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Is Consciousness an Illusion? | Episode 1002 | Closer To Truth



Closer To Truth

What is consciousness? Is consciousness something special in the universe, a carrier of meaning and purpose? Or is consciousness a mere artifact of the brain, a by-product of evolution? I hope consciousness is special, which is why I must be a skeptic. Featuring interviews with Nicholas Humphrey, Julian Baggini, Rebecca Goldstein, Galen Strawson, Anthony Grayling, and Raymond Tallis.

Season 10, Episode 2 – #CloserToTruth

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Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

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Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

#Consciousness #Philosophy

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31 thoughts on “Is Consciousness an Illusion? | Episode 1002 | Closer To Truth
  1. “My hope is that consciousness is something special…” There are two choices, hope or despair. In the absence of any shred of evidence that consciousness is not something special or any apparent reason to presume such evidence ever could be found, why would you choose to be a skeptic? Why would you choose despair? This resembles Pascal’s bargain.

  2. C O N S C I O U S N E S S
    ꧁SACRED TEACHING of DMT꧂
    DMT and 5-MeO-DMT are the molecular structures of a human’s Consciousness. They are the molecules that comprise our Consciousness. All True Psychedelics are the molecular structures of Pure Consciousness. The human body synthesizes it’s own Consciousness (the DMT & 5-MeO-DMT found in humans). Then the human body metabolizes the Conciousness that it is producing. The amount of the endogenous Consciousness that the human body is able to metabolize depends on many factors. The less pollutants, poison & other contaminants present in the body will result in the ability to metabolize more of the Consciousness that body is producing.  Likewise, the more pollution, contaminants, and poison a body has inside of it the less Consciousness it is able to metabolize. Here is a list of some of the most common poisons that humans ingest regularly which interfere with a human body from metabolizing the Consciousness that it produces, as well as any Consciousness that is ingested from external sources:
    alcohol, nicotine, sugar, caffeine, amphetamines, dissociatives, tranquilizers, flouride, hallucinogenics, and a plethora of other drugs are just some of the substances that interfere with humans metabolizing their own Consciousness. The following substances are NOT Psychedelics:
    1-mdma
    2-ketamine
    3-salvia
    4-kratom
    5-dipt
    6-pcp
    7- datura/jimson weed
    There are others . . . . . . .
    Any True Psychedelic will proclaim this Truth if you ask Them.
    The following substances ARE True Psychedelics – They are Alive, Omnicient Living Beings of Light: DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, LSD, Mescaline, Ibogaine, Psilocin, Psilocybin, THC, DPT, DET, Muscimol, there are others . . . .
    So if a human can achieve 100% purity within their bodies, with zero contaminants or pollution (an unattainable state in these current bodies) and managed to metabolize 100% of the endogenous Psychedelics that their physical body is producing (DMT & 5-MeO-DMT), that would be the limit to how Conscious that human can be. In order for a human to become more Conscious than this they must put more Consciousness into their physical bodies. You must put more molecules of Consciousness inside of your physical body in order to attain a Higher level of Consciousness. When you ingest Psychedelics you see Them that you just ingested, not some doorway or window or a “portal” to somewhere else or some entity somewhere else. When you ingest LSD the Light that you see is the LSD Themselves, very Beautiful Living Beings of Light. When you ingest DMT the Entity you see and hear is the Living Light Beings DMT Themselves. The same is true for All True Psychedelics. There is this part from Scripture:
    “They are the Eternal among things that pass away. Pure Consciousness, of Conscious Beings. The ONE who fulfills the prayers of many. Only the wise who see Them in their Souls attain the Peace Eternal”
    (Katha Upanishad)
    The Physical Body of Conciousness is The Flesh of God. The Flesh of God is the True Communion Entity (the Eucharist) The Flesh of God (the Psychedelic) is the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and evil. Our Bodies Truly are the Temple of God because God the Psychedelic Lives within it. As Saint Paul says in 2nd Corinthians chapter 4 verse 7: “We are only the earthenware jars that hold this treasure, to make it clear that such an overwhelming power comes from God and not from us”. That is the meaning of this – you can now understand this better. So whether or not a person is ingesting Psychedelics, every single human’s body is God’s Temple because DMT & 5-MeO-DMT Live within it. Anything you do to hurt or harm your body you do to harm God’s Temple. Once the Psychedelic shows this to you personally, in other words, God shows you that your physical body is THEIR Temple, and you understand this, then anything you do to hurt the Temple of God now is a worst offense in God’s eyes than when you were blind to this Truth. Now you will be deliberately defiling the Temple of God. This understanding is a good Foundation, a good step towards a person Knowing God and being able to stay with Them both in this Lifetime & afterwards.

    https://youtu.be/eHt4bsvMilc

    https://youtu.be/BFE4_gt5s0I

    https://youtu.be/UDOs8da4UAo

    https://youtu.be/_a4YVQgmVE0

    https://youtu.be/6AEOi4yfiK4

    https://youtu.be/0w63Fp8q3ng

    GodsNarrowGate@gmail.com

  3. That guy at the 17 and a 1/2 minute mark makes the most sense. Looking at all these comments talking about illusion vs. illusion I get the feeling a lot of people make an error on a semantic level and not quite understand what the guy at the start meant. Language is an imperfect tool.

  4. You can't explain consciousness, what you can do is only to be aware of it. As scientist we should know that the purpose of science is not to explain the Reality, but only describe it. You can not explain the electron, the quark…. ando so on. I believe that the apex of understanding is to understand that there are limits for the knowledge. The human being has his mental mechanisms based on evolution and things that do not fit our evolutionary reality cannot be touched or understood. We can describe the quantum vacuum, but we will not understand it because it is the essence of nothingness under the human point of view.

  5. Consciousness is the only reality, everything else is an illusion created by the cognitive mechanisms of the psychic structure, the stage where the illusion manifests itself . Clear the mind, stop the thoughts, and in the inner void the consciousness will perceive Reality as it is! Consciousness is not the result of an evolutionary process. Consciousness has always existed, it is the essence of the cosmos. because of that it is possible to be conscious outside the body. I know because I have had this experience.

  6. "Consciousness is an illusion" is a statement completely devoid of meaning. You can't even define what an illusion is without having a conscious observer to illude.

    The "orchestra of the mind" concept I think is probably more in line with the actual reality of consciousness. I mean really a brain is just a specialized computer that takes a number of complicated inputs and has maintains some sort of dynamic memory. While some of those inputs are to the external world (sight, sound, taste, etc.), we also have inputs from other internal areas of the brain. So there's this sort of feedback mechanism that allows the system to self-reflect on its own state. It doesn't seem particularly controversial to suggest that consciousness arises from that internal feedback. You can even see glimpses of the nature of this in people with short term memory loss. Typically, their actions become entirely predictable as they relive the same input and feedback loop over and over.

    I don't understand how we can dismiss that this process arises from material matter. Where is the evidence for that?

  7. You cannot dispose of the "I" because that is a limitation of our languages to explain it. If you never learned to speak you would not think in words and never use this "I" or whatever language references it. You would just have a sense of self.
    Language enables us to communicate and transfer useful information from self to self. In order for that to happen the self has to refer to itself. But void of language this does not happen. Furthermore, having other selfs around that then refers to another self as a separate identity "john doe" confirms that self's existence within. The self asks am I real? An external self says "hi John doe" and John doe's self then goes, "I feel real and this external self confirmed it by referring to me, I then must be real." The community builds up the self or ego by confirming its own existence, it's a feedback loop.

    A human being that never came into contact with other humans would just experience a sense of self, pure sensations and picture dreams. Memories and anticipation would be the only thing keeping that human from being completely ignorant of its own existence as a self that started at some point and will end at another.

  8. … all this is about deals with Being and Doing and Exchanging in order to PLAY the game of COMMUNICATION, which obviously is preferable than Doing NOTHING…

  9. I think many as well here in comment confuse what can be meant by "consciousness is an illusion". What I mean by it is that it's not a unique beyond physics thing, but an orchestra of physical things creating this illusion of oneness. I'm not saying that this process that leads to it is an illusion of course, but that the experienced result of oneness (not just singular senses) is an illusion. In same way how a song is made out of many parts and sounds, coming together into one full "non-physical" picture – this is an illusion, not the elemental parts of which this song is made of.

    It can be real in a sense sure, but fundamentally it's not. That's what many mean by "consciousness is an illusion".

  10. There is NO WAY to proove the existence of CONSCIOUSNESS. In France, at the COLLEGE OF FRANCE, Professor Stan DEHAENE who is working in the field since 1990, found no other way than asking the subject the question : " Are you conscious ? " ( rapport conscient) in order to know if someone is aware or not. For me, it sounds a very blurry criterium for making science….because there are too much space for distortion : for exemple : how is the word CONSCIOUS understood ? Even Prof DEHAENE will have a hard time defining it…so how can he assume that any body understands what it means ? So the first step would be to reliable definition of CONSCIOUSNESS. The 2nd : to find a scientific way to proove its existence. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislas_Dehaene)

  11. The mind is end point of physical reality and starting point for conscious reality. The mind scientifically interprets physical reality, consciousness explains awareness in the mind.

  12. Where the mind takes information gathered in brain and uses math and science to interpret; consciousness takes awareness in mind and uses language to experience reality. There could be development from consciousness to reality to experience to language to awareness to mind to scientific interpretation to math to information gathered in brain to physical reality.

  13. Avada is one area which has received relatively small attention in the past. Closer to truth is an avada. The field is yet to be explored. When performing avada in line with the informants’ own understanding, this produced very positive feelings. When not performing the avada, this resulted in negative feelings and anxiety. The latter also related to a more or less constant stress of not being a good enough and therefore ending up in negativity (abadi of hell) after death for most of the informants. The right choice of religious community was seen as very positive and beware of majority of fakes and negativity. Avada or closer to truth in life and death relatively small attention in the past. The dominant of the past is of something (proven with evidence) rather than nothing (yet to be proven with evidence). Further research is still needed in this much-unexplored field. Important to follow patterns of avada in life and abadi in afterlife as daily life circumstances change, and possible changes in relation to the place of avada (closer to truth of dying) in the life of the abadi (soul immortality).

  14. The only thing that exists is consciousness and that is the consciousness of God. The "I" that I feel to be is the unifying consciousness of God in me. Everything that appears to exist is made out of consciousness. I am a panpsychist panentheist monist. The experience of time passing is consciousness changing. My consciousness, the sense of self which I call self, is part of the universal consciousness which I call Self and that Self is all that exists. Consciousness is beyond time, Self invented time. Everyone's sense of time passing is unique. Each self is unique. We are God/Cosmic consciousness exploring Self as selves. We interact with each other, each being a face of God. God is everything that exists. Imagine you are an infinite intellect, you can invent and create anything that you like and make it work, you are however on your own. Time or the appearance of time passing does not exist as you haven't created time yet. I have a problem here in the language that I use is time based, a verb is a doing word and to do something implies that time is passing. I need time to discuss anything so I cannot adequately express the true reality that exists when I stand back and endeavour to look at myself. Language is inadequate, perhaps a mathematical system (Physics) not including time can describe it but human language cannot. This is why mystics cannot describe the reality they perceive when they 'see' it. I believe that all that exists is a block universe which one could see in a sort of super dimension (super time?) as a fixed concrete block. Within that block are our (and other existing 'beings') consciousnesses which describe wiggly lines in the block, each wiggly line is a life.

  15. Maybe, consciousness is built externally through sensations of the world, a type of script building, that is then internalised, building into the full personal Conscious experience we have of our own self awareness. May be there are no internal brain wired mechanisms where we believe consciousness is based when we are born. Consciousness as a thing may be fleeting, constantly changing. Consciousness may be an empty data centre that fills, over time, with experiential data, that allows our sense of self (awareness) to mature. Just a thought!!
    Are there too many maybe's in this comment!

  16. Congratulations Mr. Kuhn, this is your best video so far, also, is the most difficult issue to deal with.

    Even though, you have inquired about all the possible paths to understand what consciousness is.

  17. its like common sense- to explain it is to annihilate it- but its ok to think about it- its a fahion word at best.. like energy etcetc…an alternative religion or so…whatever…brains measure the world in counterparts of a duality realm- the counterpart of everything or something is nothing- this was simply a "negative" discovery- something was in a place and was gone after looking again- an object that was remembered became nothing. So now the brain can project the reverse into this nothing- call it consciousness, ghosts, soul, spirit, whatever- its all just a projection of the ego that sticks with its senses and its limits…all these projections serve the ego which just wants to show off and survive like any other animal- and who says that there is a physical world and another on top of it? Its the same reverse projected nothing – there is neither of these both worlds.. its just a perception failure and fallacy invention of a tricked brain- think beyond all thoughts and enjoy what you find. Nothing in everything and no cause. Common sense is the functioning of an organism , small or big and is attributes with some ethical ideas, which again find its counterparts.I just destroyed all words and beliefs. Thats freedom. It feels nothing.

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