Um, within experience, it seems like the identity of consciousness or awareness appears to be kind
of, as we've said, ever-present and has always been and always will be.
Um, yet when I approach this understanding, kind of using a scientific worldview, I typically tend
to find it pretty difficult to convince myself that consciousness is not this emergent phenomenon
brought upon by biochemical means within our head. Um, as a fundamental rather than as kind
of an experience of consciousness, what ways have you proved to yourself that consciousness isn't,
in fact, not this emergent phenomenon beyond your own personal experience?
If consciousness were an emergent phenomenon of the brain or of anything, then if we're going
to be really scientific about this, let's subject that theory to the scrutiny of experience in order
to validate this theory. We would have to see or experience consciousness emerging from matter.
Now, have you ever had the experience of consciousness emerging or arising?
I've never had that. I feel like you should be able to, okay, yeah,
you've never had the experience of consciousness emerging. Has anybody or could anybody ever have
the experience of consciousness emerging? Has the phenomenon ever been observed by anybody?
Um, not emerging but being necessary for certain. No, but that wasn't your question. The question
was, is consciousness an emergent property of matter? Let's be rigorously scientific and
philosophical, let's stay on topic and not wriggle away where the evidence begins to stack up. So,
you have never had the experience of the emergence of consciousness. Nobody,
no one has ever had the experience of the emergence of consciousness.
But no one has ever had the experience of the disappearance of consciousness.
These are facts of experience that can be verified by all seven billion people,
everybody, as long as they understand the question, will come up with the same answer.
So, this is not just about my own personal experience. This, yeah, testing can be verified by
everybody. Now, given that this is the case, that nobody, none of the seven billion of us have ever
had or could ever have the experience of consciousness emerging from matter, what does
this do to our theory? Any other theory in science that had so little evidence would be trashed.
That's the scientific process: to come up with a theory, subject it to the evidence of experience,
and if it doesn't stand the scrutiny of experience, you modify your theory.
In an extraordinary departure from the norm, scientists, in relation to this one
topic, consciousness, they look for the evidence that consciousness is an emergent property of
matter. They don't find it, they've never found it. Normally, scientists would change their theory
in line with the evidence. They don't. They just stick to their theory and imagine that one day,
somebody will eventually witness consciousness emerging from matter. That is so unscientific.
It goes against the very method of science itself. If your theory doesn't stand up to
the scrutiny of experience, you don't dig your heels in and just believe your
theory. That's called religion. You change your theory in line with the evidence.
So, I think what the difficulty, in terms of, as you said, like, can I ever see consciousness be
emergent, but consciousness is the necessity, is like the piece that's necessary to actually become
aware of consciousness becoming emergent. So, it can't be a secondary, it has to be primary, right?
So, I guess, like, what I see is there's a bridge between people like us that kind of
are able to look at experience and gain these fundamental understandings about the world, and
those that are kind of using rational, like using science to try to predict and explain the world.
And there's this kind of disconnect between the two and one of those is exactly what we're trying
to talk about - what this consciousness is and if it's emergent or not. So in my mind, I'm trying to
come up with a way of if I can't prove that it's an emergent property in my head and the only way
you could prove it is to be the predecessor to consciousness, and then what is it that would
be aware of the emergence of consciousness? What is it that would witness consciousness emerging?
Consciousness, because consciousness is that which is conscious. So the difference is that
which witnesses everything. So in order for there to be the perception of consciousness
arising or emerging from matter, something which is conscious would have to be present prior
to the arising of consciousness. What you're saying is that consciousness would need to be
present prior to the arising of consciousness. This doesn't make sense. So why don't we just
start with a model of reality that is so far removed from our experience of reality and then
try to make them work? I mean, how convoluted is that? Why not, if we want to build a model
of reality, why not base our model of reality on experience and then try to build a model of
reality step by step, building a model of reality that at every step can be verified by experience?
So if we can't prove that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon because we can't,
um, the same way we can't prove that it's not and we can prove that it, like, how do we prove that
it's this eternal, infinite, um, substance rather than, like, this moment-to-moment
experience of being aware?
It is your experience that you are aware, yes.
So being aware must be your experience. Now, what is it that is aware of being aware?
What is it that is aware that there is awareness?
Simply the experience of the experience of that or, like,
the consciousness of that. But when I said, "It is your ex--yes, it is your experience
that you are aware, yes," well, that it is your experience that there is awareness,
what is it that knows that or has that experience? What is it that is aware that there is awareness?
Myself, yes. And what self are you referring to? Try to be more specific. What is it that is aware
that there is awareness? It's not a trick question, it's a very simple question, yeah.
Through the way I see it is that I myself am consciousness. Like, that is you. Consciousness,
you, awareness, are aware that there is awareness. Yes, so the experience of being aware,
I'm trying to establish is that the experience of being aware is awareness, is experience of itself.
It is awareness that is aware that it is aware.
Yeah, the fact of being aware is not known by something other than itself.
Yeah, it is you, awareness, that knows that you are aware. It's very simple, yeah. Okay, so that,
I think, establishes that you, awareness, know yourself. Yes, okay, now tell us about yourself.
I'm asking you to do your best with words. I'm asking you, awareness,
to describe your experience of yourself.
So, I become... or I... I become...
say... No, no, not about what you become. Tell us now. Yeah, the experience of being aware.
I'm in a state of knowing of a variety of different experiences.
You are aware. Tell us more about yourself, about your awareness.
I have no idea. Uh, okay, you have no idea. That's a good answer. Why do you find it so difficult?
You're quite right, by the way, to find it difficult. But why do you find it difficult?
Because all that I have is the experience of knowing specific forms of sensation.
Forms exactly. Exactly. If I asked you to describe the sensation of the soles of your
feet or the color of your walls or what you're thinking about or what you had for breakfast,
all of those, you would find it easy to tell us about them. Why? Because
they all have form. There's something objective to them that you can describe.
And I ask you to describe yourself. You look around, you can't find anything to say. There's
nothing. There's nothing objective there. And yet you are absolutely certain that you are aware.
Yeah, so there is that. There is being aware. It's something real. It has no objective qualities,
no form. And therefore, it cannot have any limitations because it has no form.
Any limitation would be form. I guess one piece that kind of, as you know, I want to stay on
track with you. Yeah, I'm asking you a question. How do you discover that awareness is eternal or
ever-present? That was your question. And I'm showing you the way to discover this. I want to
stay on track. Okay, so you've agreed awareness is your most fundamental experience. It is known by
you when you try to find it. You cannot find it, but you cannot describe it because it has no form.
Having no form, it has no limit. As in, having no limit, it cannot be said to be localized anywhere.
Because anything localized would have a form. Nor can it start or stop because something that starts
or stops in time has a limit. You've answered your question, Wesley. You have, without realizing it,
you have discovered that you, awareness, are without form. And therefore, eternal or infinite.
I think the part of it that I get stuck on is that even though in the present moment it's infinite,
I can't make the jump to say that it's eternally infinite. In the sense that things can come in and
out of existence and yet why is this not something that form can come in and out of existence?
Okay, and you have already agreed that yourself has no form.
Something without form cannot come in and out of existence or start and stop.
You're going the right way. You keep asking all these questions. Every objection you raise
is going to be met with the not, another not an idea. It's going to be met with your experience.
I'm going to push you back and your objections are very good, by the way. You're asking all
the right questions. But every time you ask a question, I hold up a mirror of experience to you
so that you discover for yourself that in your own experience of yourself,
you awareness are infinite. That is unlimited and eternal, that is ever-present.
I'm going to leave the conversation there, Wesley. You're on the right track. We can
revisit it again if you like. Keep going the way you're going, but just, it's beautiful,
the line of investigation you're embarking on. But be sure that you answer your questions,
that you go deeply into your actual experience, and that you respond to your questions and your
doubts from the perspective of experience. Do you feel that any of these questions can't be answered
directly from experience but have to be almost logically thought through in a sense of what is?
It can be logically thought through, and we are having a very rational conversation. We are. But
this rational conversation leads to the experience of understanding. The experience
of understanding can be formulated rationally, but the actual experience of understanding
itself is awareness. It is awareness of itself. It is not a rational experience.
A rational process may precede understanding, and the experience of understanding can
be expressed rationally. But the actual experience of understanding itself takes
place behind the mind or beyond the mind, and it's not itself a rational process.
That's one last quick thing.
Okay.
In your framework of, let's say, the universe of everything that is, is it a kind of like
a mutating form of consciousness in which we all are a piece of, or what is it like?
We're not a piece of anything because awareness, as we have just discovered, is infinite and
has no form. And therefore, it cannot be divided because anything that could be divided would have
a dividing line, some form. That there are no parts in consciousness.
Reality is a single, infinite, and indivisible whole. There are no parts of reality. There
are only parts from the limited and localized perspective of a finite mind.
The finite human mind is a prism that refracts the unity of being and makes it appear as ten
thousand things, ten thousand parts. So there are parts from the perspective of an apparent part.
But from the perspective of the whole, which is the only real perspective because it's all there
really is, there is nothing. There is just its own infinite, indivisible self. And it knows there
is in itself. There is nothing other than itself with which it could be related. And the name for
this absence of otherness is love. Love is the experience that there are not two, that there
is one. That is why love is another name for truth or reality. And love is one of the ways,
beauty, love, truth, these are all the same. Love is love, and beauty are one of the ways
that reality impresses itself upon us, makes itself known to us in our lives as human beings.
It's a pleasure to talk with you. I wish you the very best beginning with your line
of investigation. So, in shortly, don't stop short. Don't stop short of total satisfaction.