The only means of strengthening one's intelligence is to make up one's mind about nothing-- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. - John Keats (1795 - 1821) No matter what aspect of conscious experience we wish to consider, whether it involves a clearly temporal action or event like wrestling an alligator, … Continue reading The Dynamics of Consciousness
There are a number of interesting developments in artificial intelligence these days, and the progress being made in making these technologies useful, especially in the medical and educational realms, gives us some cause for optimism regarding their use in the future. Even the current selection of options available in AI chat-bot applications, represent an impressive … Continue reading Developments In Artificial Intelligence
Daffodils announce the Season For those of us on the East Coast of the USA, it finally is beginning to feel like Spring! The recent rise in daily temperatures to the more seasonable level found me searching for a Spring theme to share with my readers here and in the process, I came upon a … Continue reading Finally…Spring!
This gem of a book struck me as one of the best examples of a scientist who is unafraid of stretching the boundaries of how to view the workings of our mind. How easily she glides between science and metaphor and yet remains solidly in the science camp as a rule! Her discussion in chapter … Continue reading An Alchemy of Mind
"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted." - Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 Recent reading and contemplation have brought up a number of serious reconsiderations of … Continue reading To Everything…There is a Season
One of the advantages of accumulating a fair number of decades of life experience, still reasonably intact in the main, is the ability to reflect upon and seriously consider what one has endured and accomplished over the course of those decades. As I now traverse the early days of my eighth decade, I suppose that … Continue reading Living Through and Through
The subjective experience of consciousness, as all functionally cognitive people know it, is in a constant state of flux. The person you were yesterday when you experienced your first ride on a roller coaster or jumped out of a perfectly good airplane for the first time is not the same person you are today, having … Continue reading Spiritual Resonance
Being an individual on our planet, in our solar system, in our galaxy, in this universe, is only one component of our reality, not the whole story. There is a comprehensive wholeness to the universe—to reality—to existence—within that universe, which consists of physical matter, governed by physical laws, as well as a variety of unknowns … Continue reading Beyond the Material World: A Non-Physical Reality?
Recent reading and investigation have inspired a wave of inner reflection and contemplation about the nature of my personal experience as a human person, and what exactly the point of it all might be in the first place. Clearly, the specific details of my personal life—the epoch into which my arrival on this planet took … Continue reading Life Events and My Personal Writing Space
The debate has raged for centuries. Ancient religions have wrestled with the notion of the existence of a separate “individual self or soul,” which might actually be a mental illusion (Maya) blocking our efforts to eventually attain true enlightenment. According to the Eastern philosophical view, release from the relentless cycles of Samsara (Moksha) requires abandonment … Continue reading Taking Care of Your “Self?”
John's Consciousness 