Word.ws English Dictionary

higher consciousness

higher consciousness noun: a supposed mode of cognition beyond human self-awareness.

Noun

higher consciousness (plural higher consciousnesses)

  1. (cognitive theory) a supposed mode of cognition beyond human self-awareness
    • But that the self-consciousness may be the modification of a higher form of being, perhaps of a higher consciousness, and this again of a yet higher, and so on in an infinite regressus1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, chapter 12, in Biographia Literaria
  2. the notion of historical progress in the evolution of the human mind
  3. (New-Age) a concept of mystical transcendence of human consciousness, especially in Hinduism-inspired New Age philosophy, Yoga and psychedelic drugs subculture

Forms of higher consciousness

pluralhigher consciousnesses

Origin of higher consciousness

In 19th century philosophy, used by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (died 1831, höheres Bewußtsein), Petr Yakovlevich Chaadayev (died 1856, высшее сознание; literally, "highest consciousness"). The New Age sense appears in ca. 1970 in the publications of Sri Aurobindo and others (The psychology of the unfoldment of higher consciousness (title), Swami Omkarananda, Divine Light Zentrum, 1970).

Questions about higher consciousness

What does higher consciousness mean?
Higher consciousness means a supposed mode of cognition beyond human self-awareness.
What part of speech is higher consciousness?
Higher consciousness is a noun.
What is the plural of higher consciousness?
The plural of higher consciousness is higher consciousnesses.

Words near higher consciousness in the dictionary

  1. higher arithmetic
  2. higher being
  3. higher beings
  4. Higher Bockhampton
  5. Higher Buxton
  6. higher consciousness
  7. higher consciousnesses
  8. higher criticism
  9. higher education
  10. higher functioning
  11. higher grade

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: higher consciousness (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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