consciousness - define it! Explain it! Any comments?

consciousness. I was thinking today.... whatever! Just the fact that I was thinking about anything got me to thinking what on earth is consciousness? Biological psychologists talk about how the brain functions and give plenty of, well, biological reasons for consciousness, how they think memories are formed and loads of stuff on neural networks, firing off in chains of communication and how the senses contribute to experience and all that but, I just don't see how it can be just that! Cells and stuff. I mean have you ever just sat real still and just looked at something and suddenly realised, that you are looking out of your body and you feel yourself in your body, like you're suddely aware of your very existence as a consciousness inside your physical body, apart from your physical body. Am I making any sense to anyone?

conciousness to me is awareness of the self which is a part of the environment.

And thus can be shortened to awareness of the environment.

We always feel (for biological reasons) that we are on the inside looking out at the world..
But that's just seeing things from our human experience.
When it's very likely I think, that we are actually on the outside, looking in on ourselves.

Hi Chiron, nice to meet you!
Of course we come back to the duality of body and spirit, is consciousness just a part of our biological workings, a by-product if you like of experience or is it something completely seperate that can exist without the body?
Can the memories in the hard-drive exist seperately from the workings of the machinery of the computer? Well we can download them onto a disc or memory stick or down the internet, I feel that the information and experience and memories that we carry around with us in our consciousness (and in the unconscious) are kept together by the spirit or soul! I don't know how it works, I haven't figured that one out yet, but what the hell! Call me a romantic, call me a spiritualist, call me religious, call me what you will, I'm sure something in us (and consciousness is a part of that) does exist separate from the body.

lol...so close the answer's starring you in the face.

heyjme1 if its under my nose I generally don't see it (big jewish nose curtesy of my mum) - please explain yourself and help us understand your wisdom in this matter, ta!

An encyclopedia still contains a defintion of itself within itself. Think on this for a while.

Sorceress, I know how your mind is working, but thinking too deaply into your subconcious will only give you a constant headache and leaving your body with your conscious mind will only harm your body unless you are trained in the Sharmistic way.
Being aware of everything around you including the Universe and the extreme extent of it all is being profoundly at one with yourself. Therefore this is what I believe makes up ones consciousness and well -being. Does this make sense to you?

I like this post. What is consciousness? Heck, I dunno, but I think it has very little to do with biochemical processes in the brain. I think consciousness lies at the highest level of the human essence manifest in what we call the physical material world. It is the most difficult aspect of the human essence to perceive in spacio-temporal terms. I believe that the human essence is a kind of immaterial or metaphysical substance or "force," as some people like to call it (while others like to call it soul or spirit). I believe the manifestation of this so-called force has varying levels. The lowest of which is the organization of matter into atomic and molecular compounds and processes we recognize as organic life in a physical body. In this sense the physical body is not separate from the soul or spirit or mind, or whatever you wanna' call it. It is simply the "lowest" or most "dense" manifestation of this force, and the most readibly observable in spacio-temporal terms, and the one alot of people believe is all that exists of the human essence. Higher levels proceed from actions (which are also observable in spacio-temporal terms while the true motives of which can only be guessed at), emotions and thoughts (increasingly more difficult to "observe" and, once again, the motives of which may only be guessed at by observing behavior, with emotions oftentimes being much easier to identify), to the highest level, consciousness, the true experience of which can only be understood by ourselves. Keep in mind that I believe three-dimensional space and linear time are not properties of the external world but mere categories of thought and perception, and the "real" world exists without these categories. For me the physical material world in terms of space and time is subjective creation and, thus, the varying levels of the human essence are simply the parts of one and the same essence the human mind gradually loses grasp of since it extends way beyond physical material perception in terms of three-dimensional space and linear time. Whew! Does anybody get that?

wizardlogic I like the way you are thinking, I don't entirely understand it but I like the way it sounds! The idea of consciousness or the soul as a separate force or energy, that's the way I think, sort of. The spiritualists come close to that idea when they talk about vibrations. I don't pretend to understand it but its geting close to something that rings true with me.

Hi curiosity! Big hugs to you, you know why!
Thanks for the words of warning, but how do you know I am not already a Shaman? What is a Shaman? A shaman is a person who can walk in the spiritual realms and have influence on and be influenced by those already in that place of shadows. Messages and advice are given by the spirits as well as gifts of healing, to be passed on in this world.

I know Sorceress, it's hard to comprehend. Even I begin to lose grasp of the overall image of this concept. This idea of the human essence as having varying levels of manifestation was once described to me as a star in the darkness of space having spheres of expression. The innermost ring was described as the most dense, the actual physical material substance of a star, and, thus, corellated to the level of manifestation in the form of atomic and molecular organization recognized as organic matter and biochemical processes. The next outer ring would be like atmospheric "activity" correlating to actions, behavior, which is still observable but more difficult to understand since the motives oftentimes originate in the next two outermost rings, emotions and thoughts, which (with respect to the star analogy) would be like the causes behind atmospheric "action." The final outermost ring, the manifestation of which you would not even bee able see, would be consciousness, the essential nature which is imperceptible except in the lower forms of manifestation just described. Keep in mind that the person who described the human essence this way also believes that stars and planets are actually conscious living beings on some higher spacio-temporal plane of existence. Pretty wild, huh?

And, by the way, I personally think this star/human essence analogy isn't that good, but it's interesting atleast. Lol!

Hi there Sorceress, and I apologize for not replying sooner, as I am still learning how to use this site and couldn't find your reply anywhere, until now...

Anyway I loved the image you provided of yourself just being still for a while, and then suddenly becoming aware of your own consciousness.

That's beautiful, and I think that is what makes us human creatures unique and special.

But as to consciousness...,
I tend to subscribe to the Deepak Chopra's view of Spirituality and Quantum Physics. I like the blend of Science (and its pursuit of truth) combined with a genuine awe (and acknowledgement) of Spirituality, which is BTW gaining more and more of a respected place in Science (thanks to Quantum Physic's).

And as for me: consciousness is the thing which makes me delighted to be alive! So that even though my own life may be small and trivial, consciousness reminds me that we are all so much more than this small life. And it calls me to become more than myself, which is a good thing.

I am by far my most happiest, most loving, most humanitarian self, when living in full consciousness. And I find that by visiting this site I tend to move into consciousness more readily, which is why I like to hang out here such a lot!

Hello again Chiron, you said :-

quote:

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consciousness is the thing which makes me delighted to be alive!

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But what is that thing? Where does it come from? How does it exist? Where does it exist? Why does it exist? And Is it separate from the physical workings of our existence? These are the questions I am exploring.

I know that when we can be still in this rushing, busy world and become attuned to ourselves as a separate part of our environment our consciousness screams to be noticed.

Is this existentialism?

Consciousness… Define it… Explain it…

Questions I would ask would be…
What kind of ‘it' is it?
What is an ‘it'?
What is ‘is' ?
How does it work?

Consciousness is simply awareness which is achieved through the ‘self'…
The ‘self' is a part of you which sees, but cannot see itself…
Self-awareness is received through actions, by having decisions made based on what the self sees, and is judged to be in line with what the self saw…
Consciousness is also dependant upon perception (sensory awareness) for it to have it's power…
Consciousness is often compared with judgement, and it making value judgements…

An ‘it' is strangely something that has a name with you, because it has been witnessed… The use of that name is almost always accompanied by you relocating, as close as you can, where and when the it was witnessed and what it meant to you at the time…

To say the word ‘is' you often need to be currently using the it in some way… And although all that is seen is from the past and all that is done will affect the future, there is the idea that some actions are known to take a while and after having noticed the beginning of an is, you can truly predict there to be an is of some sort at a given time…

Consciousness works by seeing and living in the memory of that vision…
What is meant here is that, there are those chemical reactions (most often attributed to the brain) of vision and short-term recognition, but from here the self takes over…
What the self does is take an already recognised it, and ‘experience' it, like the spiritual sense, like a ghost walking through the body…
(By the way, what is the proper term for what would be a ghost, that is still living in one's body?)
Consciousness, in my mind, is the combination and product of the lower forms of awareness (the ‘Unconscious', the ‘Subconscious' and the ‘Preconscious')… Such that consciousness has all the powers of the lower forms of awareness…
The lower forms of awareness would also have their own variety of chemical reactions which do much of the work for them, like the weaker vision and slighter short-term recognition of a subconscious experience…
The idea though is that the conscious mind would create some sort of it for these kinds of weaker experiences, but the name of the it is not called quite so loud and clear as it's counter-parts from the conscious realm…

There's more to it than this, of course… But that's all that's coming to mind for the moment and plus this reply is long enough already…