Consciousness does not need energy

[Ben Iscatus]

If BK were asked this question, mooted by JW in the Criticism thread, how would Analytic Idealism respond:

If consciousness looks like metabolic activity, then how can it be fundamental, in the sense that metabolism needs energy - food and air to survive?

Here's a possible answer, based on my understanding of Analytic Idealism:

Consciousness does not depend on energy because it does not die at the end of the metabolism. Each metabolising alter is absorbed back into ‘Mind at Large’. What ends is the dissociative process. The dissociative process is not visible to us because evolution has not given us the means to see it. We only observe its representation -bodies with metabolism. Similarly, the unified quantum field of energy is a representation. What does it represent - what is it really? Consciousness. To say that energy is more fundamental than consciousness is to either be physicalist or implicitly dualist. Consciousness feeds on nothing except itself. There is nothing else for it to feed on.

The Laws of Physics are regularities in the transpersonal mind, archetypal patterns expressing a part of its nature. Included in them are what we conceptualize as the laws of thermodynamics. Dissociated alters have to obey those laws, so need to resist entropy to survive. Evolution of separate alters in a planetary environment is a Big Idea in the transpersonal mind - and obtaining energy to support the dissociative process by eating, drinking and breathing are subsidiary ideas. The phenomenal appearances of food, water and air are of course only representations of such ideas.

There is also a trickster element here: to confound alters into believing they are not eternal consciousness, by needing to struggle to survive; helping to reinforce belief in their self-identity and thus in their dissociative boundaries.

[Jim Cross]

What do you make of the "excitations"? Isn't consciousness in its nature energetic?

I think it is.

[Ben Iscatus]

What do you make of the "excitations"? Isn't consciousness in its nature energetic?
I think it is.

I think it can be passive as well as active - when its just "awareness" (as when we meditate). Or perhaps that's just reduced excitation. But yes, "excitations" is metaphor-speak. It would be useful to have something more precise. The theosophists and New Agers talk of "vibrations" - I guess its a variant of that.

The problem also exists at the physical level, because (as you know) it used to be thought there was a medium for the transmission of light waves, etc, but that was later abandoned, so light doesn't work like sound in air. I remember Rupert Sheldrake once pointed out that the idea of the "etheric body" or vehicle arose in Victorian times when it was believed that the universe had an ether. It's interesting too that alcohol is linked to ether (ethyl alcohol) and spirits; also that anaesthetics were ether -yet they correlate with the loss of metaconsciousness. All very confused.

[Soul_of_Shu]

What do you make of the "excitations"? Isn't consciousness in its nature energetic?

I think it is.

Isn't energy, even at the level of the quantum vacuum/zero-point energy state, still in some way measurable and quantifiable, and thus phenomenal, beyond which it dissolves into mathematical formulations? Whereas the excitations of consciousness BK alludes to, I understand to be ideational, which can't be measured or quantified.

[Jim Cross]

What do you make of the "excitations"? Isn't consciousness in its nature energetic?

I think it is.

Isn't energy, even at the level of the quantum vacuum/zero-point energy state, still in some way measurable and quantifiable, and thus phenomenal, beyond which it dissolves into mathematical formulations? Whereas the excitations of consciousness BK alludes to, I understand to be ideational, which can't be measured or quantified.

If consciousness isn't energetic, how does it create or transform anything? How does it manifest the world? Why or how would it manifest energy or metabolizing organisms?

[Jim Cross]

What do you make of the "excitations"? Isn't consciousness in its nature energetic?
I think it is.

I think it can be passive as well as active - when its just "awareness" (as when we meditate). Or perhaps that's just reduced excitation. But yes, "excitations" is metaphor-speak. It would be useful to have something more precise. The theosophists and New Agers talk of "vibrations" - I guess its a variant of that.

The problem also exists at the physical level, because (as you know) it used to be thought there was a medium for the transmission of light waves, etc, but that was later abandoned, so light doesn't work like sound in air. I remember Rupert Sheldrake once pointed out that the idea of the "etheric body" or vehicle arose in Victorian times when it was believed that the universe had an ether. It's interesting too that alcohol is linked to ether (ethyl alcohol) and spirits; also that anaesthetics were ether -yet they correlate with the loss of metaconsciousness. All very confused.

This isn't a consensus view but it is interesting.

The link between general relativity and electromagnetism becomes clear by assuming that the so-called four-potential of electromagnetism directly determines the metrical properties of the spacetime. In particular, our research shows how electromagnetism is an inherent property of spacetime itself. In a way, spacetime itself is therefore the aether. Electric and magnetic fields represent certain local tensions or twists in the spacetime fabric.

It means that the material world always corresponds to some geometric structures of spacetime. Tensions in spacetime manifest themselves as electric and magnetic fields. Moreover, electric charge relates to some compressibility properties of spacetime. Electric current seems to be a re-balancing object, which transports charge in order to keep the spacetime manifold Ricci-flat.

https://sciencex.com/news/2021-07-elect ... etime.html

"Ether' or "aether" means light-bearing.

Diethyl ether is C4H10O. Ethyl alcohol is C2H6O.

[Soul_of_Shu]

If consciousness isn't energetic, how does it create or transform anything? How does it manifest the world? Why or how would it manifest energy or metabolizing organisms?

It may well be due to challenging questions like this that BK stopped interactively engaging in forum activity, and instead when asked such questions by his audience he re-directed them here

[Jim Cross]

If consciousness isn't energetic, how does it create or transform anything? How does it manifest the world? Why or how would it manifest energy or metabolizing organisms?

It may well be due to questions like this that BK stopped engaging in forum activity, and instead when asked such questions by his audience he re-directed them here

I think you could argue, however, that it has an energetic property even though the property is not the same as the energy that physics measures. If we can assign no properties or attributes to consciousness, other than consciousness itself, we are left with what I think I have called a "consciousness blob".

[Jim Cross]

Shu,

I can't seem to find it but isn't there somewhere BK describes consciousness (or MAL) as "volitional". There seemed to be a debate about on the old forum about whether that implied that it is meta-cognitive. I thought it was poor choice of words but interpreted it to mean energetic and creative.

[Ben Iscatus]

I think you could argue, however, that it has an energetic property even though the property is not the same as the energy that physics measures. If we can assign no properties or attributes to consciousness, other than consciousness itself, we are left with what I think I have called a "consciousness blob".

Well yes, consciousness does stuff, and that's why BK talks of excitations. If quantum fields are the weak representation of the real deal (which we can't access, due to our inadequate perceptual interface), then it makes sense that the Plato's cave shadow of what we see is related to what is really there out in the sunshine. So I'm happy with your idea that consciousness has a type of energetic quality - however that works. Strength or power of will (volition), as you say, also makes sense.

My school days told me ethyl alcohol was C2H5OH. I 'd better look at that.