You Are Trapped Inside Consciousness FOREVER. — Transcript

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1. 0:00The universe could collapse. Your body could  disappear. Time itself could stop. And you
2. 0:06still would not escape the place you were trapped  inside right now, consciousness. You have never
3. 0:12been outside it. Not once. And you have never seen  what exists beyond it, touched anything beyond it,
4. 0:19or even imagined beyond it. Because every image  of an outside appears inside consciousness, too.
5. 0:27You were trapped in something with no walls, no  doors, and no location. And the most disturbing
6. 0:33part is that you cannot even prove there is an  outside. Look at your actual experience right now.
7. 0:40You probably believe you're inside a  room. But what do you actually know?
8. 0:45You see colors and shapes. You hear sounds. You  feel pressure where your body touches the chair.
9. 0:50You experience thoughts interpreting  all of this as me sitting inside a room.
10. 0:56But the room you know is not outside your  experience. It is appearing as your experience.
11. 1:02The walls, the floor, the distance between  objects, all of it exists for you as seeing,
12. 1:08sensing, and knowing. You may believe there's  a physical world behind these appearances.
13. 1:15There may be. But even that belief is another  thought appearing inside consciousness.
14. 1:21You cannot crawl behind your perception  to check. It is like being born inside a
15. 1:26television screen and trying to discover what  exists beyond the glass. Every tool you build,
16. 1:32every experiment you conduct, and every conclusion  you reach appears as another image on the screen.
17. 1:37Even the idea of the screen's exterior is still  playing on the screen. Here is where the trap
18. 1:43becomes absolute. Imagine escaping Earth. You  board a spacecraft, cross the solar system,
19. 1:50leave the galaxy, and continue beyond the edge of  the observable universe. What have you escaped?
20. 1:57Earth, perhaps, gravity, the familiar sky, maybe  even space and time as you understood them.
21. 2:04But every star, every kilometer, every impossible  dimension is still appearing within consciousness.
22. 2:11You can change what you experience, you  cannot experience your way out of experience.
23. 2:17Try it now. Attempt to place your  attention outside consciousness.
24. 2:21Do not imagine outer space. That image appears in  consciousness. Do not imagine blackness. Blackness
25. 2:28is something perceived. Do not imagine nothing.  The thought of nothing is still something.
26. 2:35Wherever attention travels,  consciousness is already there.
27. 2:39Like a country whose border moves forward  every time you approach it. You can never
28. 2:43reach the edge because the edge itself would have  to appear within what you were trying to escape.
29. 2:49This is not a poetic metaphor. It is the  unavoidable structure of your experience.
30. 2:54But wait. Surely consciousness is inside the  brain. That would seem to solve the problem.
31. 2:59Consciousness as a temporary biological  event contained inside a skull.
32. 3:05When the brain stops, consciousness ends. Trap  destroyed. Except you have never encountered
33. 3:10a brain outside consciousness. You have seen  pictures of brains. You have may have touched one,
34. 3:15studied one, or watched its activity on a monitor.  But the image, texture, measurement, scientists,
35. 3:22and laboratory were all experienced as  appearing within awareness. Your brain may
36. 3:26correlate with consciousness. Damage the brain,  experience changes. Anesthesia alters experience.
37. 3:34Chemicals alter perception. That evidence is real.  But it does not answer the deepest question. Does
38. 3:40the brain produce consciousness, or is the brain  itself a pattern appearing within consciousness?
39. 3:46A radio changes the music when you damage its  circuitry. That does not by itself tell you
40. 3:52whether the radio created the song. And here  is the problem materialism cannot step around.
41. 3:58Matter is supposed to explain consciousness, but  matter is only ever known through consciousness.
42. 4:04You use perceptions occurring in awareness to  argue that awareness was produced by something
43. 4:09outside awareness. It is like a courtroom  where the defendant, judge, jury, evidence,
44. 4:15and entire building are all made from the same  unidentified substance. And everyone has agreed
45. 4:21not to mention it. Now notice something even  stranger. You do not experience consciousness as
46. 4:26an object. You experience thoughts, colors, pain,  memory, sound, and emotion. But consciousness
47. 4:34itself has no visible shape. Can you find its  size? Does awareness end at your skin? If it does,
48. 4:43show yourself the border. Move your attention  towards the supposed edge of consciousness.
49. 4:49Perhaps you feel your arm, then the air, then  the wall across the room. But the arm, air,
50. 4:56wall, and apparent distance between them are  all present within the same field of knowing.
51. 5:02The border never appears. You assume awareness  is located behind your eyes because vision seems
52. 5:08centered there. But the pressure behind your eyes  is also something you perceive. The image of your
53. 5:13face is perceived. The thought I'm in my head is  perceived. So try to find the one who is aware.
54. 5:20You may find a voice saying, "I am right here."  But that voice is another sound in consciousness.
55. 5:28You may find an image of yourself. That image is  being seen. You may find tension in your forehead
56. 5:34or feeling in your chest. Those sensations are  being noticed. Can you find the observer or only
57. 5:41more things being observed? If everything you can  find is an appearance, then the person supposedly
58. 5:47trapped inside consciousness may also be part of  the trap. The name, the face, the history, the
59. 5:54internal narrator, the feeling of being a small  witness behind the eyes. All of that appears.
60. 6:02You may not be a person in prison inside  consciousness. The person may be something
61. 6:06consciousness is currently displaying. Think about  a dream. Inside the dream, you can become trapped
62. 6:12in a building. You can run through hallways,  break windows, and desperately search for an exit.
63. 6:19But even if the dream character escapes  the building, it does not escape the dream.
64. 6:24The street outside is dream, the sky is  dream, the body running beneath it is dream.
65. 6:30There is no direction a character could  travel that leads outside of the dreaming
66. 6:34because the character, the journey, and the  destination are made from the same event.
67. 6:41Waking life may be structured in a disturbingly  similar way. Not because the world is unreal,
68. 6:46but because everything you call the world is  inseparable from the consciousness in which it
69. 6:51appears. What about deep sleep? Surely  you escape consciousness every night.
70. 6:57But have you ever experienced unconsciousness? You  experience becoming tired, then perhaps dreams,
71. 7:04then you experience waking up and thinking, "I  was gone." But the missing interval was never
72. 7:10experienced as a state outside consciousness.  You did not stand in unconsciousness watching
73. 7:15consciousness disappear. There was simply no  registered experience followed by a thought
74. 7:20about an absence. A blank page is not described  where the story went. It only contains no words.
75. 7:28Death presents the same impossible mystery.  We can observe when a body stops functioning.
76. 7:32We can measure the brain losing activity,  but you can never personally experience
77. 7:36the absence of experience. If an absence were  experienced, it would no longer be an absence.
78. 7:43From the first-person perspective, you can never  arrive at a known condition outside knowing.
79. 7:49Every possible destination appears here.
80. 7:53Now, the trap turns inside out. At first, being  trapped inside consciousness sounds horrifying.
81. 7:58Like eternal solitary confinement. But that fear  assumes you are a small person locked inside
82. 8:04awareness. Look again. If the body appears in  consciousness, thoughts appear in consciousness,
83. 8:11and the feeling of me appears in consciousness,  then what exactly is imprisoned? The walls are
84. 8:16appearing in you. The prison guard is appearing  in you. The prisoner is appearing in you. Even
85. 8:21the desperate desire to escape is another movement  inside the openness it is trying to escape from.
86. 8:28You were not trapped inside consciousness like  a fly inside a jar. You are trapped inside
87. 8:32consciousness like a wave is trapped inside water.  Remove the water and there is no liberated wave.
88. 8:40There is no wave at all. Consciousness is not  the cage around your life. It is the substance
89. 8:46from which the cage, the prisoner, the  world, and the idea of escape are made.
90. 8:52You have never left consciousness.  You cannot leave consciousness.
91. 8:56But perhaps that is because there's nowhere else  to go. And no separate you who could go there.
92. 9:02You are trapped inside consciousness forever. Not  because consciousness surrounds you, but because
93. 9:08in your direct experience, consciousness is the  one thing you have never been separate from.