In the Beginning Was Consciousness

16:58 — Skips the introductions.

...see, there are smart people on youtube.

Lecture starts 17:00

It's amazing how Seyyed Hossein Nasr, more than 20 years ago, said all the things philosophers and many scientists are talking about and taking seriously today regarding consciousness.

Great!! My profane understanding of this wonderful lecture is that “Either we accept the obvious primacy of consciousness or we all will go to hell together” A time will come in which people will talk of those dark times in which people believed that we were the blind product of a dead Universe. God bless you

28:00 "Johannes Kepler and Sir Isaac Newton both had a mystical vision of God and the maverick Galileo did not even imagine denying God' Amazing lecture by Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr. He has a brilliant command over language and on the most subtle and complex concepts of esoteric sciences.

Thank you for posting this lecture.

Beautiful, thank you professor.

Amazing lecture!

Brilliant brilliant discourse!!! Loved the part about "fana"!

🐟 06. CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS: Consciousness means “that which knows” or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). There is BOTH a localized knowing and a Universal Awareness, as explicated in the following paragraphs. Higher species of animal life have sufficient cognitive ability to KNOW themselves and their environment, at least to a measurable degree. Just where consciousness objectively begins in the animal kingdom is a matter of contention but, judging purely by ethological means, it probably starts with vertebrates (at least the higher-order birds and fishes). Those metazoans which are evolutionarily lower than vertebrates do not possess much, if any, semblance of intellect, necessary for true knowledge, but operate purely by reflexive instincts. For instance, an insect or amphibian does not consciously decide to seek food but does so according to its base instincts, directed by its idiosyncratic genetic code. Even when a cockroach flees from danger, it is not experiencing the same kind of thoughts or feelings a human or other mammal would experience. The brain is merely a conduit or TRANSDUCER of Universal Consciousness (i.e. Brahman), explaining why the more intelligent the animal, the more it can understand its own existence (or at least be aware of more of its environment – just see how amazingly-complex dolphin and whale behaviour can be, compared with other aquatic species), and the reason why it is asserted that a truly enlightened human must possess a far higher level of intelligence than the average person. The processing unit of a supercomputer must be far larger, more complex and more powerful than the processor in a pocket calculator. Therefore, it seems logical to conclude that the scale of discrete (localized) consciousness is dependent on the animal's brain capacity. See Chapter 17 to understand the distinction between enlightenment and mere awakening. Three STATES of awareness are experienced by humans and possibly all other species of mammals: the waking state (“jāgrata”, in Sanskrit), dreaming (“svapna”, in Sanskrit), and deep-sleep (“suṣupti”, in Sanskrit). Beyond these three temporal states is the fourth “state” (“turīya” or “caturīya”, in Sanskrit). That is the unconditioned, eternal “state”, which underlies the other three. The waking state is the LEAST real (that is to say the least permanent, or to put it another way, the farthest from the Necessary Ground of Existence, as explained towards the end of this chapter). The dream state is closer to our eternal nature, whilst dreamless deep-sleep is much more analogous to The Universal Self (“brahman”), as it is imbued with peace. Rather than being an absence of awareness, deep-sleep is an awareness of absence (that is, the absence of phenomenal, sensual experiences). So, in actual fact, the fourth state is not a state, but the Unconditioned Ground of Being, or to put it simply, YOU, the real self/Self, or Existence-Awareness-Peace (“sacchidānanda”, in Sanskrit). Perhaps the main purpose of dreams is so that we can understand that the waking-state is practically indistinguishable to the dream-state, and thereby come to see the ILLUSION of this ephemeral world. Both our waking-state experiences and our dream-state experiences occur solely within the mental faculties (refer to Chapter 04 for an elucidation of this phenomenon). If somebody in one of your dreams were to ask your dream-state character if the dream was real, you (playing the part of that character) would most likely say, “yes, of course this is real!” Similarly, if someone were to ask your waking-state character if this world is real, you would almost undoubtedly respond in kind. An apt analogy for Universal Consciousness is the manner in which electricity powers a variety of appliances and gadgets, according to the use and COMPLEXITY of the said device. Electricity powers a washing machine in a very simple manner, to drive a large spindle for laundering clothes. However, the very same electrical power may be used to operate a computer to manifest an astonishing range of outputs, such as playing audiovisual tracks, communication tasks, and performing extremely advanced mathematical computations, depending on the computer's software and hardware. The more advanced/complex the device, the more complex its manifestation of the same electricity. Using the aforementioned computer analogy: the brain is COMPARATIVELY equivalent to the computer hardware, deoxyribonucleic acid akin to the operating system working in conjunction with the memory, the intellect is equivalent to the processing unit, individuated consciousness is analogous to the software programme, whilst Universal Awareness is likened to the electricity which enlivens the entire computer system. A person who is comatosed has lost any semblance of local consciousness, yet is being kept alive by the presence of Universal Consciousness. The fact that many persons report out-of-body experiences, where consciousness departs from the gross body, may be evidence for the above. So, then, following-on from the assertion made in the third paragraph, one could complain: “That's not fair – why can only a genius be enlightened?” (as defined in Chapter 17). The answer is: first of all, as stated above, every species of animal has its own level of intelligence on a wide-ranging scale. Therefore, a pig or a dog could (if possible) ask: “That's unfair – why can only a human being be enlightened?” Secondly, it is INDEED a fact that life is unfair, because there is no “tit for tat” law of action and reaction, even if many supposedly-great religious preceptors have stated so. They said so because they were preaching to wicked miscreants who refused to quit their evil ways, and needed to be chastized in a forceful manner. It is not possible to speak gentle words to a rabid dog to prevent it from biting you. There is evidence of Consciousness being a universal field, in SAVANT SYNDROME, a condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrate certain abilities far in excess of the norm, such as superhuman rapid mathematical calculation, mind-reading, blind-seeing, or astounding musical aptitude. Such behaviour suggests that there is a universal field (possibly in holographic form) from which one can access information. Even simple artistic inspiration could be attributed to this phenomenon. The great British singer-songwriter, Sir James Paul McCartney, one day woke with the complete tune of the song, “Yesterday”, in his mind, after hearing it in a dream. American composer, Paul Simon, had a similar experience when the chorus of his sublime masterpiece, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, simply popped into his head. Cont...

25:05 “ consciousness is the most primary reality with which we judge other reality”

Good explanation in absolutes and relativity. Problem solved in three sentences. He is a true scholar. Flowing wisdom.

Simply amazing !!! Wow !!!

Blessings 🌹 from Sindh Pakistan

Unus mundus. Re: Q&A 1:15:40. Fanaa, ego death, ego annihilation. I think Jung describes Fanaa in really practical way, the conciliation of the conscious ego with the unconscious self (Ātman). The transcendent function. Nothing necessarily dies.

Thank you Dr Nasr for the lecture on living consciously, being aware, and alert to the present. The future depends on all of our collective consciousness as God is absolute and therefore gives us the ability to be in the know ( knowledge ) participating in his essence. Very interesting lecture.

Glad to hear other people that keep thinking and asking the same question. What Is atom or sub-atomic particle, what Is it Made of? We are indeed just word of GOD.

Excellent discourse on Consciousness. Professor Nasr has clarified many things

Insights practically applied. Useful n easily understood