On consciousness and matter

[Hyperreal]

The nature of consciousness is actually very easy to understand. All our experience and knowledge is conscious, so we know perfectly well what consciousness is like. The only reason people tend to view it as a difficult problem is because they're approaching it from the wrong angle: the naturalist/ material/ physicalist angle.

Quite apart from the obvious fallacy of reduction, which tries to explain consciousness as an electromagnetic or physical phenomenon, most takes on the consciousness/ matter problem - interactionist explanations (e.g. Descartes), Buddhist nihilism, idealism (e.g. Berkeley) and others - have all fallen victim to the same problem of approach.

Lonergan put forward the idea that each science has its own realm of knowledge, forming a sort of hierarchy from the most fundamental to the most complex. When the stuff you're studying becomes too complicated and involved to be dealt with by physics, you're into the realm of chemistry. When the chemistry you're dealing with gets too complicated, it's into biology. For a lower science to answer a question that is in the realm of a higher one is the fallacy of reductionism. You can study the biochemical reactions taking place in a flower til the cows come home, but it'll never tell you what sort of a thing a flower is, any more than a study of the science of the brain can tell you what the mind is or does.

As A.R. Luria pointed out, nothing about the brain is known by studying it physically, but rather by the subjective experiences linked to the brain. Looking at which neurotransmitters bind in which way to which receptors is not how we've learnt about how we see, or speak, or think. Conscious experience preceeds science's material explanations, so how can we claim to understand matter, but be so perplexed by the nature of consciousness?

The way I see it, the nature of matter is a far trickier problem than the nature of consciousness. If we've only experienced consciousness, what do we really know about what matter is like? Rather than a materialist reimagining, which would have us think that consciousness is more like matter than it seems, I would suggest that perhaps matter is a lot more like consciousness than it seems. Whaddaya think about that?

[Ahuaeynjx]

I think that our experience in viewing the physicality is subconscious ; since I define in a way consciousness as a self-referential set of gravity causing "truths". So in this perspective consciousness is something that rather spark in the moment, like magic golden/silver dust. You know someone sees another walking with boxes and that he will have difficulty in it's way, and thus removes it in advance with stealth. Thats consciousness ! People call it subconsciousness but I definately feel it's the other way around since how can we be conscious of our experience with the immense limit of our senses. I guess the stuff of consciousness is in the infinitely small ; to understand it directly would require being able to see the atom and the way love keeps them all together, must be rather complex, too complex for any one human mind to grasp.

We can even perceive a category of people in today's society which lives straight from the unconscious, the subconscious only being there to keep them from killing themselves, and consciousness becoming a farce to use in humor shows, or numbing themselves in front of TV...

So one of my truths is that the stuff of consciousness is the complex matter ; behind the mirror so to say, and we have a lot of progress to achieve to keep our society alive. But to me this makes the subject of matter the simplest problem humanity has ever faced ; the only problem lies in the scientists refusal to accept the clairvoyant sight on many thus that physicality is NOT the only plane of existance, and other stuff. This gives crazy mathematicians a hard-on ; but most practical scientists prefer the warmth and comfort of the current paradigm, they have sadly no excuse and are nuisible even parasitic to our current evolution or so I perceive.

For example we have a thousand children books that explain and brainwash the children into this stupid paradigm that life might have evolved upon billions of years... it did in a way, but I think we beleive too much in feeling that we are the belly button of the entire cosmos.

So we lie to children to lead them further away from the consciousness which created all this ; classic alienation. They tell the little naive children dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and long became extinct or definately evolved ! To me thats unthinkable and I am certain that dinausaurs still live to this day in the remote regions of our globe. Dinausaurs and men always lived together ; we have thousands of stories about dragons, and saints and warriors defeating many dragons... I don't think it was because they were taking too much LSD ! Even some dinausaurs have acquired fame like Nessie and there are many in the sea, think about the 80% unexplored deep swamp in the jungles of congo !

Crazy assumptions make uninteresting people which have nothing to say. I think it's rather in our face thats there is something all mighty behind this "story" ; so much that some people don't see it... oh reminds me of that Fedral rserv story, 9/11... oh I fall again into delerium tremens please forgive me !

Photographs of the north pole are classified top secret by the NASA... they find perfectly conserved (I mean the only rational scientific explanation is that they died 1 week ago) mamouths washing up on the shores all over the northern hemisphere, pools of hot water appear in the middle of antartica and the temperature rises above 15 degrees celcius and all forms of life party there ! Yes right I think the scientist are a bunch of happy and sometimes freakishly well paid wrong-doers, of course there are exeptions. Of course I don't claim to know everything, just saying I have pretty straight-forward approaches to honoring the creator of our experience, which does not affect the way I will handle my interactions with other forms of life, thats consciousness. Just been dreaming alot these days, lucid dreaming, thats consciousness.

Well it seems it had to come out !

Namase,

Ahu

[Alfa]

Ahuaeynjx: You lost me again. I can't understand what you are talking about. Are you using a translation tool to convert your text from another language?

Hyperreal: You are relating to immaterial to the material. Think of all the things you have experienced unconscious: dreaming, all the things you have seen, heard, felt, but not been aware of, etc. This make the concept of consciousness more complex. Were does your consciousness end and your subconsciousness start? How does that portray your psyche? Further, when SWIM takes a good dose with alice D, the concept of consciousness and the dept never cease to amaze me. So no, that certainly does not seem simple to me.

On matter: like you have learned trough your philosophy studies, you percieve outer reality trough the limitations of the reciever, which is you. You are limited by the ability of your body & mind and the character of your psyche. The question is if it is within the abilities of humans to percieve matter as is. I see the psychedelic experience as a experience in with the functional 'filters' of the psyche are lifted to some degree thus allowing us to experience more of the true nature of the outside world.

And then there is science. The science of the past has been outdated by newer science over and over. The science of the present will be outdated by the science of the future over and over. So where does this leave the absolute truth of science? I do think science leads us to better understanding of reality and matter. But I do look at it as a tool to decode what's behind the veil. i.e. the results and facts science shows us have a relation to reality and therefore it works. That does not mean by definition that it's also true.
Now, where's Daeron to flame my ass?

[Ahuaeynjx]

Too kind Alfa (ahem male), too kind !

Yes I'm speaking round.

I don't think we are limited in any way by our character or abilities... Think about it ! We have everything we need to be self-sufficient (SWIAU knows even hydrogen energy exists) ; we don't really need another scientific rehearsal since it's already playing full volume in our face and it's quite screeching alright !

What does SWIY want in life ? A knife, a house, a loving spouse, children... how simple is that did I really sum it up ? I don't think drugs will help anything if you take the dosage required to "see", they are medicine in their own right. About the visionary plants this is no way to honor them, nature and alchemistry offers medicines not shortcuts to "god" (ascension), more than my experience confirms this... To be usefull One must anchor this information in the physical body and make it evolve, something a psyche-delic experience won't let you do. If you want to be a golem eat that mono-atomic gold powder and see your eyes turn sky blue, blue ! blue... blues. Hey don't listen to me would you, please ? Methinks it's better to absorb ideas not each other unicity in land-guage ! Eat that powder and trade your soul for eternal life ? Quite familiar...

You can always type away, I'm not afraid of you !

Namase,

Ahu

[Hyperreal]

Originally Posted by Alfa

Further, when SWIM takes a good dose with alice D, the concept of consciousness and the dept never cease to amaze me. So no, that certainly does not seem simple to me.

There are two ways philosophers talk about the world. One is to say, "You think things are simple, but actually they're a lot more complex than that" and the other is, "You think things are complex, but actually they're a lot more simple than that". This second one was the tactic I was using, simply because I think the error of trying to explain consciousness in terms of the physical has muddied the waters.

When I said that consciousness was easy to understand, I didn't mean the whole realm of consciousness, but an intuitive understanding of the nature of the thing. This is how we treat matter. No one ever take a piece of wood in their hands and says, "What the hell is this stuff? Why does it have colour and texture? Why won't this other piece of wood pass through it?" Yet this is pretty much how most people talk of consciousness. If we are so unperplexed by the nature of matter, why does the nature of consciousness pose such a problem? I think it's because we've been using the wrong approach.

And then there is science. The science of the past has been outdated by newer science over and over. The science of the present will be outdated by the science of the future over and over. So where does this leave the absolute truth of science? I do think science leads us to better understanding of reality and matter. But I do look at it as a tool to decode what's behind the veil. i.e. the results and facts science shows us have a relation to reality and therefore it works. That does not mean by definition that it's also true.
Now, where's Daeron to flame my ass?

Yes, I'm always saying this. Those who over-rely on science need to look into the philosophy of science a little more, and they'd see that it is not in the nature of science to produce certain truth, but rather to produce models and interpretations.
The science of the future, I think, will show that matter is closer to consciousness than we ever thought. We've already seen that matter can act as a wave, and things like relativity theory will show that things often depend on the perspective of the conscious observer. Check out this video. (Stick with it; it's worth watching it all.)

[bewilderment]

Originally Posted by Hyperreal

The science of the future, I think, will show that matter is closer to consciousness than we ever thought. We've already seen that matter can act as a wave, and things like relativity theory will show that things often depend on the perspective of the conscious observer. Check out this video. (Stick with it; it's worth watching it all.)

Exactly, this is why I believe the matter is not so simple and that we actually have no clue about anything whatsoever. And, for the record, I have held material things in my hands and asked those questions. Matter is very perplexing, but generally the functionality of it on a practical level is not as is consciousness. But, going past the practical level, things are much more mysterious. Have you seen the movie "What the Bleep?!"? It's an interesting little movie dealing with this subject.

[Jaxonhead]

For some reason this thread resonated in me with this passage from Thomas Moore's "Care of the Soul"

"It is no accident that the history of art is filled with grotesque images---bloddy and twisted crucifixions, gracefully distorted bodies, and surrealistic landscapes. Sometimes deviation from the usual is a special revelation of truth. In alchemy this was referred to as the "opus contra naturam," an effect contrary to nature. We might see the same kind of artful unnatural expression within our own lives. When normality explodes or breaks out into craziness or shadow, we might look closely, before running for cover and before attempting to restore familiar order, at the potential meaningfulness of the event. If we are going to be curious about the soul, we may need to explore its deviations, its perverse tendency to contradict expectations. And as a corollary, we might be suspicious of normality. A facade of normality can hide a wealth of deviance, and besides, it is fairly easy to recognize soullessness in the standardizing of experience."---Thomas Moore--

I often feel that my various chemical experimentations stem from a desire to disrupt normality, and see what gems might pour from the resulting tear in the status quo.

[Ahuaeynjx]

Funny thread it is !

Jaxonhead : Then you must be a warrior, I honor what you are doing, but I can convey you that you will not find georgeous gems (lest be for your individual freedom) by tearing your soul apart with chemicals. The overpowering of energies usually resulting simply splices DNA and keeps the soul from anchoring in the physical form at all, so in a sense freakishness is only soulful when the body is balanced, food for tought. So you are doing this at the expense of your own lifespan and ascension ; let us hope it sparks some actions, we all know what needs be done ! We know lots of famous figures which did ALOT of substances, but yet we always see new people thinking that they will find the "answer" because their brain is better or more suited to receive it, I feel this is pathetic, lets learn from other experience... not try to stick our hand on the stove to see if it will do the same thing it did to them !

Bewilderment : Of course the non-physical is mysterious and full of very experiencable repercussions but there is no mystery in life really, exept for life itself ! If you think about it, study some chemistry and physics you realise the Earth has a kind of matricial energy flow as it is right now ; 12 tectonic plates, dodecahedron creates an inner resonnance of 144 dimentions. We are living here and so to speak we have absolutely no idea if our experience is the real stuff or if we were juste "created" out of the blue by some consciousness to serve a higher purpose. Inside such a powerful electro-magnetic field of the sun, no scientist can prove for sure that we aren't all subject to a massive hallucination and that the "real" life stands a few paces away, our human nature has to evolve then perhaps we will grasp the sense of all this. Some of us already have a clue... and yes alot of people I know have held some matter on LSD and were looking at it for hours, unable to understand why it wasn't more solid lol ! Well one thing for sure, life is not a dream and everything we do leaves a mark, something somewhere will definately know that it is US who left it and our consciousnesses will reap, especially if the matricial theory is right.

Hyperreal : Yeah thats why I think my approach is better !

Namase,

Ahu

[Beeker]

Entheogen users have, I think, the only real authentic scale to measure our fringe philosophy.


If you perturb the mind you can gleam knowledge from a literal black hole of content not available to many. The simple fact that there is a mystery that cannot be explained attached to our conscientiousness means we will never understand the human mind or reality as it is today.


When I think of atoms and physics I think about two separate things.


The first is one I've changed over the years. probably a debate that will continue to my grave I'm sure. God


(take every thought you have on god, every image and toss it for me here.)


God is the smallest part of any organized system. You can never look, touch, or see anything, even in death or while dreaming, without looking at a complex system where god is the perverbial hardware (engine, power, first completed impossible puzzle, etc) that holds up physics and all space and time. Even to the point that if a human goes peaking around the fabric of reality that human has instant proof that things get far more complex and other forms of conscientiousness that are so amazing to us some mistake them for gods.


The other is just for fun. Everyone knows the atoms in all of us came from old stars that farted off some heavy atoms needed for carbon biology. This is a numbers game that adds up to the impossible.


Think of all the stars and distances needed to create our solar system and earth.


Regardless of how humans got here - millions of years of changes in a primate to humanity or humanity getting evicted from a garden the simple fact is we have been making art, jewelry, and other things not needed to survive at all about 50,000 years ago.


Gene mixing from mating is well understood, no one debates that millions of sperm get sent to one lucky egg that happened to just be there at the right time. 1 egg, 1 sperm win a round 50,000 years ago and a kid is born, 15 years later he does the same thing with those same odds.


These are all personalities, humans with egos; they lived and reflected on why they were here... and they had loads of sex; 1562 generations or so.


So you have the odds of everything that happened up to earth. Then the odds of millions of sperm and eggs each with a possible human shouting, “I AM!” The odds of how people met and fell in love.


The odds of all that matter, time, and genes right to the moment where you were born and are now able to read this is literally so close to impossible that there was a huge gift given to us, for whatever reason.