Infinity and Super-Consciousness

reply to post by CHA0S


Did you check out the YouTube link?

I may be getting off topic here but I want to talk about the nature of consciousness, something that is bound to be really abstract (and maybe meaningless to you, as your consciousness may differ from mine).

Try to think about how consciousness relates to reality. It must necessarily be through the five senses namely sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Lets take for example the reality (apparent reality) of a table. You become conscious of the table mainly by seeing it, touching it, etc (I say mainly because although you could taste it by licking it, or sniff it, or become aware of it by striking it and hearing and the sound produced, none of that stuff usually happens, nobody licks tables and tables usually don't give off odors, and as for the sound aspect of a table, that's a little bit more complicated.)
It's the same for any aspect of reality, you see it, hear it, taste it, etc. In Yoga they refer to the five senses as being the five windows to consciousness (I may be wrong about this). Consciousness uses the five senses to access reality, it relies on the five senses for sensory input as to the nature of reality. If you shut off the five senses there is no way for you to be conscious of reality (at least the physical aspects). All of this relates to an organism/being with a physical body (as far as beings who are disembodied or ethereal beings it's not worth speculating about). Does this give us an insight into the nature of consciousness? A little bit, this is just preliminary information on how consciousness works which tells us very little about the true nature of consciousness or reality itself. All of this becomes apparent when you do meditation for prolonged periods. In meditation one is, to a certain extent, shutting off the five senses. If the conditions are right the meditation practitioner gets to a point where he is existing in a state with no sight, no hearing, etc. This is something that is hard to describe in words, it has to be experienced. Once again it is due to the nature of how we relate to reality through the five senses, I can't possibly relate to you something that has no correlation to the five senses. OK, so now you are in a state where the five senses have been shut off. Does that mean your consciousness is also shut off? No, you are still conscious of something. You are conscious of being, namely you are conscious of being conscious. Now you're getting somewhere. This is where you can get a little more in sight into the nature of consciousness and what it means to be conscious. In order to understand this think about the eye. The eyes see what is in front of the eyes. By its very nature, it is impossible to actually see your own eye with your own eye (you can look in the mirror and see a reflection of your eye but then you are only seeing a reflection and not the actual eye itself). I think this is not hard to grasp, especially for someone who is contemplating Infinity. Consciousness works in much the same way. Usually consciousness becomes conscious of other things. It is only when you do this "trick" of meditating that you turn consciousness upon it self and use consciousness to be conscious of consciousness.

Running out of space so I will continue later, after lunch and a little more contemplation. I hope this makes sense. Hope it helps.