Unconsciousness

[Starman]

Based on my own experiences and from what I have read and heard, for now I am willing to embrace that what we call “unconsciousness” is but another state of consciousness; notwithstanding any variation there may be between consciousness and awareness. A person “blacks out,” and when they come to they say they blacked out and experienced “nothing.” That “nothing” may be the very same “void,” or “emptiness,“ many have described experiencing in quiet meditation.

Just because we cannot identify it does not mean that there is nothing there to identify; again notwithstanding; all that is, and is not, is beyond concepts of identification. We can choose to see in categories to help us organize our thoughts or we can choose to see as one holistic organism. Often the categories become tribal in nature, while a holistic view knows that this wave is the product of a previous wave, and will product a future wave, they are all connected and even more than that, they are one and the same. Still it might be fair to say that while everything is consciousness, not everything is self-aware. This refers to organic and inorganic (rocks, etc.) life, but I am not the one to say who, or what, is self aware and which is not.

In my opinion there is no such thing as nothing, and if we play on words nothing can translated into “no-thing.” No things indicate no identity. When we “black out” there is no identity; nothing to identify with. However, we are absolutely never isolated. Just because we say there is nothing does not mean that there is not anything. Things being limited transitional images, over seconds or eons in time, the absence of “things“ implies a oneness; it also implies no space or time. Can that be what is experienced when we “black-out?” Now not everyone who blacks out experiences nothingness.

Some people do say they “blacked out” and experienced visions, or something else; in these cases “blacking out” refers to the physical body losing consciousness but not necessarily the person losing their awareness. In a state of unconsciousness it is our awareness which transitions, and one may not yet have the perception to remain aware in an environment of nothingness. The presence of consciousness becomes fine at its core and the coarseness of human consciousness, and thus human awareness, often needs to be refined to be aware of the presence of nothing, like the presence of silence. It is like your body going to sleep but you remain awake and are fully aware that you are dreaming while your physical body is fast asleep. A lot of people have had the experience of knowing they were dreaming while they were asleep. This also requires an astute awakening to maintain on a regular basis. Would we say that most people sleep walk through human life? A judgment call which I have often heard others make.

Awareness in the dream can take place, and does take place, in many ways. Dreams inside of dreams, and we can better manipulate the dream stuff when our physical body is sleeping and our mind is at rest. An anesthesiologist will “put a patient under” who is having major surgery; and they gauge various “levels of consciousness” in so doing. Still, former patients have reported being aware of the entire surgery even while their body slept “unconscious” on the operating room table. I really do not know if there is any such thing as “unconsciousness,” and am beginning to see it more as a lack of “awareness.” An ant is conscious but what is its’ day to day awareness when compared to the average human being. So its’ all relative; in relationship to something or other; its’ all related, as in brothers and sisters, as in family, etc.

Peace

[marshmallow10]

Originally Posted by Starman

In my opinion there is no such thing as nothing, and if we play on words nothing can translated into “no-thing.” No things indicate no identity. When we “black out” there is no identity; nothing to identify with. However, we are absolutely never isolated. Just because we say there is nothing does not mean that there is not anything. Things being limited transitional images, over seconds or eons in time, the absence of “things“ implies a oneness; it also implies no space or time. Can that be what is experienced when we “black-out?” Now not everyone who blacks out experiences nothingness.

I used to think that as well. Nothing is always something. But maybe that's just in our existence. There's always an opposite so you can recognize something. Without dark how would you recognize light, without wet there would be no dry etc. So without nothing, or non-existence how would there be existence? Maybe non-existence or nothing is outside of the universe? But there's no way to imagine it because how can you imagine nothing?

[iamthat]

We normally consider consciousness in the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep (or unconsciousness). Advaita Vedanta puts forward a fourth state - turiya.

Wikipedia offers the following:

Advaita also posits the fourth state of Turiya, which some describe as pure consciousness, the background that underlies and transcends these three common states of consciousness. Turiya is the state of liberation, where ... one experiences the infinite and non-different, that is free from the dualistic experience, the state in which non-origination, is apprehended. ... The Turiya state is where the foundational Self is realized, it is measureless, neither cause nor effect, all pervading, without suffering, blissful, changeless, self-luminous, real, immanent in all things and transcendent. Those who have experienced the Turiya stage of self-consciousness have reached the pure awareness of their own non-dual Self as one with everyone and everything, for them the knowledge, the knower, the known becomes one, they are the Jivanmukta.

Peace

[Starman]

Originally Posted by marshmallow10

I used to think that as well. Nothing is always something. But maybe that's just in our existence. There's always an opposite so you can recognize something. Without dark how would you recognize light, without wet there would be no dry etc. So without nothing, or non-existence how would there be existence? Maybe non-existence or nothing is outside of the universe? But there's no way to imagine it because how can you imagine nothing?

I embrace that there are things in our human existence which do not exist beyond human existence; but I feel that "nothingness" does not necessarily mean "non-existence." As I stated, to me "nothing" pertains to things; like when we go into an empty room and say there is nothing in this room, but there is something in the room and that something is you.

Can an observer truly acknowledge nothingness when they themselves are something which is present and observing what they refer to as "nothing?" An in my opinion we are present even when we can not feel, or grasp, our own presence. We are present in consciousness even when we are unaware of our own presence. So my existence may be defined by me but my definitions are inadequate in a realm where identity does not exist.

[Starman]

Originally Posted by iamthat

We normally consider consciousness in the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep (or unconsciousness). Advaita Vedanta puts forward a fourth state - turiya.

Wikipedia offers the following:

Advaita also posits the fourth state of Turiya, which some describe as pure consciousness, the background that underlies and transcends these three common states of consciousness. Turiya is the state of liberation, where ... one experiences the infinite and non-different, that is free from the dualistic experience, the state in which non-origination, is apprehended. ... The Turiya state is where the foundational Self is realized, it is measureless, neither cause nor effect, all pervading, without suffering, blissful, changeless, self-luminous, real, immanent in all things and transcendent. Those who have experienced the Turiya stage of self-consciousness have reached the pure awareness of their own non-dual Self as one with everyone and everything, for them the knowledge, the knower, the known becomes one, they are the Jivanmukta.

Peace

Thank you for sharing that. Here is a quote from Krishnamurti and while it is about meditation I think it is also about consciousness, as everything in my opinion is about consciousness and awareness, and I endeavor to speculate how awareness rises from consciousness.

"Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy - if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.

So, meditation can take place even when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of birds or looking at the face of your wife or child.

It's curious how all-important meditation becomes; there's no end to it nor is there a beginning to it. It's like a raindrop: in that drop are all the streams, the great rivers, the seas and the waterfalls; that drop nourishes the earth and man; without it, the earth would be a desert. Without meditation the heart becomes a desert, a wasteland."

[lemex]

Dreams are very honest that's all I'm aware of. They can shake us to our core.

Isn't it amazing that nothing is not a reality. When I first realized this it scrared me, something exists when it should not. Nothing isn't real. How enternal it is.

[Raziel]

The example using rocks is an interesting one in relation to the blackness.

Bear with me ..


Dogs potentially see odour as well as smell it. When they mark their territory not only is the smell there but also what you could describe as a beam of light straight upwards. Or simpler still their own personal Bat signal!

Obviously we don't see this signal as humans.

It might very well be that rocks communicate in a similar fashion that we cannot see or even conceptualise. Rock-wifi or something.

The blackness might require something other than our senses to navigate.

Just like we can't see infrared or can't hear ultrasound it's possible that the blackness requires a similar ultra version before we can comprehend what it is.

.

[Starman]

Originally Posted by knightoflenity

The example using rocks is an interesting one in relation to the blackness.

Bear with me ..


Dogs potentially see odour as well as smell it. When they mark their territory not only is the smell there but also what you could describe as a beam of light straight upwards. Or simpler still their own personal Bat signal!

Obviously we don't see this signal as humans.

It might very well be that rocks communicate in a similar fashion that we cannot see or even conceptualise. Rock-wifi or something.

The blackness might require something other than our senses to navigate.

Just like we can't see infrared or can't hear ultrasound it's possible that the blackness requires a similar ultra version before we can comprehend what it is.

.

Some very wonderful descriptions, which I can relate to, and in my opinion we are limited by our physical senses, but our senses extend deep within us far removed from the physical, and as they extend deep within us their quality changes. Insight has a different quality than outer sight but they are extensions of each other, as are physical outer touch and inner feelings of touch; in my opinion they are all connected.

There is no “this” or “that” as everything is an extension of everything else, everything comes out of everything else and everything goes back into everything else; they are all the same thing just vibrating at a different frequency; taking on various qualities, etc. Now we do have the ability to change our own frequency, transform our own quality, as well as influence the frequencies, or quality, of others.

The blackness void may be experienced as nothing because of our own level of comprehension, or lack thereof, and the conscious inability to become aware beyond what we may call “something.” In quiet meditation we can close our eyelids and look into the darkness and that darkness becomes spacious, expanding, taking on a presence of its’ own. My hypothesis is that the darkness is nothing more than the shadow of the light, and that applies to the human concepts of “good“ and “bad“ as well.

When all of creation is but an image projected by light, that image is but a reflection, the Self reflecting itself to itself, although the reflection is also the Self. Nonetheless, the reflection itself creates a refraction, or what we call “duality,” but beyond the reflection there is no duality; there is only oneness. If it has form, in my opinion, then it is but a reflection; if it is a “thing” then it is but a reflection. All reflections are illusions, or they are illusionary; in transit on their way to another transformation.

This is just my cosmological view about how we humans generally view “something” and “nothing.” Rocks just well may be able to communicate among themselves, and we should realize that our human language limits our understanding of communication. The foundation of my point of view is that there can be no such thing as nothing because that which I have come to know as “God” is infinite, and there is no place, in darkness or light, where that divine presence is not; so how can we say there is nothing when God is present everywhere? In addition “God” to me is not a “thing,” because things have borders and boundaries, they can be framed and defined, unlike what I have come to know as “GOD.” Yes, I have somewhat of a pantheistic point of view, among other things.

[God-Like]

One is never unconscious while entertaining the mind .

Most including myself just don't remember being conscious 24/7



x daz x

[r6r6]

God/Universe has access to mind?

Humans and some other animals to some degree, have access to mind.

"G"od/"U"ninverse includes metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concepts, not access to them.

There exists the following;

1} a finite integral set we label as God/Universe aka Uni-V-erse

2} Finite set of metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concepts of cosmic laws/principles ergo what is possible is finite, limited.

3} A finite set concepts of that,that which is not possible.

Spirit-1, metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concept,
----------line of demarcation----------------------

Spirit-2, physical/energy { fermions and bosons }

Spirit-3, metaphysical-2{ gravity ( ) }

Spirit-4, metaphysical-3{ dark energy )( }

r6