Awareness Precedes the Person

[loverofall]

I get this conceptually so well because when a baby is born, it is born in a state of awareness and then eventually it is taught to think it is a person from conditioning. So people thinking they are aware is the paradox because awareness was before they had the thoughts they were a person.

How does the child awareness related to pure awareness?


On another note, how do you post pictures in your replies?

[karen]

Hi, you post pictures in replies by putting the link of the pic inside these brackets (like the camera-spoke):

[img]http://www.silverwinggraphics.com/images/spokes.jpg[/img]

So your saying that conceptually you get that awareness precedes the conditioning of the person? I'm not so sure that's helpful - to get that concept.

Do you feel this to be so: that awareness precedes concepts? That's the one I'm going for. I seem to be able to get anywhere with concepts, but they die hard and frequently and always leaving me holding the bag.

[loverofall]

At some level I see the person appearing at times. I can feel that if I don't think there is not person. Its the scam of scams that everyone is running around thinking they are a person.

Whats before the I thought helps. Relating to how a baby must percieve the world too helps. I know there has been a shift because I am rereading things and its all click inside and the confustion has dropped away.

It doesn't mean I don't identify with the person though. That still happens often but its weaker.

This is a great visual that helps clear up the confusion. I couldn't get it to work with the brackets. Maybe someone else can.

2.bp.blogspot.com/_uHewhM43ujA/SXZzdHbNsnI/AAAAAAAAARQ/B0UZYguD01g/s1600-h/awareness-0.jpg

[karen]

That is because the server the image is on doesn't like people leaching their bandwidth and has taken counter-measures to prevent it.

So for that I downloaded the pic and uploaded to tinypic.com/ which does allow leaching - it's their reason for being.

And then used the brackets for that:

[zendancer]

Precisely!

[question]

I don't find it too difficult to understand that consciousness isn't a person or a bunch of thoughts. The part that is very difficult to understand is how consciousness is independent of the body. I've read so much on this already, but there isn't a pointer that comes even close to shaking my belief that the brain is first and consciousness is second.

[loverofall]

Thanks Karen for posting the picture and ZD for confirming what I felt.

Question: I'll take a stab at it. Is it because you think you are your brain?

[karen]

I hate to jump the gun, but I do feel something happening. Thanks for this thread!

[lightmystic]

Hey, thanks for the post karen. That's a pretty good description.....

[robert]

karen, with myself it started as a sense of presence. my practice was, every time that i would have a thought as often as i could remember i would listen, look, feel, whatever would quiet my mind, to the space from which the thought arose. over and over and over. until i could feel that the thought came before the brain. meaning the brain was the computer, and the absolute, god whatever was actually the thinker and the brain was just the master computer that operated the body.
and the space that i am talking about is tiny easily missed we do it thousands of times an hour. and as i continued the "practice" the space seemed to grow although i know that i was just becoming more adept at noticing that it was just the underlying fabric.
i know that my descriptions are clunky and thats okay with me. my fear is literally evaporating i can feel that too. and now it's just time to decide what to do with the rest of my life.
good luck to you all. i am here. and not

[question]

Feb 28, 2010 22:54:00 GMT -5 loverofall said:

Question: I'll take a stab at it. Is it because you think you are your brain?

I don't think that I'm a brain, or any other object. What I think I'm experiencing is what others seem to refer to with the word "consciousness". In my understanding, consciousness is a cerebral process, it's not the brain, but it can't exist without the brain. When the brain dies, consciousness disappears.

LM and ZD already tried to push me into a corner for that, but it didn't really work. I think the conclusion was that it's no use to talk about it, because no argument will help, unless I experience for myself that consciousness exists fundamentally independent of the brain.

The other aspect is that I logically concluded that consciousness, even if it's dependent on the brain's existence, still exists. And that which makes consciousness exist, is the same that makes the brain exist. So both brain and consciousness owe their existence to something more fundamental (Being, Brahman, _________). And whatewver that is, it is here 100%. I just don't see how it's specifically consciousness that is the last stop. It seems to me that consciousness is one limited phenomenon among many others and that it has no fundamental cosmic primacy.

So I guess what I'm trying to do is to not focus so much on consciousness, but on that which fundamentally is giving consciousness the ability to BE in the first place. That something which is present in everything else and which we call by a myriad of different names (chair, brain, pants, angel, shiva, joy...)

[zendancer]

Question: In the past, I always associated consciousness and intelligence solely with the brain, but today, even in the scientific community, there is a growing realization that consciousness and/or intelligence is a distributed phenomena. Physicians, for example, now know that the body's digestive system has some sort of operational intelligence that in the past was thought to be solely located in the brain. IOW, the human body is far more complex than was once realized, and many parts of the body apparently contain brain-like intelligence. Like Robert, I assume that the brain is the seat of the intellect, or mind, and functions much like a personal computer, but it is under the control of something far more powerful.

When I choose not to think, there is total awareness and alertness and direct perception, but all thoughts, images, and symbols are absent. We call that state "silent presence," and in that state the body remains fully functional. It can drive a car, change a tire, and even read a roadsign and understand the meaning directly (similar to speed reading) in total mental silence. I assume that in this state of silence the intellect is dormant, much like the sleep function on a computer. It isn't needed, so it is quiescent.

During my first experience of oneness, it felt as if everything was occuring through some unknown source of perception, as if there were an unknown organ through which everything was being processed. It did not feel like a third eye exactly, but maybe that's what some people have imagined it to be. In my case it did not feel like something that was happening through the head or brain. There was no inside or outside or any spatial orientation to it. The experience came from everywhere at once and there was no sense of a separate "me" experiencing it.

During such a deep unity-conscious experience of oneness it becomes apparent that the entire universe is alive and conscious, and that there is no inert matter anywhere. It is as if every aspect of reality is in total communion with itself beyond space and time. It is what Suzanne Segal appropriately called "the non-locatable doer." IOW no rules of logica can be applied to it, and the usual idea of separateness is felt to be hilarious. It is so funny that most people experience a fit of uncontrollable laughter. The living truth is so far beyond our usual ideas that the scale of the disparity between the two is utterly hysterical. I can't explain it, and I don't understand it, but I know that what we call "the universe" occurs within THAT, that THAT is who we are, and that THAT can do whatever it wants to do. We are all just servants of THAT whether we realize it or not. We are like microscopic waves on an ocean that is the size of the universe.

When this body/mind dies, awareness through this body/mind will end, but awareness through THAT will not end because whatever THAT is is the fabric of reality itself. This is why all fear of ego-death ends with a deep experience of oneness. We realize that who we are is not just one-with THAT; we ARE THAT. Who we ARE is the alpha and omega manifesting in emptiness "just like this."

The other aspect that cannot be communicated adequately through language is that the vastness and wholeness of THAT is so all-encompassing that one feels totally and intimately at home in it. The feeling one has is sort of like "well, it doesn't matter what happens now or ever again because now I know who's taking care of everything." This is why every person who has had a deep mystical experience says something like "Everything is perfect just as it is. All is well and everything is just as it needs to be. There is nothing out of place and nothing that needs to be improved or changed in any way."

In such an experience it becomes apparent that even if the entire physical universe disappears, the One looking out of our eyes will still be here. To appreciate my certainty of this would require one to have a similar experience, but everyone who has had such an experience knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Some people have deep experiences of oneness and some don't, but lots of people have learned to become silent. If you will keep shifting your awareness away from thoughts to what you can see and hear, you can attain some silence. Once you can sustain mental silence for more than twenty or thirty seconds, I think you'll have a much deeper appreciation for the distributed aspect of intelligence as well as deeper insight into the non-locatability of awareness. Hopefully these words will help answer some of your questions. Cheers.

[enda]

Regarding the intro to Zendancers posting yesterday on the location of consciousness, Deepak Chopras book "Quantum Healing" was very helpful to me in coming to terms with the unlimited nature of consciousness. Using the combination of medical professional and spiritual teacher he very effectively dismantled my beliefs on how the body works, and the knock-implications of that

[question]

Thanks Zendancer, I deeply appreciate your help!

I'm aware of the fact that operational intelligence occurs throughout the body, but not yet that this applies to consciousness. In my experience, intelligence and consciousness are different. Whether I am conscious or not, intelligence is still there. I am asleep but the body keeps functioning perfectly, I'm drunk and can't think straight, but consciousness is still there 100%. In any case, even if consciousness isn't located specifically in the brain, but maybe distributed throughout the body, my dilemma remains, in that the existence of consciousness is dependent on the existence of a body. I also appreciate your description of an empty mind, in which consciousness is still fully present and the body works perfectly, this fits into my understanding of the world, but there is no clue as to why consciousness is supposed to be independent of the body.

Recently I've finally taken up reading Nisargadatta (Consciousness and the Absolute), haven't read much yet, but from some passages it already became clear that he points out that consciousness is dependent on the body. As it is right now, I have zero faith in consciousness, it gives me absolutely no clue of its cosmic primacy. I go to sleep and it's gone without a trace, it doesn't look like it's going to exist forever.

I guess all I can do is follow your advice and try to keep my mind silent and sincerely hope that I'm wrong.

[karen]

Nisargadatta uses consciousness as dependent to awareness. That is, there can be awareness without consciousness, but not consciousness without awareness.