Dear Rupert,
In one of your videos, a question was raised about the impersonal nature of consciousness. You answered it by pointing out that consciousness is present during sleep, when the body-mind is not felt. That is the case when the brain is functioning (as medical instruments can record), but what about when the brain stops functioning? I have lost consciousness a couple of times and it felt as if the time during which I was out did not exist at all. I couldn’t remember anything after I came back.
You also said that consciousness is the self, and is not limited or an object, with which I totally agree. But I can’t help hypothesising that it could be like the situation of an electron and its electric field: Although the field is not an object and is unlimited, it nonetheless would disappear if you took away the electron; also, many electrons can co-exist in the same space, their fields overlapping.
I recognise that all I have said belong to the conceptual sphere, but these concepts are becoming a hindrance to my investigation of the experiential sphere. Any help is much appreciated.
Alan
Dear Alan,
You are quite right that when there is no mind, such as in deep sleep or what is normally referred to as ‘loss of consciousness’, there is indeed no time. It is only the mind that, on reappearing after deep sleep, imagines deep sleep in its own terms of time and space and, as such, believes it to have lasted in time. But in the experience of deep sleep itself there is no time. Time is made out of the thought that thinks it. No thought, no time.
It is also true to say that without time there is no thought. In other words, time and thought both rely on the presence of their non-existent counterpart, thought or time, to exist, therefore truly, time and thought are not.
On your second point, if consciousness could end, it would have to have a beginning and would thus be limited. However, no one has ever experienced a beginning, end or limit to consciousness. If consciousness could disappear, it would have to disappear into something. What would that ‘something’ be? It would at least have to be present and conscious for this ‘temporary consciousness’ to be made out of it. In other words, it would have to be consciousness.
Normally we think that an object is existent and that it disappears into non-existence. In fact, an object, as such, is non-existent, and the apparent non-existence into which we imagine the apparent object disappears is conscious presence itself. Thus, ‘something,’ ‘nothing’ and, therefore, ‘everything’ are illusions. Only presence is.
With love,
Rupert
