The creator or the receiver of conciousness

[wenwu]

Hello

 

main stream science seems to push the idea that our brains are the creator of our consciousness, that we essential live in side out brains and nothing else.

 

However, i have heard a few people over the last few months putting forward that we are the receiver on consciousness. much like a radio picking up a transmission.

 

I'd like to know what other people think of these two points of view and how it affects your practice

[Marblehead]

A properly functioning brain allows for consciousness.  Consciousness allows for awareness.  That's about as far as I go with that.

 

[Geof Nanto]

I tend towards the notion that my brain, including its complex interconnections with my whole body, works like a receiver and amplifier of consciousness. Hence my practice includes my whole being, utilising, for example, Daoist Yang Sheng Fa (life-nourishing methods) such as food energetics, qigong and mediation. My environment is also important.  

 

See also https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/45429-the-divided-brain/#comment-789251

 

It's a vast topic though and I think a ‘don’t know’ attitude that allows total openness to new insight works well here, as it does with most all inner exploration.   Hence, I think Marblehead was wise to limit himself to a couple of sentences. 

Edited November 7, 2017 by Yueya

[silent thunder]

in my experience

 

awareness is the ground of what we call reality

and the source of all phenomena and noumena

 

my body and my personality associated with the beingness thereof

are alike to a wave in the ocean

 

where the water is awareness

the ocean is the flow of change

and my personality consciousness and body are one wave

distinct and seemingly separate as one wave

yet ever connected fully and completely with the entirety of the ocean

 

the body and its associated individual seeming consciousness

to me seems but a dense pattern of vibrations

that form within the field of awareness

 

 

[Wayfarer]

This is how I see it...

 

Once the brain is dead there is no consciousness or awareness - there is nothing aware of something. This does not mean that their is nothing at all. There is the Root as described in V16 of DDJ. Yet when it says "returning" there is no returning because we never leave the Root, for there is not a "we" there is only the Root - or Dao.

 

So, the Dao is simultaneously aware and unaware, conscious and unconcious.  It is both opposites, at the same time because they are expression of its energy - they are "traces" of the "Root" (see Chongxuandao.com). So, when "we" die, we are a trace that ends, an expression that stops - in the same way that a smile ends when we stop smiling, what that smile belonged to remains the same.

 

So, to speak in terms of consciousness or not is to be focussing on the trace and not the root - which V16 tells us is never changing, always still, yet vibrant - the "things" we see are ITself but we overlook the non-expression, the no-thing that is something, the vibrant that is still, the aware unconsciousness. 

 

This is what Chuang Tsu described as the Dao of Middle-Oneness "at the still centre of Dao, all things can be seen" - something like that. So the answer to the OP, is all things, all possibilities, we cannot in truth say one OR the other as it is both . 

 

 

[exorcist_1699]

Through  intercourse , certain amount  of yang jing (pre-heavenly qi ) was absorbed into a woman's body ,and with her breathing and nourishment , a fetus  grew into a baby and after 10 months, the  baby was  born; notice that a  spirit /soul only comes into the baby at the moment  when it comes into the world  , and it is said that  its  soft forehead is the gateway for this incoming alien .

 

After our birth, the originally  united , pre-heavenly qi starts to split into jing, qi and shen  : While  jing and qi settle down to the lower part of our body ,  shen rises to the  top; the gradual distraction of shen and its further attachment to senses as we grow up gives rise to the thing  we call consciousness ,  a pseudo-self , which is in fact  a mixture of the incoming , karma-borne spirit  and a distracted ,lost mind who hardly knows of anything  about itself . As  a famous Taoist saying  tells us :

 

＂　海枯可見底, 人死不知心＂

 

（＂While you can see the bottom of the sea when it  dries  up,  never can a man  knows his Mind even at the point of  his death")

 

 

 

 

Edited November 17, 2017 by exorcist_1699

[Small Fur]

On November 5, 2017 at 9:04 PM, wenwu said:

Hello

 

main stream science seems to push the idea that our brains are the creator of our consciousness, that we essential live in side out brains and nothing else.

 

However, i have heard a few people over the last few months putting forward that we are the receiver on consciousness. much like a radio picking up a transmission.

 

I'd like to know what other people think of these two points of view and how it affects your practice

 

 

Science mistakes the brain- which is simply a field or projector, to be the actual state of existence itself. And while our being can receive transmissions at many levels, it is not entirely a passive or irresponsible state.

 

Consciousness exists in and beyond all physical forms, including the mind. Physical forms- including the mind, are just one field from which consciousness can be transmitted. Form in relationship to formlessness is part of a co-creative reciprocal process in mutual transmission- our brains being only one small facet in that process.

 

When you are in this experiential realization, you are usually no longer in a state of direct or concerted practice, rather you are simply in a state of profound awareness of your integral being to the universe. 

 

In my life this is the condition of living in wei wu wei (effortless action) which again, is not a practice, but a state of living meditation.

 

 

[Boundlesscostfairy]

I think the question is.. How much can/does the brain measure consciousness.. or how much can it refine consciousness?