"Conscience is a prison: it has no walls or bars, but no one can get out."

Complex and mysterious, consciousness is that state of mind we have when we are not asleep or under anesthesia. All the rest of the time we are conscious. But what exactly is consciousness? Scientifically, there are still many unanswered questions. For now, it can only be stated that it has a series of characteristics, being a personal and subjective state: your consciousness is solely yours, and no one else can enter it, nor can you enter the consciousness of others. That is why it is such a unique element for each individual.

Professor Emeritus of Psychobiology at the Institute of Neurosciences and the Faculty of Psychology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​Ignacio Morgado, speaks extensively about all of this in his recently published book. The mirror of imagination (Ariel, 2025).

To better understand what consciousness is, according to Morgado, one must first understand the differences between the mind, consciousness, and the unconscious. On the one hand, the mind is a network of brain functions, such as thinking, reasoning, memorizing, learning, experiencing emotions, or feeling hunger and thirst. Each of these functions can occur in a conscious state, as when you remember what happened to you yesterday, or unconsciously, as when you are driving a car but thinking about other things while driving. However, "the unconscious is not something mysterious that is beyond us, but rather a way for the brain to free us from time and thoughts to do other things that do require consciousness," explains the author.

Consciousness, however, is something very subjective that, for the psychobiologist, is nothing more than a kind of personal prison: "Each of us can only reach what our consciousness allows us to reach. Outside of consciousness, we don't know what is there or if there is anything else," he points out. For all these reasons, it's like a prison: "It has no walls or bars, but no one can leave it."

Furthermore, Morgado asserts that consciousness is the mirror of the imagination. "If we didn't have consciousness, which is a mirror in which we see and understand what we are doing, our behavior, our reaction to the stimuli we face daily, probably wouldn't be so perfect," he explains. He continues: "When you look in the mirror, you don't ask, 'How do you think I look?' because if you did, you would be thinking that the mirror is someone different from you who is looking at you, who has their own opinion and tells you how you are. Instead, you expect the mirror to be a reflection of who you are so that you can correct what isn't right."

In other words, far from being as other specialists say, for the book's author, consciousness is not something useless, like the smoke from a fire or the noise of a car engine. "Yes, it does work, because it functions as a mechanism of the human brain to allow precise assistance to the body and our behavior," he clarifies.

Who are we?

Science doesn't yet allow us to do it, but what would happen if we transplanted our brain into another person's body? "We would be transplanting our very being, because each of us is our brain, and everything our brain does and the feelings it creates," he points out. Therefore, if our brain were implanted in someone else's body, we would feel like strangers, we would feel like we were inside someone else's body. "We would be transplanting our essence and innermost identity," he continues.

Another question Morgado addresses in the book is whether an unconscious machine could ever equal human intelligence and consciousness. "We can create conscious artifacts, but they would only be prepared to respond to a specific number of situations. If something unforeseen arises, they won't," he reflects. In contrast, human consciousness does have the capacity to respond to unforeseen situations and those we haven't experienced before.

The fact is, however, that today we still don't know exactly what consciousness is or what its innermost nature is. "I fear that the human brain is not capable of understanding it, just as a chimpanzee's brain is not capable of understanding a square root," says Morgado, who believes that this very ignorance of humans has a special value. "Perceiving consciousness as something miraculous, magical, and strange allows us and helps us to have supernatural beliefs and to believe that there is something beyond our life and our mental prison," he reflects. This belief helps, above all, people who live in situations of war, illness, or poverty. "Those of us who can live in much more favorable circumstances don't have as much trouble thinking that there is no life beyond the one we already have," he concludes.