The Top Theory on Where Consciousness Comes From | Stuart Hameroff
What is "consciousness," the magic of retroflex self-awareness or "awareness" of any kind? Is it inherent in the universe, a quality of materiality, a spiritual component in the material world, a material locus in an illusory spiritual world? Although the Buddha 26 centuries ago laid out the process of consciousness, vinnana, in stark detail, that has not been good enough for a Western science ignorant of it. However, it is nearly certain that the definition, characteristics, and meaning of these consciousness-es would never satisfy the West because here in the U.S. and European countries, we imagine something more to consciousness than an impersonal (empty, essenceless, selfless) process. Because we (a collection of impersonal processes) are aware, we search in vain for something tangible, permanent, viable, and personal behind all of the apparent change, unpleasantness, and stark reality of what is just a constituted (dependently originated) process and not a thing in and of itself. If we go in search of self, we must at some point come to consciousness. If consciousness is misunderstood and clung to as self, there will be suffering and identification with that suffering. Unless things (the Five Aggregates clung to as self) as seen as they really are, there will be no letting go, no freedom, no liberation, and no awakening from the illusion of it all. In that spirit, the West keeps searching. And here's one theory about where "consciousness" comes from and therefore, to some extent, what it is.
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