Mode Of Consciousness Essay

The mode of consciousness is one’s set of attitudes towards the different aspects of life, which in turn affects how one interacts with his/her internal and external environment. The mode of consciousness is a malleable part of one’s being, due to the many external forces and stressors in the world that act upon one’s life. Behavior is the way one acts or conducts oneself in response to a situation, whether it is biological or not. The relationship between these two attributes of one’s being are closely related, in the way that the mode of consciousness is in control and highly influences one’s behavior. Karen Armstrong’s “Homo Religiosus” uses religion’s to analyze the different mindsets they provide and the different behaviors they induce

“To hold on to the mundane self, therefore, was a delusion that led inescapably to pain, frustration, and confusion, which one could escape only by acquiring the deep, liberating knowledge that the Brahman was their atman, the truest thing about them” (Armstrong 14). The Indian Aryans incorporated this view as part of their culture, that they along with other thing in existence were all a part of one Great Spirit or non-being that they respect. This cultural view causes them to respect everything from a small rock to the animals they hunt for food. In this case the culture implements a mode of consciousness for one that everything is a part of them and thus be treated as equals. This in turn makes one behave in a way that gives respect or thanks for every part of the world that he/she uses to live, through the use of rituals and prayers. Some examples are burial rituals, where the hunter puts together the skeleton of the beast and buries them, and where the hunter experiences the emotions and establishes a connection with the animal they killed as it dies. Elephants, regardless of how the modern world thinks of them, have their own delicate culture that creates their own mode of consciousness, which in turn affects the way they behave. “’The loss of elephant elders and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and behavioral development in young elephants’” (Bradshaw 356). Elephants when developed within their biologically normal culture, without any human interference, they are gentle animals who wouldn’t do much harm and have nothing to fear. This is due to the mode of consciousness that was created, which showed that not many other animals, humans especially, were of any threat or danger to them. However, this all changes when humans change elephant culture, as younger more violent elephants are