A common thread across traditions
Standard definitions describe consciousness as an alert, aware cognitive state: immediate awareness of one's own existence and of whatever is presently perceived. In Buddhism, a closely related concept is tathāgatagarbha, often translated as "Buddha nature" — an undeveloped potential within a person that can be cultivated toward full awakening through sustained, deliberate attention to one's own experience.
Buddhist philosophy also analyzes the person into five skandhas, or aggregates — form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness itself — as a way of describing the working parts of ordinary psychology.
A Gnostic correspondence
Within the Gnostic teaching associated with Samael Aun Weor, these five skandhas are mapped onto the sephirot of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life: the physical body to Malkuth, an etheric body to Yesod, an emotional body to Hod, a mental body to Netzach, and consciousness or essence to Tiphereth. In this specific framework, consciousness is treated as distinct from the mind and the senses — something that uses them to perceive, but which the teaching holds can also perceive beyond their reach. This particular correspondence belongs to one esoteric system rather than to Kabbalah or Buddhism as such.