Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Consciousness and awareness

Consciousness and awareness


DeMarco, Frank. Rita's World: A View from the Non-Physical (Kindle Location 2081). Rainbow Ridge Books. Kindle Edition.

(Q)  Bob asks a couple of questions that I have more than an inkling of the answers to.  Seems to me these are more or less what you were asking in 2001-2001.

[(1) How is consciousness, which is nonphysical, connected to a physical brain?  Scientists have demonstrated that when certain parts of the brain are stimulated, images and words and events may appear (memories, I suppose).  I have always thought that memories were part of what we physicals call consciousness, as our 'awareness' can call them up (pre-Alzheimer's of course) as part of what we call 'thinking'.  How can consciousness manipulate the brain to 'park' those memories - through a chemical process or something else?

[(2)  When 'Rita' was in 3D, she spoke and thought in English.  She is communicating to us now, through Frank, in English or does she just stimulate Frank's language so he writes the words in English?  It's hard for us in 3D to imagine anything without use of whatever language we use on this planet, so how does the use of English, French, Swahili, etc., 'translate' over to the non-3D consciousness?  Do you 'think' and communicate in a language over there, or is there an entirely different way to communicate?"]

Care to comment?  Or do I have to make up something?

(A)  You may make up something, if you wish.  the distinction between people "making up something" and "receiving information" is less than people suppose.  It isn't like it is a game of one pitching and another catching.  (I omit consideration of situations in which the intent is to deceive; I am talking about any person's process of idea-reception.  Bookmark this topic, if you wish; it would be productive.  It is the difference between thinking something through and following chains of association.  It involves the temporary group mind as an active if rarely suspected aspect of a person's consciousness.)

Now, to these specific questions.  The first question, I am afraid I have to say, indicates that Bob has not absorbed, or is not taking into consideration, what has been said so far.  Either that, or he silently means "insofar as humans are concerned", but it doesn't look like this latter is this case.  At any rate, here is my attempt to clarify the subject.  I will answer the question as posed, and you each may proceed to apply the general answer to human consciousness in particular.

(Q)  I am engaged in a silent argument here, Rita.  Doesn't Bob's first sentence show that he means humans, or at least humans and anything else that has a brain?

(A)  Well, let us proceed, and we'll see. He asks, you see, how consciousness connects to a brain.  I understand your thinking he is asking a special case of connection, but I cannot accept the question as posed without seeming to agree silently with several assumptions included equally silently.

(Q)  This reminds me of your asking the guys, in our first session, how many we were speaking to, and their throwing out the assumptions behind the question rather than giving you an answer that would have been approximately true but would have reinforced assumptions you didn't even know you were incorporating.

(A)  I have more sympathy now with their predicament then.

Perhaps my objection would become clearer if I were to repeat the question substituting the word "gravity" for "consciousness", or using "love".  Can you see that the question as posed is as if we had not had yesterday's discussion?  It treats consciousness as specific rather than a universal precondition of life - indeed of the existence of the world.  I will answer the question as posed, but not in such a way as to lose the ground we gained so far.

So let me parse the question.  In the first place, it would be truer to say that consciousness is nonphysical and physical in nature.  It is not bound by physical rules; however, it shapes physical rules.  It is not so much found in the physical world as comprises the physical world.  It is not a thing or a condition; it is a piece of what the world is made of.  That is why, as I said "yesterday", Bob's question can't be answered in the way he would have wanted - scientists cannot examine what they cannot isolate - at least, they can't understand what they are dealing with as long as they misdefine it.

So, consciousness doesn't connect to a brain; it comprises it.  The brain - and all of physical existence - is made of consciousness.  And that was my initial hesitation that you picked up on, Frank.  Consciousness has no necessary connection to a brain.  Not even within humans, but more broadly not to clouds or soil or radioactive waste or orlon fibers.  You tend to think of things having consciousness when it would be more useful to think of them as expressions of consciousness.  They are all coordinated - the world is held together - by the fact that one factor holding it holding it together is this undivided consciousness.

...  Now, there is a difference between consciousness and human awareness, and I realize that this is closer to what Bob means.  But again, the question seems to exist without reference to previous answers, which is not good.  I mean, it leads nowhere to consider these questions as if in isolation from previous answers.  It is in the drawing of connections that a new way of seeing the world will emerge for you.  If you do not draw the connection - it cannot be done on your behalf; it requires that you work at it - if you do not draw the connections and feel your way to inferences, this will be not an exploration but, in effect, idle speculation that nowhere touches your real life.  For, if you do work to absorb the material and thus change how you see the world, even if you wind up rejecting the new construct, it will have moved you to a new understanding.  But first you must have worked with the material.  That is your safety valve, you see; it is less the specific information than the general reorientation that is being presented, and less the reorientation than the temporary or permanent expansion of the ideas that, for you comprise the world.  This can only take place if you work.  This is not a science fiction story to be enjoyed and forgotten.

(Q)  I well remember how your life and mine were transformed by the material we brought forth in our sessions.

(A)  Yes, and as it turned out, even the things that unsettled me and left me wondering if I knew anything, were of great value.  In fact, I might almost say that was the value.  But, to continue.

There is a demonstrable link, of course, between the physical matter of the brain and access to any particular memory.  But is just as was explained to us, the difference between access and location, although actually I need to say more about that, more than "the guys" were able to get across to us because we were only in the first stages of absorbing their concept of access points.

(Q)  I am going to recommend - in fact, I am doing it now - that people find that part in The Sphere and the Hologram.  Maybe I will look it up, and if I can find it, I will insert it here.

The switching mechanism


[And here it is, from material received in Rita's and my 2001-2001 sessions.  First of two transcripts:]

"(Q)  I've been want to ask the guys about this.  We understand that there's now quite good scientific evidence that our consciousness does not seem to reside in the brain or in the physical body.  There's now interest in the same question with respect to memory.  Do you have any comment you'd like to make about that?

(TGU)  Well it's all the same thing.  You're looking in matter for things that are not material, and you're not going to find them.  Given that the organizing principle for the whole body is outside of the physical, and the physical is laid down on energy patterns that are set from beyond the physical, it would be foolish for us to then entrust a vital part of the mechanism to a physical place, when it's already in a nonphysical place.

The circulation of your blood is a physical function.  The storing of your memories is not entirely a physical function.  The accessing of the memories is more physical than anything else, but the actual storing of them is not.  Just as with your consciousness, the accessing of your consciousness is partly physical.  If you have a brain injury (even though that's also an energetic injury), you could look at it as a physical injury that may make it impossible for you to access memories or abilities that you had prior to the injury.  But when you drop the body, you'll find that all of those abilities and memories are still there on call, because they weren't destroyed.  They were never in the physical in the first place.  Your access to them was destroyed, or damaged, but not the actual abilities or memories.  This is why some of you have been surprised that people with extensive head injuries who were given sympathetic and loving attention over long periods of time regained abilities that had been thought to be lost.  They learned new pathways to something which was invulnerable because it wasn't in the physical."

"(Q)  All right, can you talk about the process - it's important for us, these days - about losing memories as we age.

(TGU):  Well again, you aren't losing the memories, you're losing the access to the memories.  The memories are as they are, as you would find were you to have an operation and have them open your brain and touch portions of the brain with the needles.  They've done that for years, they know that they are there.  But it isn't that that particular piece of the brain is exactly the memory; it's more like that particular piece of the brain is the doorkeeper to the memory.  A subtle difference, but it is a big one."

"(Q)  So something has happened with respect to the antenna that picks up the external information?

(TGU)  The switching mechanism, we would say.  Like a telephone exchange.  It could be that portions of the lobes that are the gateways no longer function, and it's as if the memories are gone.  But ordinarily it's that the switching function is inhibited, and can be restored sometimes; and when the switching function is restored, it's found that, lo and behold, the memories were there all along.  You see, there are two things going on.  The switching function, on the one hand, that enables you to access the places in the physical gateways, which then access the memories, and on the other hand, the gateways themselves.

So if the gateway cell, shall we say, is destroyed, then there may not be any access to memory, although perhaps another one can be developed.  Or, if the switching system fails to access the cell that's perfectly good, still you've lost your access.  In neither case has the memory been lost absolutely; it's all there, as you would say, in the Akashic record - which ought to tell you that it's there in the first place.  It hasn't been so much transferred from the physical as stored, in the first place, in the nonphysical."

[End first transcript.]

[Second transcript, which, I notice, uses the word "consciousness" more in the way we use it every day, from a session in the black box in which Rita was acting as monitor while Skip worked the machinery:]

"(Q)  Skip has a question here for me to ask.  He's asking, what is the equivalent of the switching system when you leave the body?

(TGU)  Well, you see, when you leave the body, you don't need the switching system in just that way, because that switching system is necessary because you're living in time-slices.  You're going blip, blip, blip, blip, and so there is a sequence.  There's a limitation on your consciousness, which is that it can only hold so many things in consciousness at the same time, and your consciousness really does sort of have to move moment to moment, to stay in the same place.  Once you're outside of the time-slice problem; and once you're outside of moving, moment to moment, to stay with a sliding present, you don't have that same situation, and then it's more like the crystal analogy that we gave you a long time ago, in which we said that the volume of the crystal has innumerable places in it, all of which interconnect.  They don't move; it just depends on which way you shine your flashlight.

Did that answer the question?  Your switching system is because your consciousness is required to hold things together while you're moving from moment to moment in the present.  That is to say, while the present is moving around you and you are staying up with it."

[End of transcript from The Sphere and the Hologram]

[Rita, resuming]

(A)  "The guys" were making an incomplete and only approximately accurate statement because often - especially with new material - that is the best that can be done.  The actual memories reside in what people call the Akashic record, in that everything that occurs - whether seemingly physical or seemingly mental or seemingly emotional (as if any of those could exist in isolation) - is automatically recorded there.  In a sense it could be said to occur there, because that "record" is not separate from life but is life.

However, that last point aside, our brains - human brain tissue contains access points that allow us to access the memory, but those access points are more like local copies of the original than like independent replications.

(Q)  I don't understand that last statement.

(A)  If you consider the brain tissue that connect to the memory, realize that if it were quite that simple -

Hmm, this requires a longer discussion than we should begin toward the end of a session.  I will resume with that in our next meeting.  Meanwhile, let me wrap up other aspects of that first question by saying, again, that consciousness is not a quality, to be included or not included depending on what we're considering.  Consciousness is part of everything.

Note: I did not say everything is a part of consciousness, but consciousness is a part of everything, in the same way one might say either "humans are spiritual in nature" or "spirits having human experiences" and come up with a different meaning.


Monday, February 26, 2018

Consciousness as a condition of life

Consciousness as a condition of life


DeMarco, Frank. Rita's World: A View from the Non-Physical (Kindle Location 1986). Rainbow Ridge Books. Kindle Edition.

(Q)  So, Rita, Bob asks what consciousness is.

Bob Friedman's question:  "What is consciousness, what is it made of, and how does it work, that allows it access to all six dimensions (or however many there are) at once?  Is this 3D consciousness a piece of that larger consciousness, and if so, can she describe it?

"From what she says, we are all part of that larger being that Frank draws.  And this larger being is part of even larger beings, and presumably it all is part of what Seth call All That Is, which is the totality of consciousness (which some call God) and all it 'creates'.  It's well-known that all our materialist scientists together can't explain the nature of consciousness. Maybe Rita can give it a go, with information that some of these more open-minded materialists can explore further.  What would they look for?  Is it ever 'provable' or even describable in 3D, since it is so much more than 3D and the physical brain?"

(A)  Every language describes the world differently.  In effect, each one describes a different world, psychologically, because the assumptions of the language are built into it, and then they feed these assumptions right back to the users.  Some are better at describing these things than others, because of the level of the people who developed them to express their view of the world.

We aren't going to explore linguistics here, but I want you to be aware that language makes you, or tempts you, to consider things as real and definite, which in fact belong to an entirely different order of things.

Thus, the word "consciousness".  It is natural (at least in English and in many Western languages) to think of consciousness as a condition rather than a relationship; or even as an object (if a nonphysical one) rather than either a condition or a relationship.  This is inappropriately concrete.

I need you to understand this point, or anything I say about it will be a waste of words, time, and effort.  Those of you who are familiar with other definitions, please, suspend what you know and consider this as if you had never pondered the problem.  After all, if previous answers satisfied you, why continue to look; but if you keep looking, why bother if you are only going to say, "That isn't what I read here, or was taught there"?  After you ponder this, is the time to relate it to previously absorbed ideas.  Otherwise, you are just going through the motions.  Sorry to sound so directive, but I need you here, now (whenever you read this) if you are to get anything at all from this work.

...  And, parenthetically, that is the value of our minds once we have left the body - we can serve to translate 3D experience accurately because we know first-hand what it is like to function in those conditions.  You also find it hard to remember the context we have been creating, which - if you disregard it - results in your attempting to cram new explanations into old, inadequate, contexts.

(Q)  Aha.  New wine in old wineskins!

(A)  One aspect of what Jesus meant, yes.  There was more, but that is not our subject today.

Suppose - this is not a diversion - suppose you were to ask me what gravity is, what it is made of, how it works.  Or love.  Suppose we tried to find a way to make it provable to those who doubt what it is or that it is.  Suppose we tried to do so for the aether.

You know the story of the man who was looking for his lost keys where the light was brightest rather than where he dropped them.  One point of the story is that you can't look for something where it is not, no matter how favorable the conditions.  That is, you can look, but you will not find!

Consciousness is a condition of life, no less than gravity is a condition of life on Earth or than love is a condition of separated elements feeling their essential unity.  You won't find life without consciousness any more than you will find anything in creation that is somehow not alive.  The form of the consciousness will vary according to condition, just as the form of life varies according to condition, but the one is as universal as the other.

It might be theoretically possible for a fish to scientifically investigate what water is, but it isn't very likely.  And even this is an inadequate analogy, because water is to a fish what air is to a scientist, and scientists can study air.  But how can scientists study consciousness when they cannot see it in contradistinction to unconsciousness, because nothing exists without consciousness any more than anything exists without gravity?

They don't understand this, of course, but that is the nub of their difficulty.  Not realizing that everything is alive and conscious, they cannot realize that there is no place for them to stand outside of consciousness to measure it.

This world is made up of certain essentials and cannot in any way, at any place, for any time, exist without them.  We keep coming back to it - you can't have height and depth without width.  You can't, any more than you can have a system of numbers without a gap in it (regardless of nomenclature; I am speaking of the unbroken unity of the reality).

Can you see that all the background you have been given to this point is not only invisible to your hypothetical scientist but actually antithetical to the context of everything he has been taught?  You cannot expect very many of them to welcome such an upheaval, any more than medieval scientists welcomed Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, and for the same reason.  Their system had been worked out in great detail and had great precision within its range of competence, and the new system seemed to them a flight of fancy.

If a scientist were to examine this question of consciousness from the starting point of a 3D world created out of the non-3D, however, he or she would quickly see that consciousness, love, and other essentials were the framework on which 3D reality was constructed, hence were built into it, hence could nowhere not be there, hence could not be studied in any way that assumed it as an element that could be studied from the outside.  Qualities of consciousness, yes.  Conditions of consciousness, manifestations of consciousness.  Not consciousness itself.

...  The study of how consciousness manifests in different conditions (among plants and minerals, for instance) is possible.  The contraposition of consciousness and a hypothetical unconsciousness is not, because the hypothesized conditions contradict the conditions of existence.  Again, try to imagine the world without love, or without gravity.  You can sort of do it, in a science-fiction-y way, but not really, because it can't hold together.

(Q)  I know readers will pose the question, so I'll do it for them.  Love?


(A)  You see cruelty or indifference, and you think, "we know what absence of love looks like", but you don't, because it (that is, absence of love) does not, and can not, exist in the 3D world.  What you observe is love restricted to too small a circle by various people - at an extreme, the circle being confined to themselves only.  But even here, and even when they also hate themselves, without love there could be no existence, because it is the air you breathe, know it or not, approve of it or not, conceive of it as even a possibility, or not.