I started this blog so that I would have a central location to collect and store my thoughts and notes pertaining to the study of consciousness. I have been a “student” of consciousness for more than 35 years starting with subjective experiences I had after learning Transcendental Meditation as an undergraduate in college. During meditation, I experienced a state of being where I could observe my own mental or conscious processes. It is a very powerful experience but almost impossible to describe on paper. I became aware of this as a unique state of consciousness which was different from waking, sleeping or dreaming. I am a skeptic by nature so I wanted to understand what could be causing this mental experience within the physical (or material) world. Was it just my subjective experience or was it a natural course due to the consistent practice of meditation?
I discovered that descriptions of this meditative state could be found in ancient spiritual texts and in the mythologies of a number of indigenous cultures. Again, my skeptic nature turned me to a more objective way to study this but I couldn’t not find an epistemology for the study of consciousness. So I started looking more into physics, organic chemistry and other areas of science as a way to gain a more objective way to think about a subjective experience.
I also began to “sense” a unifying presence in almost everything I studied. I noticed this in how the Universe behaved whether I looked at cosmology, astronomy, physics, chemistry or mathematics but, so far, I have not found any evidence of a correlation between the physical world and my subjective conscious experience.
Recently, I read Dan Brown’s novel, “The Lost Symbol” which examined concepts of power in the human mind. This tells me that there is a large enough collective consciousness about this topic that I can find kindred spirits.
So, as I said, this is just a place for me to collect and store my thoughts from the past 30 years and going forward but feel free read and to post if you’d like.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
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