What is Mind & Consciousness?

Investigating thought, perception, awareness. 🔗All Articles on Mind & Consciousness

Investigating Awareness and Thought…

What is the Focus on Mind & Consciousness?

In the radical non-duality exploration, understanding the nature of Mind and Consciousness is crucial. This category delves into the investigation of thought, perception, belief, memory, and awareness itself – not as properties of an individual self, but as impersonal phenomena arising within the totality of Reality. It examines how the mind constructs experience, creates the illusion of separation, and how awareness functions as the unchanging background against which all phenomena appear and disappear.

This isn’t about cognitive science in the conventional sense, nor is it about developing mental powers. It is a direct inquiry into the substance and functioning of conscious experience. We look at thoughts not for their content, but as events. We examine perception to see how reality is filtered and interpreted. We investigate belief systems to understand how they shape our perceived world. Ultimately, we turn attention towards awareness itself – the knowing capacity – questioning its nature and location.

NirvanaNuke approaches this by cutting through assumptions about a personal mind located inside a head, pointing instead to mind and consciousness as fundamental aspects of Reality itself, inseparable from the appearances they cognize.

Key Areas of Investigation

  1. The Nature of Thought: Observing thoughts as impersonal events arising and passing in awareness, without a central “thinker.” Investigating their apparent power and how identification with thought creates suffering.
  2. Perception vs. Reality: Examining how sensory input is filtered, interpreted, and labeled by the mind, creating a subjective experience that is often mistaken for objective reality. Seeing through the conceptual overlays.
  3. Belief Systems & Conditioning: Unpacking how ingrained beliefs and conditioning shape perception and behaviour, often unconsciously. Recognizing beliefs as mental constructs rather than truths.
  4. The Nature of Awareness: Turning attention towards the knowing quality itself. Is awareness personal? Does it have limits? Is it located anywhere? Is it separate from the objects of awareness?
  5. Memory and Identity: Investigating how memory contributes to the sense of a continuous self, and seeing memory itself as a present-moment phenomenon (a thought or image arising now).

Deeper Dive into Mind & Consciousness

Exploring the fabric of experience. Dive deeper with these articles:

Pointers for Investigating Mind & Consciousness

Direct inquiries into the nature of experience:

  1. Where do thoughts come from? Where do they go?
  2. Can you observe a belief as simply a pattern of energy or thought, without engaging with its content?
  3. What is aware of your current sensory experience (sight, sound, sensation)? Is that awareness located inside or outside the body?
  4. Notice the space between thoughts. What is present there?
  5. Is the awareness that knows sadness different from the awareness that knows joy?
  6. Try to find the edge or boundary of awareness.

Recommended Reading (Mind & Consciousness)

Nature of thought, perception, awareness, beliefs, memory, time. These sources explore consciousness from non-dual or related perspectives:

  • The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter by Rupert Spira
  • Review: Rupert Spira presents a series of essays arguing for the primacy of consciousness, suggesting that both mind and matter arise within and as awareness. A deep dive into the nondual understanding of reality.
  • Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett
  • Review: Daniel Dennett offers a challenging, materialist perspective, arguing against the idea of a central ‘self’ or ‘Cartesian theater’ and proposing a ‘multiple drafts’ model of consciousness based on neuroscience and cognitive science. Provides a contrasting scientific viewpoint.
  • The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist
  • Review: Iain McGilchrist explores how the differing worldviews of the brain’s hemispheres shape our perception of reality, critiquing reductive materialism and arguing for a more holistic understanding incorporating consciousness, value, and the sacred. A dense but profound work.
  • Modern Man in Search of a Soul by Carl Jung
  • Review: Carl Jung explores the spiritual and psychological needs of modern individuals, discussing dreams, archetypes, the unconscious, and the inherent religious function of the psyche. Offers a depth psychology perspective relevant to understanding the mind.
  • Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction by Susan Blackmore
  • Review: Susan Blackmore provides a concise overview of the key questions, theories, and debates in the field of consciousness studies, covering philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. A good starting point for understanding the scientific and philosophical landscape.

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