Simple Differences of Consciousness and Awareness of Mind You Need to Know Today

This article will give you the best understanding of consciousness and awareness from simple examples, Neuroscience, Psychology, Physiology and give you self-assessment tools to measure your consciousness and awareness, and techniques to improve them.

• What is consciousness?
• What is awareness?
• Should we be conscious or aware?
• What are awareness hormones, and consciousness hormones?
• Can we be conscious and aware of both?
• Is being Awake the same as being Aware?

Difference between Consciousness and Awareness Through Real-Life Example

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.

Neuroscience Explanation of Difference between Awareness and Consciousness

How Memory Works

The brain performs several operations. One of the key operations of the brain is memory management. Memory is important for the brain to perform the other two important operations: problem-solving and learning. Therefore, if we understand how memory is managed by the brain, we can easily understand the difference between awareness and consciousness.

1. All the sensory data, such as visual, auditory, touch, and smell is processed by different sensory decoding sections of the brain.
2. Then this data is sent to the linguistic section, where the data is converted into meaningful information.
3. The information is then sent to our cognitive section, where meaning is derived from the information.
4. Based on the initial meaning, our brain decodes emotion. Based on emotion, the hormonal state changes in our body, which results in a physiological change, that we can feel. This is called feeling.
5. Feeling, Meaning, Raw Data, and Information are bundled and saved in different temporary locations, and a memory index is generated.
6. This memory index is the memory relevant to the current experience. This memory management is done by a section of the brain called the Hippocampus.
7. Hippocampus then store this memory bit in a temporary memory, as well as tries to compare this bit with our long-term memory stored in Cerebellum.
8. If there is fear/threat perception, then Hippocampus passes on the threat message to a section called Amygdala, which manages the instinctive, instantaneous, and immediate action called fight or flight. This is also called the Reaction.
9. The reaction now needs to make the body physiologically ready first by making the hormonal changes. Therefore, it is sent to the Hypothalamus section. Hypothalamus works as a messenger between the Endocrine(hormonal) system, and the Nervous system, including Autonomic Nervous System, which connects all the organs.
10. Hypothalamus messages the pituitary gland to manage the hormonal state, as well as generate relevant electrical signals for our nervous system.
11. Our Somatic nervous system then manages the muscle movements, which results in the way we react or respond physically.
12. At the same time, the memory bit is sent to our Pre-frontal cortex section, where several analysis of the information is performed. This section solves any problems like threats and offers various solutions(called Ideas).
13. All these continuous sets of memory bits are then combined through indexes like a garland, and store a single index as an Event memory.
14. The brain then calculates the relevance of the event based on the number of hormonal variations, and stores the event in the long-term memory of the Cerebellum.

What is Awareness from the Neuroscience of Memory and Senses

Let’s for example you have visited your favorite restaurant, where your favorite dish is being cooked. If you are able to smell the aroma and separate the aroma from the rest of the smells, then your smell sense is working. You are aware of the place, dish, and smell. That aroma can increase your hunger, can bring back the past memories, and can bring visuals of the dishes before you. That is awareness. You may certainly feel very hungry and may want to eat right now.

Then your pre-frontal cortex processes the data. It tells you that okay, you are not hungry, but you are just reading about the food, so seeing visuals. When in the restaurant, your pre-frontal cortex will process the data. It will tell you, don’t be jumping up and down in hunger, good food will take time. That is consciousness.

So, awareness is the ability of your brain to process real-world data, consciousness is the ability of your brain to make sense of data. Consciousness is the cognition and emotion combined with the awareness.

Awareness is a function of the entire brain. For you to be able to decode the aroma of the food of your favorite restaurant, the Olfactory center of your brain has to work. This has to then send data to your Hippocampus for decoding. Hippocampus will try to pull past memories from the cerebellum. In the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, and temporal lobes, the meanings are extracted. Hence you are aware of all these sections are working, and can interoperate and send and receive signals from each other to generate a final meaning for the senses.

Consciousness is the function of your pre-frontal-cortex, the front part of the brain, whereas the awareness is the connectivity of the parts of the brain, and their ability to function.

What is Awareness by Autonomic Nervous System

This data will then be sent to the autonomic nervous system. The moment you get the aroma, your body will be relaxed, by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. This will activate your salivary gland, and the body will start making saliva, with the expectation of good food coming for digestion.

You might now observe in yourself, that you may be seeing the visuals of your favorite food in your favorite restaurant. You may already be getting the aroma. Even though you are not in the restaurant, you are reading about the food and restaurant. This reading is getting translated into meaning, and your brain is correlating memories from the past experience. Chances are that after reading this article, you may also feel hungry, and may actually visit your favorite restaurant to taste your favorite dish.

If your saliva is activated now, that means you are aware. Whatever you are reading, is connecting to your brain.

How Can You Say That You Are Aware

Whenever you are sensing visuals, sound, touch, and smell, if you are able to recollect memories, and there are physiological changes in your body, then you are aware. Note, that awareness is always a physiological entity.

For example, there is a negative person in your life. You have a painful memory of this person. Whenever you see this person, you feel something odd. For example, your heart just starts beating faster. That means you are aware of this person.

When you see the person you love most, there are changes in the eyes. Your Pupil are more dilated, you feel more energy. That is awareness.

Therefore, we can define awareness as:-

Awareness is the Physiological Experience of your current state, decoded by brain sensory parts and memory. Awareness makes you prepared for the current situation, by altering your physiology.

When you are watching a horror movie, you start getting shivers and sweating. This means that you are aware. When you see a comedy scene in your favorite Web Series, you start laughing. This means that you are aware. Laughing, and sweating, all are physiological changes.

Awareness and Consciousness by Psychology

Neuroscience and the autonomic nervous system explain how consciousness and awareness work in real in your body through signals and body-brain interoperability.

Psychology is a meta-physical layer of your brain. You have a perception of yourself and the environment. You have an idea about who you are, where you are staying, and are challenges and aspirations of your life. You have an idea about your duties and responsibilities. You have an idea about the people in your life. You can process information like the behaviors of a person. You can form sentences, and think. As you are reading this article, several thoughts are going through your mind. You may be thinking about other texts you have read about consciousness and awareness. This is your psychology.

Psychological Awareness

Just as senses act as the stimulus in the real world, thoughts and meanings act as stimuli in your psychology. Therefore you are aware if you can decode the meaning of what people are doing, saying, their behavior. The more self-aware you are, the better you will be able to connect your thoughts, other’s words, your plans.

Psychological awareness is the ability to narrate your thoughts, feelings, others, environment in an understandable language. In psychology, awareness is cognition, your ability to extract meaning.

The way Physiological awareness results in physiological changes in the body, and psychological awareness results in emotion. These emotions further act as stimuli and you start feeling.

You are psychologically aware, if you are able to extract meaning of your thoughts and experience the feeling of that meaning.

Psychological Consciousness

Let us imagine that your colleague is doing a passive-aggressive behavior. You are aware. So, you have decoded that behavior. It has got translated into emotional anger. Now out of that anger, you want to slap your colleague. But you then think more deeply. The consequences of the slapping may not be right. I may lose my job. Let me answer the colleague who is bullying me verbally with verbal answers. So, you alter the natural course of action, by deep thinking.

The more knowledge you acquire, in various different fields, the better you can think of a situation from a different perspective. You can weigh your actions better. For example, on most of the internet, you read only one perspective of a subject.

Even when you are reading about the difference between awareness and consciousness, some blogs will elaborate difference from a Neuroscience perspective, some blogs will elaborate on physiological characteristics, and some blogs will elaborate on this difference from a spiritual perspective. However, when you read any articles on Lyfas Blog, you will be reading multiple perspectives on the same topic.

Hence, most of the internet readings make you more aware, whereas Lyfas makes you more conscious.

Therefore, Psychological awareness is your ability to think and experience the meaning you have thought, whereas Psychological consciousness is your ability to think deeply about that meaning to decide upon an action.

What Is More Important? Awareness or Consciousness?

More awareness will make you identify the problems faster, you will think more. But awareness won’t help you to take the right actions. This is because Psychological awareness is your ability to think about a problem and solution. The solutions that you will decide on as an action, will often be monotonous, one-dimensional.

On the other hand, your knowledge of various different subjects, and ability to connect dots through multiple subjects, past memory, and experiences, to take the right action is consciousness.

Awareness Helps You to Think, Consciousness Helps You to Decide

If you are not aware, you can not think about the problem and the solutions. For example, you are running a startup. Your funds are getting exhausted. You are not aware. So, you do not see this as a problem. You do not think about it and are spending recklessly. Finally, your funds get exhausted and the startup is closed.

Now, say, you are aware that funds are getting exhausted. You are thinking about how to make the startup survive. However, you do not have deep thinking. You do not have the ability to link to multiple different knowledge, multiple perspectives. So, your awareness will guide you to keep pitching to the investors. You may end-up, up putting the business on the back burner, and keep chasing the investors.

On the other hand, if you are conscious, you may understand that okay, raising funds may take time. Realistically our possibility of raising funds is low. We may focus on increasing revenue or trying to compete in different hackathons, and reduce expenses. Instead of feeling afraid, due to the outcome of thinking, you will be able to solve the problem.

Without consciousness, you will keep thinking about a problem, and will not be able to take decisions. Without awareness, you will know that you can solve a problem as and when the problem comes, but you won’t be able to identify the problem itself.

Say, someone is slapping you. You have just too much consciousness. So you are thinking deeply, about how this person can be changed. What this abuser must do to become a good person. If you are aware, you will think okay, change and all will happen later, first I need to defend myself.

Awareness is the lower layer of psychology whereas consciousness is the higher layer of psychology.

Screen Your Awareness and Consciousness With This Simple Test

Simple Awareness Self-Assessment Test

1. Please point-wise make a note of the times you think that you are being cheated and betrayed. Let us say the total number of times you are betrayed is N.
2. How many times have you are being betrayed by a similar type of person? (for example partner, friends, strangers). Let us call this number N_k.
3. Say, you are betrayed totally 10 times in life, 3 times by a stranger, 6 times by friends, and 1 time by your partner. So, N=10, N_stranger=3, N_friends=6, N_partner=1
4. Your awareness A_k=(N-N_k)x100/N. Hence your Awareness_stranger=70%, Awareness_friends=40%, and Awareness_partner=90%
5. Overall Awareness=Average(A_k). Here Your awareness is 66.6%
6. You must aim at improving your awareness to over 75%.

Simple Consciousness Self-Assessment Test

1. Take the lowest awareness level. In this example, your awareness of friends is the lowest(40%).
2. Note down how many the number of times you are cheated by the same person. Take the maximum. This is N_K^R (or a number of repeated cheating you experienced from the same person).
3. Let us assume that the 6 times your friends have cheated on you, Ram has cheated on you the most, 4 times. So, N_Ram^R=4
4. When did you realize Ram cheated on you for the first time? How many times did you get cheated after you first realized that you are getting cheated? This number is N_K^T.
5. Say after you realized that you are getting cheated on for the first time, Ram cheated you three more times. So, N_Ram^T=3
6. Consciousness=(N_K^R -N_K^T)x100/N_K^R . Consciousness is your ability to decide and decode.
7. In this case, Your Consciousness=(4-3)x100/4=25%.

How to Interpret Test Results of Awareness and Consciousness?

1. If your awareness and consciousness are both >90%, then you will be super successful.
2. If your awareness and consciousness are >75%, then you will be successful.
3. If your awareness and consciousness>60%, then you will be safe.
4. If Awareness>60%, but Consciousness<60%, then you will be overthinking.
5. If your Consciousness is>60%, but your Awareness is <60%, then you will suffer more but will be safe.
6. If your Awareness<50%, then you are inattentive and unaware. You are unsafe, and people may actually harm you.
7. If your Consciousness<50%, then you are ignorant. Ignorance will make you suffer in the long run.
8. If your awareness, or consciousness is less than 50%, you will fail in whatever is your pursuit of life.

From childhood, we are asked what we want to become. No one from parents to teachers asked “who you are”. So, we are trained to be aware, rather than conscious. Therefore by design, we will be stubborn. 

Awareness and Consciousness Hormones

Dopamine is the awareness hormone. It ensures neuroplasticity between different parts of the brain. It ensures that the decoded information is quickly sent to the autonomic nervous system for action.

Serotonin, on the other hand, is your consciousness Hormone. More Serotonin helps other parts of the brain to be connected to your pre-frontal cortex.

Awareness and Consciousness Emotions

Pain and Pleasure are the emotions of Awareness. If you are not aware, you will not experience pain or pleasure. For example, during physical intimacy with your partner, if you are thinking about the office problem, and are not aware of the current moment, then you will not be able to experience the pleasure.

When your boss is bullying you, if you are not aware, you will not be able to experience the pain it is causing by the behavior of your boss.

Happiness, Satisfaction, and Sadness, on the other hand, are the Emotions of Consciousness. When you are able to make sense of a difficult situation you will be happy. When you are able to solve a critical problem, you will be happy. When you are watching a comedy movie and laugh, you will be pleased.

When you achieve your goals you will be satisfied.

Awareness and Consciousness Behavior

As dopamine is also addictive, if you are too aware, then you may be overthinking and keep on thinking. Overthinking will become an addiction. You will also become super vigilant. You would want to know each and everything around you. You would want to know about others’ mobile messages. You will be obsessed with the news. You will be super sensitive to gossip and rumors.

Lack of awareness on the other hand will make you depressed. You will not be able to experience your emotions. You will become dependent on others. This is also called codependency.

Lack of consciousness will make you confused. You will not be able to make sense of many things. You can’t take decisions and you will be keep thinking about a problem. Over consciousness on the other hand will free you from the boundaries of pain and pleasure. You will not be able to feel the lower level emotions and rely extremely on only aspirations and achievements. This will significantly rise your secondary psychopathy.

Lack of consciousness and awareness both will cause depression, anxiety and stress. Your life will become unsafe, people will hurt you and harm you. You will have no control of your life.

Excess awareness on the other hand will increase your narcissism. You will become perfectionist. You will develop obsessive compulsive disorder. You will become super aware of your image, your position. Your brand awareness will increase and you will become rigid.

Consciousness is associated with your core, your identity. Without consciousness, you will become weak in boundaries. Others will violate your boundaries, and you will endup violating other boundaries.

Conclusion

Personality development industry runs on a promise that it will increase your awareness. In this post we have seen that once you start increasing awareness, that becomes quite toxic. You keep chasing more success and money. You become totally brand-aware, and self-centric, and you start losing relationships.

Spiritual industry on the other hand promises to make you more conscious. You stop feeling the lower emotions such as pain and pleasure. It dysregulates your emotions and promotes psychopathy. You get entangled in morals and values. You keep building larger vision without any execution.

Life is all about balance, the equilibrium. Excess anything is as harmful as lack of it. If you understand when you have to grow, when you have to stop, when you have to focus on self, when you are needed to focus on others, when to think, when to study, when to act, then you will not only become successful but would lead an immensely fulfilled life.

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What is your experience in life with awareness and consciousness? What you think of the other areas where these can be applied? Where you think you have made mistakes due to lack of deep understanding of the two? Did you learn anything new with this article? Has this article helped you in increasing your consciousness? If you have any doubts and queries regarding this topic, please leave your thoughts in the comment section.

Rupam Das

Passionate, Accountable Student for Life