Jump to content
Science Forums

A Few Thoughts On Consciousness


pagetheoracle

Recommended Posts

Consciousness is of the past when it comes to words as you can’t conceptualize something unless you’ve experienced it. Direct experience is purely visual (I am a camera). I think that ‘time’ is a border between the future (unknown, unsensed) and the past (known, sensed)and the present only exists as a cusp between these two: It’s like fear and excitement are a cusp deciding the fight or flight direction you take (forward into the unknown or retreating back into the known, the certain). The future is unformed potential and the past actuality or formed reality (Think of a volcano and lava or the cone (layers of differentiated ‘matter’ as opposed to unused ‘energy’).

 

Duality exists but only in the following way which is the attempt to understand the world through taking it apart, much as a car mechanic has to take an engine apart, to show he understands it enough to put it back together, to make it work (Medics and anatomy too): To encapsulate this – we take things apart to understand them and put them back together again to make them work. Like the layers of an onion, if you keep peeling back the layers (de-constructing them), you end up with nothing. The external world is the opposite – building reality by putting things together. Whether it’s physics or the self, the same truth applies. Yin Yang / The Tao as inner journey in search of the self or the outer one to connect with the phenomenal world also say this and Zen is just orientation, through disarming the mind via koans and stopping the endless ‘quest-ioning’ by the self, that leads us inwards to nothing and gets us to just give up and get on with the process of living by ‘being’ ourselves. Be still and know ‘you’ are God, means that once you stop running and getting caught up in propaganda, you ‘see’ the truth (as opposed to hear the lie).

 

Consciousness is purely visual and depends upon concentrating upon a particular point in time and space (memory is a recording of this experience). Speeds blinds us to perception as stillness and silence clarifies reality – hence meditation. The way I see it there are two states of consciousness / unconsciousness that I call concentrated attention and dispersed attention. In the first you are tense with attention and in the second relaxed (awake and asleep). In the dispersed state our awareness becomes less clear and generalization takes over (or everything starts to blur into everything else as detail that clarifies difference is lost – hence stupor and stupid. This includes time and space co-ordinates). In a concentrated state of attention we are clear about time as well as space because of the detailed differences we pick up from reality and our own internal clock mechanism.

Edited by pagetheoracle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

The unconscious is a blank canvas, an empty screen upon which we project our future hopes and past memories. Consciousness is a distraction filled environment, of constant motion / constant calls for our attention, which turns us out into the world, rather than down and in, into the subjective world of creativity, insight and memory.

 

Consciousness is being aware of where you are and when you are, not mistaking what you're sensing for somewhere else, some other time i.e. superimposing a memory over what you think you are perceiving as being present, here and now.

 

I’ve noticed in me and other people that when in an unconscious state i.e. being asleep, we tend to blame the wrong cause, after an incident that wakes us. By this I mean we think that was is there now created the situation which woke us, when in fact it can be long gone or distant.

 

If you're not aware, you're not present and if you're not present in mind and body, you cannot control your own life or the world around you (Perception is about stopping and 'being' in one place – that is concentrating upon something specific in the present as movement blurs perception of the present and the world around you).

 

Consciousness is turning your attention back and down into the self (learning / humility) as unconsciousness is turning your attention up and out into the world or towards 'the other' (pride, confidence, action).

 

When we 'know' something precisely, it seems to be a purely visual skill of seeing it in detail (no inner voice telling you what is or isn't true, just an outer eye seeing).

 

If you concentrate on what you're doing, you can see where to stop. If you don't concentrate upon what you're doing, you keep going: This displays the fact that consciousness is actually control of your life and unconsciousness, continuity of movement through space and across time.

 

Consciousness is actually a defence against unconsciousness (the unknown, the uncontrolled – pure energy as opposed to form, future as opposed to past).

 

When we concentrate upon the world, time slows down because we take in more detail than normal. When our attention is dispersed, time passes quickly because we only pick up general awareness of something (skip over it, not wade through it laboriously).

 

Consciousness is what drives society forward. It is the new discovery as opposed to the old problem – without it societal evolution (change) could not occur.

 

Conscience is a survival mechanism - why have it if it is self-defeating? To be conscious, is to be aware and conscience is telling you what you're aware of, plus how to deal with it. The less conscience you have, the less conscious you are and the more 'unknowingly' self-destructive your acts are within the bigger picture of existence. If you cannot understand the world, you cannot control it and if you cannot control it, you become a victim of your own failure to connect and work with it - dying as an individual and dying out as a civilization or race.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...