Dimension #6: Awareness
Awareness, the Final Frontier - Beam me up, Scotty!
We have arrived at the final dimension, saving the most esoteric for last. Awareness is the least understood of all the six dimensions by science. It is the primordial concept about knowledge of something, and like will, cannot be objectively measured.
Yet, even though awareness cannot be measured, we do know that there are different types of awareness. For example, there is peripheral awareness: we are aware of our environment, the sounds and sights surrounding us. We are also aware of our feelings, and even of our emotions. Then there is social awareness and our ability to understand others and the nuances of our relationships with them.
Perhaps the most intriguing type of awareness is self-awareness. This is a unique capability that is shared with a few other animals such as dolphins and orangutans. Humans, however, develop an advanced level of self-awareness by 5 years of age:
Level 1: Differentiation
Level 2: Situation
Level 3: Identification
Level 4: Permanence
Level 5: Self-consciousness
Level 5 or “Self-consciousness” manifests as an awareness of how we are perceived and valued by others. It is a meta self-awareness, meaning that we are aware of our awareness. This enables us to be aware of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. In essence, we have the capacity to observe the other manifestations that our brain produces.
Before continuing, we must make the distinction between consciousness and awareness as while they are related, they are not the same. Consciousness is the subjective experience of our perceptions - the sweetness of chocolate, the pain from a headache, the anger towards your colleague. The key word here is experience, also known as qualia, because ultimately it is our mind that translates all the incoming signals from our environment and body into a “what is it like” sensation that we “feel.” Consciousness is our inner space where input signals are fed into our personalized rendering engine, converted into qualia, and then into the meaning conveyed by those qualia.
There can be no consciousness without awareness - put simply, if we are not aware of something, it is not part of our consciousness. This is consistent with Freud’s introduction of the subconscious mind to describe associations and impulses that are not accessible to consciousness, meaning we are not aware of them even if they exist and impact us.
Interestingly, there can be awareness without consciousness which is what happens when we have lucid dreams. We are unconscious and fast asleep, yet are fully aware of and at times unable to distinguish dreams from reality.
Thus awareness is understood as a necessary condition for consciousness but not the other way around.
The more we are aware, the higher the fidelity of consciousness, and the greater the opportunity to understand, introspect, and exert control over ourselves.
Or so it would seem.
Pre-Fabricated Decisions
Recently, there have been some astonishing discoveries that have rattled our basic assumptions regarding awareness. One of them is the finding that our brains make decisions before we are aware of the decisions made. Neuroscientists, using fMRI brain scanners, have been able to prove that decision-making processes begin before we are able to realize it. Not only that, but by the time our consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done. The implications of such findings to the concept of “free will” are existential. Could it be that our awareness of decisions may simply be a neurochemical machination, without any influence on our actions? If so, then understanding the unconscious mind would be critical to unlocking our decision making pathways.
A study published in Scientific Reports provides further evidence of a fascinating phenomenon. The research, conducted by the University of New South Wales in Sydney, demonstrated that they could anticipate the decisions people were instructed to contemplate a full 11 seconds prior to the subjects consciously deciding what to consider.
Participants were given a choice between two visual designs - one red and the other green, each with either vertical or horizontal stripes. They were then instructed to visualize these patterns in their minds while undergoing brain scans in an fMRI machine. The scientists monitored their brain activity prior to, during, and following the decision-making process.
“To our surprise, brain activity from before the decision allowed us to predict future decisions up to 11 seconds before they were made and also predict how strong or vivid the thoughts were,” states Joel Pearson, a cognitive neuroscientist and senior author on the paper.
Activity was observed in the “executive areas of the brain - the regions responsible for our conscious decision-making - as well as in the visual and subcortical structures,” according to a press release. Pearson suggests that the brain may have pre-existing thoughts 'on hold,' which could unconsciously sway our decisions when presented with a choice.
But, for who?
It is at this stage that I must surface the word “self.” It was implied the moment we introduced the notion of consciousness, and specifically, the awareness of our consciousness. What is the entity perceiving, observing, and acting upon our consciousness?
We’ve already established that we are “living” in a simulation, based on the combination of the absence of local reality as confirmed by the 2022 Nobel Prize winners in Physics, and the rendering we are doing as part of our cognition (4th Dimension) using data fed to us by our perceptions (2nd Dimension) and emotions (3rd Dimension).
At this point, we are at the nexus between FoFty and other belief systems.
If one were to believe that there is no entity representing the “self” beyond the physical form, then that person would be no different than an NPC, or a non-playable character in a computer game. NPCs are just “filler” characters that exist in the game for the sake of the game to exist - there is no point of their existence outside of that. They operate within the game’s pre-programmed set of commands, and arbitrarily execute their actions, no different than a building or the ground. There is nothing else beyond this - morality, ethics, and all other constructs are ultimately irrelevant as these are simple human constructs created as part of natural selection and our evolution as a species.
For some religions, including the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, this “self” is the eternal soul, and there are various beliefs on what happens after death to this eternal soul. In most Buddhist traditions, the self is rejected, even if some form of reincarnation is a belief that exists in most sects. Other religions such as Hinduism also share the concept of recreation, with a connection of the self between humans and god. For those who believe we are in a simulation, the self could be the entity playing our avatar.
Regardless of what faith-based belief system you subscribe to, what is important to understand is that FoFty is not a religion. It is by design and at this point where the “self” is introduced, where FoFty integrates with other belief systems reliant on faith.
Bringing it all together
Reality as we experience it is a complex dance between all the six dimensions we explored. Our lives, much like dancing, is not a race: the point is not to complete the dance as quickly as possible, but rather, to experience the joy while stepping through the moves.
While we have conventional understandings of each of the six dimensions, I’ve described aberrations - some of which are backed by scientific studies - that force us to reconsider traditional views of reality. From the illusion of local reality, to the use of our thoughts in controlling our destiny through epigenetics, to decisions being made without our awareness, the construction of what we experience day in and day out may deviate from what we think.
In essence, this begins the dismantling of what we have been conditioned to believe throughout our lives. There is much more going on than we think, both externally and internally. By using science as the starting point to describe each dimension, we gather from a common launchpad in unison. Likewise, by using science to highlight new findings that distort our assumptions, we embark from the same port towards a similar destination - one that feels intrinsic for us to travel to, even if we have not yet defined nor mapped a path yet.
In the next chapter, we will tear down frameworks that have consciously and subconsciously trapped us and govern what we believe are acceptable bounds of living. As we do, and throughout the rest of this manuscript, I will refer back to these six dimensions as they serve as anchors that prevent us from going astray.
➡️ Watch the accompanying YouTube video for this article here:
➡️ Read the previous FoFty manuscript article here:
