Consciousness

Consciousness has a multiplicity of meanings and degrees of significance depending on the school of thought within which the term is used. Meanings include: awareness or perception of an inward psychological or spiritual fact; inward awareness of an external state, object or fact; concerned awareness; mind, in the broadest and most inclusive sense; the totality of sensations, perceptions, ideas, attitudes, and feelings of which an individual (or group) is aware at any given time, or within a particular span of time; waking life (as distinct from sleep or unconsciousness); the part of mental life or psychic content that is immediately available to the ego; or a function of the brain in reflecting the external world when an individual assimilates historically elaborated forms of culture.