Okay so I think I am finally ready to post. Seen this a couple days ago and was shocked I could not come up with a good definition for consciousness. Probably still cant but after some reflection and meditation I think I can finally post.
To the most basic of its definition anything that is living and breathing is conscious. That plant lives and breaths it has consciousness, your dog lives and breathes so it has consciousness, you are a living breathing entity so yes you are conscious.
Now their are varying levels of consciousness, and this stems from how we understand and relate our consciousness to our lives.
I guess I am still unaware how a plant or animal could raise their level of consciousness, have read that since our souls go threw this whole cycle that we were once life experiencing itself as a plant we progressed to an animal by being a good plant, and progressed to be a human by being a good animal, and who knows maybe being a good human will progress us to be one of those alien or elf entities every always sees. Although I believe being a good human leads us back to the heart of the master dreamer.
Yes I am one of the dreamers. Although I do not see why believing that this is all one dreamers dream means that our level of consciousness does not matter. Everyone and thing is just an extension of the dream, a separate dream within the dream, and over the eons these dreams have become complex. And they have also got out of the dreamers control in some aspect. And I think inherently we are all trying to get back on track with the master dream.
But back on track on the raising and spreading of consciousness without entheogens as the question was posed. As I was getting to we raise our consciousness by varies ways and methods others have touched on. By contemplating our existence and how we relate to this world, by using our actions/thoughts/words to spread love and goodness, by the conscious effort to rid our bodies of pollution(evil thoughts/actions, hateful thoughts/actions, bad stuff!).
Meditation, study, and devotion is an easy, but sometimes timely, manner to discover we are conscious beings and then trying to raise our consciousness. By implementing devotion, dedication, study, and love in our lives along with meditation to calm and center ourselves is an easy way to achieve higher states of consciousness.
I believe entheogens are tools to help, speed up, and facilitate this process, but without such things it is still very possible.
Hope this provides some additional insight.
