Sam Harris says "consciousness is not inside your head." Huh?

Today I heard Sam Harris say on a guided meditation on his Waking Up app, "Consciousness is not inside your head. Everything is just appearing."

I've heard Harris say this many times. I don't understand that notion. 

The brain is inside the head. The brain generates consciousness. If you doubt that, have general anesthesia. Have someone hit you on the head with a baseball bat, hard. Have your brain surgically removed.

No brain, no consciousness. But we can lose an arm, a leg, or some other non-essential organ and still be conscious. 

If someone can make a good argument for how consciousness is not inside the head, leave a comment about this. Maybe you can convince me Harris is right and I'm wrong.

I found a post on Quora that could explain what Harris really means by this, which makes a lot of sense.

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Marcus Geduld

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Studied at School of Theatre at Ohio UniversityUpdated 1y

He is speaking metaphorically. He’s a neuroscientist. He knows the brain generates consciousness*, and he knows that the brain is an organ inside the skull.

But he’s trying to help you cut through a persistent illusion: that when you look at a tree, that tree is outside of you and you are a few feet away from it, observing it from a spot just above your nose.

He’s not saying there’s no tree. There is a tree. But you can’t directly perceive it. Data about it enters your brain via your sense organs, chiefly your eyes in this case, but what you’re actually “seeing” is a mental model, built by your brain. It’s a simulation of some sort of external reality.

So is the little bit of your nose that maybe you can see in your peripheral vision. You’re not actually seeing it. It’s just another part of that same mental model as the tree. So is the sight of your hand, if you look down at it or bring it up to your face. So is your sense that you’re breathing. So is your pain when you have a headache.

Your brain has built a simulation—based on real data—that includes the tree, your nose, your breaths, the feeling of your feet on the ground, your ideas, and so on. All are existing in the same “space,” which is consciousness.

So maybe Harris could have said “Everything is in your head,” but what he’s trying to do is get you to see that this sense of yourself being a separate object from the stuff you see “all around you” is an illusion.

The problem with “Everything is in your head” is it creates an image, at least of me, of this normal-sized head with lots of little things inside it. Even if that’s kind of what’s going on, it doesn’t create the visceral feeling that the stuff you see over there is part of consciousness.

If you’re inside a room right now, imagine consciousness as a space wrapping around it, wrapping around the entire room. And that thing in the center of the room that seems to be “you” is just one part of consciousness. It’s just as much inside the wrapper as everything else in the room, as the room itself.

In the real world, there is a separation. There’s you and a tree, two distinct things, but in your consciousness, they’re all part of the same thing—the same simulation. And that tree “over there” is just as much a part of you as that hand “over here.”

Really, when you’re looking at a tree, you’re not seeing a tree, you’re seeing colors and shapes. “Tree” is a concept you’re laying on top of that. (And that concept is also part of the simulation.) And the same is true with “your” hand. When you look at it, you’re seeing shapes and colors. When you look in general, you’re seeing a bunch of shapes and colors, and your brain is layering the concept “tree” on some of them and “hand” on others. But they’re all part of consciousness. Equally.

Imagine a character in a movie suddenly realizing the truth. “Oh my God! I’m in a movie. That car over there is part of a movie. It’s just pixels. That building … pixels! There’s no difference between them. They’re all just colored pixels!”

He’s forgetting one thing, right? He too is just colored pixels. He’s making a false separation between himself and the car, himself and the building. All are part of the same movie. (When the movie was shot, cameras were pointed at actual things, but now what’s being projected is pixels.)

I’m not trying to say nothing is real or it’s all an illusion. And I don’t believe Harris is saying that either. He’s a materialist. I’m saying that when you look around the room, everything you see is equally inside your head and equally close to you. That thing “across the room” is just as close to you as your fingernails, because everything you see and sense is “just pixels,” which is to just your brain’s representation of what’s actually out there.

If that thing over there is a simulation inside your head, it’s not really “over there.” The thing it’s a simulation of might be over there, but you can’t directly perceive that thing. What you’re seeing is a part of you and you’re a part of it.

The data which is telling you that “the thing thing is across the room from you” may be very useful data. It may help guide your actions, if you want to experience going to it and picking it up, but that doesn’t stop everything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and otherwise sense from all appearing in the same space, along with your thoughts and feelings.

All of this can be sophomoric, dorm-room “Oh, wow! Trippy,” but mindfulness meditation can gradually train you to have a visceral sense of it. Over time, you learn to see consciousness as a “space” in which all sorts of things appear, and they’re all equally items-in-consciousness: tree, sense of self, sad feeling, memory of yesterday, solution to problem, sound, sense of distance, etc.

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* The truth is more nuanced. Turns out, Harris is agnostic about the relationship between the brain and consciousness. Thank you, User-11317941740410993461 for correcting my errors. For more info, see the videos in the exchange between me and Benjamin, below.

 

Comments

[Appreciative Reader]

Heh yes, the Quora comment does make some kind of sense, agreed. With one additional qualification: Where he says, that everything's just pixels and no different from any other thing that's also pixels, there's one essential difference that he forgets, or at any rate does not mention: These pixels are the representation of what is actually there in the outer reality. The mental model is a model of what is actually out there. (At any rate, that is the most parsimonious explanation of what we have here, and what it makes sense to believe is true.) So that one set of pixels is indeed different from another set of pixels; and these illusions are reflections of actual reality; and what is more, in general pretty much similar to the actual reality (except, of course, in those cases where it isn't).

But agreed, and minor quibbling aside: That Quora explanation you found seems a pretty good attempt to explain where Sam Harris might be coming from.

Which raises the question: Does Sam Harris himself not explain, then, where he's coming from? One would expect he has. Because to say a thing like that without clearly explaining what he means --- something reasonable, I'd hope and expect! --- is irresponsible, in that it is likely to create misunderstandings, and have people run away with some wild woo-ridden interpretation of his words.

But then Sam Harris does say a lot of things at a lot of places, doesn't he? So yeah, maybe it isn't fair to expect him to explain everything to the minutest detail every time he happens to open his mouth, or to take up his pen or keyboard. (Except, of course, it is too, at least if he were scrupulous about he explains himself. Still, no reason why one can't cut him some slack there.) But I'd hope, and expect, that somewhere in the rest of what he's said or written, does lie the clear and simple explanation for what he did mean, some reasonable rational explanation, and straight from the horse's mouth.

[um]

https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/video/the-primacy-of-consciousness

The Primacy of Consciousness
By Sam Harris and Rupert Spira

[Spence Tepper]

I think it's safe to say what we perceive is what the brain creates for us to see, and there are inputs internally and externally. Through meditation it is possible to watch that process, to watch the mind directly as it creates the movie.

Consciousness is a little different from the sensory picture the mind builds moment by moment. The viewer is separate from the images. The observer of the movie is not the movie. Both may be parts of the same brain. Just different parts.

Through meditation you can heighten your awareness of what you see.

Here is an experiment often replicated demonstrating that we don't see things in plain sight. We see what we attend to. And often don't see the Gorilla in the room.

http://www.chabris.com/Simons1999.pdf

And this can have deadly consequences..

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3474444/#:~:text=Inattentional%20blindness%20is%20more%20likely,plans%20while%20transcribing%20an%20order.

Until we become aware of what we attend to, and can have some control over that, train the mind, then we don't actually witness ourselves watching the movie in real time. We see whatever objects that trigger our attention. Our visual and auditory world is confirmatory, but we miss a great deal. When we can witness our own selves as observers, we can also witness when we are attending or not. And discover what we are missing.

When that happens we see the theater, we can move through the lobby and outside the theater. But we also see the movie and the little things we normally miss. These might just be different places in the brain, but we can go there as we learn to attend to those things, and that starts when we become consciously aware, in real time, that we are observing these images and are not the images themselves.

So you could say consciousness is outside the brain, but there is no evidence for that. It would be more accurate to say that we can learn to raise our consciousness, or awareness, and open whole regions we knew nothing of, even see things around us we were unaware of, but which were always there, are always there waiting for us to attend to them.

It is enough to say that there are many levels of consciousness and as we learn in meditation to raise ours we see many more things.

It's not necessary to conjecture about the body or the brain. It's a red herring.

[SantMat64]

Sam in advaitist mode: "Everything is just appearing." In other words, the appearance of everything is the evidence of God.

Well, Ramana Maharshi thought so. "There is no one who has not known God: ignorance consists in not being aware of this Truth. Yes, call it by any name—God, Self, the Absolute, or the seat of consciousness—it is all the same. "

[12 months left]

Interesting idea the brain produces consciousness ie. no brain, no consciousness. Similar reasoning: no tracks, no train therefore the train tracks produce trains.

Are trees conscious? They have no brains. Jellyfish? No brains.

[Ron E.]

As Sam Harris doesn’t explain what he means by “Consciousness is not inside your head”, the Quora post goes someway in the statement about on seeing a tree you are actually ‘seeing’ a mental model in your heads - or, a best guess interpretation of tree. Yes, it’s what the brain does, builds models from within its network of neurons and synapses that are awash with information derived from the senses and as situations arise, elicits the best or likely ‘cognitive’ scenario that presents a course of action – all based on survival of the organism.

Much of the confusion over the concepts of consciousness, mind and the other cognitive processes seems to derive from the thinking that the physical and mental worlds are separate sub-stances. It is really quite simple in that a brain and body is needed for any mental phenomenon to arise – no brain equals no mind, consciousness etc.

To be conscious is a hallmark of biological beings. Unfortunately, to call it consciousness is to call what is essentially a process a thing and consciousness, from the biological perspective is a process. There is good evidence that the cognitive abilities evolved in sync along with the physical progress of the organism.

All living organisms demonstrate the ability to be aware – even a simple cell is aware enough to respond to other cells, to light and dark etc. – but are they conscious? Some refer to them as being ‘minimally conscious’, though awareness seems more accurate for cells. In this sense trees and flowers are aware – they are comprised of cells that interact, reproduce and generally respond to their environment.

It seems that an awareness of the never-ending stream of information that the brain’s net-working presents gives the impression of a self that has consciousness whereas what has occurred is the senses have perceived something ‘out there’ and instantly processed by the brain from past experience as to whether or not a response needed. The brain recognising (or being aware of) the image it has produced we call consciousness.

[Appreciative Reader]

Hello, um. That was an interesting link, that discussion between Sam Harris and Rupert Spira.

Although it doesn't really speak to Harris's alleged comment about consciousness not being limited to the brain. On the contrary, I enjoyed listening to Harris's perfectly courteous yet firm rebuttal of Spira's woolly-headed nonsense. What I loved was how Spira was forced to concede, at the end, the ridiculousness of his consciousness-is-everything position (or at least, one aspect of that position).

That's exactly how I've come to look at this as well, um:

The first level of this skeptical enquiry is what I've seen you do. You completely reject other people's alleged experiences, in so far as those may apply to you. Which is a perfectly reasonable position, and I agree with you there.

The second level of this is something you've said you used to do, but now have outgrown. I'm afraid I'm still a participant of that stage of the game, where I continue to "practice" myself, and see whether some interesting experiences might yet be forthcoming.

But that still leaves the third stage, the stage that I'm afraid leaves the vast majority all loose-jawed and goggle-eyed, but that Sam Harris treats in a way that aligns perfectly with what I myself find reasonable. This is when you have a certain experience, but simply register that experience. You don't run away and imagine that this somehow speaks to reality (beyond merely reflecting the reality of the experience itself); and nor do you go around preaching your gospel basis your experiences; but instead try to patiently, skeptically, scientifically arrive at an understanding of what it might all be about.

...Anyhoo. What I wanted to say is, I enjoyed listening to that discussion you linked to, very cool! 👍

[Appreciative Reader]

"To be conscious is a hallmark of biological beings. Unfortunately, to call it consciousness is to call what is essentially a process a thing and consciousness, from the biological perspective is a process. There is good evidence that the cognitive abilities evolved in sync along with the physical progress of the organism."

..........Well said, Ron! 👍

Agreed, consciousness is an emergent property of our brain and nervous system and gut biome et cetera. And agreed fully, it's extremely misleading to call it "consciousness", and to imagine it is some kind of a thing. That essentially linguistically-based illusion is what is probably at the root of all of this hoo-ha around the hard problem of consciousness, and whatnot. Just think of it as "being conscious", rather than "consciousness", and all of that nonsense evaporates into nothing, which is all it had ever been.

"We are conscious", is all. There is no "consciousness" per se. "Consciousness" is merely how we allude, linguistically, to the fact that we're conscious.

[um]

@ AR

👍 👍 👍

Personally I have to force myself a little to listen to what both gentleman have to say to the end.... it is not my cup of coffee ... I do not have [Unfortunately ???] what i call a chess-players mind. If the world doesn't speak to me and discloses its secrets there is little I can do and for that reason know.

What you wrote about dealing with experiences, in point 3, that depends on the content of the experience. People that hear voices are mostly so impressed that they cannot but act upon what they hear. If there is not somebody around that knows about the ins and outs, it might be difficult if at all possible to know the causal source of the inner speaker.

After all the inner experience has to be processed by the mind and the mind is conditioned to function in a sensual world. If somebody calls you name in that world you react, you do not think and argue with yourself whether that person that speaks to you exists or not in the real sense.

Maybe the cup of coffee before doesn't exist at all, ... might be possible ... who knows ... but in the mean time I better consume otherwise it gets cold.

In the same way inner voices are processed ... and it might be quite difficult to make oneself believe it is not there etc.

Finally ...I wonder if people not believing the advaita point of view are even able to understand what it is all about let alone judge it to be true or not.... it is a very subtle thing. ...it reminds me of the one liner of one of the RSSB teachers .. it is to be caught, not thought about

I understand that their point of view might be vary boring for the most of us.

[Appreciative Reader]

Brrhhhh! Sure it is subtle, the Advaita business, at least if you compare it to such oafish imbecilities as the nonsense in the Bible, or the Koran. But at the end of the day it is nothing more than mere speculation; and people brainwashing themselves into believing it makes sense, even as they systematically commit one logical fallacy after another in arriving at their fallacious conclusion.

That ochre-robed guy that Brian had linked to, maybe a month or so back? That video of his, where he speaks specifically on the methods of Advaita? (And, what is more, this guy was the real deal. A bona fide monk, teaching real Advaita, of hoary tradition, not this New Age claptrap. And a nice guy too, I quite liked him, and warmed to his sincerity and his innocent demeanor, I remember.) .......Well, it was very clear, wasn't it --- like I'd clearly shown on that thread, and in any case like it was entirely obvious from what the guy was saying --- that the "method" consisted of reasoning and logic-ing away, up to a point, and then deliberately throwing it all away and pretending you've seen the light, when actually all you've done is fooled yourself with your logical fallacies. (He does spell out, clearly, that there is no particular perceptive input or "exeprience" involved there.)

Afraid Advaita does not pass the test of reasonableness and rationality. But that said, I do agree, of all extant religions and philosophies, it is, indeed, one of the most subtle, and one of the most sophisticated, systems of enquiry and understanding. I do have the greatest respect for the sages of yore that gave us those gems. (I'm not being ironical, I do think of them as gems, as priceless artefacts from the past.) Given their times, given their base of knowledge, that was awesome, that feat of understanding on their part. ...But it is less than impressive today, today when we do have the scientific method that they had not, and that we can measure our beliefs and philosophy and worldview against.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi AR
You wrote:
"And agreed fully, it's extremely misleading to call it "consciousness", and to imagine it is some kind of a thing. That essentially linguistically-based illusion is what is probably at the root of all of this hoo-ha around the hard problem of consciousness, and whatnot. Just think of it as "being conscious", rather than "consciousness", and all of that nonsense evaporates into nothing, which is all it had ever been.

"We are conscious", is all. There is no "consciousness" per se. "Consciousness" is merely how we allude, linguistically, to the fact that we're conscious."

I agree. Like gravity or magnetism, these are qualities of matter. In the case of consciousness, qualities of biological matter. But when scientists try to understand and investigate, they do separate these qualities and isolate them conceptually. Nothing wrong with that. They are separable, as qualities, and that helps investigation, yet inseparable, as part of matter / energy. But then again, what is matter? Organized energy?

You can look at consciousness the same way. Yes, it's a quality, a process, yet it is also an experience. And all of that, as far as we are concerned, part of the human experience.

There is no need to conceptualize that consciousness is larger than the human body, however, as social creatures, we do see and not see things we are conditioned to see or not see, by our social milieu, our conditioning and our genetics. In that sense, consciousness expands beyond the conscious mind. Just like your PC expands beyond your PC when you are on the internet. Physically, these are the result of actual connections. What you see on your PC screen is still just on that screen, though it may be replicated on the screens of others. The whole world can look at what you just wrote. So, through our connections, our consciousness can become aware of things outside of our normal world, if we are willing to look.

You could say that our consciousness is connected through our genetics to the ancient past. Our DNA is not just a code for what we are today, but a library of code that goes back to the beginning of biological time, and includes elements that affect our conscious and unconscious mind. And some of what is unconscious can become conscious, unlocking all sorts of things beyond traditional ideas of what we know today. We can see the relics of an ancient past, more than what would fill a traditional museum..all within the physical body.

If that code contains all sorts of DNA elements that are in every human being, then that also connects all of us as a shared experience, once we become aware of it.

So, in these ways you could say consciousness extends beyond what we define as the traditional body, especially looking at our communication connections with others, and the hidden elements from an ancient past that spans millions of years, built into the body's DNA.

And, while consciousness may be a function of the physical body, our bodies are part of the larger physical world. Biology, chemistry and physics are all connected, though they are separate fields of investigation.

Our visible consciousness has a background that is much larger than all the elements contributing to it, and to which we are all connected.

But for practical purposes, we can limit discussion to what we see and feel, hear and understand, all within these tiny brains.

There is no hard body problem. You are right to say that is a linguistic misunderstanding. We are all connected physically, and limited by our physical nature, though we can refine those connections, see more of the unconscious by effort and development.

The notion of spirit and consciousness as "things" may also contribute to the problem. These may be qualities of the physical body, the physical experience.

But if the highest level of understanding, where we are at peace and see all things around us clearly, and amazing places within, brings joy, it is understandable that people might infer this to be the base reality behind all things.

Perhaps ideas and design do drive material construction. Afterall, DNA is a microscopic design millions of years in the making that builds these bodies. So, is the physical body the cause, or that tiny and mysterious design?

Even DNA as a cause isn't quite right, when both DNA and body are part of the same process, with both changing over time.

You can pick the sphere you are comfortable commenting on.

Perhaps that picking and choosing is the problem. We describe the "body" as a separate thing when, actually, it is part of the rest of this reality. We describe the body as a separate entity for purposes of study, understanding and management. But the body could not exist outside of the biosphere we live in, unless we manufacture another artificial environment for it. It isn't actually separable, just as consciousness can't actually be separated.

As far as we are concerned, consciousness is in this tiny brain, with connections we don't fully understand.

But the brain, the body, the DNA within, and the rest of physical reality are all connected and largely a mystery.

[um]

@ AR

Many things I knew, even from childhood on are now understood differently
I often say:
Truth exist of its own grace
Truth is nobodies property
Truth has to be given
and most of all ..
Truth has depth
The last is best made clear by the metaphor of a river, Starting from its spring on-warts to the sea, its sound changes although the water remains the same.

If people try to convince you it is up to you whether you want to debate or turn your back upon them. One can also take the trouble of trying to understand what they want to convey without feeling the urge to agree or disagree..

Today certain things adavaita teachers point at are understandable, for the simple reason I do see them myself. Many things that are common sense for an adult are beyond the understanding of a child .. he might be able to make a mental construct of what is said but it is beyond his capacity of experience at that moment of time.

To me the way of talking of advaita can be compared with the different ways people speak about say .. roses. It is all related to their interests, their motivations etc what determines their focus. The Botanist, will speak of roses in another way than the farmer, the shop owner, the artist, the lover, the poet , the mystic ... but ... they all talk about the same rose.

They should not argue with one another as they cannot understand .but they could have interest in what the other is doing.

Now and then I talk with one of the members of the family about Q&A ... most of the time it is a lot of fun. We found out that most of them are not asking questions, they are not interested in the teacher with whom they argue, or his teachings .. they give a S**T about him and his teachings ... they only come to confirm and defend their own worldviews.

They didn't need to. If they were convinced. If they trusted themselves they would not go there ...they go there to fight them, proof them wrong so that they can go home making themselves believe that they were correct.

AR they all are just afraid to hell to lose what they have. They just cling to their worldview as if death would come if it was taken away from them.

Read against this background a couple of pages of advaita Q&A and you will understand .. they fight them as these teachers are seen as robbers, robbers that wil take away from them what they love so much, what they are so attached to for their security ... their concepts.

[Appreciative Reader]

Hey, Spence.

"what is matter? Organized energy? (...) You can look at consciousness the same way."

..........Sorry, I disagree. That is, you *could* look at anything as akin to anything else, and in some cases it might be a useful thing to do: but as a generalization, I don't think what you're saying holds. That is because we see matter as organized energy not just because it seems intuitively appealing, and not because some philosophizing or navel-gazing points us in that direction, but because that's what the actual, hard evidence points at. That's where the analogy with consciousness breaks down, because there is no such corresponding evidence for consciousness. Consciousness is simply a process, and to look at it as we might gravitons and photons, for instance, when it comes to gravity and light, is completely wrong as generalization --- albeit sure, metaphorically it is fine, as indeed all metaphors are always fine, provided they are used appositely.

The rest of what you say seems reasonable, as far as I can make out, and I guess I agree with all of that. Agreed, our DNA reflects our evolutionary history; and our consciousness, in as much as it is a product of our evolution, probably also draws from that history (in terms of having been shaped by evolution, and evolution having been predicated on the actual history of what kind of environment we'd had, and how we developed in there.)

[Appreciative Reader]

"Today certain things adavaita teachers point at are understandable, for the simple reason I do see them myself."

..........Such as what, um?

This sounds fascinating! Could you flesh that out with some actual examples? Basically, talk about what you "see" now, that you didn't earlier; and in what way that "vision" corresponds with what Advaitins teach?

[um]

@AR

Hmmm .. I am not sure whether I should engage in that invitation. after all I am not a teacher. but a coffee drinker.

With what could I please you that would make sense??
Difficult.

Let me just write down what comes to mind.

You see maybe all, maybe not, maybe some humans are like echo pits. You through something in and you get something out .. the pit out of itself does not make sound.

Some through unintentionally stones in the pit and others shout and some sing a song and others whisper

Whence in a while my nephew comes to visit me carrying a burden of live with him. After the first coffee to wash away the frustrations of an hours drive we leave the
world and drive to a nearby small forest. We never talk about what burdens him. We enteratin ourselves with a lot of meta talking, in accessible for most. Great fun.

Most of the time I do the talking, like the improvisation of a Jazz musician. He is trained in the famaly tradition to ... yes but uncle ... with every word I speak. He is as a person in the audience that loves jazz. They too do not come to argue with the musicians but to listen and to enjoy.

Sometimes my words find resonance in him and with great affection and an naughty mind he will express his joy and gratitude.

I have made it clear that I am not sharing anything with him, ... he is the one that sings his songs in my echo pit and he gets back what he has invested .. it is all his own work.

In one of these occasions, I heard myself say that .."I" ... was not going to die as i was never born. For a moment he stopped me. Maybe he was afraid that his uncle had a brain damage, speaking such an nonsense. Quickly I made it clear to him that I do know about birt and death of OTHERS. Others are born and die but I do not ...it is meaningless to say that I would know.

Weeks later, because of a discussion that was going on here I bought myself an book on advaita and came there across the same things I had expressed to my nephew.

Years ago it would have been impossible to understand these words .. yes intellectual but I would not have that strange inner conviction that what is said was just the simple truth, just common sense.

One cannot argue once self into conviction .. it is there or not. And with that conviction comes the lack of arguing and the knowledge that one cannot share these things with each and every one..

In RSSB the use the word satsang, the communion of the truth and that communion can take place only with a person not with a book as book knowledge is as talking to yourself thinking it to be somebody else. What is needed is the company of somebody.
Today I know that to be true and I also know know that it doesn't matter at all who speaks, what is spoken ... the only thing that matters is communion ... is is the unspoken presence that matters.

Look how many words are needed to explain a simple thing.

[Roger]

Consciousness is the emergent property of biological life, it’s the thing that sentient creatures observe when engaging in self-awareness... the realization of watching oneself recursively.

Consciousness, Soul, Spirit, Life Force, Energy, Mind, Ego are all different interpretations of the same answer given to the inward searching question of who/what am I.

What is this thing I observe, and can integrate with... (and is this thing everything).

For me, consciousness could be thought of as the phenomena of biological life, a temporary state of being where self- awareness is possible (at least for us humans).

In terms of defining consciousness I would start with differentiating between my own experiential levels of it.

That is, everything from my unconscious mind through my subconscious via my imagination and memory onto full consciousness and various levels of what I regard as autopilot.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi AR:

Thanks for your reply.
You wrote:
"we see matter as organized energy not just because it seems intuitively appealing, and not because some philosophizing or navel-gazing points us in that direction, but because that's what the actual, hard evidence points at. That's where the analogy with consciousness breaks down, because there is no such corresponding evidence for consciousness. "

Yes, I think I spoke imprecisely. As a psychologist we often have these concepts: Intelligence, Social Awareness, Ego, Drives, even Unconscious, even anger...These are actually conceptual descriptions that help organize a broader variety of behavior. At some point we think of them as things, like gravity and magnetism, but they aren't. Like Gravity and Magnetism, they are always connected to something physical, the human brain, that was my analogy. But unlike those products of physics, they are merely conceptual...

However, you might be interested to take this one step further. Gravity and Magnetism are also concepts with a great deal of evidence to support that the world works this way, and we see the effects of gravity and magnetism on matter and a variety of particles, even waves of light passing by the sun, but these observations are being used as evidence for a conceptual invention to explain them. Gravity is a particularly good example, since only its effect on matter can be detected. Gravity, as a particle or wave or other "thing" has never been found, yet. We just know it by its action, kinda like consciousness. While whole suns, planets and galaxies move in part based on their mass and the mass of their neighbors, near and far, nothing measurable can be detected as a medium between them. As far as science is concerned, it's empty space. But as far as the behavior of these bodies, gravity must exist and has near infinite support in science.

Consciousness is much like that. It isn't a thing per se, but its effect can be measured in other behaviors..It is measurable. Any Anesthesiologist will tell you consciousness is a real thing, and if it doesn't rise to certain levels after surgery, alarms go off and a whole list of protocols to save life are engaged.

Maybe the medical definition is the closest to the hard sciences...The level of conscious wakefulness of a person can be evaluated by an Anesthesiologist on several scales.

So, it exists by its effect, not as a measurable thing in and of itself, but its effect on other things. Just like Gravity.

You can read more about this line of thinking in a recent article in New Science, "Why the Laws of Physics don't actually exist."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2349359-why-the-laws-of-physics-dont-actually-exist/

These hard sciences are, inevitably, linked to the limitations of human thinking. But they benefit greatly by rules of objective truth, still, at the end of they day they can be refined and changed, because they are descriptions, human descriptions of observations, and not the things themselves. In theory those things don't change...that would be Truth, at least in theory.

[Appreciative Reader]

"I" ... was not going to die as i was never born.

..........Can you expand on that, um? How is it you came to feel that, or think that, or imagine you knew that?

Not asking in order to argue this out with you, or to find loopholes in your logic, or anything like that. In this case, I only wish to understand how it is you came, as you say, to "see" that, and what exactly it means when you say that you "see" that.

[um]

@ AR

Do not worry AR ..... this is not the first time you asked something.

Walking with my nephew, trying to explain something ... it just dawned upon me.
It is not that complicated.
You can compare it with the realization that you will never know what it is to give birth to a child.

But the next step is that you have to allow yourself mentally that realization as a fact like seeing and touching a tree.

It was and is an "strange" experience to acknowledge that one is not going to die and that only others die, ...= .... you bring their body to a graveyard and call it death.

To put these things in this way before you, knowing your outlook on life does arise feelings of reluctance ... why would I serve a piece of cake with the coffee, having the feeling that you might not like it ??

[Appreciative Reader]

Okay, this is what I'm parsing this as. You've not actually experienced having been born. Nor are you going to actually experience death, because you will have ceased to be at that point, and you won't be around to experience it, and so will not experience it. Therefore, while you see others born and see others die; but you've not seen your own birth, and nor will you see your own death. To that extent, and as far as your first-person experience, you've never been born, and you'll never die.

Have I got that right? Is that what you meant to convey, um?

[um]

@ AR

Yes .. that is it AR

Not even that long ago death was related to the body and I would not be able to understand that notion.

It is not an intellectual understand but a kind of "weird" notion, conviction.
I do not know how to convey that in words.

[Appreciative Reader]

Hahaha, cool, um!

That is a perspective I've never heard expressed. Completely original, at least in my experience.

And it sounds completely reasonable to me. Nothing remotely supernatural about it. It's true enough: None of us, the "we" that we are right now, have recall of having been born; and none of us will actually experience death itself. That's true enough.

I'll let that sit with me for awhile, and see what I make of it.

---------

Two observations, though, meantime:

First: This isn't where Advaitins are coming from. I point this out because you did say, that you saw the same thing being said in some book about Advaita. While I don't know what specific book you meant, but it's common knowledge what Advaita teaches, and when they say that you never were born and you never will die, this isn't what they mean, at all.

And second: While this is true enough, this insight of yours, but what are the ramifications of it? Does it offer any solace? Does it affect one, at all, in any way? (I'm not dismissing your observation, I'm actually asking myself these questions. Like I said, I'll let this percolate within myself, for awhile, and see what I make of it.)

---------

Thanks much for sharing this, um! Like I said, this was a completely original perspective that you've come out with, and an entirely reasonable one as well.

Like I said, those questions I've raised, about what might be the actual ramifications of this perspective/insight, is something I'll give myself time to work out myself. But in the meantime, if you'd like to talk about how you might answer this question, about how exactly this insight has affected you, then do please go ahead.

[um]

@ Ar

Later, due to what was going on in this blog, I bought "selfless self" a Q@A, 500 plus pages by a disciple of Shri Nisargadatta.

That notion, is described on almost every page and .. in the same words.

It has been quite labor as for some time I have had it with writers, whomever they are. Just with a lot of coffee, and a couple of pages a day I managed to continue reading .. but I have not yet finished it and knowing myself it might end up every moment on the shelf.

Ever since I woke up in the cinema, there have more of these notions, not always that pregnant. I do not know what effects what. You see in order to be receptive, to allow these notions come in the foreground of awareness, my "old" mind has to stand asside and allow things to just happen spontaneous. Whether it is the notions or the letting happen or the two of them it has a kind of calming effect...I do not find words for it.

It is kind of awareness that "I" need not always and about everything take controll etc ... AND ....that in fact something else is living in and through me

I am not doing the writing nor do I know of a writer in me doing the writing. Writing takes takes place spontaneous. Once on paper, I am forced to own it as mine but that is not the truth .. there is not an I that can write .. there might be an "I' that allows it to happen ... with the grinding of teeth ... hahaha

Again, these are all weird notions, and have nothing to do with the intellect.

This process is already at work for a very long time but only recently it has found the strength to appear in my awareness.

[um]

@ AR

Maybe this is the whole thing, the beginning and the end:

[1] in lasting association with a cheerful one, everyone becomes cheerful.

Replace "cheerfull" by any other word you like.

[2] The dictum was: "Give them a good example and LET them grow"

[3] The cheerfull ones give that example

It is all common sense, obvious and self explanatory, whence you start to see it

In that sense "the truth is "given""

[El]

I read all of your post. I know I'm going to regret this comment. But here is all that came up. I don't say this too often:

Jesus Christ.

Here's the pixels that come to my mind: me with a big whole where my brain lives.