Why, how and exactly What, turns the engine on...
Yes the old question formulated by Alan Watts: 'Are you doing it or is it doing you?'
One does not beat their own heart. Or activate the immune system, or breath. These are all autonomous responses.
You are an observer of these responses and can affect them. You can hold your breath, but you are going against the flow. Your body will not be a willing participant for long.
Consciousness turns the engine on and has a great stake in keeping it on. If it wants to act in the world it must keep the body going and so it will protect and maintain the body, its vehicle that carries it around. I think that my consciousness in a non-local non-temporal phenomenon independent of my body but acting in conjunction with this biological organism in order to maintain a presence in this bandwidth realm we call the universe.
I also believe there is only one consciousness and that it is mine. And yet all may claim so and they would be right too.
I think of consciousness in this way, that when you imagine a rubber sheet, stretched out into infinity, that this represents reality and that when you poke a finger underneath it, you will cause a protrusion from this sheet.
And that is who you are. A protrusion from consciousness that now sticks above the field of reality and therefore can discern reality. When you die, the rubber sheet snaps back and you lose oversight.
To be able to interact, we must create many protrusions so that we can observe one another. Yet under the sheet it is all consciousness and we are all connected below that surface.
It is for this reason sometimes we can have memories of events that never occurred to us experience past lives or recognize places we have never been in.
Our memories are stored in that consciousness and do not evaporate when our protrusion levels back to the flat surface.
Our body and brain are merely very smartly evolved inter-mediums so we can be in contact with basically, ourselves, to experience life in as diverse ways as we can. That doesn't mean our bodies should be neglected but maintain it well and it will last long enough to gain experience.
The reason consciousness 'protrudes' is to be self-aware. And self-awareness can only, ONLY be achieved by the self splitting into more than ONE form. So you and I are one, but we inhabit different bodies, experience different lives and so when I look upon you I see myself yet in another form. If there was only me, I would not know me, I would be god instilled in an eternal dream.
The fact is, to be self-aware, consciousness needs to
undergo the formality of occurring.
This is why our nature is dual. Duality is the reduced fraction of multipality. If that is not a word, it is now.
You see, next to one, is two, two defines one in two ones. Think it over.
After two come many. 7 billion many. And perhaps many other conscious species in the universe. They are protrusions too, them aliens, you know, just use different evolutionary biological based forms.
If consciousness is basically a form of energy that can act to protrude itself into existence by pushing up from this 'rubber sheet', the only logical reason to do so is that it is not satisfied with just contemplating all possible infinite omnisciently recognized possibilities. It wants to be and the only way to so so is basically, to create reality as a platform on which to act out all these infinite possibilities.
That is what we are, as humans. To live and have experiences in unique ways. Life on Earth is a playpen for consciousness, so that it undergoes the formality of occurring.
That is why we are all unique. Evolution is an amazing system that allows for near infinite variety just on this single world. Imagine billions of Earths, all with different creatures, adding and giving form to consciousness. Experiencing reality in their unique ways.
It makes no sense not to be unique, for that would mean one typical protrusion would suffice. The very fact humans are diverse, that genetics are a system of diversity proves to me that consciousness want to experience everything possible into infinity, otherwise evolution would lead to a single species so well designed that no harm can come to, ultimately well adapted it and then it would sit around looking at its own body. But what a meager existence.
I often think how sad it is when a person dies. All their hopes and dreams, experiences, feelings, everything that one is, is cut off, the memories fade into the consciousness underneath reality but as a matter of fact, a whole universe seizes to be. Because their perspective on everything IS the universe.
It disallows consciousness to look upon itself in one less way. This is a shame.
So, I am saying is, I am doing myself, as consciousness, to be a protrusion into reality out of which I can discern myself, be self-aware and see myself in many different shapes around me, who watch back at me with the same curiosity and wonder.
Who am I but you and the sun
A sad reflection of everyone
Was it me who let you walk away
Were you the one or is it we're the same
-- Mountain - For Yasgur's Farm
We are the same, you and I, and we are the sun, we are the universe, a canvas for experience. The very fact we are, to me, proves the reason for why we are here. If we would not be here there would be no need for us. And yet, here we are, so there must be a wish being fulfilled.
And we know what that wish is. We can recognize its pattern, see? In religion e.g. All people seek answers to these existential questions.
Well, here you have it. And it is a personal perspective, but that is self-proving, because I am a single protrusion out of reality and as such, my views differ from yours. And they can exist simultaneously, which is one of the great unanswered and as far as I know, unrecognized philosophical questions. There is
roomfor difference because the rubber sheet stretches infinitely to compensate. But to me it makes sense and I feel I have answered satisfactory these existential questions.
For you and other it is a matter of choice to accept it or reject it and both choices are fine and mean little to me. We must all find our own answers for why we exist, to come to terms with these pesky questions like 'what is consciousness and memory and life and the whole caboodle.
And that is the self-sulfilling prophecy of my TOE, that we are all doing that in our own way, which was exactly the purpose of these protrusions of consciousness.
And this is why I believe the human mind is a fractal. Because I can zoom in and out of any person and recognize this patterns of diversity and uniqueness.
In a way all we do reflects the notion of undergoing the formality of occurring, to satisfy consciousness' need to look at itself in different ways.
Political ideology e.g., like religion, is a binder of individuals under a common denominator, meaning we collect ourselves as social groups as a deeply subconscious way of looking at each other in relation to other groups. We self-organize as a species, if you like, to observe and act out in reality. We focus on the differences, yet we forget we are all the same consciousness.
If we are all the same, then why kill each other over these surface differences? It makes no sense, for the purpose was to be different.
We gather in cities, even if our social group finds, between individuals, different visions of reality. So in a city you have many different people with different views, yet still we gather there, rather than wander around. We say that we are social animals, but even though this is a evolutionary and biological argument, the deeper causes of genetics and biology were to provide infinite variety, so this very deep drive within us can be considered a genetic materialistic drive that came out of the intent of consciousness top provide this structured framework for the purpose of undergoing the formality of occurring.
SO you can take any group of people and see the patterns that come out of discerning reality as a whole. This pattern recognition is wider than any mankind-based paradigm or axiom. It is bigger than reality, because consciousness is bigger than reality. Reality is a function of consciousness and we see that in a few religions around the world. And yet, we see it in animism too, where everything is alive, basically its saying that all is consciousness, even stone.
Here too, Alan Watts was ahead of me:
"All I am saying is that minerals are a rudimentary form of consciousness, whereas the other people are saying that consciousness is a complicated form of minerals."
-- Alan Watts, Myth of Myself / The Tao of Philosophy
So with my view here I try to unify reality itself into a coherent explanation of why we are here, who we are, what we are, as per the question posed by Aearl.
What turns the engine on? I turn it on. But you as well, by simply being in the world.
And so, this view I have gives purpose to existence. At least, to mine.
This is why I struggle with suicide, not feeling too good about myself and life. On one hand I am merely a protrusion, like billions in so that I am BOTH unique NOR special. It is not either...or. It is both...and.
And on the other hand, my unique perspectives if not only this particular one I just wrote about, are worthy to exist and experience this wondrous phenomal opportunity we call life.
Consciousness set reality in motion, in which there developed a cosmos, which followed many stages of complexification, to arrive at a planet in some spiral nebula, in one arm of that, in some solar system, where evolutionary processes began, that lead to a naked ape species that developed consciousness, as if it thus was born into the universe from underneath, as a figure of speech, to go through a developmental progress of millennia, to come to fruition when my mom and dad had sex and gave birth to me. I am the very fulfillment of the dream of consciousness to undergo the formality of occurring, and who am I then, to kill myself because the very experience of myself, on Earth, is painful hurtful to me? And yet, I am that what made me, through this elaborate structuringof reality, the universe and all that is the whole platform dedicated as a stage for me to dwell on.
To off myself is insignificant and perhaps my experience of it is what needed to undergo the occurrence, yet I cannot be certain of it. Or it may be a disaster, when I am cut off too soon, because I may still add to my unifying theory and progress mankind someway.
So basically, and it proves the pattern again, hence the fractal mind, whatever I do or choose, will be what is supposed to happen. I am a self-aware self-fulfilling prophecy.
I can find this pattern in any system or model, in any thought, trivial or wise. I stumbled over something and I think it is beautiful. But the world as such it is, makes my life not all that better.
