What is Consciousness?

Let yourt mind relax. Let your mind relax and expand, mixing with the sky in front of it. Then notice: the clouds float by in the sky, and you are efffortlessly aware of them. Feelings float by in the body, and you are effortlessly aware of them, too. Thoughts float by in the mind, and you are aware of them as well. Nature floats by, feelings float by, thoughts float by...and you are aware of all of them.
"So tell me: Who are you?
"You are not your thoughts, for you are aware of them. You are not your feelings, for you are aware of them. You are not any objects that you can see, for you are aware of them.
"Something in you is aware of all these things. So tell me: What is it in you that is conscious of everything?

-Ken Wilber, Boomeritus

I am skeptical of that you are your consciousness. You can watch your thoughts, feeling, etc. But you can also watch your consciousness.

I think it is hard to tell what implication this has, if any.

Blessings

Sebbi

http://users.bigpond.net.au/marshan/book3.htm


I liked the chapter on

EXFORMATION

This word is used by Tor Nørretranders in his book The User Illusion, published in Danish in 1991 and in English in 1998. He argues that effective communication depends on a shared body of knowledge between the persons communicating. If someone is talking about cows, for example, what is said will be unintelligible unless the person listening has some idea what a cow is, what it is good for, and in what contexts one might encounter one. In using the word “cow”, Nørretranders says, the speaker has deliberately thrown away a huge body of information, though it remains implied. He illustrates the point with a story of Victor Hugo writing to his publisher to ask how his most recent book, Les Miserables, was getting on. Hugo just wrote “?”, to which his publisher replied “!”, to indicate it was selling well. The exchange would have no meaning to a third party because the shared context is unique to those taking part in it. This shared context Tor Nørretranders calls exformation. He coined the word as a abbreviated form of explicitly discarded information, originally in Danish as eksformation; the word first appeared in English in an article he wrote in 1992. He says “exformation is everything we do not actually say but have in our heads when or before we say anything at all. Information is the measurable, demonstrable utterance we actually come out with”.

You are aware of your own consciousness...you're contemplating it now.

You are conciousness. However when you say you are aware of your conciousness, you are actually concious of the thought that I am concious, not conciousness itself.

One can be more certain of his/her consciousness, rather than their unconscious awareness. Although, consciousness is all relative, you could be conscious in a dream, and be conscious of the fact that you have control over your logical thinking, and/or senses, which is of no coporeal sense. Yet be physically unconscious... The factors beind one's consciousness would be his or her state of being at the moment. A sixth sense perhaps. One knows he/she is conscious without having to think about it too deeply.