2.2 What Is Human Consciousness?
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
I finally understand human consciousness, what it is and from whence it comes, an understanding I have long desired. We begin with Spirit: the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2). Genesis 1:1-3 is not an analysis of the “Big Bang,” but rather an analysis of all reality.
Here are two lines that speak of the EXACT same thing. The earth was without form, and void – the body without the spirit is dead (Genesis 1:2 – James 2:26). Heaven and earth are vital parts of one another. The spirit gives life to the body; heaven gives life to the earth.
What Is Spirit?
Spirit is two very, very different things. Spirit is the un-created form-less substance of God. Spirit is the created substance of the heavens and heavenly elements and heavenly beings, including the human spirit.
The spirit-substance of the heavens comes out from the Spirit of God, but is entirely created and therefore different. Angels are spirits; they are not like God. Angels are visible in the heavens; God is not. Yet the substance of heaven-spirit is, in fact, similar to in many ways, and comes every moment out of the Spirit substance of God.
Two Metaphors
God has given us two metaphors by which to comprehend God-Spirit, the air of the atmosphere and the water of the oceans. God-Spirit is all pervasive, filling all things and containing all things. God-Spirit is the energy and life force of God.
Heaven-spirit is created; heaven-spirit having to do with humans corresponds with the earth’s atmosphere and is contained within the earth’s magnetic sheathe. Heaven-spirit is the energy and life force of the earth. Angels, which are made of spirit-substance, live in and operate through heaven-spirit, yet they are isolated and limited creatures, confined to a measured form.
The Breath of Life
But these things come under questions yet to come; here we are interested only in human consciousness.
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). This human physical form was like the earth, empty of life; then God added to it the human spirit, the “breath of life.”
As the human spirit, a heavenly body, came into union with the human body, an earthly body, at the very junction of those two bodies, the human soul was formed. The human soul – mind, will and emotions – exists by the life-joining of the human body and the human spirit.
Self-Awareness
Now we look at something Paul said that is the core reality of human consciousness AND God consciousness. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:11).
The technical definition of “consciousness” is self-awareness, that is, self-knowing. This definition is in full agreement with Paul’s definition, but Paul’s “knowing” is much deeper than “awareness.” Consciousness is a spirit-knowing of one’s self. BUT – although Adam had received the breath of life, he never ate of the tree of life.
Animals and Angels
In that brief space of time between their formation and the decision in the garden, Adam and Eve were not finished; they were not yet completely human.
A human being is fundamentally different from all animal species and all angelic species. You and I have a physical body that is very similar to the physical bodies of the animals. And we have a spirit body that operates in the heavens right now that is very similar to the spirit bodies of the angels. BUT – human consciousness is something quite different from any self-awareness animals or angels might possess.
Identity
God created man to be filled with another Person – Himself. Angels and animals are sufficient in themselves; they do not search for any “identity.” Human beings are only in-part; we are made for being filled with another Person, and without knowing that, we are searching in every direction for “identity.”
Adam and Eve were, in fact, searching for their identity. Because they chose the serpent, Adam and Eve chose to be filled with angelic spirits, rather than with Christ. The prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2).
The Fallen Human Spirit
Fallen angels are as essential to the fallen human spirit as various micro-organisms are essential to the human body. Reincarnation is REAL – for fallen angels. When one human in whose spirit they live dies, angels must go on to other humans in order to continue hiding from God. It is the angel’s memory of past humans that the human imagines to be his or her own “reincarnation.”
Demons are as familiar and normal to every human being as the air we breathe and the thoughts we think, yet always they are subject to the human. But this is fallen man; what happens to the spirit side of our consciousness when we are born again?
A Different Species
And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). This experience, this formation of a Christian, is fundamentally different than Adam in his original creation. Here is something we can know ONLY because we share our Father’s lowly heart, seeing all others as better than ourselves. A Christian is an entirely different species of being from a non-Christian.
Two more statements from Paul that just knock our socks off. He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. – The Spirit will also give life to your mortal bodies (1 Corinthians 6:17 and Romans 8:11 condensed).
The Spirit Gives Life
Remember that it is the spirit that gives life to the body. Paul says that my spirit and the Spirit of Christ are one spirit, and that it is the Spirit of Christ that is, right now, the life force by which my present body operates. Always before we have put Romans 8:11 into the future, as something we certainly are not experiencing now; we did that because of our gross unbelief. – God is telling us the truth.
Thus far, we have spoken only of Spirit, but we know that Spirit NEVER operates in or of or by itself. Spirit and Word can never be separated. Word always leads and Spirit always follows, yet Spirit always comes first to prepare the way for Word.
Joint-Knowing
The Greek word translated “consciousness/conscience” is suneidesis or joint-knowing. Because most Christians, including the Bible translators, believe with all their hearts that the serpent spoke the truth in the garden, they have invented a human “conscience” that comes entirely out of the tree of knowing good and evil. Thus what is called the “conscience” is, in fact, the nature of the fallen human, seeing everything as a choice between doing what is right versus doing what is wrong.
That is not what “joint-knowing” or “knowing together with” means. It means two or more persons sharing the same form.
Spirit and Word
Human consciousness, then, is the unique combination, the junction, of spirit and word.
This spirit is not, however, an impersonal frequency/energy/ wave length and this word is not impersonal sounds/letters standing as metaphors of something else. For the fallen human, spirit includes the voice of another spirit (two or more persons sharing the same form) and word is the search for an identity, a story in which to live, a word that is always coming out of or against accusation.
For you and me, Spirit and Word are always and utterly Persons. Yet that Spirit is our spirit as well and that Word is our life, the only story we tell.
Words
Without words there can be no human consciousness.
I listened to a fascinating lecture in a college class regarding words and human consciousness. Here is the link, if you are interested: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/ The lecture spoke of individuals who grew up with no language and no words, not coming into contact with speaking humans until they were adults. Once they learned to speak, that is, learned human words, these individuals could begin to formulate in their own minds who they were, that is, could create a self-identity. Once they knew themselves, looking back to their pre-word days, they could remember very little, only hazy impressions.
Christian Hades
Spirit by itself provides only a potential for human consciousness, not the self-perception itself. Our identity, then, is shaped by the words of our language, the words of the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Because Christians are so familiar with the speaking of demons, the story most of our brethren tell themselves about themselves is a story of accusation coming out of the tree of knowing to do good and knowing to do evil, coming out of always falling short of God. Christian Hades is far worse than the unregenerate Hades.
Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ is knowing we are one spirit with Him AND speaking His words as our only story.
Pro-Knowing
Let’s go back to Paul’s statement of human self-awareness. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Because you and I as believers are one Spirit with Christ, we take this “knowing” Paul speaks of into a deeper knowing.
Pro-ginosko, translated “foreknowledge,” means, for us, the knowing in God’s heart out of which we come every moment. This pro-knowing inside of God is both Spirit and Word. God knows you and me inside Himself completely separate from time, that is, all here now. Our lives, then, spring forth every moment out of that pro-knowing inside of God.
The Story We Tell
We are transformed by the renewing of our minds. We are made just like Jesus by the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in our own minds. Jesus walked inside the story by which He knew Himself – the story of another Person, the Father, filling Jesus’ Person, with all of the Father’s self.
My identity is that I am filled with another Person, the Father. The only difference between me and Jesus is that I know the Father through Jesus. Thus my story, the story I tell myself about myself, is that Jesus connects me as one person with the Father by every Word that He speaks.
Human Consciousness
Human consciousness, then, is the potential for self-knowledge coming from the human spirit joined together with the human identity formed by words, by the story of self.
As born-again believers, our spirit IS the Spirit of Christ, the One who knows the self-awareness of the Father. And our identity, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, is Jesus Himself fulfilling in us every Word that He is, connecting us as one person together with the Father by every Word that He speaks.
The pro-knowing of the Father is now our own knowing of self (know as we are known – 1 Corinthians 13), and the story of Christ is our DNA, the words of our minds.