I woke up very early this morning, as I usually do, had a cup of coffee and something to eat, read and replied to a few essays and comments here, and then again as I usually do, went back to bed and slept for an hour or so.
It’s become a habit for me to do this because I really enjoy the extremely lucid dreams I have while sleeping when I’m already rested and after eating.
The dreams I usually have at that time are so lucid they are literally worlds and realities indistinguishable in quality and “realness” from the world of daily life. I converse with people in them, can bang my knee against a wall, pet the cat, slam my fingers in a desk drawer, listen to music, in short they are experiential worlds as real as any other. As “this” one – the one we each find ourselves in at this moment.
Dreams, in other words, are real. They exist. They are as real as anything else.
Which begs the questions “what is real” or “what is reality”. But those questions I want to leave for another time, and I’ve purposely titled this essay with the suffix “- 1” not because I have any plans to write a “- 2” or a “- 3” but because I might one day. Who knows. Maybe I already have, somewhere?
What I want to ask instead this morning is “what is consciousness”, or perhaps “what is awareness” might be a better question considering my observations of a process this morning.
There I was trundling along in my dream talking to 4 people, smoking a cigarette, and waiting for a cab we had called to arrive. The sun was shining on a warm summer day, there was traffic driving by on the road outside the building we were in, the parking lot was about 70 percent full.
The cab finally arrived and I watched it turn of the street and come across the parking lot towards us as I also watched the 4 people I was with walk down the stairs and across the lot towards it.
I started down the stairs, went out the door and walked across the lot myself. A couple of birds flew through my field of vision and landed in the trees at the edge of the road. A dog wandered by crossing my path as I walked towards the cab that the other people were sitting in by this time.
I got to the car, walked around to the side of it, reached out my hand and grasped the door handle, opened the door……
And was lying in bed with my eyes closed listening to traffic noises from down the street and feeling the pillow under my head and and the bed covers on me and the cool morning breeze come through the open window beside my bed, and hearing my cat Magic stretching and meowing quietly in her sleep on the chair in my room.
The transition was that fast, and I thought to myself “what just happened?”
WHAT just happened? The traffic noises and the cat sounds and the breeze and everything else I was now aware of had been there all along while I existed in that other just as real world that we call a “dream”, but I was not aware of them until I suddenly was aware of them.
Did any of it exist? Most of us would I think say yes, but until I became suddenly aware of it it didn’t exist as far as I knew.
How much of life are we not aware of until we are suddenly aware of it?
What does it mean to be aware?
What does it mean to become aware?
How many “realities” are we unaware of?
Is physical “reality” dependent on “awareness”?
Who opened the car door? Did he get in?
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…is constantly changing as I acquire more knowledge. For instance, last night I learned that some songbirds stutter…for exactly the same reasons that some humans stutter, apparently.
Birds verbalize. We verbalize. We use the same portions of our brains to do so. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, cannot communicate orally. Yet they can communicate using sign language.
that opened my eyes when I was a lot younger. It was from R.D. Laing, who said that motivation determines awareness. What we want makes us see certain things in the world, imagine certain things in the world, and not see certain things in the world. I believe if we were suddenly aware of how limited, inaccurate, and just plain made-up is our “reality,” it would scare the hell out of us.
Here’s a story about Ram Dass and Swami Satchidananda meeting. They sat together in silence for quite a long time, gazing at an enormous tree. In time, one of them said, “They call it a tree.” They both burst in to peals of laughter.
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quantum entanglement of photons and “spooky action at a distance,” which seems to depend on the observer.
are as important objects of study as are the objects of consciousness. The varied ways in which we can be aware or conscious — in the arts, in various cultures, in different historical eras — are all revealing of our nature and potential as human beings.
Maybe this was part of the shift in outlook that occurred as we passed from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, that there is more than one legitimate way to see the universe, because these ways of seeing are all human.
Ever see the film Baraka?
The Nature of Unconsciousness
🙂
Not bad for a lefty!
One of the ideas about our history is that we wondered around (even reasonably advanced) and were aware but not conscious, then roughly somewhere 5 – 10 k years ago something kicked on and viola we were. Personally, I blame the Greeks, and Heredotus specifically. Before him, we had the I conquered this and I subjegated them, but we didn’t have reason for it. Hence Heredotus (well, Aeschylus too, to a point) giving us a why it happened as well as what happened. I guess you could blame Homer, too (and doesn’t everything lead back to Homer?).
Three scientists representing the national group of psychologists (sorry, don’t know the name) attended a three-day talk given by a master somewhere in the East, I’m pretty sure it was Nepal. At any rate, they were forced to write up for their publication a very disconcerting and unscientific report. It had rained hard the entire three days . . . except on the group listening to the talk. They said they were disoriented for several days afterwards. I always wondered if the rain was actually kept away or if the listeners were soaking wet but somehow hypnotized into thinking they were dry.
care to get into it a big, grandiose way, as to our consciousness or lack thereof.
But I will say this: that the most outstanding of my dreams had to do with REALITY. In other words, some poignant, or very outstanding experiences, or, even some not so much, were manifested in my dreams in, what would seem, “overexaggerated” proportions (or simply, how I would REALLY react), of my reaction to those experiences. Most dreams do not stick with us — those that do, I tend to think DO have meaning.
In some ways, for example, those things which disturb us the most appear in our dreams, which I think a blessing in some ways. Not that the dream, itself, is a blessing, for often it is not — it is far too often quite disturbing in that respect. But my point is that this “process” may be a kind of protectionism in some way. Without wishing to be redundant, I kinda’ feel that a REALITY in life, difficult to accept, finds its ways into our dreams and becomes an unexpected poignant experience in the dream expression — sometimes, very frightening. But, it may translate into nature’s way to allow our consciousness to transform, yet, into another form of consciousness.
I don’t pretend to have any answers to this — just giving my gut level thoughts on this. Wrong or right or subjective, or not! Just a thought!
that is absorbed into the earth . . . that feeds the tree and rises up the tree trunk and feeds the leaf on the tree . . . and is absorbed in the atmosphere . . . and falls as rain . . .on a leaf on a tree . . .
(This may not be right “scientifically”, but once I began to understand myself and my place in nature as this . . . totally one with nature, the whole world opened to me – as if the fishscales left my eyes and where I once saw thru a glass darkly, I now see face to face . . anywhere I want to be, I am . . and I am nowhere, I am nothing more than a drop of rain . . . but I am everything in nature).
This was after living my father’s death with him, I felt that I went into the pillow with him as his body withered . . . and I was with his spirit. I remember being with a friend shortly after his death and explaining that I was here, but I was also on the other side of the wall . . . an intense feeling that I could be both places at once. . . I could go thru the wall or be anywhere I wanted to be . . .
Is this really my consciousness? I know it does not seem realistic, but it’s the way I’ve been living and seeing my life, and my place in the universe, for the last 12 years.
And what does this have to do with dreams . . . and whether they speak to us?
Now I spend my days picking berries, gathering fruit and vegetables, freezing, drying, canning. I’m spending 8-10 hours outdoors every day this summer. It is lovely. I am living in a huge garden.
Thank you, Edger, for this essay about consciousness. It’s an important learning.
If you ever see the documentary “Condo Painting” on the channel lineup, be sure to catch it. I think you’ll find his ideas on other realities are very close to yours. He paints what he calls “antipodal beings”, which he says are real beings who simply inhabit planes that we can’t see normally. Apparently these antipodal beings have graciously chosen Condo to be a sort of “court portraitist” whose mission it is to capture these beings on canvas. It’s a really great documentary and is a lot more fascinating than I make it sound.
It’s a documentary about the peoples of the world and what they’ve made of it. There’s no narration. It’s quite beautiful and fascinating. I think you would enjoy it.
I truly believe that the only thing which can save us now is the evolution and understanding of concsiousness — that shift in awareness which will “return” us to the respect of the planet, each other and all life which many of you have spoken of here, perhaps most recently, Opol in his beautiful “We are All Relatives…” essay (excuse the translation from the Cree).
The essence of Buddhist teachings finally comes down to:
See mind with mind.
Observe mind with mind.
Watch mind with mind.
I attended my first teaching from His Holiness the Dalai Lama 20 years ago, a 3 day seminar in a giant San Jose sports auditorium. I had my notebook out the entire time. I wrote one note:
Mind is devoid of Mind!
Try watching the mind and see where that leads you.
…Teilhard de Chardin holds:
The author goes on to elaborate on the growth of our collective consciousness…
We need to link this line of thought, which seems very popular here, to the larger social/political/ecological/economic issues we face. We must start where you are or thoughts/actions on those issues have no power and no possibility of positive results.