I would say when we’re in the lost-in-thought state, consciousness isn’t lost, but the awareness of consciousness is lost.
Absence of consciousness must imply the state of a computer for example. It can still process or produce information but it is not aware of any of this. But we humans are almost always aware of the contents of the consciousness, the information, unless we get a concussion etc. and get unconscious or are in deep sleep.
So from that point of view there are three levels, not two and we are in the second by default:
1- No consciousness
2- Consciousness
3- Awareness (or consciousness) of consciousness
The third one may also be called awareness of the Self, with or without the knowing that it’s the Self. If it is with this knowing, then it is the awakened (enlightened, Self-Realized) state.
I think sometimes it's useful and helpful to describe things in a general way but lately, increasingly, with this stuff, I think maybe we need to zoom in a little more.
You wrote, "I would say when we’re in the lost-in-thought state, consciousness isn’t lost, but the awareness of consciousness is lost."
In this case, with this subject, I think we need a lower-level description (one with more detail). I think consciousness while we're lost in thought (LIT) is complicated and difficult to observe and describe.
In LIT, to a first approximation, we don't know what we're thinking or that we're thinking. I've been defining it that way lately because it's a simple definition and because some popular new books define it that way so it will be familiar to people. But really that's oversimplified.
We (the "I" we feel that we are ) know what we were thinking in LIT only after the fact, after we leave LIT and recall the memory, but when we inspect the memory, we remember being conscious of the thought. At least that's how I experience it. If the memory is accurate *something* knows thoughts while we're in the lost-in-thought state but it's not the same "I" that knows things a moment later when we snap out of the LIT state and understand. If the memory is accurate it seems to imply that LIT has its own subject distinct from the one we feel like we are.
"Absence of consciousness must imply the state of a computer for example. It can still process or produce information but it is not aware of any of this..."
Consider the so-called "automaticity" state also known as "driving hypnosis." (These states are really mental activities.) We have no awareness of this while it happens and can't remember it after it ends. For all we know, we really are robots with respect to that state (activity).
"But we humans are almost always aware of the contents of the consciousness, the information, unless we get a concussion etc. and get unconscious or are in deep sleep.""
I think the opposite is true. LIT is the normal default state. Most people are in LIT almost every waking minute of their lives. In that state, to a first approximation, they don't know what they are thinking or that they are thinking. (Although, as I said a moment ago, it may be the case that a separate subject has experience in that state.)
"The third one may also be called awareness of the Self, with or without the knowing that it’s the Self. If it is with this knowing, then it is the awakened (enlightened, Self-Realized) state."
I agree that there's a radical disjuncture between LIT and the states (activities) we experience when we snap out of it. (You didn't say that but it's implied by separate numbers 2 and 3.) I also agree that the number 3 states have a sort of reflexive awareness-of-awareness quality to them although when we get more familiar with that quality or go deeper into it, it stops being reflexive and becomes nondual.
But as I said the other day on the Wordpress blog, I think there are a multiplicity of activities or states that can be described this way. I don't think there's any single #3 state.
I'm wondering if it seems to you like there's a single #3 state because you were lucky enough at the start to notice the "right" #3 state and that's the only one you ever paid attention to. That would explain why you may have gotten further with this approach than I did. (You got stabilized in #3, right?)
Also, I think the brain makes use of consciousness in a variety of ways. I think a-of-a is one of the ways the brain makes use of it. I suspect that consciousness itself is the Self, not any particular use the brain makes of consciousness.
Thanks for your detailed reply, Freddie. Just to clarify, I didn't imply that LIT is not the default state for people, it is in fact. I just think that we are still aware of our thoughts while we're thinking and in LIT state. We are aware of our thoughts, but are not aware that they're just thoughts. We take them for real. I'm pretty sure that's your experience, too, but somehow our difference is a matter of language, I don't know. If you weren't aware of your thoughts while you were thinking it'd be complete darkness.
It's exactly like watching a movie. While you're watching it, with the excitement, you forget that it's just a movie and begin to take it for real. But you're still aware of what you're watching. Only not aware that it's just a movie. In my terminology, watching a movie but not being aware of it is only something that a camera, or a robot would be doing. (And perhaps some lower level living beings? )
To answer your question, no I haven't stabilised in 3. (But that might have changed yesterday, we'll see, it's still very new.) The shift I mentioned to you 2 years ago, was I think what some people call the birth of inner stillness / silence. My understanding is that it's the first step of recognising one's True Self, albeit observing it from a small lens yet. And probably the recognition is more subconscious than conscious. Yet it's enough to change one's life experience dramatically. As I hinted above, I think I was given a way bigger lens yesterday that might have resulted in drop of thoughts around "I", but it's still new, I don't know if it's permanent.
Also it's probably worth mentioning here, as the size of the lens gets bigger, the time you spend in LIT decreases, so does the intensity, the degree of being lost in LIT.
As you mentioned in your first ever article on your blog, awareness is not binary (on / off), there are degrees. So LIT has degrees, too, by definition. My experience is the more you recognise the Self, the less time you spend in LIT, because you don't believe your thoughts (or believe less), and the light of the Self begins to illuminate your LIT state more and more. Have you observed this?
Yes Focus, I believe that is the case for me, but I think I am spending less time in the LIT state because of intention/practise. IMO It plays a big role too.
In the past I was "always" lost in thought when I was driving, watching TV, swimming or whatever but now because I understand what it is and have the intention, I experience the transitive awareness and the intransitive awareness(self) more often.
My understanding is that as you recognise the Self more, more correctly as the Self recognises itself more, the intention / practice turns into a more automatic process, because in the Self something much more real, authentic is recognised, although at first it’s difficult to put a name on this, and this creates more motivation. Also one’s belief in the thoughts start to collapse, so the attraction to thoughts diminish more and more. The only meaningful thing to do that remains is staying with the Self (i.e. practice). But it’s not really a practice anymore, just a new mode of being. So dropping the contraction “I must practise”, may in fact be very useful at this stage as it allows you to relax into your True being. After a certain point the only “practice” is relaxation. True surrender is also relaxation.
"I just think that we are still aware of our thoughts while we're thinking and in LIT state. We are aware of our thoughts, but are not aware that they're just thoughts. We take them for real. I'm pretty sure that's your experience, too..."
As best I can observe, "I" only know the experience of LIT thoughts when they replay in memory. The memory seems to show that the thoughts were experienced by something at the time they occurred. But "I" who views the memory had no knowledge of the thoughts when they occurred. I'm putting "I" in quotation marks because I think all I's are generated by the brain as part of these activities and I think the "I" that gets generated during LIT activity, if there is one, is very likely different from the one who observes the memory.
I'm sorry if this seems hyper-analytic but I'm taking the title of this new blog seriously even if it makes me look like a crackpot. I started this new blog because I thought most readers on the Wordpress blog wouldn't be interested.
"If you weren't aware of your thoughts while you were thinking it'd be complete darkness."
We don't need to be aware *of* anything in order to be aware. In fact, attention to objects makes it seem as if we're less aware. This happens big time in LIT.
"It's exactly like watching a movie. While you're watching it, with the excitement, you forget that it's just a movie and begin to take it for real. But you're still aware of what you're watching. Only not aware that it's just a movie. In my terminology, watching a movie but not being aware of it is only something that a camera, or a robot would be doing. (And perhaps some lower level living beings? )"
I think movie-watching is almost exactly like LIT because it *is* LIT. The only difference is the source of the thoughts. In one case our brain generates them and in the other Netflix generates them. So my reaction is, "Everything I said above about LIT applies to movie-watching."
By the way that question touches on my earliest interest in this stuff. When I was very young (3? 4? 5? I'm not sure) I used to watch cartoons on TV and often they contained a frame. In other words, the cartoon would start with a character telling the beginning of a story to another, then the cartoon would shift to the time and place where the story happened and we'd see it in "real time" without the framing characters, then at the end the frame characters would briefly reappear to make a few closing remarks.
I noticed that whenever I watched one of these cartoons, at the end when the frame characters reappeared, I was always surprised because I had forgotten that the story was set inside a frame. This annoyed me. It bothered me that I couldn't remember. Every time this happened I vowed that next time I would remember! I would not be surprised! I really tried. It was a project of mine for I don't know how long -- maybe a couple of years which is a long time when you're 4 or 5 or whatever. I never succeeded, not a single time. One of the reasons I couldn't do it, probably, was that I was in LIT.
Thanks for explaining about the birth of inner stillness.
"(But that might have changed yesterday, we'll see, it's still very new.)"
I hope it did, grats in advance. :)
"My experience is the more you recognise the Self, the less time you spend in LIT, because you don't believe your thoughts (or believe less), and the light of the Self begins to illuminate your LIT state more and more. Have you observed this?"
Less time: yeah but the change is very slow. Over 20 or 25 years, it may have shrunk by 20 or 30%, something like that. Believe less: thoughts seem as true as ever but the fact that they are useless has a more powerful defusing effect now. Light of self: Yes if what I'm about to say is the same as what you said. The transition between LIT and non-LIT is much less dramatic now because something meta to both has become more evident.
That same increased continuity between LIT and non-LIT is also apparent between dreaming and wakefulness. Sometimes when I wake from sleep during a dream, it feels like the knower of the dream is the exact same knower of the waking state.
I would say when we’re in the lost-in-thought state, consciousness isn’t lost, but the awareness of consciousness is lost.
Absence of consciousness must imply the state of a computer for example. It can still process or produce information but it is not aware of any of this. But we humans are almost always aware of the contents of the consciousness, the information, unless we get a concussion etc. and get unconscious or are in deep sleep.
So from that point of view there are three levels, not two and we are in the second by default:
1- No consciousness
2- Consciousness
3- Awareness (or consciousness) of consciousness
The third one may also be called awareness of the Self, with or without the knowing that it’s the Self. If it is with this knowing, then it is the awakened (enlightened, Self-Realized) state.
What do you think?
I think sometimes it's useful and helpful to describe things in a general way but lately, increasingly, with this stuff, I think maybe we need to zoom in a little more.
You wrote, "I would say when we’re in the lost-in-thought state, consciousness isn’t lost, but the awareness of consciousness is lost."
In this case, with this subject, I think we need a lower-level description (one with more detail). I think consciousness while we're lost in thought (LIT) is complicated and difficult to observe and describe.
In LIT, to a first approximation, we don't know what we're thinking or that we're thinking. I've been defining it that way lately because it's a simple definition and because some popular new books define it that way so it will be familiar to people. But really that's oversimplified.
We (the "I" we feel that we are ) know what we were thinking in LIT only after the fact, after we leave LIT and recall the memory, but when we inspect the memory, we remember being conscious of the thought. At least that's how I experience it. If the memory is accurate *something* knows thoughts while we're in the lost-in-thought state but it's not the same "I" that knows things a moment later when we snap out of the LIT state and understand. If the memory is accurate it seems to imply that LIT has its own subject distinct from the one we feel like we are.
"Absence of consciousness must imply the state of a computer for example. It can still process or produce information but it is not aware of any of this..."
Consider the so-called "automaticity" state also known as "driving hypnosis." (These states are really mental activities.) We have no awareness of this while it happens and can't remember it after it ends. For all we know, we really are robots with respect to that state (activity).
"But we humans are almost always aware of the contents of the consciousness, the information, unless we get a concussion etc. and get unconscious or are in deep sleep.""
I think the opposite is true. LIT is the normal default state. Most people are in LIT almost every waking minute of their lives. In that state, to a first approximation, they don't know what they are thinking or that they are thinking. (Although, as I said a moment ago, it may be the case that a separate subject has experience in that state.)
"The third one may also be called awareness of the Self, with or without the knowing that it’s the Self. If it is with this knowing, then it is the awakened (enlightened, Self-Realized) state."
I agree that there's a radical disjuncture between LIT and the states (activities) we experience when we snap out of it. (You didn't say that but it's implied by separate numbers 2 and 3.) I also agree that the number 3 states have a sort of reflexive awareness-of-awareness quality to them although when we get more familiar with that quality or go deeper into it, it stops being reflexive and becomes nondual.
But as I said the other day on the Wordpress blog, I think there are a multiplicity of activities or states that can be described this way. I don't think there's any single #3 state.
I'm wondering if it seems to you like there's a single #3 state because you were lucky enough at the start to notice the "right" #3 state and that's the only one you ever paid attention to. That would explain why you may have gotten further with this approach than I did. (You got stabilized in #3, right?)
Also, I think the brain makes use of consciousness in a variety of ways. I think a-of-a is one of the ways the brain makes use of it. I suspect that consciousness itself is the Self, not any particular use the brain makes of consciousness.
Thanks for your detailed reply, Freddie. Just to clarify, I didn't imply that LIT is not the default state for people, it is in fact. I just think that we are still aware of our thoughts while we're thinking and in LIT state. We are aware of our thoughts, but are not aware that they're just thoughts. We take them for real. I'm pretty sure that's your experience, too, but somehow our difference is a matter of language, I don't know. If you weren't aware of your thoughts while you were thinking it'd be complete darkness.
It's exactly like watching a movie. While you're watching it, with the excitement, you forget that it's just a movie and begin to take it for real. But you're still aware of what you're watching. Only not aware that it's just a movie. In my terminology, watching a movie but not being aware of it is only something that a camera, or a robot would be doing. (And perhaps some lower level living beings? )
To answer your question, no I haven't stabilised in 3. (But that might have changed yesterday, we'll see, it's still very new.) The shift I mentioned to you 2 years ago, was I think what some people call the birth of inner stillness / silence. My understanding is that it's the first step of recognising one's True Self, albeit observing it from a small lens yet. And probably the recognition is more subconscious than conscious. Yet it's enough to change one's life experience dramatically. As I hinted above, I think I was given a way bigger lens yesterday that might have resulted in drop of thoughts around "I", but it's still new, I don't know if it's permanent.
Also it's probably worth mentioning here, as the size of the lens gets bigger, the time you spend in LIT decreases, so does the intensity, the degree of being lost in LIT.
As you mentioned in your first ever article on your blog, awareness is not binary (on / off), there are degrees. So LIT has degrees, too, by definition. My experience is the more you recognise the Self, the less time you spend in LIT, because you don't believe your thoughts (or believe less), and the light of the Self begins to illuminate your LIT state more and more. Have you observed this?
Yes Focus, I believe that is the case for me, but I think I am spending less time in the LIT state because of intention/practise. IMO It plays a big role too.
In the past I was "always" lost in thought when I was driving, watching TV, swimming or whatever but now because I understand what it is and have the intention, I experience the transitive awareness and the intransitive awareness(self) more often.
My understanding is that as you recognise the Self more, more correctly as the Self recognises itself more, the intention / practice turns into a more automatic process, because in the Self something much more real, authentic is recognised, although at first it’s difficult to put a name on this, and this creates more motivation. Also one’s belief in the thoughts start to collapse, so the attraction to thoughts diminish more and more. The only meaningful thing to do that remains is staying with the Self (i.e. practice). But it’s not really a practice anymore, just a new mode of being. So dropping the contraction “I must practise”, may in fact be very useful at this stage as it allows you to relax into your True being. After a certain point the only “practice” is relaxation. True surrender is also relaxation.
Love the explanation. Thanks
"I just think that we are still aware of our thoughts while we're thinking and in LIT state. We are aware of our thoughts, but are not aware that they're just thoughts. We take them for real. I'm pretty sure that's your experience, too..."
As best I can observe, "I" only know the experience of LIT thoughts when they replay in memory. The memory seems to show that the thoughts were experienced by something at the time they occurred. But "I" who views the memory had no knowledge of the thoughts when they occurred. I'm putting "I" in quotation marks because I think all I's are generated by the brain as part of these activities and I think the "I" that gets generated during LIT activity, if there is one, is very likely different from the one who observes the memory.
I'm sorry if this seems hyper-analytic but I'm taking the title of this new blog seriously even if it makes me look like a crackpot. I started this new blog because I thought most readers on the Wordpress blog wouldn't be interested.
"If you weren't aware of your thoughts while you were thinking it'd be complete darkness."
We don't need to be aware *of* anything in order to be aware. In fact, attention to objects makes it seem as if we're less aware. This happens big time in LIT.
"It's exactly like watching a movie. While you're watching it, with the excitement, you forget that it's just a movie and begin to take it for real. But you're still aware of what you're watching. Only not aware that it's just a movie. In my terminology, watching a movie but not being aware of it is only something that a camera, or a robot would be doing. (And perhaps some lower level living beings? )"
I think movie-watching is almost exactly like LIT because it *is* LIT. The only difference is the source of the thoughts. In one case our brain generates them and in the other Netflix generates them. So my reaction is, "Everything I said above about LIT applies to movie-watching."
By the way that question touches on my earliest interest in this stuff. When I was very young (3? 4? 5? I'm not sure) I used to watch cartoons on TV and often they contained a frame. In other words, the cartoon would start with a character telling the beginning of a story to another, then the cartoon would shift to the time and place where the story happened and we'd see it in "real time" without the framing characters, then at the end the frame characters would briefly reappear to make a few closing remarks.
I noticed that whenever I watched one of these cartoons, at the end when the frame characters reappeared, I was always surprised because I had forgotten that the story was set inside a frame. This annoyed me. It bothered me that I couldn't remember. Every time this happened I vowed that next time I would remember! I would not be surprised! I really tried. It was a project of mine for I don't know how long -- maybe a couple of years which is a long time when you're 4 or 5 or whatever. I never succeeded, not a single time. One of the reasons I couldn't do it, probably, was that I was in LIT.
Thanks for explaining about the birth of inner stillness.
"(But that might have changed yesterday, we'll see, it's still very new.)"
I hope it did, grats in advance. :)
"My experience is the more you recognise the Self, the less time you spend in LIT, because you don't believe your thoughts (or believe less), and the light of the Self begins to illuminate your LIT state more and more. Have you observed this?"
Less time: yeah but the change is very slow. Over 20 or 25 years, it may have shrunk by 20 or 30%, something like that. Believe less: thoughts seem as true as ever but the fact that they are useless has a more powerful defusing effect now. Light of self: Yes if what I'm about to say is the same as what you said. The transition between LIT and non-LIT is much less dramatic now because something meta to both has become more evident.
That same increased continuity between LIT and non-LIT is also apparent between dreaming and wakefulness. Sometimes when I wake from sleep during a dream, it feels like the knower of the dream is the exact same knower of the waking state.