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CONSCIOUSNESS & AWARENESS

I. Consiousnes & Evolution

II. Defining Awareness & Consciousness
III. The Mystery of Awareness

IV. The Enigma of Consciousness
V. The Ouroboros Consciousness
VI.  Ouroboric Super-Awareness

VII. The Super-Awake Flow
VIII. Shared Fields of Consciousness
IX. Civilization and Consciousness 
X. Civilization and Consciousness Part II

 


THE INNER AND THE OUTER PERSON
The inner and the outer Person
The Sacred Wound of the Inner Warrior
 
THE BUTTERFLY OF THE SOUL

The operative system of thought
The liberation from or of the Self
The liberation of the greater Self
The Butterfly of the Soul





 
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CIVILIZATION AND CONSCIOUSNESS - PART II

There are several important take-aways from this major civilizatoric self-control.

One is that we here can observe that self-control unfolded in consciousness not only stems from the ability of higher cognition. There seems to be another system with very potent means for enabling human self-control and is religion. In opposition to hard core scientists like Dawkins, who view religion as a mutation, as an unwanted anomaly, we can here observe how crucial life-lines of trade would be impossible without Buddhism at the Eastern end and Cristianity at the Western end of these silk strings. Animals are not religious. Religion seems to be a higly efficient social self-control interface rooted in story telling ability unfolded within consciousness. Harari is right when he calls man a story telling animal. Without religious stories, there would be no silk routes. Consciousness it seems, counts for two of the historically most infigting brain interfaces: the rational mind and the religious mind.
It is in this context important to emphasize that this line of thinking does not require an actual belief in any kind of spirituality. We are solely looking at the civilizing power-glue of organized religion, which is entirely different than the question of God's existence or not.
 
The Emergence of Non-dual Ouroboros Consciousness
Another take-away is that the concept of non-dual unity consciousness could not come into existence without high tide urban development and increasing wealth through long-distance trade. Long distance trade and the unfoldment of long distance prioritation of sight in consciousness is interlinked.
The cognitive part of consciousness is dual. The religious is too but it has in it inbuilt the possibility to transcend duality into non-duality.

Both the shamanistic hunter-gatherer and the later agricultural-based cultures are fundamentally based on and in a dual consciousness and the split understanding of reality made by of the same. A non-dual consciousness requires crisscrossing neurons combining diffent part of the brain in pretty much the same way as silk routes can be seen as cultural neurons.
Consciousness litterally had to expand to spacehold the vast greographic area of the Seleucid-Ashokan culture and trade unity.

FROM MEDIEVAL EXESS TO THE RATIONALITY OF ENGLIGHTENMENT
Let us now jump to another disruptive period, this time taking place in Europe itself. It began in the Italian city-states in the 15th century with the renaissance period and it culminated with the age of enlightenment.

Norbert Elias's observations in "
The Civilizing Process," elucidate the transition from the Medieval to the Enlightenment period implied emotional self-control:

"The soul is here, if one may express oneself thus without comparison, much more prepared and accustomed to leap from one extreme to the other with always the same intensity, and often even small impressions are uncontrollable associations, enough to trigger the fear and the turnaround. When the structure of human relations changes, when monopoly organizations are formed for corporal violence and instead of the persistent feuds and wars the more stable urgency situations due to peaceful, money- or prestige-acquired functions keep the individual in tight reins, the affective expressions slowly strive towards a line in the middle."

Norbert Elias highlights that as we progressed in the process of civilization, we transformed from beings reliant on close-range senses to those predominantly guided by long-range, visual perceptions. In this evolution, the term "Enlightenment" carries a significant implication.
 

Emotional regulation became crucial, and our sensory experiences shifted from direct tactile engagements to more distant observations. This transformation is encapsulated in the term "Enlightenment," which defines the post-medieval "Age of Reason." For 17th-century thinkers, "The Golden Middle Way" emerged as a paramount concept, which can be seen as history echoing itself.

Throughout the trajectory of civilization, long before even the medieval era, our transition has been marked by becoming more composed beings, residing in more harmonious environments. Consciousness, functioning as an operative system, struggles to process intense emotional disturbances. It is susceptible to regression because the most recent evolutionary developments are inherently the most delicate. Therefore, the societal emphasis on self-control becomes indispensable for the flourishing of consciousness.

The Sensuous Middle Ages
Even in the much later period of the Middle Age, the average person lived more spontaneously, acting on immediate sensory experiences, at least as compared to our time. This immediate, sensory, yet unpredictable life was led without considering potential consequences. Distress, captivity, defeat, victory, mutilation, unrestrained pleasure, devastation, religious penance, and remorse were experienced within the silent and sensory space of the body. Surveillance and punishment came from external forces like religious and secular institutions, not from within.


Part of a painting of Bruegel

Even until the Enlightenment period, it was customary for a man to greet a woman by touching her chest, an act that would lead to outrage in today's context.

Direct, unreflective, and uninhibited sensory experiences were the prerogative of pre-industrial humans. I've personally witnessed this kind of immediate sensory presence in India's slums. Civil restraint is conspicuously absent there, replaced by instinctual survival behaviors.

 

 

Odysseus to Smartphones: The Reign of Consciousness
The famed act of Odysseus resisting the Sirens highlights consciousness's strategic emergence. External societal regulations prompted our internal self-control. Our primal, emotion-driven self now contends with consciousness's constructs. While the sensory immediacy of pre-industrial times dominated once, now, our society steers towards visual interfaces.

Modern cognition emphasizes sight, intensified by media and technology. The repercussions of this visual dominance might be the trade-offs between our body's interoceptive well-being and a visually oriented brain, leading to auditory experiences being dominated by visual descriptions.

Especially in times of change, our various biological layers become misaligned.
Our adaptability is remarkable, yet the evolutionary baggage we carry - a complex blend of outdated biogenetic software and hardware - challenges our ability to navigate pressing issues like our growing digital reality.


External Control Dictated Self-Control
It's crucial to note that the first semblance of inner self-control emerged due to the need for external regulation. To participate in complex social structures, and more broadly to live civilly, we must be considerate of others.

Consciousness may be small, but it remains vigilant. It's fragile, yet cunning. By forming intricate networks with other individuals' consciousnesses, it tricks our inner cyclops. It wraps itself in the protective blankets of civilization. Advanced civilizations reduce the risk of catastrophes. We shield ourselves and one another through civil wisdom and self-restraint.

The body remains primal, an animal residing within us. Its operating system is emotions within attention. It has become increasingly terrified of the constructs that consciousness has formed. Since the time of Odysseus, we've attempted to subdue it with the conscious mind's thoughtful tendrils.

TOWARDS THE DISTANT-SENSING CONSCIOUS BEING
From the Middle Ages onward, humanity's distant senses have been honed at the expense of immediate sensory experiences. The Church slowly taught us the concept of sin and thus distance ourselves from our immediate sensory existence. Simultaneously, we were trained to read and heed wise words, replacing older, more direct forms of communication and control.
 
Then at much later stages came television, introducing us literally to "distant viewing". This explosion of information and the ability to navigate distant worlds prepared us for computer interfaces. Today, our gaze is glued to the screens of our smartphones. Are we transitioning towards a global, disembodied symbiosis with computer circuits?

From a civilizational perspective, we've rapidly evolved into self-regulating systems managed by visual interfaces. Jacques Lacan's concept of the "Big Other" has been digitized.

Lacan and The Gaze of the Other
We are but actors on the world stage. For Lacan, we are always conscious of 'the other's' gaze, even before we ourselves look. The gaze of this "Big Other" shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world.

I would argue that we, by evolutionary history, are herd animals. Our survival has always depended on the group and our place within it. This all-pervading collective gaze of the group, or what I would term, not the "big other" but "the Big Others", is what truly shapes us.

This civilizational reprogramming of our sensory hierarchy has shifted energy and priority from awareness to consciousness. Only in consciousness we can alienate ourseves and in duaity look at ourselves with the gaze of the Big Others. The immediate, bodily-focused attention of our past has been superseded by a distancing collective shaped consciousness in a increasingly more civilized world. The body, in this process, becomes subject to the apparatus of consciousness.

The dominance of sight in our cognitive processes became radically more pronounced with the mass-medial advent of reading and writing. Gutenberg made thoughts visible instead of heard. Currently, we're witnessing another surge in the prioritization of visual senses. Since smartphones became ubiquitous, our reliance on and cultivation of sight for both personal and societal navigation has deepened. Just imagine for a second, how much teenage brains might have changed, daily staring for hours into a smartphone. I am sure that millions of neurons used for anchoring the body in interoceptive (well)being, have been traded off with visual highways in the brain. Therefore it can be no surprise that our day-to-day interactions, auditory perception frequently yields to the primacy of sight. As a music teacher, it's intriguing for me to hear phrases like, "Have you seen that concert?" Such expressions underscore the pervasive influence of visual cognition.

The Age of Remote Viewing
This intensified focus on the visual may have relegated our more instinctual, awareness-based systems, leading me to speculate on its implications for mental well-being.
Many of the ailments of modern society, including existential alienation, are largely created as a consequence of our cultural escape from the immediate experiences of our close senses.
Electronic gadgets, especially smartphones, engage our distant senses, such as hearing and vision, to an extent that even the last 50 years of the TV era has not achieved on its own, but has prepped us for. Until the day when we can feel, smell, and taste in virtual reality environments, the rapid deprivation of our immediate sensory needs continues. At the same time, our yearning for the lost physical sensation increasingly tries to be satisfied through vision. Like Narcissus, we search in the visually created mirror image for the fullness that only the immediate sense of touch can provide. Our culture, reflected in countless small interactive screens and the mass media's production of reality, becomes a scopophilic attempt to reclaim the lost immediate sensory richness and innocence. (Note: "Scopophilic" refers to taking pleasure in looking, especially in a voyeuristic sense.)

Western Societal Dynamics
Today, our Western society is simultaneously playful and excessively regulated. Highly advanced urban environments connected globally through information technology operate under constant pressure, continually pushing beyond their limits. This ever-changing reality most urgently requires the higher consciousness's cognitive functions' sublime and creative capacity for innovation. The paradox is that while this societal structure has created the conditions for intensified consciousness in flow, it is through this society's constant internal pressures that the very flame of this consciousness is repeatedly extinguished.

It is indeed a wonderful thing that we have become more conscious beings within the last 2500 years. However there is a trade off in the sense that every blessing always comes with a curse. Hegel's dialectic way of thinking fit quite well here: Thesis-anti-thesis: synthesis.


After this brielf exploration of the anachronistic workings of ancient and more recent operative systems within the brain,  it is time to delve deeper into the mystery of awareness.
In the subsequent exploration, I will traverse the intimate realm of our senses, unearthing the dormant 'God' of awareness concealed in our body's depths. As Meister Eckhart profoundly stated:

"I am certain as I live that nothing is so close to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to my own self; my life depends upon God's being near me, present in me."
 



Sources
Seleukos Nikator, Constructing a Hellenistic Kingdom - John D. Grainger
Bactria, The Histoty of a forgotten Empire - H. G. Rawlingson
The Greek Experience of India - Richard Stoneman - 2019
Alexander the Great - Robin Lane Fox
A History of Christianity - Diarmaid Mc Culloch
The Silk Roads - Peter Frankopan
Hellenism in ancient India
- Bannerjee, Gauranga Nath
The Story of Civilization ( II to V) - Will Durant
The Art and Architecture of India - 1996. B. Rowland
Buddha Statuen - Leonhard Adam - 1925
Buddha in Indien - Kunsthistorisches Museeum in Wien - 1995
The Jaina Path of Purification - Padmanabh S. Jaini
Collected Papers on Buddhist Studies - Padmanabh S. Jaini
Konge for en dag (King for a Day) - 1946 - Kaare Foss
Richard Stoneman - Naked Philosophers: The Brahmans in the Alexander Historians and the Alexander Romance - 1995 - Richard Stoneman
The Bible and the Buddhist (Sardini, Bornato [Italy] 2001) Duncan McDerret:


An Intriguing but Isolated Figure: Dr. Phil Christian Lindtner

www.Jesusisbuddha.com - curated by Dr. Phil Christian Lindtner

Dr. Christian Lindtner is a figure who has stirred considerable controversy and, as a result, finds himself on the periphery of mainstream academic discourse. Yet, it is important to acknowledge that many of his scholarly observations are indeed corroborated and credible. Nonetheless, from my perspective, Lindtner, like many specialists, may exhibit a certain obliviousness to topics beyond his immediate expertise. For instance, his assertion that Jesus was a non-historical figure, used to underpin his theory that the New Testament is essentially a reiteration of Buddhist scriptures, can be challenged. The evolution and adaptation of the Jataka Tales demonstrate the flaw in such a provocative claim. Stories and myths evolve and transform as they traverse cultures. Upon reaching new lands, they often become personalized, centering around a local figure, thereby acquiring a unique, localized expression. Thus, Christianity is not merely a facsimile of Buddhism; rather, it has been profoundly influenced by Buddhist teachings and adapted them within its own spiritual and cultural framework.
 
To illustrate the transmutation of stories across cultures, consider the tale of a clever young man from the reign of the Indian Emperor Akbar in the 16th Century, which later became associated with the Danish King Christian IV in the 17th Century. In the Indian narrative, a bright youth impresses Akbar with his wit at a crossroads and is subsequently invited to the royal palace at Fatehpur Sikri. Upon his arrival, he is extorted by a guard demanding half of whatever reward he receives from the emperor. Cunningly, the young man requests 100 lashes from Akbar, who, upon understanding the situation, admires the young man's ingenuity and offers him a position in his ministry instead.

Fast forward to Denmark, where a similar story unfolds with King Christian IV. On a winter day, he purportedly rescues a young man who had fallen through the ice while traveling between Copenhagen and Skåne. The king invites the man to his court, and the narrative from Fatehpur Sikri ensues. Within 50 years, this story migrated from India to Denmark. The likely scenario is an amalgamation: the Danish king may have saved someone from drowning, and this act was later embellished with Akbar’s tale to portray Christian IV as a generous monarch.

Examining the New Testament’s depiction of Jesus, we encounter two distinct portrayals: one is a more confrontational figure, while the other embodies non-violence and forgiveness. The grafting of narratives onto a local figure doesn't always seamlessly align with the individual's character, suggesting a historical basis for Jesus. The discrepancies in these stories indicate the layers of narrative added over time, pointing to Jesus as a tangible historical figure.
 

More Controversial Yet Thought-Provoking Sources:
While I recognize the following sources as inspirational, I don't view them as entirely reliable for academic rigor:

Jesus Lived in India - Holger Kersten
Lost Years of Jesus - Elizabeth Clare Prophet

These sources and personal experiences while travelling for years in India and Nepal, have contributed to my nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between Eastern and Western philosophies and religions.

Gunnar Mühlmann