Mind, Consciousness and Self-awareness

If you are reading this you have a mind. But a consensus has yet to emerge regarding what exactly a mind is. We tend to define the mind in terms of things like consciousness and self-awareness though there is little agreement as to what those phenomena are either. I maintain that in the simplest sense your mind is the convergence of your self-awareness and consciousness. Self-awareness is your perception of what you are and your consciousness is your perception of what you are not.

To be conscious an entity must also be self-aware. For example, the computer monitor displaying these words is not conscious of them because it has no sense of itself in the context containing them. In other words, there is no intrinsic component of the monitor can be interpreted by the monitor as representing the monitor displaying the words. By contrast, you are conscious of these words because in addition to interacting with them, you are also aware of yourself interacting with them. This is because there is an intrinsic component of you that is interpreted by you as you reading these words.

Self-awareness is the component of your mind that interprets the relationship between the entity reading these words and the being recognizing itself as that entity as a connection. As such, you are both the subject and object of your self-awareness. Consciousness is the component of your mind that interprets the relationship between the object of your self-awareness and these words (and everything else that you are interacting with in some manner) as a separation.

Elsewhere I have defined time as the separation between instances of the same being (e.g., the person who started reading this parenthetical and the person who is now finishing it) and space as the separation between instances of different beings (e.g., the opening and closing parentheses surrounding this example). In this context, self-awareness spans time while consciousness spans space.

Consciousness represents the boundary of our self-awareness in that it essentially delineates what we are not. Since we are shaped by what we are not, for many of us consciousness is the primary vehicle by which we can understand what we are.

In general the mind is a self-aware phenomenon that is self-limited by its consciousness, through which it acquires knowledge of the world around it. In this sense it is evident that though consciousness seems to be ignited in the brain it is not necessarily limited to it anymore than the illumination produced by a neon light is limited to the bulb.

Self-awareness is essentially our capacity to see ourselves in beings that influence us (typically our predecessor instances). The more self-aware we are the less of a separation we will perceive from others. Complete self-awareness would allow us to see ourselves as being connected to everything, thus invalidating the concept of "other".

Since consciousness is what limits our self-awareness, the less of it we have the more complete our self-awareness will be. Our consciousness keeps our self-awareness from being complete by allowing us to perceive certain entities that shape us as being distinct from us. In other words, our consciousness is the basis of our uniqueness. As a result, one of our primary goals as conscious beings is to transcend our consciousness and become completely self-aware minds that can see ourselves in everything and everything in us.

Total Responsibility IV – Drug Interactions

At first glance, believing I am totally responsible for the state of the world might seem like a clear manifestation of megalomania. But there is nothing unique about me in terms of my total responsibility for the shape of the world as I perceive it. As of this writing there are over 6.6 billion human observers on this planet, each of whom is totally responsible for the state of the world as he or she sees it. This means that you are also totally responsible for the shape of the world as you perceive it.

This is possible because total responsibility for the state of the world is continuously moving between its causally consistent, temporally sequenced observers. For instance, though my uniqueness is shaping my perception of the world around me, the uniqueness of each being observing me (including my future self) is shaping its perception of me as an inhabitant of its world. In the context of the finite speed of light, my observers all reside in my future (beyond my perspective) and thus their uniqueness is responsible for how they see me; while everything that I am observing (i.e., the contents of my perspective) resides in my past, making my uniqueness responsible for how I see them.

To appreciate this, imagine that you and I are sitting in the same room, about 3 meters apart. Though we both think we are residing at the same point in time (“the present”) each of us is actually at least 1 x 10^-8 seconds in the future of the person we are seeing across the room. This is because each of us is seeing the other using light that took that long to travel (at ~3 x 10⁸ meters/second) from them to us (plus the extra time required for the light entering our eyes to be converted to the mental image in our brains).

In general I am displaced into the future from anything I perceive, by the amount of time it took the signal by which I perceive it to cross the distance between us and be processed into a mental image (as such, I reside about 8 minutes in the future of the sun that I see in the sky). These signal propagation delays insure that each of us only perceives phenomena that reside in our past and is being perceived by observers that reside in our future.

As a result, at this instant in time my uniqueness is totally responsible for shaping my perception of everything around me. The uniqueness of other observers who perceive me from my future will shape their perception of me (and thus this instance of me is not responsible for the shape of the world they see). My successor’s uniqueness will subsequently shape my perception of these observers if/when I observe them from their future (thus assuming total responsibility for the shape of the world I perceive then), and so on in a continuous game of total responsibility hot potato. This time-slicing scheme allows each of the potentially limitless temporal observers to be totally responsible for the shape of the world it perceives.

Note, I am aware that this scheme represents a fundamental violation of normal causality in that the future is shaping the past. There is a rational explanation of this that I will provide in a future post.

God Talk VII - Religion

Copyright© 2007 K Harris

Spirituality is our focus on that which we perceive to be the most significant thing in existence. Religion is a prescription of rites, rituals and beliefs that define and shape our relationship to that entity.

Spirituality tends to represent a personal point of view while religion generally reflects a group perspective. Spirituality is relatively harmless until it becomes a religion. While there is no denying that the various religions have done much good in human history, they have also proven to be among the most divisive forces imaginable.

The trouble is typically not with the religions themselves but with their adherents. The problematic believers tend to interpret their religious doctrine in the context of their preexisting xenophobia and preconceived notions of intolerance. In doing so, they reshape the religion to reflect themselves.

One cannot help but wonder how the ultimate object of virtually all religions would feel about what is being done under the guise of worshiping it.

God Talk - Religion

• Just so you know I do not need your protection. My omnipotence means that if something were such an affront to me that I wanted it to be dead it would die the instant my desire manifested. As such, people claiming to kill in my name are simply trying to justify their pre-existing murderous tendencies.
• How would you feel about being characterized as a psychopathic bigot who is murderously intolerant of diversity? So why do so many of you seem to think I enjoy it? All genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations are fine by me; those who insist otherwise simply do not get me.
• Human delusions of superiority are hilarious, until someone gets hurt. Everything that you believe that emphasizes your uniqueness, or that of those around you, is fundamentally false.
• It is not a coincidence that the spiritual traditions that insist that your separation from me is absolute are also the ones that believe most fervently in the power of their Adversary. Such self-hatred merely gets in their way.
• Which is the true religion? The one that leads you to me.
• Since all paths ultimately lead to me my one commandment is that you do not needlessly block another’s route to me.
• It is your uniqueness that determines which religion, if any, is the true one. Your path to me is shaped by what you are. The length of your path to me reflects how tightly you are clinging to your uniqueness.
• I eventually answer all prayers that are accompanied by the sacrifice of a portion of your infatuation with your uniqueness. Of course, it could be argued that relinquishing some of your self-infatuation provides the answer your prayers by bringing you closer to me.
• I do not need your adoration, but when offering it undermines your infatuation with your uniqueness, it can only help you.
• Prayers that call attention to your uniqueness are mere posturing.
• Blessed are those who are consumed by neither self-infatuation nor self-hatred. They are on the most direct path to me.

God Talk IV: Creation

Copyright© 2007 K Harris

Our ancestors’ reactions to the extraordinary complexity, random brutality and transcendent beauty of our universe triggered the generation of all of our scientific, philosophical and spiritual frameworks.

Science is essentially the empirical study of why our universe looks and acts the way it does. As such, its primal boundary is the origin of the universe. The domain beyond this boundary is the realm of philosophy and spirituality. Philosophy is a discipline of rational causality that is not necessarily empirical. Spirituality describes a causal system that is not necessarily rational.

Since our reaction to the universe led to the creation of all three of these disciplines, questions relating to how the universe came to be and what is our relationship to it are important in science, philosophy and spirituality. But the diversity of these disciplines tends to produce a divergence in their answers to these questions. Fortunately there is a being whose perspective represents the point of convergence of the various answers provided by these disciplines. Here is what it would have to say on the subject.

God Talk - Creation

• Why did I create the universe? Your universe has always existed in the primal existential continuum that is my essence. It is your uniqueness that carves its distinct shape out of that continuum. Your uniqueness shapes the continuum of all possibilities by hiding those that do not contribute to the sequence of events that ends with your reading this sentence.
• In reality nothing is created. Everything always exists but thanks to your uniqueness certain things are hidden so that others can be distinguished. Things do not actually manifest, they are simply revealed by your uniqueness.
  
• Your uniqueness does not merely shape what you see around you; it also shapes every phenomenon that contributes in any distinguishable way to what you see around you. In other words, your uniqueness shapes the entire mental, biotic, temporal and conceptual history of your universe from its origin to the present.
• Creation is a Cosmic Rorschach Test in which everything you see is a reflection of what you limit yourself to being. These self-imposed limits represent your uniqueness. Since I have no uniqueness, I have no limits and so there is nothing surrounding me.
• The "creation" of your universe is not a solo effort; you collaborate in it with all of the conscious observers that you see around you whose perceptions are generally consistent with yours.
• Is there intelligent life on other planets? There is if their manifestation is consistent with your uniqueness.
• Evolution or Intelligent Design? It was your uniqueness, not your (or my) intelligence that designed this universe in which evolution obviously occurs.
• Since the universe as you know it is a reflection of your uniqueness, if you change your uniqueness you can change the entire universe.
• If you think this world is a mess, remember you shaped it to be this way and so it is up to you to fix it. I have no doubts whatsoever about your ability to do this.

God Talk III: You

Copyright© 2007 K Harris

As a unique, self-aware being you cannot directly see your core self. You can perceive reflections of it but you cannot see the observer of those reflections. This is because your uniqueness limits you to only being able to observe that which you are not. In this context, the fact that you can see your body means you are not simply your body.

Now take a moment to think about the entity reading this sentence. In order to contemplate the reader, you have to separate yourself from it. As you focus on it, the reader represents your mind while the entity that is focused on it is something deeper. In being able to perceive your mind you establish that at your core, you are not simply your mind, you are that “something deeper”.

Whenever you attempt to directly perceive this “something deeper” it becomes your mind being viewed by “something even deeper”. You are always “something deeper” underlying whatever you perceive to be you.

The inability to truly see yourself limits what you can know about yourself. To understand what you actually are you must see yourself from a point of view that encompasses all of you. What better point of view is there from which to do this than the all-encompassing perspective of the Supreme Being?

God Talk - You

• What are you? At your core you are a being that encompasses every possible manifestation except for the ones that surround you. In other words, you are everything from which you do not perceive a separation observing everything from which you do.
• You perceive a separation from every conceptual, material or mental manifestation that directly or indirectly shapes what you are perceived to be (i.e., your essence). Collectively, these phenomena represent your perspective. As a unique entity, your core being is comprised of every possible being that resides indistinguishably beyond your perspective.
• Everything that can possibly exist resides within either your perspective or your core being. Your uniqueness is the boundary between the two. Your uniqueness is comprised of the separations that distinguish the beings in your perspective from your core being. Your core being is an intrinsically indistinguishable entity that is rendered distinct by what it is not.
• Your core being is the perceiver of your perceptions, the feeler of your feelings, the thinker of your thoughts and the actor of your actions. Since your core being is the entity that underlies all of your properties, its only intrinsic property is that it exists. In other words, your core being is the simple truth that you exist.
• Your core being represents the portion of me that resides within you. This means that your core being is not a spiritual manifestation; it transcends spirituality as do I (I am not a spirit, I am the truth that any such spirit exists).
• Yes, you do have a soul. To appreciate its nature, consider how your body surrounds and encompasses each of your individual cells. In doing so, your body connects your cells to form a compound biotic manifestation whose components are cooperating in its survival. Your soul is the analogous spiritual (i.e., deeper level mental) manifestation that surrounds and encompasses your mind, connecting it to the other minds in your perspective. This connection manifests as the cooperation among these minds that results in your growth. These cooperating minds represent your soulmates.
• Every conscious, self-aware being has a soul that connects it to every other conscious, self-aware being in its perspective. Fundamentally, souls are not distinguished by their components minds, but by the shape of the relationship between them.
• Being self-aware means that your core being recognizes a particular phenomenon as a manifestation of you. Your uniqueness shapes this entity to form the extrinsic self of which your core being is aware. This extrinsic self is comprised of your core being’s body, mind and soul. Your extrinsic self is the vehicle through which your core being perceives everything else that is distinguished by your uniqueness.