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I know something here that one simply does not read about or hear much about.  It concerns the nature of consciousness, and so is essential.

The most common metaphor for consciousness is “seeing” — as if consciousness were entirely in the eyes.  And tied to this is the undue importance placed on reading words and discursive thought.  Out of this distortion arise dogmatism and intellectualism equally.  This is a form of conditioning that poisons almost entire ecosystems of religion, philosophy, and spirituality.

Seeing is a part of consciousness but only metaphorically.  If you take literally “seeing=consciousness” then someone like Helen Keller could not be a sentient being!

Other senses like hearing and touch and taste are also metaphors.  But if consciousness is hearing then that also rules out Helen Keller.

All of the senses are important to consciousness, but no single sense defines it.  One must pierce through the haze of metaphors and find the hidden diamond.

What is that which Helen Keller could do which was the core of her sentient existence?

She could feel.

Everyone feels but we are conditioned to trivialize “feelings” or associate them with being a particular gender or temperament.

What I am stressing here is that Feeling is actually the core of sentience, the distillation of the other senses.  Feeling is to “feelings” just as seeing is to an aggregate of visual images.  Infinitely more to it.

From this it is easy to see how love and a sense of beauty play into consciousness.  I would like to explore that some more later.

It is evident that animals and plants have Feeling.  Maybe physics will even discover that energy waves and subatomic particles are Feeling.

The final note concerns the Vedantic triad Being-Consciousness-Bliss, Sat-Chit-Ananda.  Bliss is seriously distorted in favor of equating it to a particular experience of expansiveness or release.  As if the ultimate is a permanent orgasm.

But bliss is essentially just Feeling.  But Feeling as I have indicated which is the very nature of consciousness, which subsumes the other senses as well as brain activity.

It may seem shocking to say it but here it is.  All feeling is bliss.  All feeling.

“I feel depressed.  That is not bliss.”  Are you so sure?  Is the essence of depression so very different from that of elation?

Depression is a point on a spectrum or continuum of affectivity.  It is energy channelled in a certain way.  It only needs a change of course and voila! the same energy is open and joyous and free.  This is something about which I can personally speak with authority.  How this can happen is another question, which I will not try to answer here, because there is no single answer for everyone.

Anyway, there is more to say about this, and I will be back with a sequel.

Stay tuned.