Article on consciousness

[Guest guest]

Hi List,

 

Below is a URL and a snippet from an article on the Web. The topic

of the article is unrelated to 'nondualism' per-se, but the part

posted below seems most interesting.

 

Namaste,

 

Tim

 

 

http://www.csicop.org/si/2001-03/conciousness.html

 

The more we look into the workings of the brain the less it looks

like a machine run by a conscious self and the more it seems capable

of getting on without one (e.g., Churchland and Sejnowski 1992; Crick

1994). There is no place inside the brain where consciousness

resides, where mental images are " viewed, " or where instructions

are " issued " (Dennett 1991). There is just massive parallel

throughput with no obvious center.

 

Experiments such as those by Libet (1985) suggest that conscious

experience takes some time to build up and is much too slow to be

responsible for making things happen. For example, in sensory

experiments he showed that about half a second of continuous activity

in sensory cortex was required for conscious sensation, and in

experiments on deliberate spontaneous action he showed that about the

same delay occurred between the onset of the readiness potential in

motor cortex and the timed decision to act -- a long time in neuronal

terms. Though these experiments are controversial (see the

commentaries on Libet 1985; and Dennett 1991) they add to the growing

impression that actions and decisions are made rapidly and only later

does the brain weave a story about a self who is in charge and is

conscious. In other words, consciousness comes after the action; it

does not cause it.

 

This is just what some meditators and spiritual practitioners have

been saying for millennia; that our ordinary view of ourselves, as

conscious, active agents experiencing a real external world, is

wrong. In other words we live in the illusion that we are a separate

self. In mystical experiences this separate self dissolves and the

world is experienced as one -- actions happen but there is no

separate actor who acts. Long practice at meditation or mindfulness

can also dispel the illusion. Now science seems to be coming to the

same conclusion -- that the idea of a separate conscious self is

false.