A look at consciousness.

It's when I look in the mirror, and I look right in my eyes and I realise that what's looking back at me is not actually me, it's just my body. Often I will look into my eyes and wonder what's behind it. It's a strange feeling I get. And to me that's my conscious.

 

Isn't that what Buddhism is all about? Being so super-conscious--accessing the parts of our consciousness that we're not aware of--that you attain true enlightenment?

Isn't that what nirvana is?

 

From my personal understanding, I think it's just mere awareness of one's own surroundings and self. Or is it Self?

I guess that could go deeper, in terms of our egos, and how we see ourselves.

 

Would you mind if I shared a photo of a special book I have? It was bought for me by a man I considered my guru maybe close to ten years ago now. His name was Eystein and he was Norwegian. He was a very powerful figure in my life who I took many influences from. He bought this for me for meditational purposes. It's a great read. When he handed it to me, it was in a small brown paper bag, he'd written a powerful message for me in Runes, I choose to half cover this passage as it was meant for me only. Inside the bag was a pack of insense and to this day, I keep this book locked away in my small indoor safe with my grandparents medals. After the 10 years it is still enriched in insense scent.

He taught me that the ways of the Norse were deep within Hindu beliefs and spirituality. To connect with my inner self as an Aryan, I had best read and relate this book.

What I found immediately though was I had no real Guru or a Swami or anybody to physically guide me. So when he speaks about his meditation process began with sheer adoration for his Swami, I felt lost and confused. I didn't have that person, did I really "love" Eystein? Of course not. Yet, when I do go on my spiritual voyages it's Eystein who I see in my 3rd eye, which is why I call him my guru after all. I have not seen or heard from Ey in maybe 8 years now. It's a friendship I severely miss and I hope wherever he is, that he is safe. he must be close to 70yo now, I hope he made it back to Norway which was his dream, he wanted to go back home. I came back home, that's how we lost each other.

I would go on to hear some interesting stories about him from other people and how he was very much a cult. I couldn't see it. I can see where they are coming from, but if he was a cult then he took no advantage of me and I would have been easy prey at the time. He wouldn't go out of his way to help others, quite the opposite, but when he connected with someone, he'd do anything to help and our beliefs were kind of the same. I'd also like to think that I taught him things too. I remember he'd come around all hours of the night with his friends and ask my miss "is Jocelyn awake?" and I'd get out of bed and he'd be all excited and we'd go out for beers at Irish pubs and just talk spirituality for hours and hours. Sigh. I really do miss the man.

 

It ultimately is ineffable and mysterious. It's kind of a closed circle. Whatever is perceiving trying to figure out whatever is perceiving. If you can't identify what consciousness is in the first place, how can you ever point to a place in the brain or in space...or wherever you want to look for it...and say, "This is the equivalent of what it's like"? You can't. It will always be a mystery.

There's so much more to the mind than we are aware of, though. Capacities we haven't even dreamed of. One thing I will say is that time IS of the essence. Of everything, including consciousness. Take a step beyond linear time and a whole new world will open. Time truly is relative. There are no endings and beginnings as such. Only rich experiences.

 

At the age of 10
I believed in Carl's Dalai Lama golf tournament.


I always thought as a kid "total consciousness" meant that you were awake and aware of your surroundings buried in a casket. I said to myself, "who the fuck would want that, alive and kicking in a casket". I was using the word fuck at that age because parents used it all day long.

It was'nt til recently, a member here. A very well respected one ( I know it's hard to imagine) told me to look into Buddhism. I did and obviously total consciousness was better explained as I researched it more.

Im not all the way there yet, but Buddhism has been the first thing that sparked any interest since I was let down at 11 years old.

 

Analyzing the phenomena from a physical viewpoint, the mystery to me is in how every aspect of consciousness gets filtered. When I think about it, there seems to be this layered aspect of filtration where awareness is filtered as in the flashlight metaphor, which I think psychedelics in particular can make one aware of. Then again, our conscious thoughts are filtered. Our thinking seems to be filtered in a two-fold manner, one for formulating understandable language, which we either say or think and the other for abstracting the stimuli/phenomena to summarily respond to it. By this, I mean representing stimuli in sort of a gestalt way, where the totality of the stimuli is understood without having to think about each and every part of it.

The mystery to me, assuming such filters to be a relatively accurate description of our conscious processes, are these effects automatic or are there some other aspects of consciousness (subconscious comes to mind) that are influencing these processes?

 

A lot of this discussion is simply about the physics of our eyes

We focus on what we want to see, so when I am looking at this screen on my laptop, I am unaware of the rooftops of the houses outside the window. However when I focus on the rooftops, I become unaware of the computer screen. This does result with the point of convergence of my eyes moving and this is how we determine depth.
It is the principal of 3D films in the cinema, where we either separate by color filters, transverse Polaroids, or oscillating glasses.
With the 2 dots. I can focus in to the point that I can see both sides of my nose while looking at a close object, but focusing on an object in front of one eye, causes my vision to lengthen.
As we get older, the lens in our eyes hardens, leaving the muscles less adjustment and often causing long or short sight.
It is not so much a blind spot as not being to see everything at once.

Likewise, our iris adjust to light intensity. In a dark room, the iris will fully open to give us the maximum image from any available light. But if I shine a torch, the iris will close and the rest of the room will vanish from my vision.
This is a lot slower than focus. A good example being that their is always enough light to safely walk around a cinema, but someone walking in from bright sunshine can easily start tripping over the seats.
You can also experience this effect in reverse when you open the bedroom curtains on a sunny morning

 

That's a good question, actually. I think surroundings can mean material surroundings, as well as non-material (spirituality comes into play perhaps?) I'm not a proponent of linking consciousness with spirituality, but, I think there could be a correlation between spirituality and where our desires to be spiritual, originate. Most likely those desires or ideas come from consciousness, directly or indirectly.

 

You can pontificate all day long, but ultimately its experience that matters.

"Those who speak do not know. Those who know do not speak "

This thread should be in the science forum not the philosophy and religion forum.

 

A person's beliefs, being the building blocks of the reality they perceive, limits their view to only that which corroborates their beliefs. When those beliefs are challenged, and the person has no answer to those challenges, they either replace the old, obsolete belief with the new one that actually fits reality--thus increasing the scope of what they are conscious of--or they censor all valid challenges by placing a lock on the door leading to the area where their faulty beliefs were challenged and discredited, which is a conscious choice to not be conscious, which, depending on what the conscious being believes to be as stake, could be considered dishonest. I think we can all relate to that.

 

I don’t think that consciousness is synonymous with spirituality, but without awareness (the ability to be conscious), we wouldn’t be able to discern a spiritual life. I think that consciousness comes from the brain, it’s a brain function, which is why when someone is “brain dead,” they are essentially unconscious. I’ve always wondered if that’s entirely true though or do people who exist in a coma like state experience an altered state of consciousness?

 

When I mentioned filtering consciousness, I was thinking more in line with the Blind Spot Test you posted, not necessarily perception. You're not really changing your state of perception as it pertains to those classifications with that test, the state of awareness is changing.

 

well either you're aware of your existence or you're not. everything that has a ceribral cortex experiences every same emotional state as yourself.

now the experience of existing, that's where you have all this subjectiveness. its inside you're own mind that you experience everything.
the mistake people make about it is to assume because of this that's all there is.

sorry but there really is a reality that begins where all subjectivity stops. generally immediately beyond the edge of sapient society.
all the rocks and minerals, even complex organic chemistry, these are the reality that is untouched and not alterable by subjective process.
how the physical universe works are part of this too. and its the physical universe that is the default condition. nothing subjective is.

being the only thing one person is familiar with, does not make that thing, whatever it might be, a default (at rest/unaltered) condition of anything.