Feeling alive, undeadened by religion

Some more Maui meditations...following up on "Big waves, small waves: no difference?"

I enjoyed the comments on this post. I agree: splitting reality up into awareness and what we're aware of – how is this not another duality that the consciousness is all philosophy tries to get away from?

Reading further this morning into Peter Dziuban's book by the same name, my consciousness made clearer by Kona coffee, I'm struck by how Awareness (with a capital "A") can be made into an abstract divinity with pretty much the same characteristics as God.

I've never been aware of Pure Awareness, unsullied by anything I'm aware of. And I strongly suspect that neither Dziuban nor anyone else ever has either.

Yet somehow I'm supposed to consider this the really real reality, even though it is nowhere apparent. I'm supposed to view what my senses tell me as akin to images on a movie screen: passing, ephemeral, lacking unchanging being.

But where is this Being that Dziuban (and Plato, among many others) talk about? How can it be separated from my here and now awareness, which contains many beings, me included, naturally?

Methinks too much can be made of what most probably either is (1) so absolutely simple, we aren't recognizing it as such or (2) so absolutely different, we aren't looking in the right place.

Whatever.

I'm not interested in trading away the aliveness of the present moment for deadening promises that later, someday, tomorrow, after death, eventually, I'll be aware of something other than what I'm conscious of now.

Laurel and I went on a Pacific Whale Foundation sunset dinner cruise yesterday. It sure seemed real. But the whole time I was only aware of what my senses, thoughts, and emotions conveyed to me – not Awareness itself.

Which was good, because if I'd been in a state of Pure Awareness I would have missed the whales and dolphins that appeared next to the boat (against the odds, according to my experienced captain, given that only a couple of whales are still hanging around Maui).

I'm not denying the possibility that consciousness is separate from the body that each of us is (or at least, seems to be) at the moment.

But every time Dzuiban approaches the central question about consciousness that I raised earlier, it gets skirted. Here's an excerpt from a chapter I read today:

A question that may arise based on all of the preceding might go like the following:

"If the mind is not inside a body or brain, then why does the mind's activity stop when the body is anesthetized? How could anesthesia affect the mind if the mind is not there? And if the mind isn't in the brain, then why don't the mind and body function just as well when the brain is damaged or removed?"

Great questions. No good answer. This one leaves a lot to be desired.

So if it appears the state of a "body" is altered via chemical anesthesia or surgery, naturally the state of the "mind" will appear altered too, for it is all the same, one "stuff." It is not because a mind is inside a body…This book is not denying that such things seem to occur.

Well, as I said before I'm not big on relying on quotation marks to define reality. If I seem to be unaware when I'm anesthetized, a literary device – making it into "mind"—doesn't change the situation for me. Or anyone else.

Feeling alive. Isn't this what life should be about? When I'm catching a wave on my boogie board, soaring down a zipline, or watching a whale surface nearby, I'm absorbed in the moment.

I'm not anticipating the future or remembering the past. For me, this is where the feeling of increased aliveness comes from: being here and now, fully.

Positing some state of Being separate and distinct from what's present, this is the province of religion – whether it be a monotheistic creed or a philosophic exaltation of "consciousness is all."

Way back in the '60s I grooved over Be Here Now. I haven't moved much, if anywhere, since. How could I?

Comments

[tAo]

I agree... BE HERE NOW.

because awareness is simply just another word for whatever is Being Here Now.

But I think that the author of the book's question:

"And if the mind isn't in the brain, then why don't the mind and body function just as well when the brain is damaged or removed?"

...is absurd. I don't think its a "great question" at all. Why doen't the body function when the brain idmaged or removed? Because the brain IS what makes the body funtion, you idiot. The author is confusing brain with mind. There is a definite difference. Therefore, I don't thibk much of the author or his reasoning.

And this answer that the author gives definitely leaves more than just a lot to be desired:

"So if it appears the state of a "body" is altered via chemical anesthesia or surgery, naturally the state of the "mind" will appear altered too, for it is all the same, one "stuff."

As Brian says: Feeling alive. Isn't this what life should be about? ... For me, this is where the feeling of increased aliveness comes from: being here and now, fully."

Awareness and whatever is happening in the moment... is the same thing. There is no awareness apart from that.

So yes yes yes.... "BE HERE NOW" ... or as as I like call it: "instant presence" (and without even thinking about it).

[Obed]

This post is taken from the site of Dr Avi Sion.
http://www.thelogician.net/5c_meditate/5c_med_frame.htm
He is the author of what follows

Sitting in meditation, one’s “self” usually seems to be an ever present and weighty experience, distinct from relatively external mental and material experiences. But if one realizes that such self-experience is a rational (i.e. ratiocinative) product, a mental subdivision of the natural unity of all experience at any given moment, one can indeed shake off – or more precisely just drop – this sense of self, and experience all one’s experience as a unity.[8]

Note well, the task at hand is not to ex post facto deconstruct the rational act of division, or reconstruct the lost unity of self and other by somehow mentally sticking or merging them together, or pretend that the Subject or the Object does not really exist. Rather, the meditator has to place his soul in the pre-ratiocinative position, where the cutting-up of experience has not yet occurred. It is not a place of counter-comments, but a place of no (verbal or non-verbal) comment. It is the position of pristine experience, where the mental reflex of sorting data out has not yet even begun.

All things are accepted as they appear. An impression of self appears, as against an impression of other? So well and good – it need not be emphasized or noted in any way. It is just experienced. If no distinctions are made, there are no distinctions. We remain observant, that’s all. We enjoy the scenery. Our awareness is phenomenological.

In pure experience, what we call “multiplicity” may well be manifest, but it is all part and parcel of the essential “unity”. Here, essence and manifestation are one and the same. Here, Subject and Object form a natural continuum. The totality is in harmony, bubbling with life. It is what it is, whatever it happens to be.

Before getting to this stage of integral experience, one may of course have to “work on oneself” long and hard.

[Edward]

A young boy is given a calf on a tether. His father says, "It is now your job to take care of this calf. Do not let go of the tether."

So the boy wanders off, happy to do what boys do. He walks along the road and looks at the trees and houses. He jokes and plays with his friends. He goes to the stream and throws sticks at the fish. All the time he holds the tether, and his beast follows along.

The boy walks farther than he ever has, feeling mature in his responsibility. he wanders over the hills and along strange roads, knowing that by taking care of the calf, he is important: to the calf, to his family, to his village.

Such a long time passes while he walks that it is dark when he finds the road back home.
At the gate he turns to look a the calf on its tether, and he sees a full-grown bull. The boy is so startled, he trips backwards, hits the ground, and when he drops the tether, the bull tramples him.

Drop the tether, there is only here & now.

[Phil]

Just curious, all this talk of consciousness and unconsciousness;
Is there a difference between having been unconscious and having been extra consciousness - but with no memory?

After being in a state of what we call unconsciousness, is being knocked on the head with a baseball bat, could it not be that we were in fact extra conscious (or whatever term you wish to call it) but all memory of the condition being removed upon return to normal conscious state?

Just wondering if this could reasonably be considered a possibility, and if not, why not?

[Obed]

Hi Edward,
Ouch!