20100910 prc keithhill questions answered 28-30

10/09/2010 prc keithhill questions answered 28-30

Index

Section 3: On the nature of consciousness

Q28 What is your definition on the nature of consciousness per se in and of itself, separate from particular levels of manifestations?

^There are many levels and manifestations of the fundamental nature of consciousness. The specific nature of consciousness is co-located very often within organisms of one kind or another. However there are more than that outside of physicality and existent or manifested as individual identities of one or another of the many spiritual species.

Consciousness in and of itself is a phenomenon of awareness. Consciousness is aware. Literally, consciousness cannot be unconscious. This is the fundamental distinction between the embodied consciousness and the disembodied consciousness. Consciousness is always aware. In other words, it never sleeps. Sleep is a necessity for the organism of whatever variety because they are routinely organised so as to self-repair in times of the absence of the consciousness.

And here we must differentiate between the consciousness of the body, that is, its in-built self-organising awareness and multi-layered functions of embodied mind, which is a product of the nervous system and its concentrated organ, the brain. Every organism of necessity requires a similar extension and concentration of a nervous system because of a universal requirement to monitor and thereby know through the nervous system the condition of not only the core functions but also the extremities.

So to that extent there is a first differentiation to be made between the mind of the body, which is a product of the brain; the mind of the identity, and by that we refer to the spiritual aspect of the embodied form which is permanent. And by that we imply that there is no body which is permanent. Therefore every physical organism exists the manifestation, decay and death characteristic of embodiment on the planet you call Earth.

This being universal, the consciousness can be distributed across any species and the continuum of consciousness across species is universal also. So this implies that there is a majority set of consciousness which is independent of physicality.

A minority set of consciousness which constitutes the intrusion into physicality of the enduring form, the permanent form of consciousness, into the organism whatever its level of organisation, complexity, habitat, social or solitary, self replicating or dyadic in its biological reproductive function. These parameters of consciousness are sufficient for this moment in order to respond to the question as given.

Q29 Where does consciousness come from? In the Michael books it is stated that everything in the cosmos derives from the Dao, which would mean that consciousness derives from the Dao. Do you agree?

^And the answer is of course we agree, because we wrote those books also.

Q30 If your answer to the above question is yes, then that suggests either a) consciousness is a function or manifestation of Dao or b) consciousness is a fundamental aspect of Dao, that is, just consciousness somehow is Dao.

Regarding a) the ancient Indian meditators suggest in the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, that consciousness is identical with the Brahman, the Absolute, and that human consciousness was a portion thereof or participated in the Absolute. I'm assuming that Brahman is another word for Dao?

^And we concur with that.

In other words, consciousness is a fundamental substrate of the Cosmos in the same way that energy and mass are fundamental to and inseparable from the physical universe.

In relation to b): Is consciousness eternal? I ask this because if consciousness is a function of Dao it will come and go, rise and fall, and therefore have a lifespan. But if consciousness is a fundamental aspect of Dao, because Dao always is, so will consciousness always exist. Your thoughts on these options?

^We have a number of thoughts on these options.

The first is that consciousness is not the Dao. It is an aspect only of the Dao, it is not fundamental to it. It is a derivative product of the Dao. It is not primary in that respect, so the willingness to consider consciousness as a function or capacity outside of but contained within, if one can resolve that puzzle. And by that we imply that consciousness is a feature of or a parameter of or a derivative of or located within the Dao. By this means we illustrate that it is both within and able to be considered separately from Dao. And this speaks as much to the nature of the Dao as anything else.

The issue is the capacity to conceptualise parts of the Whole. In that sense consciousness is a part of the Whole, therefore it is not identical with the Whole, but rather an independently discussable feature of the Whole. That is what we mean by the capacity to exercise or examine consciousness as a feature of the Dao is an analytical function of the exploration of the Whole that is the Dao, and not merely its independent part.

So by these means we intend to alert you to the capacity, first, to examine all features and parameters of consciousness, for, just as it is a parameter of the Dao, also it has sub-parameters, each independently considerable. And so to consider some of the aspects of consciousness is first, to examine its nature.

Its nature is such as to build identity. Given that identity is independent of physicality, then identity can be considered a construct within the Dao in such a way as to act as a focal point for the flow of information. For consciousness contains awareness, which processes information. In that sense the information processing capacity is an essential parameter of consciousness for it to be aware. For if consciousness was unaware it would not be processing information. And of course that is one definition of unconsciousness, in that there is no information processing occurring. There is no flow and it is not interpreted.

By this means we point you to the underlying nature of information, which implies that there is information existing in distributed form and information flow from areas or volumes or independent locations which have a greater information density than at other places and that implies that information has a mesh-like quality, whereby flows can be multilateral and multidimensional and require many attributes of sensitivity in order to adequately process.

So in this sense we refer to the idea that there is distributed information; there is distributed identity; there is information flow contained within the identity and its movement; there is information flow independent of identity and its movement, and information flow of interest to identity and therefore actively monitored , gathered and processed.

Identity as such is not subject to decay. It is, however, subject to growth. And so by this we point to the unilateral intrinsic aspect by which information is organised and processed by identities which self-organise and develop as active working repositories of information. And that through the course of identity development, information flow is statistically biased towards concentration rather than dispersal.

The two-way exchange function of concentration and dispersal therefore exhibits a selection bias, whereby the information flow towards identity in the long view is unbalanced such that information net flow is towards the point of concentration represented by identity.

In this sense identity is a product of information flow. So the consideration of what comes first, the Dao, consciousness, identity; these are nested hierarchies in the sense that the Dao contains all, information is a sub-parameter, and identity modulates information in terms of local accretion.

That is sufficient for this day.

[1268 words]

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