What is consciousness?

[drugo]

Is it substance? Sound? Energy? Language? - that is within everything or just humans? Is it a form of life which separates us from animals, and/or plants - is it alive only in humans as culture, custom, myth, religion, philosophy, scientific thinking, mathematics, imagination, art, compasion etc?

Does consciousness contract and expand? Are there specific levels of consciousness? Or more broadly, is it a theory of reality? OR theories of relative realities?

Is it ultimately ineffable? Is it Experience unable to be accurately represented in words?

Do you think that there are specific forms of consciousness every human should be aspiring to?

You don't have to answer all of the above, there are just some stimulating ideas.

What is this thing we call consciousness???

[lofty86]

Conciousness ??? LOL

Have you checked out brainmeta.com its an online forum which discusses this in great detail.

[drugo]

Conciousness ??? LOL

Have you checked out brainmeta.com its an online forum which discusses this in great detail.

I'm sure there are a lot of forums, institutions, intellectual circles, and people in all sorts of places discussing 'consciousness'. My question is geared towards this community.

Thanks for the link though

Edited August 15, 2009 by mooksha

[~shameless~]

What is this thing we call consciousness???

'Its like a really good piece of music but without lyrics,

[Thelema]

My reply is a beginning of a long coversation that could happen, rather than an end to a conversation. My question, to answer the original question with a question, is:

"What makes you think that Consciousness is a 'Thing?'"

[M S Smith]

Consciousness is the gift of the Divine; it is what allows us to reflect upon our experiences and find meaning.

~Michael~

[nabraxas]

The consciousness of humans and other life forms is reality's way of experiencing itself. We are the eyes of the universe, and the more conscious we become the more clearly the universe "sees" itself.

http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2009/06/way-of-seeing.html

[drugo]

My reply is a beginning of a long coversation that could happen, rather than an end to a conversation. My question, to answer the original question with a question, is:

"What makes you think that Consciousness is a 'Thing?'"

Nice perspective

If it isn;t a thing, then what can we say about it?

Do you mean that consciousness can't be discussed as an absolute thing? Such as, 'This Thing' is consciousness, therefore making all other equally valid descriptive attempts invalid.

Maybe consciousness is existence, and humans are evolving hyper-sensitive self-reflecting beings oriented towards existence. Also, some are arguably a lot more sensitive than others, take, for example, a Qigong master compared to a consumer - football driven proletariat factory worker.

Maybe this existence 'pod' known as my life is a self-reflexive angle to participate in and become existence, through myself? Become infinite through the finite. Attain the eternal through the temporal-ephemeral life we call human existence. Like buddha's Nirvana, or Plato's ascend from the cave into the ineffable absolute - which can only be experienced and not completely understood and transmitted in Concept, thought, and words.

By not being a 'thing', are you suggesting that consciousness is ultimately ineffable -can't be reduced to this or that set of words? or possibly consciousness is everything??

Much love.

[drugo]

Consciousness is the gift of the Divine;

~Michael~

Hey Michael, thanks for your thoughts and feelings:)

Do you think that the 'gift' comes with any obligations? Anthropologists all agree that gifts embody obligations. Not that these obligtions is usually a bad thing, quite the opposite. They are a connecting thing, in many different senses. Whenever a gift is given, in both pre-modern and modern societies and cultures, the object or service (gift) embodies meaning indicating the relationship of the gift giver and gift receiver. This meaning essentially binds the transactors in one form or another. SUch as a wife cooking dinner for her husband (should) bind their loving relationship. Commodities offer an alternative to gifts in the way that they are alienated from the giver and receiver. They embody none, or only shallow meaning which unites the giver and receiver. For example, when buying food from Coles, the worker could get fired and the next day we would go back and get the same object (commodity), regardless of the relationship. The categories are not as simple as that but it's a good introduction.

So if you except the premise that 'gifts' embody obligation. What do you think the divine requests of us? love, beauty, hard-work, prayer?

it is what allows us to reflect upon our experiences and find meaning.

Also, do we only find meaning, or do we also create meaning? I tend to think that there is a tension between the two thus birthing our personal identity into existence.

[drugo]

What is this thing we call consciousness???

'Its like a really good piece of music but without lyrics,

Why no lyrics? ...Ineffable?

Maybe the universal instruments offer lyrical-type expressions which can be transformed, or at least transmogrified, into, say, the English language.

[drugo]

http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2009/06/way-of-seeing.html

That's cool. How do you we gain this clarity? Are there specific paths? or should be dabble in a heap of bins like a true postmodern cat?

[M S Smith]

Hey Michael, thanks for your thoughts and feelings:)

Do you think that the 'gift' comes with any obligations? Anthropologists all agree that gifts embody obligations. Not that these obligtions is usually a bad thing, quite the opposite. They are a connecting thing, in many different senses. Whenever a gift is given, in both pre-modern and modern societies and cultures, the object or service (gift) embodies meaning indicating the relationship of the gift giver and gift receiver. This meaning essentially binds the transactors in one form or another. SUch as a wife cooking dinner for her husband (should) bind their loving relationship. Commodities offer an alternative to gifts in the way that they are alienated from the giver and receiver. They embody none, or only shallow meaning which unites the giver and receiver. For example, when buying food from Coles, the worker could get fired and the next day we would go back and get the same object (commodity), regardless of the relationship. The categories are not as simple as that but it's a good introduction.

So if you except the premise that 'gifts' embody obligation. What do you think the divine requests of us? love, beauty, hard-work, prayer?

Also, do we only find meaning, or do we also create meaning? I tend to think that there is a tension between the two thus birthing our personal identity into existence.

The proper use of consciousness itself glorifies its benefactor.

So what is the proper use? Well, it knows itself.

I'm finding meaning while sitting here thinking about this subject. I don't believe I can say that I am creating it.

~Michael~

[t st tantra]

am i a consciousness and/or do i have consciousness?is there some difference?

eg......

i am = consciousness

and/or

i = consciousness

and/or

am = consciousness

?

t s t .

[drugo]

The proper use of consciousness itself glorifies its benefactor.

So what is the proper use? Well, it knows itself.

I'm finding meaning while sitting here thinking about this subject. I don't believe I can say that I am creating it.

~Michael~

That's interesting.

What is the improper use of consciousness? Is it also 'found' meaning, or perhaps created meaning?? Do we sometimes find the 'wrong' things and other times find the 'right' things?

Also, when you wave your hand goodbye to someone are you 'finding' meaning? The gesture of waving embodies very specific meaning, sometimes really powerful meaning relevant to you and the person your waving off.

I tend to think that we do not just receive meaning, but we also create meaning - within an eternal flux of energy sometimes labeled as consciousness, being in/as being. Possibly through the process of receiving/creating meaning within our everyday opening to the world we come to know/be ourselves/everything in profound ways. I like to think of our everyday opening to the world as at play within a dualistic reality offering the discovery of everything, or the infinite, through the self. Infinite through finite, eternal through temporal.

Governed by morality, each choice we make seems to craft more profound understandings of ourselves through to existence itself. As the Socratic dictum suggests to 'know thyself', I feel that deeper self knowing can offer a break through the self into the not-self, the eternal, complete human consciousness.

Is the experience of consciousness kind of like a window into the eternal? Kinda' like a prisoner gazing out of their prison cell onto lakes, forests, animals, galaxies etc - only the 'outside' is eternity for consciousness, the eternal which can be sensed through the finite paradoxes of human life. Maybe we can peek at this plateau of eternity through powerful spiritual methods, and thus re-defining the "I" on the inside of the window, or the 'prison cell'.

Why should/do we aspire to communicate the incommunicable? Why do we attempt ever so difficultly to offer our version of the eternal? In Plato's analogy, why does the philosopher aspire to descend back into the cave of shadows?

Edited August 16, 2009 by mooksha

[drugo]

i am = consciousness

and/or

i = consciousness

and/or

am = consciousness

?

Maybe consciousness is existence: am=consciousness, and I exist and am also the thing which I am aware of: i am=consciousness. On top of this, maybe we are evolving more and more profound forms of being aware of existence: i=consciousess, or self-conscious animal.

Self/all-existential-awareness of being infinite and finite, being everything and individual. Otherwise known as matter and spirit - maybe matter is just spirit in temporal sets of formations though - therefore rendering the temporal ultimately always infinite???

Nice comment tst. A lot of people cling to consciousness as simply awareness or simply existence, and therefore tend to disconnect , what I think is, the intimate commonality of life.

Edited August 16, 2009 by mooksha

[t st tantra]

an interesting symbol loop exists in that......

i can be split in.....

. the point

and

_ action [am]

a subloop in which represents ?

t s t .

[drugo]

an interesting symbol loop exists in that......

i can be split in.....

. the point

and

_ action [am]

a subloop in which represents ?

t s t .

Can "I" be separated from "am"?

I see the paradox being that we are trying to separate what are two and the same thing.

"I" = ego,self,soul. Whilst "am"= being, existence, action. But, fundamentally "I" exists. "I" exists in action. Therefore, when we try to separate the two we get this 'subloop' as you call it.

Language is ridden with paradoxes given its reductive nature, along with a whole heap of historically produced forms of thinking, such as binaries.

This sort of ontological onslaught can seem lame, or a tad pointless, but when grasped in deep ways it can really move consciousness.

For example. Rather than Descartes' cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am." maybe, jump on board with the phenomonologists and flip existence back to base. "I am, and then I think." Or even, "I am - a thinking, feeling, meaningful being". By embodying this type of difference, that means not just conceptually agreeing, but by being able to apprehend the world and your being in it as fundamental.

I was doing some work with subs. a few months ago and I incorporated some of Merleau-Ponty's (French phenomenologist) ideas of intentionality, meaning and time with some simple Kundalini breath work. It's hard for me to express how this philosophers ideas effected my experience, but i'll just say it was profound far beyond what I expected, that is, for those of you considering experimenting with powerful western thought and entheogens.

Bit of a rant there. To swing it back, this experience with subs. definitely had a powerful impact on my understanding/experience of "consciousness", more specifically, the relationship between mind and matter, or intent and action.

Edited August 17, 2009 by mooksha

[t st tantra]

some think i was the state before i am.....existence without awareness of that existence?

t s t .

[Gunter]

it is a term, nothing more.

[drugo]

it is a term, nothing more.

What do you think the term is trying to represent?

[drugo]

some think i was the state before i am.....existence without awareness of that existence?

t s t .

hmm, that's cool. Do you think this awareness emerged in our species for a reason?

Do you think that consciousness has direction, kinda' like water landing on a mountain's edge naturally will seek to travel down towards, say, a lake of water at the base? But, some currents of water seem to get caught in small enclaves, forming small and particular semi-stagnant pools, waiting for a rush of water (Revolution) to wash them downstream.

If so, what do you think streams of consciousness are flowing towards / the ideal direction(s)?

Or, given my personal premise, what is the seductive 'lake' of spiritual communion all about?

Edited August 17, 2009 by mooksha

[t st tantra]

Or, given my personal premise, what is the seductive 'lake' of spiritual communion all about?

it!.......or us?

we awoke in it,the sea of possibilities and agreed to play this to find what we are and what it is?

or

we agreed to manifest this to find out what we are?

t s t .

something from cabalah i think.......

'i am that i am'

a name of god ,a state of consciousness....my understanding is limited......we exist because there is nothing else [to do].....can gods unbe ? or do they wake up later?......also a self powering mantra

Edited August 17, 2009 by t st tantra

[Thelema]

If it isn;t a thing, then what can we say about it

what is this "it" of which you speak that is not a thing? maybe an adverbialisation? Like not saying: "x is conscious" but instead that "x acts consciously"? then still, you can't talk about consciousness but you can analyze what it means to be acting consciously. Not to be permitted on this construction, is to postulate the having of a consciousness along with an action that makes that action acting consciously, as this would loop back on itself and miss the whole point, which at the beginning was to expand on the whole "no-thing" idea.

By not being a 'thing', are you suggesting that consciousness is ultimately ineffable -can't be reduced to this or that set of words? or possibly consciousness is everything??

by not being a thing, i mean that there is no referent for effables. also that it can't be reduced - because there is nothing, no-thing, to reduce. No, I don't mean that consciousness is everything, either. Unless we agree that this everything, like the set of all sets, leads to logical paradox. If it were that type of special everything, then I might be willing to go along that sort of path.

I regard the positing of a subjective and an objective a falsity, and the positing thereof of a consciousness and an objective substratum metaphysical lies that try to overdetermine the original, the Seyn, if you will - [not a "thing"], through a transcendent grounding.

[drugo]

what is this "it" of which you speak that is not a thing? maybe an adverbialisation? Like not saying: "x is conscious" but instead that "x acts consciously"? then still, you can't talk about consciousness but you can analyze what it means to be acting consciously. Not to be permitted on this construction, is to postulate the having of a consciousness along with an action that makes that action acting consciously, as this would loop back on itself and miss the whole point, which at the beginning was to expand on the whole "no-thing" idea.

by not being a thing, i mean that there is no referent for effables. also that it can't be reduced - because there is nothing, no-thing, to reduce. No, I don't mean that consciousness is everything, either. Unless we agree that this everything, like the set of all sets, leads to logical paradox. If it were that type of special everything, then I might be willing to go along that sort of path.

I regard the positing of a subjective and an objective a falsity, and the positing thereof of a consciousness and an objective substratum metaphysical lies that try to overdetermine the original, the Seyn, if you will - [not a "thing"], through a transcendent grounding.

So to conclude on your argument, would you say that consciousness is a process, or the experience of conscious life. Rather than, say, a specific thing or a kind of object of analysis. Do you mean that consciousness is a process of 'analysis' therefore it cannot be analysed? Kinda' like trying to eat your own face off?

[Foton]

Cut up from wikipedia: consciousness is awareness of individuality and responsiveness to environment.

there is no conciousness! It is an illusion constructed out of language. There is no seperation, all is bodhimind.

There may well be other layers... shiva with VR goggles and an alien on her back.