Consciousness and its role in reality — V

Matthijs Cornelissen
last revision: 25 September 2025

comparing the physicalist and integral views

If you haven't read the earlier sections,
you may like to read them first:

 

This section offers a short summary of the main differences between the physicalist concept of consciousness as used in mainstream science, and the integral concept which we will use in Infinity in a Drop.

The concept of consciousness that I have called "mainstream" is the physicalist concept that most academic psychologists seem to take as the accepted standard, and that authors within the interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies tend to use to differentiate their own views from. It is also the concept which medical professionals use in an emergency ward to determine whether a patient is conscious or not.

Traditionally, most Indian knowledge systems that deal with consciousness appear to have been somewhere on a continuum between pure and integral spirituality. Over the last 50 years, however, there appears to have been a marked shift towards a more integral world view, especially amongst the urban middle class. So, for simplicity's sake, I'll focus here on the difference between the mainstream physicalist and the integral view. For the integral view, I am basing myself on Sri Aurobindo's writings.

  1. The mainstream view is based on the experience of consciousness in the ordinary waking state.

    2. The integral view is based on the experience that self and world are one with the transcendent Divine.

  2. As a result, the mainstream view identifies consciousness with the small portion of the mental processes of which we are aware in our ordinary waking state.

    3. The integral view sees consciousness as a core-element of all of reality, and it sees our mental consciousness as just one particular way of being conscious.

  3. In the mainstream view, which is limited to the ordinary waking state, matter looks unconscious and spirit is superconscious.

    4. In the integral view, our mental way of being conscious is a middle term, approximately halfway in an extensive hierarchy of different types of conscious existence ranging from spirit to matter.

  4. In the mainstream view, consciousness is an exception, occurring only in the complex nervous systems of mammals and perhaps a few other types of animals. Some restrict it to humans; others extend it even to sufficiently complex machines; a slowly increasing number supports panpsychism.

    5. In the integral view, consciousness is primary and pervasive throughout existence.

  5. In the mainstream view, consciousness is a late entrant in the play: it is a difficult to explain result emerging from an essentially chance-driven evolution.

    6. In the integral view, consciousness is there from before time; it is deeply embedded in absolutely everything and it is the guiding principle behind the evolution of increasingly complex biological forms in which it gradually emancipates from the stupor of consciousness in matter.

  6. In the mainstream view, consciousness is basically one-dimensional and limited. The only way of being conscious is the one we humans have in our ordinary waking state. Dream, animal consciousness, sleep, and coma are looked at as diminished forms of that same type of consciousness.

    7. In the integral view there are many different ways of being conscious, which form together a complex spectrum of different worlds, each representing a different relationship between puruṣa and prakṛti.

  7. In the mainstream view, consciousness is centred in the ego and identified with the mind. As such it is intrinsically intentional and always maintains a difference between subject and object.1

    8. In the integral view, consciousness can be centred in and identified with the ego, the ātman, Brahman or nothing at all and as such it can appear as dual, biune, unitary, or even "empty". Underneath all appearances, consciousness remains, however, everywhere an integral part of the indivisible unity of sat, cit and ānanda (existence, consciousness and joy).

  8. In the mainstream view, consciousness is limited to awareness.

    9. In the integral view, consciousness is also power: cit is also cit-śakti (or cit-tapas).2

  9. In the mainstream view, consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon "emerging" from physical processes, but without any possibility of affecting the physical world.

    10. In the integral view, consciousness belongs to the essence of reality. As long as our consciousness is limited to its physical embodiment, we are the puppets of the seemingly unconscious processes of nature. However, when we free ourselves and our consciousness from those bonds, we can attain the state of a pure witness, or go even further and identify with higher ranges of consciousness from where we can affect events out of a genuine freedom, not from without, but from within, in perfect harmony with the whole.

  10. If the world is purely physical, love, truth and beauty would be no more than subjective illusions. A purely physical life (if that could exist!) would be intrinsically meaningless.

    11. In the integral view, the little, narrowly embodied consciousness we presently identify with, is slowly growing and on its way to embody the perfect truth, love and beauty which it already is in its essence.

 

As mentioned before, considering these differences one could get the impression that naming both concepts "consciousness" is a mistake, but looking closer it becomes clear that the mainstream conceptualization of consciousness covers one amongst the many forms of consciousness recognised in the integral spiritual view. In the rest of this text I will use the word "consciousness" in the wider, more comprehensive, integral spiritual sense unless it is obvious from the context or specifically mentioned.
 

We can put the same points in a table:
 

mainstream view

integral view

1

view derived from mind as experienced in the ordinary waking state

view derived from cit as experienced in transcendent and cosmic states of conscious being

2

consciousness less than mind;
only a few mental processes conscious

consciousness more than mind;
mind only one type of consciousness

3

only the ordinary waking state fully conscious;
matter unconscious
the spirit ineffable

the ordinary waking state a middle term in a long range from spirit to matter

4

an exception

pervasive, in and beyond space

5

a late arrival

from before time

6

one-dimensional

manifesting in many different ways of being

7

centred in the ego

centred in the ātman (Self)

8

only awareness

awareness as well as power:
cit as well as cit-tapas

9

an epiphenomenon

the essence of self and world

10

life is the product of chance

life has as an aim and is on its way to embody pure truth, love and beauty

Table 6e. Mainstream vs integral concepts

For those who are interested, there is a much more detailed issue-wise comparison between all three concepts of consciousness in this chapter of the appendix [p. 208].

How does all this matter, and where to go from here?

It comes naturally to us to think that the kind of consciousness we humans happen to have is simply all that there is to consciousness. This is, however, as useful for psychology, as it was for physics to think that the entire cosmos circles around the little planet on which we humans happen to live.

The concept of consciousness that presently prevails in mainstream science takes it as an epiphenomenon of physical processes in the brain without known purpose or function, a view that can only add to an increasing sense of psychological alienation and futility, or to a growing disenchantment with science — not exactly the type of developments humanity can sensibly look forward to.

As we mentioned in the introduction, most, if not all major problems humanity faces at present are essentially psychological, and with the increasing role science plays in shaping our society, we can no longer afford a science of psychology that is crippled by its present, far too limited understanding of its core subject area. From an Indian perspective, modern psychology looks like what physics would have been if it had limited itself to the study of rocks, arguing that fluids and gasses (not to speak of electricity and electromagnetism) are not solid enough to be considered legitimate objects of scientific inquiry, or if it had dispensed with mathematics on the ground that so few can fully master its mysteries. We cannot afford this, we simply must come to a wider, more realistic and more comprehensive understanding of consciousness, its nature and possibilities.

I hope to have shown that for a comprehensive understanding of the whole of reality we need an integral understanding of consciousness, including its omnipresence and its aspect of power. But even this is not enough. We cannot understand our own little lives if we don't understand where the world as a whole is going because the world is not standing still, we are part of its movement, and we want to participate. We are, even biologically, physically, forward-looking. What is missing in our description of consciousness so far are the dynamics, the large scale, long-time involution and evolution of consciousness, for it is these that give us a legitimate hope that

[Our] tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature's face.

— Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, p. 344

So, in the next chapter we'll discuss Sri Aurobindo's idea of a still ongoing evolution of consciousness as meta-narrative for psychology.

To understand the basic direction of this still ongoing evolution of consciousness, and to get at least some idea of what the next step could be, it will be helpful first to have a look at the present and see what has happened till now; what new light the integral conceptualisation of consciousness can shed on the evolution of the human mind in a world that at first sight appears to have been purely physical. How does our understanding of the evolution change if we assume that consciousness is not only passive but also dynamic, and not only pervasive, but primary?

 

Endnotes

1Searle (2005) acknowledges that there are non-intentional states of consciousness even in the waking state, but in this he seems to be the exception.

2Sri Aurobindo's integral view comes in this respect close to Kashmiri Shaivism, in which Śiva and Śaktī imply and include each other. This is radically different from the Sāṃkhya view which takes its division between puruṣa and prakṛti (Self and Nature) as almost absolute. Sāṃkhya sees a pure, passive consciousness as the essence of the puruṣa, and nature as dynamic but empty of consciousness. In Vedānta too, there are schools that limit consciousness to its witness aspect. The idea that matter is void of consciousness is less common amongst Vedāntins, since it goes against many passages in the Vedas and older Upaniṣads which assert that everything in existence is a manifestation of consciousness.

In Sri Aurobindo's view, to concentrate on the passive, witness aspect of consciousness is a useful, even necessary device in the earlier stages of sādhanā, but it cannot be the ultimate truth, since the manifestation could not have come into existence unless the consciousness of Brahman which created the world had the power to do so. The more advanced stages of yoga are also impossible without the power aspect of consciousness. See this text from a footnote to The Synthesis of Yoga.