there's an exception ah yes indeed there is an exception to that which is largely 00:08:28 when you're talking to someone else so in conversation and in dialogue you're actually can maintain consciousness for very long periods of time well which is why you need to imagine you're talking 00:08:41 to someone else to really be able to think out a problem

We report the first neural recording during ecstatic meditations called jhanas and test whether a brain reward system plays a rolein the joy reported. Jhanas are Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) that imply major brain changes based on subjective reports:(1) external awareness dims, (2) internal verbalizations fade, (3) the sense of personal boundaries is altered, (4) attention is highlyfocused on the object of meditation, and (5) joy increases to high levels. The fMRI and EEG results from an experienced meditatorshow changes in brain activity in 11 regions shown to be associated with the subjective reports, and these changes occur promptlyafter jhana is entered. In particular, the extreme joy is associated not only with activation of cortical processes but also with activationof the nucleus accumbens (NAc) in the dopamine/opioid reward system. We test three mechanisms by which the subject mightstimulate his own reward system by external means and reject all three. Taken together, these results demonstrate an apparentlynovel method of self-stimulating a brain reward system using only internal mental processes in a highly trained subject.

Some would go as far as to say and for at least the last twenty years, work is no longer a means to an end for us, it is our collective intellectual power that has driven the companies, societies, ecologies forward and it has come at the expense of our individual wellbeing.

thought is physical it is a matter of 00:06:23 brain circuitry

get the consciousness book by Rupert Glasgow for free

The original function of consciousness was probably to direct a mobile self that was short of energy to a fresh supply of food. On the smaller scales of life, you don't need to be aware to find food. Trichopax adhaerens - one of the simplest of all animals moves around haphazardly. 00:02:54 It slows down in the presence of food, and speeds up in its absence. This is highly effective, and makes the tiny creature spend more time where there is food spend more time where there is food than where there is not. But it never moves in a particular direction towards a particular target, and there's no need for it to be conscious of its environment.

We are like someone who knows that a fever, a cough, and loss of smell are all symptoms of something, but has no idea about the virus that causes them.

Respect, Trust, and Equity

Both more fundamental than the Hard Problem of Consciousness, and more expansive in scope, the problem of integration/unification is also central to the problem of the origin(s) of life.

Granted, how a natural entity can have interiority, i.e., subjectivity, is a hard problem, but if the question of integration and unification is not identical to the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” (Chalmers 1995) it is also inseparable from it and surely a presupposition of the very possibility of interiority. Nor would even an understanding of how subjectivity could be resident to a single cell tell us how consciousness could become an integrated unity across many cells. If we assume consciousness is a physically based phenomenon, and that it draws upon the activity of various parts of the brain, let alone constituent cells, then we must face our deficits in understanding how the experience of a unified consciousness is realized at the level of an integration of some cells but not others albeit in the absence of evident, non-arbitrary, physical boundaries.

Its life out of its center enters into a relationship to it; the reflexive character of the centrally represented body is given to itself. Although the living being on this level is also absorbed in the here/now, lives out of the center, it has become conscious of the centrality of its existence. It has itself; it knows of itself; it notices itself -- and this makes it an I. (pp. 269-70)

The human sphere is defined by a jump from centric positionality to that further level of detachment that uniquely allows for that purchase upon its center that Plessner calls "excentric positionality." The human "I" which is the unique result of excentric positionality becomes the constant companion of human positional positing. It preserves, and inhabits its centered lived body, while also constituting its excentric detachment from its center by way of its reflexive awareness of its posited center.

Even at the level of a simple organism, the dialectics of double aspectivity suggests the emergence of a non-empirical, enactively posited center or core, the predecessor, for Plessner of the possibility of consciousness.

For Plessner, the living boundary is both a liminal zone that mediates between organism and the outer medium, itself being neither, and yet also an enactively self-defining and enforcing circumference and outer-limit. The organism moves outward in the expansion and assimilation of its liminal zone and moves inward, taking the outer within, re-establishing itself and reasserting its perimeter. The living boundary already introduces a subject-object status that prefigures for Plessner the overcoming of dualisms between inner and outer, interiority and exteriority. The living boundary is an on-going enactment of an exteriority that it defines and yet also reaches into and assimilates and of an interiority that is both sustained and transformed. The motive force of the dynamic living state is this double aspectivity of its existence and the dialectical tension which drives it forward.

Group Flow StateWorld Builders and Collective Consciousness

Plenum: A Collective Story of Regeneration

I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few questions in class

On the view that experience, like thought, has representational content, this can be understood as the view that experiences, like thoughts, can have content that is first-personal.

After all, self-consciousness is presumably a form of consciousness

On this account, every belief involves the self-ascription of a property and so, arguably, is an instance of self-consciousness

first-personal thought and language is irreducible to non-first-personal thought and language, and is essential to the explanation of action

on, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused con

the gentlemen who make a business and a living out of writing books

there’s nothing exceptional about human brains.

The typical clinical course of an epidural hematoma is an initial loss of consciousness, a lucid interval, and recurrent loss of consciousness with an ipsilateral fixed and dilated pupil. While decompression of subdural hematomas may be delayed, epidural hematomas require evacuation within 70 minutes.

I’ve argued you need something new in the story and the kind of view I’ve been drawn towards are views that take consciousness as something sort of fundamental and irreducible in our picture of the natural world in the same way that we take space and time and mass and charge as fundamental. We’re used to the idea that some things are fundamental. If you can’t explain electromagnetic phenomena in terms of your old laws, your old properties and laws, spacetime, mass, Newtonian dynamics, you bring in something else. Electric charge, Maxwell’s laws.Likewise, I think for consciousness. So I’ve been drawn towards views that take consciousness as fundamental and what that comes to in practice in philosophy is either you’ve got the choice between either a dualist view where you’ve got. You’ve got the physical world, which is one thing, and then you’ve got say the mind, you’ve got consciousness, which is another thing.They’re both fundamental properties distinct from each other. And then there are laws that connect them. That’s one view. And the other view is panpsychism, which says consciousness is somehow present at the very basis of the physical world and maybe the physics that we know and love basically somehow fundamentally involves consciousness somehow.

think the most interesting of which is that this whole idea of consciousness is an illusion. A pathology built up by our cognitive systems to believe we have these special properties of consciousness introspectively, even though we don’t.

I’m sure that many of them are among listeners potentially. It seems like there’s a bit of a stream of this among rationalists and I often find natural scientists, I just can’t get them to accept that there’s like anything strange about consciousness existing.

“I”, “me”, and “my”

and increasingly so since the seventeenth century

for the related Hegelian view that various forms of self-consciousness depend on intersubjective recognition

Ich betrachte das Bewusstsein als grundlegend. Ich betrachte Materie als Ableitung vom Bewusstsein. Wir können nicht hinter das Bewusstsein kommen. Alles, worüber wir reden, alles, was wir für existent halten, postuliert das Bewusstsein.

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Evolution, as we understand it, and as it must be studied by the human intellect, is the story of the evolution of consciousness, and not the story of the evolution of the form. This latter evolution is implicit in the other, and of secondary importance from the occult angle. ~Alice Bailey

Analogously to how one can play and win video games without any understanding of the underlying hardware or software, these technologies can be made to work even without insight into what nature is in itself.

Flora Hogman conducted a case study of Second and Third-Generation, and in her sample of the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors she noticed that they feel a sense of pride and awe of the survivors. This awareness of the suffering is part of the fabric of their lives, but is channeled into empathy, political activism, greater consciousness of others suffering, and a reluctance to intermarry.

“The ordinary waking consciousness is a very useful and, on most occasions, an indispensable state of mind; but it is by no means the only form of consciousness, nor in all circumstances the best. Insofar as he transcends his ordinary self and his ordinary mode of awareness, the mystic is able to enlarge his vision, to look more deeply into the unfathomable miracle of existence.The mystical experience is doubly valuable; it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a less self-centered and more creative life.”

Sartre argued that a central proposition of Existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the most important consideration for individuals is that they are individuals—independently acting and responsible, conscious beings ("existence")—rather than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individuals fit ("essence"). The actual life of the individuals is what constitutes what could be called their "true essence" instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them. Thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.[27]

we argue that “consciousness” contains no top-down control processes and that “consciousness” involves no executive, causal, or controlling relationship with any of the familiar psychological processes conventionally attributed to it

Consciousness Creates Reality

Social Change

These objective conditions will foster heightened political awareness among the working class so that full advantage can be taken of the weakened state of the bourgeoisie and collective oppo- sition to their political and economic power can besustained

o say you've split yourself from minority groups, that you disown us, that your dual consciousness splits off parts of your-self, transferring the "negative" parts onto us

This voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity

doze

You have been told that each cell of your body has a consciousness and an intelligence of itsown; that were it not for this consciousness it could not do the work it so intelligently does.Each cell is surrounded by millions of other cells, each intelligently doing its own work and eachevidently controlled by the united consciousness of all these cells, forming a group intelligence,which directs and controls this work; this group intelligence apparently being the intelligence ofthe organ which the cells comprising it form. Likewise, there are other group intelligences inother organs, each containing other millions of cells, and all these organs make up your physicalbody.Now, you know You are the Intelligence that directs the work of the organs of your body,whether this directing is done consciously or unconsciously; and that each cell of each organ isreally a focal center of this directing Intelligence; and that when this Intelligence is withdrawnthe cells fall apart, your physical body dies and exists no more as a living organism.Who is this You who directs and controls the activities of your organs, and consequently of eachcell composing them?You cannot say it is your human or personal self who does this, for you of yourself consciouslycan control the action of scarcely a single organ of your body.It must then be this Impersonal I AM of you, which is You, and yet is not you.Listen!You, the I AM of you, are to Me what the cell consciousness of your body is to your I AMConsciousness.You are a cell, as it were, of My Body, and your consciousness (as one of My Cells) is to Mewhat the consciousness of one of the cells of your body is to You

Paul, the energy field which is activated by the activity of Consciousness—by that I mean the presence of specific ideas and concepts—is constituted of the Universal Substance with which you had a conversation the other day. The impetus which gives Substance rise to give form where form has not been is the activity of Consciousness. As you remember from your conversation the other day, if the activity of consciousness arises out of a three-dimensional frame of reference, which for the most part is constituted of beliefs and reactions, the Universal Substance cannot respond. It is required by its Nature to respond only to that which is in harmony with your Being. It is for this reason that Substance must be activated from the standpoint of your experience of Being as Conscious Being. In other words, the activation of that energy field called Substance, in order to be fulfilled, must originate while you are experiencing your Being as Conscious Being, Fourth-dimensional Awareness, Awareness from that Place. For the sake of convenience, you can call that Place the Center of your Being. Mind you, that is not truly where the Center of your Being is, but the concept has meaning for you at this point, and I shall allow it. This should clarify a point for you. Whatever is set into motion from the standpoint of Fourth-dimensional Conscious Being must move into manifestation. Whatever originates from a three-dimensional frame of reference does not cause anything to move into manifestation, nor does it hinder anything moving into manifestation. Cause does not lie positively or negatively within the three-dimensional, or finite, frame of reference. This is a great point to understand and keep in mind. I would like you, on your own time, to consider the ramifications of that point.

RAJ: This would mean that the conscious experience of Being is not existent someplace in an objective, three-dimensional universe. It means that the Universe of Mind is peopled with infinite ideas which are perfectly tangible to Consciousness. Therefore, they are not bodiless in the sense of having no visible, tangible outline, form, or colour. It means that everything is identified and identifiable, minus the finite sensation of space and time, minus the sense of separation between subject and object, which is unavoidable in the three-dimensional frame of reference. It is also minus the sense of the beholder being located somewhere in that which is beheld. Man is as incorporated as God, and yet “all is infinite Mind and Its infinite manifestation.” Mind is never minus Its manifestation.

You see, the Christ-consciousness is that consciousness of things which embraces the Totality of Being as It Actually Is, consciously. It is that which sees and experiences the Reality of all appearances, because It does not have Its attention focused on them—but rather on that Awareness which is Mind being Aware of Itself. Mind sees from the inside, as it were.

your focus of attention remains at the point of your Consciousness. This is why you are finding yourself successful.

You must remember that none of what you see, hear, taste, smell, or feel is going on external to the conscious experience of it, even though that is the way it appears. All of it is Consciousness. All of it is Mind’s Self-experience.

RAJ: This Light energy, which is constituted of the Christ-consciousness—God’s view of Himself—is what constitutes your consciousness and your experience, Totally and Completely. you must understand that there is nothing else going on—no other Presence but this Light. It is the Light of Living Love.

Now, I want to correct a misconception on your part. Your ability to reason and think is not the equivalent of the three-dimensional frame of reference. Your thought processes and reasoning processes are not to be ignored. We would not be communicating at this very moment if you did not have the means to translate the meanings I am communicating into words and phrases. It is only by virtue of the fact that you have imagination, reason, perspicacity—all of the various capacities and functions of Consciousness—that you are able to correctly translate that which unfolds to you. This is true whether it is coming from me, or from that Place wherein you directly experience the Reality of Being.

This Light energy, which is constituted of the Christ-consciousness—God’s view of Himself—is what constitutes your consciousness and your experience, Totally and Completely. you must understand that there is nothing else going on—no other Presence but this Light. It is the Light of Living Love.

We are going to cover a number of things which will all deal with the appearing of the Christ in your consciousness as your Consciousness of Being. This will be essential in order for you to function cohesively as the All One that you are.

Paul, all of this is constituting the activity of Consciousness which acts according to Law upon the Nature of the Universal Substance of your Being. The correct vision, felt from the standpoint of Reality, must come forth according to Law as that which appears tangibly, three-dimensionally, as the infinitude of your Being. Remember that once this Law is set into motion. It cannot be stopped from manifesting by any fearful or limited thoughts in which you might indulge from the standpoint of a finite, three-dimensional point of view. Such a point of view cannot be placed at the point of Conscious Being, which is the only Place any action can be set into motion. As you know, when you are in that Place, it is totally impossible to experience fear, doubt, or any sense of limitation. This is a scientific Law that I am talking about. You can prove it day after day after day, without fail, because it is Law functioning according to the scientific, principled Nature of Being. Once you have set a thing into motion by being consciously aware of the Fact from the standpoint of Fourth-dimensional Conscious Being, your only responsibility is to continue forward, being from that point—exactly as you have been doing—without any care or concern as to how or when it will appear. You must realize that Being functions according to Its own infinite, eternal Harmonies. If that which has been set into motion has not appeared, it is because appearing at that point would not be in harmony with Its unfolding Being. You can trust you do not need it at the moment you are considering the fact that it hasn’t yet appeared. I want you to consider this deeply. I want you to consider it while you are in that Place when we are not talking to each other. I want you to let it unfold its infinite meanings to you before we talk about it again.

The backwards C-shaped portion around which the brass wire is precisely wound represents Consciousness. The brass wire represents the field through which Consciousness functions. This function is of a vibrational nature, causing the field represented by the brass coiling to harmonize vibrationally and appear to take on the structure of the conscious activity with which it is harmonizing.

And as I grew in age, I began to discover that the old teachers who spoke of the need to, “Forgive seventy times seven,” knew something quite profound that had even become lost within the tradition, the Jewish and Essene traditions, of my day. For, you see, to forgive means “to choose to release another from the perceptions that you’ve been projecting upon them.” It is, therefore, an act of forgiving one’s self of one’s projections. And as we begin to forgive, even unto seventy times seven times, each time you forgive you take yourself deeper into the purity of your own consciousness. You begin to see how profoundly you have been coloring, and therefore affecting, all of your relationships, through the simple act of not being aware of the power of projection.

Therefore, beloved friend, when you judge, you have moved out of alignment with what is true. You have decreed that the innocent are not innocent. And if you would judge another as being without innocence, you have already declared that this is true about you. Therefore, to practice forgiveness actually cultivates the quality of consciousness in which, finally, you come to forgive yourself. And it is, indeed, the forgiven who remember their God.

And woe to that fatal curiosity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness