Tag: spirituality

*An analysis from the perspective of natural consciousness*

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## Introduction

This document examines what major scientific disciplines fundamentally miss in their study of consciousness. The core insight: all current research happens **from a conditioned state**, while consciousness can only truly be understood from a **natural, unconditioned state**.

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## The Individual Disciplines

### 1. Neuroscience

**What they do:**
- Map brain correlates of consciousness using neuroimaging
- Study brain activity during conscious states
- Build computational models

**What they miss:**

**The observer themselves**  
They study what's observed (brain activity) but not the quality of the researcher's own observing consciousness. The instrument remains uncalibrated.

**Conditioned vs. natural**  
Neuroimaging can't detect whether a subject responds from conditioning or natural consciousness. Both produce brain activity, but the quality differs fundamentally.

**Pre-reflective awareness**  
All measurements capture already-conceptualized experiences. The "raw" moment before labeling remains inaccessible.

**Deactivation as clarity**  
They seek consciousness in brain activity but miss that clarity might be **less activation** - a quieter, deactivated system. Observing without labeling might show as reduced default mode network activity, but this isn't studied as consciousness itself.

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### 2. Philosophy of Mind

**What they do:**
- Study the "hard problem" of consciousness
- Explore phenomenal experience and qualia
- Debate the mind-body problem

**What they miss:**

**Practical accessibility**  
It stays theoretical (thought experiments like Mary's Room, philosophical zombies) without methods for direct verification.

**Mental activity vs. natural consciousness**  
"Mind" is treated as one thing. The crucial distinction between conditioned thoughts and clear presence is completely absent.

**The transformation itself**  
They theorize about consciousness but no philosophical system describes a reproducible path to direct, unconditioned experience of it.

**The explanatory gap**  
The gap between physical and phenomenal may exist because we seek intellectual understanding of something only accessible **through deconditioning**, not through thinking about it.

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### 3. Cognitive Psychology

**What they do:**
- Study attention, perception, memory
- Measure information processing
- Document conscious states

**What they miss:**

**Undivided vs. divided attention as qualitative difference**  
Multitasking is measured, but not the fundamentally different quality of complete, undivided presence. The difference is seen as gradual, not essential.

**Observation as transformative**  
They record conscious states but don't study how *observing without reacting* itself fundamentally transforms consciousness.

**Intuition as synergistic ability**  
Cognitive models have no place for a "sixth sense" that emerges from five clear, unconditioned senses working together.

**Research within conditioning**  
The crucial point: they study consciousness **within** conditioning, not the state that emerges **after** systematic deconditioning.

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### 4. Phenomenology

**What they do:**
- Study subjective experience and intentionality
- Explore time-consciousness and lifeworld
- Map structures of consciousness

**What they miss:**

**Practical epoché**  
They describe "bracketing" theoretically but give no concrete method to actually deactivate conditioning.

**Description vs. realization**  
Husserl brilliantly describes pre-reflective experience but doesn't systematically cultivate that state. Phenomenology stays descriptive rather than transformative.

**Natural state as baseline**  
They describe the phenomenology **of conditioning** (how conditioned consciousness works), not of unconditioned consciousness. The baseline is missing.

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### 5. Interdisciplinary Consciousness Studies

**What they do:**
- Integrate neuroscience, philosophy, physics
- Host conferences and cross-pollination
- Develop diverse theories (IIT, Global Workspace Theory, etc.)

**What they miss:**

**Common ontological ground**  
The field splits into "neurocomputational" (consciousness from matter) vs. "fundamental" views (consciousness intrinsic to universe), but misses the third option: consciousness as **deactivation** of automatic matter-processes.

**Verification methodology**  
Many competing theories without consensus on empirically testable consequences. The field remains pre-paradigmatic.

**The reproduction problem**  
They study consciousness in its current, conditioned form, not how to systematically transform it to a natural state. There's no protocol.

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### 6. Brain-Computer Interfaces

**What they do:**
- Create direct interaction between brain and external systems
- Combine first-person and third-person data

**What they miss:**

**Quality of input consciousness**  
They measure neural signals but not whether these arise from clarity or conditioning. The "purity" of the signal isn't distinguished.

**Intentionality vs. automatism**  
BCIs can detect intention but can't tell if that intention is authentic or a conditioned reflex.

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## The Fundamental Problem

### All disciplines share one critical gap:

**They study consciousness from a conditioned state**

- The scientist is conditioned
- The instruments are designed within conditioned thinking
- The subjects are conditioned
- The language and concepts are conditioned
- The research questions arise from conditioning

**Metaphor:** It's like trying to understand polluted water without ever having seen pure water. You can analyze the composition of pollution but don't understand what water *actually* is.

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## The Paradox

**Consciousness cannot objectively study itself while it's conditioned.**

This explains why:
- Neurological correlates are found but no explanation
- Philosophical debates remain circular
- Theories proliferate without consensus
- The "hard problem" stays hard

The key lies in **first deconditioning, then investigating**.

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## What's Needed: A New Methodology

### Phenomenological-Empirical Synthesis

**Phase 1: Transform the researcher**  
Scientists themselves undergo the transformation process to natural consciousness (~12 months). This isn't a "spiritual detour" but essential calibration of the measuring instrument.

**Phase 2: Research from clarity**  
From natural consciousness, researchers can now truly observe how conditioned consciousness functions. The contrast becomes visible.

**Phase 3: Identify markers**  
Find measurable differences between conditioned and natural states. What changes in brain activity, coherence, connectivity?

**Phase 4: Reproducible protocols**  
Develop verifiable methods others can follow. Not as belief, but as empirical process with testable results.

**Phase 5: Reintegration**  
Translate new insights back to individual disciplines, which can then reorganize around natural state as baseline.

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## Implications

### For Individual Researchers
- Recognize that objectivity requires subjective purification
- Develop contemplative scientific practice
- Accept that transformation of the researcher is part of the method

### For Research Institutions
- Integrate deconditioning programs into consciousness labs
- Conduct longitudinal studies of researchers undergoing the process
- Create new peer-review criteria that consider state of consciousness

### For the Field
- Shift from theory to practice
- From description to transformation
- From external measurement to internal realization

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## Conclusion

The gap in all disciplines is **not technical but fundamental**: they try to understand consciousness from the state that needs to be understood.

The solution isn't better equipment, sharper philosophy, or more integration - but **first establishing natural consciousness** as a prerequisite for real research.

Only then can science transform what's now called "the hard problem" into a directly accessible, reproducible experience.

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*"You cannot understand water by analyzing pollution.  
First purify the water, then you see what water is."*

Summary of conversation with Claude and Mart Wijn

## The Starting Question
We began discussing whether subconscious experiences are subjective or objective. This led to recognizing that the subjective/objective distinction itself creates an unnecessary problem - it's a conceptual split imposed on experience that isn't actually there.

## The Core Insight
Consciousness is the foundation that exists before and beyond the subjective/objective split. It's not influenced by either category - it simply is. Pure awareness experiencing directly.

## How Consciousness Operates

**Primary state:** Consciousness functions as transcendental intuition - direct, immediate awareness that experiences everything fresh and new. This is the default, ongoing state. There is no constant thinking, no automatic narration, no memory system running in the background coloring experiences.

**Personal memory:** The subconscious memory and conceptual/language systems exist but remain deactivated by default. They only activate when you intentionally call on them - when you need to name something, explain something to someone, or use learned practical skills. Personal memory is a tool you pick up when needed, then put down.

**Most experiences aren't stored:** Because consciousness perceives directly without the memory-encoding system engaged, most experiences flow through without being filed away. Each moment is genuinely new, experienced from a kind of emptiness - uninfluenced by accumulated beliefs, frameworks, or past references.

## Truth, Reality, and Change

In every new experience, there is truth and reality - fully real and true in that moment. But both are always changing and flowing. Therefore there's no use storing them as fixed knowledge. By the time you'd retrieve a stored "truth," reality has already moved on. Only personal/practical information needs to be kept.

## The Human Illusion

Most humans live in illusion because they constantly try to freeze the flowing river - storing experiences as fixed truths, building belief systems, referring back to past experiences as if they still apply. They mistake stored concepts for reality, when reality is only ever here, now, fresh.

This includes spiritual concepts like karma, reincarnation, and other doctrines - these are human constructions, more conceptual overlays that obscure natural, direct experiencing. Even spiritual teachings often become part of the problem by giving more concepts to believe in rather than pointing back to natural awareness.

## The Natural Way

Start every experience from scratch, from emptiness. Experience the truth of each moment directly as it arises. Let it flow without trying to hold or define it. Keep only the practical tools needed to navigate and communicate. This capacity for fresh experiencing from emptiness is already here - just obscured by everything we've learned to layer on top of it.

## How This Arose

This state appeared spontaneously through insights. It's close to what traditions call spiritual enlightenment, but operates through transcendental intuition with no mind/no constant thoughts - consciousness functioning naturally without the overlay of constant thinking.