Posts Tagged ‘consciousness’

Evolutionary Thought – More Than Four Brains

Quite often, people have been raised to think of their brain as a single — or at most, two sided — organ. In one sense, this is correct but in many other senses it is not. Through millions and millions of years of evolution our brains have developed into wondrous machines that not only are more powerful than even the most powerful supercomputers yet invented but are also capable of some of the most sublime thought processes yet known in the universe.

Evolution, at least as we know it, does not work in what is called a linear — or straight line — sequence. We grow as organisms and as thinking, feeling human beings in fits and starts. Sometimes we make great leaps forward and then fall back a little and other times we stay in place, treading water, before we make another great leap forward. This is just a fact of nature and we are no more immune to it than we are immune to eventual death in the physical sense.

What happens to our consciousness, of course, is the greatest mystery in the universe and one we may yet be able to figure out at some point in our evolutionary life that has not yet been reached. In actual physiology, we know that our brains are not in fact a single unit in the sense of the word. There is a series of interrelationships between at least four parts of the brain, which are usually referred to as being the four lobes. For the most part scientists usually concern themselves with only three of the four lobes, for some reason. Read more…

How Does Consciousness Arise?

Consciousness is our knowing state, but where does it ultimately comes from? If you can observe consciousness then you are out of it and transcending it, so consciousness itself must have a base. Let’s find it through logic.

First, there is an image in consciousness that resembles an object that comes to us through the five senses. That’s what the five sense consciousness do for us. They give us these signless images, these non-labeled images that appear in consciousness.

There is next a function of consciousness that grasps those images, that turns the images into discrete particular things to be experienced with particular properties and attributes. Otherwise every object would be like every other object to you, and every sense field like every other sense field. This is done by a part of consciousness which we typically call the “mind.” It gives names and properties to things. Basically it’s responsible for naming and labeling.

Next there is the knowing part of consciousness we call the “apparent knower” and take as our assumed silent self. This is the self-reflexive knower, the source of intellectualization, the pivot by which you judge and know things. This is the self-authenticating aspect of consciousness we call the self or knower.

This knower is what knows the thoughts. When there is a thought there is consciousness, but when consciousness is empty, what’s there? You’re not annihilated or extinct or non-existent because obviously the world still goes on. You might think there is a gap within consciousness, but somehow it arises again. There is always a continuity of awareness behind, above, beyond or transcending consciousness, however you want to word it. It is awareness that is there when consciousness is empty without any object.

We can call this awareness “primordial awareness” or “ready awareness” or the “potential for consciousness” or “presence,” which are all just a way of saying is-ness or be-ingness without the thoughts of being so.

These three parts – the reflected images of perception, the descriptive grabbing of discrimination, and the knowing must all share the same base or supporting substance otherwise they could not connect, hence they are all ultimately parts or functions of the same consciousness. All three are one, they are the same thing talked about in three parts because of the different characteristics or functions being performed. Yet they must all be united as one otherwise they could not interact with one another.

Now if you think deeply, you’ll realize that the seventh consciousness, or self-authenticating nature, has to have something beyond it, something that authenticates it, something transcending it. There has to be something which stands behind or transcends the knowing aspect of the inner I. In technical terms, there is something that authenticates the apparent self, that stands behind knowingness. If there was not something behind knowingness, knowingness could NOT arise. There must be something that gives rise to consciousness. There must be something aprior that corroborates conscious knowing. Read more…

Buddhism Teaches Cognitive Science About Consciousness

Let us say you see a red apple, which is all that your eye does for you. It just brings you the sensory image of an apple by somehow translating the outside world into an image for consciousness, but it doesn’t provide the concept that the image is an apple nor does it make the word “apple” arise in the mind. That comes later. It somehow just gives you a mental picture image of a red apple by somehow reflecting the outside world and transmitting that reflection into consciousness. That’s what the reflective aspect of consciousness does – it gives you the shape, colors, smell, feel of the apple by reflecting the outside world and making it into a consciousness image.

Therefore, what you actually see when you see an apple is not the apple but consciousness. You are just seeing, perceiving, witnessing or experiencing an image in consciousness, but not the apple itself. The image in the mind doesn’t give you any other intelligence beyond the image, so your eyes, ears, tongue, body and nose just give you all these mental impressions which Buddhism calls images or signs. Your five senses are like five soldiers who always make an accurate report to headquarters without adding any commentary or interpretation at all. They just give you all these simultaneous images. But who interprets them?

Without being able to grasp those images and discriminate them out into parts with borders, properties or characteristics, you don’t have a clue that there is something there with a specific meaning as a specific object with specific attributes and characteristics. In other words, besides reflecting the outside world into something internal, consciousness has a function of discrimination that makes this one set of pictures quite different in meaning from another set, otherwise they’d all appear to you as the same. Read more…