Another Consciousness meltdown, this time a la Paar and Schips...

Lisa Ortiz2 said:Haha, maybe they’ll even issue us a certificate for this feat. Something like, "Successfully weathered the crossfire of logic on the Philosophy subforum and managed to survive." 😁 😁

Let's not lay our final intentions out on the table just yet.😳
Because if we don't survive, what are they going to write on our headstones?😁
Oh wait... they certainly know how to write those!🙂

As for the question of consciousness... we can certainly dive into that... but for the next ten days or so, I have enough work on my plate that I actually need to learn how to fly.
It is possible I might make a brief landing... (and no, I am not talking about a broomstick, why are you looking at me so suspiciously? 😳 )
so please bear with me.
Best regards.👋

The Sufis have this one beautiful saying:
God sleeps in stone, dreams in plants, stirs within animals, and finally wakes up in man.
It’s all just consciousness.
That’s the foundation.

I mean, anything goes at this point, right? Even these ridiculous, messy duels where everyone just starts scattering everything everywhere like it’s back in our sophomore year of college.

I realize this isn't exactly the right thread for sharing lyrics—and I know I should probably stick to the topic at hand—but certain lines just drifted into my head, and I felt I couldn't really help myself...

YOU CHOOSE TO JUDGE,
IS THAT YOUR ROLE?

Otto said:Well, anything goes at this point—even these silly little debates where people just scatter arguments all over the place, much like we saw back during our third year of college.

I'm not quite sure if you meant "on" the third year or "during" the third year, but I get the gist.🙂
As for me, I don't think there's even a manual for this kind of thing. Is there one out there? Honestly, life just throws things at you... and there's certainly nothing wrong with learning as you go.😁

(Olivia Carter25, this reminds me of a little fire starter... our charming boy William Gonzalez3 is basically the spark... it’s only polite to say thank you.🙂 )
Just for William Gonzalez3 👋

Don't be quite so worried about the "retaliation of clever philosophers."

I really appreciate the compliment, and I truly mean it when I say thank you, but I honestly don't think I deserve to be called a philosopher.

Anyway, I don't want to derail the conversation.
Please, just carry on with the discussion about consciousness.

William Gonzalez3 said:but I don't want to derail the conversation.
please, carry on with the discussion regarding consciousness.

I must admit, I also found myself playing around with the topic somewhat subconsciously.
My apologies to the author.🙂

Olivia Carter25:

"Hmm. This actually confused me more than helped. Does this mean we're self-aware even when we're asleep?"

Why are you asking everyone else when you can just test it yourself? Run an experiment. Lie down, pass out, and see if you’re still "there." I ran the experiment on myself and figured out I'm definitely not conscious when I sleep. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying. Maybe other people are aware, but I can't check their heads—I can only check mine. When I'm out, I'm gone.

When you get down to the brass tacks of what consciousness actually is, the answer is dead simple. Consciousness is THAT WHICH EXISTS. It’s the raw material everything is made of. It builds everything from scratch—atoms, cells, planets, plants, animals, humans, you name it. Consciousness does all the heavy lifting itself. It can morph into whatever it wants, but it has to do it step-by-step through a process we call evolution. There’s a logic and a method to reaching a specific shape. Think of consciousness as dough that can be baked into an infinite variety of cookies.

Now, since consciousness handles all this solo, it obviously needs certain tools to get the job done. There are only a handful of these essential abilities, split into physical and psychic categories.

1. Physical abilities involve exertion and movement. Once consciousness exerts effort and moves, it becomes what we label as energy or matter.

2. Psychic abilities consist of observing that movement, then feeling, remembering, thinking, and understanding.

That’s it. That’s the whole story of consciousness. And honestly, it's the whole story of how this entire universe functions.

By using those physical and psychic tools, consciousness can basically manifest anything it wants—it can pull off any miracle in this world. Like I said, that's the core wisdom behind how everything comes to be and exists.

So, final question: what exactly is sleep versus being awake?

Sleep is just the state where consciousness isn't using a single one of its physical or psychic abilities. In that state, there is zero awareness. While it's happening, nothing exists. This cycle repeats because using those abilities wears consciousness out. Eventually, it just wants to stop and chill. The second it rests, all the little toys it built while awake collapse and vanish. But once it’s rested, it always wants to wake up and start building new toys again until it gets tired once more. This endless loop of burning out and recharging—this back-and-forth between being awake and sleeping—goes on forever. It had no beginning, and it won't have an end.

Cheers.

"Quote:"

Sandra Wilson68 said:Olivia Carter25:

Hmm. This actually left me more confused than anything else. Does this mean we’re actually self-aware even while we're asleep?

Why bother asking everyone else when you could just look it up yourself?

Not really.

Try an experiment. Lie down, drift off, and see if you can actually tell when you're dreaming.

Are you actually aware when you’re awake? You claim you are, so let's just take that as a given for a second. Now, really think about it. Are you truly conscious of every single micro-moment—every tiny action and every passing thought? As far as I can tell, you aren't. Which means you weren't actually aware of being aware, even though your logic dictates that if you were awake, you should have been fully conscious.

How am I supposed to conclude that just because I'm asleep—meaning, I lack any perception of being conscious—that is the very reason I am unconscious?

I can't draw any conclusions from that.

But, Olivia Carter25, when we’re awake, our level of awareness—how much we actually notice—is entirely up to us.

And when we're high, well, we don't really have any control over it at all; consciousness just sort of slips away.

When we're awake, certain things just become part of the background noise of life.

It isn't necessarily that we aren't aware of them, per se—it’s more like we've "decided" to push them down into the subconscious. It's similar to how we might choose to tune out the street noise outside our house.
If we were actively trying to process every single sound from the street, we'd be listening intently and analyzing everything. But there's no real need for that since we already know exactly what each sound is.
That's a car, that's an engine, that's a truck...
Our minds have become so habituated that they handle all of this automatically, almost without our involvement.

On the other hand, the moment there's a shift in the pattern of those sounds, our subconscious sends a little flare up to our conscious mind to let us know something isn't quite right. So, if we hear a helicopter, we suddenly become acutely aware of it and head straight to the window to see what it's doing and where it's headed.

So, I suppose while we're awake, we intentionally suppress a massive amount of information into the subconscious just so we can focus on whatever we're currently doing—seeing and hearing only what is absolutely necessary.
When we sleep, though, we aren't suppressing anything because we aren't conscious of anything at all (not even our own snoring, which is loud enough to keep the neighbors in the apartment next door awake), so there isn't really anything to suppress.
Consciousness just... shuts off.
It's a bit like turning off a computer.

Olivia Carter25,

William Gonzalez3 already hit the nail on the head regarding your dilemma about being awake versus asleep—basically, consciousness vs. unconsciousness. I’ll just add my two cents to what he said. Here’s the bottom line: consciousness lives or dies based on one thing. It's what I've been preaching: the ability to actually *do* things, both physically and mentally. Consciousness depends entirely on whether you are performing actions or not—stuff like exerting effort, moving, perceiving, feeling, remembering, thinking, or understanding. If you're doing them, you're conscious. If you aren't, you aren't. When we sleep, we stop performing these actions, so there's no consciousness. Once we wake up and start acting again, consciousness kicks back in automatically. Waking up is literally triggered by the restart of those actions. That's what defines the state of being awake.

Keep in mind, though, that your conscious state is limited by whatever those physical and mental actions allow. At any given moment, you're only conscious of whatever you've directed those actions toward. For example, if you're reading a book, you're only conscious of the content of that book and nothing else. You aren't even consciously aware of the book itself or your own existence in that moment. To become aware of the book you're reading, you have to stop reading it and redirect your attention to the object or to yourself—looking at the book, looking at yourself, or thinking about the act of reading.

The takeaway here is simple: consciousness always hinges on whether you are engaging in physical or mental activities. If you are, you're conscious, but only of what those specific actions are focused on. If you aren't doing any physical or mental work at all, you aren't conscious of anything. That's sleep. Deep, dreamless sleep. Even dreams are a form of consciousness because you're still using mental faculties—perceiving, feeling, remembering, thinking, and understanding.

Look, I know what you're really after. You want to know if you can stay conscious while sleeping. Yeah, it's possible through practice and meditation. It's that state where the body is out cold, but you remain awake and aware of something. This works because our "Self" is an energy (the soul) tethered to the body. Through meditation, you can essentially detach from the physical shell and let the body sleep while the "Self" stays awake. But if the "Self" also goes to sleep—meaning it stops using every single one of its mental and physical faculties—then you're in a deep, dreamless sleep, and there is absolutely zero consciousness there.

Later.

Sandra Wilson68 said:...if our "Self" is truly asleep—meaning it isn't engaging in any physical or mental activity whatsoever—then we are in a state of deep sleep (dreamless sleep), and at that point, there is certainly no consciousness present.

But if consciousness just shuts off like a computer (as William Gonzalez3 suggests), and if—per your logic—there is absolutely no awareness left (given that the entire universe exists only within consciousness, so when consciousness is off, there is effectively "nothingness"), then what exactly "switches it back on" in the morning? Does the Self just reboot itself? How is that possible if it's turned off? Is it something from "outside" (like an alarm clock)? But how could an alarm clock even exist if nothing exists until it's perceived by consciousness?

I think I follow what you two are getting at. I tend to view it as though the "Self" is sleeping, but the "Self" is actually part of a larger entity that maintains control (sort of like that image mentioned in the original post).

Nancy Fowler61:

”I think I get what you two are getting at. It’s like the ‘I’ is sleeping, but that ‘I’ is just a piece of something much larger pulling the strings (kind of like that image in the original post).”

Look, nobody "controls" consciousness. There are just laws of necessity—logic, if you will—that allow consciousness to exist on its own. It self-sustains by constantly cycling through its three natural states. These states are in a perpetual loop, which is basically what people mean when they talk about "vibrations" or "biorhythms." Take the way a person lives: sleeping and resting at night, then waking up and moving around during the day. That’s a repeating rhythm, a natural cycle that keeps us going through those three states. Nobody else does that for you; you do it for yourself. It's the same with your heartbeat. Your lungs breathe that way. Your stomach empties and fills that way. If you look at physical forms and phenomena in nature, you'll see the same thing—everything exists and sustains itself through this constant pattern of repetition. Why it *has* to be this way and not any other way? That’s a longer conversation. I’ve got it all laid out on my website, so if you're actually interested, go read it.

I think there’s an internal alarm clock running in our subconscious.

It’s basically automatic—much like what Sandra Wilson68 was getting at regarding things like digestion, heart rate, and breathing.

Comparing sleep to shutting down a computer is really just an analogy, and honestly, it's a flawed one since true perfection in such a comparison isn't really possible.

Maybe if we viewed sleep more like putting a computer into "standby" mode, the concept might be a bit easier to grasp.

The brain might be a computer, but it’s not what makes us human.

So, what exactly defines our essence?

Could someone please clarify who these guys are—you, Paar, and Schips?

Is Paar similar to Vladek, or am I off base?

And what about Schips?

😕

Why on earth did this malicious forum refuse my post? 😢

Will it actually go through now?