A Proposed Term and Its Scientific Foundation

Abstract

This document proposes the term Natural Human Consciousness (NHC) to describe the baseline state of human awareness present at birth: direct, unfiltered, present-moment experience without narrative self-construction. The term addresses a gap in existing consciousness literature, which consistently frames non-narrative awareness as primitive or undeveloped. Drawing on neuroscience, developmental psychology, and consciousness research, we argue that NHC is not a lesser form of consciousness but the human default, and that what we typically call adult consciousness represents a partial occlusion of this state through accumulated narrative and unprocessed experience (residue). Scientific support is drawn from Damasio, Bayne & Naci, McGilchrist, Porges, Siegel, and others.

Origin of the Term

Natural Human Consciousness did not emerge from a literature review. It emerged from lived experience.

In 2017, I underwent a spontaneous process that resulted in a permanent shift: the dissolution of Default Mode Network dominance and the return to a state of direct, unmediated present-moment awareness. Over the seven years that followed, I lived, observed, and gradually understood that state.

The term arose as the most accurate description of what I had recovered — not something new, but something original. My book of the same name, Natural Human Consciousness: The Heritage for the Next Generation, documents that process in full.

The term was not constructed. It was recognized — first in experience, then in the literature that turned out to have been pointing at it all along.

This document is therefore grounded in both first-person longitudinal experience and third-person scientific analysis. That combination is not a weakness. Consciousness research increasingly recognizes that a phenomenon which cannot be described from within cannot be fully described at all.

Link to document: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20594686