This poll relates back to the age old struggle between dualist and empirical viewpoints on consciousness. After All your trips, or no trips, how have you come, at present, to find yourself thinking about your mind? are you struggling to comprehend how the beautiful apparitions before you could occur through some physical chain reactions? Or does everything appear to be beautiful despite or even because of the fact that it represents neuron functioning? or is everything just all up in the air?
I dont exactly agree with any of the poll options Bill, except I can kind of agree with number 3 in that consciousness is one with phenomena. Consciousness is the cause of everything, because the way I look at it, there is a conscious intelligence which guides all phenomena. Dualistic consciousness is the false mental miscreation which goes against the very nature of our reality. In a thread I started here called Light of Creation, I explained how consciousness is born out of Sat, the universal consciousness, and this is what our individual consciousness is born out of. When we are born out of it, consciousness splits in two, intelligence and ego, and this is the beginning of seperation, or illusion. Tracing your consciousness back to it's source leaves one with the knowledge of the unity of mind, not the seperation because the ego is not really who you are, which is easily proven once one trancends their own. What is left when the mind folds back up and attunes itself to every other mind, the mind that is this reality? Everything and nothing at the same time, the being and the nothing are in essence the same thing, and the efforts to prove otherwise are in line with throwing ice cubes at the sun
Thanks- but i think you would thus fall under option 2. The consciousness i refer to is human primarily. if you believe human consciousness to be part of a greater consciousness then you are likely option 2 or 3. if this greater consciousness actually represents all of reality to you, then id say your option would be 2.
Number 2 however, requires there to be a seperation of phenomena, which at first appears to be so. For example, in my look at it, we have the Light, the Sound (OM), the Vibration, and the Soul. Or, Time, Atom, Truth, and Soul. Whichever and whatever. But when consciousness is trascended, it becomes true that these are all essentially the same thing, so the phenomena is only one, not universal at first glance becaues it happens out of the universal, but single in the sense that all is one upon further realization, this is why I can sort of go with number 3. Number 2 I feel only applies to us as we see it now, just like Time itself. But number 3 is the grand scheme, so to speak.
dont think of number 2 as seperating a whole into parts, but more as a collection of metaphysical facets that we identify with the whole
I would say that it is a combination of the physical and metaphysical characteristics. The mental creation of Ego (Physical) Whereas The universal consciousness, the connection we hold to the world that transends our sense of self seems more metaphysical. Mind you, that my psychedelic experiences are very limited and the idea I just presented very simplistic and compared with some of your theological understandings very crude so I hope I'm not making a fool out of myself.
i think you guys are twisting the options through your beliefs. consciousness is physical consciousness is metaphysical then if you chose the second, you can choose further to say that you believe it is metaphysical amongst all the other metaphysical beliefs of yours, or to say that consciousness is uniquely metaphysical. im not trying to put your belief into words, but classify your beliefs under headings.
