CONDITIONED CONSCIOUSNESS

References have been made here to background versus foreground consciousness, to what philosopher Alan Watts called floodlight versus spotlight consciousness, and to what spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has called pure versus conditioned consciousness. 

In an interview entitled Ripples on the Surface of Being, Tolle talks about pure consciousness, but then goes in to conditioned consciousness:  “. . . I call that stillness pure consciousness, whereas everything else is the conditioned consciousness.  The human mind is the conditioned consciousness that has taken form as thought.  The conditioned consciousness is the whole world that is created by the conditioned mind.  

“Everything is our conditioned consciousness; even objects are.  Conditioned consciousness has taken birth as form and then that becomes the world.  So to be lost in the conditioned seems to be necessary for humans.  It seems to be part of our path to be lost in the world, to be lost in the mind, which is the conditioned consciousness.

“. . . The purpose of the world is for you to be lost in it, ultimately.  The purpose of the world is for you to suffer, (for you) to create the suffering (apparently) needed for the awakening to happen.  And then once the awakening happens, with it comes the realization that suffering is unnecessary now.”