By Ovidiu Brazdau, PhD

The consciousness experience is the most mysterious subjective phenomenon that every human being experiences every day. Yet, the lack of scientific knowledge regarding this is reflected in the small number of terms that describes this ability: conscious, consciousness, being aware, aware understanding, conscious awareness, unconscious non-awareness, being unaware, It seems that no theory is accepted to everyone, in contrast to the wide acceptance of medical terminology. Consciousness seems to be a result or a component of all the sub-systems of a human being, instead of being generated by one single part of the brain, nervous system or body.

My researches concerning consciousness started in 1998, with EEG research with yoga meditation and kundalini trance states. Between 1998-2003 I have studied all the available theories and research in order to be up-to-date with the latest discoveries in the science of consciousness. To mention some of the important representatives I have studied during that time: Tart, Chalmers, Wilber, Searle, Baars, Krick, Koch, Ornstein, Lilly, Grof, Hilgard, Dennett, Engler, Coan, Jackendorf, Forman, Flanagan, Stapp, Globus, Velmans, Lycan, Cohen, Amit, Lockwood, Penrose.

Though I found many perspectives, I could not discover one dealing with the issue of measuring the consciousness levels and its changes. The only assessment instrument that seems to offer some perspective was “Self-Consciousness Scale” (Fenigstein, 1975). Since 2003-2008 I have developed my own model as a part of my Ph.D. research at the Institute of Anthropology – Romanian Academy of Science in Bucharest. My research was supported a lot by my experiences in the transpersonal psychology movement. I founded Romanian Association for Transpersonal Psychology in 2002 and since 2002 I get in touch with a lot of people and perspectives in consciousness research all over the world.

From my perspective consciousness must be studied as a universal experience: an experience, not a phenomenon philosophically speaking. This way we can define and describe consciousness qualities and we can measure it in a consciousness quotient (CQ). I leave to philosophers and neuropsychologists the task of debating about the nature of consciousness, or about the qualia, I focus on conscious experience itself (I present an abbreviated view of my own theory at the end of this article).

The designing of this consciousness quotient instrument came as a result of my research into the nature of consciousness and the desire to quantify consciousness. If IQ refers to the speed of information processing, the CQ refers to the ability to access the information with cognitive awareness or understanding.

The main goal of my research was to find some measurable qualities of the consciousness experience, other than from biology or physics. I use a cognitive psychology perspective to define my own model of the conscious experience.

In a few sentences, the main premises are these:

1. To be conscious is equivalent to having access to information.

2. The one who is accessing the information is the Self / Ego / “I” / Spirit / Atman / Knower etc.

3. Access does not necessarily mean to consciously understand. Processing information is a complex cognitive ability, that can be either conscious or unconscious.

4. The level of consciousness is directly proportional to the amount of information that can be accessed simultaneously.

As it can be observed, I do not take care of the philosophical problem “Who is the knower”. Is it the Self, is the Ego, or the Spirit… This is a debate I intend to stay out of it. What is important for me, is that there is an instance that gets the information received through our senses, and from our own processing. Also, I do not deal with processing of information. I am just interested if the information is there or not in the conscious field. If the information is there, in the conscious field, then the person must be able to demonstrate its presence by answering some simple questions about the information.

I have defined the Consciousness Quotient as the level of consciousness (or the level of being conscious) that is experienced in the morning, ½-1 hour after we woke up, after a refreshing sleep, without being exposed to any significant stimulus (coffee, TV, radio, music, talking etc.)

In other words, the consciousness quotient is the general level of being conscious / aware throughout a day, in regular life conditions. Of course, this level of being conscious can change, and we have some good available models that explain this (Charles Tart’s model is for me a very valid one, for example).

Every change in the conscious experience can be described in terms of information. I consider the main mechanism of all the states of consciousness to be the expansion / contraction of the consciousness field. Some of us have a larger level of consciousness, described by a higher CQ, that is: they can access plenty of information. Some of us have a lower CQ, and can access less information. And of course, areas where we can access information can differ in different states, but overall, the general CQ is the same. In some moments we are more conscious about our feelings, but less of our thoughts or our own being. Our CQ shows only the degree of what we are able to access simultaneously. In a regular state, increases in consciousness of one field (e.g. emotional field) can only be obtained “ stealing” consciousness resources from one side (e.g. social-relational field) and offer more consciousness to another field of life (e.g. emotional). In a way, it is similar to attention: we cannot focus on more than a few elements.

I do not intend to debate the nature of altered states of consciousness, and there are lots of questions I do not respond to with my CQ theory, I am aware of this. My intention is to do scientific measurements of consciousness.

I use the terms “being conscious” and “being aware” with a general similar meanings: access to information. I know some researchers have made specific separations between the meanings of the two terms, but from my point of view difference is that awareness is more applied to a limited now-here moment, while consciousness refers to a general ability. Or, in other words, consciousness is generated from all the limited now-here awareness experiences.

I liked the idea of Bernard Baars, who described consciousness using the metaphor of theater. Baars visualized the relationships between consciousness, attention, working memory and others in the so called “Theater of Consciousness”, in which attention acts as a spotlight, and the players in the spotlight onstage are contents of conscious experience. Using this model to describe the CQ theory, I would say that the CQ would be like the entire theater building. Some theaters have larger stages, with lots of actors and high power spot lights, some theaters have smaller stages, and small spotlight, with only a few personnel to manipulate the spots.

A higher CQ than the average means a person can access simultaneously a larger amount of information, while a lower CQ means that person can access a lower amount of information. Hence, the one with a higher CQ will usually have a larger perspective, if the information is processed and understood. If one person enters for one hour a mystic trance state, perhaps he/she will access much more information during that state. But from my perspective and using CQ theory, his/her Consciousness Quotient is only what will remain after the peak experience vanished. If the state is „habitualized”, and persists months after the peak experience, we can assume that it is possible to have a higher CQ.

I felt necessary to introduce dimensionality in the study of conscious experiences, because some “spiritual” leaders have a developed spiritual perspective, but low value social interactivity, and can behave as if they are social primates, driven only by instinct, some of them having personal emotional unsolved problems. In my own search, I found in Yoga a wonderful support. The model of subtle informational bodies seems useful for describing some aspects of the conscious experience of the human being.

As a final remark in this introduction, I must say that in order to label a CQ as “lower” or “higher” we must see what is the average CQ of a population, and to measure the Minimal Effectiveness Baseline CQ, necessary for a human being to survive in our complex environment.