What Is Consciousness? A Journey to Neville Goddard

What is consciousness? It’s a deceptively simple question—one that has eluded clear answers across psychology, philosophy, and popular conversation alike. To understand the nature of consciousness and how to evoke it is vital to understand Neville. Let's get beyond inadequate and outdated concepts, and go to the real practice.

It is a matter of sorting out a series of misapplications of the term. In this post, I trace it from a hazy colloquialism to the scholarly rigour of Jung and Kastrup. The journey takes a quantum leap with GI Gurdjieff and culminates in the brilliant conception by Neville – the most radical and complete account of consciousness.

Colloquial meaning
In colloquial usage, the term “consciousness” is the average, common waking mental state. However, it is agreed among diverse sources that this colloquial usage is inaccurate, because the normal, average, common waking mental condition is almost entirely sub-conscious. CG Jung remarked that unconscious contents behave so often as if they were conscious, that you often can’t tell whether someone’s speech and actions are deliberate or not. (See Man and His Symbols, p.33).

Modern philosophy
In modern philosophy of mind, “consciousness” denotes “experiencing” in a broad sense. If there is an experiencer, then there is, by definition, consciousness. The trouble is, this can take place in an unconscious state, paradoxically enough. For example, there is no doubt that people subjectively experience dreams, although the conscious mind is asleep. Nor is there any doubt that a dog has mental experience, yet no dog is considered to be conscious.

Modern psychology: CG Jung, explained by Kastrup
Bernardo Kastrup, having read and re-read Jung’s collected works several times, has discerned the Swiss psychologist’s position. Jung did agree that consciousness was, just as modern philosophy would have it, experiential in nature, but further specified his definition as follows: “consciousness” has three attributes:

a) volition;
b) network of associations to lend meaning; and
c) re-representation of contents (e.g., to say to oneself, I know that I have this or that thought, this or that emotion).

Shades and nuances are acknowledged:

“Between ‘I do this’ and ‘I am conscious of doing this’ there is a world of difference... There is a consciousness in which unconsciousness predominates... [and one in which] self-consciousness predominates” (CG Jung, quoted in B. Kastrup Decoding Jung’s Metaphysics p.24)

As promising as this seems, I do not think this marginal acknowledgement of self awareness really moves significantly beyond “re-representation of contents”; that is, mere apperception, or simply knowing that one knows, feels or thinks something. Indeed, Kastrup describes this component of Jungian consciousness as “a meta-cognitive experiential process that inspects, interprets and evaluates”. It is, as he says, “self-reflective introspection” (ibid., p.18).

I truly appreciate Bernardo Kastrup’s exposition of Analytic Materialism (see prior posts). On the question of consciousness, however, he does not go beyond Jung's position. This is clear enough in the video episode in his series where he diambiguates the term.

There is always the possibility that Bernardo Kastrup misrepresented Jung’s position. But I doubt it, because, having ardently searched, nowhere in the Jung material (Man and His Symbols; Memory Dreams and Reflections; The Way of Individuation by Jacobi, documentaries, etc.) could I find any description of consciousness beyond the familiar "I know that I have thoughts".

We now cross a gulf. We go from knowledge developed under conditions of ordinary life to esoteric sources -- and move much closer to a truly authoritative definition of consciousness.

GI Gurdjieff
Dr. Maurice Nicoll, British psychologist, started a promising career as an analytical psychologist, Jung’s exponent in London. When Nicoll heard Ouspensky lecture in London in 1921, he left Jung to study with both Ouspensky and Gurdjieff, and never looked back. This always intrigued me, and I thought it was very telling. He, too, was struck by the quality of esoteric knowledge.

Please go to Neville on Fire Podcast S02E07 for the rest of this story, and to see how Neville fits into the picture. You can access the transcript or the audio.