"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." Max Planck For all of you guys, who so much try to hint that real scientists disregard Consciousness.
I agree... however, Rupert claims that Awareness & Consciousness are the same. But to be absolutely accurate could awareness be just beyond consciousness? Conscious here (being like law) and suddenly a clear awareness kicks in AND now he/she is consciously aware? A rock is a conscious vibration because its vibrations(electrons) KNOW (order) vs chaos) what to do.
@@peterscherba4138 I personally see a difference between awareness and consciousness, I see consciousness as that which hosts the jungian psychology archetypes, I see consciousness as a cup of water in the sea, sea being the infinite aka pure awareness, I see consciousness as the finite Third eye can be seen as the seat of the soul, true awareness, which makes sense because it's in the center of two polarites being left brain and right brain Everything points twords there being a distinction between consciousness and awareness
@@peterscherba4138 Sir I appreciate your idea and I think and bit sure of that consciousness and awareness is not same because to remain conscious there need to be a conscious effort of self where there is no no need to be remain aware if we are conscious. Awareness is there all the time.It's fundamental reality. Only we have to recognize and feel awareness by remain conscious. We can't go beyond awareness So I think our priority is to be conscious all the time that should be the stage of where we are consciously aware. What do you thik? Thank you.
I always liked the analogy of looking for the person (consciousness/awareness/identity) in the body is like taking a radio apart looking for the announcer.
Ridiculous. The radio is receiving audio from an external source. The body is not receiving some external broadcast! It’s all self-contained, which means the consciousness is IN the body.
@@electrictroy2010 That which makes 'you' you is not contained within the brain, nor the body. The body is the construction you utilize to experience the reality as a physical experience.
I am a physicist and I will provide solid arguments that prove that consciousness cannot be generated by the brain (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). Many argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but it is possible to show that such hypothesis is inconsistent with our scientific knowledges. In fact, it is possible to show that all the examples of emergent properties consists of concepts used to describe how an external object appear to our conscious mind, and not how it is in itself, which means how the object is independently from our observation. In other words, emergent properties are ideas conceived to describe or classify, according to arbitrary criteria and from an arbitrary point of view, certain processes or systems. In summary, emergent properties are intrinsically subjective, since they are based on the arbitrary choice to focus on certain aspects of a system and neglet other aspects, such as microscopic structures and processes; emergent properties consist of ideas through which we describe how the external reality appears to our conscious mind: without a conscious mind, these ideas (= emergent properties) would not exist at all. Here comes my first argument: arbitrariness, subjectivity, classifications and approximate descriptions, imply the existence of a conscious mind, which can arbitrarily choose a specific point of view and focus on certain aspects while neglecting others. It is obvious that consciousness cannot be considered an emergent property of the physical reality, because consciousenss is a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of any emergent property. We have then a logical contradiction. Nothing which presupposes the existence of consciousness can be used to try to explain the existence of consciousness. Here comes my second argument: our scientific knowledge shows that brain processes consist of sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes; since consciousness is not a property of ordinary elementary physical processes, then a succession of such processes cannot have cosciousness as a property. In fact we can break down the process and analyze it step by step, and in every step consciousness would be absent, so there would never be any consciousness during the entire sequence of elementary processes. It must be also understood that considering a group of elementary processes together as a whole is an arbitrary choice. In fact, according to the laws of physics, any number of elementary processes is totally equivalent. We could consider a group of one hundred elementary processes or ten thousand elementary processes, or any other number; this choice is arbitrary and not reducible to the laws of physics. However, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrary choices; therefore consciousness cannot be a property of a sequence of elementary processes as a whole, because such sequence as a whole is only an arbitrary and abstract concept that cannot exist independently of a conscious mind. Here comes my third argument: It should also be considered that brain processes consist of billions of sequences of elementary processes that take place in different points of the brain; if we attributed to these processes the property of consciousness, we would have to associate with the brain billions of different consciousnesses, that is billions of minds and personalities, each with its own self-awareness and will; this contradicts our direct experience, that is, our awareness of being a single person who is able to control the voluntary movements of his own body with his own will. If cerebral processes are analyzed taking into account the laws of physics, these processes do not identify any unity; this missing unit is the necessarily non-physical element (precisely because it is missing in the brain), the element that interprets the brain processes and generates a unitary conscious state, that is the human mind. Here comes my forth argument: Consciousness is characterized by the fact that self-awareness is an immediate intuition that cannot be broken down or fragmented into simpler elements. This characteristic of consciousness of presenting itself as a unitary and non-decomposable state, not fragmented into billions of personalities, does not correspond to the quantum description of brain processes, which instead consist of billions of sequences of elementary incoherent quantum processes. When someone claims that consciousness is a property of the brain, they are implicitly considering the brain as a whole, an entity with its own specific properties, other than the properties of the components. From the physical point of view, the brain is not a whole, because its quantum state is not a coherent state, as in the case of entangled systems; the very fact of speaking of "brain" rather than many cells that have different quantum states, is an arbitrary choice. This is an important aspect, because, as I have said, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness. So, if a system can be considered decomposable and considering it as a whole is an arbitrary choice, then it is inconsistent to assume that such a system can have or generate consciousness, since consciousness is a necessary precondition for the existence of any arbitrary choice. In other words, to regard consciousness as a property ofthe brain, we must first define what the brain is, and to do so we must rely only on the laws of physics, without introducing arbitrary notions extraneous to them; if this cannot be done, then it means that every property we attribute to the brain is not reducible to the laws of physics, and therefore such property would be nonphysical. Since the interactions between the quantum particles that make up the brain are ordinary interactions, it is not actually possible to define the brain based solely on the laws of physics. The only way to define the brain is to arbitrarily establish that a certain number of particles belong to it and others do not belong to it, but such arbitrariness is not admissible. In fact, the brain is not physically separated from the other organs of the body, with which it interacts, nor is it physically isolated from the external environment, just as it is not isolated from other brains, since we can communicate with other people, and to do so we use physical means, for example acoustic waves or electromagnetic waves (light). This necessary arbitrariness in defining what the brain is, is sufficient to demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible to the laws of physics. Besides, since the brain is an arbitrary concept, and consciousness is the necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness, consciousness cannot be a property of the brain. Based on these considerations, we can exclude that consciousness is generated by brain processes or is an emergent property of the brain. Marco Biagini
@@felixl1865 We know exactly what consciousness is, because it is the only reality we directly experience; consciousness is the common property of all our mental experiences, such as sensations, emotions, thoughts and even dreams. We have a direct empirical knowledge of consciousness and its properties, in particular the persistent, immediate and intuitive awareness of oneself as an indivisible unit. The question is : what is the origin of consciousness? My arguments prove that the properties of consciousness are incompatible with the properties of brain processes and therefore the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent property of such processes is disproved by our scientific knowledge. The brain is not a sufficient condition for the existence of our mental experiences. It is worth considering that the current laws of physics explain with great accuracy all chemical and biological processes, including cerebral processes. Devolopments in physics are expected to refer to high energy processes or cosmology, but it is unreasonable to hypothesize that we will find new laws of physics that will change our descriptions of biological processes. The point is that we do not need new laws of physics to explain biological and cerebral processes, and such processes are perfectly reducible to the current laws of physics, while consciousness is not. Since consciousness is irreducible to cerebral processes and to the laws of physics, the only rational explanation for the existence of consciousness is that an immaterial/unphysical element exists in us and interacts with cerebral processes, and our mental experiences are the result of such interaction. The nature of such non-physical element and of its interaction with the brain cannot be investigated through the scientific method, since it is not physical. Therefore, the problem to establish the nature of such non-physical element does not belong to the scientific domain, but to the metaphysical domain, and it is a matter of personal beliefs. In conclusion, an honest scientist must recognize that science has some intrinsic limits and that consciousness is certainly beyond such limits.
There are thousands of examples of people's consciousness leaving their bodies and existing external to their brain. They come back with accurate descriptions of what happened while they were either clinically dead or unconscious. They maintain hearing, sight and logical thought process while outside of their bodies. That tells me consciousness is not exclusively produced by the brain.
@spiro When atheists find something that threatens their beliefs they ignore it, trivialize it or deny it. Welcome to the club. Thousands of personal testimonies are irrelevant? So you are the trivializing kind of atheist.
@spiro There are so many people who have experienced the OBE and NDE. Many atheists who were once hardened skeptics about non local consciousness returned believers in non-local consciousness. Now you could say anecdotal evidence is not proper evidence, but to the person who experienced it, proper evidence is irrelevant. They know what they experienced was 100% reality. I once watched a video of a man describing his NDE. He was so emotional it made me quite emotional. He said when he 'crossed over' everything was beyond real and lucid and that when he returned to the physical world this world felt more like a dream state. Intriguing to say the least. I am not a firm believer, but I have to question my beliefs when I hear these kind of stories. These people return transformed and absolutely convinced it was NOT illusionary. More to the point, most people during clinical death have a flatlined brain or certainly a brain in chaos, so why would there be lucid and coherent thought processes during this time?
LSD taught me you can hold your brain in your hand and still continue to exist. You could get rid of yourself completely and still have conscious existence. Consciousness is not the brain the brain is like a filter for what’s already there.
@@spiraldynamics6008 and there will never be proof. Consciousness is not physical to this universe. You cannot touch, see, hear, measure, etc. the _actual_ consciousness, but only the effects of it.
@AnonymousAlien2099 Faxs. The fact these Materialistic believers believe that brain produces consciousness is nothing but a mere assumption of scientist and nothing else. Yet, They have audacity to bring, "There's no proof." While what they believe in is also nothing but a mere assumption of how consciousness is but, it doesn't mean it is that way.
We also can’t ignore that we observe consciousness in others all the time, and that has to be a part of the experience. I don’t remember my consciousness beginning but I can see it developing in a newborn child.
@@kentwood9821 one observation: we can never experience consciousness in the third person, only in the first person, present tense. We assume others have consciousness, but we can never know for sure.
One of the best spirituel video's imo, love Rupert. "Truth is not a democracy and 'the majority of people beliefs something..', that tells absolutely nothing whether something is true or not" Great and powerful said.
Total and absolutely grateful to be able to access such wisdom, insight and clarity. This is truly exceptional in its clarity of insight and totality of experience. Never have I heard such an explanation of reality ... of everything. Thank you Rupert 🙏
@@darrenfromla It's an answer but one you don't understand yet. You're looking for a specific answer and/or cold hard "evidence" or else you feel the answer or the theory isn't sufficient enough for you. Many people will tell you the same thing. Consciousness has no beginning nor an end. Your consciousness doesn't go anywhere because it is part of the one whole which everything we know is manifested from. To understand this, you have to be beyond common, everyday logic. We are talking on a quantum level, where the normal rules of our world don't always apply. No beginning, and no end. We aren't infinite, but consciousness is.
@@in_vas_por8810 thanks for replying. The concsiousness you speak of is just an object in your awareness that you are saying i don't understand. I love knowing deeply that at my core, i am just consciousness experiencing life through the vessel of the human body. I just don't think people really know what they are talking about when they objectify consciousness as something that has no beginning or end. My experience is telling me that we can't know anything outside of consciousness but there could be lots of stuff that happens outside of consciousenss. Or before it! If the universe was created by the big bang then in what space was the big bang in when it happended? And what space was that space in? It goes on and on and consciousness could turn out to be a very shallow level compared to how deep it goes. After all, we keep discovering new layers to everything, how come we regard consciousness as the fundamental? But we can't currently know because we as humans currently cannot experience anything without consciousness. Maybe consciousness does have and end and there is something beyond it that we just cant comprehend. I never hear people talking about consciousness in this way. All the spiritual traditions seem to point to consciousness and the God or fundamental place from which all things spring from. It's just a theory. Just an object in someone's awareness or consciousness.
Thank you thank you thank you. This is my mantra. Thank you for your existence in this world, and for continuing to pull me back home. I would love to meet you one day physically so I can give you a big hug!
Right on point. "The All is Mind; The Universe is Mental. The Mind has nothing to do with "matter" and everything to do with the illusion of matter. Every little ache and pain you're having are mentally designed to make the experience realistic for you. But the truth is, you're just watching, not really hurting.
The way I see it is in layers. We have the five senses that are inputs to our mind. Then there is a "sixth sense" which is our thinking mind. But that thinking mind is not the mind some folks here are talking about. The "six" senses make up our conventional "human" mind. This dies when the brain dies. The theory eastern religions say you can experience through meditation is experiencing consciousness that is responsible for perceiving everything coming from our six senses and to gain insight into this "inner mind" which is not our "thoughts" or ego but a mind that just perceives - it is difficult to explain. They go on to posit through their contemplative inquiries, that this "inner" mind does not die but it is not something you can call you and supposedly this inner mind goes onto be "reborn" in some other human or human like vessel. They also state that there's a repository of memories somewhere and that's also something that you can experience through deep meditation. That theory goes really crazy in different segments of eastern philosophies and religion with some saying that this inner mind is a shared conciousness and in effect, that might mean that the inner most quality of each one of our conciouness is the same. In a way, you and I and everyone else "concious" might have this shared inner mind. Sort of like we are all vessels where the entire universe is aware of itself, just that we are so busy with our human (or any other living being in the universe) senses and human "talking" mind that we fail to realise the inner mind. It's crazy, but they say, meditation can make you experience this and inquire into this mind and find out for ourselves.
You can't find a thought in the brain, thoughts are produced by what you focus your attention on, it's an energy feild. So when you focus on nothing externally peace arises. The brain is only a thing that allows you to know your soul which is undefineable
@@sinkec you said to yourself that you/him got it. Actually there is nothing to get, your brain is inside it, and it's inside you, and you're inside it and it's inside you... amazing..
Dyslexic Artist Theory on the Physics of 'Time' we don’t have a future or a past though... you have memories and predictions but when you were living in those memories you were present (and when you are remembering them right now it’s a new present but that present is still right now), and when the future that you predict comes to be it will also be present. As you are reading this “time” flows on and your eyes look upon new words and you remember the old ones, but it’s all happening at that exact “moment” between old and new, it’s never the past and it’s never the future, those are just the words we use to describe feelings of memories and predictions. How could it ever not be now?
Size also change. Near the speed of light, things appear 1/100,000 their normal dimensions. Planets & stars no longer look round. They look squashed almost flat
Wish I was there cause NO! My conciousness does not allways feel the same! Also ,I lose consciousness at night,I don't lose the matter from my body.Conciousness DOES emerge from the brain.I have no doubt.Just because Rupert speaks softly,does not mean he is correct.
_"Also ,I lose consciousness at night,I don't lose the matter from my body."_ How do you know you lose consciousness at night??...Can you explain what *an absence of your own presence* is like to anyone??...Try it... Also...when you say *"I"* don't lose matter from "MY" body....what exactly are you pointing at when you say *"I"* ??...it's certainly not the body is it??... _"Conciousness DOES emerge from the brain."_ The Grey Fleshy matter of the brain cannot produce awareness any more than the four walls of a house produced the space within the walls...you're NOT thinking this thru bro...
I agree. In the physical world consciousness is there when the brain is in function. You faint and wake up you can say that you LOST consciousness. Now try to see could it also work if you said - everything WENT OUT OF consciousness. I'm saying this because it is evident that all we ever experience can only occur when we are conscious. Therefore our experience takes place in consciousness. So what happened when we fainted? Everything went out of consciousness? In that case the seat of consciousness is aparently a void. Darkness, absence and non existence... at its very core consciousness is nothingness. As such it is able to contain something. If you get what i mean.. because evidently there is consciousness all the time generated from the individual brains with or without us. Watch Bernardo Kastrup ...he's got a wild twist in there i think you might appreciate
During surgery/anesthesia my consciousness did seem to end and restart. It was the most disorienting feeling. There was an absence of existence or time passage in that I can generally tell if I slept a long time or a short time while sleeping although "unconscious". After surgery the period of unconsciousness could have been moments or millenia, it was simply missing. How do we explain this?
If your consciousness ended and restarted then what experienced that ending and restarting? Who felt that disorienting feeling? Who felt that absence of existence or time passage? Consciousness cannot end and cannot begin. It is absolutely fundamental. You confuse a lack of sensations for a lack of consciousness. Whether you’re asleep or under anesthesia, consciousness never disappears, it can’t disappear. That lack of experience was still experienced by consciousness otherwise you would never claim to have experienced it.
I’ve experienced the same thing with alcohol. About 4 hours of missing memory. It’s because alcohol blocks nerve cells from storing memory & it’s probable anesthesia does the same .
Around 8:10 rupert says that culture's belief that concsiousness has a beginning and an end is completely unverifiable. He neglects to say that his views are equally unverifiable. Just because we can't experience consciousness beginning or ending doesn't mean it doesnt and its curious with all of his intelligence he wont acknowledge that simple point. His whole view hangs on the idea that human experience can give us clues to what consciousness is up to. He says over and over that experience is more useful than belief. That may be true but it doesnt mean human experience has the answer to what consciousness is and when or if if begins or ends
Consciousness does begin because we were created in a construct of time and therefore have a beginning. We kind of do sense having a beginning because none of us have memories or a sense of self that goes back infinitely in the past., I believe we were created with a beginning to have no end by God who has no beginning and no end. Therefore only God is truly eternal and we are only eternal in a secondary sense in that we were created with a beginning, but will never end from that beginning. God exists eternally an necessarily without a cause because he is The Absolute Foundation of reality, and outside of Time and Space. Only things that begin to exist have a cause, and things only begin in time. Since God is timeless and the creator of time he exists as a Prime Mover to all existence. Consciousness could end for sure, but it won't because God has ordained it to keep going. There isn't much point of creating conscious being only for them to be extinguished because the moment one's consciousness ends makes there entire existence pointless and as if it never occurred. The whole beauty and point of consciousness is that we get to go on experiencing and have prior memories of previous experiences. We learn, grown, mature, etc. To create that process and stop it would be meaningless. If that were the case then there would be no point in any one existing at all, since it would all be reduced to nothing in the end. If that were the case it wouldn't really matter if one ended it now. What would be the difference of my consciousness ending now or 50 years from now? The end result would be me being nothing and having no memory or experiencing anyway. I wouldn't even get to appreciate the extra 50 years because I wouldn't exist.
How can you remember a beginning of consciousness, to remember consciousness beginning there would have to be consciousness observing the beginning, consciousness never begins and it never ends it just is.
@@christopherclewlow6634 I understand that but I don't understand how that proves that consciousness is fundamental, you are just assuming that there isn't a time where there is no consciousness.
@@Gregory-ud6zq no I'm not, I'm saying that it's impossible to remember a beginning of consciousness no matter how well developed your brain is, there has to be something conscious of the beginning of consciousness and in being conscious of the beginning youre already conscious so you're still not really remembering the beginning if consciousness, when i say it never begins and it never ends, I mean from the perspective of consciousness. As for there being a time when there is no consciousness, I don't ponder over that because I am aware that my discriminating mind is extremely limited in its ability to understand the nature of reality. Non dual teachings are about unlearning, not learning, its about getting your mind out the way in order to get closer to the truth. In winnie the poo, poo says that rabbit has a brain and that's why he doesn't understand anything. Thought limits our understanding.
There is no consciousness without living organisms that have brains. Living organisms did exist at the Big Bang or the first billion years after (still too hot in the universe). No organisms… no brains… no conscious thought
"Your argument is a giant argument from personal incredulity...you repeat what morons like Spira,Chalmers and Kastrup are saying. They make money on your illiteracy dude..." I have never once paid a cent to consume any content related to spirituality. All books I read are downloaded as PDFs from the internet. All videos are watched on TH-cam completely for free. I've never heard of Chalmers or Kastrup. The only other videos I've watched have been by a man named Mooji and a man named Eckhart Tolle. "I amazed how long are you going to ignore the findings of science." I'm not ignoring the findings of science. I have never once stated to know about the nature of consciousness. I am merely open to ideas that posit answers to questions you or I don't know the answer to. Some answers happen to coincide with my subjective experience, which is when they become beliefs. I am simply challenging the beliefs of science in my comments because after all, they are still beliefs when it comes to consciousness. There are no definitive answers.
He can't provide evidence of that. But it doesn't matter to him because he takes a "methodological naturalism" approach which means that he chooses not to consider supernatural causes. Somehow, he thinks this makes his beliefs superior just because they are rational. It's an extremely narrow-minded and dull view of the world.Instead of remaining open to possibilities about things he doesn't know the answer to, he postulates that they only have a materialistic, scientifically observable explanation.
nickolasgaspar link me to a study that can show what's happening in the brain when we are conscious but not thinking. Then you'll be a lot closer to approaching a convincing argument. Being able to predict thoughts shows nothing except that there are areas in the brain resposible for the production of thoughts. Equating that with thw subjective consciousness is incorrect.
You keep using the term null hypothesis, yet it is unclear exactly what the null hypothesis is in this situation. Because you haven't specified one. The null hypothesis is a statement that there is no relationship between two observed phenomena. Taking the context of this discussion into account, a sensible null hypothesis is therefore that there is no relationship between the subjective consciousness and the universe, for example. But a null hypothesis requires the existence of two empirically observable phenomena. Your argument falls down here because consciousness is not empirically observable. (www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Mind/MindElli.htm) Therefore, you cannot reduce this argument to merely scientific/statistical structure because there is no null hypothesis.
I believe i lost my consciousness. No one believes me since I am still able to talk and walk. But I experienced it ending inside my brain. It was like a light went down my spine, as if someone has pulled the plug and than everything just went dark. I would like to share my story someday.
It Instantly felt as if i‘ve never existed in a „matrix“ to whatever. I have a nowborn son and after this happened to me he started to cry all the time.
I find matter many times every day, for example today I found it in the form of the pizza I ate for lunch. Anyway, matter is simply and basically defined as energy with mass, and since Einstein showed their equivalence, it's popular and scientifically correct to know they are essentially the same, i.e. matter is a form of energy. If consciousness does anything, as implied in acts of knowing, it must require energy. Not all energy is associated with mass. In particular fundamental particles with even spin, such as photons (particles of light, that have spin 0) have no mass. Possibly consciousness is associated with a unique and so far unidentified form of energy. If consciousness operates with no expenditure of energy, that would magical, meaning scientifically impossible. However it may be impossible to ever identify the energy of consciousness, possibly due to the uncertainty principle, if it is very subtle.
Thanks for this insightful comment. I think it is really unfortunate that Rupert insists on using the word consciousness to point to what I think he really means as energy itself. I think his use of the word consciousness makes for a tremendous amount of confusion because of the commonly excepted definition of consciousness, as in, being conscious or being aware. If we had to extrapolate that out in the ways he is suggesting, then we would have to assume that a rock is aware and has similar consciousness as a human, or that a mound of dirt has consciousness like a human does. That seems pretty preposterous to me, or at very least, unverifiable, at least thus far. While it is true, that the word or label is never what it is pointing to, still, words do matter because there are commonly accepted definitions of words, and consciousness, is not really synonymous with energy itself, but I think that’s how he’s using it. Again, I personally feel that it causes a lot of unnecessary confusion. I wonder if you have any thoughts on this. ⭐️
@@robreich4905 He doesn't mean energy when he refers to consciousness. He uses the word "consciousness" interchangeably with the word "awareness". The idea of a rock being conscious (panpsychism), is not the same thing as a rock having its origin inside consciousness but not being aware in and of itself (nondualism). A dream is a creation of consciousness and a rock that appears within a dream arises from within consciousness but is not in itself conscious.
@@oldboy5001 Thanks for your reply. Still it seems odd to me to say that a rock has it’s origin inside consciousness even though the rock itself isn’t conscious. Like, what do we know about the origin of rocks besides the their smallest bits are atoms or subatomic particles etc? And if we want to talk about how subatomic particles come to, I think that’s somewhat possible with our current understanding. But if we use the word consciousness there, could we possibly be using it in the same way we’d use it to say I’m conscious right now? Or that I’m aware right now? Just seems an enormous assumption and an enormous claim to make. Any other elaborations would be welcome and thanks again for the replies 👌
@@robreich4905 My understanding of nondualism is that it proposes that conscious awareness is primary and infinite and that nothing exists or ever has existed outside of it (infinite mind). All "matter" and all experience are products of it and arise from within it. Materialism proposes the exact opposite ie that "matter" is primary and it gives rise to consciousness through some as yet unexplained process (known as the hard problem of consciousness). Most of us have been conditioned in the materialistic worldview so nondualism is initially pretty hard to swallow, but quite compelling when you examine it in depth with an open mind.
This comment section seems to be all kinds of confused... and with good reason Rupert is going a little too far and explaining unexplainable things too much with muddy words and it doesn’t point to the real truths as much as some of his other words do. The only thing that matters from all of his teachings is the truth of the present. What Eckhart Tolle calls the Now or the power of now. This is just the fact that there really is no future and no past, just memories and predictions, when we are remembering that remembrance is happening in the present, when we predict things about the future like “hmm I’m almost positive my roommate will arrive around 3pm since she said so and she usually does” that prediction happens in the present and when she does show up around 3pm it will also be the present. The trouble people have is that this ‘present’ or ‘now’ is elusive, we can’t ever get a hold of it, there are no real ‘moments’ to experience, just one big long (actually eternal) present that is always spilling forward, like a river or waterfall. The present ‘moment’ is a terrible name for the truth it is trying to point to because it tries to make presence into a noun. Do you experience time right now as you read this as a noun? No, it is a flowing from old to new constantly, that is the experience that every person that I have ever talked to has of time. As a flowing from old or “past” to new or “future” but right in the middle of the two always, you can’t ever just reside in the past or the future, because when you do it’s now.
Yes, we are all receivers of consciousness, but we can use our minds as processors to run imagined consciousness and overlap it with reality, this will synchronize oneness in whatever you are observing, and by doing this you are co creating with consciousness and hopefully your vibrate high energy frequencies and since everyone are a receiver, they will still receive what you encoded to them :)
Define consciousness? Because everything else made sense. But I perceive the mind as the all. If your referring to awareness as consciousness then what are you really saying?
One could never find the "stuff" because it can't be experienced in the same way out direct experience via our sensory perceptions are. Also, Rupert never brings this up but the brain, if designated as a transducer, will readily explain that it(the brain) isn't producing consciousness but instead is the receptor for it in the same way for instance that a radio is a receptor for electromagnetic energy or a piano soundboard is a transducer for the string vibrations that are converted into sound waves which we then perceive.
Sometimes I trip when I look at my son and think "how the hell does he have human consciousness" does he just inherit him? Is consciousness created when the brain is being created or how? HOW and when is consciousness created. Why does me being a human and having offspring automatically gives that embryo the ability to have a consciousness. Lol I'm high
Ed Gepixel consciousness manifests a brain, the body mind world that appears. The air that creates the flame was prior to the flame, and in fact is what the flame is “made of”. So too the brain, the grass, the stars are “made of” consciousness. The brain happens to be a highly complex localization of consciousness that allows the unit to trick itself into thinking that it is separate from the “rest of the world”, and also drop that same illusory belief.
@@edgepixel8467 I disagree ... the power that gives you this skill is an intelligent . Think in the universe ... space ... planets and the galaxy ... your brain mind will surrender to the absolute fact of god
Someone (Me, Myself & I) pointed out, "how does an electron know what to do?" A grain of sand in essence is vibration, electrons so on. How does our immune system and stomach know what to do? Consciousness, or life, knows and IT expresses itself like or as that. How do I know what I know? Not what I know but the actual "knowing?" Knowing (like my awareness knows) is fundamental to creation. IT is consciousness AS JUST being, outside of (prior to) existence and IN existence. WHAT exactly is this KNOWING?? This universe at the time (and before) it came into being existence, IT must have known... and therefore it still knows... itself.
Likewise there’s many living cells that are constructed wrong. They don’t process food or create proper membranes. They die. Or they survive but only just barely Sometimes these malconstructed cells exist within us. They are cancer cells.
One could add another argument here. Wouldn't it be possible that the brain produces consciousness? - No, because nothing comes from nothing. In the matter-only model, there is no such thing as conscious experience. It just consists of the mathematical laws that describe how things behave, but mathematical laws can neither capture the substance things are made of, nor result in conscious experience. Under the matter-only paradigm, we have the insurmountable problems of explaining consciousness and explaining what the substance behind all things is. It's just so simple, consciousness is the missing substance of all things. We cannot imagine any substance that is beyond conscious experience, because there is none.
NOT meaning to be either insulting, or dismissive, but this guy comes across as though he is simply trying to 'out-clever' his host (or whomever that invisible person is he is speaking to). I can promise you, he knows nothing with any more degree of absolute certainty than the rest of us; he's simply a philosopher with a theory albeit, a theory worthy of consideration. If there is ANY connection between matter and consciousness at all then I can only suspect that they are somehow one and the same thing...intrinsically bound together...just different manifestations thereof - in the same sense that electricity and magnetism are different manifestations of the same thing. One did not come before the other. It is the same with matter and consciousness; one cannot be separated from the other. Or so that's the way I view it. The essence of each is imbued within/reflected within the other. Sort of like the Asian philosophical principle of Yin and Yang. No matter how you 'play' it -- matter first, or consciousness first -- each begs an answer as to its origins/emergent essence. It's sort of like flipping a coin and thinking that because it came up as heads instead of tails you have more clearly defined the coin's essence, or point and purpose.
Thanks for sharing this observation. Normally I appreciate Rupert's way of thinking but I don't like how he makes people into saying 'yes' to his questions, eg. how can someone know that even in deep dementia one is aware of their altered mind condition?
@@edgepixel8467 I guess I should've completed my sentence more roundly for those of us that read faster in our minds than our eyes... I would fix my comment like this: "Wise words, they are more akin to those of a Taoist perspective, differing slightly from those of the perspective of Vedanta that Rupert prefers to teach from. It is nice to see differing perspectives out here because they all point to the same fundamental and experiential truth. Having multiple ways of getting to the same underlying truth is important because we all learn in different ways."
@@edgepixel8467 "Why should one prefer the Vedantist perspective instead of the Mahayana Buddhism or Taoism one?" This question does not reply accurately to what I said because it implies that I said something along the lines of "one should prefer Vedanta" or "Rupert prefers Vedanta teachings so should you" which I did not. So I cannot really answer the question because I have no reason why "should one prefer the Vedantist perspective instead of the Mahayana Buddhism or Taoism one?" I think whatever 'perspective' and/or 'teaching' gets you to the truth about the present "here & now" is the one you should prefer... until that perspective of teaching is no longer needed and you simply reside in the peace of the present.
Is the belief that consciousness precedes matter necessary to the practice of self-enquiry and self-realization? If so then the whole thing is invalid; it is circular reasoning.
It's rather the other way around: you discover that consciousness precedes matter during the practice of self-enquiry and meditation. You don't approach these practices with a belief, but you rather question all beliefs, including the belief that there is a material world. However, sometimes it might speed up the process to adapt opposite beliefs to those that you can infer to be false, mainly because some beliefs are very deeply imprinted into your mind and hard to eradicate.
I remember consciousness ending and then beginning when they drugged me with anesthesia for surgery. Room spinning, and consciousness going into the OFF position. Then consciousness turns ON and it's, Hello, I've been repaired!
I've been chewing on this example too. It's important to note that memory is a function of the mind, not consciousness. And that while the contents of consciousness may change (e.g. you took a drug that shut off the body's sensory perceptions), consciousness itself may remain. It's tricky because from the perspective of my mind, I suddenly warped from the operating room to the recovery room. So both models seem to me to be consistent with my experience.
@@Svenscreams Yea if consciousness is there but it doesn't register as being there in the mind or in memory, then you get into nonsense like this: Consciousness is unconscious of itself. How can you call that consciousness? It's the consciousness of a rock or a grain of sand existing, it's the laws of the physical universe and not anything that you could call "consciousness" in the conventional sense.
I’ve experienced the same thing with alcohol. About 4 hours of missing memory. It’s because alcohol blocks nerve cells from storing memory & it’s probable anesthesia does the same .
This seems kind of one sides. When you consider the data which creates the brain is part of the brain. It's like having a bunch of wiggles on a paper and certain spots are more tightly packed than others. These tightly packed spots represent matter. A certain tightly packed spot being a brain which would project this personal experience. Consciousness as a sole existing entity is a bit far fetched when considering that what consciousness is can be broken down too each of the senses in synchronicity as well as thought, and the part of the brain which records events.
Perhaps the mind/body relationship is like a bird and a tree. The tree does not create the bird but the bird finds the tree and finds a home in it to nest. If the tree gets cut down, the bird flies away.
You do see consciousness end in other people. Of course that doesn't mean consciousness itself ended, but that is a real experience, seeing someone you know intimately who was consciousness, die and no longer be conscious. Also if your only experience is consciousness that alone doesn't prove that it came first.
There is no consciousness without living organisms that have brains. Living organisms did exist at the Big Bang or the first billion years after (still too hot in the universe). No organisms… no brains… no conscious thought
Please help me understand. Awareness is never aware of its own disappearance- of course not, there would have to be another awareness that is not my own to be aware of that. But others are aware that I was out for an hour during surgery, although for me, one moment I was going into surgery and the next moment I was awake post surgery in recovery. But although I didnt experience a loss of awareness, I was out. So awareness is limited, it is limited to what it experiences and disappearance of that awareness can be verified not by me but by the awareness of others. What am I missing?
Barbara Scholz hi Barbara, even in deep sleep when there is nothing to be aware of, awareness is there, if not you could not hear the fire alarm and react. Now it gets really tricky when we think about at what time in our life awareness enters our body, or mind for that matter. But in the end, ‘ Who’ cares?
On the contrary, it is the responsibility of those who claim that consciousness is created by or as you put it "the function of the body-mind" to prove that.
I feel that human consciousness is only one degree in a circle. There are 359 other degrees that correspond to consciousness but which is only a state of being something that is not human consciousness but something else, which then again forms the total 360 circle being where our consciousness is in
how do you explain terminal lucidity? where demented people with have a moment of crystal clear clarity before they die. also how do you explain savant sydrome where brain injury can result in a superhuman ability, like memory art music skill. how does this happen out of no where? If brain makes conciousness how do you explain this. it does make sense to explain it as conciousness is universal.
There is this strange case of a guy who jumped into a swimming pool, bumped his head and all of a sudden he could play the piano beautifully. Where did that come from. Was it part of his consciousness all along?
@@edgepixel8467 The story about the guy who hit his head and could play the piano is pretty famous so I have to believe it's true. But your point is well taken. There is a lot of bs out there. We can only guess which ones are true.
That is the ultimate question. Is consciousness a bi-product of the brain , or is the mind a receiver of consciousness from outside the brain. Similar to the internet is not inside your computer, it's the wi-fi receiver that connects to the internet. If you were to rip out the wi-fi receiver and the internet turned of you could make an assumption that the wi-fi receiver creates the internet, but as you know that would be an incorrect assumption. Will we ever be able to answer this mystery I wonder.
Rupert's wine analogy doesn't seem to address the experience in this context. the question, here, is how damage to a part of the brain seems to end consciousness. By bringing up things the 'muddle' our consciousness, he obviously points to things that do not change the presence that notices such muddles. But when they shove the screwdriver into my head and I wake up two years later, isn't it true to say that the damage did affect consciousness. It isn't like wine, where I can notice how my noticing doesn't change. After the damage by the screwdriver, I don't experience anything until I do, two years later. My consciousness, upon awakening, is still fresh and pure and clean, but we don't need to deny that consciousness had no choice but to lose all objects.
I agree pretty much. But what he seems to be saying, and indeed what would feel 'real' to you, is only what you experienced. The screwdriver and the coma would be a story to you I can only make sense of this stuff by considering what makes reality 'real' for me. I'm often lost in admiration at the discoveries of science, but the reality they point to seems to be lost somewhere, no matter how much I 'imagine' it to be real. When I'm attempting and failing at that imagining, I realise I'm trying to bring the content of the story closer to experience, which is my actual reality. I guess it depends what you think the word 'actual' means. There are two possible interpretations of the word, with opposite implications for which belongs in the other.
For me I see it like this:. In deep sleep the mind is not there so memories are NOT recorded. When you wake up there is nothing to remember. So it appears that deep sleep of many hours occurs in an instance, but you could have been fully aware and enjoyed the experience. Death is then the same as deep sleep. The most important point Rupert makes is that you are always aware, whether your in deep sleep, in dream sleep, or in the waking state or in death state. Awareness is like the TV screen it's always there. When the movie plays it's the waking state or dream state. When the movie dors not play it's like dreamless sleep. And if the movie never plays again its like death. Only in dream sleep or in waking state is there a mind that records information as memory so we can recall the experience and talk about. So Near Death Experiences (NDE) that are remembered implies there was enough rnind/brain operational to record the experience so in the full waking state we remember it So simply put if no thoughts occur then no time occurs. ( Meditation experience ) Time and Space is manufactured by the mind only in waking state and dream state. Biocentrism says the same, as all mystics have said for thousands of years. The law of physics and science do not change, science works well, but these things can't have access to the screen as they are only in the movie. (The world of form)
Imagine that you have a microscope that you can see all sorts of micro organisms with. If the lens of the microscope breaks you will no longer be able to perceive the microbes, but you will still have awareness. Similarly, infinite consciousness needs a finite mind to perceive the finite world. If the finite mind is damaged the perceptions will be altered or will cease altogether but awareness will still remain even if it can no longer perceive finite objects.
@@HopyHop1 Yeah, and the main problem with my comment was that it assumes that I was no longer having experiences while in a coma. Just like we often remember intense dreams days after having them, our sense of having had 'no experience' isn't reliable.
Dr. Spira, I am most grateful for your videos. I'm a philosopher at heart and my brain is delighted and gratified when I have a chance to listen to your videos. Your arguments are "brain candy", indeed. Have you published any works on this very topic of consciousness and matter? I'm particularly aroused by the concept of matter as the experience of the mind. How is it that we are impacted by what we perceive as matter? What are we really experiencing when we hit a tree with a vehicle we're driving? Please suggest a book or two on the matter (pun intended). Thank you.
Rupert does not have a doctorate degree of any kind and he never replies in comments. Rather than recommending books, I would recommend watching the plethora of YT videos he has available and if you really want to dig deep in his teachings, go to his website and subscribe. I AM THAT by Nisargadatta Maharaj is widely considered the ultimate book for Advaita teachings.
The entire universe which includes space, time, matter, body, senses, brain and words is unconscious. Consciousness alone which is the ultimate source of words, which is hearing these words and which is understanding these words is conscio The entire universe which includes space, time, matter, body, senses, brain and words is unconscious. Consciousness alone which is the ultimate source of words, which is hearing these words and which is understanding these words is conscious. That’s what I am, you are and everybody is. Am I right, Rupert? us. That’s what I am, you are and everybody is. Am I right, Rupert?
But it doesn't make sense thinking about it. If the point was that we were all to be one, why do we all experience these things separately? The beauty is that we experience that we are separated. There would be no beauty if we all felt like cells of a plant. And that we have the experience of separation means that symbolically/spiritually we are separated, even if it were so that we technically all of us had the same conscousness. That is actually the deep side of it, that we are experience separation and that means we are separated, that is the beauty. That we are all one consciousness is no deep thought at all. It destroyes beauty. What destroys beauty is not deep truth, it has lost what "deep truth" means.
I'm 3:20 into the talk so he may address my question, but I wanted to ask before I forget. He ask "...does the consciousness that knows your experience change?" Unless I misunderstand this question, is he not ignoring pretty obvious brain states where there is no conscious experiences e.g. Coma, Dreamless sleep, anesthesia etc.?
What ive never heard Rupert explain is the experience of physically being “put to sleep” with anesthesia? Is that the same as deep sleep ie no content for consciousness to focus on yet still aware?
If it disables the nervousness system then it would be just like a deep sleep with no experience since the senses are cut off from the brain which is in fact s mind which. Is experienced by consciousness
I would say because consciousness seems to be something internal whereas matter is external. I can see objects outside of myself. What does he mean that we have never found matter??
I think conciousness is a product of the brain. I have very good reason to believe so and there's very little evidende to believe conciousness is just universal. Doesn't hold water and I won't believe it just cause some guru said it. Maybe Rupert has seen something I havent or knows something I dont, but I won't just believe that. Maybe I'm wrong, I genuinely want to know what's this conciousness thing and i know he might be right.
I think he's referencing think of a pipe as your neurons. Water is not created from the pipes, but if I turn on the faucet the water will run through the pipes. I turn off the faucet the water stops. The water is still there it's just not being faciluted through. Conscious is the water. The pipes are the neurons in your brain and your bodily functions are the faucet. When your body dies, the pipes stop working, the faucet won turn, but the waters still there. I hope that helps explain it
But you say “think”.... Do you think it’s a possibility that consciousness is a product of the brain, because it messes up your whole sense of reality? It triggers a scary response, because you realise you’ve been programmed and brainwashed? Have you ever considered that scientists have our same brain with the same thoughts... If consciousness were the truth of “all things”, scientists would have the same doubts and excuses that your mind has about this, as this changes EVERYTHING! There’s very little evidence actually about matter, as even physicists including Einstein have found matter to be “99.99999% energy”... The literal people who represent most of our today’s knowledge and cultural beliefs have found the same truth. The fact this is all matter is just a possibility created by those who live in a state of survival. Science is really not reliable. If science really wanted the actual truth, they would consider all possibilities and test it out. It’s funny. You’d believe that scientists want to evolve, but anything that goes against what they want to believe is called pseudoscience or fake news. The best scientists are the ones who question everything. That’s exactly what Einstein did. He questioned and came up with his new knowledge and it changed everything. I believe you should consider the fact that you’re just choosing to believe this to be safe, instead of realising the reality of this more than valid “claim” ,as what Rupert is claiming is ALL of our experiences : )
Over-Consciousness is pictured in the Rainbow, Colors is our Under-Consciousness = Day-Consciousness and Night-Consciousness. Yeah, programs is Not Produced in the radio, but work through the radio. At night, We move our Day-Consciousness, to the Night-Bodies, Deep-Sleep, one by one, via our Coupling-Body, REM. We are Gravity-Beings, physical body. Instinct, Gravity, Feeling, Intelligence, Intuition, Memory. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo. The Circuit-Princip is Basic in the Eternal Life, it is in everything, at the Life-side and Stuff-side, at all levels, and Micro- Medio- and Macro-Cosmos.
I do agree with Rupert's position, but I don't think that he made a strong argument for his case here. Regarding the glass of wine he could have asked not if there was still consciousness that was aware of the slight inebriation, but if consciousness had changed even ever so slightly due to the glass of wine-not if there was consciousness present at all. He questioner, I believe might have understood that line of reasoning rather than what Rupert went on to present as evidence.
So... Anybody remembers when they didn't walk and then they started walking? Well... I doubt it, because babies don't have conscious memories, so... This argument that because we don't remember the beginning of counsciousness therefore it existed already is meaningless. The end or beginning of things do not depend on our memory of it.
LOL! The Heliocentric model is completely false though. Bad analogy there. Curvature has never been observed or measured. In fact modern zoom cameras demonstrate there is no curvature at all. I agree consciousness is distinct from the brain though.
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
Max Planck
For all of you guys, who so much try to hint that real scientists disregard Consciousness.
I agree... however, Rupert claims that Awareness & Consciousness are the same.
But to be absolutely accurate could awareness be just beyond consciousness? Conscious here (being like law) and suddenly a clear awareness kicks in AND now he/she is consciously aware?
A rock is a conscious vibration because its vibrations(electrons) KNOW (order) vs chaos) what to do.
@@peterscherba4138 I personally see a difference between awareness and consciousness, I see consciousness as that which hosts the jungian psychology archetypes, I see consciousness as a cup of water in the sea, sea being the infinite aka pure awareness, I see consciousness as the finite
Third eye can be seen as the seat of the soul, true awareness, which makes sense because it's in the center of two polarites being left brain and right brain
Everything points twords there being a distinction between consciousness and awareness
@@peterscherba4138 Sir I appreciate your idea and I think and bit sure of that consciousness and awareness is not same because to remain conscious there need to be a conscious effort of self where there is no no need to be remain aware if we are conscious. Awareness is there all the time.It's fundamental reality. Only we have to recognize and feel awareness by remain conscious. We can't go beyond awareness So I think our priority is to be conscious all the time that should be the stage of where we are consciously aware. What do you thik? Thank you.
@@subhadipdas2765 Yes I agree
I also think of Pure Awareness, Pure Consciousness, and Pure Being as all (non-relative) the same.
"Truth is not a democracy" (2)
Neither is it Tyranny.
Just wrote the same thing:)))
Does self need confirmation? Only if it is imagined.
@@dougerhard2128
Liberal Fascism is here.
Prepare for camps and mass graves.
1.45 : "Truth is not a Democracy" Brilliant !
I always liked the analogy of looking for the person (consciousness/awareness/identity) in the body is like taking a radio apart looking for the announcer.
Or taking apart graphic card of your PC to reach out for the fictional character to have some dialogue!...LOL
Wtf I've never read anything that's tripped me out more than this
Ridiculous. The radio is receiving audio from an external source. The body is not receiving some external broadcast! It’s all self-contained, which means the consciousness is IN the body.
The fictional character in a PC is contained within the CPU that executes commands to create that person. Likewise the Brain is our CPU
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@@electrictroy2010 That which makes 'you' you is not contained within the brain, nor the body. The body is the construction you utilize to experience the reality as a physical experience.
I am a physicist and I will provide solid arguments that prove that consciousness cannot be generated by the brain (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). Many argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but it is possible to show that such hypothesis is inconsistent with our scientific knowledges. In fact, it is possible to show that all the examples of emergent properties consists of concepts used to describe how an external object appear to our conscious mind, and not how it is in itself, which means how the object is independently from our observation. In other words, emergent properties are ideas conceived to describe or classify, according to arbitrary criteria and from an arbitrary point of view, certain processes or systems. In summary, emergent properties are intrinsically subjective, since they are based on the arbitrary choice to focus on certain aspects of a system and neglet other aspects, such as microscopic structures and processes; emergent properties consist of ideas through which we describe how the external reality appears to our conscious mind: without a conscious mind, these ideas (= emergent properties) would not exist at all.
Here comes my first argument: arbitrariness, subjectivity, classifications and approximate descriptions, imply the existence of a conscious mind, which can arbitrarily choose a specific point of view and focus on certain aspects while neglecting others. It is obvious that consciousness cannot be considered an emergent property of the physical reality, because consciousenss is a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of any emergent property. We have then a logical contradiction. Nothing which presupposes the existence of consciousness can be used to try to explain the existence of consciousness.
Here comes my second argument: our scientific knowledge shows that brain processes consist of sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes; since consciousness is not a property of ordinary elementary physical processes, then a succession of such processes cannot have cosciousness as a property. In fact we can break down the process and analyze it step by step, and in every step consciousness would be absent, so there would never be any consciousness during the entire sequence of elementary processes. It must be also understood that considering a group of elementary processes together as a whole is an arbitrary choice. In fact, according to the laws of physics, any number of elementary processes is totally equivalent. We could consider a group of one hundred elementary processes or ten thousand elementary processes, or any other number; this choice is arbitrary and not reducible to the laws of physics. However, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrary choices; therefore consciousness cannot be a property of a sequence of elementary processes as a whole, because such sequence as a whole is only an arbitrary and abstract concept that cannot exist independently of a conscious mind.
Here comes my third argument: It should also be considered that brain processes consist of billions of sequences of elementary processes that take place in different points of the brain; if we attributed to these processes the property of consciousness, we would have to associate with the brain billions of different consciousnesses, that is billions of minds and personalities, each with its own self-awareness and will; this contradicts our direct experience, that is, our awareness of being a single person who is able to control the voluntary movements of his own body with his own will. If cerebral processes are analyzed taking into account the laws of physics, these processes do not identify any unity; this missing unit is the necessarily non-physical element (precisely because it is missing in the brain), the element that interprets the brain processes and generates a unitary conscious state, that is the human mind.
Here comes my forth argument: Consciousness is characterized by the fact that self-awareness is an immediate intuition that cannot be broken down or fragmented into simpler elements. This characteristic of consciousness of presenting itself as a unitary and non-decomposable state, not fragmented into billions of personalities, does not correspond to the quantum description of brain processes, which instead consist of billions of sequences of elementary incoherent quantum processes. When someone claims that consciousness is a property of the brain, they are implicitly considering the brain as a whole, an entity with its own specific properties, other than the properties of the components. From the physical point of view, the brain is not a whole, because its quantum state is not a coherent state, as in the case of entangled systems; the very fact of speaking of "brain" rather than many cells that have different quantum states, is an arbitrary choice. This is an important aspect, because, as I have said, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness. So, if a system can be considered decomposable and considering it as a whole is an arbitrary choice, then it is inconsistent to assume that such a system can have or generate consciousness, since consciousness is a necessary precondition for the existence of any arbitrary choice. In other words, to regard consciousness as a property ofthe brain, we must first define what the brain is, and to do so we must rely only on the laws of physics, without introducing arbitrary notions extraneous to them; if this cannot be done, then it means that every property we attribute to the brain is not reducible to the laws of physics, and therefore such property would be nonphysical. Since the interactions between the quantum particles that make up the brain are ordinary interactions, it is not actually possible to define the brain based solely on the laws of physics. The only way to define the brain is to arbitrarily establish that a certain number of particles belong to it and others do not belong to it, but such arbitrariness is not admissible. In fact, the brain is not physically separated from the other organs of the body, with which it interacts, nor is it physically isolated from the external environment, just as it is not isolated from other brains, since we can communicate with other people, and to do so we use physical means, for example acoustic waves or electromagnetic waves (light). This necessary arbitrariness in defining what the brain is, is sufficient to demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible to the laws of physics. Besides, since the brain is an arbitrary concept, and consciousness is the necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness, consciousness cannot be a property of the brain.
Based on these considerations, we can exclude that consciousness is generated by brain processes or is an emergent property of the brain. Marco Biagini
I would like to ask you what do you think consciousness is then?
@@felixl1865 We know exactly what consciousness is, because it is the only reality we directly experience; consciousness is the common property of all our mental experiences, such as sensations, emotions, thoughts and even dreams. We have a direct empirical knowledge of consciousness and its properties, in particular the persistent, immediate and intuitive awareness of oneself as an indivisible unit. The question is : what is the origin of consciousness? My arguments prove that the properties of consciousness are incompatible with the properties of brain processes and therefore the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent property of such processes is disproved by our scientific knowledge. The brain is not a sufficient condition for the existence of our mental experiences.
It is worth considering that the current laws of physics explain with great accuracy all chemical and biological processes, including cerebral processes. Devolopments in physics are expected to refer to high energy processes or cosmology, but it is unreasonable to hypothesize that we will find new laws of physics that will change our descriptions of biological processes. The point is that we do not need new laws of physics to explain biological and cerebral processes, and such processes are perfectly reducible to the current laws of physics, while consciousness is not. Since consciousness is irreducible to cerebral processes and to the laws of physics, the only rational explanation for the existence of consciousness is that an immaterial/unphysical element exists in us and interacts with cerebral processes, and our mental experiences are the result of such interaction.
The nature of such non-physical element and of its interaction with the brain cannot be investigated through the scientific method, since it is not physical. Therefore, the problem to establish the nature of such non-physical element does not belong to the scientific domain, but to the metaphysical domain, and it is a matter of personal beliefs. In conclusion, an honest scientist must recognize that science has some intrinsic limits and that consciousness is certainly beyond such limits.
There are thousands of examples of people's consciousness leaving their bodies and existing external to their brain. They come back with accurate descriptions of what happened while they were either clinically dead or unconscious. They maintain hearing, sight and logical thought process while outside of their bodies. That tells me consciousness is not exclusively produced by the brain.
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@spiro When atheists find something that threatens their beliefs they ignore it, trivialize it or deny it. Welcome to the club. Thousands of personal testimonies are irrelevant? So you are the trivializing kind of atheist.
@spiro you sure are.
I don't believe that is possibile. While is still plausibile that consciusness is not a product of the brain, thought feeling and sensations sure are
@spiro There are so many people who have experienced the OBE and NDE. Many atheists who were once hardened skeptics about non local consciousness returned believers in non-local consciousness. Now you could say anecdotal evidence is not proper evidence, but to the person who experienced it, proper evidence is irrelevant. They know what they experienced was 100% reality. I once watched a video of a man describing his NDE. He was so emotional it made me quite emotional. He said when he 'crossed over' everything was beyond real and lucid and that when he returned to the physical world this world felt more like a dream state. Intriguing to say the least. I am not a firm believer, but I have to question my beliefs when I hear these kind of stories. These people return transformed and absolutely convinced it was NOT illusionary. More to the point, most people during clinical death have a flatlined brain or certainly a brain in chaos, so why would there be lucid and coherent thought processes during this time?
LSD taught me you can hold your brain in your hand and still continue to exist. You could get rid of yourself completely and still have conscious existence. Consciousness is not the brain the brain is like a filter for what’s already there.
There is no proof
@@spiraldynamics6008 and there will never be proof. Consciousness is not physical to this universe. You cannot touch, see, hear, measure, etc. the _actual_ consciousness, but only the effects of it.
@AnonymousAlien2099 Faxs. The fact these Materialistic believers believe that brain produces consciousness is nothing but a mere assumption of scientist and nothing else. Yet, They have audacity to bring, "There's no proof." While what they believe in is also nothing but a mere assumption of how consciousness is but, it doesn't mean it is that way.
"Nobody takes the time and the trouble to actually look at their experience of consciousness"
How true, for all seven billion of us on the planet.
It looks like you know an aweful lot of people very intimately to make such a statement. Yet... I don't think we ever met
We also can’t ignore that we observe consciousness in others all the time, and that has to be a part of the experience. I don’t remember my consciousness beginning but I can see it developing in a newborn child.
@@kentwood9821 one observation: we can never experience consciousness in the third person, only in the first person, present tense.
We assume others have consciousness, but we can never know for sure.
“Truth is not a democracy”. Well put. I think consciousness is a form of energy, eternal and unchanging. But we humans, driven by ego, don’t see that.
Mind appears in consciousness and “matter” appears in the mind ... like time and space :)
It’s oddly satisfying when they pause for a long time to think.
TTS Television silence is underrated in our society
POVG is that you?
That’s how you know they are listen to each other instead of just hearing whats being said.
“Are you aware of consciousness beginning or ending?”
“I’m not aware of being conscious before my first memory, around age 3.”
🙈😂
But you existed before you were 3 years old, and you were consciouss of yourself at that time. Afterwards you say i dont know.
One of the best spirituel video's imo, love Rupert. "Truth is not a democracy and 'the majority of people beliefs something..', that tells absolutely nothing whether something is true or not" Great and powerful said.
Total and absolutely grateful to be able to access such wisdom, insight and clarity. This is truly exceptional in its clarity of insight and totality of experience. Never have I heard such an explanation of reality ... of everything. Thank you Rupert 🙏
2:25: = does brain damage lead to impairment of consciousness ? No,it leads to the impairment of the content of consciousness
what about sever vegetative states where all seeing hearing speech, ability to breathe on one's own? Where is consciousness found in that situation?
@@darrenfromla It is found everywhere, as it always is. In terms of the specific person though, thats not really clear. The body is just a vessel.
@@in_vas_por8810 that's easy to just say. Just saying "it is found everywhere" isn't an answer.
@@darrenfromla It's an answer but one you don't understand yet. You're looking for a specific answer and/or cold hard "evidence" or else you feel the answer or the theory isn't sufficient enough for you.
Many people will tell you the same thing. Consciousness has no beginning nor an end. Your consciousness doesn't go anywhere because it is part of the one whole which everything we know is manifested from. To understand this, you have to be beyond common, everyday logic. We are talking on a quantum level, where the normal rules of our world don't always apply. No beginning, and no end. We aren't infinite, but consciousness is.
@@in_vas_por8810 thanks for replying. The concsiousness you speak of is just an object in your awareness that you are saying i don't understand. I love knowing deeply that at my core, i am just consciousness experiencing life through the vessel of the human body. I just don't think people really know what they are talking about when they objectify consciousness as something that has no beginning or end. My experience is telling me that we can't know anything outside of consciousness but there could be lots of stuff that happens outside of consciousenss. Or before it! If the universe was created by the big bang then in what space was the big bang in when it happended? And what space was that space in? It goes on and on and consciousness could turn out to be a very shallow level compared to how deep it goes. After all, we keep discovering new layers to everything, how come we regard consciousness as the fundamental? But we can't currently know because we as humans currently cannot experience anything without consciousness. Maybe consciousness does have and end and there is something beyond it that we just cant comprehend. I never hear people talking about consciousness in this way. All the spiritual traditions seem to point to consciousness and the God or fundamental place from which all things spring from. It's just a theory. Just an object in someone's awareness or consciousness.
10:40: = mystics,for centuries,have been saying that consciousness or spirit is the ultimate reality
Thank you thank you thank you. This is my mantra. Thank you for your existence in this world, and for continuing to pull me back home. I would love to meet you one day physically so I can give you a big hug!
Love this guy.
Right on point. "The All is Mind; The Universe is Mental. The Mind has nothing to do with "matter" and everything to do with the illusion of matter. Every little ache and pain you're having are mentally designed to make the experience realistic for you. But the truth is, you're just watching, not really hurting.
you have a mind, define "all"
The way I see it is in layers. We have the five senses that are inputs to our mind. Then there is a "sixth sense" which is our thinking mind. But that thinking mind is not the mind some folks here are talking about. The "six" senses make up our conventional "human" mind. This dies when the brain dies. The theory eastern religions say you can experience through meditation is experiencing consciousness that is responsible for perceiving everything coming from our six senses and to gain insight into this "inner mind" which is not our "thoughts" or ego but a mind that just perceives - it is difficult to explain. They go on to posit through their contemplative inquiries, that this "inner" mind does not die but it is not something you can call you and supposedly this inner mind goes onto be "reborn" in some other human or human like vessel. They also state that there's a repository of memories somewhere and that's also something that you can experience through deep meditation. That theory goes really crazy in different segments of eastern philosophies and religion with some saying that this inner mind is a shared conciousness and in effect, that might mean that the inner most quality of each one of our conciouness is the same. In a way, you and I and everyone else "concious" might have this shared inner mind. Sort of like we are all vessels where the entire universe is aware of itself, just that we are so busy with our human (or any other living being in the universe) senses and human "talking" mind that we fail to realise the inner mind. It's crazy, but they say, meditation can make you experience this and inquire into this mind and find out for ourselves.
@@NoobTube4148 Carl Jung speaks of a " collective unconscious " .
Hermetic's is a beautiful thing isn't it!
Earth has no shape because there is no earth, we are nowhere.
You can't find a thought in the brain, thoughts are produced by what you focus your attention on, it's an energy feild. So when you focus on nothing externally peace arises. The brain is only a thing that allows you to know your soul which is undefineable
This man's voice is awesome
Rupert is like my record keeper 5:53 of all that is for a how to truly see real true.
So we are Consiousness, it is us, we are it, it IE CONSIOUSNESS IS EVERYWHERE & EVERYTHING!!!
You got it friend :)
@@sinkec you said to yourself that you/him got it. Actually there is nothing to get, your brain is inside it, and it's inside you, and you're inside it and it's inside you... amazing..
No it's not, sorry but you really need to stop lacing your morning coffee and LSD and start focusing on science.
Consciousness can be a property of matter
property of matter? example a woord/matter is produced by 'x' or 'y' , it cant be a property of it, since matter/wood is a result.
X Roth no, because all their qualities are opposite
We need a deeper understanding of the physics ‘time’ and why we have a future and a past. This would give us a deeper understanding of consciousness.
Dyslexic Artist Theory on the Physics of 'Time' we don’t have a future or a past though... you have memories and predictions but when you were living in those memories you were present (and when you are remembering them right now it’s a new present but that present is still right now), and when the future that you predict comes to be it will also be present. As you are reading this “time” flows on and your eyes look upon new words and you remember the old ones, but it’s all happening at that exact “moment” between old and new, it’s never the past and it’s never the future, those are just the words we use to describe feelings of memories and predictions. How could it ever not be now?
Time is mutable. As you approach the speed of light, time slows to a crawl. 100 years for you would be 100 million years for someone on earth.
Size also change. Near the speed of light, things appear 1/100,000 their normal dimensions. Planets & stars no longer look round. They look squashed almost flat
thank you, i am
13:19 MIND BLOWN
Maybe he refers to dark matter i dont know i lost him
Wish I was there cause NO! My conciousness does not allways feel the same! Also ,I lose consciousness at night,I don't lose the matter from my body.Conciousness DOES emerge from the brain.I have no doubt.Just because Rupert speaks softly,does not mean he is correct.
_"Also ,I lose consciousness at night,I don't lose the matter from my body."_
How do you know you lose consciousness at night??...Can you explain what *an absence of your own presence* is like to anyone??...Try it...
Also...when you say *"I"* don't lose matter from "MY" body....what exactly are you pointing at when you say *"I"* ??...it's certainly not the body is it??...
_"Conciousness DOES emerge from the brain."_
The Grey Fleshy matter of the brain cannot produce awareness any more than the four walls of a house produced the space within the walls...you're NOT thinking this thru bro...
I agree. In the physical world consciousness is there when the brain is in function. You faint and wake up you can say that you LOST consciousness. Now try to see could it also work if you said - everything WENT OUT OF consciousness. I'm saying this because it is evident that all we ever experience can only occur when we are conscious. Therefore our experience takes place in consciousness. So what happened when we fainted? Everything went out of consciousness? In that case the seat of consciousness is aparently a void. Darkness, absence and non existence... at its very core consciousness is nothingness. As such it is able to contain something. If you get what i mean.. because evidently there is consciousness all the time generated from the individual brains with or without us. Watch Bernardo Kastrup ...he's got a wild twist in there i think you might appreciate
Thank you Rupert, excellent video, much appreciated : )
*Blessings for All.* ⭐
During surgery/anesthesia my consciousness did seem to end and restart. It was the most disorienting feeling. There was an absence of existence or time passage in that I can generally tell if I slept a long time or a short time while sleeping although "unconscious". After surgery the period of unconsciousness could have been moments or millenia, it was simply missing. How do we explain this?
Google deep sleep consciousness rupert spira....he goes into this in another vid and on his website
If your consciousness ended and restarted then what experienced that ending and restarting? Who felt that disorienting feeling? Who felt that absence of existence or time passage? Consciousness cannot end and cannot begin. It is absolutely fundamental. You confuse a lack of sensations for a lack of consciousness. Whether you’re asleep or under anesthesia, consciousness never disappears, it can’t disappear. That lack of experience was still experienced by consciousness otherwise you would never claim to have experienced it.
I’ve experienced the same thing with alcohol. About 4 hours of missing memory. It’s because alcohol blocks nerve cells from storing memory & it’s probable anesthesia does the same
.
The studies & experimental data of Non locality of Consiousness are essentially saying this exact thing!
Any links for scientifically proven evidence of this?
This is still one of his best!
Around 8:10 rupert says that culture's belief that concsiousness has a beginning and an end is completely unverifiable. He neglects to say that his views are equally unverifiable. Just because we can't experience consciousness beginning or ending doesn't mean it doesnt and its curious with all of his intelligence he wont acknowledge that simple point. His whole view hangs on the idea that human experience can give us clues to what consciousness is up to. He says over and over that experience is more useful than belief. That may be true but it doesnt mean human experience has the answer to what consciousness is and when or if if begins or ends
Consciousness does begin because we were created in a construct of time and therefore have a beginning. We kind of do sense having a beginning because none of us have memories or a sense of self that goes back infinitely in the past., I believe we were created with a beginning to have no end by God who has no beginning and no end. Therefore only God is truly eternal and we are only eternal in a secondary sense in that we were created with a beginning, but will never end from that beginning. God exists eternally an necessarily without a cause because he is The Absolute Foundation of reality, and outside of Time and Space. Only things that begin to exist have a cause, and things only begin in time. Since God is timeless and the creator of time he exists as a Prime Mover to all existence. Consciousness could end for sure, but it won't because God has ordained it to keep going. There isn't much point of creating conscious being only for them to be extinguished because the moment one's consciousness ends makes there entire existence pointless and as if it never occurred. The whole beauty and point of consciousness is that we get to go on experiencing and have prior memories of previous experiences. We learn, grown, mature, etc. To create that process and stop it would be meaningless. If that were the case then there would be no point in any one existing at all, since it would all be reduced to nothing in the end. If that were the case it wouldn't really matter if one ended it now. What would be the difference of my consciousness ending now or 50 years from now? The end result would be me being nothing and having no memory or experiencing anyway. I wouldn't even get to appreciate the extra 50 years because I wouldn't exist.
Without Nothingness nothing comes into existence
We don’t remember the beginning of our consciousness because brain wasn’t developed in the early stages and couldn’t hold the memory
How can you remember a beginning of consciousness, to remember consciousness beginning there would have to be consciousness observing the beginning, consciousness never begins and it never ends it just is.
@@christopherclewlow6634 I understand that but I don't understand how that proves that consciousness is fundamental, you are just assuming that there isn't a time where there is no consciousness.
@@Gregory-ud6zq no I'm not, I'm saying that it's impossible to remember a beginning of consciousness no matter how well developed your brain is, there has to be something conscious of the beginning of consciousness and in being conscious of the beginning youre already conscious so you're still not really remembering the beginning if consciousness, when i say it never begins and it never ends, I mean from the perspective of consciousness.
As for there being a time when there is no consciousness, I don't ponder over that because I am aware that my discriminating mind is extremely limited in its ability to understand the nature of reality. Non dual teachings are about unlearning, not learning, its about getting your mind out the way in order to get closer to the truth.
In winnie the poo, poo says that rabbit has a brain and that's why he doesn't understand anything.
Thought limits our understanding.
@@christopherclewlow6634 lol that Winnie the Pooh reference is amazing hahhahahaha. But ya I pretty much agree with you.
There is no consciousness without living organisms that have brains. Living organisms did exist at the Big Bang or the first billion years after (still too hot in the universe). No organisms… no brains… no conscious thought
So True 💛
Fabulous as always. Thank you.
Near death experiences, physic mediums, OBE's, yoga meditation (samhadi) - do the math! Conciousness creates EVERYThING!
"Your argument is a giant argument from personal incredulity...you repeat what morons like Spira,Chalmers and Kastrup are saying. They make money on your illiteracy dude..."
I have never once paid a cent to consume any content related to spirituality. All books I read are downloaded as PDFs from the internet. All videos are watched on TH-cam completely for free. I've never heard of Chalmers or Kastrup. The only other videos I've watched have been by a man named Mooji and a man named Eckhart Tolle.
"I amazed how long are you going to ignore the findings of science."
I'm not ignoring the findings of science. I have never once stated to know about the nature of consciousness. I am merely open to ideas that posit answers to questions you or I don't know the answer to. Some answers happen to coincide with my subjective experience, which is when they become beliefs. I am simply challenging the beliefs of science in my comments because after all, they are still beliefs when it comes to consciousness. There are no definitive answers.
He can't provide evidence of that. But it doesn't matter to him because he takes a "methodological naturalism" approach which means that he chooses not to consider supernatural causes. Somehow, he thinks this makes his beliefs superior just because they are rational. It's an extremely narrow-minded and dull view of the world.Instead of remaining open to possibilities about things he doesn't know the answer to, he postulates that they only have a materialistic, scientifically observable explanation.
nickolasgaspar link me to a study that can show what's happening in the brain when we are conscious but not thinking. Then you'll be a lot closer to approaching a convincing argument. Being able to predict thoughts shows nothing except that there are areas in the brain resposible for the production of thoughts. Equating that with thw subjective consciousness is incorrect.
You keep using the term null hypothesis, yet it is unclear exactly what the null hypothesis is in this situation. Because you haven't specified one. The null hypothesis is a statement that there is no relationship between two observed phenomena. Taking the context of this discussion into account, a sensible null hypothesis is therefore that there is no relationship between the subjective consciousness and the universe, for example. But a null hypothesis requires the existence of two empirically observable phenomena. Your argument falls down here because consciousness is not empirically observable. (www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Mind/MindElli.htm)
Therefore, you cannot reduce this argument to merely scientific/statistical structure because there is no null hypothesis.
nickolasgaspar correlation does not equal causation.
Consciousness is a mirror looking at it's reflection in a mirror.
Go Rupert!!...
I believe i lost my consciousness. No one believes me since I am still able to talk and walk. But I experienced it ending inside my brain. It was like a light went down my spine, as if someone has pulled the plug and than everything just went dark. I would like to share my story someday.
It Instantly felt as if i‘ve never existed in a „matrix“ to whatever. I have a nowborn son and after this happened to me he started to cry all the time.
Nope. Can't lose your consciousness when there's only consciousness
Aryaputra you can lose the connection to the source. My brainstem injury was too traumatizing
@@lilligesien455 no.
Aryaputra as he says it leads to a lack of content of consciousness. But in my case it’s different, I will never be back in the dimension I once was.
I find matter many times every day, for example today I found it in the form of the pizza I ate for lunch. Anyway, matter is simply and basically defined as energy with mass, and since Einstein showed their equivalence, it's popular and scientifically correct to know they are essentially the same, i.e. matter is a form of energy. If consciousness does anything, as implied in acts of knowing, it must require energy. Not all energy is associated with mass. In particular fundamental particles with even spin, such as photons (particles of light, that have spin 0) have no mass. Possibly consciousness is associated with a unique and so far unidentified form of energy. If consciousness operates with no expenditure of energy, that would magical, meaning scientifically impossible. However it may be impossible to ever identify the energy of consciousness, possibly due to the uncertainty principle, if it is very subtle.
Thanks for this insightful comment. I think it is really unfortunate that Rupert insists on using the word consciousness to point to what I think he really means as energy itself. I think his use of the word consciousness makes for a tremendous amount of confusion because of the commonly excepted definition of consciousness, as in, being conscious or being aware. If we had to extrapolate that out in the ways he is suggesting, then we would have to assume that a rock is aware and has similar consciousness as a human, or that a mound of dirt has consciousness like a human does. That seems pretty preposterous to me, or at very least, unverifiable, at least thus far. While it is true, that the word or label is never what it is pointing to, still, words do matter because there are commonly accepted definitions of words, and consciousness, is not really synonymous with energy itself, but I think that’s how he’s using it. Again, I personally feel that it causes a lot of unnecessary confusion. I wonder if you have any thoughts on this. ⭐️
@@robreich4905 He doesn't mean energy when he refers to consciousness. He uses the word "consciousness" interchangeably with the word "awareness". The idea of a rock being conscious (panpsychism), is not the same thing as a rock having its origin inside consciousness but not being aware in and of itself (nondualism). A dream is a creation of consciousness and a rock that appears within a dream arises from within consciousness but is not in itself conscious.
@@oldboy5001 Thanks for your reply. Still it seems odd to me to say that a rock has it’s origin inside consciousness even though the rock itself isn’t conscious. Like, what do we know about the origin of rocks besides the their smallest bits are atoms or subatomic particles etc? And if we want to talk about how subatomic particles come to, I think that’s somewhat possible with our current understanding. But if we use the word consciousness there, could we possibly be using it in the same way we’d use it to say I’m conscious right now? Or that I’m aware right now? Just seems an enormous assumption and an enormous claim to make. Any other elaborations would be welcome and thanks again for the replies 👌
@@robreich4905 My understanding of nondualism is that it proposes that conscious awareness is primary and infinite and that nothing exists or ever has existed outside of it (infinite mind). All "matter" and all experience are products of it and arise from within it. Materialism proposes the exact opposite ie that "matter" is primary and it gives rise to consciousness through some as yet unexplained process (known as the hard problem of consciousness).
Most of us have been conditioned in the materialistic worldview so nondualism is initially pretty hard to swallow, but quite compelling when you examine it in depth with an open mind.
He's talking about matter outside and independent of consciousness. Can you ever find that?
I regard matter existing as one and independent of awareness because I am only aware of this body-mind and point of view.
great! Thanks Rupert.
This comment section seems to be all kinds of confused... and with good reason Rupert is going a little too far and explaining unexplainable things too much with muddy words and it doesn’t point to the real truths as much as some of his other words do. The only thing that matters from all of his teachings is the truth of the present. What Eckhart Tolle calls the Now or the power of now. This is just the fact that there really is no future and no past, just memories and predictions, when we are remembering that remembrance is happening in the present, when we predict things about the future like “hmm I’m almost positive my roommate will arrive around 3pm since she said so and she usually does” that prediction happens in the present and when she does show up around 3pm it will also be the present. The trouble people have is that this ‘present’ or ‘now’ is elusive, we can’t ever get a hold of it, there are no real ‘moments’ to experience, just one big long (actually eternal) present that is always spilling forward, like a river or waterfall. The present ‘moment’ is a terrible name for the truth it is trying to point to because it tries to make presence into a noun. Do you experience time right now as you read this as a noun? No, it is a flowing from old to new constantly, that is the experience that every person that I have ever talked to has of time. As a flowing from old or “past” to new or “future” but right in the middle of the two always, you can’t ever just reside in the past or the future, because when you do it’s now.
He says there is no experience of consciousness beginning but there's also no proof of it not beginning
Yes, we are all receivers of consciousness, but we can use our minds as processors to run imagined consciousness and overlap it with reality, this will synchronize oneness in whatever you are observing, and by doing this you are co creating with consciousness and hopefully your vibrate high energy frequencies and since everyone are a receiver, they will still receive what you encoded to them :)
Define consciousness? Because everything else made sense. But I perceive the mind as the all. If your referring to awareness as consciousness then what are you really saying?
it doesn't matter what i call it, if you can make sense of it thats what matters, look past the minor errors and work on the big picture.
One could never find the "stuff" because it can't be experienced in the same way out direct experience via our sensory perceptions are. Also, Rupert never brings this up but the brain, if designated as a transducer, will readily explain that it(the brain) isn't producing consciousness but instead is the receptor for it in the same way for instance that a radio is a receptor for electromagnetic energy or a piano soundboard is a transducer for the string vibrations that are converted into sound waves which we then perceive.
In the end, it doesn't even matter
Will it basically does , if consciousness isn't material we are fucked , forever reincarnating for no reason
Sometimes I trip when I look at my son and think "how the hell does he have human consciousness" does he just inherit him? Is consciousness created when the brain is being created or how? HOW and when is consciousness created. Why does me being a human and having offspring automatically gives that embryo the ability to have a consciousness. Lol I'm high
Or, the vehicle appears “in” it.
Ed Gepixel consciousness manifests a brain, the body mind world that appears. The air that creates the flame was prior to the flame, and in fact is what the flame is “made of”. So too the brain, the grass, the stars are “made of” consciousness.
The brain happens to be a highly complex localization of consciousness that allows the unit to trick itself into thinking that it is separate from the “rest of the world”, and also drop that same illusory belief.
Consciousness is always there, it’s the realization of the self/body that awakens into it in reverse.
Thinking is a very creative amazing work human do . Thinking leads to belief in god
@@edgepixel8467
I disagree ... the power that gives you this skill is an intelligent . Think in the universe ... space ... planets and the galaxy ... your brain mind will surrender to the absolute fact of god
IF wine can influence my consciousness THEN the wine ingredients must ALSO be consciousness SEEING as IT is NOT MATTER NOR IS IT A SEPARATE, FIRST. ??
Consciousness THAT knows ITSELF makes everything consciousness. And if a grain of sand (is not matter) IT is consciousness!
Ed Gepixel remember that an insult from another person gives you a choice, Its a choice to let it affect you.
fascinating discussion! wish there was more of it!
I Hope he's right!🤞
No need to hope. Investigate and find out for yourself
Someone (Me, Myself & I) pointed out, "how does an electron know what to do?" A grain of sand in essence is vibration, electrons so on. How does our immune system and stomach know what to do?
Consciousness, or life, knows and IT expresses itself like or as that. How do I know what I know? Not what I know but the actual "knowing?" Knowing (like my awareness knows) is fundamental to creation. IT is consciousness AS JUST being, outside of (prior to) existence and IN existence. WHAT exactly is this KNOWING?? This universe at the time (and before) it came into being existence, IT must have known... and therefore it still knows... itself.
There are many other universes that have failed. They are constructed wrong & don’t form stars or planets
Likewise there’s many living cells that are constructed wrong. They don’t process food or create proper membranes. They die. Or they survive but only just barely
Sometimes these malconstructed cells exist within us. They are cancer cells.
One could add another argument here. Wouldn't it be possible that the brain produces consciousness? - No, because nothing comes from nothing. In the matter-only model, there is no such thing as conscious experience. It just consists of the mathematical laws that describe how things behave, but mathematical laws can neither capture the substance things are made of, nor result in conscious experience. Under the matter-only paradigm, we have the insurmountable problems of explaining consciousness and explaining what the substance behind all things is. It's just so simple, consciousness is the missing substance of all things. We cannot imagine any substance that is beyond conscious experience, because there is none.
NOT meaning to be either insulting, or dismissive, but this guy comes across as though he is simply trying to 'out-clever' his host (or whomever that invisible person is he is speaking to). I can promise you, he knows nothing with any more degree of absolute certainty than the rest of us; he's simply a philosopher with a theory albeit, a theory worthy of consideration.
If there is ANY connection between matter and consciousness at all then I can only suspect that they are somehow one and the same thing...intrinsically bound together...just different manifestations thereof - in the same sense that electricity and magnetism are different manifestations of the same thing. One did not come before the other. It is the same with matter and consciousness; one cannot be separated from the other. Or so that's the way I view it. The essence of each is imbued within/reflected within the other. Sort of like the Asian philosophical principle of Yin and Yang.
No matter how you 'play' it -- matter first, or consciousness first -- each begs an answer as to its origins/emergent essence. It's sort of like flipping a coin and thinking that because it came up as heads instead of tails you have more clearly defined the coin's essence, or point and purpose.
Look up the Third Hermetic Principle. The origin of Matter has been long since identified.
Thanks for sharing this observation. Normally I appreciate Rupert's way of thinking but I don't like how he makes people into saying 'yes' to his questions, eg. how can someone know that even in deep dementia one is aware of their altered mind condition?
Wise words, this is more akin to a Taoist perspective, differing from the Vedantist perspective Rupert prefers
@@edgepixel8467 I guess I should've completed my sentence more roundly for those of us that read faster in our minds than our eyes... I would fix my comment like this: "Wise words, they are more akin to those of a Taoist perspective, differing slightly from those of the perspective of Vedanta that Rupert prefers to teach from. It is nice to see differing perspectives out here because they all point to the same fundamental and experiential truth. Having multiple ways of getting to the same underlying truth is important because we all learn in different ways."
@@edgepixel8467 "Why should one prefer the Vedantist perspective instead of the Mahayana Buddhism or Taoism one?" This question does not reply accurately to what I said because it implies that I said something along the lines of "one should prefer Vedanta" or "Rupert prefers Vedanta teachings so should you" which I did not. So I cannot really answer the question because I have no reason why "should one prefer the Vedantist perspective instead of the Mahayana Buddhism or Taoism one?" I think whatever 'perspective' and/or 'teaching' gets you to the truth about the present "here & now" is the one you should prefer... until that perspective of teaching is no longer needed and you simply reside in the peace of the present.
Truth is like 1. As whole as one, as half whole as it is. Truth is 1. As half one. As 1 as of 2 halves. Truth is but half truth.
Is the belief that consciousness precedes matter necessary to the practice of self-enquiry and self-realization? If so then the whole thing is invalid; it is circular reasoning.
So you believe nothing was created from nothing and from nothingness sprang consciousness. Frankly, I think you're an idiot.
It's rather the other way around: you discover that consciousness precedes matter during the practice of self-enquiry and meditation. You don't approach these practices with a belief, but you rather question all beliefs, including the belief that there is a material world. However, sometimes it might speed up the process to adapt opposite beliefs to those that you can infer to be false, mainly because some beliefs are very deeply imprinted into your mind and hard to eradicate.
@j conrad
I hope after five months you've grown enough to understand how ridiculous your comment was.
I remember consciousness ending and then beginning when they drugged me with anesthesia for surgery. Room spinning, and consciousness going into the OFF position. Then consciousness turns ON and it's, Hello, I've been repaired!
You were councious that u werent councious haha
I've been chewing on this example too. It's important to note that memory is a function of the mind, not consciousness. And that while the contents of consciousness may change (e.g. you took a drug that shut off the body's sensory perceptions), consciousness itself may remain. It's tricky because from the perspective of my mind, I suddenly warped from the operating room to the recovery room. So both models seem to me to be consistent with my experience.
@@Svenscreams Yea if consciousness is there but it doesn't register as being there in the mind or in memory, then you get into nonsense like this: Consciousness is unconscious of itself. How can you call that consciousness? It's the consciousness of a rock or a grain of sand existing, it's the laws of the physical universe and not anything that you could call "consciousness" in the conventional sense.
I’ve experienced the same thing with alcohol. About 4 hours of missing memory. It’s because alcohol blocks nerve cells from storing memory & it’s probable anesthesia does the same
.
This seems kind of one sides. When you consider the data which creates the brain is part of the brain. It's like having a bunch of wiggles on a paper and certain spots are more tightly packed than others. These tightly packed spots represent matter. A certain tightly packed spot being a brain which would project this personal experience. Consciousness as a sole existing entity is a bit far fetched when considering that what consciousness is can be broken down too each of the senses in synchronicity as well as thought, and the part of the brain which records events.
Perhaps the mind/body relationship is like a bird and a tree. The tree does not create the bird but the bird finds the tree and finds a home in it to nest. If the tree gets cut down, the bird flies away.
Would I have a better consciousness if i stuck an antenna into my brain. I thought consciousness was a frequency of the universe.
the brain is nothing more than a receiver for the soul. We aren't actually here, our brains and bodies are extensions for user to use.
So everything is both real and unreal.
You do see consciousness end in other people. Of course that doesn't mean consciousness itself ended, but that is a real experience, seeing someone you know intimately who was consciousness, die and no longer be conscious. Also if your only experience is consciousness that alone doesn't prove that it came first.
There is no consciousness without living organisms that have brains. Living organisms did exist at the Big Bang or the first billion years after (still too hot in the universe). No organisms… no brains… no conscious thought
Please help me understand. Awareness is never aware of its own disappearance- of course not, there would have to be another awareness that is not my own to be aware of that. But others are aware that I was out for an hour during surgery, although for me, one moment I was going into surgery and the next moment I was awake post surgery in recovery. But although I didnt experience a loss of awareness, I was out. So awareness is limited, it is limited to what it experiences and disappearance of that awareness can be verified not by me but by the awareness of others. What am I missing?
Barbara Scholz hi Barbara, even in deep sleep when there is nothing to be aware of, awareness is there, if not you could not hear the fire alarm and react. Now it gets really tricky when we think about at what time in our life awareness enters our body, or mind for that matter. But in the end, ‘ Who’ cares?
♥
Unconvinced. Rupert offers no convincing argument to prove consciousness is not the function of body/mind.
On the contrary, it is the responsibility of those who claim that consciousness is created by or as you put it "the function of the body-mind" to prove that.
This guy reminds me of Dr, zaker Smith from lost in space.
I feel that human consciousness is only one degree in a circle. There are 359 other degrees that correspond to consciousness but which is only a state of being something that is not human consciousness but something else, which then again forms the total 360 circle being where our consciousness is in
0:18 thanks for that
I remember the first experience upon awakening today.Why couldn't the first experience of my organism be the same?
#GoVegan 💚 #Agnostic #AntiTheist #Spiritual #Centrist
how do you explain terminal lucidity? where demented people with have a moment of crystal clear clarity before they die. also how do you explain savant sydrome where brain injury can result in a superhuman ability, like memory art music skill. how does this happen out of no where? If brain makes conciousness how do you explain this. it does make sense to explain it as conciousness is universal.
There is this strange case of a guy who jumped into a swimming pool, bumped his head and all of a sudden he could play the piano beautifully. Where did that come from. Was it part of his consciousness all along?
@@edgepixel8467 The story about the guy who hit his head and could play the piano is pretty famous so I have to believe it's true. But your point is well taken. There is a lot of bs out there. We can only guess which ones are true.
That is the ultimate question. Is consciousness a bi-product of the brain , or is the mind a receiver of consciousness from outside the brain. Similar to the internet is not inside your computer, it's the wi-fi receiver that connects to the internet. If you were to rip out the wi-fi receiver and the internet turned of you could make an assumption that the wi-fi receiver creates the internet, but as you know that would be an incorrect assumption. Will we ever be able to answer this mystery I wonder.
Rupert's wine analogy doesn't seem to address the experience in this context. the question, here, is how damage to a part of the brain seems to end consciousness. By bringing up things the 'muddle' our consciousness, he obviously points to things that do not change the presence that notices such muddles. But when they shove the screwdriver into my head and I wake up two years later, isn't it true to say that the damage did affect consciousness. It isn't like wine, where I can notice how my noticing doesn't change. After the damage by the screwdriver, I don't experience anything until I do, two years later. My consciousness, upon awakening, is still fresh and pure and clean, but we don't need to deny that consciousness had no choice but to lose all objects.
I agree pretty much. But what he seems to be saying, and indeed what would feel 'real' to you, is only what you experienced. The screwdriver and the coma would be a story to you
I can only make sense of this stuff by considering what makes reality 'real' for me. I'm often lost in admiration at the discoveries of science, but the reality they point to seems to be lost somewhere, no matter how much I 'imagine' it to be real. When I'm attempting and failing at that imagining, I realise I'm trying to bring the content of the story closer to experience, which is my actual reality.
I guess it depends what you think the word 'actual' means. There are two possible interpretations of the word, with opposite implications for which belongs in the other.
For me I see it like this:. In deep sleep the mind is not there so memories are NOT recorded. When you wake up there is nothing to remember. So it appears that deep sleep of many hours occurs in an instance, but you could have been fully aware and enjoyed the experience. Death is then the same as deep sleep. The most important point Rupert makes is that you are always aware, whether your in deep sleep, in dream sleep, or in the waking state or in death state. Awareness is like the TV screen it's always there. When the movie plays it's the waking state or dream state. When the movie dors not play it's like dreamless sleep. And if the movie never plays again its like death. Only in dream sleep or in waking state is there a mind that records information as memory so we can recall the experience and talk about. So Near Death Experiences (NDE) that are remembered implies there was enough rnind/brain operational to record the experience so in the full waking state we remember it So simply put if no thoughts occur then no time occurs. ( Meditation experience ) Time and Space is manufactured by the mind only in waking state and dream state. Biocentrism says the same, as all mystics have said for thousands of years. The law of physics and science do not change, science works well, but these things can't have access to the screen as they are only in the movie. (The world of form)
Imagine that you have a microscope that you can see all sorts of micro organisms with. If the lens of the microscope breaks you will no longer be able to perceive the microbes, but you will still have awareness. Similarly, infinite consciousness needs a finite mind to perceive the finite world. If the finite mind is damaged the perceptions will be altered or will cease altogether but awareness will still remain even if it can no longer perceive finite objects.
@@HopyHop1
Yeah, and the main problem with my comment was that it assumes that I was no longer having experiences while in a coma. Just like we often remember intense dreams days after having them, our sense of having had 'no experience' isn't reliable.
Very good.Jason Palmer.mt.pine ark.
What about anesthesia?
Dr. Spira, I am most grateful for your videos. I'm a philosopher at heart and my brain is delighted and gratified when I have a chance to listen to your videos. Your arguments are "brain candy", indeed. Have you published any works on this very topic of consciousness and matter? I'm particularly aroused by the concept of matter as the experience of the mind. How is it that we are impacted by what we perceive as matter? What are we really experiencing when we hit a tree with a vehicle we're driving? Please suggest a book or two on the matter (pun intended). Thank you.
interesting question
I don't think Rupert's intention is to provide you with 'brain candy' - but you can buy his books here non-duality.rupertspira.com/store
Rupert does not have a doctorate degree of any kind and he never replies in comments.
Rather than recommending books, I would recommend watching the plethora of YT videos he has available and if you really want to dig deep in his teachings, go to his website and subscribe. I AM THAT by Nisargadatta Maharaj is widely considered the ultimate book for Advaita teachings.
@xxxmwxxx
That's a pretty vacuous thing to say.
The entire universe which includes space, time, matter, body, senses, brain and words is unconscious. Consciousness alone which is the ultimate source of words, which is hearing these words and which is understanding these words is conscio The entire universe which includes space, time, matter, body, senses, brain and words is unconscious. Consciousness alone which is the ultimate source of words, which is hearing these words and which is understanding these words is conscious. That’s what I am, you are and everybody is. Am I right, Rupert? us. That’s what I am, you are and everybody is. Am I right, Rupert?
But it doesn't make sense thinking about it. If the point was that we were all to be one, why do we all experience these things separately? The beauty is that we experience that we are separated. There would be no beauty if we all felt like cells of a plant. And that we have the experience of separation means that symbolically/spiritually we are separated, even if it were so that we technically all of us had the same conscousness. That is actually the deep side of it, that we are experience separation and that means we are separated, that is the beauty. That we are all one consciousness is no deep thought at all. It destroyes beauty. What destroys beauty is not deep truth, it has lost what "deep truth" means.
Consciousness with mass is so-called matter/ material THEREFORE IT IS A MASS OF CONSCIOUSNESS!
I'm 3:20 into the talk so he may address my question, but I wanted to ask before I forget.
He ask "...does the consciousness that knows your experience change?"
Unless I misunderstand this question, is he not ignoring pretty obvious brain states where there is no conscious experiences e.g. Coma, Dreamless sleep, anesthesia etc.?
He talks about this with sam harris
A born baby has awareness of consciousness when it screams... prior it doesn't know the world but it knows while in the tummy.
Actually it does in the tummy...
@@edgepixel8467 Has she/he what? Do you have an unconscious mind right now?
Ha! Rupert Spira is like peak existential-phenomenology! lol!
What ive never heard Rupert explain is the experience of physically being “put to sleep” with anesthesia? Is that the same as deep sleep ie no content for consciousness to focus on yet still aware?
Yes, he mentions it on his website a few times. Essentially, no form = no experience other than itself.
If it disables the nervousness system then it would be just like a deep sleep with no experience since the senses are cut off from the brain which is in fact s mind which. Is experienced by consciousness
Love him, but unfortunately until now we do not have any single proof
I would say because consciousness seems to be something internal whereas matter is external. I can see objects outside of myself. What does he mean that we have never found matter??
I think conciousness is a product of the brain. I have very good reason to believe so and there's very little evidende to believe conciousness is just universal. Doesn't hold water and I won't believe it just cause some guru said it. Maybe Rupert has seen something I havent or knows something I dont, but I won't just believe that. Maybe I'm wrong, I genuinely want to know what's this conciousness thing and i know he might be right.
I think he's referencing think of a pipe as your neurons. Water is not created from the pipes, but if I turn on the faucet the water will run through the pipes. I turn off the faucet the water stops. The water is still there it's just not being faciluted through. Conscious is the water. The pipes are the neurons in your brain and your bodily functions are the faucet. When your body dies, the pipes stop working, the faucet won turn, but the waters still there. I hope that helps explain it
But you say “think”.... Do you think it’s a possibility that consciousness is a product of the brain, because it messes up your whole sense of reality? It triggers a scary response, because you realise you’ve been programmed and brainwashed? Have you ever considered that scientists have our same brain with the same thoughts... If consciousness were the truth of “all things”, scientists would have the same doubts and excuses that your mind has about this, as this changes EVERYTHING! There’s very little evidence actually about matter, as even physicists including Einstein have found matter to be “99.99999% energy”... The literal people who represent most of our today’s knowledge and cultural beliefs have found the same truth. The fact this is all matter is just a possibility created by those who live in a state of survival. Science is really not reliable. If science really wanted the actual truth, they would consider all possibilities and test it out. It’s funny. You’d believe that scientists want to evolve, but anything that goes against what they want to believe is called pseudoscience or fake news. The best scientists are the ones who question everything. That’s exactly what Einstein did. He questioned and came up with his new knowledge and it changed everything. I believe you should consider the fact that you’re just choosing to believe this to be safe, instead of realising the reality of this more than valid “claim” ,as what Rupert is claiming is ALL of our experiences : )
does our spirit retain our memories?
Over-Consciousness is pictured in the Rainbow,
Colors is our Under-Consciousness =
Day-Consciousness and Night-Consciousness.
Yeah, programs is Not Produced in the radio,
but work through the radio.
At night, We move our Day-Consciousness,
to the Night-Bodies, Deep-Sleep, one by one,
via our Coupling-Body, REM.
We are Gravity-Beings, physical body.
Instinct, Gravity, Feeling, Intelligence, Intuition, Memory.
Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo.
The Circuit-Princip is Basic in the Eternal Life,
it is in everything, at the Life-side and Stuff-side,
at all levels, and Micro- Medio- and Macro-Cosmos.
I do agree with Rupert's position, but I don't think that he made a strong argument for his case here. Regarding the glass of wine he could have asked not if there was still consciousness that was aware of the slight inebriation, but if consciousness had changed even ever so slightly due to the glass of wine-not if there was consciousness present at all. He questioner, I believe might have understood that line of reasoning rather than what Rupert went on to present as evidence.
Maybe consciousness lives on just as the light that can be seen in the sky from dead stars of billions of years ago ?
consciousness is not outside of you, it's inside you
So... Anybody remembers when they didn't walk and then they started walking? Well... I doubt it, because babies don't have conscious memories, so... This argument that because we don't remember the beginning of counsciousness therefore it existed already is meaningless. The end or beginning of things do not depend on our memory of it.
Without the brain and thinking process can consciousness be manifested?
LOL! The Heliocentric model is completely false though. Bad analogy there. Curvature has never been observed or measured. In fact modern zoom cameras demonstrate there is no curvature at all. I agree consciousness is distinct from the brain though.