consciousness and awareness

[silent thunder]

I'm curious how others define/experience consciousness and awareness.  Is there a distinction for you or how your teachers describe them?

 

As I experience it, consciousness is temporary and object based, closely related to personality and mind, while awareness is primal, abiding and beyond action or form.  Consciousness generates and responds to symbols, ideas/thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations and personality.  Awareness seems to be an abiding, underlying almost causative potential, unchanging and... thorough, penetrating... pervasive... ineffable.  Awareness is not a thing, yet feels like a presence but that's misleading as it implies a thing, which contradicts the experience of it.  So presence comes close but misses the mark for me.

 

The more I ponder it, the more my sense and definition of awareness seems to mirror the descriptions I've read of Tao; ineffable, timeless, pervasive, foundational, omnipresent, empty, inexhaustible.  Of course, I'm describing my sense of awareness, from my own defined process of consciousness.  Is it possible to separate awareness from any thing?  I can't imagine how, or under what circumstances.

 

My sense of it, is that any thing that can maintain a form, any form, or presence of any kind within what we refer to as the physical universe, possesses awareness, otherwise, nothing would coalesce and no form would be present.  Yet not every thing exhibits consciousness, or is capable of it.

 

Stones don't give me the impression they are thinking, yet I can't shake the indelible sense that they and all else, share abiding awareness.

 

 

 

[noonespecial]

edit *post meditation rant*

Edited April 26, 2015 by noonespecial

[Marblehead]

We must be conscious in order to be aware but we may not necessarily be aware (of reality) just because we are conscious.

 

Yes, we can be aware of dreaming while unconscious.  But, that is not reality.

 

We can be conscious but so stoned that there is no awareness.

[3bob]

another saying for consideration:

 

"There is only one reality in form, which is the pure consciousness which is conscious of form,

and this reality is what realizes itself as formless, timeless, spaceless".   by Gurudeva

[Marblehead]

another saying for consideration:

 

"There is only one reality in form, which is the pure consciousness which is conscious of form,

and this reality is what realizes itself as formless, timeless, spaceless".   by Gurudeva

And that causes me to question my awareness.

[noonespecial]

Question, if someone was born into a small black room with no outside contact with other people, animals or any type of sensory input what type of consciousness would they have (assuming there was no need to be fed)? Would they even have any concpet of self? Yet surely they would be aware of being aware.

[Marblehead]

Question,

Good question.  Yes, I think self-awareness would be there.  I also think that consciousnss would be there but their consciousness would be based totally on the physical as there would be no inspiration for any more complex thoughts than that.

[noonespecial]

Good question.  Yes, I think self-awareness would be there.  I also think that consciousnss would be there but their consciousness would be based totally on the physical as there would be no inspiration for any more complex thoughts than that.

 

Yes, so the level of consciousness would be limited to the needs of the physical body, hunger pangs, reproductive urges, the need to defecate, etc - but there would be no self-conceptualization; which must be based on the multiplicity of diverse and oft-contradictory sensory experience. (Perhaps we throw around the word consciousness when we really mean self-concpetualization)?

 

Then what seperates the human born into a sennsory deprivation from an amoeba, without external input I would say nothing,  our grandiose human consciousness is not so grand outside of nature,  so consciousness is a self-sustaining loop wherein we seem to be agents of nature's ability to self-reflect.

[silent thunder]

Good stuff. 

 

Recently someone said something that intrigued me deeply, regarding awareness and the senses. 

We may be limited in how much we can observe externally with our senses, but as to turning inward, there is no limit.

Thus we may use our senses to transcend our senses.

 

I just woke up.  What a great joy to be able to start my day with these thoughts, instead of the same old... I need some tea.  I'm going to have some fun pondering that black box idea for sure...

[soaring crane]

I'm conscious of what I'm looking at and I'm aware of what's in my field of peripheral vision. Simultaneously.

[noonespecial]

I'm conscious of what I'm looking at and I'm aware of what's in my field of peripheral vision. Simultaneously.

 

Reminds me of a quote from Rebbe Breslov,

 

"There is nothing very mysterious about free will. You do what you want to do, and don't do what you don't want to do."

[Marblehead]

I'm conscious of what I'm looking at and I'm aware of what's in my field of peripheral vision. Simultaneously.

Yeah, but you are not always where you think you are.

[soaring crane]

Yeah, but you are not always where you think you are.

 

quite probably. But that doesn't actually change my perspective of where I am.

[Marblehead]

quite probably. But that doesn't actually change my perspective of where I am.

That caused me a thought.  Back in the days when I used to travel as often as I could one of the most excitied times of any journey was when I got lost and had no freakin' idea where I was or in which direction I should head.  (But I did see some beautiful places I never would have seen otherwise.)

[dwai]

I'm curious how others define/experience consciousness and awareness.  Is there a distinction for you or how your teachers describe them?

 

As I experience it, consciousness is temporary and object based, closely related to personality and mind, while awareness is primal, abiding and beyond action or form.  Consciousness generates and responds to symbols, ideas/thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations and personality.  Awareness seems to be an abiding, underlying almost causative potential, unchanging and... thorough, penetrating... pervasive... ineffable.  Awareness is not a thing, yet feels like a presence but that's misleading as it implies a thing, which contradicts the experience of it.  So presence comes close but misses the mark for me.

 

The more I ponder it, the more my sense and definition of awareness seems to mirror the descriptions I've read of Tao; ineffable, timeless, pervasive, foundational, omnipresent, empty, inexhaustible.  Of course, I'm describing my sense of awareness, from my own defined process of consciousness.  Is it possible to separate awareness from any thing?  I can't imagine how, or under what circumstances.

 

My sense of it, is that any thing that can maintain a form, any form, or presence of any kind within what we refer to as the physical universe, possesses awareness, otherwise, nothing would coalesce and no form would be present.  Yet not every thing exhibits consciousness, or is capable of it.

 

Stones don't give me the impression they are thinking, yet I can't shake the indelible sense that they and all else, share abiding awareness.

I've heard of it being described as "consciousness" and "objectless consciousness". I think what you are referring to as "awareness" is "objectless consciousness". Objectless consciousness is that which is left when all objects disappear (like in the gap between thoughts during meditation). It is as you describe awareness. In Indian traditions, the Mind is what you call consciousness...a field of thought objects. 

Edited April 28, 2015 by dwai

[Marblehead]

I've heard of it being described as "consciousness" and "objectless consciousness". I think what you are referring to as "awareness" is "objectless consciousness". Objectless consciousness is that which is left when all objects disappear (like in the gap between thoughts during meditation). It is as you describe awareness.

I hold to a concept somewhat like that.

[wilfred]

i'll have a stab - consciousness is the arising and awareness where it's arising from. based on conditions, subjective vs permeating through everything, 'objectless'.