Consciousness Cannot Have Evolved
 

https://iai.tv/articles/consciousnes...lved-auid-1302

"In other words, what the author calls the ‘functions of consciousness’ aren’t the cognitive tasks performed by consciousness, but simply those visible to consciousness—i.e. reportable through conscious introspection. Why call these tasks the ‘functions of consciousness’ if they aren’t what consciousness does, but merely what it sees?"

Sounds a lot like observing or witnessing.

"Phenomenal consciousness cannot have evolved. It can only have been there from the beginning as an intrinsic, irreducible fact of nature."

Body-mind - Biological machine with no free will and not the seat of consciousness.

Consciousness - Manifested or reflected as mind (and everything else).

Hi,

My understaning is that human consciousness is just now starting to evolve. What we see first are all the ugly things we have created from the depth of our ignorance.

John

I'd say Consciousness always was, is and always will be and independently so. What evolves are the forms that are illuminated by consciousness, one of them being the human mind.

"God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man." ~ Ibn Arabi

rock >> (instinct) >> plant >> (emotion) >> animal >> (intellect) >> man >> (intuition) >>


.

Yes I agree. The human mind being the human intellect.

My understaning is that the intellect isolates itself from core wisdom. That there is a natural connection it has with the heart and the 3rd eye. However it needs to be trained through us to integrate itself with those aspects of self.

I am curious about your perspective on that process.

John

Yes. But maybe consciousness develops wisdom as a result of all these experiences in evolving forms. It has been said that knowledge is the science of the mind while wisdom is the science of the Soul. Such wisdom is like the diamond, created by millions of years of pressure.

Peace

Honestly, I haven't a clue as to the process or interface between Consciousness and mind/intellect/intuition, etc...

One possibility is Orch OR as put forth by Sir Roger Penrose and Dr. Stuart Hameroff. They posit it's only a primitive consciousness, a proto-consciousness interwoven in the fine-scale structure of space-time at the Planck Scale, but maybe that's how it manifests in duality and how we perceive it? If the hypothesis eventually ends up holding water, that is.

It is a very interesting hypothesis, I'll grant them that, and Penrose is perhaps the foremost expert on the structure of space-time.

Materialism is another thing I abandoned a long time ago, even before I gave up on finding a single objective reality. Everything, particularly science, makes much more sense when one frees the mind from the limitations of materialism and objective realities.

Consciousness is only a hard problem for materialism. It is hard to get consciousness, especially the qualia, when starting with matter as the basis of reality. If we start with consciousness as fundamental, then everything else can be derived from it. Everything we experience is produced through the functions of consciousness. Space, time, and matter, are just some things consciousness creates within itself, from itself, to witness and observe. The body is just the seat it creates from which to witness the show, a perspective in first person point of view. Consciousness may not be the playwright, the plays have all been around for eternity, but it is the producer and director of the version which is performing in it’s own theater. It builds the stage and props, using itself as the raw materials. It sews the costumes, choosing one to wear.

When it sees all of the forms within itself, and sees itself within all of the forms, it knows no sorrow.

I like to think that consciousness, through this eternal cyclical dance of creation, experience, and destruction, is evolving toward something greater. Yet if consciousness is eternal, there is the problem of not having arrived at one's destination, no matter how slow one progresses, when one has had eternity to get there. Perhaps the destination is fundamentally unobtainable, we approach it asymptotically, always getting closer and closer in space, yet it is always infinitely distant in time.

And yet here we are. Consciousness. Wonderful, isn't it?

"God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man." ~ Ibn Arabi

+

Practice being in need of only a few things, for this is the closest thing to God, while the opposite is the farthest. (Crates of Thebes)


The rock is the one that needs less in order to exist, therefore, it is closest to the divine essence, being outside the strife of the animal kingdom.