Understanding Consciousness.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the key to understanding existence is to understand consciousness. I stopped believing that it was a function of the brain some time ago. I believe that the brain is simply the window through which consciousness views material reality, and logic the tool it uses to order and describe it. As such, I don’t believe that logic is any more capable of understanding consciousness than a screwdriver is capable of understanding the person turning it.

It seems to me that the human ego builds a barrier which prevents us from taking the big step. So convinced are we of our individual place in a fragmented version of ‘reality’ that we laud the faculty of reason above all others. Unfortunately, reason traps us in a loop of self-perception from which we seek no escape because logic is incapable of seeing the problem. It can only speculate on the possibility of something unknowable to itself, and it takes a higher faculty to persuade it of its shortcomings. The notable Taoist commentator Osho once described Zen as ‘the process of giving up knowledge in order to gain true knowing.’ This, I think, is the direction we should be taking.

So where would it get us if we did? I believe it would render humanity, and everything it holds to be true, obsolete. And then we could forget insignificant trivia like going to the moon, because we would have taken a real giant step for mankind and broken through the barrier of illusion.

Of course, I don’t know any of this.