When we are conscious, we are conscious of some thing: be it an object, a person, or an idea. But China-based philosopher Itay Shani argues that such “ordinary consciousness” is made possible by what he calls “pure consciousness”—a consciousness without objects, structure, boundaries, or form, which meditative and mystical traditions have long been aware of. Pure consciousness, Shani contends, is awareness of a boundless reality that no word or thought could ever capture, that can only be gestured at using negation, metaphor and contradiction. To recognize it is to recognize that there are worlds beyond our familiar world of objects and things.

When contemporary scientists and philosophers contemplate the question “What is consciousness?” they tend to do so by focusing on phenomenal states, namely, mental states endowed with a qualitative feel — a “what it’s like” character. When one is awake, aware, and fully in one’s senses, one is typically subject to a continuous stream of experiences involving rapidly unfolding trains of thoughts, feelings, and images, and accompanied by longer-lasting moods and emotional overtones.

Such phenomenal states feel a certain way. The sweet smell of the rose; the icy chill of a morning swim in the river; the tender pangs of longing — all are different from each other in terms of what it is like to have them. They are also, generally, directed at certain objects of thought, real or imaginary. A conscious experience is therefore said to be “of” or “about” something. There is something we think of when we think, something we perceive when we perceive, and so on. Moreover, these objects are presented in consciousness from a certain point of view—the perspective of the conscious subject. For example, objects are viewed from a particular angle, perceived as approaching or receding, as far or near, as surprising or familiar, and so on. Furthermore, phenomenal consciousness unifies a great multiplicity of objects and properties into a single experience, which may contain, for example, a panoramic view of a town, with its towers, rooftops, and cobblestone streets; the distant sounds of a church bell; the wind’s chill on one’s skin, and so on. All of these elements combine into a single, multifaceted experience.

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This, then, is the conventional way of thinking about consciousness. It consists of experiences like these, which have a certain phenomenology, which are of or about things, presented from a particular point of view, within a unified whole. A natural way of thinking, given that it corresponds to the general characteristics of ordinary experience.

But there is more to consciousness than ordinary consciousness. Throughout history, across different civilizations, and under various circumstances, certain humans have experienced — or perhaps we should say realized, or directly encountered — a different type of consciousness. An inner reality that defies the regular outlines of common human experience. One in which the above characteristics of ordinary empirical consciousness no longer obtain. Such consciousness is often described as pure consciousness, a title which is meant to designate the fact that it pertains to consciousness as it is in-itself, apart from the specifications of particular objects, perspectives, attributes, attitudes, and phenomenal qualities.