WHO KNOWS?

Have you ever lain on the ground, it's a beautiful, cloudless summer day - and instead of looking up at the sky - just for a moment, imagine that you are looking down at it . . .



W
e spend the majority of our time with our individual awareness focused on the world that appears outside of us.
We receive information through our sense organs, eyes, ears, our sense of touch, sense of smell etc.
The picture we have built of the world in our minds even makes its presence known during dreaming, so steeped are we in that particular sphere of existence.

This world reaches out from the surface of our bodies into the infinity of outer space.
However, infinity, if you think about it, as well as stretching out to the infinitely large, must also stretch the other way, to the infinitely small, the microcosmic, the subatomic.
Into the world of energy.

We can explore that world and the only instrument that we need for our journey into inner space is a Human Body.
In order for us to discover about our inner world we need to experience it for ourselves.
In this context, experience is the only means of gaining real knowledge about ourselves.
To experience is to know.

I could describe to you the taste of ice cream, but unless you had tasted it for yourself, the words I used would be meaningless - and a very poor substitute for the delicious taste.

So this inner world is explored, using our awareness, by turning it within.
Instead of being saturated with the exterior world, we start to tune our senses in to what's going on inside ourselves.

Documented evidence exists on this subject reaching back to really early civilisations.
Some, no doubt, disputed by science.
Science generally requires quantifiable proof before anything is regarded as being true, but as we've discussed, the only quantifiable proof with regard to experience, is experience itself.
It's impossible to allow someone or something else to share an actual experience, so a lot of this subjective reality stuff is unfortunately dismissed as mumbo-jumbo by the scientific community.

I have noticed that there seems to be a major division of thought in one area particularly.
The area of consciousness, or awareness.
Not in the general sense but in the precise nature of its existence.

Some tend to lean in the direction of consciousness evolving over time, parallel to the evolution,
the development of the human mechanism, the brain, central nervous system etc. and that it only exists as a direct result of these mechanisms.
Others share a belief that consciousness is a subtle form of energy and that it has always existed.

Strange that we are divided about something so close to us all.
Something that is the key to everything we think or do.
Something, without which, we wouldn't even be aware that we were here at all.

So what do you think?
Do you think that awareness, that ineffable quality of knowingness, that which is so personal to us in everything we do, that sense of self, of "I-am-ness", do you think that it is just an accidental occurrence resulting from having sense organs and a brain?
Something which is evident in every life form, from the simple cell, through the insect world,
plants even, right up the ladder of evolution.
Can something as profound as consciousness just evolve?

Just think of the idea of consciousness.
Consciousness as a concept.
How incredibly bizarre it is.
The ability to know, to feel a whole spectrum of different things, from colours, tastes, sounds, emotions, thoughts.
All the time, these phenomena only exist because we know that we are experiencing them.
Irrespective of the meaning we attribute to these phenomena, they surely do exist.
Or are we dreaming it all?
But we are aware of the dream as well.

I propose a different hypothesis.
That consciousness has been imbued into the very essence of the universe since whenever it was that it started.
That consciousness is the most subtle form of energy.
It cannot be created, cannot be destroyed and that it dwells at the heart of every nucleus of every atom.
It is every where at once, is all knowing.
It lives in the quantum world, if you like.

Now, I know nothing of quantum maths or physics, but the little I have gleaned on these subjects certainly doesn't contradict the hypothesis.
But I suggest that science will never be able to discover consciousness because it is only accessible to consciousness itself, being infinitely subtle.
The only way to "discover" consciousness is to be it and for it to experience itself.

Consider this.
The only value judgements that we make are relative.
That is, we can only value something, or give it a measurement in relation to something else.
We have no idea whatsoever how large or small the universe is because the only values used, be they light years, miles or inches, are only a set of relative values that we have invented purely for convenience.
Likewise, neither have we any real notion of how old the universe is.

Is up really up, or could it be down?
There is no such thing as an absolute value.
Consciousness is the only thing that is absolute.

To be being is to know being.
To know being is to be being.
It is at one with itself.
It is beyond duality.
Beyond question, beyond words.
It is never absent.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Ellumbra

Great article. I always enjoy visiting your site. Many of the points you made are those that I have been writing about as well.

I also want to let you know that I tagged you for "7 Facts About Me." You can get the information on my site. I hope you don't mind.

Ellumbra said...

Hi there Lea - thank you for your appreciative comment.
I've completed the tag & passed it on.
I shall come on over for a good read.

Lucy Lopez said...

Hi Tim! I think you've raised some important questions and offered some valid answers. I tend to view consciousness in a somewhat similar way although this question you raised:

Can something as profound as consciousness just evolve?

suggests to me that it presumes a quality of linearity in consciousness. I do not see it that way. However, I do believe that we experience an 'expansion of awareness' which seems to be time-dependent. The illusion of time, however, is shattered in the infinite and eternal 'now'. In the state of pure consciousness, there is neither expansion and by implication, linearity. Everything is.

Ellumbra said...

Aha - me being vague Lucy, sorry.
Perhaps I need to clarify what I meant. I did not mean "evolve" in the way we refer to our general social awareness as "evolving" or expanding - for example, gradually becoming more receptive to tackling poverty or human rights issues etc.

More fundamental than that - I cannot see how energy can become imbued with conscious ability merely as a by-product, a side effect of physical evolution - it is far too unique and bizarre a property for that.
Even as a concept - as an idea.
Which leads me to imagine that it can only be an essence, known and shared by the creative power itself - which certainly coincides with omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience.

It can exist in a timeless, infinite and pure state - yet simultaneously be the core, the soul, the conscious heart, integrated within and aware of its own physical manifestation, expressed through linearity in time and space.

A willow watching leaves float by,
knows not how they greet each willow.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you clarified that Tim :-). I did think you would have meant that but checked just in case I might have missed something. Ta!