Attention and the three states of consciousness.
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I found this link is useful in explaining and understanding a core-problem of our states of consciousness.
The picture though a two-dimensional presentation of a three-dimensional object also serves as an example of optical illusion, where 2-D and 3-D are confounded in perception.
To understand this the context of the माण्डूक्य-उपनिषद् / māṇḍūkya-upaniṣad will be also of immense help.The reader may find the relevant references elsewhere. And it is abundantly available, so I am not presenting that scripture here any more.
'Attention' is the most common and prominent evidence of all conscious being.
In other words,
Consciousness implies presence of attention, and Conversely, Presence of Consciousness implies presence of 'attention'.The absence of attention is also known because of attention only and can't exist on its own.I don't think this needs any more elaboration.Again, the three states of consciousness which may be taken as another word of 'mind' in active state, namely
1. The waking state when there is thought or perception of a world and a response to the sensory perceptions.
2. The dream state when the sensory perceptions of a 'world' stop, but another dimension of consciousness opens up where at a subtle thought-level or dream-level appears and though this dream is similar to the 'world', this world exists with dream-state only, and is gone in,
3. Deep dreamless state of consciousness which we call 'sleep'.In this third state though one could be waken up from some agency, one has no evidence of that agency while absorbed in deep sleep.This indicates that the attention is usually focused in one state of consciousness only at a time.
The moving round ball in the photo in the link given above could be treated as 'attention'.Though the ball moves in 2-D and 3-D paths, we can't see the 2 images of this object in the picture in the same moment.That is because of optical illusion.
Similarly, while we are awake, we can't enter the dream state or the sleep-state.In fact these three states are mutually exclusive and are registered in memory because of attention only.
माण्डूक्य-उपनिषद् / māṇḍūkya-upaniṣad precisely deals with the Reality-Principle on this fundamental understanding and approach.
--
--
I found this link is useful in explaining and understanding a core-problem of our states of consciousness.
The picture though a two-dimensional presentation of a three-dimensional object also serves as an example of optical illusion, where 2-D and 3-D are confounded in perception.
To understand this the context of the माण्डूक्य-उपनिषद् / māṇḍūkya-upaniṣad will be also of immense help.The reader may find the relevant references elsewhere. And it is abundantly available, so I am not presenting that scripture here any more.
'Attention' is the most common and prominent evidence of all conscious being.
In other words,
Consciousness implies presence of attention, and Conversely, Presence of Consciousness implies presence of 'attention'.The absence of attention is also known because of attention only and can't exist on its own.I don't think this needs any more elaboration.Again, the three states of consciousness which may be taken as another word of 'mind' in active state, namely
1. The waking state when there is thought or perception of a world and a response to the sensory perceptions.
2. The dream state when the sensory perceptions of a 'world' stop, but another dimension of consciousness opens up where at a subtle thought-level or dream-level appears and though this dream is similar to the 'world', this world exists with dream-state only, and is gone in,
3. Deep dreamless state of consciousness which we call 'sleep'.In this third state though one could be waken up from some agency, one has no evidence of that agency while absorbed in deep sleep.This indicates that the attention is usually focused in one state of consciousness only at a time.
The moving round ball in the photo in the link given above could be treated as 'attention'.Though the ball moves in 2-D and 3-D paths, we can't see the 2 images of this object in the picture in the same moment.That is because of optical illusion.
Similarly, while we are awake, we can't enter the dream state or the sleep-state.In fact these three states are mutually exclusive and are registered in memory because of attention only.
माण्डूक्य-उपनिषद् / māṇḍūkya-upaniṣad precisely deals with the Reality-Principle on this fundamental understanding and approach.
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