Science and Spirituality

The Science of ‘Pure Awareness’ and the Magic of Our Unconscious

Recent scientific papers point to the power of unconscious ‘Pure Awareness’ that lies beyond our conscious ego-self.

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I HAVE mixed feelings about the relationship between science and spirituality. I think that science can never grasp the deepest reality of who we are because that level is beyond the material existence that is the domain of science. But short of that deepest reality, science and scientific theories can certainly offer many insights into our material and spiritual experience.

This past week, I read 2 articles that provide scientific perspectives on what is often called Pure Awareness in spiritual teachings. Other terms that I have heard for Pure Awareness include:

• the Field of Being, Pure Beingness, Oneness, Nonduality
• Emptiness (sunyata), No-self (anatta), the Tao, the Void, Nothingness, No Thing
• Consciousness, Pure Consciousness, I Am-ness, Presence, Radiant Presence
• Awareness, Pure Awareness, Formless Awareness, Effortless Awareness, Choiceless Awareness
• Witnessing, Silent Witnessing, Witnessing without a Witnesser, Doing without a Doer
• Direct Experience, Raw Experience, Experiential Field, Experiencing without an Experiencer

There are subtle differences among these terms. But for my purposes I am treating them all as minor variations of Pure Awareness.

Many say it is impossible to describe Pure Awareness because all descriptions are limiting, and Pure Awareness is unlimited. I agree with that, but, as seen in the list above, there are many people who attempt to describe it.

Blindsighted Seeing

‘BLINDSIGHT’ is the ability in some blind people to perceive something visual using the unconscious part of their brain. It is a subtle sense that we all have, but normal conscious sight overwhelms it most of the time. I read about it in this article:

Psychologists have studied blindsight since the 1970s, which is described in scientific detail on Wikipedia:

The people in the blindsight tests insist that they have no vision of any kind and have no visual imagery of any kind. However, when asked to take a wild guess as to the location, shape, or orientation of an object, they are often correct. They insist it was just pure luck, and they did nothing, even when they were repeatedly successful.

Our primary visual processing takes place in the cerebral cortex (outermost part of our brain). The patients had lost all or part of that ability. But an older visual processing center is located in the middle of our brain and is considered left over from our pre-mammalian brain (it is still used by fish, reptiles, and amphibians).

The hypothesis is that these people (and monkeys in similar situations) are unconsciously perceiving visual stimuli using that older visual processing portion of their brain. But they are not subjectively sensing (or interpreting) the objects with their conscious brain (what I call ego-consciousness). The author suggests that some form of interpretation or judgment is required for us to have a conscious experience of something.

My guess is that blindsight could also account for children being able to read and play soccer while blindfolded, as shown in the movie “Superhuman” (⬇).

What I find most interesting is that these patients insist they are not doing what they are doing. The perception is happening without the involvement of their ego-consciousness. It is happening in the perceptual field of the unconscious. That unconscious field may be what many nondualism teachings refer to as Pure Awareness (or some other related term).

The author further states:

So, ask yourself: what would be missing from your life if you lacked phenomenal consciousness? If you had blindsight, blind-touch, blind-hearing, blind-everything? …what would be missing would be nothing less than you, your conscious self. — Nicholas Humphrey

In more spiritualist terms, when we become the unconscious self (such as with blindsight), the ego-self disappears and there is only the no-self (anatta in Buddhism).

[Note: Based on the distinct parts of the brain involved, the author further suggests that only mammals and birds have a cerebral cortex ego-consciousness (my term). All other Earth creatures operate from blind-sensing and he does not consider them sentient beings.]

[Note: Neither of these articles mentions the subconscious mind. Because of that, when I use the terms conscious-mind or ego-consciousness, I am combining the conscious and subconscious minds of Freudian psychology. To me, our subconscious is deeply intertwined with our conscious thoughts and emotions. I see the unconscious mind as beyond those. However, I have also seen people combine the subconscious with the unconscious, instead. 🧐]

Only the Unconscious is Real

IN THE second article I came across on the same day as the one above, a neuroscientist describes a new theory of consciousness (⬇). He and his colleagues suggest that consciousness results from linear memory.

From an evolutionary perspective, they say consciousness was originally designed to use linear (they call it episodic) memory to predict or plan the future. We consciously recombine and reorder memories for greater flexibility to make predictions. (More recently, in evolutionary terms, we expanded our consciousness to non-memory things like abstract thinking and language.)

Their approach tries to address the problem that conscious thinking is very slow.

For example, Radical Nonduality teachers often point to a study in the 1980s that implied that our conscious awareness of an action takes place after our brain has already put the action in motion. They say that is evidence that we have no “free will”. For more on that study, which had some problems, and the “free will” argument, see:

Some say our brain is slow, but our mind is fast. What this new approach is suggesting is that our conscious mind is slow, but our unconscious mind is fast. They suggest this approach explains why we can make split-second decisions and action when playing sports, musical instruments, or in an emergency. But we can take forever to decide which ice cream we want.

When we are making split-second decisions, we are tapping into our unconscious mind, which is fast, automatic, and multi-tasking. In the full research papers, below (⬇), the authors call that our “Unconscious System 1".

When we are trying to make an ice cream decision, we are using what they call our “conscious memory system”, which is housed in our cerebral cortex. They also call that our “Conscious System 2", which is slow, effortful, logical, and calculating.

The theory they propose suggests we make our decisions in our Unconscious System 1. Our conscious awareness of those decisions occurs as a delayed memory in Conscious System 2.

That is also why we often feel we have no control over the stream of thoughts in our brain. The stream originates in our Unconscious System 1 and we are viewing them in our Conscious System 2.

There are a lot more details covered in the full research paper, which is available here:

• Consciousness as a Memory System by Budson, Andrew E. MD; Richman, Kenneth A. PhD; and Kensinger, Elizabeth A. PhD. In Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, Oct 3, 2022. (Note: There is a discussion of blindsight in that article, as well.)

Pure Awareness in Science & Spirituality

BOTH THE blindsight research and the new theory of consciousness (above) point to the powerful role of the unconscious mind. In both, the thinking conscious ego-mind needs to be set aside to allow the more powerful unconscious mind to act to its full capacity. (The blindsight article suggests normal sight overwhelms blindsight, which is why we are unaware of it.)

To me, the unconscious mind is the Pure Awareness that so many spiritual teachings talk of these days, from Esoteric practices to Radical Nonduality. Pure Awareness is the term “oneness”, covering columns 3 to 6 in my proposed Duality — Nonduality Spectrum ⬇.️

One problem with the way spirituality discusses Pure Awareness is that there is no clear description. Spiritual teachers treat it as something so profound that either (1) only they can clearly describe it — and each description is different, or (2) it is beyond description and, at best, can only be pointed to.

So, we end with a hodgepodge of terms (as in my list at the top of this article). They are related to each other, but exactly how is unclear.

Many nonduality teachers further reject the whole idea of a useful unconscious mind. They bundle our unconscious with our ego-conscious mind and our subconscious mind. All 3 are part of the illusion (or maya) of manifest or phenomenal existence.

Spiritualists know there is something beyond the mind, but to them, it is not another type of mind. It is instead the infinite intelligence of God/The Absolute/The Universe/The Void. Scientists try to be more specific about the terms they are using, though that can confuse, as well.

My main takeaway from this is that there are probably many levels to the range of terms that I put under Pure Awareness. What an Esoteric teaching might call Pure Awareness may be very different from how a New Age channeler is using the term, how a Zen Master uses the term, and how a Radical Nondualist uses the term.

In fact, there are advantages to leaving Pure Awareness as undefined as possible. One is that we cannot easily pin the teachings down for criticism or questioning. A second is that the teachers/speakers can use the term to mean different things in different talks and for different people.

My guess is there is a lot of flexibility taking place for those reasons.

“So, when I told you to look where there was nothing, then I spoke because this uncamouflaged experience can be most directly perceived where nothing is perceived with the outer senses. In one sense anything that you can see or feel or touch is not real, and yet in another sense it is the nature of all reality.” — Seth/Jane Roberts, The Early Sessions, book 3, session 133 on February 17, 1965

Here is my first attempt at a more refined understanding of spiritual Pure Awareness.

Pure Awareness is…

Level 1 Pure Awareness — Using Conscious Awareness

This is the intentional use of our ego-conscious mind to reach a state of Pure Awareness that is closer to our unconscious mind. It usually involves a form of concentrative meditation practice. We can think of it as controlling our mind to take us closer to our unconscious mind. That effort often involves dealing with a lot of subconscious thoughts along the way.

Level 1 Pure Awareness is seen in meditation practices that range from hard Concentration, to Contemplation, to Effortless Awareness. There is also a range in terms of the role of the object of concentration, ranging from deeply Meaningful to completely Meaningless. For example, Transcendental Meditation, which I practice, is considered an effortless concentration using a meaningless mantra.

Esoteric and New Age meditations often fall into this level of awareness. New Age YouTube videos, for example, guide meditators into alternate psychic realities and energy fields. I also put hypnosis and psychological practices and treatments at this level (though I know little about either of those).

In Hinduism, this level is associated with Pratiyahara (withdrawing the senses) and Dharana (concentration meditation), which are the 5th and 6th “limbs” in Patanjali’s 8 Limbs of Yoga (also called Ashtanga Yoga).

Level 1 Pure Awareness can also be a state of consciousness separate from specific practices. That is like expanding our meditation into our daily life. Mindfulness in daily life might be an example of an expanded contemplation practice. Effortless awareness in daily life is taught by David Bingham and is kind of moving closer Level 2 Pure Awareness.

Level 2 Pure Awareness — Transcending Consciousness Awareness; Becoming Unconscious Awareness

This is the stillness or emptiness (sunyata in Buddhism) when we have no thoughts or sensations. There is a range in how much the thoughts and sensations are quieted or controlled, from some control to complete silencing. [2.1] Some Thoughts: We observe thoughts and sensation, but we do not identifying with them. Our ego-consciousness is there, but so is the unconscious Pure Awareness. Our conscious thoughts and sensations are seen as clouds passing in the sky. There is only the direct and full experience of what is happening now, with no judgment or opinions from our unconscious self. [2.2] No Thoughts: We have absolutely no thoughts or sensations. There is just witnessing with no awareness of a witnesser. This is also a direct, raw experience, but there is no experiencer. There is no separation between the experience and the experiencer — they are one and the same thing. There is only an experiencing that is witnessed completely from the unconscious mind, which has no identity.

I believe that playing sports and music at a high level and being in the flow of any activity and synchronicity of life are all somewhere in between the range of [2.1] Some Thoughts and [2.2] No Thoughts.

“Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.” — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the “flow state” concept

I would put the teachings of the late Peter Brown (Direct Experience) and Richard Lang (The Headless Way) in the [2.1] Some Thoughts level, at least in the way they start their teachings. I would put more extreme Radical Nondualists (like Tony Parsons) in [2.2] No Thoughts level. (See links to these teachings in the Related Resources section below.)

In Hinduism, this level is the yoga of Dhyana (transcendent meditation), which is Patanjali’s 7th Limb of Yoga, in which thoughts and the duality of separation are transcended.

Like Level 1, Level 2 Pure Awareness can be experienced through meditation practices and can be brought into daily life. People who achieve that are probably “enlightened” and in a state of “unity consciousness”. I believe that holding [2.2] No Thoughts in daily life is extremely rare and more like Level 3.

For more on enlightenment, see:

Level 3 Pure Awareness — Beyond Pure Awareness

This is the deepest level of spiritual teachings. It is a level that we simply cannot talk about because it is completely beyond any conceptualization of the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious minds. Pure Awareness, and all the other terms listed at the top of the article, point to it, but none of them is it. It is not awareness.

We might think of it as living in the Unconscious System 2 all the time, with only an occasional venture into the Conscious System 1. But that too is just pointing and not fully it.

As with the other levels, we might achieve this temporarily through a practice. Or it might be a more permanent state of being. But our conscious self will never know it. Some say the unconscious self can know this, but I am not so sure.

It might be what the silent gurus of Hinduism and Buddhism achieve (not the ones who are forever talking and giving advice to their followers).

[Note: In general, Level 1 Pure Awareness aligns with columns 3 and 4 in the Duality-Nonduality Spectrum, above. Level 2.1 aligns with columns 4 and 5. Level 2.2 aligns with columns 5 and 6. And Level 3 probably aligns with columns 6.]

To study the Way is to study the Self. To study the Self is to Forget the Self.

To Forget the Self is to be Enlightened by All Things of the Universe.

To be Enlightened by All Things of the Universe is to Cast Off the Body and Mind of the Self, as well as Those of Others.

Even the Traces of Enlightenment are Wiped Out, and Life with Traceless Enlightenment goes on Forever and Ever.

— Dogen, in ‘Genjokoan’

The Unconscious Mind is Everywhere

THERE ARE a lot of articles online describing differences between the conscious and unconscious minds, and how we can use those differences to make decisions and manage our lives better. As is typical of topics related to the mind, they each have their own definitions of the consciousness and the unconscious mind.

For example, one of the most common techniques for manifesting things you want is to think about them intently, and then forget completely about them. Really, that is the technique. What you are doing when you forget about the things you want is you are turning them over to your unconscious mind (spiritually, we might say higher self, or soul, or God) to manifest for us. (That technique does not always work, by the way.)

While we talk about conscious, subconscious, and unconscious minds, you really have only one mind. The further your awareness and identity is from that one mind, the more other minds you feel you have.

The multiple minds are your conscious and subconscious, which, according to the neuroscience theory proposed above, are only memories and not the real you (the decision maker).

That one mind is the source of all your other minds, including your unconscious mind. But of all your minds, the one that is closest to that source, and can be the access to that source, is your unconsciousness — your Pure Awareness.

Related Resources

• For more on the Duality — Nonduality Spectrum, see:

• This article introduces the Headless Way teachings of Richard Lang:

• This article introduces the Direct Experience (Radiant Presence) teachings of Peter Brown:

• This article introduces the perspective of Radical Nonduality:

• For more on Being in the Flow of Life, see this collection of articles:

• Note that the articles in this collection are behind the Medium paywall. For paywall-free access to my articles, go to www.AlanLew.com, linked below.

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