The Inside-Outside Story of Consciousness: A Phenomenological Exploration

Abstract

Amidst the materialistic chaos of modernity, science has aspirations of offering the platters of calmness and serenity. The phenomenological wing of psychology tries to fathom the inner contents of self-consciousness to locate the patterns of its reflection in the outer fringes so that attitudinal components in the forms of thoughts, feelings, desires and phantasy can attain some quality of balance to restore tranquillity within. It studies consciousness or the natural course of experience that brings past into the present and opens up a space of possibilities from which choice makes a move to the future. But there is an inside and outside story of consciousness. Reflection seems to retrieve the surface glare of consciousness, the pre-reflective ones form the inner most base. The sole experience of this consciousness is self. All the experiences are characterized by a quality of “mineness”. The phenomenological approach serves as an indicator of evolution of self from pre-reflective to reflective state in the Dasein format of ontological development. The shift in the centre of gravity from consciousness (psychology) to existence (ontology), the subsequent direction of phenomenology has met an alteration making it at once both personal and mysterious. Phenomenologists offered a way to conceptualize experience that could accommodate those aspects of one’s existence that lie on the periphery of sentiment awareness.