Consciousness, Impressions And The Mind

Double consciousness refers to two worlds or realms – the physical and spiritual; one is seen like man’s physical structure, the other is not seen like his spirit or soul yet they are united in one body.  The two realms are interrelated – an individual is linked to the spiritual world; his strength depends on variables as well as his ability to make the outmost use of it.  It is in this sense that double consciousness is used in the essay.

Is man capable of reasoning while sleeping?  This is a fundamental question which helps in determining reasoning which we take for granted.  It is difficult to have a coherent expression of thought while sleeping.   The certainty of this derives from asking a drowsy person questions who is compelled to wake up but has not regained consciousness; he mumbles words and makes sentences which may be reasonable but unmediated and unsophisticated.  Reasoning is the work of the consciousness of all faculties of the mind, not the work of the sub-conscious mind.

Artries and nerves are connected in a very complex manner in the human system.  These pump blood and supply the necessary vitamins to various parts of the body.  Nerves are connected to the brain and the mind without which reasoning is incapacitated.  A trained mind works very fast; this makes  us forget the hemispheres of the brain, the functionality and non-functionality of the mind depending on the links or dislocation of the links of the nerves to the mind.

An active mind works in various ways.  It is capable of focusing on a particular subject matter for a long duration of time; it reasons with the aid of associations and reflexes.  Every good work of literature is the outcome of an active mind which mediates between social, political, religious, economic and psychological worlds.  The mind sieves waste from substance of material and immaterial culture of a people.   It is ironical to say that there is no waste in the sense of outright irrelevance of any material but certain ideas, facts and views are out of place in some context; what the artist does is to cut off all unnecessary ones to achieve coherence, logicality and a total view of a slice of life which is possible to present at a time.  Every man’s height, weight and size are not the same; these inform the seamstress’ work for each person like the creative artist whose audience, worldview and literary material inform his work.  These work through the conscious mind of the artist which determines the choice of every literary item.

The artist is free to adopt any literary patterns.  One is the working of the mind in relation to a stream of activities which is expressed through either the mind of a character or characters.   This is what the young artist does in James Joyce’s The Portrait of An Artist as a young man.  His mind is an open book before others who know what he is thinking in relation to the narrative and narratology.  The mind of the artist works at a higher state of meditation or consciousness than when two persons are involved in conversation on trivial issues or routine matters.  The conversationalists  may not call upon their faculties to question all aspects of their conversation like the active artist who narrates, queries, accepts or rejects opinions, views and ideas in relation to form.

He imitates the active mind which reasons in different ways in writing.  The mind reasons between two or more items or ideas; it uses associations to express opinion; it  compares opposites, affirms or negates them.  The active mind probes issues, searches for answers to problems and situates all things within a context, situation or world.   The background may be rich in symbols and metaphors which assist him in offering complexity to his work.  These and elevated language lift literature from a lower stratum to a higher one.  What mind is capable of this?  It is the mind which rises to higher states of contemplation – a mind taught by learning and nature.

The mind may use reflexes of the past and the present to link narrative or events.  The past informs the present while the present informs the future in a complex web of narrative.  Any mind may attempt to do these things but only a sophisticated and trained mind is capable of doing thorough links between the past and the present making the reader aware of only necessary ideas without lumping unnecessary ideas on the mind of the reader.

Dr Ngaage is of the Department of English and Literary Studies, Faculty of Arts, Niger Delta University.

Barine Ngaage