Self Comes to Mind

consciousness vanishes in its standard format, the only partial exception being the particular conscious state that accompanies dreams, and that in no way contradicts the wakefulness prerequisite because dream consciousness is not standard consciousness.
    We tend to approach wakefulness as an on-or-off phenomenon, a zero for sleep, a one for the awake state. To some extent that is correct, but the all-or-none approach hides gradations that we are all familiar with. Sleepiness and drowsiness certainly reduce consciousness, but they do not bring it to zero abruptly. Turning the lights off is not an accurate analogy; lowering a dimmer switch is closer to the mark.
    What do the lights reveal when they are turned on, suddenly or gradually? More often than not, they reveal something that we commonly describe as a “mind” or “mental contents.” And what is the mind so revealed made of? Patterns mapped in the idiom of every possible sense—visual, auditory, tactile, muscular, visceral, you name it, in marvelous shades, tones, variations, and combinations, flowing in orderly or jumbled manner, in brief, images . Earlier I offered my views on the origin of images ( Chapter 3 ), and all we need to do here is recall that images are the main currency of our minds, and that the term refers to patterns of all sensory modalities, not just visual, and to abstract as well as concrete patterns.
    Does the simple physiological act of turning on the lights—waking someone up from a slumber—necessarily translate into a conscious state? It definitely does not. We need not go very far to find counterevidence. Everyone has had the experience of waking up tired and jet-lagged, in some other land beyond the seas, and taking a thankfully short but seemingly long second or two to realize where exactly one is. During that brief interval there is a mind but not quite yet a mind organized with all the properties of consciousness. If I lose consciousness as a result of knocking my head against a less-than-soft object, I will have another blissfully short and yet measurable delay until “coming to.” By the way, “coming to” is short for “coming to consciousness,” returning to a self-oriented mind; the phrase is inelegant but celebrates a sound folk wisdom. In neurological jargon, regaining consciousness after a closed-head injury can take its sweet time, during which the victim is not fully oriented to place or clock, let alone to person.
    Those situations show us that complex mental functions are not monoliths and can literally be broken down by sections. Yes, the lights are on and you are awake. (Strike one point for consciousness.) Yes, the mind is on, and images are being formed of whatever is in front of you, although those recalled from the past are few and far between. (Strike half a point for consciousness.) But no, there is little yet to indicate who the owner is of this shaky mind, no self to claim it as its own. (Strike no point for consciousness.) Overall, consciousness fails to pass. The moral of the story: to get a passing standard consciousness score, it is indispensable (1) to be awake; (2) to have an operational mind; and (3) to have, within that mind, an automatic, unprompted, undeduced sense of self as protagonist of the experience, no matter how subtle the self sense may be. Given the presence of wakefulness and mind, both of which you will need if you are to be conscious, you might say that the distinctive feature of your consciousness is, lyrically speaking, the very thought of you. But in order to make the poetry accurate, you would have to say “the very felt thought of you.”
    That wakefulness and consciousness are not one and the same is apparent when we consider the neurological condition known as vegetative state. Patients in a vegetative state have no manifestation suggestive of consciousness. Like patients in the similar but more grave situation of coma, vegetative patients fail to respond to any message from the examiners and offer no spontaneous signs of awareness of self or surroundings. And yet their electroencephalograms, or EEGs (the electrical wave patterns continuously produced by a living brain), reveal alternating patterns characteristic of either sleep or wakefulness. Along with wake-pattern EEGs, patients will often have their eyes open, although they stare vacantly into space, not directing their gaze to any particular object. No such electrical pattern is noted when patients are in