How to describe consciousness?

[Dodo]

**How can we describe consciousness**

Perhaps a better question is: *What is consciousness* or *What am I*

I see many people/thinkers/philosophers  who try to describe consciousness, with means that don't stem from a direct investigation of consciousness, but from mind and what the Ego thinks consciousness is. Those are doomed to be theoretical and full of errors, since the mind is not infinite enough to grasp something that is not an object of experience.

To really know the answer all you have to do is turn attention away from all objects of experience and notice the empty field of awareness / consciousness which allows all experience to be known here and now. It's rather practical and everyone can do this. Requires no beliefs, interpretations or guessing.

You have a front row seat when it comes to being able to investigate consciousness, because you *are* consciousness in your deepest essence. Putting it on a paper will be harder than realizing what it is.

I guess to answer the question, in written form, I would have to try my best to describe in words that in which the words themselves (and everything else which exists) appear:

(attempt) Consciousness is an ever present, effortlessly self-aware field of being, with no form, no size, no qualities whatsoever - in order to allow all qualities to exist within it. Just like a screen needs to be transparent in order to allow all varieties of colors and forms to be shown within it.

**It is not an object of experience, it is that which allows objects of experience to be known.** I see people  trying to approach to answer the question by viewing consciousness as just another object, like Mind or Body. But if we look at our experience, consciousness is not perceived as you perceive thoughts, images, perceptions and other objects of experience.

*Consciousness is not something which can be seen, smelled, touched, thought, derived etc.*, but you can verify that it is there by asking yourself the question *"Am I conscious?/Am I aware?"*, you cannot know consciousness by any kind of objective qualities, which is where the mind fails and this becomes the "hard problem of consciousness". But it isn't hard at all. It's 0 itself, but 0 and infinity are hard problems for the Mind. When in reality zero is the simplest thing.

To know consciousness one has to relax their focus from objects and see what remains. If consciousness is viewed as an object, then the investigation is already poisoned and will not yield the right result.

Edited January 29, 2020 by Dodo

[Lento]

Consciousness does not exist. It's nothing. It's everything.

[pluto]

10 hours ago, Lento said:

Consciousness does not exist. It's nothing. It's everything.

This is self-delusion, even nothing is something.

 

[Rilles]

try to find it first, then describe it

[Dodo]

3 hours ago, Rilles said:

try to find it first, then describe it

but the idea here is that you cant find it as you find other things, because it doesn't have objective qualities, not even subtle ones. 

[Dodo]

16 hours ago, Lento said:

Consciousness does not exist. It's nothing. It's everything.

Yes, an even funnier statement is: " Consciousness does not exist, but everything exists in it."

[Lento]

You guys are stuck in a prison of your own creation. You're still stuck in the mind, trying to find something that cannot be found. You're mistaking the pointer for the moon, and you'll still be doing that until you stop seeking to find an imaginary answer for your imaginary questions.

Until then, keep looking, and I'll keep laughing ??

[Lelouch Lamperouge]

Lets say human is mirror, then Consciousness is black amalgam behind the mirror that makes reflection possible. Black amalgam does not pass light through it, and that allows reflection. It reflects objective reality but it itself is not part of objective reality. Similarly, mirror itself is not what is shown in the mirror. Objective reality itself is just an object, matter, substance, unconscious thing. If we assume that objective reality includes everything and that it is being then the only way to describe consciousness is that it is non-being and that it isn't identical to anything. Its a distinction with world. If it was not so, then we wouldn't be mirrors but we would be windows, we wouldn't be able reflect outer reality. We would be no different than table. Why we witness and table doesn't - because there is black amalgam behind which allows for reflection. 

[Nahm]

@Dodo Nice. The “gate less gate”. ?  So “sneaky”. ♥️

[Pramit]

this is a good summary:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#ConCon

3 hours ago, Lento said:

You guys are stuck in a prison of your own creation. You're still stuck in the mind, trying to find something that cannot be found. You're mistaking the pointer for the moon, and you'll still be doing that until you stop seeking to find an imaginary answer for your imaginary questions.