Philosophemes on Consciousness

Can there be consciousness without knowledge or knowledge without consciousness ?

Does not all knowledge involve self-knowledge and the positing and definition of a self-subject ? All knowing involves a knowing of the knowing process itself.

What can be known ? What should be known ? What is the highest knowledge and what is the highest knowledge about ?

What is ignorance ? An ambiguous term. It can mean erroneous thought or lack of the right cognition regarding something. But it can also mean simply non-knowing, that is, a consciousness which is not in the act of knowing. The ordinary conscious act of knowing is a relation, a flowing out, an entanglement, a diremption, limitation or even corruption of consciousness - accompanied by a positing of a subject-self and the awareness of the knowing process itself (the reflection into self via negation of the positing).

In another sense knowing is simply the state of any state of consciousness, a pure self-relatedness. Thus we have an absolute knowing which involves a non-knowing in the common sense, which is the fullness of the liberated mind that does not flow out relationally but has its self-positing in self-abrogation and self-reflection in its own freedom.

The highest knowledge is the effect of a self-referential, self-illuminating, self-enfolding (or self-unfolding) process of consciousness itself.

Know the structure and dynamics of the world to know the structure and dynamics of the mind : time, transience, impermanence, constant self-negation and self-production, self-implication, returning to immediacy and beholding its compositeness. Immediacy is actually result, relativity (reflection), mutual reference and dependence: past and future, memory and expectation.


But never forget - as is common- about the possibility of direct action of consciousness on consciousness, of expunging, and not being a passive spectator only - it cannot obtain detachment and freedom without breaking the cage and traps. This is the meaning of activity in Hegel's logic of essence.

The subtle body (or first-person experience of the body known from the inside) is an oasis were we can find liberation from the past, from time, from memory, from an identity we are carved into. The body, the subtle body.

A lower form of consciousness: that which seeks external contingent relational communion: strive for freedom beyond a self and identity which is imposed and which is no true self or identity.

A state in which a-thousand fold of all the false allure once wanted is granted, a state which is an upward torrent with power and a future.

Make self-reflection, the right awareness of mind and body - and of the emergent self and ontology of hidden puppet-master time - the center of everything.

True philosophy cannot be academic philosophy, because it imposes and assumes an exterior a priori standard and reification - a certain enculturation, historization and socialization.

This is what is so lacking in western philosophy, in Hume, the lack of orientation and insight capable of leading to transfiguration and the growing of 'wings', to flight. Western philosophy is often just a shell.

Language is part of the immediate data of consciousness.

Afferent vs. efferent nerves. The mind an internal feedback, a watermill, thoughts function both as input and as output (an internal loop driven by the main current - reflected in neural anatomy). A little like Barendregt's diagram. Thus we can have afferents we do not want or want afferents we don't have. We can be force to do efferents we do not want to do or want to do efferents we can't. The watermill feedback structure is built through this continuous current, an eddy. The prison of the mind.

Watchfulness must be centered on a turning inwards, not only looking on exterior spheres of common experience, but encroaching on and discovering and centering itself on previously hidden, inwards domains, the abode of forces that act behind the scenes, which wield great power if unseen, but weaken under the sunlight of clearly conscious watchfulness, turned inward, shining a steady light wherein they are caught, found out. Ordinary consciousness is a kind of exteriorization and out-flow of itself, a self-nescience, self-passivity and self-marginalization.

Parallel to watchfulness progressively consolidating itself inwards we must also develop the practice of considering the total sphere of experience, of consciousness, as a whole, as an all-enveloping universe considered in its entirety, in a balanced way radiating, as it were, out from the innermost center, so that there is attained a perfect balance of the inner and the outer and the exterior sphere is re-integrated into the impassive unity of the center.

Thought is a product, a proliferation, the leaves, the buds, the result of inner forces, energies, organizations and productions - all stemming from a central source and power station. Watchfulness and its sphere of power must regain the usurped throne, wherein sits the original producer, controller of all thought.

But there is something very important missing. The theory of the self. In (modern) western philosophy it surfaces in various cryptic forms, as an abstract condition for knowledge, as part of free moral agency, a something that puzzled Hume. Schopenhauer, in his theory of the 'negation of the will' which is really about the positing- limitation and negation of the self, its procession (fall) and reversion (liberation), offered a more thorough treatment (not found since Plotinus) of what we called 'the mystery of the self'.

Logic is an attempt at the psychoanalysis of language. Language acts in different ways and at different levels on the mind, ways and levels beyond the most immediate abstract level.
There is so much more to be said about 'meaning' (beyond both surface representation and mere social dynamics). Wittgenstein took a wrong a theory of meaning and replaced with an even worse one. The deeper levels of meaning and action are related to a kind of rhythm and music in language (both metaphorically and non-metaphorically).

Hence the importance and irreplaceability of direct reading, hearing, recitation of certain kinds of ancient texts. This is why there can be an esoteric linguistics as a sacred science.

There is a lot to be said about the heart, its nature and energies and fields (the spiritual flames) and how it relates to spiritual development and in particular to consciousness, to the breath, to 'self' (its involution and reversion), to Schopenhauer's negation of the will, to the irradiant contemplations, to the esoteric significance of 'humility', 'poverty', 'simplicity'. Also what is 'faith' (shradda) ? It is a certain spiritual act related to unification and an anagogic tending, certainly found in Plotinus and of course in the Yoga and Vedanta.

It is not a question of replacing the false sophistry of modern western philosophy with a single true philosophy. Rather true philosophy must mean a collection of possible perspectives (darshanas) with anagogic and illuminating power as well as powerful rebuttals of false philosophies.

While there are false philosophies such as Wittgenstein or Rorty, there are only a plurality of truth-pointing perspectives. Thus true negation is multidimensional, there is a false negation and an anagogic negation.

Overcome the illusion of the self and its dualities and causes and energies.

True intelligence and morality are in fact the same. The empathy at the foundation of morality can extend to an 'empathy for truth', the guiding power behind all truly great philosophers, spiritual teachers, scientists, writers, artists, etc.

The 'cunning' and 'craft' of amassing wealth and obtaining power over others (hurting them either inevitably or voluntarily) is not 'intelligence' but its very opposite.

Know the texture, the symptoms of the mind, if the defilements are there. To inspect objectively, unfiltered, the totality of one's consciousness, but to inspect diagnostically, reviewing the symptoms. Look, inspect, distantly, objectively, neutral, in order to interpret, diagnose, reveal symptoms.

Introspection must be total, all-encompassing, neutral, balanced: the body-sensation, proprio-perception, breath, feeling just as much as thought, perception, etc. Find the center, progressively deeper layers, turn inwards. But also act, illuminate, transfigure, integrate, calm, expunge.

Models of consciousness inspired by physics: consciousness a self-subsisting field spread out across space-time as well as beyond space-time. The body represents a kind of fragmentation and limitation of this field (a Faraday cage). Like a receiver and transmitter. The limited and trapped consciousness must energize and expand and regain its unity with the total field of consciousness. These kinds of models that objectify consciousness are problematic. And not all merging of ordinary consciousness into another enveloping 'larger' consciousness is necessarily good (i.e. consider collectivism) or represents a higher state of enlightenment and freedom. The contrary could well be the case.  What is of interest is consciousness in and for itself, the consciousness of consciousness which is absolute and free. Consciousness by folding in on itself finds the secret to unfolding itself and thus attains freedom.