Does consciousness begin or end, and how do we know we are – conscious? Through the course of our existence there remains, always the paradox of consciousness – being aware of itself – conscious of being conscious, and does it obscure itself?
The best analogy is the fish being in the water. Is there any awareness of the all that surrounds them. Clues maybe, such as being hooked and pulled through the surface and into the air. Or for cetaceans, always having to surface to fill their lungs with air, and perhaps to renew the awareness of their surroundings. When do we come up for air? Is it when human consciousness finds itself aware of itself, aware of the process of looking at nature and feeling, realizing, the connection; the link that is broken somewhere in our learning to be. Realizing that we are connected to nature, and in that we are all connected to each other. The earth is us, and we are the earth. Or as the whale surfaces to breathe, is our first glimpse of heaven only when the spirit emerges from the confines of the body through existential experience, possibly for the first time only in death?
How are we to know, to understand, the distinction of consciousness when it is only through its awareness can we know. It is, in a sense mystical, yet when fully immersed in sense perception, if we allow an understanding, a separation to take place between awareness and feeling, in that middle ground, between body and mind, we feel the reverberations of consciousness, of eternal beauty.
This then is the mystery searched for over ages of time, the philosophers stone, the Holy Grail, the wisdom of the ancients. No matter how far we search we will never find it until we look within. Our heart and our mind in a flash (of consciousness) come to know we are, they are wholly separate, and always, wholly (holy) one.
Scientists search the depths of space, and the depths of the microscope for what? For what they already know, consciousness creates the universe, even as a consciousness creates an awareness of, and even still is – the universe / multiverse. What is being revealed is that the real world, the true awareness is a Quantum world, lines of force we call reality are constructs of consciousness, not the reverse. The universe (multi-verse) did not happen to unfold consciousness. Consciousness has forever been, and will ever be. The endless varieties of experience are its coming into existence, expression, to know itself forever for the first time. A cosmic, all surrounding, great cycle, consciousness being its own creation, in the paradox of time …
grandfathersky 
❤