[austintorn@aol.com]

I think, in brief, consciousness is the inner reality in which we locate thoughts, feelings, and objects in time and space in a global way—as opposed to a machine or zombie which just operates.

This inner reality is all we ever see, and it is ever and always inside our heads.

Is there an outer reality? I would guess so, but we never see it directly. The brain projects it back out where it probably is, from the information contained in its radiation. However, we would swear that unlucid night dreams have “stuff” that is really there, too.

I suppose the brain does most of its analysis subconsciously, the impending result presented to consciousness, alarmingly to some, after most, if not all, of the analysis is done. Perhaps this result is fed back in to see if a veto comes back, at least for those who don’t act instantly on their thoughts and count to ten.

So, let’s say, of all of your whole self and memories and capacity, a thought surfaces on the mind that you are happy. Consciousness observes this thought, as an audience watches a play, and so you say “I am happy”, the ‘I’ being the subject, consciousness, of the object on display: the experience of happiness.

Some think that consciousness can only be a subject, never an object, and so is the same for (the normal) everyone.

Consciousness is, to me, is the sea in which we “see”, not that which we “see”, but, of course, there’s no where else for it to be seen.

Note that no amount of physical facts about wavelengths or such can hint of, say, what the color “red” looks like in our inner reality. Therein lies the gap.

Explaining consciousness is one of the last frontiers for which we have no clue for (the gap).

Is it like a sixth sense of the brain perceiving itself? Or is the universe made of it? Or from it?