Stream of consciousness

“ This is an abstract way of dealing with consciousness, in which, as it actually presents itself, a plurality of such faculties are always to be simultaneously found; or we may insist on a concrete view, and then the spiritual self in us will be either the entire stream of our personal consciousness, or the present 'segment' or 'section' of that stream, according as we take a broader or a narrower view—both the stream and the section being concrete existences in time, and each being a unity after its own peculiar kind. ”

“ THE STREAM OF THOUGHT.
We now begin our study of the mind from within. Most books start with sensations, as the simplest mental facts, and proceed synthetically, constructing each higher stage from those below it. But this is abandoning the empirical method of investigation. No one ever had a simple sensation by itself. Consciousness, from our natal day, is of a teeming multiplicity of objects and relations, and what we call simple sensations are results of discriminative attention, pushed often to a very high degree. ”

“ It is contended that the senses correct the vagaries of the mind; that we are enabled to distinguish between the creations of the mind and the impressions brought to it from the external world solely by the consciousness we have, when we are awake, of the action of the senses and the knowledge we have that the impressions borne to us by the senses are objective—that is, made by something existing without ourselves. If, for instance, you close your eyes and give rein to the imagination, a stream of ideas—pictures of persons and places—flows before the mind’s eye. ”

“ As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings. ”

“ Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. ”

“ And this philosopher's well-known formula assumed: there exists a spiritual, non-extended, indivisible substance, an objective, immortal entity, superadded to and independent of brain, which thinks, feels, and wills—a substance cognizable by self-consciousness alone, and which is in fact the "thinking principle" or proper "soul." Mind thus becomes absolutely and wholly an extra-cerebral product, and the possible offspring of activity on the part of the "soul" alone. ”

“ Such a conception would require that every specific state of consciousness, every idea, every thought, perception, sensation and feeling, after it had passed out of mind for the moment, should enter a great sea of ideas which would be the sum total of all our past experiences. ”

“ But what we fail to know, yet what we must know, is the nature of the pristine consciousness which lies integral and progressive within every functioning organism. The brain is the seat of the ideal consciousness. And ideal consciousness is only the dead end of consciousness, the spun silk. The vast bulk of consciousness is non-cerebral. It is the sap of our life, of all life. ”

“ To explore the most sacred depths of the unconscious, to labor in what I have just called the subsoil of consciousness, that will be the principal task of psychology in the century which is opening. I do not doubt that wonderful discoveries await it there, as important perhaps as have been in the preceding centuries the discoveries of the physical and natural sciences. ”

“ It is for the sake of the proof that it is not fundamental that we must now endeavour to decide what it is.
"Consciousness," by those who regard it as fundamental, is taken to be a character diffused throughout our mental life, distinct from sensations and images, memories, beliefs and desires, but present in all of them.* Dr. Henry Head, in an article which I quoted in Lecture III, distinguishing sensations from purely physiological occurrences, says: "Sensation, in the strict sense of the term, demands the existence of consciousness." ”

“ One mind communicates its motion to the other by means of a medium, just as I communicate to your organs of hearing the vibrations of my organs of speech, through the medium of the atmosphere. When I have a thought which is an active condition of the mind, which may be denominated mental action, it is transmitted to the Spirit-medium or Spiritual atmosphere, and undulates through that until it strikes upon that receptive mind where the same motion is communicated, and the same thought produced, and the thought is impressed upon the consciousness. ”

“ There is, first, in the order of our consciousness and in the degree of its undeniableness, the element of our actual impressions, the flux of our consciousness as it apprehends particular sights and sounds, smells and tastes and touches; particular sensations of rest and movement, pleasure and pain, memory, judgment, and volition, a flux, “changeless in its ceaseless change.” We have so far found neither a true object for thought, nor a subject which can think. ”

“ Can the thing, then, in and for your self, be ever separated from your consciousness thereof; or can the consciousness—provided it is the actual or completely determined consciousness of the first degree—be ever separated from the thing? Can you think the thing without the consciousness of it, or an altogether determined consciousness without its thing? Does reality arise for you in any other manner than through your immersing your consciousness into its lowest degree? ”

“ In metaphysics, in phrenology, in animal magnetism, in electricity, in chemistry, the tendency is the same, even when conclusions seem most dissonant. The mind presses nearer home to the seat of consciousness the more intimate law and rule of life, and old limits, become fluid beneath the fire of thought. ”

“ Do you ever know without having a consciousness? Can you ever, therefore, with your knowledge—and since this knowledge, unless you change yourselves into logs and stones, is inseparable from your nature—can you ever with your whole nature go beyond determinations of consciousness? ”

“ The mind must sink itself into the deepest conscious state, NOT UNCONSCIOUSNESS, or absent-mindedness, or sleep, but such a focused concentrated state of absolute consciousness that all thoughts are sunk and merged into the one state, like particles drawn to an irresistible magnet. ”

“ We come now to consider the mental apparatus which is at the disposal of the self: to ask what it can tell us of the method by which she may escape from the prison of the sense-world, transcend its rhythm, and attain knowledge of—or conscious contact with—a supra-sensible Reality. ”

“ But the experience leaves its 'unimaginable touch' on the matter of the convolutions, and the next impression which a sense-organ transmits produces a cerebral reaction in which the awakened vestige of the last impression plays its part. Another sort of feeling and a higher grade of cognition are the consequence. 'Ideas' about the object mingle with the awareness of its mere sensible presence, we name it, class it, compare it, utter propositions concerning it, and the complication of the possible consciousness which an incoming current may arouse, goes on increasing to the end of life. ”

“ And this something, although impossible to be analysed, must be regarded as existing within that mysterious medium which is the uniting force of the universe. The soul must, in fact, be thought of as possessing some sort of "spiritual body" which is the centre of its complex vision and which, therefore, expresses itself in reason, self-consciousness, will, sensation, instinct, intuition, memory, emotion, conscience, taste, and imagination. All this must necessarily imply that the soul is within, and not outside, time and space. ”

“ I will simply ask—What happens if we ascribe to the "originating Mind" the character absolutely essential to the conception of Mind, that it consists of a series of states of consciousness? Put a series of states of consciousness as cause, and the evolving Universe as effect, and then endeavor to see the last as flowing from the first. ”

“ The first seat of our primal consciousnesses the solar plexus, the great nerve-center situated behind the stomach. From this center we are first dynamically conscious. For the primal consciousness is always dynamic, and never, like mental consciousness, static. Thought, let us say what we will about its magic powers, is instrumental only, the soul's finest instrument for the business of living. Thought is just a means to action and living. But life and action take rise actually at the great centers of dynamic consciousness. ”

“ Is every feeling, then, in the whole series of our varied consciousness, referable, in all its parts, to sensation, as its original source?—not its source merely, in one very evident respect, as that which is, in order, truly primary to all our other feelings, but as that which essentially constitutes them all, in the same manner as the waters of the fountain are afterwards the very waters which flow along the mead? ”

“ To maintain that the reality of people’s ‘objective’ experience of God is reducible to neurochemical flux, and nothing more, may be equivalent to maintaining that their experience of the ‘objective’ reality of the sun, the earth, the air they breathe is reducible to neurochemical flux. (D’Aquili & Newberg 1999:120) Furthermore, the aforementioned research illustrates the problem concerning the very nature of subjectivity, objectivity, and consciousness. ”

“ If sensation, and its most developed form, consciousness, is a reflex of the material in something immaterial, which feels itself a unit in contrast to the material, and, where sensation rises into consciousness, is opposed as a unit to the material—self-consciousness again is the reflex of this sentient and conscious subject in a new and still higher immaterial unity ”

“ Suppose these other forms of consciousness brought together and amalgamated with intellect: would not the result be a consciousness as wide as life? And such a consciousness, turning around suddenly against the push of life which it feels behind, would have a vision of life complete—would it not?—even though the vision were fleeting. ”

“ The notice is the consciousness, and the consciousness is the notice.
Thus far, therefore, it appears, with abundant evidence that Reflection is nothing but Consciousness; and Consciousness is the having the sensations and ideas. But what will be objected is, that we not only have Ideas; but we are capable of forming the idea of that particular state of mind which exists when we have an idea. ”

“ All spirits submerged in mortals, subconsciously are en rapport with the spirit spheres, and when the subjective and objective consciousness are fully en rapport, they establish a medium, through which very advanced spirits of exalted spheres can convey into visible expression the results of their wisdom and attainments. ”

“ The tides of wakening consciousness roll in upon them daily as we unclose our eyelids, and keep up the gentle movement and murmur of ordinary mental respiration until we close them again in slumber. When we think we are thinking, we are for the most part only listening to sound of attrition between these inert elements of intelligence. ”

“ The soul bursts day by day into fresh impulses, fresh desire, fresh purpose, at these our polar centers. And from these dynamic generative centers issue the vital currents which put us into connection with our object. We have really no will and no choice, in the first place. It is our soul which acts within us, day by day unfolding us according to our own nature.
From the objective circuits and from the subjective circuits which establish and fulfill themselves at the first four centers of consciousness we derive our first being, our child-being, and also our first mind, our child-mind. ”

“ Sensation, passion, reason, &c., all exist as soon as the human being is born, but consciousness only comes into existence when he has originated within him the notion and the reality denoted by the word "I." Then only does he begin to exist for himself. In our next paper we shall proceed to the discussion of the most important, but at the same time most difficult, question in all psychology — How does consciousness come into operation? ”

“ Our capacities for sensation, for example, are less intimate possessions, so to speak, than our emotions and desires; our intellectual processes are less intimate than our volitional decisions. The more active-feeling states of consciousness are thus the more central portions of the spiritual Me. The very core and nucleus of our self, as we know it, the very sanctuary of our life, is the sense of activity which certain inner states possess. This sense of activity is often held to be a direct revelation of the living substance of our Soul. ”

“ In such cases we find in the unconscious, instead of modern symbolism, an antiquated archaic view of the world and of life. If a requisite psychological function is not represented in the sphere of consciousness, it exists in the unconscious in the form of an archaic or embryonic prototype. ”

“ We have sensations and we have ideas, which are 'copies of sensations.' We may then consider how far these facts will enable us to explain the whole series of mental phenomena. 'Ideation,' which he suggests as a new word—the process by which a continuous series of thoughts goes on in our minds—is the general phenomenon to be considered. Without, as yet, pronouncing that sensations and copies of sensations will turn out to form the whole contents of our consciousness, he tries to show for what part of those contents they will account. ”

“ There exists a gradation of degrees of consciousness, and the fully-conscious course of mental representation is everywhere conditioned by its connection with the obscured spheres beyond. Our attention surveys but a small area, on the boundary lines of which the altitudes of consciousness decrease, and finally approach the zero point. ”