AWARENESS: The Constancy of Electrochemical Synaptical Stimulation

“Awareness” is a concept for which is attached all manner of transcendental mystical kumbaya. But, as many “master” practitioners of the meta-spiritual have proselytized, you are already aware.

However, to maintain fixation on their metaphysical teachings, they rely on "levels of awareness," with the additional claim that they are experiencing a higher level of “awareness” to which you are not yet "aware," but for which they can teach you how to become "aware."

Every time a neuro-circuit fires it is an electrochemical experience in the brain. As long as the brain is still electrified then there is never a time you are NOT aware, because there is never a single solitary nano-second in which some circuit somewhere in the brain is NOT firing at some moment.

And that, my friends, in a nutshell, is “awareness.”

What the brain is giving attention to in any moment, through electrochemical stimulation is “awareness.” What you're not aware of is simply unstimulated neuro-circuits. Only the most powerful circuits cause the most awareness so, essentially, what the "enlightened masters" teach is how to construct circuits more powerful than others.

Yet, we still cannot deny circuitry. Awareness cannot be extracted out from any specific electrochemical synaptic stimulation, because awareness IS... electrochemical synaptic stimulation.

The concept of “awareness,” in other words, my writing or talking about "awareness," is the same neuro-stumulation as if I were in deep meditational bliss. My conceptualizing “awareness" has a circuit all its own, linked up with numerous other socio-culturally conditioned circuits to give a linguistically based concept for engaged communication with others . Meditational bliss also has a circuit all its own, linking up with billions of other circuits.

But, what you loathe to hear is that you are nothing more than neuro-circuits and I am truly sorry for informing you of such (not!).Yet, in realizing "thoughts" are nothing more than electrochemical neuro-circuit firings, you no longer need to struggle for control. Let them fire off and disappear, rise and fall, because you can no more control your brain circuitry then you can control the weather.

So it makes no difference (except to the pseudo-gurus and pretenders who want your attention and, more likely, your money) what kind of awareness one experiences, because awareness itself will attend you to your death and you have NO choice in this.

No matter what other neuro-circuitry you link up to awareness as conceptual, in your efforts to construct more circuits such as “pure awareness” or “direct awareness, it is still nothing more than electrochemically stimulated brain circuitry. You could drop some great acid or ride the worlds tallest roller coaster and both would give you a neuro-circuit experience that would seem more than just... awareness. But it is still just... awareness. However many ways you wish to slice and dice it through conceptual interpretations (additional brain circuitry), it is still brain-centered and synaptically stimulated and it has no other basis but that.

Ahhhh...now isn't that "liberating"? (also a circuit).

So what makes awareness, while alcoholically intoxicated, different from awareness of a "non-dual" state?

Nothing. They are both synaptical stimulation, just different electrochemical cocktails. One is stimulated through chemical ingestion, but both are brain-based in origin. The only difference is related to socio-culturally conditioned brain circuitry which superimposes different meanings upon specific brain-based experiences. Thus, achieving an experience of .10 alcohol intoxication does not help fire off positive limbic center emotions, the same as achieving the non-dual state, simply because you are wired to perceive alcohol intoxication as a less VALUABLE experience or for different purposes, although both employ the same types of chemicals, GABA, acetycholine, dopamine, seratonin, etc, etc.

But achieving the "non-dual" state is as electrochemically constructed as achieving alcohol intoxication. In either case, both experiences eventually wear off and you go chasing after it again.

I watched a video recently in which a scientist reported on the effects of the non-dual state ON the brain. This was a spiritual video, so he stated his research as if the non-dual experience affected the brain rather than the brain actualizing or generating the non-dual experience. In other words, out of the great universal cosmic consciousness, “non-duality” magically seeped through the subjects cranium (or up the “chakras”) and, thereby, interacted with the brain to cause electrochemical stimulation associated with a brain-centered experience referred to as the ""non-dual state (but is it? or just a great whizbang synaptical explosion?).

This helps keep the ancient texts alive and the mystical prognosticators of non-dual awareness can still write more gobbeldy goop in books that you’ll pay big bucks to read.

The brain is the cause of every experience “you” encounter as effect. There is no other cause and no effects exist outside your grey matter.

It is true that as long as you’re alive, you are aware and conscious. Levels of awareness are brain activated, but you will always return to your baseline level of awareness because that’s simply how you’re wired-up (a schizophrenic will return to baseline wiring, although we may interpret that as mentally ill).

Like me, I’m sure many of you can attest to such experiences. So you have to wonder how these “enlightenment” practitioners get away with perpetrating themselves as somehow different from you or I and as having something to teach you about awareness that you and I need to learn. Nah, what they are actually teaching you is their special concept of awareness, which you cannot achieve, since the ‘concept’ arose specifically from their unique brain circuitry. You cannot experience their concept. You can only experience your own concepts.You can have an ‘experience’ and then fire off a bunch more synapses to generate a linguistic understanding of that experience through a ‘concept.’ But you are experiencing words and the special emotional significance attached to the words are linked up with the emotion producing Limbic system.

Awareness was initially generated in the womb. Circuits then gradually linked up to other circuits causing a neuro-circuit superhighway of continuous awareness. If you wanted you could have large portions of your brain lobotomized in the desire to return to the very limited awareness prior to birth that would come from the reduction of circuitry. But a more important question is why is your brain circuitry what it is right now at this moment. What experiences imprinted upon the brain creating the circuitry that you are aware of right now? Why did you have the experiences you have had that formed your particular brain to "think" and "believe" as it does now? This was not WILLED by you. How could it, since you had no choice in your birth, parents or childhood experiences? Not one circuit in your brain, that you now experience as your “self” existing through a “life,” was chosen by you, but all circuits are “you.”

What brought you to this moment, to this very sentence you read right now? All the imprinted experiences of your life has constructed neuro-cicuitry that brought you to this very moment, only to lead you to the next and the next and the next.

So here you are….

Why?

Are you ever so slowly, gradually, unbeknowst even to your ‘self,” on a path to approaching...

…God?

Simply go where the circuits take you.

What other choice do you have?

Artwork by Adam Sicinski "How to Mind Map"