Awareness vs. Consciousness

In these lessons, I use the words awareness and consciousness in a very specific way. It will help you to be clear about this before you go further.

Awareness is the basic capacity to know or experience anything at all. It is the simple fact that there is experiencing, before we divide it up into “me” and “what I’m aware of.” Awareness itself does not depend on any particular state, object, or experience.

Consciousness, as I use the term, is awareness taking the form of a specific experience. It always has a subject–object flavor: I am conscious of this sound, this thought, this feeling, this memory. In other words, consciousness is awareness structured as “someone experiencing something.”