Tuesday 6 March 2007
Consciousness, what is it, how does it relate?
What is consciousness? There is my consciousness and your consciousness. There is the consciousness of a group, a hole population or a country. - There is being conscious and the content of consciousness. The word comes of being aware, knowing, awake, to be concerned with. K talks quite a bit about consciousness. Can we go into this? Does consciousness separate?
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not easy to look at this, consciousness.. what do we mean with the word and what is it.
first thing to understand is that i am looking at this phenomenon and this looking comes from my own consciousness.
we neither can look ourselve in the face.. i can look in the mirror but then i see only a reflection..
is it the same with consciousness?
Reading K ('The network of thought', Saanen talks 12/7/1981, p 10-13) he goes into what is consciousness: 'The turning point is in our consciousness. Our conscisousness is a very complicated affair..we are not aware of our consciousness.. Consciousness is common to all mankind..suffering, uncertainty, loneliness, insecurity, jealousy, greed, envy .. human consciousness is one whole .. our consciousness is the consciousness of all humanity .. thought is part of consciousness, .. skill has its own consciousness .. consciousness includes, in the much deeper consciousness, our fears.. This consciousness is common to all mankind. .. it means that you are no longer an individual .. this is very hard to accept..'
Consciousness is commen to all of us. The content varies but thought stays thought and suffering remains suffering for all of us. This is common to all of us and there is no difference in this respect between humans.
in today's quote on the kinfonet K talks about meditation, but i think it is related to the consciousness too...
The end of meditation is meditation itself. The search for something through and beyond meditation is end-gaining; and that which is gained is again lost. Seeking a result is the continuation of self-projection; result, however lofty, is the projection of desire. Meditation as a means to arrive, to gain, to discover, only gives strength to the meditator. The meditator is the meditation; meditation is the understanding of the meditator.
(Commentaries on Living Series I)
i am looking at it, wsb, but have no words to express what i see, yet.. i'll come back to it later.. it is an important issue for sure.. it seems to deal with the essence of life..
strange thing is that it seems to be impossible to write down a clear description of the consciousness, because words are limited and our personal content/consciousness is limited, but as soon as you see this limitedness, see the fact and logic and natural aspect of the limitedness.. then something opens up... and all words fail..
but i'll come back and give it another try soon :)
how do you experience the observation of consciousness?
Tow days later K is saying: ‘ human consciousness is similar in all humans, .. is made up of .. fears, anxieties, pleasure, sorrows..faith, ..love and compassion .. from that compassion is a totally different kind of intelligence..Humans beings throughout the world .. tried to find out if there is something beyond thought ..there is group consciousness..our consciousness has been programmed for thousands of years to think of ourselves as individuals .. in conflict .. we have accepted that .. we have never challenged it .. never asked to live a life without conflict..thought has created the problems which surrounds us..thought dominates our lifes..thought is the remembrance of the past things, the activity of knowledge..knowledge is never complete..we never questioned hether knowledge in itself can solve any of our problems..except technological problems..thought being limited creates problems..thought is functioning in the resolution of problems..our conciousness has been programmed as in individual consciousness.. I have a individual training .. but that does not make you an individual..individual consciousness .. is the consciousness of all humanity..is your consciousness different from that of another?..if you are aware of this fact than you have broken the program. .. is there another learning, not in the context of knowledge..a non accumulative perception-action? .. Can you see that a new form of action, a new form of non-accumulative knowledge, is possible which will break the pattern .. so that you are acting totally differently? .. if we understand the nature of our own consciousness, if we see how it operating .. knowledge, action and division ..if we see the truth of it and break away from it, we introduce a new factor..that is the real turning point of your life..if you totally move away from that you affect the hole consciousness of mankind.’
I left out some of the text with the aim to trace some of the important messages. There is consciousness which commoen to all of us and which implies there is no individual consciousness as most might think. Then there is non-accumulative perception. And the action which flows out of this affects consciousness.
yes i understand what K is saying, and i read your summary and it all does make sense.. but do i really see this, do i really comprehend the human consciousness as a whole and do i see my individual part in it for what it actually is.. i'm not sure.. somehow i have an image of the 'totally different action' which prevents me for living that action... why is there the hesitation.. i am doubting.. doubting is a good thing but it can be an escape too maybe.
We are conscious of one thing or the other. The content is different but we are conscious of one thing. Now looking at all this we are conscious of, K suggests it is of the same. And if it is the same it is one. I am surprised to observe how certain events affect my being. If someone declares war this affects all of us. We know also that the presence of one person can change things, its presence without doing anything. All this does point of what K is pointing out. I do not see it as a reality either but it is something to keep in mind and find out. Is it that we do not watch what we are conscious of deeply enough? Then he is talking about non-accumulative action. - I was thinking of all the tourists taking pictures in Paris. Taking pictures prevents being in the place they spent so much to see it. Just being, not taking any pictures would connect them and this would be part of them while the pictures will fade away and will be replaced by other pictures. We can see how the accumulation comes in between. Accumulation prevents real contact.
yes there is no real contact.. mind is busy with the past and the projection of the past into the future.. and busy to translate all what is happening into the personal picture we have made of the world, our idea of reality.
this personal picture is build up by the conditionings, the experiences of the past, the upbringing, education, environment, etc..
try to comprehend this mechanism and then it is seen how complex it all is.. in fact it is a great wonder this is possible, that the mind is capable to do it all... but.. as long as we donot understand that my view on life is different from yours, that 'my' truth cannot be 'your' truth, that we individually are so much different due to all sorts of influences, also biological, also in nature every animal has its uniqueness, and every leave on a tree has its own specific form.. a difference coming from little internal variations, mutations and environmental influences.
that's nature, and the beauty of it.
but as long as we do not understand this, and have the delusion to think that i can know what is good, bad, or truth for you, then we are violent towards eachother and then the consciousness is the cause of seperation.
but when we do understand the nature of life, the nature of conscience, the varieties, the individual uniqueness, the working of it, the similarities, the shared source, then we see the common consciosness, humanity as a whole and nature as a whole.
Being busy there is no contact and no understanding. When we want to understand we look at it in a way as we need a technical or logical solution for it, it is intellectual. But do we see that observation of it, is the change? - There is this assumption of individuality, my view, your view. Is it not the longer the two talk about the different views, they see that both views give a different perspective of the same? There are biological differences and yet the basic processes are the same. When we say I know the good and the bad it means I know what is good and bad for everyone which is ignorance and finally separation, yes. - What came to mind is that today’s consciousness is based on the consciousness of all the earlier generations. The way I understand a certain subject is based on something someone found out many years ago. We all learn from each other, this is part of consciousness.
Later on K is asking: ‘Can the brain can be free of the content of consciousness? .. in listening we are learning about ourselves .. to look about ourselves and therefore bring about a total freedom in which the whole brain can operate ..when there is the operation of the whole there is integral order. When there is integral order, there is total freedom..
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