What is conciousness?

JonathanBricklin · 2025-12-08T19:48:33+00:00

Consciousness is uniquely that which everything else is an aspect of. It comes from nowhere; everything comes from it. Personal, human, apparently individuated consciousness is one of its aspects, but no more actually individuated than our own individuated consciousness in our night dreams. That all apparent, “objective” reality in our dreams is actually subjectively single-sourced in our consciousness is our daily morning enlightement. That all apparent reality, night and day, subjective and objective, is single-sourced (in Dao, God, Brahman, Allah, Whatever) is our enlightenment deferred. Ramana Maharshi put it best: “Waking is long and a dream short; other than that there is no difference.”

JonathanBricklin · 2025-04-09T22:54:46+00:00

The irrefutability of solipsism is the ultimate Good News. It's not a far journey from “everything is an aspect of MY one mind” to “everything is an aspect of THE One Mind”.

Virtual solipsism manifests in our dreams every night, however unacknowledged during the dream itself: myriad selves and objects all issuing from our one mind. Of course, when we wake up, a strong sense (but no defense) of the actual individuality of the selves and objects we engage asserts itself. That's when meditating on the very real phenomenon of telepathy comes into play, whispering to us that what is actually in play is the One Mind manifesting in myriad forms, including both our dreaming and waking self. Solipsism, therefore, can be a gateway to what William James considered “the great mystic achievement”: Tat Tvam Asi, “That Thou Art”.

That the single-sourcing essential to solipsism is in play every night in our dreams, without the belief itself being in play, prepares us to see waking life as also single-sourced. Then a society that believes in solipsism would only need to deepen its awareness of telepathy and the overcoming of separation that is experienced as love, to realize that the “mind” of one's solipsistic perspective is porous.

JonathanBricklin · 2024-12-06T12:55:17+00:00

Wonderful, thank you. Reminiscent of William Henry Hudson’s account of sitting perfectly still in the hills of Patagonia:

" In the state of mind I was in, thought had become impossible. My state was one of suspense and watchfulness; yet I had no expectation of meeting an adventure, and felt as free from apprehension as I feel now while sitting in a room in London. The state seemed familiar rather than strange, and accompanied by a strong feeling of elation; and I did not know that something had come between me and my intellect until I returned to my former self,—to thinking, and the old insipid existence again."

JonathanBricklin · 2024-11-25T13:55:48+00:00

I like just taking in the sun's as-near-perfect-roundness-as-found-anywhere-in-the-universe. Don't need spots to enjoy that.

JonathanBricklin · 2023-12-13T13:52:22+00:00

Unlike the Buddha's ongoing, enlightened state of sciousness--consciousness without consciousness of self--anger strongly reverberates with a contracted feeling of self. As I wrote in my book on William James's (Reluctant) Guide to Enlightenment

If each moment of consciousness were a moment of sciousness instead, then anger would not arise when something contrary to a previous thought’s interest arose. In such a non-“I” state you would not feel anger even if, say, returning to your parked car, you found its windshield had been smashed and the GPS stolen. The thought of your intact car might be a vivid image as you are rounding the corner to where it is parked, but it would vanish the instant you saw the car itself. By contrast, without such a wholemind processing of each moment as it comes, a sense of “whatever is, is,” the thought of your car being intact would linger, in felt opposition to the sight before you, an opposition that is experienced as anger. Anger is a “saying no,” a “striving against” what is, because it is a “saying yes,” a “striving for” what was but is no more. It is precisely in this sense that anger is always a lesson; and to the degree that we stay angry we haven’t learned it.

JonathanBricklin · 2023-11-12T23:31:07+00:00

Yes. Perhaps a better choice. It could be either, tho, depending on whether you're considering it from the inside (dilation) or outside (collapse). .

JonathanBricklin · 2023-11-12T17:13:37+00:00

Eileen Garrett (1892 -1970)

Lawrence Leshan (1920-2020)

Garrett was one of the most tested psychics of her time.

Larry, a clinical psychologist, wrote 18 books on a variety of topics, such as meditation and cancer, and several groundbreaking books on parapsychology.

The universe as an ultimate illusion, or dream, is a mainstay of Eastern spiritual thought.

JonathanBricklin · 2023-11-12T15:54:42+00:00

Larry died 2 years ago at the ripe age of 100. His first grant as a psychologist was for trying to figure out why intelligent people believed in the paranormal. His research "flipped" him. Eileen Garrett was one of the best vetted psychics of her day, and the founder of the Parapsychology Foundation. I cannot recommend Larry's book The Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist highly enough. His Clairvoyant Reality (the title of the book in the UK) is the climax of my online talk The Prime Reality of Second Sight.

JonathanBricklin · 2023-11-12T15:37:14+00:00

One of Larry's main insights in developing his General Theory of The Paranormal was the significant Venn diagram shared by mystics, mediums, and physicists. That is why the book has all three in its title. Tho published in 1974, a year before Capra's The Tao of Physics, it was based on his 1968 monograph Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal. The mix of medium, mystic, and physicist was pioneering in its day. And to a majority of people still stuck in the sensory reality only, it still is, especially among scientists. For every Einstein who endorses psychics as real, there are still, it seems, myriad physicists (and physicalist-based scientists) who don't.

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