Ego or Awareness

[eternomi]

Refering to the following blog post:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...-or-awareness/

Steve Pavlina's Subjective Reality (as of September 11th, 2006)

awareness/consciousness -> mind -> thought/intentions -> manifestations of thought (including the physical universe, your ego, the laws of physics, other people, bananas, etc.)

Here are a few questions poking at this model. I am sure Steve is poking at it already, so why not help him out a bit?

If "consciousness" is all there is, and the body and everything else is just a projection of this single consciousness, why bother with the body at all?

Simply thinking should fix everything, but it does not. Why so? If it is, why the lag?

How come there is a linkage between levels of awareness one experiences and the states of his body ("awake", "sleep")? IOW, how can one vibrate at higher levels during sleep, but at lower levels when "awake"? If they are both projections of the "mind", why aren't they the same?

If the body and consciousness have a one-way link (from the consciousness to the body and outward on), then how come alcohol, drugs and other "physical" substances cause one to lose or alter the experience of sense of consciousness?

What about black outs? For example when you get a strong hit to the head, or when your blood sugar level falls.. If you ever lived through one of these, you know what I am talking about. Did the universe stop existing because you blacked out (yes it did for 'you' whatever that mean)? Where did the one and only consciousness you experience go?

Note: I absolutely agree with the single consciousness and everything emanating from it, but I tend to think that there is more to the link between the ultimate single consciousness (far left) and its "physical" manifestations (far right). Perhaps the link is not a one-way projection as depicted above or there is an extra layer between the single consciousness and as the experience of that consciousness which we (I?) call "the self".

[eternomi]

Maybe he hasn't answered these either?

From:
A must read!

It's impossible to help everyone if I hold a fixed perspective, since any one perspective has major blind spots.

The correct perspective would not have any blind spots.

[Mark Lapierre]

Originally Posted by eternomi

If "consciousness" is all there is, and the body and everything else is just a projection of this single consciousness, why bother with the body at all?

The explanation I've heard most often is that the point of everything is the experience. Consciousness projected all that we think of as 'reality' so that it can experience things from different perspectives, including limited ones.

Originally Posted by eternomi

Simply thinking should fix everything, but it does not. Why so? If it is, why the lag?

Why should thinking, at the limited level of human consciousness, fix everything? I don't see it happening, and I don't believe the explanations of why it could, because the evidence is lacking. Steve, and others, believe differently because their experiences do demonstrate, from their perspective, valid reasons for believing as they do.

Originally Posted by eternomi

How come there is a linkage between levels of awareness one experiences and the states of his body ("awake", "sleep")? IOW, how can one vibrate at higher levels during sleep, but at lower levels when "awake"? If they are both projections of the "mind", why aren't they the same?

If by "mind" you mean Universal Consciousness, then the answer is that they're different because they provide for different experiences.

But if by "mind" you meant the mind which is associated with an individual's brain, then they aren't the same because they're the result of different physical states. And that is what I believe, that different states of awareness are the result of different levels of activity in the brain and body, caused by certain activity in the brain and body (meditation, anxiety, excitement, seeing a car drive up the curb heading straight for you).

I believe states of awareness are linked to bodily state because brain and body are intertwined. One affects the other, in both directions, at a physical level. That effect might be explained by some as "vibrations", or other terms with a new-agey slant, but I believe every repeatable effect has an objectively verifiable mechanism behind it. Meaning that we can measure the pulses flashing through our neurons.

Originally Posted by eternomi

If the body and consciousness have a one-way link (from the consciousness to the body and outward on), then how come alcohol, drugs and other "physical" substances cause one to lose or alter the experience of sense of consciousness?

Where's the one-way link? If you're referring to the relationship Steve mentioned which you quoted, he said that the arrow means "gives rise to", but that doesn't mean that there's a one-directional link between the two. It means that one came first, and from that the other was created.

Originally Posted by eternomi

What about black outs? For example when you get a strong hit to the head, or when your blood sugar level falls.. If you ever lived through one of these, you know what I am talking about. Did the universe stop existing because you blacked out (yes it did for 'you' whatever that mean)? Where did the one and only consciousness you experience go?

There are also other, less dramatic instances where you're not consciously aware. Deep sleep for example. Nothing wrong with your brain at that point, but you're still completely unaware of what's going on around you, or internally (no dreams). That consciousness fades because it's a property of your body, and at that point your body's state isn't capable of maintaining it.

Yet the universe is still there when you wake up. I believe that's because there really is an objective universe, but even in the subjective model, Universal Consciousness is all that exists, the consciousness that most people experience is only a very limited part of that Consciousness, and thus being unaware has even less of an effect on the universe than holding out your hand would stop a hurricane.

Originally Posted by eternomi

Note: I absolutely agree with the single consciousness and everything emanating from it, but I tend to think that there is more to the link between the ultimate single consciousness (far left) and its "physical" manifestations (far right). Perhaps the link is not a one-way projection as depicted above or there is an extra layer between the single consciousness and as the experience of that consciousness which we (I?) call "the self".

Unlike Steve, my experiences have been totally congruent with the objective model of reality. Including experiences which some would considered spiritual and/or supernatural (sleep paralysis as an explanation for ghost or alien visits, for example).

I haven't experienced anything which leads me to believe the subjective model, though I can understand it and argue for it, but since it relies entirely on belief, unless I experience something to shake my beliefs, I can't believe otherwise. Ironic innit?

I believe that people place their faith in subjective reality, and other beliefs which require faith in something unverified or entirely subjective, because it's human nature to want to explain the unexplained, and something good can be easily explained to one's satisfaction, even if others see it as irrational. But hey, I'm sure some people would consider my belief in scientific explanations to be equally irrational. And I'm ok with that

Hmm, I'm just noticing that because I don't believe in the subjective model as a true reflection of reality, I don't feel any desire to pick holes in it, and am happy to use my understanding of it to plug any holes others pick, because to me it's a purely academic exercise. And if I decided to pick holes in it I could. Non-attachment in action

But I also won't rule out the possibility that the subjective model is closer than the objective model, because that would mean discounting the experiences of Steve and many others. There are many situations I can think of in which I have no idea how I'd react. If I'd had Steve's experiences it's quite possible I'd hold a similar opinion to him.

Originally Posted by eternomi

The correct perspective would not have any blind spots, would it?

If that perspective is an omniscient one, yes. Otherwise of course there would be blind spots. Though I'm sure when Steve reaches omniscience we'll be the first to read about it

[Shaden]

The correct perspective would not have any blind spots, would it?

Except towards the unanswerable question; does this perspective have any blind spots?

When you're unaware of a blind spot, you won't realize it's there. Steve's very new-agey philosophy is to shift between beliefs so that he get's a notion of where his blind spots lie and what beliefs he can adopt to prevent this from happening.

But even with this kind of philosophy you never reach the point where you can say with all confidence that you have located and solved all your blind spots. There may still be another one out there, perhaps a catastrophically huge one that you're completely unaware of.

It's the process of growth that's the important element of this exploration; not reaching any fixed state.

[eternomi]

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

If by "mind" you mean Universal Consciousness,...

But if by "mind" you meant the mind which is associated with an individual's brain, ...

Mark, you touched the heart of the matter!

Awareness, mind and consciousness are words that get thrown around a lot. I take them to be the same thing, but perhaps I am missing something.

But assuming that I am not, the question now simply becomes is my consciousness the result of a "body" created by the "universal consciousness"? Or is my consciousness "the universal consciousness" which gives rise to the body?

If it is the former, then the body does not matter at all! If it is the latter, the body does indeed matter to a certain extent, but the reliance on that body would be lessened as the consciousness of the body approaches to the consciousness of the universal consciousness.

IOW, in the latter, reality is virtual wrt the universal consciousness, but very real and objective at some level for the creations of that universal consciousness. Note that, the objectivity is not necessarily at the level that my body perceives with my eyes.

I tend to believe this latter explanation these days.. Hence, there is an extra level of separation between the "created" and the "creator" -however, this is not a space-time kinda separation at all-.