By: What Is Consciousness? - The Negative Psychologist

[…] Space might be said to exist in a negative way; which isn’t really ‘existing’ at all in the way that we normally think of it. Space doesn’t assert itself at all, and because of this it has the capacity to allow anything at all to exist (and assert itself as it wishes) without any effort of straining on its part. Space’s ‘negative existence’ facilitates all sorts of positive or assertive existences, in other words. We can suggest therefore that consciousness or awareness might have a purely negative type of existence in that it can be aware of all sorts of positive objects and events, without any ‘striving’ on its part, without the imposition of any pre-existing ideas or assumptions, and this accords with our share actual experience of awareness being an essentially ‘open’ kind of thing, and not at all rigid or ‘closed’ as we know the thinking mind to be. For the thinking mind to investigate consciousness therefore, and turn it to the object of its narrow (i.e.. rule-based) enquiry, would in this case be something of a joke. Thought can only ever acknowledge phenomenon that correspond to its categories or rules (which are ‘positive’ in nature) so and this means that it is incapable of acknowledging the negative reality that is space. This is why we automatically assume that space doesn’t deserve any status in the hierarchy of existence, that is why we assume that it is ‘negligible’ so to speak. This is the thing about thought – it always has to have some sort of ‘angle’ (some sort of ‘solid ‘starting-point’) with regard to what it is making an enquiry into. If it doesn’t have an angle then it can’t proceed and this corresponds to what we have already said about thought always having to ‘narrow the field’ before it can get to work. ‘Narrowing the field’ works, and is appropriate, when we want to find out about the figure. Narrowing the field means however, that we are by focusing exclusively on the particular and thereby ignoring the universal. If consciousness is something that is universal rather than particular then in this case, by employing the tool of rational enquiry, we would be wrong-footing ourselves right from the start. Given our very great tendency (even as scientists) not to look at the limitations that are inherent in rational thought, it is more than likely that this is exactly what we are going to do…Art: Taken from article by Tim Hinchcliffe Virtual Reality Takes Consciousness Research into Mystic Realms of the Divine Play […]