Okay gang I spent time digging into the definitions of awareness, perception, and sensation in various fields from various points of view. There’s no 100% consensus (how could there be, we’re friggin’ humans!) but my provisional conclusion is, organized by cognitive level:
Sensation is the pure bare-bones detection of sensory data, which includes the ‘sixth’ sense of the mental realm. Sensation is what I’ve been calling awareness. (But I’ll stop, promise!)
Awareness is the higher-level process that involves (requires) sensation, but ‘goes beyond it.’
And the third, perception, is the middle-level process that is somewhere between the two.
Ordered by level of cognition: sensation, perception, awareness.
Yes, broadly speaking I accept this general outline.
I would only add that there may be an aspect of awareness that is independent of the senses (as well as thought) - but this is not the generally accepted view.
Awaring is usually thought of as a conscious activity, it is a kind of knowingness. But in certain situations you aware objects unconsciously, automatically, without knowing you’re doing it. Like when you drive to work and are suddenly there, as if you were instantaneously transported. Though you are aware of objects during the drive, you aren’t consciously aware of them.
Awareness is like a space that illuminates objects and it is also self-illuminating.
A kind of a sun which can be seen as space, with no boundaries, empty, and it’s emptiness is illuminating and self-illuminating. Every “cell” of the sun-space is luminous and self-luminous. Which makes this space autonomous. K would say “that stands alone”.
Senses, in this metaphor are like …empty channels, or vessels…of the illumination.
But these senses do not “affect” awareness (the illumination)
When awareness goes towards the object, via senses, we say: “I am aware of…”
When the “what is” enters awareness, I call it immersion, external enters the internal, a fusion of the 2, boundaries are lifted, it is a kind of full emptiness.
This reminds me of something thats been on my mind recently. Samadhi is a concept that I have been describing to fellow zazen students as a supposed state that occurs during meditation.
The story is that the first important state is the one of dropping one’s current experience as and when we become aware that we are involved in some experience/narrative during zazen. The second state is of calmness and space between thoughts that arises from the first state (of noticing and dropping).
And finally we sometimes arrive at Samadhi (translated as absorption) - thing is, I don’t know what Samadhi is like (if it exists at all), maybe because I am not present.
The next state of conscious awareness is when I suddenly find myself transported back to square one : suddenly realising that I am caught up in some experience/thought again.
Is there Awareness in Samadhi? Is it a sort of flow state with no activity and no one flowing?
Does the quality of awareness change depending on the state of the subjective/central identity, their relation to the surrounding objects - or does awareness dissapear and reappear with discrimination?
What is the relationship between awareness and experience/memory?
I would call Samadhi this: a state in which awareness has no impulse to do or do be anything in particular.
Awareness in Samadhi is grounded, body is felt as a large rock, breathing is barely noticeable.
So, yes, the awareness is present, and thought/ the “me” are diminished/crushed by the strong and still field of awareness.
“Samadhi” can be a seen as a flow of uninterrupted energy.
This is what I’m puzzling over (the word Samadhi itself is probably used slightly differently in different traditions). It feels related to the ideas being voiced about the relationship between sentience (the I/non I experience) and awareness.
In order to stop confusing the issue further, maybe we should agree that if we are defining words, awareness cannot mean the same thing as spaciousness. When we usually say Awareness, we are talking about a function of sentience (as James has been saying), it is a relationship between subject and object.
Awareness of in other words - the more “mystical” form of awareness without objects might need another name like space, union, emptiness, flberrjub.
@macdougdoug
I agree
It is confusing, personally I can’t follow any long posts. I choose to respond to the initial question right at the beginning, before to many words are said. The entire question is drown in words as we discuss and discuss interminably…
It is easier to dialogue live, actually.
I still come here to read the questions, especially.
Apologies for being absent yesterday - life happens!
Yes. Awareness (or consciousness) does not always seem to require conscious awareness! The most obvious form this takes for me is when I wake up from sleep a second or two before the alarm goes off. Another example is the body’s reflex awareness of danger before the mind has become consciously aware of the danger.
As was mentioned in the OP peripheral and covert awareness are forms of awareness that we might refer to as ‘active unconsciousness’. There are clinical experiments that show, for example, that our eyes can register events about which our conscious awareness has no memory, but that our peripheral awareness (or active unconscious) has registered and so can make use of in action.
The difficulty with the word samadhi is that it has a great many different meanings according to different traditions and usages. It is sometimes translated as meditative absorption, sometimes as meditative concentration, sometimes as formless awareness - and even within a single tradition there can be varieties of samadhi.
What does seem to be the case is that there are forms of awareness in which the sense of being a subject in relation to other objects (or what we might call being ‘consciously aware’) is drastically diluted.
While this may stretch the definition of a word like ‘awareness’, there is clearly still something taking place in the mind (in such a state), and so it can reasonably be called a form of awareness.
While the word awareness has its etymological roots in sentience (i.e. ‘awareness of’) it may not be reducible to sentience. In certain Buddhist traditions, for example, spacious awareness is regarded as the ground of experience and not reducible to any experience. That is, it sees subject/object experience as arising from a ground of spacious awareness, and dissolving back into spacious awareness (which is understood to be synonymous with emptiness).
You got me thinking about ‘unconscious meditation.’ I don’t mean consciously observing the thoughts and feelings that bubble up from the unconscious mind. That is conscious-awareness driven. I mean a meditation that is unconscious-awareness driven. You’d need to get yourself into the state, the realm of active unconsciousness. And then, drift? Bit like near-sleep hypnagogia?
Krishnamurti actually said on several occasions that all true meditation is unconscious meditation - though he clearly meant by this something different from ordinary unconscious activity.
Just to follow up on this again briefly, K sometimes made a distinction between ‘awareness’ and ‘attention’ (as you may know).
There is a video in which K is speaking to a Theravadin scholar about meditation, and he says that attention has no border (an implication being that ordinary awareness is more limited).
An attention in which there is no border is, I take it, synonymous with a sense of spaciousness.
Elsewhere when talking (or writing) about meditation K also points to a state of attention in which there is limitless space and silence. This is obviously not an ordinary state of awareness or attention.
sometimes K says attention is a flame or like a fire
awareness and attention are inseparable
the way I take it is: awareness is not passive, it has it’s own intrinsic power to act
like love and intelligence - intelligent action is embedded in love
First time coming across meditation described in this way. It is striking. For me, it distills the teaching down to its core essence. To deny hope is to embrace everything. The words are wanting.
K: In observation there is neither the observer nor the idea of observation.
What comes to mind is that a conscious effort to meditate comes from a desire for progress : I do some special practise because I have it on good authority that its good for me, that there is something magical to be gained.
The only way I’m aware of awareness of the movement of self arising automatically, without effort, is when the self is seen for what it is (dangerous) and for some reason we feel the responsibility not to empower suffering.