Originally Posted by
Omnis Dei
I am not attempting to argue that human beings are unconscious, simply that the implications related to consciousness (separating self-aware human minds from sensory receptors and information processors of other mechanisms) are based on circular logic, and in reality there isn't any particular way in which we are more conscious than, for example, a tree, a forest, a corporation, a computer or a stomach.
The reason we cling to this idea that we are different from such other things is because we seek to have choice and control. Accepting that the conscious systems we identify as us are merely emergent phenomena, we must also accept that we don't actually have any control over ourselves, and that feels like a contradiction. Of course we have control over ourselves, if I decide to ride my bike, and then I ride my bike, I have evidence that I made a choice and controlled the outcome to coincide with that choice. But who or what really decided to ride the bike? Was it my perception... my soul? Or merely the neurons of my mind following conditioned courses of action?
When a predator strikes at a school of fish and they scatter as one, then regroup as one, did they individually choose to follow protocol to increase their chances at evasion? Or, since the entire school moves as one, was there some sort of emergent hivemind making these decisions? Of course not, the reality is that there are rules imbedded in their DNA which enables the illusion of a hivemind to emerge. When African termites build their massive mounds, often over generations, there's no hivemind at work actively seeking to build a fortress, they're just following basic, very simple parameters. When a termite senses another termite as been somewhere, it acts according to the conditions stipulated in its DNA, and the Mound Emerges.
The human mind is no less a hivemind than an insect colony, a school of fish or flock of birds. It is an abstract, emergent phenomenon based on neurons following basic stipulations outlined in their DNA. It is data being received by sensory receptors and processed by these neurons. The difference is, we take our thoughts and we take our perception and we bundle them together so that we can have claim over this thing called "me" and this enables us to feel the illusion of control.
The core of detachment, as I see it, is basically remembering that your thoughts are your thoughts, and they'll follow their nature. Your perception is your perception, and it's following its nature, which is simply to watch. The watcher need not strive to control the processes, actions nor results. It's job in the colony is to watch, nothing more. And if it stops trying to control everything, that doesn't mean the colony stops working.
There is absolutely no reason to regard the watcher and the thinker as the same "me." The me is abstract, we cling to it only because it is frightening to relinquish control. But you never really had it in the first place. You are an illusion, an emergent concept surviving only because once you believe you are an individual person, releasing this belief faces you with the idea that you'll disappear, or that you're not valuable, or something else threatening to the ego. But in releasing this concept, you gain the ability to watch yourself as you interact with the world. You gain freedom from yourself, and become able to enjoy the ride. This is why delusional followers of eastern philosophy often talk about ego death. The ego is an abstract and burdensome concept... and something of a parasite, a freak accident that occurred when human minds became so intelligent they we able to ascertain what they consider consciousness. And from it, "me" was born. But like I said before, "me" is imaginary. My name is Legion.