Very relevant addition.
One question arises:
Under this interpretation, could chit be seen as the background consciousness or latent attribute of existential consciousness, from which our ‘mind-based’ chitta arises?
To put it differently: we could be looking at the river or ocean (chit) from which individual eddies or waves (chitta) arise.
Or is that proposition incompatible? If so, how do the two precisely relate and how might chitta arise from chit (or arise from something else…)?
All of this has been explored at great length for thousands of years in Vedanatic philosophy and its many offshoots. I am very much an amateur with respect to all that! I’m just up to speed enough to understand that many Western analysts of “consciousness” are not really interested in what thousands of years of traditional theory and practice consider the very foundation of “consciousness”, not to mention the foundation of being itself. Which more or less makes me a more sober version of Alan Watts, in effect. Take that for what it’s worth! But consider deeper sources than my opinion for more profound understandings of such matters!
I am in agreement with this stance, that the topic has been explored for a great deal of time, and one of the purposes I attempted to cite recent scientific findings was to connect them back to themes discussed by very old philosophies.
Real knowledge is not so much about finding and polishing some undiscovered diamond of insight, but rather remembering truths that were forgotten. That is my opinion on consciousness, and pretty much any deep-rooted question.
Such a stance requires deep humility but also an awareness of ancestral connection that spans generations, cultures and philosophies.
Are we humans self-hypnotically stupid? And does the recursive nature of language, make us all feel like we are more conscious of reality, than we truthfully are? And is this because human behaviors are subconsciously orchestrated for the express purpose of becoming functionally automatic? To extent that we biologically conceived creatures, simply fail to notice the biologically “receptive” nature of our experience of consciousness? Like the surface-level impressions of reality, being received by the biological reality of our eyes right now, for example? Into which we arguably, subconsciously inject, through the predictive processing nature of our biological brain, our well-learned, some might say conditioned, reality-labeling words of psychological interpretation?
Welcome to the Forum! Also, glad you like to swim in the deeper end of the pool!
With respect to your post above, I can’t quite make out if biological receptivity disqualifies us from the experience of the truly real. Of if noticing our basic biological nature is part of a path to more authentic realization. I’d appreciate clarification one way or the other (or some other way I have not considered). THX.
Are we biologically conceived creatures with bodies that experience the reality of consciousness & biologically conceived minds that experience awareness of a reified form of that reality? And with the current debate around the question, “is AI conscious?” Have we opened the Pandora’s box containing the simple truth that we are most definitely “not” as conscious of reality, as our adaptive behavioral capacity for language, makes us all feel like we are?
For example, how does my mind’s awareness of the words David Bates, make me truly aware of my reality as a human being? Or how does my mind’s awareness the “reified-reality” word “hands” make me truly conscious of those dexterous features of my human anatomy on the end of my arm’s?
And is a thread about the subject of consciousness on a forum like this one, confused about the difference between our lived experience of consciousness & our linguistic “concepts” of consciousness? Because of the way the subconscious phenomenon of “reification” makes the thinking, speaking, writing nature of human communication possible?
And does the communication “tool” of language, as a “correspondence” system of sounds & symbols, have the capacity to confuse us about the truth of linguistic correspondence to reality?
For example, the signifying word “hands” does correspond to those features of my human anatomy, yet as a simple signifier, does the word simultaneously describe & disguise the unseen reality of my hands? Clearly demonstrating the limited nature, of its correspondence to truth?
Well … that’s a lot of questions!
I’ve posted all over the place in this Forum about “consciousness” (use the search tool to find some of those), but as a quick summary, here are my preferred views:
The questions were directed towards a spiritual self-diagnosis of why the root meaning of the words spirit, spiritual, & spirituality; is Breath? And the subconsciously synchronous way we describe whatever we see, with reality-labeling words that correspond to the surface-level of reality, received by the biological reality of our eyes.
In the context of felt & unfelt reality of being human, like the way I can’t feel the reality of what is happening inside my brain, as I press the keys on a keyboard to make words appear of the 2-demensional nature of a screen. Just as I can’t feel the whole-self, 4-dimensional reality of my existence in time. Or explain “how” I think, talk, & walk. How about you?
And the concern my comments are directed towards, is the way forum members seem to be into exploring abstract exposition, rather than actual experience.
I’m pretty sure I do “feel” time in an abnormally extended way. My part of the world is very geologically active. Volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes abound. Our local ports and farm lands were laid down by 50 feet of volcanic lahar less that 5000 years ago (in local human memory). The ridge I grew up used be an island before a pyroclastic flow connected it to the main. All the rocks and clay I have always lived on were pushed here by glaciers from far away. 12,000 years ago, the whole place was under thousands of feet of ice. I am acutely aware of the transience of all things human in this landscape and easily imagine the mountains on the horizon forming in Cretaceous seas and colliding (as they continue to do) with the continental land mass. I fully understand our common ancestry with the seals, the gulls, the salmon, the jellyfish and the kelp. I realize that every breath and bone was forged in supernovae thousands of light-years away. There is no part of me that does not belong to an infinite spectrum of moments converging here, now in this one. And now the next … and the next … and …
I was intrigued by the idea of trying to feel the reality of what is happening in the brain. Generally, I don’t try to feel that. I do, I believe, very much feel reality. It just never occurred to me to localize that feeling in the brain! To me, reality feels more like the whole body connected to earth, immersed in sky. Reality comes in waves and ripples. There are movements and tensions and flows. Words bubble up like foam on a stony beach. Gulls call in the distance.
This is not just forum members! It’s a more like a cultural default setting! In a Western philosophical context, the debate about whether concepts reflect “reality” has been going on at least as long as the scholastic debates between realists and nominalists. Lots of people (here and elsewhere) think a tightly logical set of concepts will somehow transform the world. I am not one of those people. Logic is good for clarifying matters - but the point of that clarity is mostly to stop wasting time on semantic debates and to allocate more of that time to direct action and direct experience.
Do you feel the reality of visual illusion of sunrise and what is happening in the darkness of space? When you say that you very much feel reality? I mean the reality of earth’s “immersion” in cosmic reality, as was shown in the 1968 photo called earthrise, and what’s been described as the most ecologically important image in the history of humanity. And what can argued as direct result of the first reformation, after centuries of Western culture waiting for a supernatural intervention in human destiny during the so-called dark ages?
While you describe being immersed within cosmic reality beautifully, when you write “I’m pretty sure I do “feel” time in an abnormally extended way. My part of the world is very geologically active. Volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes abound. Our local ports and farm lands were laid down by 50 feet of volcanic lahar less that 5000 years ago (in local human memory).”
You describe words bubbling up like foam on a stony beach, which has a lovely self-affecting feel to it. Yet in the unseen & unfelt context of “how” words bubble up into the conscious awareness we learn to call mind, 21st-century science observation, tells us that our thought-words are electro-chemical signals travelling between networks of neurons inside the reality of our 80 - 100 million cell biological brain.
And for me personally my own experience of a second reformation, as a second coming of my mind, metaphysically speaking, is the conscious realization of the earth turning in space cause of my felt-sense of the visual & cognitive illusion, inherent in the feeling that sun rises above a horizon during the birth of a period of daylight, that the consensus-reality word “sunrise” corresponds to.
A conscious realization of an “entwined” biological feeling of the sun rising above a horizon, and a psychological sense within my experience conditioned mind, that the word “sunrise” does actually align with a correspondence theory of truth. Except that it doesn’t even though millions of people adhere to this linguistically agreed upon, consensus-reality vision of truth.
Which I feel is where this community, like the awakening from the meaning crisis community goes wrong, and cannot find a way to successfully scale its important message. Through too much abstract exaptation and not enough actual human experience interpretation. In a way that is universally applicable and experientially undeniable.
Agree 100% and I prefer to not waste what’s left of my precious time at age 74, by reminding myself of my immersion in synchronous reality, as I observe the birth of each new day by experiencing the earth-turning reality of my existence in time. As I time the period it takes for the the sun to peek above a horizon & become fully visible, at Bondi beach, here in Sydney, Australia.
Where earth-axis rotation due to the circumference nature of this cosmic location, is 864 miles per hour. Which I use my smartphone’s, (more computing power than that which enabled the the taking of the ecological earthrise photo in 1968), to confirm by visting: Earth Surface Rotation Speed Calculator
A direct action and direct experience John Vervaeke likes to call “participatory knowing” that I have praticed at various locations around the globe, including for 3 days & nights at the famous Temples dedicated to the rising sun & moon, at Abu Simbel in Upper Egypt. Those monumental messages in a bottle, so to speak, gifted to human history by our ancestors in Africa, where people still adhere to the Ubuntu philosophy of ancestor acknowledgment, with the simple semantics of “we are, because they were.”
Which is a very scalable phrase about the reality of our human existence, in my humble opinion.
Just to add another perspective on these matters, I’d be curious how you the content presented here lands for you.
The content lands as the reality of how the recursive nature of language & the subconscious orchestration of the functionally automatic behavior of human adults, makes us all feel like we are more conscious of the nature of reality, than we actually are.
And in the lived experience context of creating a global second renaissance, I believe this involves a second coming of the experience developed minds of adult human beings. Which I write about on my personal blog, in posts with questions like this one:
Is the Bible about the history of natural Philosophy?
Or the written truth of a Supernatural Reality?
Was Jesus a Supernatural God-man, or a Natural Philosopher?
Did Jesus speak unpalatable truths about our human behavior?
And what is the lived-experience wisdom, of our salvation?
Please consider:
In parallel recent discussion elsewhere, I offered a schematic outline of my views about the relationship of language and reality. That schematic is reposted below. Based on this framework, I then plan to respond to your post above.
My methods and framework are outlined in the post above. Applying that, the first thing that strikes me it that different epistemic communities are going to read all this content in very different ways. There are over 40,000 different Christian denominations, for example, and many of them have quite different notations of who Jesus really was and what Jesus really taught. I imagine some of these come closer to the mark than others, but I would not pretend to have full possession of the “truth” about Jesus, and I would tend to be extremely skeptical of anyone advancing such truth claims. This presents a situation in which pluralistic views seems unavoidable.
Based on my methods and framework above, I prefer to use language that any given community relates to best. Or, given a particular piece of writing, I like to consider which sorts of readers are likely to derive the most value from it. Your blog post is multi-layered, so it’s not like one particular community stands out as the most direct audience for this. (Religious fundamentalists will hate it, of that however I’m pretty sure!). Just to explore the question of which sorts of readers would gain the most from your work, I put the question to AI (see that below). It’s not like AI is the final word on anything, but it is handy for framing discussion questions, and that is purpose to which I am applying it here.
Prompt: “What communities of readers are mostly likely to appreciate the blog post?”
The themes and language used in The Perceptual Wisdom of Realized Being suggest it would strongly appeal to several distinct, though overlapping, reader communities:
The “Spiritual But Not Religious” (SBNR) Community: The author explicitly references this demographic in the text. Readers who are drawn to spiritual concepts like enlightenment, mindfulness, and psycho-spiritual rebirth, but reject rigid religious dogma or literal interpretations of scripture, will appreciate the post’s secular, philosophical take on spirituality.
Progressive and Esoteric Christians: Individuals who view the Bible metaphorically rather than literally will find this content highly engaging. The post strips away the supernatural elements of Jesus’s identity, re-framing him as a “natural philosopher” and wisdom teacher whose parables were designed to wake people up from linguistic and psychological illusions.
Followers of Eastern Philosophy and Non-Dualism: The post heavily parallels concepts found in Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and non-dualistic traditions. References to “Maya” (the illusion of knowing), the comparison of Jesus to Buddha as an “enlightened, realized being,” and the focus on moving past language to experience true reality are core tenets of these philosophical communities.
Mindfulness and Meditation Practitioners: The author’s practice of sitting by a window, focusing on the raw biological reception of sight and sound, and trying to separate physical reality from the “thought-words” of the ego is a classic mindfulness exercise. Practitioners interested in the mechanics of being present will resonate with this approach.
Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science Enthusiasts (with metaphysical leanings): The post deeply explores how human language acts as an abstracted overlay that distorts our perception of reality. Readers interested in the intersection of neuroscience, language, and consciousness will appreciate the inclusion of AI explanations regarding the electro-chemical substance of thought and the biological reality of the brain.
Are you looking to share this post with a specific group, or are you trying to find similar communities to explore for your own reading?
Just to illustrate the point that different communities have very different ideas about who Jesus truly was, I decided to use AI to summarize Internet-available literature on the four Gospels. Are these four Gospels really describing the same person? Perhaps. But they are surely emphasizing differing elements of that same person, each element being of differing interest to very different ancient communities.
Prompt: "Compare the views of the four New Testament Gospels on who Jesus was and what Jesus taught. "
While the four New Testament Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—agree on the core historical narrative of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, each was written for a different audience and with a distinct theological purpose. As a result, they offer four unique “portraits” of who Jesus was and what he prioritized in his teachings.
The first three (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they share a similar structure and point of view. The Gospel of John stands apart with a highly theological, reflective, and unique narrative style.
Written first (around 65–70 AD), likely for a Roman Christian audience facing persecution, Mark’s Gospel is fast-paced, urgent, and deeply human.
The Suffering Messiah: Mark emphasizes Jesus’s humanity, emotions (anger, grief, fatigue), and his ultimate destiny to suffer and die.
The “Messianic Secret”: Jesus frequently commands those he heals, as well as his disciples, to keep his identity a secret. In Mark, Jesus’s true identity as the Son of God cannot be fully understood apart from the cross.
The Cost of Discipleship: Jesus teaches that to follow him is to take up one’s cross. True greatness is found in servanthood and suffering, not power.
The Immediate Arrival of the Kingdom: Mark’s Jesus focuses on the urgent need to repent because the Kingdom of God is actively breaking into the world.
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” — Mark 10:45
Written primarily for a Jewish-Christian audience, Matthew seeks to prove that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament).
The Promised King: Matthew traces Jesus’s lineage back to King David and Abraham, presenting him as the legitimate King of the Jews.
The New Moses: Just as Moses went up a mountain to receive the Law, Jesus ascends a mountain to teach the true meaning of the Law (the Sermon on the Mount). He is the authoritative teacher and lawgiver.
Fulfillment of the Law: Jesus teaches that he did not come to abolish the Jewish Law, but to fulfill it and elevate its moral standards (focusing on the heart rather than just external actions).
The Kingdom of Heaven & The Church: Matthew is the only Gospel to explicitly use the word “church” (ekklesia). Jesus teaches on community discipline, forgiveness, and the global mission to “make disciples of all nations.”
Written by a Greek-speaking Gentile for a broader Greco-Roman audience, Luke emphasizes the universal scope of Jesus’s mission.
The Universal Savior: Luke traces Jesus’s genealogy all the way back to Adam (the father of all humanity), showing that Jesus is the Savior not just for Israel, but for Gentiles as well.
The Champion of the Outcast: Jesus is portrayed as deeply compassionate, specifically reaching out to women, the poor, tax collectors, Samaritans, and the socially marginalized.
Social Justice and Reversal of Fortunes: Luke’s Jesus teaches a radical social inversion—where the poor are blessed, the rich are warned, and the humble are exalted (notably highlighted in the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son).
Prayer and the Holy Spirit: Jesus teaches extensively on the necessity of persistent prayer and promises the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
Written last (around 90–100 AD), John is highly symbolic and deeply theological, focusing on the cosmic identity of Jesus.
The Pre-Existent Word (Logos): John begins not with a birth story, but in eternity past. Jesus is the divine Word of God who became flesh. He is explicitly presented as one with the Father.
The Divine “I AM”: Jesus identifies himself using the divine name of God (Yahweh) in seven famous “I Am” statements (e.g., “I am the bread of life,” “I am the way, the truth, and the life”).
Belief and Eternal Life: Rather than teaching about the “Kingdom of God” (a phrase rarely used in John), Jesus teaches that eternal life is a present reality achieved by believing in him.
The Commandment of Love: In John, Jesus does not teach a collection of ethical laws, but condenses his teaching into a single, profound command: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
| Gospel | Audience | Key Portrait of Jesus | Primary Focus of Teachings | Key Literary Feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mark | Roman Christians (persecuted) | The Suffering Servant and secretive Messiah | The cost of discipleship; suffering; the urgent arrival of the Kingdom | Fast-paced, action-oriented, vivid human details |
| Matthew | Jewish Christians | The New Moses and Kingly Messiah | Correct interpretation of the Law; righteousness; the Church | Five major blocks of teachings (like the five books of the Torah) |
| Luke | Gentiles / Theophilus | The Universal Savior and compassionate healer | Social justice; reversal of fortunes; inclusion of the marginalized; prayer | Highly polished Greek; emphasis on parables of mercy |
| John | Broad Christian Community | The Divine Word (Logos) and Son of God | Belief in Jesus for eternal life; unity with God; the command to love | Long theological discourses; “I Am” statements; symbolic language |
I am not trying to insist on a common linguistic framework, but a conscious recognition of our semiconscious reality and balancing of the biologically “receptive” & psychologically “projective” nature of our human form of consciousness. With all due respect Robert, are you confused by the way the subconsciously orchestrated & functionally automatic nature of your physical & psychological behavior, combines with the recursive nature of language, to make you feel like you are more conscious of reality than you actually are?
Which from my perspective on the need for balanced consciousness, is clearly evident in point 5 of your response. Is the ineffable attractor, the “semiconscious” reality of being human? And the simple truth behind Jesus concise statement about why he taught the socially normal people of his day in “cryptic” parables of awakening? I mean, why did the original ending of Mark’s gospel have the women fleeing the empty tomb and not speaking about the physical resurrection of a supernatural Messiah? Was it because the oldest form of wisdom in our world, has always been about humanity’s semiconscious reality? As suggested in the quintessential advice; Know Thyself?
Is our semiconscious reality the true reason for Jesus spiritual diagnosis of humanity, as delivered to history in Matthew chapter 13?
"And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”
He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the [a]mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:
‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,
And seeing you will see and not perceive;
For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
Their ears are hard of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed,
Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them.’
But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear;" (Matthew 13:19-16).
Which I did my best to reveal in my thoughts about what I see outside my window & my lack of “conscious” awareness of my own reality and the reality of a tree.
BTW have you proved my point by not responding to my questions about your direct experience of your own reality? As suggested in the title of my blog post, about the unpalatable nature of existential truths? And how the subconscious orchestration & functionally automatic nature of our experienced conditioned adult behavior, “instinctively” sees us avoid “approaching” the unpalatable nature of truths about our own reality? Which is arguably the reason for our common preference for abstract expatiations, over actual experience?
In the context of this larger thread, I’ve been wondering lately when the idea of “reality” first popped into my head and what that particular word might mean in practice. In running thought experiments lately, it seems clear that “reality” is not an object of experience like the color of the sky or the shape of a tree. Whether such sense impressions are “real” or not is a secondary question for further reflection beyond the impressions themselves. Like any other word in human languages, “reality” is a word I learned to use through books and conversations. I fit that word to my own direct experience in a way that seems consistent with its general usage. As a practical matter, the “real” to me feels solid, predictable, consistent, coherent, reliable, widely shared, consensus-driven, something that can be trusted or counted upon. By contrast, lesser degrees of reality pertain to the fleeting, the ephemeral, the arbitrary, the fake, the idiosyncratic, the dogmatic, the fraudulent, the manipulative, and the superficial. Of course, there are edge cases and mixed cases. False advertising is real enough (it surely exists), but is very unreal in what it points to. The fact of dreaming is certainly real, although the objects seen in the dream dissolve in wakefulness. We could go on … But the point of using a word like “real” seems mostly to be able to contrast one type of experience from some other type of experience that is less “real”.
As to whether or not our subconscious fools our sense of what is real or not, again, until I studied Freud in school, the idea of “subconscious” never occurred to me. I have never directly experienced such a thing! To me, “subconscious” is an organizing category for things like dreams, feelings that come from seemly nowhere, desires, impulses, intuitions, and any number of thoughts and emotions whose origins cannot be traced to some obvious physical stimulus. Having read quite a bit of psychology, I’m willing to use the word “subconscious” in theoretically-oriented conversations (with people who are conversant with the theory), but it’s not a word that comes up much in ordinary or casual speech.
As to whether Jesus was really pointing to the subconscious or not, I really have no opinion at all. Both “Jesus” and the “subconscious” are topics of vast literatures, quite a bit of which does not come to any strong consensus about who Jesus was, or what the subconscious is, let alone if Jesus had any notion of the subconscious. Before we go deeper into the that discussion, we would need some agreement on definitions of terms, standards of evidence, process of discussion, etc. For now, I’m happy enough to hear your opinion, and I’m happy enough (on this topic) not to have an opinion!
I can see where you are coming from, its painful to admit unpalatable truths about just how ignorant of our own reality we actually are. Or that an illusion of knowing is actually inherent in the communication tool of language and makes us confuse coherent communication with reality comprehension. Because as you say: " As a practical matter, the “real” to me feels solid, predictable, consistent, coherent, reliable, widely shared, consensus-driven, something that can be trusted or counted upon." Trusted to communicate the reality-labeling words of language, that correspond to the surface-level of reality “received” by the biological reality of our eyes, for example. Trusted to communicate thousands upon thousands of layers of abstract exaptation’s, on forums assuming knowledge of reality, like this one.