माऊली सांज, अंधार पान्हा. विश्व सारे जणू होय कान्हा...

From quite some time I was trying to understand the meaning of the words 'Consciousness' (चेतना in Marathi) and 'Awareness' (जाणीव in Marathi). Dictionaries identify them as synonyms of each other and people sometimes use these words interchangeably. Do they have overlapping meanings?

My instinct and innate feeling tells me that there is some subtle difference. Even after a lot of reflection, I'm not able to differentiate between these two words in the manner that is clear and complete.This humble attempt is just to pen down my own understanding of the meaning of these two words.

'Consciousness' is the state of mind and 'Awareness' is the state of soul. Mind actually have four states:

1. Unconscious state.
2. Subconscious state.
3. Conscious state.
4. Super conscious state.

Under the influence of anesthesia, in deep-dreamless sleep, due to brain injury our mind enters the realm of unconsciousness. Awareness is zero in this state of mind.

Subconscious and Conscious states of mind work very close together. Anything that is routine, our conscious mind delegates to the subconscious mind. For instance, consider this situation, when you are learning a car driving. You have to do everything consciously, changing gears, pressing accelerator, controlling steering etc. But soon when it becomes a routine, your conscious mind finds no challenge in it and delegates this responsibility to your subconscious mind. You can then focus on more interesting stuff like listening music while driving your car etc. Let us take one more example, when you move to a new house, you have to consciously find the light switch among the available switches, to switch on the light. After few days, whoa! you switch on the light without even thinking about it. You press the correct button. Always!

If it is too routine a work, even your subconscious mind finds it no more challenging and delegates this work to your unconscious mind. Evolutionary biologists tells us that, at early stages of human evolution, the beating of heart, digestion etc were conscious and voluntary activities.Over the huge period of time, as they became too routine an activities, that our conscious mind delegated them to our subconscious mind and then they were delegated to the unconscious mind. That is the reason why, heart beats even when a person is in coma.

Yoga tells us that there is one more state of mind that is super conscious state. This is the supreme state of mind and there is full awareness in this state. This full awareness is nothing but the enlightenment of the soul, self-realisation, salvation etc. This is the state when you (your soul) release its true self i.e its omnipresence and that there is no personality but God.

More the consciousness more will be the awareness. No discovery has ever happened in this world without the concentration of mind. When scientist concentrate his mind on something, it reveals its mystery and scientist become aware of it. Concentration is also one way of controlling your mind. More you concentrate more will be the consciousness. We can increase the consciousness of mind by controlling it. One way to achieve this is by meditation. In meditation, you control your mind and in the process increase consciousness of your mind and become more aware.


Hrishikesh Alshi
Nagpur/Bangalore