TO BE CONSCIOUS, OR NOT TO BE CONSCIOUS, THAT IS THE REAL QUESTION . . . By Leon van den Berg Imagine yourself trying to share your awesome experience of a rainbow with someone who’s totally colourblind — and who sees only this [PIC 1] Now, no matter how much you argue, demonstrate, scream and shout, that person will never understand what you are raging about. He may even feel superior to you and look down on you as if you are hallucinating, seeing ghosts and/or pretending. Sadly he’ll never be able to realise that you are experiencing this when you look at a rainbow: [PIC 2] This blindness is a physical disability and can be identified with this test: [PIC 3] If you only see ’n bunch of different shades of dots, you are colourblind. If, however, you distinguish two figures between 1–10 on a grey background, you are clearly able to appreciate the rainbow in all it’s glory. A more serious kind of blindness is mindblindness where “mind” refers to consciousness. AWAKE BUT UNCONSCIOUS Consciousness is everything that is the case in contrast to nothing that is the case while you are unconscious after fainting, going into a coma, falling asleep, passing out after heavy drinking, or dying. The labeling of people who are autistic as “mindblind” does not apply here, because they are most probably more conscious than ordinary people because they’re not distracted by their language and that of others. Mindblindness in the sense of lack of consciousness while wide awake, is a serious Western condition where people have, at an early age already, disconnected to “autopilot” — it is subjected themselves to so many cultural routines that they they don’t have to be aware. PRACTISING TO GO INTO PERFECT DENIAL Though they may look down on “people on the bandwagon”, they themselves had, as kids already, climbed on cultural wagons that would take them where they wanted to go. After choosing some wagon to overcome consciousness they may apply logic to deny consciousness, and after many decades “practice makes perfect” may kick in and they really become totally mindblind. Not only do they deny their own consciousness — which is for all practical purposes the world, the universe — they (obviously!) deny that of others, even trying to convince these healthy people that they are unconscious as well. ‘PASS OVER IN SILENCE” This condition gets at its worst when an intellectual who has successfully destroyed his own consciousness call it “a myth” or “mythology” when a conscious philosopher concludes his thesis with a reference to consciousness. The conscious philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) concluded his doctorate (the Tractatus) with: “What we cannot speak about, one must pass over in silence.” In other words, as much as you have a snowball’s hope in hell to describe the colours of the rainbow to a colourblind person, you have any hope to describe the essence of consciousness — the best you can do is get there through silence. AUTISM IS MINDFULNESS The unconsious Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) called Wittgenstein’s conclusion “unfortunate”, “mystic" and “mysticism”. If Russell meant by this “primitive” it is his attitude that’s unfortunate, because one cannot reject essential truths like the colours of the rainbow and consciousness because you find them “primitive”. The extent to which this terminal disease, mindblindness, has developed becomes clear with the rather general use of this very term to describe the mindfulness of the autistic person. ‘BEWITCHMENT OF OUR INTELLIGENCE’ Russell was far from autistic — language (in the sense of formal & mathematical logic) was his only reality. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, clearly “suffered from” the autistic condition called Aspergers Syndrome, a condition that becomes clear in these words: “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.” This basically has the same meaning as his statement above about silence. Mindfulness has been bewitched by Logos (“by means of our language”) and Wittgenstein’s philosophy is to use ordinary language (“by means of our language”) to overcome this bewitchment. He called this overcoming “language therapy”. OVERUSE AND MISUSE OF ‘LITERALLY’ Fortunately this mindblindness was a typical disease of the 19th and 20th century, clearly due to the influence of the mass media being essentially literal. A good example of the bewitchment of our minds by literacy can be heard and seen in the overuse of “literally” to mean “actually, really, concretely”. Like this one I recently read: “He literally chased me out of his office!” THREE WISE MEN My immediate response was, so he didn’t really do it, he only did in a literal way. The 21st century can already be called the reawakening — a process that was kickstarted in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the hippies — century, with authors like Eckhart Tolle, Osho, Deepak Chopra, establishing themselves as best sellers. So I’ll conclude — in the same spirit as that of Wittgenstein —with three quotes each by these three wise men: A [PIC 4] ECKHART TOLLE (BORN 1948) IS A GERMAN CITIZEN WHO RESIDES IN CANADA AND IS BEST KNOWN FOR HIS BOOKS ‘THE POWER OF NOW’ AND ‘A NEW EARTH’. IN 2011 THE ‘WATKINS REVIEW’ LISTED HIM AS ‘THE MOST SPIRITUALLY INFLUENTIAL AUTHOR IN THE UNITED STATES. 1 “WHEN you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness. “You are present. “You have stepped out of thousands of years of collective human conditioning.” — From his book ‘Stillness Speaks’ 2 “DOGMAS — religious, political, scientific — arise out of the erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or truth. “Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. “And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of ‘I know’.” — From his book ‘Stillness Speaks’ 3 “NOT to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. “This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.” — From his book ‘The Power of Now’ B [PIC 5] CHANDRA MOHAN JAIN (1931–1990) — ALSO KNOWN AS ACHARYA RAJNEESH FROM THE 1960S ONWARDS; AS BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH IN THE 1970S AND 1980S; AND AS OSHO FROM 1989 — WAS AN INDIAN PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR, MYSTIC, GURU AND SPIRITUAL TEACHER WHO GARNERED A WORLDWIDE FOLLOWING. 1 “STILLNESS is only possible if your mind is without thoughts.” 2 “I TEACH selfishness. “I want you to be, first, your own flowering. “Yes, it will appear as selfishness; I have no objection to that appearance; it is okay with me. “But is the rose selfish when it blossoms? “Is the lotus selfish when it blossoms? “Is the sun selfish when it shines? “Why should you be worried about selfishness? “You are born — birth is only an opportunity, just a beginning, not an end. “You have to flower. “Your first and foremost responsibility is to blossom, to become fully conscious, aware, alert; and in that consciousness you will be able to see what you can share, how you can solve problems.” — From ‘The Book of Understanding’ 3 “IN this world, it is very difficult to find a happy person, because nobody is fulfilling the conditions for being happy. “The first condition is that one has to drop all comparison. “Drop all these stupid ideas of being superior and inferior. “You are neither superior nor inferior. “You are simply yourself! “There exists no one like you, no one with whom you can be compared. “Then, suddenly, you are at home.” — From ‘The Book of Understanding’ C [PIC 5] DEEPAK CHOPRA (BORN 1947) IS AN AMERICAN MEDICAL DOCTOR AND SPIRITUAL GURU. HE BECAME CHIEF OF STAFF AT THE NEW ENGLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL IN MASSACHUSETTS BEFORE ESTABLISHING A PRIVATE PRACTICE IN 1985. HE MET MAHRISHI YOGI, WHO INVITED HIM TO STUDY AYURVEDA. CHOPRA BECAME A FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF AYURVEDIC MEDICINE AND LATER BECAME MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF THE MAHARISHI AYURVEDA HEALTH CENTER. 1 “SILENCE is the great teacher and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. “There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence.” 2 “IN the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” 3 “THE Ego, however, is not who you really are. “The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. “Your social mask thrives on approval. “It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear.” — From his book ‘The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams’
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 15:22:46 +0000
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