Max Planck had no understanding regarding consciousness. His opinions on the matter is merely opinion, nothing more really. So is that of most scientists or religious people.
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Consciousness
- Thread starter allfoak
- Start date
Sensory information has to be processed in order to be perceived. If it isn't processed, then there is no awareness of it.
ajay0
Well-Known Member
This is very well put.
The only fact you truly know is that you exist. All the rest is conceptual constructs in mind. ~ Gilbert Schultz
However we miss this essential reality due to lack of attention and create the unreal conceptual self with its intrinsic dualistic perception due to excess of conceptual thought and imagination. Just as pain calls for attention to the body, suffering is a similar call for attention to this unnatural state of the mind.
It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy -- truth liberates. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
godnotgod
Thou art That
yep.
godnotgod
Thou art That
When I said that 'everything is the subjective', I meant that who you really are is the universe itself. So there is no individual separate self; there is only the universal Self, playing itself as the individual self.
You left out the most important part of perception:
godnotgod said:
"...a processor, such as a brain, is required to interpret what the receptor detected. But even then, there is only the registration of the pressure waves. What is finally needed is consciousness."
A tape recorder in the forest can record the sound pressure waves of the tree falling, but there is no sound until a conscious being hears the tape.
In the Jacobo-Grinsberg experiment I cited earlier, Test Subject A directly heard and felt the stimuli which was recorded via the EEG machine, but Test Subject B, though his brain registered those same stimuli as shown by his EEG record, was unaware of them. If you are sleeping, you may not hear sounds in your environment, but your brain registers them. Where is subjective mind?
If the sound being heard is a fire alarm, the brain processes the sound, but it means nothing until consciousness decides what to do about it.
godnotgod
Thou art That
godnotgod
Thou art That
What Planck is saying is the result of insight into the nature of things. Insight is to see things as they are, without thought. There is no opinion here since opinion is the product of the thinking mind. Pure consciousness is not thinking. It is seeing.
No. I'm asking where the sensory perceptions are processed and experienced. If they are processed in the brain, then are they also experienced there? At least we've finally established the centralized processing center for sensory perceptions. With the centralized processing also comes a sort of unity among all things since all perceptions are centrally processed.
Oh, within Buddhism, there are six base-sense media, not just five. There is also the pattern-recognition sense base media dedicated to detecting ideas.
Nibbedhika Sutta: Penetrative
"And what is the cause by which perception comes into play? Contact is the cause by which perception comes into play.
"And what is the diversity in perception? Perception with regard to forms is one thing, perception with regard to sounds is another, perception with regard to aromas is another, perception with regard to flavors is another, perception with regard to tactile sensations is another, perception with regard to ideas is another. This is called the diversity in perception.
"And what is the result of perception? Perception has expression as its result, I tell you. However a person perceives something, that is how he expresses it: 'I have this sort of perception.' This is called the result of perception.
Nibbedhika Sutta: Penetrative
"And what is the cause by which perception comes into play? Contact is the cause by which perception comes into play.
"And what is the diversity in perception? Perception with regard to forms is one thing, perception with regard to sounds is another, perception with regard to aromas is another, perception with regard to flavors is another, perception with regard to tactile sensations is another, perception with regard to ideas is another. This is called the diversity in perception.
"And what is the result of perception? Perception has expression as its result, I tell you. However a person perceives something, that is how he expresses it: 'I have this sort of perception.' This is called the result of perception.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
I do love your thoughts on this. Coherency IS something to strive for.
godnotgod
Thou art That
Yes, and therein lies the problem. That is the problem with perceptual reality, and one of the reason the Buddha sought higher ground, ie 'Ultimate Reality', that is transcendent of perceptual reality.
Part of how perception is interpreted has to do with what we already know from past perceptions, stored in the brain, to which the current perception is compared.
Which is why clinging to perceptual distortions is considered to be makyo.
godnotgod
Thou art That
...and why perceptual reality cannot ultimately be trusted. This, of course, includes the brain, which essentially hallucinates reality.
"I think it helps to compare the experience of self to subjective contours – illusions such as the Kanizsa pattern where you see an invisible shape that is really defined entirely by the surrounding context. People understand that it is a trick of the mind but what they may not appreciate is that the brain is actually generating the neural activation as if the illusory shape was really there. In other words, the brain is hallucinating the experience. There are now many studies revealing that illusions generate brain activity as if they existed. They are not real but the brain treats them as if they were."
The Illusion of the Self | Sam Harris
Like the sleep-dream world we know to be an illusion upon the act of waking up, we too know the level of consciousness as 'wakefulness' to also be an illusion upon awakening to yet higher levels. of consciousness. This awakening to a higher level is what the Buddha's experience was all about. And just like the dream world, which absolutely seems real while we are on that level of consciousness, the level of wakefulness (Waking Sleep; Identification) also seems perfectly real to most of us. And it does so partly because, unlike the dream world which vanishes upon waking, the next level does not vanish. But when transcending it occurs, consciousness is transformed so that it's true nature is now revealed. It is this transformation of consciousness that Planck experience to some degree, allowing him insight into the nature of consciousness.
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godnotgod
Thou art That
...and you can only realize that because a higher state of consciousness, one that is accurate, illuminates what makyo actually is. Those caught in the world of makyo cannot see this as their view is still driven by the ordinary conditioned mind of perceptual reality, which thinks that consciousness is an emergent phenomena of the brain.
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Demonstrate Planck had insight.
Sentience is vulnerable to delusion, but sentience is also the means by which delusion is overcome and awakening occurs.
godnotgod
Thou art That
That's exactly right.
It seems where we disagree is whether 'the subjective mind' is real or not. I still see it as one aspect of the subject/object split, which is healed when awakening occurs, and duality is dissolved into oneness.
godnotgod
Thou art That
I wish this kind of intuitive insight were provable via Logic, Analysis, and Reason, but it is not, as it is transcendent of these methods of the thinking mind. The only way you can confirm what he is saying is to see it in the same manner that he is seeing it, and that involves a transformation of consciousness.