Perception and Consciousness

[Dontaskme]

I am trying to determine what you expect a valid proof to look like.

If going to a hospital. into a theater room, while an open-brain neurosurgery is underway. You can see a brain with your own eyes.
You can see a doctor touching it...

You asked "WHere is this brain occurring?" It's in your skull.

If that doesn't convince you - I am not sure what proof you expect.

But this is just common knowledge...so where exactly is this knowledge occuring?

Do you see the dilemma?

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[Logik]

And not one of them is generating consciousness. Consciousness is first order. Brains occur within it.

Don't shift the goal-posts now.

You said " Where IS this brain occurring? If everything I'm perceiving is being perceived in a brain then where is this brain?"

It's in your skull. And we have reasonable medical evidence that if we put an ice pick through your brain - you will stop perceiving.

[Dontaskme]

You asked "WHere is this brain occurring?" It's in your skull.

If that doesn't convince you - I am not sure what proof you expect.

Listen, you are the one that says consciousness is an emergent of the brain, so what are we talking about now? the brain or consciousness?

Are we talking about brains that know where they are occuring, or are we talking about the consciousness that knows where the brain is occuring?
Is the brain consciousness?

Can you make up your mind about what knows where it is occuring here, is it the brain that knows or the consciousness that emerges from the brain that knows?

Are you even making any sense? ..lets be clear about what we are actually talking about here?

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[Logik]

Listen, you are the one that says consciousness is an emergent of the brain, so what are we talking about now? the brain or consciousness?

If I hit you over the head with a baseball bat you will become unconscious. So I reasonably suspect your consciousness and your brain are interlinked...

Of course we can always run the experiment and you can prove me wrong.

Let me know when and where - I'll bring the baseball bat and the camera.

[Dontaskme]

And not one of them is generating consciousness. Consciousness is first order. Brains occur within it.

Don't shift the goal-posts now.

You said " Where IS this brain occurring? If everything I'm perceiving is being perceived in a brain then where is this brain?"

It's in your skull. And we have reasonable medical evidence that if we put an ice pick through your brain - you will stop perceiving.

Don't you mean the brain will stop perceiving because it's been damaged having been interfered with by the interaction of another appearance in contact with it..that other appearance being an ice pick?

So who is this ''you'' that will stop perceiving ? ...I thought you said the ice pick through the brain ...not the ice pick through a you.? ..where did this you suddenly come from?

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[Logik]

Don't you mean the brain will stop perceiving because it's been damaged having been interfered with by the interaction of another appearance in contact with it..that other appearance being an ice pick?

Well, isn't that the same thing?

If I remove your brain and you remain conscious then clearly your consciousness is NOT in your brain?

When/where do you want to try it?

[Dontaskme]

Listen, you are the one that says consciousness is an emergent of the brain, so what are we talking about now? the brain or consciousness?

If I hit you over the head with a baseball bat you will become unconscious. So I reasonably suspect your consciousness and your brain are interlinked...

Of course we can always run the experiment and you can prove me wrong.

Let me know when and where - I'll bring the baseball bat and the camera.

No, this is a common misperception that there is a you in the brain that can be made unconscious.

The brain can stop functioning due to being impaired and effected by other factors, but what is this you that becomes unconscious? where is that you located exactly?

And how would you know what unconsciousness is, you'd have to be unconscious to know of such a state? you have no idea what is unconsciousness all you know is consciousness...so all you are saying is what you know which is is common knowledge...but where is this knowledge occuring and to whom?

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[Ramu]

Listen, you are the one that says consciousness is an emergent of the brain, so what are we talking about now? the brain or consciousness?

If I hit you over the head with a baseball bat you will become unconscious. So I reasonably suspect your consciousness and your brain are interlinked...

Of course we can always run the experiment and you can prove me wrong.

Let me know when and where - I'll bring the baseball bat and the camera.

So you BELIEVE that you are your body? You must then believe mind is in your body? What if your body is just in your mind instead? You see all of these things we "perceive" yet nobody is doing the perceiving. The Seer is not a thing. Materialists always assume a subject\object duality but that dualism is a mere illusion. Collapse subject and object and you realize that you are Reality itself....fooling itself that it's a human. All there IS is Awareness aka Consciousness. You might be witnessing a body as Consciousness but that's all. However your mind takes ownership and claims body and mind as ones own. This body is a mere projection of Consciousness. Try reading The Untethered Soul by Singer...cant remember first name...this will open your eyes...and lastly if you are looking for yourself try looking at neuroscience and the frontal lobe...the lobe of higher reasoning and sound judgement....no one is there...there is no one home...you are not there...you are not an expression of physical matter. You ARE Consciousness Itself...ive struggled with finding myself and I became free when I broke loose from concepts and imagination...its hard to accomplish because of our culture and upbringing. No one ever told you this was just a paradigm that you were obligated to agree with. If you carefully look at the metaphysics you will see truth.

[Dontaskme]

Don't you mean the brain will stop perceiving because it's been damaged having been interfered with by the interaction of another appearance in contact with it..that other appearance being an ice pick?

Well, isn't that the same thing?

If I remove your brain and you remain conscious then clearly your consciousness is NOT in your brain?

When/where do you want to try it?

But it's not my brain, neither is it my consciousness. Is there a person inside my brain that is conscious now?

That's not what consciousness is.

All that's happened is the facultity for perception has been removed, not that consciousness itself has been removed.

There is no person in a brain, only perceptions.

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[Dontaskme]

Well, isn't that the same thing?

No it's not the same thing, a brain is a thing seen, whereas consciousness is not a thing that can be seen.

Anything seen is inseparable from that which is seeing it. So it is the same thing and not the same thing in the same moment, birth and death just differ in their appearance. Now you see me now you don't..but nothing is going anywhere or being anything. The unseen cannot appear or disappear, only the seen can, and the seen only dissolves back into it's purest formless source which is consciousness that never makes an appearance, it being the unseen groundless ground of all seen appearances.

Consciousness has never known unconsciousness or death, because it is unborn, it's always this ever alive presence that is this immediate presence, the only knowing there is.

If you believe that there is a person that can die...then prove it? you'd have to be dead to know that, death is just an idea..not an actual event.

You have never known death.

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[Logik]

No it's not the same thing, a brain is a thing seen, whereas consciousness is not a thing that can be seen.

But you experience consciousness, do you not?

So I will hit you over the head with a baseball bat and when you come back round you will tell me what you experienced during your coma.

[Dontaskme]

No it's not the same thing, a brain is a thing seen, whereas consciousness is not a thing that can be seen.

But you experience consciousness, do you not?

So I will hit you over the head with a baseball bat and when you come back round you will tell me what you experienced during your coma.

Consciousness is just the totality, the Isness of this immediate alive presence of all that IS.. It's no thing being alive. And same applies to death...no thing dies, there is no thing to die, there is no thing to be alive...concepts, aka language are just concepts, they are imaginations arising in no thing consciousness which just IS this pure essence of ISness or consciousness without the illusory conceptual overlay...there is only ISness being ISness..nothing else exists only ISness exists, which is not a thing.

It's not a ''someone'' (thing) being consciousness, experiencing that consciousness. Consciousness cannot experience itself because there is only consciousness which is no thing, it's no thing being conscious it exists. So there is no actual literal experiencer experiencing itself here. There's just no thing experiencing no thing. When we talk to others, we are only talking to ourself..because there is only SELF..and that self is no self interacting with itself.

Test it for yourself, find out where your consciousness begins and ends. You'll see that you have not come into consciousness with your own personal consciousness...you have come out of consciousness that already IS ..THE THOUGHT that I have consciousness is just a thought arising in consciousness that already IS...so the thought is an illusion.There is only consciousness being consciousness. It's the unseen seer, the unknown knower.

The idea that there is a person who has consciousness who was born and will die is just an idea, it's a thought arising in consciousness which is no thing..so the even though thoughts arise, there is no thing to whom these thoughts are arising...so what is an idea, I have no idea.

All thought is pure imagination aka a conceptual overlay upon no thing...and this overlay is not the pure ISness that IS...the concepts have no real reality or existence apart from the consciousness in which they arise and are known. Concepts are KNOWN but no concept has ever been seen. For there is no concept that can see...a concept is an illusion.

Birth and Death is not an experience, concepts are just ideas within consciousness that is neither dead nor alive...so even consciousness is not an experience...all experiences arise in it as and through the dream body, the vehicle for expression, of no thing...in the same way nightly dreams arise to no one, there is no one in deep sleep, or in a dream..yet existence still IS...the consciousness that is aware of waking reality is the same consciousness that is aware of the nightly dream. You are the awareness of your character within the dream, you are not your character.

Consciousness has no location...identification with the character is always referential, it's location, but that's an illusion because there is nothing in the ISness that is in relationship with anything else..this is all purely conceptual, it's relational..illusory.





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[surreptitious57]

Why can not we all just instinctively understand what consciousness is ?
Why do we think physical reality exists if it is no more than an illusion ?
Why is consciousness not allowing all of us to see it for what it truly is ?

[AlexW]

Why can not we all just instinctively understand what consciousness is ?

Because you don't look at it "instinctively" - you try to understand, which means you are looking AS thought.
If you would look AS consciousness you would immediately know it. Understanding, putting it into concepts may also happen, but this is a secondary stage - not really important.

Why do we think physical reality exists if it is no more than an illusion ?

Because that is how we have been conditioned to interpret reality.

Why is consciousness not allowing all of us to see it for what it truly is ?

Consciousness is not holding you back, how could it? What is holding you back is that you are looking from the perspective of a separate "you" (you are looking AS thought - or rather: thought can't actually look, it can only "hijack" real looking by establishing the belief that there is a "you" looking)

[surreptitious57]

Seeing consciousness as itself rather than as thought is something I find quite hard to do
I can understand it as a concept but simply accepting it is for me very counter intuitive
This is because everything I know and experience is from my own personal perspective
So I am not aware of consciousness existing outside of me only of me being conscious