Those who seek the understanding, and carry on the search above the kindergarten level of looking for it in behavior, beat themselves about the head, (which is to more accurately say their own consciousness berates, condemns, and beats its own self about the head), and for what?
According to common, “enlightened thought,” the consciousness of the few condemns itself for not being IN an enlightened state. As dictated by its operational construction, consciousness only exists and manifests itself through its perceiving of itself as being separate from everything else. There simply IS no consciousness without consciousness OF something else.
Consciousness in man exists to look at the physical world as a thing totally apart from the consciousness doing the looking. It is only via this approach that man ever thinks about reaching out, and altering the materials that naturally make up this planet in ways that better suit his needs and offer him pleasure.
The only evidence that consciousness even exists, is in its feeling of being something totally separate from whatever it is being conscious of. Consciousness looks at a bamboo shoot and says to itself, (without having to actually say it), “That tall, thin, yet strong plant is not me. I could cut it down and do with it whatever I please since it is not me. I could fashion it into a pole with which to catch fish, or into a spear to kill deer, and thus more efficiently feed myself.”
No animal without consciousness has such a relationship – a detached relationship – with their environment, and patently, no creature thrives as does man as a result of him feeling – via consciousness; separate, apart, and individually distinct from the physical world around him.
J.