrees

with the canonical statement that holds that the word vedanā is derived from the root

"ved", or the verb "vedeti", both meaning "to know" or "to experience". Hence, if the

word is indeed related to vedeti, it implies that vedanā means experience, either

physical or mental”, and he continues saying, “we must stress that our use of the term

"sensation" as a translation for vedanā does not refer to an anoetic sentience, or a bare

experience devoid of personal inclinations” (pp. 81, 83). Also elsewhere in Buddhist

philosophy we find that “Feeling" (Pali: vedanā) is the bare sensation noted as pleasant,

unpleasant (painful) and neutral (indifferent). Hence, it should not be confused with

emotion which, though arising from the basic feeling, adds to it likes or dislikes of

varying intensity, as well as other thought processes” (Nyanaponika, 2013). As for the

significance of bare sensation we don’t only find it in Buddhist doctrine but also

Merleau-Ponty commented “sensation has no philosophical grounds other than that of

nominalism, which means that we can reduce the meaning of the sensed to the

meaninglessness of association by contiguity” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 18).

Stcherbatsky (1922), comments on the interpretation of bare sensation, or in his words

pure sensation, that “could never appear in life in its true separate condition; it was

always accompanied by some secondary mental phenomena […]. Among these mental

phenomenal […] or faculties […] three are especially conspicuous, namely, feelings […]

ideas […], and volitions […]” (p. 18) (brackets indicate the Sanskrit translation which I

have excluded from the text for not confusing the reader since I follow the Pali

translations throughout this essay).

Vedanā therefore encircles three basic terms: bare sensation, feeling and

experience. It is ‘bare sensation’ in the biological and contextual perspective that



signifies sensation without build in meaning. The Buddha and Gibson were right

because as Gibson validates, there is a stimulus for a cell and a stimulus for an organ

for which for the latter there is a sensation that can be perceived as a mere sensation

without any labeling, or in other words, any interpretation ascribed to it. To note here

that the human organs are part of the proprioceptive system that is internally to the

human body and the most of the time we are not aware of any functions, sensations,

feelings or perceptions taking place. Furthermore, vedanā, being assisted with the

mind’s faculties, also signifies feeling that brings pleasant, unpleasant or neutral

interpretations and from an epistemological perspective, it signifies experience, the

experience of our interior and exterior environments.

Out of this information, it is easy now to understand mechanistically that

perception starts at an anatomical path that has its origin at a transmitter’s station to

lead to the receiver’s sense-organs, and consequently to sense. The messages, which

must be registered in conscious, unconscious or subconscious domains of the mind, are

thereafter deciphered in such a way as to reproduce a sort of meaning and action to

experience states of ourselves. Hence, there is a point-to-point correspondence

between the stimulus and the fundamental perception, the environmental source to the

perceptive being, which is tacitly intertwined with the experiencing body and nature

itself. As Merleau-Ponty (2002) justifies:

“ […] The perception of our own body and the perception of external things provide an example of non-positing consciousness, that is, of consciousness not in possession of fully determinate objects, that of a logic lived through which cannot account for itself, and that of an immanent meaning which is not clear to itself and becomes fully aware of itself only through experiencing certain natural signs” (p. 5).

From the Buddhist perspective though, perception has a greater meaning; it is

the third aggregate (Saññā) out of the five aggregates (Rūpa, Vedanā, Saññā,

Sankhara and Viññāna) and signifies recognition, or identification as well as

interpretation. Harvey (1995) comments further on the latter term, interpretation, that

saññā can signify misinterpretation as well. Out of ignorance, (on which term I will refer



further down), one should “not consider the perception of permanence in what is

impermanent” and further he continues saying that “given appropriate guidance, […]

saññā can come to cognize true feature of reality, e.g. recognize impermanence in what

is impermanent” (p. 143). Saññā could be also seen as the ascribing of a name to the

object of an experience and its function “is to turn an indefinite experience into an identified and recognized experience” (quote retrieved from the Fundamentals of

Buddhism, Buddhanet Productions). Here, perception (saññā) stands for one idea and

one interpretation of one particular experience out of the many impermanent

probabilities. Thus, out of the myriad probabilities, how can we know what is true or not?

Merleau-Ponty gives great validity to what perception is that touches the significance of

‘knowingness’:

“Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking up of a position; it is the background from which all acts stand out, and is presupposed by them. The world is not an object such that I have in my possession the law of its making; it is the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not 'inhabit' only 'the inner man', or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself. When I return to myself from an excursion into the realm of dogmatic common sense or of science, I find, not a source of intrinsic truth, but a subject destined to the world. All of which reveals the true meaning of the famous phenomenological reduction. […] The most important lesson, which the reduction teaches us, is the impossibility of a complete reduction (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, pp. xi-xv)”.

Truth is not derived out of one idea out of one experience but is the totality of

accumulation of experiences however real or unreal they might be and at time by

disregarding dogmatic common sense and science. In support to this, the comments by

Albert Einstein are also elucidating, “Truth is what stands the test of experience” and the

Buddha’s comment “The truth itself […] can only be self-realized within one’s own

deepest consciousness” (McFarlane, 2003 p. 34, 36). The Buddhist and

phenomenological perspectives refer to the false fabrications of a conception, (out of

ignorance), of an idea about a particular object or situation, what is perceived

intellectually; and in a sense one constructs a conceptual element for introducing a

definite, determinate idea about the object of experience, although the actual

‘experience’ is indefinite and empty. Previously I mentioned the Buddhist commentary

on perception as well as Gibson’s interpretation; correspondingly that “The function of



perception is to turn an indefinite experience into an identified and recognized experience” and also that “the active observer gets invariant perceptions despite varying sensations”. Thus man constructs reality from variable numerous stimulations,

out of which we fabricate an invariable subjective reality. Our mind perceives what one

would think (re)presents reality, especially when this notion of ‘real’ comes out of a

judged, conditioned and filtered knowledge, thus ending up to the impossibility of

distinguishing what is a true or a false perception. (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 40). Man

somehow subjectifies or objectifies the emptiness of ‘reality’ out of 'interpretations' of the

information-flow he receives. It is a 'hypothesis' that consciousness brings about

impressions of ‘knowing’ about reality; sometimes impressions are true other times

false. Simply inferring from the above - and taking in account the fact that every single

moment furnishes life to the next moment for simply ‘feeding’ and validating what

impermanence is - shouldn’t we thus acquire a notion of emptiness of inherent

existence of all that is?

Danto (1994) speaks about ‘interpretation’ that something can be seen as for

what it ‘might be’; it is in a sense to offer a theory within the limits of our knowledge,

much in the same way that limits of imagination are the limits of knowledge itself (p.

119, 127). Hirsch on the other hand (1967), claimed that understanding comes before

interpretation and judgment, moreover before meaning itself. He said that ‘the function

that brings significance is called judgment and that one understands meaning whereas

one constructs significance’ (p. 143) but through Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological

reduction we can see judgment as leaping from a conditioned mind which is being

involved for seeing reality with an ‘eye’ of prejudice, “instead of being the act of

perception itself grasped from within by authentic reflection, […] and instead of being a

transcendental activity, it becomes simply a logical activity of drawing a conclusion”

(Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 39). We should give validity of interpretation to both

perspectives because judgments are interdependent on conditional mental processes or

conditioned on consciousness. It is true that we construct significance out of judgments

and sometimes we can be correct and righteous, but when we are prejudiced, ‘ignorant‘

and we don’t have the ‘right view’ all interpretations or judgments of reality fall into

mere-logic that cannot touch the transcendental realms of the emptiness of reality itself.



Here I am using the term ‘ignorance’ (avijjā) in both ways that is used in Buddhist

philosophy, as the first link out of the twelve links of dependent co-arising and ignorance

within the four noble truths. Karunadasa (2013), reminds us that for the former usage it

connotes the ignorance that the five clinging aggregates (Rūpa, Vedanā, Sanna,

Sankhara and Viññāna) amalgamate the personality of human being and for the latter it

connotes the ‘not-knowingness’ of things as they actually are in this world we are living

in: the fact that there is suffering, the cause of suffering, its cessation and the way

leading to its cessation (p. 28, 29). The ‘right view’ is the first classification out of the

eight-fold path that leads to cessation of suffering. In conclusion, and paraphrasing

Danto, I feel that although man might be a construct and the sum total of conditions, the

sum total of interpretations and systems of representations, this should not blind us for

what man is capable of in terms of realizing and transcending common notions of the

dialectics of real and unreal. It is not what the man represents but the way and the how

he represents reality (Danto, 1994, p. 205).

The above has brought me to comment on what consciousness stands for. The

Buddhist analysis of the mind refers to the conditionality of consciousness; “Apart from

conditions, there is no arising of consciousness”. (Karunadasa, 2013, p. 48). Here

consciousness refers to intentionality that consciousness perceives or is aware of

something as I aforementioned at the very beginning of this essay. This conditional

affair we find between consciousness (viññāna) and mind and matter (nāma-rūpa);

when organ-consciousness, object-consciousness and sense-consciousness come

together, all three variables are stimulated for contact to rise and right after, or at times

simultaneously, sensation (vedanā) and or perception (awareness) arises. This is a

linear dependent arisen path from information to perception. This Buddhist perceptual

meaning correlates with what I aforesaid in regards to the psychological perceptual

meanings (look page 5). We see this conditional and interdependent triangle of mind-

and-matter and consciousness; that consciousness comes to be with mind-and-matter,

intentional-consciousness has mind-and-matter as its conditions. In support to this,

Johansson (1985) expresses two of the many purposes of the paticcasamuppāda

(dependent co-arising): “one is to explain rebirth, another is to explain perception. S II

73 clearly explains perception: “Owing to eye and rūpa, eye-consciousness will arise.



The coming together of the three is contact. Dependent on contact is sensation” (p. 31).

Here, I would like to comment on the fact that the Buddhist doctrine very rightly

comments on the organs (eye, ear, etc.), on the objects and the sense (mind) as

consciousness, namely: eye consciousness, object consciousness and mental

consciousness. Consequently, one could interpret it that there is a greater

consciousness other than the intentional-consciousness ‘of being aware of something’

because the above formulation implies that the organs and the objects could have

consciousness separate to the mind-intentional-consciousness. Nevertheless, it is true

that the meeting of all three constructs what is called ‘existence’ for a perceptible

subject. Besides if we take in account all facets of existence from the very minute to the

very abundant and also the fact that consciousness, as referred to viññāna this time, is

responsible for the continuity of both this life and the next, named death-consciousness

and rebirth-linking consciousness respectively, we can infer that there is a

consciousness beyond the intentional consciousness of bare awareness.

Here, I would like to stand more on the classifications of consciousness in the

Buddhist cannon under the terms ‘dhātus’ (element). It is also translated as eighteen

components of perception and is relevant to the perceptual meaning as well as for the

construct of existence from the Buddhist perspective. There are eighteen dhātus that

construct a stream of events, that signifies a different way of constructing the

personality of an individual from what I aforementioned in regards to the five clinging

aggregates. Both are a part of the full-integrated personality of a human being. These

eighteen dhātus include six sense faculties, six kinds of objective elements and six

kinds of consciousness. Thus we have:

Six internal bases Six external bases Six kinds of Consciousness Eye faculty Visible forms Visual-consciousness Ear faculty Sounds Auditory-consciousness Nose faculty Odor Olfactory-consciousness Tongue faculty Tastes Gustatory-consciousness Body faculty Tangible Bodily-consciousness Faculty of the intellect or consciousness

Non Sensuous objects Non Sensuous-consciousness

(Stcherbatsky, 1922, pp. 7-10)



Here I have changed the first list from using the term ‘sense of’ into ‘faculty’ as I

find it more appropriate and have found in different texts that ‘faculty’ is equally valid.

‘Sense of’ presupposes intentionality where as ‘faculty’ does not, since there are myriad

activities and functions that are unintentional. Also in the above commentary by

Stcherbatsky, he classifies the last dhātu of six external bases and the six kinds of

consciousness as ‘non-sensuous’ instead of mental object and mind consciousness

correspondingly that we find in different Buddhist texts. This classification is quite

arguable because one could interpret that ‘non-sensuous’ does not mean, nor imply,

that are mental. In support to this, I raise awareness to the fact that there are myriad

activities and functions that are involuntary, unconscious and subconscious and their

function is integral and necessary for the organism’s existence, however no any activity

includes mental processes. Furthermore, Stcherbatsky (1922) explains that the ‘non-

sensuous’ cognition was named by Theravadins as “heart-stuff”, which was introduced

for symetricality on classifying consciousness (pp. 18-19). But “heart-stuff” is a very

important distinction because it does infer to the intuitive faculties of the human

organism, which in effect are not mind-based, but gut-based (for more see the books

‘Second Brain’ by Gershon, M. (1998) and ‘Heart’s Code’ (1998) by Paul Pearsall).

Stcherbatsky (1922) mentions that the mind splits into two categories the

subjective and objective; the former corresponds to the ordinary use of pure

consciousness as citta, mano and viññāna or as pure sensation, and the latter, the

objective, contains the interpretive sensations, feelings, ideas and volitions and more

mental phenomena that reach forty-six separate elements (p. 15). He explains that

feelings are viewed as objects of the mind and are entered in the group of elements.

The first eleven aforementioned dhātus (look list on page 12) contain one element each

where the last one, twelfth, is subdivided in sixty-four; and besides the primary forty-six,

it contains the fourteen elementary forces; the element of character and the three

eternal elements in which the Nirvāna (or Samādhi) is included (Stcherbatsky, 1922, p

15). We observe from the above, that there is a very thorough and in detail classification

for sense-consciousness, object-consciousness and mind-consciousness but

nevertheless all consciousness refers to intentional acts; apart from the three eternal

elements where we find Samādhi being classified and relates to the consciousness



seen as an empty state, or a perception without conception, or as dimension.

Johansson (1985) gives us this very last interpretation, he says that consciousness

being so multifaceted, can be viewed as the ‘dimension of consciousness’: “One

sometimes gets an impression that it can be described as a very thin substance but it is

probably more adequate to call it the dimension of consciousness. This center can also

be described as an inner space, which can be filled with images but also be emptied” (p.

63). Johansson continues on viññāna classified in dhātus (elements) but differently than

the classifications I previously mentioned: “[…] as we find in M III 31 there are six

elements (dhātu) mentioned, earth, water, light, air, space (ākāsa) and viññāna” (p. 58).

From the elements’ succession we observe that they start from “gross” and dense

matter and progress towards thinner and more transparent. Here we see that viññāna is

described as an even more subtle space than ākāsa (p. 59). Johansson (1985)

concludes that this ‘inner space’ describes the different levels of samādhi, “by directing

the attention inwards to the inner space, a higher level of emptiness and boundlessness

may be reached. This inner space is mainly visual but in reality six-dimensional, since

all the senses are represented: ‘consciousness of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body (touch),

the inner sense’ (S II 4)” (p. 59). This ‘inner-space-consciousness’, from my perspective,

could be seen as an unintentional space, which means that consciousness is empty in

itself as I mentioned above. It is a state of just pure being, which could be accounted as

a state of no disturbance, a state of reactivity under the very right conditions as I will

explain further down to this essay.

Although there might be an intention to reach this state because Johansson

expresses that “by directing the attention inwards to the inner space, a higher level of

emptiness and boundlessness may be reached”, as soon as one arrives in that state,

under my opinion, there should not be intentionality thereafter. It could be seen as a

state that is pure perception without intentional conception. In another section,

Johansson (1985), gives a contradictory and confusing to me definition that the

common notion of “viññāna mainly refers to the stream of conscious processes” (p. 63),

which presuppose intentionality. Furthermore, in another commentary of Buddhist texts,

we find four spheres (classes) of consciousness that are categories for classifying types

of cittas and all once again presuppose intentionality apart from the last that refers once



again to Nibbāna (Nirvāna or Samādhi); three of them are mundane (sense-sphere

consciousness, fine-material-sphere consciousness, immaterial-sphere consciousness)

and the last one is supramandane (supramandane consciousness) (Bodhi, 2007, p. 29).

I take it that the Buddhist doctrine on consciousness is so multidimensional that

is hard to pin down only one notion of the term. However, apart from this unique state

‘consciousness as dimension and inner space’ or ‘Nibbhāna’, consciousness is always

accounted as intentional, being conscious of something, consciousness arises

dependent on an object and a sense organ. ‘Consciousness is’, instead of ‘being

consciousness of’. In Gibsonian terms however, these states being in and out of

Nibbhāna, do not include the passive functions of an organism because, those states

include so many involuntary, unconscious and subconscious activities of an organism.

Besides, this Nibbhānic state is achieved after extreme meditative practices which in

effect cannot include mundane passive activities of an ‘ordinary’ organism.

The above is elucidating in regards to how the Buddhist doctrine classifies and

views ‘consciousness’. From a more neuroscientific perspective on consciousness,

Antonio Damasio a neuroscientist and a professor at the University of Southern

California, he explains in his book ‘Feeling of what happens’ that “consciousness as we

commonly think of it, from the basic levels to the most complex, is the unified mental

pattern that brings together the object and the self” (p. 2). And he continues saying that

“consciousness begins as the feeling of what happens when we see or hear or touch (p.

26). The last understanding of consciousness matches with the psychological and

Buddhist perceptual meaning but, from the above, we still find a perspective of

consciousness being conscious of something out of the feeling of what happens when

one senses, thus it is intentional, it intends to an object. In addition, Damasio

distinguishes three kinds of self: autobiographical self (extended consciousness), Core

self (core consciousness) and Proto-self (p. 174). However, according to the Buddhist

doctrine, Damasio’s interpretation that there is a ‘self’ is somewhat false because he

believes that the sense of ‘self’ is a critical component in any notion of consciousness,

whereas seeing the ‘Self’ through the Buddhist principles, I believe that the Non-self is a

critical component in any notion of consciousness. In Abhidhamma we find that citta is

defined in three ways: as agent, as instrument, and as activity and the third one is the



most adequate. We further find an elucidating commentary in regards to the self and

consciousness:

“Citta is fundamentally an activity or process of cognizing or knowing an object. It

is not an agent or instrument possessing actual being in itself apart form the

activity of cognizing. The definitions in terms of agent and instrument are

proposed to refute the wrong view of those who hold that a permanent self or ego

is the agent and instrument of cognition. The Buddhist thinkers point out, by

means of these definisions, that it is not a self that performs the act of cognition,

but citta or consciousness” (Bodhi, 2007, p. 27).

Could one think somehow that this commentary could infer that consciousness

has a being-ness of its own, that it is possible for consciousness to cognize by itself

without the use of the mind? Then if that is true then we can easily postulate that the

mind is a faculty of consciousness and not the other way around.

Damasio (2000) continues exemplifying that the “proto-self is the non-conscious

precursor for the core self and the autobiographical self” (p. 22) and further down he

says “Proto-self incorporates structures that regulate and represent the body's internal

states” (p. 100), which can be well linked with the passive receptor cells that function

subliminally to any conscious mental process (See Gibson 1966). Damasio explains

that the core consciousness is created in pulses (vibrations), each pulse triggered

(stimuli) by an object that man interacts with or that man recalls (p. 176) (my own

comments in brackets). The core consciousness provides an organism a sense of ‘self’

about one present moment. The extended consciousness on the other hand, has a

more radial perspective of time and space and also that it enhances itself through

language process (Damasio, 2000, p.16). Extended consciousness (autobiographical

self) has to do with exhibiting knowledge and with displaying it clearly and efficiently for

intelligent conscious processing (Damasio, 2000, p. 199). Damasio explains further that

“core consciousness is the process of achieving a neural and mental pattern that brings

together, in about the same instant, the pattern for the object, the pattern for

the organism, and the pattern for the relationship between the two” (p. 194) which can

be correlated with vedanā (sensation) in the Buddhist cannon. Damasio presents the

following rather esoteric hypothesis that is inclusive to the causal aspect of reality, and



the path of passive to active activities, or from the pre-reflective to reflective cogito, what

Gennaro is in support of as we shall see further down. Damasio says that “core

consciousness occurs when the brain's representation devices generate an imaged,

nonverbal account of how the organism's own state is affected by the organism's

processing of an object, and when this process enhances the image of the causative

object, thus placing its saliently in a spatial and temporal context” (p. 169). Damasio

delineates interestingly consciousness to core and extended consciousness that it

makes sense on one hand, but on the other, it still refers to intentional acts. The proto-

self concept is still valid since there are many organisms that behave in this level of

existence, but it does not support the notion that in that level there is consciousness,

what I will refer to as ‘essence consciousness’ later on.

This brings me to another perspective of consciousness that of representational

philosophers that it is interesting to include. Gennaro, a philosopher at Indiana

University, introduces these two terms the transitive and intransitive consciousness that

is based on the higher-order theory. He says “that a mental state is conscious when we

are conscious of it” (Gennaro on Consciousness, par. Higher-Order Theories of

Consciousness). But this intuitive formulation utilizes two different uses of the word

"conscious." The first use is called intransitive, because this form of consciousness has

no object. The second use is called transitive, because this form of consciousness takes

an object; transitive consciousness is consciousness of something”(Gennaro on

Consciousness, par. Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness). From the above we

could infer that the former term, intransitive, is associated with passive activity and the

latter with active; correspondingly the former with passive receptors and the latter with

the active perceptual systems. The former is of a great interest here because this

consciousness does not have an object and it can refer, under my point of view, to

mundane activities of simple organic and inorganic forms. It could be correlated with

Damasio’s ‘proto-self’ concept although here we find a clear term referring to

consciousness. Gennaro continues by supporting the passive aspect of stimulations,

“conscious mental states should be understood […] as global brain states which are

combinations of passively received perceptual input and presupposed higher-order

conceptual activity directed at that input” (Gennaro on Consciousness, par. iii. Hybrid



Representational Accounts). However, Gennaro gives this arguable statement:

“intransitive state consciousness is explained in terms of transitive consciousness of

mental states” (Consciousness, par. Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness), which

is, in effect, impossible for one to even think or sense all the passive and involuntary

activities that an organism creates, all being well-tuned and infallible. Thus intransitive

state consciousness is not necessary to be explained by transitive consciousness at all

times but only when is needed to or when it happens naturally out of the organism’s

functions. Not only Gennaro but also other representationalists support the conscious

mental states in terms of intentionality. Gennaro explains, “a first-order representational

(FOR) theory of consciousness is a theory that attempts to explain conscious

experience primarily in terms of world-directed (or first-order) intentional states.

Conscious states clearly must also have “intentional content” (IC) for any

representationalist” (Gennaro on Consciousness, par. iii. Objection 3: Mysterianism).

More specifically, in Husserlian terms “’intention’ is the relation between an act of

awareness and its object”. For example, when I “intend” an object, there are

distinguishable aspects of that result.

• The object as perceived by me (“intentional object”) • The act by which I perceive the object (“intentional act”) • For physical things there is the object which exists independently of my

perceptual act. The absence of the object that still is existent. (cited in Hirsch, 1967, p. 218)

Searle and Gibson would partially agree with this idea because intentionality and

intentional acts simply perceive reality from the active perspective, the doer, the

perceiver’s active perceptual systems, and in Searle’s terms to intend to do something

is only one kind of intentionality amongst many others. However, as Gibson reminds us

there is the passive aspect of the being that originate at the passive receptor-cells,

which is stimulated without having intention to do so, but nevertheless their functionality

precedes mental conscious activity. In the human organism there is the interoceptors

and proprioceptive system that function well tuned, at most times, without the organism

being aware of, or conscious of those activities. In this latter state, man’s awareness is

not triggered but nevertheless it is a function of the organism that undeniably is vital for

its survival and existence. In Gennaro’s words, the intransitive state consciousness



elevates to transitive and in phenomenological terms it is a pre-reflective state, which is

primarily passive and at times it might rise to our consciousness and become active –

reflective state; or how I comment on this, it might remain in its ‘hibernated’ state or in

a state of ‘steady action without disturbance’, what I call and explain further down as

‘reactivity under very right conditions’.

One could easily argue therefore, that in any state of an individual, whether that

is ‘Emptiness’ in the Buddhist perspective or ‘Transcendental’ in the philosophical

perspective (there is no any correlation that I am trying to infer between these terms),

there is myriad functions that bypass our consciousness (awareness), and still these

functions are so well tuned for experiencing empty and transcendental states.

Thus taking in account the above ideas from an interdisciplinary perspective, I

believe that ‘intentionality’ does not presuppose ‘consciousness’ in the ‘greatest’

perspective of being-ness, but it is simply reduced to what mere ‘awareness’ is, which is

the knowledge or perception of something that arises and consequently is perceived.

Intentionality utilizes only the data available to consciousness that is, the appearance of

objects including ideas and imaginations. To be ‘conscious of’ is just a small fraction of

all the faculties of consciousness itself. There is a lot of information that is registered in

our unconscious and subconscious domains of our mind of which we are unaware, but

nevertheless, they do function and act accordingly for the organism’s equilibric state, or

any state.

In further support of the above conception, I should mention a few different

stimulation stages in correlation to consciousness: Voluntary – Involuntary, Interior-

Exterior, Conscious, Unconscious, Non-conscious and Subconscious. Voluntary

stimulation stands for the intentional thought processed activity, which refers to a

conscious action, being conscious of something and refers to the active perceptual

systems, whereas the involuntary stimulus reactivity correlates to the unconscious, non-

conscious and subconscious activities and the passive receptors. Interior and exterior

stimulations refer to the inner and outer compartments of the inorganic or organic

properties of the ‘body’ that transmits and/or receives information; interior refers to the

interoceptors and proprioceptive system and exterior to the five-exteroceptive sense



systems (these systems are present or absent according to the inorganic or organic

‘body’ of existence). Interior and exterior can be either voluntary or involuntary and

accordingly fall under the different consciousness classifications. Danto (1994) has a

dialectical perspective to reason interior to exterior in association to consciousness;

“Everything has a kind of interior and an exterior, a ‘pour soi’ and a ‘pour autrui’. The

interior is simply the way the world is given, while the exterior is simply the way the

former becomes an object to a later or another consciousness. While we see the world

as we do, we do not see it as a way of seeing the world; we simply see the world. Our

consciousness of the world is not part of what we are conscious of” (p. 163).

Thus once again, I cannot agree that consciousness is only what we are

conscious of. There is so much more for reality to be what it is, whether it is in our

consciousness, as of being aware of, or not. Conclusively, there should be a different

statement from what is usually suggested that the ‘mind creates reality’ thus here I re-

interpret and suggest that ‘consciousness creates reality’. In that sense, I am inferring,

as briefly mentioned above, that the mind is a faculty of consciousness and not that

consciousness is a faculty of the mind. I believe this agrees with the definition by Sir

John C. Eccles, a neuroscientist who won a Nobel Prize in 1963 for his research on

neural synapses; and he stated that “I want you to realize that there is no color in the

natural world and no sounds—nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty,

no scent… The “world out there” is synthesized in our consciousness”.

One could easily thus express, what I call that all is ‘meaningfulless’, which

means that something is ‘full’ of meaning but simultaneously ‘empty’ of meaning, since

we decide the meaning out of our perceptions and interpretations of what we

experience. Shouldn’t we thus claim that our exteroceptive, interoceptice and

proprioceptive systems are there just for the simple reason to experience diverse states

of ourselves, to learn by reflecting on what we perceive which naïvely seems to be real,

or in other words unreal? Consequently, if all that is, is meaningfulless, one would

question what ‘reality’ is, because all information and stimuli can be easily disregarded

for providing false perceptions and interpretations. Besides as human intellectual

beings, we have a tendency to construct meaning in both meaningful and meaningless

states which Shermer calls ‘patternicity’ (Shermer, 2011, p. 60). Here we have come to



a conclusion that nothing has build in meaning, all is empty and there is no inherent existence; all is a construct of our mind, or better, of our consciousness and

‘essence consciousness’.

If all is empty and there is no inherent existence then what is ‘reality’? It is

important to note here the interconnectedness between consciousness and reality

through the Buddhist doctrine: ‘Consciousness is taken up for study first because the

focus of the Buddhist analysis of reality is experience, and consciousness is the

principal element in experience, that which constitutes the knowing or awareness of an

object’ (Bodhi, 2007, p. 27). This commentary binds reality to experience and

consciousness, which is essential for being in the world. The Buddhist philosophy

accounts the eighteen dhātus I aforementioned (look page 12) as the core foundation

for a world to exist and for a reality to come to be (Karunadasa, 2013, p. 23). Rainer

Mausfeld (2013) gives an interesting view to what reality might be:

“Reality, in our ordinary usage of the term, denotes the entirety of things that

actually exist. By “reality” we mean the mind-independent world in which we are

situated about which our senses inform us and with which we can interact. In our

ordinary modes of thinking, we regard all those aspects of our world as belonging

or referring to reality, for which we have no reasons to assume that they are merely

the product of mental activities, such as imagination, hallucination, or fiction […]

The ways we deal with such situations suggest that we are equipped with intricate

means to distinguish mind-internal productions from what we regard as mind-

independent aspects of our world” (p 91).

Mausfeld points out to “reality” as being ‘mind-independent’, which is an

agreeable term for detaching ourselves from our mental constructions of what we think

is real, what Buddhist doctrine very well teaches; detachment. To take this notion

slightly deeper to the vibrational elements of reality, I feel therefore, that

‘Reality signifies the information-flow created by impermanent vibrational

frequencies that when they are conceived, received and perceived by an

organism they construct an ‘experience’ that ascents learning and edifying

processes of our interior and exterior environments. By ‘experience’ I mean

the totality of inclusivity of ‘all that is’, real or unreal, because ‘all that is’ is

interdependently co-arisen by consciousness’s interpretive processes’.



This report is important in two accounts, firstly that the main purpose of reality is

to learn and evolve out of experiencing it without judging its ‘realness’, but to ‘feelualize’

its essence; that means that even if we have experiences that seem to be unreal, it is

only to a reference of what one believes it is real, thus there is no concrete foundation to

prove or disprove any experience whatsoever, especially as long as there is a learning

and/or edifying process involved. On the second account it is important because it

follows the Buddhist perspectives of reality, that of eighteen dhātus, of impermanence

and of paticcasamuppāda (dependent co-arising). I exemplified earlier the primary

(eighteen dhātus) as for the secondary and the tertiary Bhikkhu Thanissaro translated

Assutavā Sutta commentary on impermanence: “what's called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or

'consciousness' by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another”, and on

paticcasamuppāda: "'When this is, that is. From the arising of this comes the arising of

that. When this isn't, that isn't. From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that"

(SN 12.61; PTS: S ii 94; 2005). I should stress here the fact that the law of dependent

co-arising is inclusive to all voluntary-involuntary, interior-exterior and conscious,

unconscious, non-conscious, subconscious processes that I aforementioned. It is

inclusive, although at times it cannot bring light to our consciousness to what might be

happening in terms of involuntary, unconscious, non-conscious and subconscious

processes. However, the processes that do happen are dependent co-arisen by other

processes previous to them, or after them; for if we take in account the time-space

continuum, there is no time as such and everything happens at he same time. Hence

past, present and future is dependently co-arisen by activities and re-activities at any

time frame. Stcherbatsky (1922) mentions in his book ‘The central conception of

Buddhism’ that “Although the separate elements (dhātus) are not connected with one

another, either by a pervading stuff in space or by duration in time, there is,

nevertheless, a connection between them; their manifestations in time, as well as in

space are subject to definite laws, the laws of causation” (p. 28). This exemplifies the

importance of paticcasamuppāda and its relevance to time and space.

On the above conception of ‘reality’ I mentioned that ‘reality’ signifies the

information-flow created by ‘impermanent vibrational frequencies’. Hence an object

vibrates and emanates information from a particular point in space, which I call



‘consciousness-data’. ‘Consciousness-data’ is a term I am introducing as well and is

the data that is emanated out of ‘essence consciousness’ that its object possesses

from the most minute immaterial to the most abundant and large that can be material or

immaterial. Vibration is the oscillation or repetitive action of an object around its

equilibrium position; and equilibrium position is the position the object will attain when

the forces acting on it equals to zero for the object either to stay in stillness or to keep a

steady action until an external force is acted upon it to change its activity. To mention

here that oscillation is interdependent on other environmental factors whereas vibration

is independent; an object vibrates disregarding environmental factors, which validates

its nature for being impermanent. Linked to impermanence, Albert Einstein’s theorem

‘Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem’ says that the smooth locomotion of an object is

interfered by external forces, or ‘noise’, since it is bombarded with infinite information at

all times.

When particles vibrate there is an information-flow from point-to-point

(transmitter-receiver stimulation). Here, for giving merit to Gibson’s theories, it is

important to make a further distinction between active and passive information-flow. An

object can alter their state from passive to active and vice versa dependent on external

or internal to the organism conditions. The former state equates to the vibrational

frequency of an object that emanates actively information and the later equates to the

equipoised state that emanates information but passively. The former state, the active,

is when the object transmits and receives information and this information-flow influence

itself and other objects in its surrounding/inrounding. The object in that state intends to

transmit and receive information and for being active, it responds to this information;

here the stimulation is obtained. On the other hand, the passive state is when an object

transmits and receives information unintentionally; their stimulation is imposed and

refers to unconscious and subconscious states for sentient beings and non-conscious

for non-sentient beings. Here, the object/subject can alter their state only ‘under the

very right conditions’. Two more distinctions need to be made under the very last

categorization. There is the state of ‘hibernation’ or ‘deep sleep’, and the state of ‘steady

action without disturbance’. The ‘steady action without disturbance’ could be seen as

the ‘empty’ state after deep meditation when one meditates on the ‘emptiness as an



approach to meditation’. In this context, emptiness signifies "empty of disturbance"

(Thanissaro, 2006). But here I need to clarify that ‘steady action’ does not mean

necessarily that one is intentionally active; because there are involuntary, unconscious,

non-conscious or subconscious activities that the organism cannot or does not need to

perceive. Nevertheless there is no disturbance at any moment. ‘Hibernation’ or ‘deep

sleep’ is another state of reactivity under very right conditions but the organism either is

of a very low energy-state, or it is a state achieved out of the nature’s interference or

influence. By ‘nature’ I mean the interior and exterior compartments of an organism,

because both are interdependently co-arisen from each other. If nature is not in such

and such state to support the existence of an organism then the organism cannot exist.

The reverse conception is still valid because there are, or there should be, beings that if

they are not in such and such state to support nature’s existence, then a particular

nature cannot exist. At those last states of ‘hibernation’ or ‘deep sleep’ and ‘action

without disturbance’, the object can be perceived and sensed as well as it can perceive

and sense but without any conception. At that state it cannot willingly react until a force

is acted upon it, mental or otherwise, internal or external, so as to stimulate it enough

and transfuse its passive state to an active state. It is a state of ‘reactivity under very

right conditions’, which is applicable on different states I mentioned above too (look

pages 14 and 19).

Thus we can find a certain causal interdependent relationship between the

environmental source and the perceptual object or subject. Whether there is or there

isn’t sensation, perception and awareness involved, there is information-flow emanating,



which originates at the very core vibrational frequency of an object, which in effect is a

constant variable information-flow. In other words, vibrational frequency is

interdependent to the environmental source and to the perceptual object or subject; and

all three variables together are responsible for A reality to manifest itself. However, as I

previously mentioned reality is so much more than what we perceive. I quote here once

again the Buddhist’s and Gibson’s comments “indefinite experience into an identified

and recognized experience” and also that “the active observer gets invariant

perceptions despite varying sensations”. Thus, when something is materialized or

actualized the experiencing object or subject tunes into the vibrational frequency

emanating from the environmental source for sensations and perceptions to take place.

Finally since vibrational frequencies are impermanent in nature, the object or subject

experiences different realities.

I call this vibrational frequency that all organisms have immaterial or material, as

‘essence-consciousness’ and the information-flow that it emanates I call

‘consciousness-data’. This notion offers two important fundamentals; one is that there

is an underling consciousness (essence consciousness) from the consciousness that is

viewed as intentional and being aware of something and this essence consciousness

interconnects organic, inorganic, passive and active, mundane and supramundane

forms of manifestations. Since vibrational frequencies are impermanent, thus ‘essence

consciousness’ is impermanent too which implies that reality does not have a

permanent entity, and that all is empty (Suññata). The second fundamental is that the

‘essence consciousness’ is inter-conditioned to its own environment. That means that is

conditioned and unconditioned in different circumstances; thus ‘essence-consciousness’

since it is also the foundation for intentional consciousness, is inclusive to mundane and

supramundane states as well as passive and active states of organic and inorganic

being-ness. ‘Essence consciousness’ is the faculty that makes something to be what it

is, having all its attributes and functions by emanating ‘consciousness-data’ to its

surroundings and inroundings; at times being active, reactive and perceptible and at

times being passive and reactive only under the very right conditions.

Finally to conclude we should look closer to what is called quantum double slit

experiment. This experiment proved that when scientists fired photons through two slits,



once they weren’t observing it, the particle behaved as a wave. Once they observed it,

the particle behaved normal as a particle, and this happened whether they observed it

before or after the particle passed the two slits. This is a peculiar manifestation that they

claim the particle traveled back to time so as to behave as a particle right from the

beginning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkkIvp71P1c minutes 14:20 to 19:20). As I

aforementioned, according to the Buddhist doctrine there is sense-consciousness,

object-consciousness and mind-consciousness for something to come to be. If all

variables are interconnected, thus all variables should be interfering with each other as

well. Man possesses the sense-consciousness and mind-consciousness, which

interfere with the object consciousness and alters its state. Someone might think that

the particle has its own consciousness and understands when is being observed and

when it is not. Maybe it does not have intentional consciousness, but maybe it has

essence consciousness under the passive classification I aforesaid, which in that level

of manifestation behaves as a system of detecting information; it detects the information

that is transmitted from the observer. In this state, as well as in the right opposite

supramundane state, Nibbhāna, the organism detects without or in advance of the

evidence of the receptor-component-cells or perceptual systems. There are many

inorganic forms that use their receptor-component-cells as a sensation, which is their

mechanism to detect, rather than to have a sensation. In one level of existence nature

could be easily classified under this categorization, because unquestionably nature has

detection mechanisms to receive and transmit information from their inner and outer

environment; and in another level an individual in a high meditative state could also be

classified into this.

In this essay I brought various interpretations on consciousness seen from the

philosophical, psychological, scientific and Buddhist perspectives. Consciousness in its

complex and multifaceted being-ness is still to be discovered and experienced for its full

growth and complete understanding. Nevertheless, there is an unquestionable

argument that consciousness, in its essence, is not only intentional and that it binds with

living and non-living organisms; it binds itself with nature and all sentient beings. I

conveyed the terms ‘essence consciousness’ and ‘consciousness-data’, so as to bring a

different perspective on consciousness itself and the information matrix we are living in.



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On Consciousness and Beyond | An interdisciplinary Approach to Consciousness and Intentionality

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