What is conscious?

I have a strong and clear answer to this critically important question of what is conscious or not.

My convictions about the nature of consciousness are so strong that I feel someday I will impact millions around the planet.

When I was a teenager I had a very high fever that caused my left brain to shut down. This was after having been both a young linguist and math prodigy (expressive of the two most primary skills of the left-brain ).  Through that immensely challenging experience I learned new things.

One of these things was  that“consciousness” is a “universal relationship of connection to which we tap into  – and dependent on how conscious and alive we are.”   This is not human brain centered. Left-brain functions are brain centered but not consciousness as a whole. The left brain create images and words that are projected outward – giving the illusory appearance of brain-centeredness.

As a result, any living or sentient thing  – animal and plant – can be called “conscious.“

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS

The subject of this article is  about something that involves everything we experience, namely….what Is consciousness?

William James once wrote that the discovery of precisely what is consciousness will make all other scientific discoveries pale by comparison. Taken from a special report by World Science

THE HARD PROBLEM – WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS

In sci­ence, plen­ty of prob­lems are hard. But per­haps just one is so grue­somely try­ing that sci­en­tists them­selves have termed it, well, “the hard prob­lem.” How does con­scious­ness arise—the liv­ing, aware ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing?

Some the­o­ries hold that it comes from, or is even iden­ti­cal to, elec­tri­cal and chem­i­cal pro­cesses known to un­fold in the brain. Oth­ers say it arises else­where: in some even sub­tler, yet-un­dis­cov­ered brain pro­cesses, or per­haps a mind-stuff quite dis­tinct from the brain—some call it a soul.

Few on ei­ther side claim to have fi­nal an­swers. But they of­ten ar­gue pas­sion­ately over who’s at least in the right play­ing field.

TESTING PROPOSITIONS
Now a group of re­search­ers has be­gun a study that they say might set­tle the is­sue. “We can ac­tu­ally test this, and put and end to all these de­bates,” said Sam Par­nia, a crit­i­cal care doc­tor at Weill Cor­nell Med­i­cal Cen­ter in New York.

Par­nia has spent years stu­dying re­ports that some car­di­ac-ar­rest pa­tients keep hav­ing clear, dis­tinct thought pro­cesses af­ter they’re clin­ic­ally dead and de­tect­a­ble brain ac­ti­vity has ceased. Pa­tients com­monly re­count these men­tal ex­pe­ri­ences, which of­ten in­clude see­ing a light at the end of a tun­nel, af­ter be­ing re­vived.

Parnia and colleagues aim to put these re­ports to a test: spe­cif­ic sounds will be played to such pa­tients, and they’ll be asked to re­call the sounds af­ter re­viv­ing. If they do, it would con­firm the ac­counts of thoughts with­out brain ac­ti­vity—sup­port­ing the claims that “con­scious­ness is a sep­a­rate, yet un­disco­vered sci­en­tif­ic ent­ity” from the brain, Par­nia wrote in a pa­per in the the April 23 ad­vance on­line edi­tion of the re­search jour­nal Med­i­cal Hy­pothe­ses.

CRITIQUES
The study “looks like an in­ter­est­ing pro­pos­al,” wrote Da­vid Chal­mers, a phi­los­o­pher and di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Con­scious­ness at the Aus­tral­ian Na­tional Un­ivers­ity in Can­ber­ra, Aus­tral­ia, in an e­mail. If the claims are con­firmed, it would “pose an in­ter­est­ing chal­lenge for sci­en­tists to ex­plain,” re­marked Chal­mers, au­thor of sev­er­al books on con­scious­ness.

But it probably would­n’t set­tle the most bas­ic, long­stand­ing dis­pute: wheth­er mind and brain are dif­fer­ent things, Chal­mers added. For in­stance, even if pa­tients’ claims are ver­i­fied, they “could be due to as­pects of brain func­tion­ing dur­ing car­di­ac ar­rest that are not cap­tured by the mea­sure­ments” Par­nia is us­ing, Chal­mers wrote. These mea­sure­ments are tak­en by elec­tro­en­ce­pha­lo­gram, a tech­nique in which sen­si­tive elec­trodes at­tached to the head rec­ord elec­tri­cal brain ac­ti­vity.

TRIALS AND PROTOCOLS
Par­nia said the tri­als be­gan on a pi­lot ba­sis in Jan­u­ary at two U.K. hos­pi­tals with 10 pa­tients; he aims to ex­pand the study to oth­er coun­tries and re­cruit over 1,000 pa­tients.

Per­haps the most strin­gent test in the study is al­so the one that ad­dresses the most ex­tra­or­di­nary no­tion. Crit­ic­ally ill pa­tients some­times re­port “out-of-body” ex­pe­ri­ences in which they feel they have floated out of their own bod­ies and are watch­ing them­selves from above.

Mark well: Par­nia is not test­ing wheth­er pa­tients gen­u­inely feel their minds have floated away. He wants to test wheth­er the minds ac­tu­ally do float away—a con­tro­ver­sial idea to say the least. His team plans to place pic­tures stra­te­gic­ally around pa­tients’ rooms where they’re vis­i­ble only from near the ceil­ing. Pa­tients would la­ter be asked about the im­ages. “Thus, the claims of con­scious awareness and out-of-body ex­pe­ri­ences will be tested in­de­pen­dent­ly,” he wrote in the pa­per.

FOR OR AGAINST AN “OUTRAGEOUS” VIEW?
He ad­mit­ted some would find the idea out­land­ish. A study pub­lished in 2002 found that just elec­tric­ally stim­u­lat­ing spe­cif­ic brain ar­eas could trig­ger an out-of-body-like ex­pe­ri­ence—ev­i­dence to some that the sensa­t­ions are il­lu­so­ry.

Dan­iel Den­nett, di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Stud­ies at Tufts Un­ivers­ity in Med­ford, Mass., wrote in an e­mail that he’s nev­er seen ev­i­dence that the events are an­ything more than hal­lu­cina­t­ions. The ex­pe­ri­ments, “if con­ducted with scru­pu­lous care,” will surely con­firm this, added Den­nett, a phil­o­so­pher who is al­so au­thor of sev­er­al books on con­scious­ness.

Yet, said Par­nia—in de­fense of the op­po­site view—pa­tients have ac­cu­rately re­ported events in their hos­pi­tal rooms that oc­curred dur­ing out-of-body ex­pe­ri­ences, while they were clin­ic­ally dead. “If we get 200 peo­ple, and all claim to have an out-of-body ex­pe­ri­ence but none can iden­ti­fy the im­ages, that would very much sup­port the idea that this is a false mem­o­ry,” Par­nia said. “If on the oth­er hand, 200 peo­ple iden­ti­fy these im­ages… then we’d have to ac­cept that may­be hu­man con­scious­ness, as bi­zarre as it may sound, could be non-local to the brain.”

Tag: What Is Consciousness

Toward A New Science Of Consciousness

In our ongoing series of posts on consciousness here we focus on the movement towards  a new science of consciousness. To envision that, we really need to carefully define our two key terms: science and consciousness.

Science
It is word derived from the Latin “scientia” meaning knowledge. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary refers more specifically to a “knowledge attained through study or practice… knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws, esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world.”

Forms Of Science
Here we refer to both a) the strict discipline that uses “the scientific method” for observing and experimenting rather than just vaguely believing in something about our world, and b) the body of knowledge that results from applying this method. There is also pure science looking for facts and applied science seeking applications of those facts tied together to form theories.

Consciousness
All words are pointing tools used to separate elements of our consciousness, and consciousness itself might point to the whole unseparated whole. Webster, not surprisingly, gives several definitions for consciousness. These include a reference to any quality or state of being aware, whether of what’s within or outside; and whether of sensation, thought, emotion or again the whole of all conscious states – and whether we are awake, aware, present, oriented or in dream and altered states. Lastly, and alternatively, it refers to “the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes.”  The etymology of the term conscious comes from an ancient Latin word conscius which means “to know.”

Thus the terms scientia (knowledge) and conscius (to know) thus beg for a marriage.

Contrast To Create Identity
Because “consciousness” partly refers to just about everything we ever have or could experience, or the medium thereof. It thus seems to be something very non-distinct. We, nevertheless, can give it a distinct identity via the quite stark contrast to “unconsciousness.” This is similar to defining a level of darkness by the level of the absence of light.

Close Association With Human Consciousness
Also we cannot experience consciousness in other life form. Thus we can only infer something like that exists (as by observing how animals act the way we do) . Otherwise the term “consciousness” is tied to just human awareness – and especially within our brain, including the higher order self-aware ways the brain might function.

Toward A Trans-Personal Definition Of Consciousness
Let us consider, in this context, the following alternative definition. It sees consciousness in an broader context than even the whole of what we humanly experience. Namely it postures consciousness to have some trans-personal and trans-human qualities as belonging or proprietary to all of nature. This is awfully hard, if impossible to prove with finality since we cannot really ever go outside of our own consciousness. We cannot do that trick anymore than we can jump over our own knees. Thus perhaps this is merely a pure inference. It is derived, however, of a kind of detached observation and therefore can form a quite sane theory. It is a theory of consciousness which can further be put to practice and even tested. This is why there is such a true need for a science of consciousness, namely and again to test such theories or to tell us which might be valid or not.

OUR DEFINITION
The definition here states that: consciousness forms the potentially universal relationship of connection in nature It thereby can form nature’s core essence  or what holds all of nature together as one to derivatively define its essential essence. This is like chocolate making up the essence of a chocolate bar.

Implications Of This Definition/Theory For A Science of Consciousness
The above definition and theory has some profound implications. If valid, if begs for a really new science of consciousness – and for that matter, a new science of nature as such. It focuses away from the presence of the western way of envisioning all of the essence of nature – as with the periodic table of elements or with the view of matter or energy defined mathematically predominating. The latter points primarily to a physical, machine-like world and wherein consciousness seems dispensable. It might either be of secondary, derivative, emerging,  irrelevant, or shadowy value. In more extreme views, consciousness is appears unreal, a phantom or the ghost in the machine.

Why Propose A Non-Mechanical Science of Nature?
How do we focus away from this western vision with our new definition in hand? There are two main ways. First, we don’t start with the intellectual bias of assuming that math symbols will exclusively lay open the bosom of nature. For the distinct identity of those symbols – those pointing and consciousness biasing tools -  is that they abstract  how best to separate all elements of consciousness, and b) the physical world is exactly what those symbols best point to or bias our attention towards. They cause us to prefer giving attention to what is most clearly separate in our awareness and also thus having separating surfaces in our vision. This is definitely the physical or material world or what is composed of “matter.” The assumption is that this scientific view is not a metaphysics or ideology of nature. But let us counter-culturally consider that  it is!

A Different Root Vision
Rather than starting then with this math-bound apriori metaphysics – an ideology that preferentially points towards certain directions – let us instead look more at the experience of both what is distinctly connective and separative consciousness – and in a pre-physical pure and raw experience of consciousness. Why chose this first duality? One side, the connective, points to the underlying oneness of nature, and the other as systematically away. Thus the origin of this duality is directly from nature’s oneness – as a true duality should and must be. This is why we don’t use words or pointing tools like yin yang, or matter, energy – each derived from a different cultural perspective.

Right/Left Brain Split
This alternative duality is easily correlated to the differences between our two main brain hemispheres, something well documented in empirical psychology.  The thesis here is that neurons do not produce this split in brain consciousness, or consciousness as such, but rather just tune in like a radio to the more primordial, connected, ocean of consciousness that precedes the separative-seen or surface-perceived physical world of our senses.

Conclusion
If taken seriously, the above view creates a deep and profound revolution in our whole knowing and understanding of nature as such or essentially. This is why a scientific study of consciousness can be so pivotal and important for different fields. This especially applies to the healing arts that treat consciousness ailments. Integral healing is usually a connection to wholeness, and if we do not understand the very root foundations of connection in nature, we will also not know how to truly, integrally and deeply heal ourselves and our loved ones. We can only treat them symptomatically because the understanding is surface-bound. Secondly, if science is exclusively associated with the quantitative study of what is but physical and material, and if at the very same time our new alternative definition of consciousness holds true, then any mechanical or traditional science of consciousness will predictably  fail.  It will fall flat on its face because it takes a very different, non-mechanical, non-mathematical, and non-consciousness-separative approach. This whole notion aims to overturn, to revolutionize, to form a global mind change in relation to the vision promoted by Galileo, Descartes, and Newton and which really established the inner foundation for our modern industrial/commercial civilization

The question of what is consciousness is not at all trivial nor ordinary.

NON-PHYSICAL & EVER-PRESENT
To approach consciousness, you have to know it isn’t something you can simply wrap your hands around. It is not physically contained. To make matters worse, consciousness is always present. You can’t escape it. You can go to China to study China but you have to be open to go everywhere to study consciousness. We can argue all is nothing but an experience of inner and outer, normal or altered consciousness. Do we limit ourselves to just human consciousness studies? To whole streams or separate bits of consciousness? But how do we approach this vast global subject – in order to know and explain what is consciousness itself beyond its different higher or lower levels, contents, maps, charts, diagrams, states or stages and laws? And what is the difference between real and artificial consciousness?

CRITICAL QUESTION TO ANSWER
This question is especially important when we are faced with a variety of “consciousness diseases.”  A diabetic may step on a nail and not  feel a thing. How is it that an Alzheimer’s patient can’t recognize a closest relative, child or spouse?  Thus knowing exactly and precisely “what is consciousness” may be the single most vital for our extremely health and environmentally challenged times. Consciousness disease pandemics are such a powerful sign that whatever we know falls short of deepest insight.

SOLVING THIS RIDDLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
In my own life, and after an experience where my left-brain shut down to help me see things in the raw, I came to the conclusion that – or began to put into words for the left brain, what is the right brain experience. From that came the following definition to understand collective and cosmic consciousness: Consciousness forms a potentially universal relationship of connection in all of nature. This means that matter, which we experience as separate things, is not really what nature’s root foundation is all about. It only appears so in an illusionary, phenomenal or surface consciousness, but not in  the deeper layers, levels and states of consciousness. Imagine the latter really connect everything. Also mathematics is not a well-designed tool to then understand that consciousness because math symbols point to consciousness separations or actually directly away from the essence of consciousness, which here is seen as forming the essence of nature. Can this create problems? You betcha. Take a look at global pollution or fact that life dies in the presence of large mixes of synthetic chemicals,. As you can see, if we try to seriously overturn the taproot premise of physics and chemistry, the math-bound view, this leads to a vast and deepest of revolutions in thought.

AS A NATUROPATH
As a naturopath, I have  applied this consciousness revolution to the natural healing arts, to help reverse cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and less serious consciousness diseases. Consciousness is real. We can directly induce, raise, awaken or bring it out of nature as simply as we pour water over a seed.  The reason we generally don’t or fail to fathom it is because we are knee-deep stuck in the 17th century’s stale, math-bound vision – the mechanical, unconscious, dead-bound view. Thus knowing “what is consciousness” becomes a the pivotal catapult for a most powerful revolutionary global mind change or shift in the whole of our lives.

What Is Consciousness

What is consciousness is no small topic at all.

LOSING ONE’S CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE LOSS OF A GREATEST TREASURE
There is hardly anything more sad and tragic in life than a progressive withering of one’s consciousness, especially after a life of richly gathering  knowledge, experience and wisdom. We see this especially in Alzheimer’s patients who can’t recognize their loved ones. This happen rather often and after long periods of  illness or insipid advancing old age. About half of Americans over 85 suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. With this receding of consciousness we lose the natural enjoyment, joy and zest for life. Life becomes a true drag. We may become chronically depressed with one foot in the grave. Colors then can become less vivacious, sounds less sonorous, thoughts less clear as the mind dulls, and motions slower and shaky. The ability to accomplish dreams is seriously impinged. We can’t pull really things off and pull them together.

WHY?
Whydoes all this tragically happen? Why isn’t life a more constant joyous upward journey? What causes this awful slippage into unconsciousness and how can it mostly be avoided or at least slowed?

COMPARED TO OTHER RICHES
Among one’s greatest life accomplishments a person can point to their livelihood  – as a  doctor, lawyer, accountant,  nuclear physicist, artist or entrepreneur. Or they may be a homemaker or parent. Without the knowledge however of what is consciousness, and thus the essence of life contained in different forms, all other riches and enjoyments of life can be taken away. One can say thus that the knowledge of what is consciousness (and as the essence of one’s life) is really the important study of all.

IF WE ONLY KNEW!
If we therefore and intimately knew what is consciousness and how it functions – whether how it rises or recedes – we could very greatly alter and improve the course of our lives.

BREAKTHROUGH KNOWLEDGE FOR HEALING
In my experience that kind of knowledge is entirely possible. It  is dear and precious to have. It can be accessible but only with an open, receptive mind that can think out of the box. One of my life aims, as I keep envisioning it,  is to write a popular book of  50 simple ways of healing the whole of ourselves, beginning thus first and foremost with a healing of our consciousness. This is because the healing of our consciousness is really at the foundation of all other major forms of healing.  This then supports and spreads out to improve the whole of our lives.

HOW I CAME TO THIS PERSPECTIVE
I came to this perspective through some trying experiences of my own, as outlined  in my bio. This influenced me to become a natural healer or naturopath – ever showing the path of healing journeys to others.

What Is Consciousness?

The question of what is consciousness is not at all trivial nor ordinary. For example, you can walk into a department store, go to the sports section and find a pair of skies. Or you can go to a library and find a book specifically about glass lamps. But where do you go to find what is consciousness or even just a book that truly describes what consciousness is?

NON-PHYSICAL & EVER-PRESENT
Consciousness isn’t something you can simply wrap your hand or mind around. It is not physically contained. No matter what we are engaged in, somehow consciousness is to a degree present. It is part of everything we experience. Does that mean it has no specific identity whose knowledge we can master?

CRITICAL QUESTION TO ANSWER
It has been my experience that this riddle can and must be solved. It becomes critically importance to know the answer when suffering from a variety of “consciousness diseases” - such as those evidence by neuropathy, lack of circulation where the bloodstream fails to carry consciousness to our cells. We see this also with diabetes and atherosclerosis. A diabetic will thus step on a nail and not necessarily feel anything. Someone who has had a stroke similarly has part of their brain or related body part no longer feeling. A sense of consciousness is lost. Alzheimer’s patients have this especially with certain brain functions. With metastatic cancer a given  illness spreads unnoticed to destroy life. Actually most all chronic and systemic diseases have some inner component that involves a recession of consciousness.  Thus knowing and understanding  exactly and precisely “what is consciousness” may be the single most important and vital of all question to answer in our times. This is why even Nobel Laureates in physics, chemistry, and biotechnology have fallen prey to Alzheimer’s disease. Somehow physics, chemistry, and biotech disciplines  have not yielded optimal answers to our key and central question.

PANDEMIC
Note also that consciousness diseases are very much pandemic in our times. This is powerful evidence that we are far afield in  our inner knowing of what is consciousness really and thus how to help support, nurture and retain rather than lose and hinder its presence.

SOLVING THIS RIDDLE
In my own life, I have come to certain powerful and clear conclusions on this critical question and not based on borrowing secondhand from the ideas of others I know or have read about from the distant past. This is not gathered from any ancient tradition such as  Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, shamanistic or other alternative views. Rather my breakthrough view came about via a rare left-brain meltdown. This allowed me to peep through a small hole to see our world “in a raw” or in a conceptually-stripped way – a view chronicled in my bio at www.raw-wisdom.com/bio. What I most deeply learned is that consciousness forms a potentially universal relationship of connection in all of nature. It is thus distinctively not an exclusively human attribute or possession, especially not of just our brain and brain neurons. This phenomenon of consciousness then internally unifies or forms the binding-together connective essence of our entire world! What a statement this is to make. This profound view also differs from the vast cultural assumption that has been promoted since  the 17th century that supposedly  matter and energy postured in time and space and described or defined mathematically forms the essence of nature. I find this not to be true but a surface illusion. This view spearheaded the Industrial Revolution and the distinctiveness of our modern world.

AS A NATUROPATH
As a naturopath, I have  applied a very different root understanding of nature and ourselves to help reverse consciousness diseases. The effectiveness of this reversal becomes a true litmus test for a real definition and also real (and not imagined or academic or philosophical or faith-based, or spiritual-tradition concocted) understanding of “what is consciousness.” Otherwise our theories are but self-gratifying nonsense that fail to liberate the conditions of impeded consciousness. Understanding “what is consciousness” when grounded in substantive objective reality forms thus a vast revolution in impersonal and true understanding – a revolution  in our whole vision of what is nature’s essence or the essence of the entirety of the cosmos we live in.

Knowing  thus “what is consciousness” can have some of the most profound and powerfully revolutionary effects on the whole of our lives.

Nature of Consciousness

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Nature of Consciousness

NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS – WHAT IS IT?
In a kind of comprehensive overview of approaches, Ken Wilber has a post on the Web taken from his Journal of Consciousness Studies article   (February 1997, pp. 71-92) and which outlines his Integral Theory of Consciousness. It  integrates twelve different approaches to apparently understanding the nature of consciousness. These include  the approaches of cognitive, introspective, neuro-psychological, clinical psychological & psychiatric, social and developmental psychological, psychosomatic, eastern and contemplative traditions, quantum theories, subtle energy studies and adventures into non-ordinary and drug-induced states.  The list is long enough to certainly make the subject matter confusing to some. To make matters worse, we could expand that list profoundly. Where then do we truly understand the core essence of consciousness? Is there a core binding-together essence or a disintegration into so many forms?

SIMPLIFYING THE UNDERSTANDING
In most all other studies of life one can garnish a specialized expertise. But the study consciousness potentially can involve all of life and all of knowledge that we consciously take in ad infinitum. How then again do we arrive at its core essence? An essence is something that universally penetrates and thus is singular and simple – like the essence of a chocolate bar being made of chocolate. We might add an almond to the bar, but what primarily permeates remains simply chocolate. Is there a comparable essence to consciousness, or something that unifies the whole – in and throughout all of the potential categorizations or approaches. In my experience the answer is yes. However, to arrive at the seeing of what that is takes a vastly transcending mental, beyond the right/brain split perspective.  You almost have to step outside and above the human mind/brain and its perpetual constructs to reach such a high perspective.

LITMUS TEST
Supposing you get that far, how do you know that your conclusions are trans-personally or objectively true – true from all sides and past side-views, subjectivity and limited biases? There is really a Litmus Test. Our modern world is presently plagued with a variety of what I call growing consciousness diseases. It can be argued that all diseases are really carriers of a consciousness-depleting element. Some are so more dramatically than others. Thus we can have cancer that silently or without our consciousness spreads to kill us. We can become severely diabetic, and where when we step on a nail we feel nothing as we suffer from neuropathy – a loss of feeling, a loss of consciousness in the extremities primarily. We can fall also into the throws of Alzheimer’s disease where our mental consciousness breaks down. Now if a theory of consciousness can be tested in its applications to help reverse all three of these and similar condition,  then we really and powerfully are onto something. With out such proof, we remain groping in the dark just as the patients with those ailments may be too.

IS THERE SUCH AN ANIMAL?
After nearly half a century of searching for such a viable theory, I can  honestly share my conclusion that there is such an animal. Most philosophers and scientists won’t make this kind of assured statement. I do because my experiences transcended my own personal identity or concern with such an identity. The implications of that “theory” I am referring to are revolutionary. The application are more than immensely powerful. For when one has a far better understanding of consciousness,. it  can truly help those who have let it slip away, unconsciously – which seems a terribly helpless state. When physicians try to help such patients, but they can’t, they too are at a loss to understand what consciousness is, why we need a transcending understanding.

IMPLICATIONS
This “theory” is such an understanding. Its implications are profound. When understood, it has the vast potential to not only help those who are consciousness-ill, but to more so overturn the very taproot foundations of our whole modern worldview or vision of the essence of nature. This may seem a very bloated statement indeed. But, nevertheless, in my experience it happens to be true. The fact is that what we take to be  our very highest truths in physics and chemistry – buttressed by mathematical formulations as the anchoring crutch, actually fail to factor in the existence, identity, or nature of consciousness in nature.

CORE PURPOSE OF BLOG
Once on does factor in that phenomena, everything else changes. As to this “theory” (written in quotation marks because it has ceased to be a theory for me)  it is the core mission of this blog and of our original and related site, namely  raw-wisdom.com
to bring out to the public this understanding.

NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
With that said, now let me present the gist of this theory states of consciousness’ defining identity. Through that special identity we can fathom it in a conquering way. I’ve not learned this via any lab studies because a laboratory setting and all the tools of measurement it coalesces are actually the wrong tools with which to understand consciousness’ essence. Rather my “theory” is the  result of other experiences. In my youth I was a math prodigy whose left-brain shut down temporarily forcing me to befriend an opposite brain vista. Later I tried to make peace between the split-brain views. Through that reconciliation, I came up with what I consider a piercing of the veils of consciousness. This requires super normal skills. I don’t state that to bloat my ego but simply because the need for transcendent is a given.

A DEFINITION
With this introduction now let me outline a set of words that for me best point to the quintessence of consciousness.  Consciousness can be seen as the primary potentially universal relationship of connection in and throughout all of nature. It thereby forms nature’s core essence and the basis for nature’s  oneness.

VAST IMPLICATIONS
Our math-based vision of nature no loner holds true if our definition of consciousness is valid. The nature of consciousness supplants what math symbols point to in defining the essence of our world. Just imagine how profound the implications of this simple statement are. Math symbols generally abstract how to separate all elements of consciousness. Given the prior definition of consciousness, however, math symbols then cannot possibly point us to the essence of nature. This violates of central and thought to be bedrock thesis of chemistry and physics – the deep assumption that mathematics offers a universal paradigm for integrating the objective understanding of the oneness of nature. Again the preceding definition denies that.

IS THIS VIEW OBJECTIVELY VALID?  OR A PERSONAL SUBJECTIVE VISTA?
Many think that consciousness is solely the byproduct of  human evolution as animals and plants presumably are not really, truly conscious or at least as cognitive and self-conscious.  To move to a more nature-permeating definition of consciousness, as in pansychism, requires proof or a Litmus test. Again suppose we can use our “theory” to actually reverse the most persistent consciousness illnesses. The details are outlined in this blogs.  Without such proof, the theory would only be a set of empty words promoted by our egos. With such backup evidence, we can advance our understanding of the world we live in – and of ourselves.

This is no small statement.

Here is a gist or abstract for a paper entitled Toward a Non-Mechanical Science of Consciousness to be presented at the next 2010 global conference of ASSC – Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. This is pending approval by ASSC. For more information and details on a non-mechanical and non-math-based view of nature, plus a unique and revolutionary philosophy of consciousness and our cosmos, visit our  www.raw-wisdom.com website.

PROVOCATIVE TITLE
The above title of Toward A Non-Mechanical Science of Consciousness or even a Non-Science of Consciousness seemingly goes against the core thrust of ASSC and allied organizations. It definitely offers a revolutionary thesis that counters some central beliefs of our modern world.  No doubt we need a more advanced and non-mystical (not just vaguely and comfortably believed in) view about what consciousness is. It needs to have practical and effective applications that really work to enhance our consciousness. This study, however, has resisted those kinds of results and even with the best of conventional scientific thrusts to fathom exactly and precisely what the essence of consciousness is.

This paper examines  the reason why this innate resistance not only exists but has non-accidentally persisted.

AUTHOR’S  EXPERIENCE
In his earlier years, the author Nathan Batalion was a math prodigy who at the age of 17 had an high fever that caused his left-brain to shut down.  Subsequent decades of deep inner explorations, led him to develop a radically different view of not only the nature of consciousness but of our cosmos as such. He went past his mathematical training and astute knowledge of physics to see through the essential left-brain dominant perspective that supposedly math-bound formulations pointed us to nature’s true essence . He went past the 17th century catapulted ideology of Galileo and Newton or the vision of a solely math-defined/machine-principle-eliciting view of nature and our cosmos.

THUS GOING PAST CONVENTIONAL LABORATORY APPROACHES
The distinctive features of a modern laboratory include a converging of measuring tools in order to buttress, reinforce and ever expand this same 17th century ideology of nature. A common assumption of the phrase “toward a science of consciousness” is thus that we need to break down consciousness to conform and fit into this mold. Or we need some breakthrough conventional lab protocol to fathom exactly what consciousness is in a measured way. We may thus study consciousness in the same way we study a geological rock – using precise lab assays or a test tub chemical analysis.  We might then reduce the rock to a few chemical components, each delineated by an exact atomic structure. But can we really discover the nature of  consciousness by these means – breaking it up into such atomistic parts or something akin? We may employ the very sharpest tools of measurement and/or microscopy to explore this approach and still somehow it has resisted that exploration – and for extremely good reasons.

The resistance, of course, is not what we would expect being “scientists.” We would anticipate our efforts bearing fruit soon – as we use our most exacting and reliable tool for “objective perspectives” and to satisfy peer reviews. However, peer review and peer pressure can be closely related what then engenders still more deeply ingrained cultural bias.

RADICAL THESIS
Here a radical thesis is proposed that we need to escape most of the conventional paths for arriving at a trans-left/right brain dominant, truly impartial, culturally non-tainted, impersonal and/or objective view of what consciousness is.

THE MAIN MISSTEP
Back in the 17^th century western civilization experienced a hugely revolutionary and dramatic inner transformation. There was a shift from the dominance of the Bible-centered view of the world. This was symbolized by the steeples of churches that rose the highest or assumed cultural dominance. The biblical truths were the organizing core beliefs of the medieval vision. The biblical view was as deeply entrenched then as the math-centered vision that replaced that perspective is now. Civilization, guided by the likes of Galileo, Descartes, Newton aggressively sought to uncover nature-conquering truths that supposedly were more free of beliefs and blind metaphysics than the prior biblical.  All elements of consciousness could now be subdued, fully known and reunited into a new order – the purely math-led and defined. All else was less real or less reliable to lean upon. This lead to a reconstruction of most major fields of knowledge and the transition from medieval religious culture to our modern industrial/commercial world.

AUDACIOUS THESIS GLOBALLY APPLIED
No longer the word of the biblical God, now where math symbols pointed presumably gave us bedrock truths of  the “principia” or  laws of nature. This very audacious thesis, if right, could help us evolve to heights or if wrong  (because it is so universally and aggressively applied) could destroy us. This presumption, nevertheless, was promoted with an unbridled lack of doubt. It manifest in the global proliferation of the fruits of chemistry, physics, biotechnology, pharmaceutical medicine and the centuries-long experiences of our Industrial Revolution.

HEALTH “SIDE-EFFECTS”
Galileo, Descartes and Newton naively envisioned a kind of glorious future Utopia evolving out of their ideas, and which was to manifest later with the Industrial Revolution. However, they never vaguely imagined the same future to filled with chemical pollution, atomic weapons proliferation or health pandemics like cancer. It was far from their consciousness to suspect that their ideas might be implicated in such threatening developments. They rather and again, with little self-scrutiny, foresaw blinding progress to be led by the discovery of nature’s “truly objective” laws. Nevertheless we now experience certain “side-effects.” They can be named “side-effects” to make them appear less significant. On the issue of health “side-effects,” we must face the fact that the collective health of our planet’s human population is not improving at present. A generation ago in the US, for example, 2% of children were known to suffered from chronic diseases. Now it is closer to 8%, the figure having quadrupled in just one generation. Cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease are especially pandemic and they are what I call “consciousness diseases.” For example, cancer spreads unnoticed within. Diabetes manifests with neuropathy or lack of feeling, especially of the extremities. A diabetes patient may step on a nail and not feel the penetration. Alzheimer’s disease obviously involves another kind of extreme loss of consciousness. If consciousness diseases are actually growing in our modern world, it becomes obvious that culturally we do not fathom deeply, we have not conquered the knowing of this phenomenon – not via our most conventional, trusted understandings.

ENVIRONMENTAL “SIDE-EFFECTS”
From an ecological point of view, we also find ourselves approaching a kind of precipice. Our global collective path is not just energy-wise non-sustainable, it also threatens the extinction of life and therefore the extinguishing of consciousness. Some estimate that in the next 10o years 1/2 of all life forms on earth, plant and animal, will be threatened with extincting. This implies that present trends will continue. The recent wholesale death of bee colonies portends this.  Avatar was a film with a script that captured a little of this gist. The integrity of the whole web of life and consciousness on Earth is being threatened on multiple fronts. Something is obviously very wrong which implies our modern knowledge of nature is faulty.

CONCLUSION
This paper assembles potent and piercing ways to challenged, transcend, and replace our conventional, taproot and mechanical understanding of nature. This means we also deeply reorient our understanding of waht is the nature and organization of consciousness within us and in our great universe. Here we thus challenge the depth-validity, integrity and true wisdom of the core of core philosophies of our times, the mathematical, and that just 400 years ago began guiding the formation of our uniquely modern world. So to move toward a genuinely objective science of consciousness we need a different approach.