[MD] Consciousness (explained?)

[Andre Broersen]

Hi Ham, Platt, Will marksmith'' and All:

marksmith wrote to Platt:
Where I get stuck is where does personal consciousness
come in?   At some point, it seems to me that this
Consciousness gets divided up. This may be called an
illusion by some, but it's one hell of an illusion!

Andre:
This is something I cannot let go at the moment so I thought I'd share some
of stuff I am reading at present.  I have mentioned the book before and this
is from Reanney. Some of you may think this is a load of bull...maybe. I am
really interested in how, if at all, this has a place in the MoQ (otherwise
I am barking up the wrong tree...but a bloody interesting tree it is).

I'll introduce it with a statement from David Bohm:
'We may well now ask whether the close analogy between quantum processes and
our inner experiences and thought processes is mere coincidence...the
remarkable point-by-point analogy between thought processes and quantum
processes would suggest that a hypothesis relating these two may well turn
out to be fruitful'.

Reanney continues: 'I am saying what Krishnamurti said, that consciousness
is its content. Just that..[but] all the available  evidence seems to
suggest that consciousness is a direct function of the electrical circuitry
of a living brain.
But is this true? Let us work through this. Your normal waking consciousness
is characterised by several key elements:

- a sense of self- the feeling that you are the 'centre of your world'
- a sense of linear time- the feeling that time passes by in regular
sequences
- a sense of separateness- a feeling that you are a discrete atom of
consciousness
- a fear of death

Why has your consciousness taken on these qualities? Because your brain has
evolved to maximise your chances of survival in a risky world. The tools of
human awareness-your senses- have been trained by natural selection to focus
on the 'here' in space and the 'how' in time, that is, to keep your mind
concentrated on just those features of the environment that most affect your
survival prospects. Your window of reality is a narrow sensory band that
screens out most aspects of the world around you. Your brain is an
extraordinarily effective filter whose prime function is not to expand your
consciousness, but, in a very real sense, to contract it.
This has happened because a biological danger can only be avoided by
biological action, which means realising a particular quantum possibility
through the collapse of its associated wave function. So the brain has
evolved a two-fold role: (1) to sense the quantum ripples around it and (2)
to trigger the collapse of the selected wave functions of ripples in its
immediate environment in both space and time. What else is your waking
consciousness but the picture you create of your
immediate surrounds?....What your brain is filtering out is the vast input
of quantum waves from the universe around you and, on the basis of past
experience, picking those most relevant to where you are and when you are.
But here is the point of my suggestion that these quantum waves have the
essential character of thoughts. In effect, what I am saying is that the
whole quantum cosmos around you is consciousness- is latent consciousness in
a universal sense- but that your brain restricts its 'field of awareness'
only to what is important to you. Which is what biology has trained it to
do. Your brain is not the seat of your consciousness...rather it is the
'guarding censor that, from the wider spectrum af awareness, selects only
what impacts most strongly on your biological well-being...its central
message is...that deep consciousness, ongoing awareness, does not depend on
the brain for its existence. (pp 66-67).

As Pirsig suggests in Lila, the search for meaning is a relatively recent
fad.

To which I add:
'While sustaining biological and social patterns
Kill all intellectual patterns
Kill them completely
And then follow Dynamic Quality
And morality will be served (Lila p406).

The ongoing aesthetic continuum, the uncollapsed quantum waves, the 'mu'
state, before the quality event collapses the waves into particles trapping
them into time and space. Thus creating the inorganic, organic, social and
intellectual 'levels and melding them into the here and now'' of our
existence based on analogies upon analogies of our own personal history.
By killing the intellectual patterns,(sense quietness, mental quietness
value quietness) the waves can be experienced...Thou art That...the
songlines (as the Australian Aborigine would say) of the uni-verse to which
Lila dances.

'He stood on a mound of sand (!) beside some juniper bushes and said 'Ahhhh!
He threw out his arms. Free! No idols, no Lila, no Rigel, no New York, no
more America even. Just free!
He looked up in the sky and whirled. Ahhh, that felt good! He hadn't whirled
like that for years. Since he was four. He whirled again. The sky, the
ocean, the hook, the bay, spun round and round him. He felt like a Whirling
Dervish'(ibid p 415)

Am I now a new age dud?

For what it is worth
Andre