The Five Levels Of Consciousness

Have you ever found yourself thinking about the different levels of consciousness? Consciousness is "the state or quality of awareness you have of your surroundings both internally and externally, and the understanding of what is happening to you." However, that is not anything I had considered previously, but it was just taken for granted. Professor of Psychology and Authors, Max Velmans and Susan Schneider, wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness: "Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives." Research also shows that consciousness can be separated into two major levels, wakefulness and sleep. There
While you are awake and alert, responses occur in a more rapid and timely manner, and while you are in the daydreaming state, you become detached from your surroundings at that moment, which causes slower response times and less awareness. All of these stages of consciousness occur daily for each individual. Also in medicine, physicians can observe a patient's responsiveness and categorize their state of alertness and comprehension. For instance, a few of the categories are; severely ill, comatose, anesthetized and impaired. With regards to consciousness, in the past twenty-four hours I have experienced several different levels of consciousness and below I will describe what I encountered along the
These conscious states are very important, even if we are unaware that they are occurring at times. From the lowest level of consciousness, which is REM or Delta brain waves, to your most alertness, which is Beta brain waves, they are all so important and needed daily. Most importantly, everyone needs REM sleep, which is the deepest sleep stage, so that they can be alert when it is needed. Consequently, sleep deprivation leads to lack of awareness, and the inability to accomplish everyday tasks. When you are daydreaming, in which your brain waves are in the Alpha stage, you are able to let your mind relax without actually being in a state of sleep, which is helpful to recover from being exhaustion. If one spends the majority of their day in either a sleep deprived or daydreaming state, nothing good can become of it. It would be likely that you would not be able to remember several of the occurrences from the day, which could cause harm to not only you, but others as well. Therefore, no matter what state of consciousness you are in at any given time, it is important that it is occurring and needs to be recognized. So in closing, in the words of 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes, "Cogito Ergo Sum" ("I think, therefore I am"), the idea that one's thinking proves their