[MD] In and out of intellect.

[ml]

Morning Joe,


----- Original Message -----
<snip>

mel said:
Sleep is not oblivion, but the things about
which, there is consciousness are not
the same as those in the 'wakeing' state.

Joe replied:
One of the first rules in the study of esoteric literature as proposed by
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky it to ³remember yourself²!  A further argument is
that if you don¹t remember yourself, you are fast asleep to what you are
experiencing.  Is this the point you are making about sleep not being
oblivion?

mel:
I don't traffic in esoterica, but I take their comment
to be a klugey way of speaking of mindfulness.

My comment was not aimed at that, but rather at
the attributes of consciousness while sleeping,
which is not slumber-unto-oblivion.  Sleeping
people, like sleeping animal respond to physical
stimulus, but often do not remember the incidents,
but none the less they scratch, slap at bugs, nudge
animals or people away from them, adjust blankets,
turn towards or away from light or noise, sit up,
look around, speak, ask/answer questions.

They only think they sleep peacefully.  But all night
long different brain centers 'light up' and then
settle down again.  Some of the responses are from
internal sources.
--------------------------------------------------------------


mel said:
What is disengaged is most of the creating
of memory, so most of what passes is not
remembered.

Consciousness is always consciousness of...
and when the 'of' consists of difference too
small to matter, then we blithely forget it and
move on.  What we choose to not remember is
as if it never existed.  It did, but not for the illusion
of 'I'.


Joe replied:
You are saying when asleep I cannot create new memory since I am an
illusion.  Some dreams I remember.  An analogy to sleep would apply to the
non-creating of memory in the so-called waking state.  Can I be conscious of
what I don¹t remember?  Are most of my activities done in a state akin to
sleep? Merely a mechanical repetition of what I had been aware of at a
different time?  I accept a conscious/mechanical metaphysical description
for my activities.  Am I only mechanically aware of what I do during the
day, so that it can be said that my activities are those of a sleep-walker?
I am impressed!


mel
I did not say you cannot create memory, but that most of
'what' awareness is stirred about is not something important
enough to bother to remember.  Dreams are something different
and while I am not an expert, one source of dream is from
the building of memories that happens when yesterday's
experience moves from short to long term memory.  As
memory is associational, one often 'glimpses' the 'memory
tree' of associations that will come to hold the new memory.
When the building of memory coincides with a stirring of
the logic centers of the brain, the result is the instinctual response
to try and create a serial narrative of the experience.  It is just
the nonsensical picture of the creative instinct, for lack of a
better term.

On the other hand there are dreams of entirely different kinds
that seem to be massive alignments of some kind of 'pattern
recognition' that get way wierd...the prophetic, the sudden
answer to a long standing question, etc.

Can you be conscious of what you don't remember?
Sure.  There is lots of "process awareness" that
encompasses routine tasks that you can perform
deliberately, but again are mostly below notice for
the purpose of memory.  Driving, using the bathroom,
taking a shower, etc.  Probably you are thinking about
something else rather than being mindful of those acts.

The 'density of attention' we put on a given experience
or activity can become a deliberate creation of vividness
or strength of memory.

These two previous paragraphs contain the extremes of
mindfulness versus 'runaway' mind and the vividness
of out 'impression' of consciousness is diferent.
A runaway mind, distracting us, gives a low static
quality of perception; boring repetition.
Open, still, full attention is where flashes of the unfolding
of dynamic reality is liklier to be seen and 'wow moments'
unfold without your effort.  Life gets rich.

(It is kind of like: there are as many 'species' of
consciousness as there are things to be conscious of...)
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mel said:
Memory and the formation of memory give
us the texture and character in our lives, our
sense of 'who we are' and the knowledge we've
processed, but memory is just another matter
for consciousness to be conscious about.

Joe replied:
I lose track of you, when you say ³but memory is just another matter for
consciousness to be conscious about.²??????  For me consciousness is DQ in
the social order.

mel:
Our 'holy' condition of self-consciousness, which has led
so many thinkers to sing the praises of humanity, is
simply a matter of our turning our consciousness onto
memory itself.
We are able to construct a narrative of order, where we
enforce a structure of time, solid relations of cause and
effect, precious shades of meaning and celebrations of being.

All of this within the mind, the combination of consciousness,
experience and immediate memory.

Consciousness itself arises before the social, it is biologicaly
an emergence.  As to whether it, as reactivity, is something
we can project or actually account for in the physical, I do not
know, yet.
-----------------------------
as I said earlier...
Try it on for a while, play with it, and
see if it makes 'operational' sense.

thanks--mel