Free will again (Humans)

by BBella , Monday, March 12, 2012, 06:18 (4638 days ago) @ dhw

Romansh drew our attention to an article by Susan Blackmore on:
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Books/Tenzen/question1.htm
In this she asks repeatedly whether she is conscious, tries to make her students ask the same question, has difficulty pinning down the reality of time, and concludes:->Years pass.
Am I conscious now? No I'm not. 
What?
I realise for the first time that I can answer "No". What if this slippery, difficult, not quite being really here, is not being conscious, and I should have been answering "no" all along? 
Is this the same as looking into the darkness? 
Is there any light?->[dhw] She doesn't actually tell us what she's supposed to be conscious of, and all I can get from this is the fact that she hadn't realized there are different levels of consciousness. -She concludes that all this time of asking the question, Am I conscious now?, she now realizes that "now" cannot be 
pinned down to a moment. When she witnesses "being" fully consciousness, there is no now. Only a fleeting blur of 
change. So, she realizes that all along she should have been answering "no" to the question, Am I conscious "now"? 
since there is no now. Her 2 questions at the end are philosophical questions about what it was she witnessed being 
fully conscious. -That probably won't clear anything up, and as for the rest of the post below, I think we are viewing consciousness/awareness from two different angles or maybe different definitions. But we can try and find a way to bring our angles closer together. Maybe it can be solved with definition.->BBella, however, sees the article as the record of a profound awakening, of how "she became aware of her own ability to control her focus." I find no focus at all ... only the question whether she is or isn't conscious.-As I mentioned before, we all express our experience differently. I usually express more analytically detailed where hers seems to be less. By asking the question, she has found her ability to turn her focus (ears/eyes/senses) 
from watching the mind film inside, etc, to watching the life film outside. She is witnessing, so to speak, without judgment (mind chatter). ->BBella's post raises some interesting questions. For me the key is a parenthesis in which you wrote: "the word excessively can't even pertain to awareness, you either are or aren't". This "either/or" eliminates the idea that there are different degrees or levels of consciousness.-This is why I say we are/may be looking at this from two different angles. Yes, there definitely are different levels of consciousness but, to me, different levels of consciousnesses (inside the mind) isn't what this article or I have been talking about. But, from your angle, I do see how you are seeing leaving the "mind chatter/film" behind and observing outside us is a level of consciousness. ->I'd say an animal or small child is aware of its surroundings, its needs, and even the means required to get its needs. I doubt if an animal or a small child is aware of all the alternatives (including renouncing its needs), or of the processes involved in making its decisions, or of the very FACT that it's making decisions. So my first problem with your argument is that I do not see awareness as an either/or but as a matter of degrees and levels.-The awareness the article speaks about is very similar to the "level" of consciousness you are speaking of above about children and animals. These particular beings you mention have very little or "no mind". This is the conscious awareness this person has found, and I found, and for us, it feels like what is called "enlightenment" but could be called "no mind" as well. As is said in the article, it isn't permanent. As adults, we would be without direction if we lived within that state, but as you can see by the examples you've given, beings exist very well without "no mind."->You didn't understand what I meant when I compared this to the "philosophical" (as opposed to commonsense) level of thought, on which nothing is real or certain, but the point of the comparison is that your own identity becomes unreal and uncertain if you think too much about it (= excessive self-awareness). I'm sure there must be at least one person you know who has problems relating to himself/herself and to others because of too much self-analysis.-Yes, most everyone. But again, we are like ships crossing in the night in our discussion, which is ok, as it's the only way to find each other. The very self-conscious/awareness that you are speaking of above is the very self-conscious/awareness she in the article and I have found a way to turn our focus from (in the beginning only momentarily) by what she calls, becoming conscious. I call it becoming aware. Maybe it's just better to call it enlightenment, for lack of a better word?-continued...