Non mystics take their consciousness from the society or culture in which they find themselves.
Largely by default they absorb and are taught the commonality of their experience of existence by the entertainment industry, plays, films, books, TV, taboos, fads, fashions, trends, religions, cultures, societal norms, ideologies, politics and suchlike – all impermanences, mostly mythomanic.
This is the extent of their consciousness. Gurus call it “sleep walking”. This lower defaulting consciousness defines the limits of most humans. They are not mystics.
Mystics are given the big C Consciousness of the Reality of cosmic existence. This Blog calls the experience the Mystic Experience of Reality (MER), in which all things ever known and unknown, including matter and spirit have always and will always exist.
Some modern physicists are suggesting Consciousness is evolutionary human “emergence”. Elsewhere in this Blog I have likened the process to the chrysalis effect.
Whatever, that experience is what makes mystics fundamentally different. It’s probably why Drs Burke then Sinetar suggested mystics are a separate human species. Some of today’s physicists suggest this Consciousness could be the cosmos’s fundamental nature from which everything emanates (what older generations reduced to a diminutive worldly humanoid they called God?).
Whatever, this experience is why mystics ignore the unrelenting impermanence of human consciousness. To them and true Seekers mere human consciousness is a hindrance to evolutionary fulfillment.
There is not much of value at the level of ordinary human consciousness unless you want to stop evolution, just remain in comfortable stasis with the perennial struggle to be a better human being.
(Ironically, being a better human being is axiomatically, automatically achieved as a by-product of capital C Consciousness, MER).
Ignatius Loyola who despite founding the Jesuits was brave for his times by admitting mystic reality is nevertheless “the better part” of human fulfillment.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 
there are now no exact measurements for consciousness. Perhaps basic consciousness may be of insects, to the second power of animals and to the third power the rational mind of humans. The fourth power is suprarational consciousness of mystics.
LikeLike
Ron, your suprarational fourth power could turn out to be just a chink opened for mystics to enter the beginning of a supra Ultimate Reality the nature of which is beyond our present human structure to even register let alone understand.
Keith.
LikeLike
The consciousness of the MER I mean seems unique to mystics. It is that consciousness that defines the mystic, in my experience.
I suspect there is an even greater consciousness even present mystics haven’t yet experienced. Even that greater consciousness might not be the limit of evolutionary progress. There are likely many more, greater and greater levels of cosmic consciousness that humans and mystics in their present form willl never experience.
Present human conscioussnes seems limited to a primary level restricted by physical, biological attributes. Mystical experience of conscioussness does not require such physical limitations. Mystics are ‘wired’ differently. (This might explain why those who accept reincarnation say mystics wont have to face the human experience again after bodily death).
LikeLike