What is consciousness?
It is awareness?
Yea but what is awareness anyway?
We can measure the consciousness of a people
by their level of awareness.
Of what?
Of themselves and their surroundings for starters.
On a higher scale of life as it manifests in its
many variegated form....
Let's look at this .... through observation....
now we can guess at the consciousness of a worm
....food, food and more food.... until it becomes a
pupa .... it is sleep, sleep and more sleep -
a kind of hibernation as it transforms within until it
becomes a butterfly... its consciousness expands to
... knowing flight, knowing food, knowing mating
until it dies ..........................

Likewise taking man .... he is conscious of the need for
food ... clothing .... protection .... procreation AND
his five sensory perceptions of sight, hearing, taste,
touch and smell. What does he do with this - with his
mind he manipulates his environment, with his emotions
he creates relationships, through his physical body and
its five senses he makes a life for himself... until he dies.

Are all men of the same level of consciousness?
Obviously not? How? Why?
Some just exist; some live their lives, some achieve,
some transcend.
There is obviously a difference between all these types
of human beings. Their awareness of themselves in
relation to their surroundings is directly proportional to
their quality of life.
One would then say a man who transcends is not having
a high quality life. Materially perhaps. But the material
person is unable to fathom what the transcendent experience
of the spiritual man is like. The higher levels of awareness
that he has opened up to which is still a mystery to those
who haven't reached his state of being.  To the point he
is no longer interested in mundane material existence.
His consciousness therefore has expanded to include
dimensions of being. This manifests in his increased
humanity, dispassion, detachment, lovingness beyond all
barriers, disenchantment of the world in its divisiveness.

We see an improved standard of living, caring and sharing
amongst those of a high level of consciousness. This does
not include wealth and that which wealth bestows upon
people. For this kind of a high standard of living is at the
expense of other human beings in other parts of the
world who slog to provide the rich their lifestyle. Here is
a higher consciousness which has managed to order its
environment but which has not expanded its concern beyond
that of self-ishness is waiting to bloom into an all encompassing
consciousness.

Mass consciousness to self consciousness to group consciousness
(here the group being humanity)

When the majority of humanity reach this state of group consciousness
he stops plundering the Earth and stops enslaving other human
beings to meet his needs. He instead starts serving others to meet
their needs. He relinquishes all and in giving up the Earth attains Heaven.