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The Ascension Connection Invites You to an Open Call
Thursday, May 23rd, 2024
10 am California, 12 pm Chicago, 1 pm New York
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Let’s Talk About Consciousness
Hosted by Dr Rob Stevens
What is consciousness? Is it synonymous with awareness? It’s something we all take for granted and at the same time, it remains one of the least understood and most mysterious and intangible phenomena.
This Thursday, I want to talk about consciousness and introduce some thought-provoking ideas, some of which you can read about below. Once I’ve introduced these topics, we’ll open the floor to discuss the intriguing phenomenon.
“Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality” by Anil Seth TED talks:
Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience — and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. How does this happen? According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we’re all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it “reality.” Join Seth for a delightfully disorienting talk that may leave you questioning the very nature of your existence.
https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality
The Time Experiment
There is a fairly recent belief that our reality is a hologram, sometimes referred to as the matrix. The theory is that this “hologram” is perpetually being created and destroyed many trillions of times a second – frame by frame if you will, like a movie. Our waking conscious mind is tuned into the moments when our reality has manifested. We do not perceive the individual frames or the time between frames and everything appears to roll along smoothly, providing us with the feeling of the flow of time. However, there are instances between the frames, between the creation and destruction where there is no movement, a stillness. That is where our consciousness resides when we are in the “now” and the perception of time is lost. There is a simple experiment we can try where we may observe time stops.
- Relax and place a watch or clock in front of yourself
- Watch the second hand and feel the rhythm of the ticking
- Close your eyes and visualize in your mind your favorite place or pastime. Feel it, imagine the details, the warmth of the Sun, the sounds, and the sights.
- Once you’ve stabilized your feeling of being ‘there’ open your eyes slightly, just a bit. Don’t focus on the clock but casually gaze on the dial as if disinterested.
If you follow this correctly you’ll notice the secondhand stick or stop at least momentarily. If you are very successful you will be able to stop the second for quite a while.
Goldilocks
For many of us, we believe in a deeply interconnected reality where we are all a small facet of a vast Oneness, a universal or Divine super consciousness that is beyond our current perception and therefore understanding.
Consider the “Goldilocks Enigma” (Paul Davies)
It’s not too hot, it’s not too cold and its forces act together in a way that’s just right; why does the universe seem so perfectly tailor-made for life to exist?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/817511.The_Goldilocks_Enigma
Paul Davies worked with astronomer, Fred Hoyle, and tells us that Hoyle thought that it appears as if some super-intelligence was behind the laws of physics. Davies agrees that it does look that way and no scientific explanation for the universe can be acceptable unless it accounts for this fact. “On the face of it, the universe does look as if it has been designed by an intelligent creator expressly for the purpose of spawning sentient beings.
https://www.sott.net/article/491308-The-Goldilocks-Enigma
Panpsychism
In our standard view of things, consciousness exists only in the brains of highly evolved organisms, and hence consciousness exists only in a tiny part of the universe and only in very recent history. According to panpsychism, in contrast, consciousness pervades the universe and is a fundamental feature of it. This doesn’t mean that literally everything is conscious. The basic commitment is that the fundamental constituents of reality—perhaps electrons and quarks—have incredibly simple forms of experience. And the very complex experience of the human or animal brain is somehow derived from the experience of the brain’s most basic parts.
https://www.livescience.com/does-consciousness-pervade-the-universe.html
Levels of Consciousness
The sources above set the scene. I want to take a dive into some perspectives from Itzhak Bentov’s book Stalking the wild pendulum . The start of his book is somewhat technical, so I’ll cut to where it gets descriptive and more readily understandable. The hypothesis is that all “matter” has the property of consciousness down to the very smallest subatomic particles. Itzhak introduces the concepts of Quality and Quantity of Consciousness.
- Quality: relates to frequency response, the ability of the “individual” to respond to stimuli
- Quantity: relates to the number of possible responses to stimuli.
The belief is there is a universal principle of evolution where individuals slowly climb in quality and quantity to reach the “Absolute”.
In this picture of the universe the Absolute is a vast ocean of potential, the source from which everything manifests, a super intelligence – this sounds a lot like Paul Davies.
We may broadly consider the following levels of consciousness in our physical reality:
- Mineral Reality – No growth, just attribution
Plant Reality –
Growth and reproduction
Perception of “life”
Awareness of light and dark
Adaptation
Response to emotion (The Backster Effect, consciousness in plants)
- Animal Reality
Wide range of emotions
Freedom of movement
Communications with humans and intelligence to rival humans? - Human Reality
Able to project into other levels of consciousness
Imagine a smooth valley landscape with a rocky outcrop. This big rock formation constitutes an individual. If we accept that all matter embodies some minute level of consciousness we might consider over millions of years there is a dim awareness however small, which is sharpened and shaped by other plants and creatures that find shelter and hiding places within its structure. Birds nesting within its body are grateful for the protection and shelter. The rock “feels” this which feeds the “spirit” of the rock. Thus the rock learns to extend its protection over millennia driven by the feelings of gratitude.
Consider a very large air mass that has consciousness – perhaps we might call this an “elemental”. The vast pattern of winds on a global scale, the trade winds, may be considered a large entity of low “mineral” level consciousness. This entity delegates local weather to smaller entities within himself that are aware of local conditions. The sum of these entities do their best to keep everybody happy under the given conditions, all steered by the thoughts from the many.
“As above so below”
Consider our Sun, the Planets, our Earth, Humanity and all living things.
From the examples above we see that “nature spirits” and ancient “gods” rely on the energy they get from others to keep themselves powerful – that’s the power and energy of thought. Politicians get their power from their constituents. They also lose their power as their constituents no longer resonate with them and turn their attention away. The power of thought from a group may create what some believe is a fully autonomous thought form, an egregore, in its own right for good or bad. Does this sound like the ancient Moloch or the Greek and Roman Gods and their worship by the people?
We all rise in consciousness when we perceive and understand the power of our thoughts and their effect on our reality.
The Communication Gap
For a given level of consciousness, awareness and perception extends beyond, above, and below, the range of frequencies for that individual. During waking hours the majority of humanity are somehow blindfolded. However it appears that every night during REM sleep, periods of active dreaming, we perceive the astral plane. It is here we might meet other people and animals that have also reached that level.
The astral plane or reality is the vast bridge that connects all the physical realities, mineral, plant, animal and human. It is thought to be a reality dominated by emotion.
I will end here with some words from Douglas Adams who wrote the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy stated:
“The Guide says there is an art to flying”, said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
Please join us Thursday, May 23rd to share in a discussion that might just expand your mind. If you are not sure of the exact time and date to participate from your country, try this Time Converter
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