Levels of Consciousness

Your brain rules your body. Every emotion whether you are happy, sad, excited or angry everything is controlled by your brain. Your conscious mind takes decisions, plans, guides, commands, etc. But sometimes you regret what you do. Sometime in anger or excitement you take decisions and later feel bad about them. This is all because of the different levels of consciousness. These levels show your expression, knowledge and behavior. Your level of consciousness keeps on fluctuating and you react according to them.

Every psychiatrist has his own way to describe different consciousness levels. According to some people consciousness can be divided into three parts and some divide it into eight. It has also been classified into spiritual, neurological and altered. Let's discuss few of the very well-known theories of consciousness levels which are mostly followed by many psychiatrists.

Sigmund Freud's Levels of Consciousness
According to Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, there are three levels. They are consciousness, pre-consciousness and unconsciousness.

Consciousness: In the conscious level of mind, we are alert and fully aware about the activities around us. We work according to our daily chores. Our feelings, activities, memories and other important decision-making activities are controlled and performed by our conscious mind.

Pre-consciousnesses: Pre-consciousness is the middle ground between the unconsciousness and consciousness. In this part of the mind, we have memories, experiences, knowledge or a data which can be accessed at the time of need or we can recall this information as per our requirement.

Unconsciousness: In the unconscious mind, we have those desires which are suppressed and run continuously in the back of the mind. They are fears, violent motives, sexual desires, repressed memories and may be the dark side of our personality. These come into picture when we dream or sometimes unintentionally expressed by us.

David R. Hawkins's Levels of Consciousness
According to internationally renowned psychiatrist David R. Hawkins, there are two levels of consciousness, positive energy giving levels and negative energy giving levels. Although we switch to different expression or levels at different time, we still remain in a particular level that is the core level. Following are the expressions which all come under positive and negative energy levels.

Positive Energy: The positive energy giving levels are courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace and enlightenment.

Negative Energy: The negative energy giving levels are shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger and pride.

The above given two theories are very well-known among the 'n' number of theories presented across the world. But there are many more well-known psychiatrists who all added to the study of consciousness. According to William James, there are three levels of consciousness that are - physical, mental and spiritual. This differentiation was given long time ago. Hence, other psychiatrists kept working on it. Some say that human level of consciousness have four levels which are sleep, walking sleep, self-awareness and objective consciousness. Like this, there are many other concepts and theories to classify the human consiousness.

Many people have their own perceptions and concepts in yoga also. Some experts reveal three consciousness levels as subconscious, conscious, and super conscious and some believe in nine consciousness levels. Self-consciousness adds to one more level in these theories. In yoga the levels are somewhere related to spirituality. We can say that the consciousness levels are also classified on the basis of neurological, spiritual and psychological orders.

Altered Level of Consciousness
There is one more level of consciousness, altered level of consciousness. In this level, the person needs a stimulus to respond. Without any stimulus, the person is unable to respond. It can be further classified into state of confusion, stupor, delirium, coma and obtundation. This level can be a result of some brain injury or brain disorder like inadequate supply of oxygen in the brain, or extreme pressure from the skull, etc.

We all are at different levels of consciousness at different time so we possess different expressions and have a particular personality type. These levels sometimes become our identity so we should always try to possess positive qualities as, negative qualities not only impact us but also harm the sentiments of others. This is possible only when we always try to be in the state of consciousness.