Reflexive self-consciousness
Encyclopedia
Reflexive self-consciousness is a concept, related to that of enlightenment
Enlightenment (spiritual)
Enlightenment in a secular context often means the "full comprehension of a situation", but in spiritual terms the word alludes to a spiritual revelation or deep insight into the meaning and purpose of all things, communication with or understanding of the mind of God, profound spiritual...

, formulated by Eugene Halliday
Eugene Halliday
Eugene Halliday was a British artist, philosopher and teacher. For a large part of his life he lived and taught in Manchester and Altrincham, England, giving talks, running groups and giving personal tuition to a large number of interested people...

 during the 1940s-1950s in England.

Eugene Halliday made a lifelong study of art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

, religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

. From his understanding he formulated a coherent set of ideas. In his seminal work "Reflexive Self-Consciousness", he sets out the nature of consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...

 and its relation to the world of phenomena, being, and mankind. From this he explains how consciousness itself can become "reflexive". By this he means that consciousness becomes completely self-transparent and continuously aware of its own presence and nature.

He says that when observing a thing or situation we can promote this reflexive state by turning our own consciousness back onto itself. "It is the self, which is consciousness itself which is observing this thing, this self I am, I return to the self." By placing our nature as observer at the heart of his work, Halliday sets out a method by which to liberate ourselves from object-identification, which locks us into a cycle of conditioned reflexes, pleasure pursuit and pain avoidance.

Halliday examines the meaning of the related terms sentience, consciousness, feeling, sensation, awareness. All are related, and to some degree interchangeable; all refer to "that in and by which we know what we know, and that we know". He sees consciousness as a fundamental quality of being and not, as some materialists would suggest a product of complexity in matter derived from evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

. Halliday states that if we do not posit sentience or consciousness as a property of that source which is present "from the very beginning of creation or evolution, we cannot find a point later at which we may logically introduce it".

This assertion may be challenged by those looking for proof. Halliday explains that if we ask ourselves what this statement means, we can only say "we know what we mean. Consciousness is its own evidence" (p. i). He then goes on to say that we cannot indicate what we mean by one of these consciousness-related words "without appealing to that in us, which corresponds with their significance, that is, to that in us which knows that it knows".

He sees a complex structure of cells, such as the brain, as "a vehicle for the expression of the complex processes of consciousness" and not as the origin of that consciousness. No matter how complex the arrangement, consciousness cannot arise from the biochemical interactions of a large number of non-sentient particles.

Halliday posits that the ultimate source and origin of our being is sentient and conscious. He sees this origin as an infinite field of sentient power. Halliday compares the activity of this infinite field of sentient power, the source of all beings, to that of the sea. Its internal movements, its waves, create vortices within it, which give rise to all the observable phenomena of the world. Atom
Atom
The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...

s, molecule
Molecule
A molecule is an electrically neutral group of at least two atoms held together by covalent chemical bonds. Molecules are distinguished from ions by their electrical charge...

s, cells
Cell (biology)
The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing, and is often called the building block of life. The Alberts text discusses how the "cellular building blocks" move to shape developing embryos....

, plant
Plant
Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

s, animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...

s, mankind, human beings, all are formed within this infinite sentient field, and all are sentient. There is no non-sentient level of being. Thus agreeing with the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...

when he said "there are no dead gaps in Nature". This infinite field of sentient power, which is the ultimate source of the universe and all within it, is the Godhead of the theologians, the Absolute of the philosophers.

Halliday says that the true nature of the self is consciousness itself. As beings with physical bodies, we are conditioned by the limitations of our sense organs, by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain and by emotional charges in the records of our experiences, so that we often behave in a reactive manner as if we were no more than animals, with no free choice. If we learn to remember the nature of our true self, and our source in consciousness, we can free ourselves from this enslavement and become human, capable of free choice and action.

Before evolution, Eugene Halliday posits an "involution", whereby the motions of this absolute sentient power creates the universe and all the beings in it. Consciousness tends to fall into identification with beings, down to the grossest physical level of the mineral world. Through the process of evolution, sentience evolves through mineral, plant, animal and human to rediscover its true nature as Consciousness itself, at one with the infinite field of consciousness. This return of consciousness to its source, is the Reflexive Self-Consciousness of the title of the book.

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