What are two kinds of unconsciousness?

Answer 1

It could refer to a medical unconsciousness or a spiritual, intellectual, or worldly unconsciousness. Someone can in the first instance, be knocked unconsciousness from a concussion, brain injury or coma. One could also become unconscious with anesthesia or induced coma. They would not be brain dead and would also be in a state of subconsciousness, using other brain waves or different parts of the brain in a dream like state. But they would be mostly unaware of what was happening around themselves.

In the second instance it would mean that they weren't fully conscious in everyday life. It would refer to a person not being aware of their feelings or the feelings of others, or the reality and depth of things around them, in a larger sense, as in the world. It would mean that there were different levels of "awareness" and some therapies, personality theories, and religions try to teach a greater or heightened awareness. They use prayer, meditation, and talk therapy as a way to do this. It led a personality theorist from Harvard, Timothy Leary, to use LSD as a quicker way to awareness. Tibetan Monks, for example, use meditation to quiet their brains to achieve greater and expanding awareness and get to the highest level known as enlightenment. Most cultures who practice achieving enlightenment, ie: Carmelite nuns, Native American Medicine Men/Women, and individuals through personal tribulation (see Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr.) describe this state as a great compassion, acceptance and understanding.

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Another take:

A person not being conscious of something is different from the person being unconscious. Not being conscious of something is the same as being unaware. You can be fully awake and alert and be unaware of a person's actions behind you, for example, or unaware of the subject matter of a nearby conversation that you are filtering out in order to focus on your own conversation.

You are unconscious during sleep which is a natural, healthy and cyclic kind of unconsciousness. You are completely unaware of anything around you unless it is arousing enough to awaken you. You are unresponsive to any kind of question or cue. Sleep cycles are complex, and your responsiveness to different cues changes over the course of a cycle.

You are also unconscious during a coma, which can result from severe trauma or it can be medically induced for various reasons. I think general anesthesia can be considered a kind of induced coma which is temporary, controlled and for the most part completely harmless in the long run. But this kind of unconsciousness is not normal and is different from the sleep cycle.