What Is Consciousness? Science, Spirituality and Practice

You are reading this, so something is happening right now. Marks on a screen are turning into meaning. You feel the chair, hear a hum somewhere in the room, notice a mood. And behind all of it sits the quiet fact of being aware. What is that?

Consciousness is the capacity to experience anything at all, the felt sense that there is something it is like to be you. Scientists, philosophers and spiritual teachers all study it, and they still do not agree on what it is. This guide walks through the hard problem, the three big explanations (materialism, panpsychism and idealism), what the spiritual traditions say, the states we move through every day, what near-death and awareness research does and does not show, and practices you can try today. We will say plainly where something is established, where it is debated, and where it rests on tradition or faith.

What Is Consciousness?

Consciousness is the fact that experience exists. When you taste coffee, there is the chemistry of the coffee, and there is the taste. The taste is the part we call conscious experience. Philosophers call these inner qualities qualia: the redness of red, the ache of missing a friend, the stillness after a long exhale.

Most definitions circle three ideas. Awareness is the simple knowing that something is here. Subjective experience is the sense that it feels like something to be you. And selfhood is the story of “me” that rides along on top. Spiritual teachers often say these are different layers, and that awareness is the one that remains when the story quiets.

That distinction matters for everything that follows. Being conscious in the medical sense (awake, responsive, aware of your surroundings) is something doctors measure every day. Consciousness as a mystery, the question of why there is an inner life at all, is something nobody has explained yet. We will keep both in view.

You do not need to settle the debate to explore it. You are already doing it. Try this for ten seconds: stop reading and notice that you are aware of the room. Not the objects in it. The awareness that includes them. That is the territory this article is about.

From the podcast: Rupert Spira, a teacher in the nondual tradition, explores awareness and the nature of the self in his conversation on the Next Level Soul podcast. It is a good companion to the ten-second exercise above.

Why Consciousness Is Called the Hard Problem

In 1994 the philosopher David Chalmers gave this puzzle its best-known name, the hard problem of consciousness. His paper followed in 1995. He separated it from what he called the easy problems. The easy problems are about function: how the brain focuses attention, stores memories, reports on its own states, and tells waking from sleep. They are not easy in practice, and researchers will work on them for generations. But they are the kind of question science knows how to approach. Find the mechanism, test it, refine it.

The hard problem asks something different. Why is any of that processing accompanied by experience? A brain could, in principle, be described as sorting signals and steering a body with no inner life at all. Yet you have one. Many researchers think this gap is real. Others expect it to fade once the easy problems are solved. The field has not settled the question.

Two other landmarks help. In 1974 the philosopher Thomas Nagel asked what it is like to be a bat, arguing that even complete knowledge of a bat’s sonar would not tell you how its experience feels from the inside. And neuroscientists have spent decades searching for the neural correlates of consciousness, the brain activity that tracks conscious experience. They have found real patterns. Correlation is not explanation, though, and that is the heart of the hard problem.

Here is the honest summary. In everyday life, consciousness clearly depends on a working brain. Anesthesia switches it off, injury changes it, sleep dims it. What we do not know is whether the brain produces consciousness, filters it, receives it, or is one of its shapes. Each explanation below makes a different bet.

From the podcast: Biologist Rupert Sheldrake takes on the question of what consciousness is and what it says about the soul in his Next Level Soul interview. He is a challenger of the standard view, so listen with the same open and careful mind we ask of every guest.

Try this: the next time you eat something you love, taste it slowly, then ask where the taste is. In the food? On the tongue? In the brain? In awareness? You will not solve the hard problem. You may feel why it is hard.

Materialism, Panpsychism and Idealism

Almost every serious account of consciousness falls into one of three families. Each has thoughtful people behind it. Each has a weak spot. And each lines up, loosely, with how people tend to think about spirituality.

Materialism (Physicalism)

Materialism says matter is the basic stuff of reality, and consciousness is something the brain does, the way digestion is something the stomach does. It is the working assumption of most neuroscience, and its strengths are real. It has produced testable theories. Global workspace theory proposes that consciousness is information broadcast widely across the brain. Integrated information theory links consciousness to how unified a system’s parts are. And materialism explains why damage to the brain changes the mind.

Its weak spot is the hard problem itself. Describing neurons firing does not obviously tell us why there should be an inner feeling. Recent head-to-head experiments between leading theories have not produced a clear winner, and some theories remain openly contested. Materialists reply that the gap will shrink the way the mystery of “life” shrank once biochemistry matured. Maybe. For now, that is a promise rather than a result.

Panpsychism

Panpsychism proposes that consciousness is a basic feature of the world, present in some simple form in matter itself, much as mass or charge is. A rock is not pondering anything. The claim is that the ingredients of experience are there from the start, and that minds like ours are what happens when those ingredients combine. Philosophers such as Galen Strawson and Philip Goff defend versions of it, and it has moved from the fringe to a serious seat at the academic table.

Its strength is that it does not have to explain how experience appears from nothing. Its weak spot is the combination problem: how do countless tiny bits of experience add up to one unified you? It is also very hard to test. Panpsychism sits close to what many spiritual traditions have long said, that awareness runs through everything, though the philosophers state it in careful, non-religious terms.

Idealism

Idealism turns the order around. Consciousness is the ground, and the physical world is how that ground appears. The roots are old: Indian philosophy, Buddhist Yogacara, and in the West Bishop Berkeley. Today thinkers such as Bernardo Kastrup argue for a modern form in which the universe is a single field of mind and individual lives are like whirlpools in it.

Its strength is that it matches direct experience, since everything you have ever known has arrived inside awareness. Its weak spot is explaining why the physical world is so consistent and law-like, and why brains and minds seem so tightly linked. Idealists have answers. Critics are not persuaded. This, too, is a live debate.

Where Quantum Ideas Fit

You will often hear that quantum physics proves consciousness creates reality. It does not. The physicist Roger Penrose and the anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff proposed that quantum processes inside neurons might play a role in consciousness. It is a fascinating hypothesis, and it is also controversial, with many physicists and neuroscientists skeptical. Our guide to quantum physics and spirituality separates what is known from what is borrowed language.

From the podcast: Several guests have approached the quantum question from different angles. Physicist Amit Goswami speaks about creating reality through the quantum field. Astrophysicist Bernard Haisch discusses why reality may not be what it seems. Joseph Selbie makes a case for a divine code in quantum physics. These are guest perspectives, and some of them go further than mainstream science does. Dean Radin, a researcher who studies psychic phenomena, covers the evidence he points to for psychic abilities, which asks whether awareness reaches beyond the brain.

A way to use all this: notice which of the three feels most true to you right now, and write one sentence about why. Then notice which one you would most like to be wrong about. The answer tells you something about your own assumptions.

What the Spiritual Traditions Say About Consciousness

Long before laboratories, contemplatives ran their own experiments, using attention itself as the instrument. Their reports differ in language and agree on a surprising amount. A word of care: these are teachings and lived reports, not laboratory findings, and we present them as such.

Vedanta and Yoga

In Advaita Vedanta, the nondual school of Hindu philosophy, consciousness is not produced by anything. It is the reality. The Sanskrit word chit means consciousness, and the teachings describe the deepest Self (Atman) as one with the ground of all being (Brahman). The ordinary mind, on this view, is a surface layer, and the sense of being a separate person is a kind of misidentification. Our guide to non-duality explores this in depth.

Yoga takes a practical angle. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras open by describing yoga as the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind, so that the observer rests in its own nature. Breath, posture, ethical living and meditation are the means. According to the tradition, what remains when the mental movement settles is awareness itself.

Buddhism

Buddhism approaches consciousness with striking caution about the self. The Buddha is said to have taught that what we call a self is a flow of changing experience (body, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness), with no fixed owner at the center. Later schools, such as Yogacara, describe layers of consciousness, including a “storehouse” where impressions are kept. Tibetan teachings speak of the natural clarity of mind, called rigpa, which is described as present beneath all thought. Meditation here is investigation. Look, and see what is actually there.

Mystics of Every Faith

Kashmir Shaivism describes the universe as the play of a conscious energy, chiti. Christian contemplatives, from the desert fathers to the medieval mystics, speak of an inner stillness where the soul rests in God. Sufi teachers describe the heart as a mirror that can be polished until it reflects the Divine. The language is devotional rather than philosophical, yet each points toward a deeper awareness behind the busy mind and a sense that it is not separate from the sacred.

What They Share

Three threads recur. Awareness is more basic than thought. The sense of a separate self is more flexible than it seems. And direct practice, not belief, is the way in. That last point is why these traditions can sit comfortably beside honest inquiry. Our guide to spiritual enlightenment follows these threads through the paths, stages and signs different traditions describe.

Try this: pick one tradition that speaks to you and read a single short passage from its own texts this week. Read it slowly, like a letter from a friend.

From the podcast: Dr. Tony Nader speaks about how Transcendental Meditation can change the world, and Geoff Hoppe explains how to reach cosmic consciousness. Ibrahim Karim shares how to access different realms of reality. Each speaks from a tradition or a lived practice, so we offer them as teaching rather than laboratory finding.

States of Consciousness

You do not live in one state of consciousness. You move through several every day, and each one shows you something about what consciousness can be.

Waking, Dreaming and Deep Sleep

Waking awareness is the one we call normal: outward-facing, tied to the senses, organized around goals. Dreaming, most vivid during REM sleep, is a rich inner world with no outside input. Deep sleep, the dreamless stages, is where ordinary experience seems to dim or disappear. The Mandukya Upanishad names these three and then points to a fourth, turiya, described not as a separate state but as the awareness present in all three. That is a spiritual claim, and a lovely one to test against your own life. Is there something in you that knows you slept well?

Lucid Dreaming and Flow

In a lucid dream, the dreamer realizes they are dreaming. Sleep researchers confirmed this in the laboratory in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when lucid dreamers signaled with prearranged eye movements while still asleep. Flow, the absorbed state athletes and artists describe, shows a different shift: the sense of a separate self fades and action feels effortless. Neither requires belief. Both suggest that the usual sense of self is more flexible than it looks.

Meditative States

Meditators report states in which thinking slows, the boundary between self and surroundings softens, and a spacious awareness remains. Brain-imaging studies of experienced meditators have found differences in networks tied to attention and self-referential thought. The research is real, but it is still young, results vary between studies, and a brain scan cannot tell us what a state is like from the inside. Treat it as encouraging, not conclusive.

Clinical and Altered States

Medicine maps consciousness too. Anesthesia reliably switches off awareness. In severe brain injury, some people who seem unresponsive have been found, through brain imaging, to follow instructions in their minds. In a well-known 2006 study, a patient diagnosed as vegetative showed brain activity consistent with imagining a game of tennis when asked. Findings like this remind us that the outside of a person can hide an inside. Researchers are also studying psychedelics under medical supervision, where participants often describe profound or mystical-type experiences. Those studies are ongoing, they are not an invitation to experiment on your own, and what such experiences mean is still debated.

From the podcast: Author Anthony Peake explores consciousness and altered states in his Next Level Soul conversation, a good listen if this section made you curious.

Try this tonight: notice the moment before sleep and watch thoughts turn into images. In the morning, write down any dream fragment before you move. You are mapping your own territory.

Near-Death Experiences and the Study of Awareness

Few subjects test our theories like near-death experiences. People who come close to death, often after cardiac arrest, sometimes report a clear, structured experience: deep peace, a tunnel or a light, meeting loved ones, a review of life, a feeling of complete belonging. Many say it felt more real than ordinary life, and that it changed how they live.

What does the research say? Quite a lot, and not all of it fits a tidy story. A 2001 study led by the Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel, published in The Lancet, followed cardiac arrest survivors in Dutch hospitals and found that a minority reported a core experience. The larger AWARE study, led by the critical-care physician Sam Parnia and covering just over two thousand cardiac arrests, interviewed survivors about what they recalled. A small number described awareness during the period when the heart had stopped, and in one case the details were matched to events recorded by the defibrillator. Researchers also placed hidden images in resuscitation rooms to see whether anyone could report them, but too few arrests happened in those rooms for the test to tell us anything. Follow-up work has looked at brain activity recorded during resuscitation.

There are competing explanations. Skeptics point to the dying brain: low oxygen, surges of brain activity as blood flow falls (a 2013 study in rats reported one after cardiac arrest), medications, and the way memory fills in afterward. Others argue that clear, organized experience at a time when the brain should barely be functioning suggests consciousness may not be produced by the brain alone. Both camps agree on this much: the reports are common, consistent in broad outline, and worth studying. No study has settled the question either way.

We have spoken with many experiencers on the Next Level Soul podcast. The neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander shared his experience in his conversation with us, and we always present stories like his as personal testimony, to be weighed with an open and careful mind. For the research, history and common features, read our complete guide to near-death experiences.

From the podcast: Dr. Alexander also sits down with us on NDEs, psychedelics and the true nature of reality. And Anton Grosz shares his experience and the ideas that followed in Handbook for a New Consciousness. Both are personal accounts, offered as testimony.

Whatever you conclude, these accounts return again and again to the same few messages: love, connection and presence. You do not have to wait for a crisis to practice them. Ask yourself one question this week. If I knew my awareness was part of something larger, what would I do differently on an ordinary Tuesday? Then do one small thing.

Practices to Explore Your Own Awareness

Theory only takes you so far. The traditions agree that consciousness is something to investigate from the inside. Here are five simple practices. None needs special gear or belief. Start with one.

1. Rest in Open Awareness

Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Instead of focusing on the breath, let attention open like a wide lens. Sounds, sensations and thoughts come and go. Then ask quietly, what is aware of all this? Do not hunt for an answer. Rest as the noticing, for ten minutes. If thoughts take over, return to the breath and open again. Our meditation guide explains how to begin if you are new.

2. Ask Who Is Aware

This is the heart of self-inquiry, closely associated with the sage Ramana Maharshi. When a thought or feeling arises (I am anxious, I am late), ask: to whom does this arise? Then look for the one who is aware. Teachers say the point is not a clever answer but noticing that the looking itself reveals something quiet and steady. If this stirs up fear or disorientation, stop, ground yourself, and consider talking with a qualified teacher or mental health professional.

3. Ground in the Senses

Awareness is easier to find when the body is awake. Name five things you see, four you feel, three you hear, two you smell and one you taste. Then notice the space in which all of it appears. It takes a minute, and you can do it in a checkout line. More simple exercises are in our mindfulness practices guide.

4. Watch the Edges of Sleep

Spend a few minutes at bedtime watching thoughts loosen into images, and a few minutes on waking before you reach for your phone. Keep a notebook by the bed. Over weeks, patterns appear. Some people find this the easiest way to see how fluid the sense of self really is.

5. Practice Presence in One Ordinary Task

Choose one daily task, such as washing dishes, walking the dog or making tea, and do it with full attention. When your mind wanders, notice that you noticed. That moment of noticing is a small taste of what the traditions call awareness. It counts.

Be patient with yourself. These are not techniques for producing a special experience. They are ways of paying attention to the one you are already having.

Books Worth Your Time

These are starting points, from neuroscience to philosophy to nonduality. We chose a range so you can see the debate from more than one side.

• Being You by Anil Seth: a neuroscientist’s accessible case that experience is built by the brain. Find Being You on Amazon.
• The Conscious Mind by David Chalmers: the original in-depth argument for the hard problem. Find The Conscious Mind on Amazon.
• Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff: a readable defense of panpsychism. Find Galileo’s Error on Amazon.
• The Idea of the World by Bernardo Kastrup: a case for idealism. Find The Idea of the World on Amazon.
• I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj: direct, practical dialogues with a nonduality teacher. Find I Am That on Amazon.
• Consciousness Beyond Life by Pim van Lommel: a cardiologist’s look at near-death research and what he makes of it. Find Consciousness Beyond Life on Amazon.

Here is a small challenge. Read one that disagrees with you. You will understand your own view better for it.

Conversations About Consciousness

These guests come at awareness from different angles, from physics and biology to meditation and near-death research. Each conversation is on the Next Level Soul podcast.

Rupert SpiraAwareness, Consciousness & the Nature of SelfRupert SheldrakeThe Science of Consciousness & the SoulAnthony PeakeDecoding Consciousness and Altered StatesAnton GroszHandbook for a New ConsciousnessDr. Eben AlexanderNDEs, Psychedelics & the True Nature of RealityGeoff HoppeHow to Reach Cosmic ConsciousnessAmit GoswamiCreating Reality Through the Quantum FieldBernard HaischAn Astrophysicist on Why Reality Isn’t What It SeemsIbrahim KarimHow to Access Different Realms of RealityDr. Tony NaderHow Transcendental Meditation Can Change the WorldDean Radin, Ph.D.Science-Backed Psychic AbilitiesJoseph SelbieQuantum Physics and the Case for a Divine Code

Want more? Browse every episode on the Next Level Soul podcast page.

Where to Go Next

If one idea here stayed with you, follow it. Listen to Rupert Spira explore awareness and the nature of the self in this Next Level Soul podcast conversation, or return to the guide on spiritual enlightenment when you want the wider map. Next Level Soul is a spiritual ecosystem of conversations, movies, courses and community, with more than 720 episodes of the main show and new content every week. The power is within you, and you are already enough to begin.

Go Deeper with NLS Mastery: Awakening Divine Consciousness

If you want to explore consciousness through direct practice, you can go deeper with a guided course. Paul Selig teaches it in Awakening Divine Consciousness, part of NLS Mastery. Watch the course preview.

Explore the Course

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Consciousness in Simple Terms?

Consciousness is the experience of being aware. It is the felt sense that there is something it is like to be you, to see a color, feel a mood or notice a thought.

What Is the Hard Problem of Consciousness?

Coined by philosopher David Chalmers in the 1990s, it asks why physical processes in the brain are accompanied by inner experience at all. Explaining how the brain handles attention or memory is considered the easier part. Why any of it feels like something remains unsolved.

Where Does Consciousness Come From?

Nobody knows. Materialism says the brain produces it. Panpsychism says it is a basic feature of matter. Idealism says it is the ground of reality. Many spiritual traditions describe it as fundamental. Science has not settled the question.

What Is Panpsychism?

Panpsychism is the view that consciousness is a basic feature of the world, present in some simple form in all matter, with complex minds arising when those elements combine. It is defended by some philosophers and debated by many others.

What Is the Difference Between Mind and Consciousness?

In many spiritual traditions, the mind is the stream of thoughts, memories and emotions, while consciousness is the awareness in which they appear. In science and everyday speech the two words often overlap.

What Do Spiritual Traditions Say About Consciousness?

Advaita Vedanta describes consciousness as the ultimate reality. Buddhism questions the fixed self and studies the nature of mind. Mystics in many faiths describe a deeper awareness behind thought. These are teachings and lived reports rather than scientific findings.

What Are the States of Consciousness?

The commonly described states are waking, dreaming and deep sleep. Others include lucid dreaming, flow, meditative states and medically induced states such as anesthesia. The Upanishads also describe turiya, the awareness present in all three ordinary states.

Can Consciousness Exist Outside the Body?

This has not been established. Some people report awareness during near-death experiences, and researchers are studying those reports. Skeptics offer explanations based on a stressed or dying brain. The question remains open.

Are Near-Death Experiences Proof of Life After Death?

No study has proven it, and none has disproved it. Near-death experiences are common and consistent in broad outline, and they are meaningful to those who have them. Scientists and spiritual teachers interpret them differently.

How Can I Explore and Expand My Consciousness?

Start with simple practices: open-awareness meditation, self-inquiry, sensory grounding, watching the edges of sleep and giving full attention to ordinary tasks. Go gently, and talk with a qualified teacher or professional if a practice brings up distress.