Series:
Essay #1:
Synopsis:
Self
Sauron's Eye
Consciousness is attention, and it’s a thin layer on the surface of a deep self
We all have equal expertise when it comes to consciousness; just look inside. Consciousness is real because each of us has immediate awareness of his own. I know I’m conscious. Do you have consciousness? If I asked you, you’d confirm it. As for animals, I can observe behavior in them that really looks like it comes from consciousness. Here’s my take on what it is. Consciousness is Sauron's Eye, always on, never blinking, looking to the inside and outside, even when I’m asleep. Consciousness is attention.
Where is Sauron’s Eye located? A scientist can scan my brain but he won’t find my consciousness because it’s my first-person experience (which only I can experience). Consciousness is the inside perspective par excellence: it can only be experienced from the inside, not seen from the outside. I can’t verify your flow of consciousness because I’m not you: I can’t be in my head feeling my flow and at the same time in your head feeling your flow. “Woman, I can’t be in two places at one time!” said the soul singer par excellence Bobby Womack when his girlfriend demanded that he both get a job and be home for loving.
Nor can I see my own attention because an eyeball can’t see itself looking. Attention can only see objects, never itself. Think about it: consciousness is not a thing in the world, rather, it’s the activity of paying attention, so I see through it, not at it. What if I track the flow of sensations and ideas in my mind? Now I’m making an object of my mind, where my mind is the object seen and my consciousness is still the invisible seer. In brief, paying attention is first person experience and it can’t be observed from an outside, third-person perspective (even when I observe myself). I can’t prove scientifically the existence of consciousness, and who cares? I don’t have to prove it, because to experience is to know.
I believe all living beings have consciousness (defined as attention). Take Mr. Amoeba, for example. Mr. Amoeba doesn’t have a rarified mind like ours, but he pays attention to his internal processes and to the outside world. Mr. Amoeba restrains and focuses his eye, keeping its light shining here, directing it there. In the buzz of perception, he looks at what’s relevant to him, what’s good and bad, and he knows, “go here--safe; eat this--good.” If he couldn’t do that, he’d starve or get eaten.
Mr. Amoeba directs his attention just like I direct mine, and herein is a mystery. Why do I pay attention to different things than Mr. Amoeba? Why do I look at this, not that? Because it’s me who pays attention. Self is behind attention and self directs attention to what self cares about.
C.S. Lewis said, “Yet even if I could examine my thinking, it would, I well know, turn out to be the thinnest possible film on the surface of a vast deep.” Conscious awareness is a thin film on the surface of the self, which self extends down and down into the unconscious and the unknown-- into Carl Jung territory.
Jung saw attention (ego-consciousness) as a small field surrounded by “a multitude of little luminosities” (from: On the Nature of the Psyche). Most awareness is subconscious, that is, I’m not aware at top-level of my awareness at lower levels. For example, when running I don’t pay attention to my heart rate and balance. I’m tracking them, though, because if my heart skips a beat or I lose balance, I’m suddenly very aware of these “beneath” levels. Sometimes I’m writing and I think… peanuts? I’m hungry. Sometimes I’m reading and I think of the X-Files… where did that come from and how did it commandeer my attention? I don’t know how many personalities and luminosities are down there, all talking at the same time, and how one voice gets hold of the microphone to speak over the others.
Sometimes my body is tired and I can’t focus my mind. My attention goes hither and thither, lingering here, getting lost there, until it finds the TV and gets stuck. When I’m tired, I can’t focus on a single thought from beginning to end, which makes sense because consciousness runs on a meat platform. I am embodied soul and an impaired brain can’t support intense focus.
It’s time to end this intro. Attention is a spotlight, and I shine it on the objects that I’m interested in. The brighter the spotlight, though, the smaller its circle, and the larger is the darkness surrounding the little circle of light… and said darkness includes me, the person who’s observing. So I focus on the bright objects in the circle and I can’t see that the darkness holds the real mysteries, like the mystery of attention (my activity of seeing), and like the mystery of me (the unknown self who directs attention).
Carl Jung said (in: On the Nature of the Psyche) that “knowledge must be incomplete, and moreover to a degree that we cannot determine.” Why? because facts don’t speak for themselves. A conscious living being must speak for the facts and turn them into knowledge. He must shine the spotlight of his attention on the observed facts and make sense of them, but the harder he looks at the facts, the less he sees his participation in their creation. The creator of facts is in the darkest of the darkness.
Essays in this Series, Self: