I still don’t see in direct experience how consciousness can know itself in deep dreamless sleep. Okay, obviously in deep sleep consciousness is, but how can it be conscious of itself since there is nothing to be known? In the appearance of a dream, consciousness knows itself as dreaming, but in the dreamless sleep how the hell can it know something, even the sense ‘I am’? To know itself it has to be conscious ‘of’. I agree that its faculty to be conscious remains in deep sleep, since you can be conscious of the alarm clock, but can consciousness know something, even itself, when there is nothing more to know?
Jérôme
Dear Jerome,
The whole premise of your argument hinges on your belief that ‘to know itself it (consciousness) has to be conscious “of”, that is, conscious of an object. If you do not know or are not even open to the possibility that consciousness’s only mode of knowing itself (with or without the appearance of objects) is through itself, by itself, I cannot help you.
In my response to you a few days ago I suggested a way in which you might explore this and ascertain for yourself that our knowledge that consciousness is present now does not come from being conscious of something, but rather directly from consciousness being conscious of itself. It is not that the answer is not clear. It is that you take your beliefs to be true without deeply exploring them.
You say, ‘Obviously in deep sleep consciousness is’. Please describe the experience through which you have arrived at this certainty. If, as you say, there is nothing (objective) to be known in deep sleep, what other experience, other than the experience of consciousness knowing itself directly, could be responsible for your certainty?
You speak of deep sleep from experience. You acknowledge that deep sleep is your experience. Please describe your experience of deep sleep. If it is not the experience of consciousness knowing an object and not the experience of consciousness knowing itself, what exactly does your experience of deep sleep consist of?
Even if you think deep sleep is a ‘nothingness’, that nothingness is obviously your experience, otherwise you would not assert it. You go on to say, ‘in the appearance of a dream, consciousness knows itself as dreaming’. By implication, therefore, in the experience of deep sleep, consciousness knows itself as nothingness.
Either way, consciosuness knows itself.
* * *
Both of these lines of reasoning – those that I have explained which are derived from experience and those that you enumerate which are derived from imagination – lead to the same inescapable conclusion, that consciousness always only ever knows itself. It does not know itself in a state (in the waking state, let alone the dream or deep sleep state) but rather by itself, through itself.
I am not trying to prove anything to you but rather to destroy your pseudo-proofs, which are based on beliefs alone. This will leave you genuinely open to the possibility that consciousness experiences itself as ever-present, with or without objects. The response to this openness comes from an unknown direction.
Furthermore, you say (in your next post), referring to consciousness: ‘It is, but it doesn’t know that it is!’
If it (consciousness) is not present in deep sleep to know that it is, how does it know that it is? That which knows in everyexperience is consciousness. Either you are imagining an experience of deep sleep that doesn’t exist or, if you are speaking from experience, you assertion that it isproves that it is there knowing its own being.
In short, being and knowing are inseparable. Unhappiness is the name we give to the belief that they are separate.
With love,
Rupert
