Does Tom Campbell say that? I can't say I agree. Sounds a bit simplistic.

Thanks, I can't watch while at work, and my Mom is staying at my house this week, so I probably won't be able to watch while at home. So it might be a while before I watch.

BillB wrote on Jul 4^th, 2015 at 11:18pm:


In all the fields of human knowledge there is nothing so complex that it cannot be explained in simple words and terms by those who truly understand it.

But some mediums of communication are harder than others as in written form without verbal communication to enable one to quickly correct misunderstandings and without pictures to communicate some things, and when having short space and time. But even so, anything can be put clearly and simply, without jargon, and articulated with common knowledge so as to maximise understanding.

BillB wrote on Jul 4^th, 2015 at 11:18pm:


We must define our terms. I will define mine:
Consciousness is the central “I”; the core identity; the central intelligence; the central observer, decider, and source of effort. Consciousness consists of three attributes: awareness of self and surroundings, freewill, and the ability to exert force. (For convenience I will here define consciousness and soul as the same item; soul being consciousness, consciousness being soul. And intelligence too as the same item.)

The first aspect of consciousness is awareness, and is double sided; it can look outward at its surroundings, and it can look inward, back into itself. Like the inner and outer surfaces of a tennis ball each face in different directions, one inward and one outward. Imagine both surfaces of the tennis ball each having an eye upon them; each eye is back to back to the other, with one eye looking outwardly, the other eye looking inwardly. So too, awareness is both outward looking or external awareness, and inward looking or internal awareness. And so by definition, awareness is awareness of itself and its surroundings.

Awareness is the outer layer or first aspect of consciousness. This is also passive intelligence, the ability to discriminate but no ability to freely choose, for choice is pre-programed as in computers or instinctual as in animals. The second aspect of consciousness is freewill or active intelligence, which is the ability to freely choose any option perceived; and the third aspect of consciousness is the ability to exert and apply force, and which in reference to intelligence  is creative intelligence, which is the ability to freely select aspects from a variety of options and blend them together to create a previously imagined result, which is creativity, or to create an anticipated result which is problem solving.   

As an analogy of outward awareness, the eye of your physical body cannot see itself; it may look and search all over your body but it cannot see itself. But it can know its own existence when it realises that it is the one who is doing the looking. Only a foolish eye would conclude its self does not exist because it cannot see itself anywhere on the body. So it is with awareness or consciousness, that is, the soul. The soul is the one who looks; the one with the awareness.

The physical eye can take a reverse bearing off any item it can see, reverse the direction of that item back upon itself and thereby know its own location and existence. So too consciousness can take a reverse bearing off any item it can see, including any structured thought within the mind, and know its own location and existence as the central observer.

Consciousness can exercise both its external and internal awareness at the same time. It can extend either of them, or both of them, it can reach in both directions, outward and inward simultaneously. There is as much within as there is without. Both external and internal awareness have faculties, or senses, which are subdivisions of awareness, and of which the body's senses are the material imprints or replications, and which means that both internal and external awareness can perceive thoughts and energies and matter in different formats, just like the body's senses perceive material reality in its different formats via the different senses.

The term surroundings here refers to anything outward of awareness, of which awareness can be aware, being all structured thoughts, whether visual, auditory or any other format, all emotions and feelings, all sensory income, all environmental surrounding, whether of the physical, emotional or mental environment.

External or outward looking awareness is one station of consciousness. Back to back to external awareness, looking inward, is internal awareness, which is another station of consciousness. Inward further is the station of freewill, or control, which directs the two stations of awareness. This station of control looks outward at the station of internal awareness, and if internal awareness is extended inward within and through the freewilled control station, and from the control station looks further inward and upward it comes to the station of conscience, with which it communicates but of which it is free to obey or disobey. The conscience is like a skylight at the inner upper pinnacle of consciousness. It is the highest sense within our self of what is good and right to do. This is not the individual or social construct that psychs tell us is the conscience, but is an actual organ in the soul. It may be complied with or ignored; that ability of compliance or ignoring it is what enables our freewill. If the freewilled controlling/directing station, along with internal awareness, continues reaching within and upward, it comes up against the station of conscience or the skylight, and can penetrate it, and may go further within and upward, to that of which conscience is the voice of. We might call this station above conscience the master self, or overself. It is that from which we extend, and relative to which, we are like a pseudopod. There is a communication line between each station of consciousness, and the line runs downward through our centres of consciousness in the body, and the line is our consciousness. The line is a cord. It is our self, with stations going upward into itself, and centres of interplay with the Earth's various planes as it goes downward through the body. The line is layered within itself, like a coaxial cable, with spirit/life running down the middle, and communications running along and around the outside. Like the optic nerve has life blood running to and fro through the central blood vessels and around the blood vessels is the optic nerves that carry communications.  As the cord runs down through the subtle bodies and through the physical body different parts of the cord's outer layers peel off at each bodily centre of consciousness, at which energies of that plane and its respective body of ours circulate through that centre. And when we work inwards and upwards into our consciousness we pass through its stations of consciousness, as described.

At the thread's centre and most core is the flow of spirit or pure life, and it is the friction between this layer of spirit and the other layers that produces awareness, both external and internal, and the layers going inward or outward of awareness as awareness is retracted or extended, for spirit permeates everything and everywhere, and we can retract or extend it.

The freewilled or directing station is a product of the life and awareness thread descending into our bodies while the surrounding communication layers of the thread have their flow ceased or held back at the semi-permeable membrane of the skylight, so they only come into the soul faintly, until we dissolve the skylight through living it outwardly and creating a continual outflow from conscience down through the stations and out through our living into the physical world.

It is the combination of this freedom to act independently to conscience, together with the illusory nature of earth life, where mortality seems so real, and survival so necessary, that provides us with freewill and its potential to learn and grow. For freewill requires falsity to be truly free, and also requires ignorance of truth, so it can venture across the full range of truth and falsity, ignorant and learning as it goes. We lived before birth and live after death, but we don't know that, so we strive to survive while alive on Earth. We didn't know what being alive was before we came into earthly bodies with survival needs and drives, and when we pass through death we emerge as a soul with a realisation of what our being alive is, for we have just past through a life of trying to survive finishing in a convincing death and now we stand alive and conscious of it. And so too, with every emotion, feeling and thought related to physical survival, and living requirements and comforts, after death each one of those false emotions, thoughts and attitudes activates a realisation of a quality of true life within the soul, or a true virtue or energy, which we could not have activated without the falsity of Earthly living to bring our realisation to it.      

By exploring the stations of consciousness, going up and down them, and through proper prayer and use of our freewill and faculties, through exercising all the aspects of our consciousness, we gradually become knowledgeable of the nature of our consciousness or intelligence, and aware of the interplay between consciousness and our surrounding psychological machinery, being the mind and emotions and their interaction, and we come to understand the nature of the human condition.            

In essence consciousness results from the friction between spirit and matter; and intelligence results from the contrast between spirit and matter, or more accurately from the contrast between light and darkness in their most absolute sense. Between these two greatest extremes is an infinite array of possibilities that result from the gradient between the two, or from the spectrum of shades and colour and all their combinations thereof that exist between light and darkness, between spirit and matter, and which comprise all existence. And life in its most essential form is the dynamic between the two greatest and most primal extremes, and which dynamic permeates all existence. 

1796,  Personally I "believe" that awareness is an attribute of matter, like mass or charge.

It may aggregate and develop into consciousness thus allowing everything to be aware, conscious as a system.

BUT I would never be able to claim that is "true", and it cannot be proven.  Unlike mass or charge is cannot be quantified.  It is only what "I" think may be one underpinning to reality.

I have Tom Campbell's book but I've only read a little of it. I've read about quantum mechanics some, but I'm not a physicist, so I won't be able to say a lot about Tom Campbell's "beliefs" this way.

I've watched some of his videos. In one of them he was explaining why he knows what he says is true. It seemed as if there wasn't a lot of room for doubt. At this time he's human, so he can be wrong about some things just as all of us including myself can be wrong.

Early in his book he speaks of Seth/Jane Roberts as a background source. I wonder how open minded he is about questioning Seth/Jane Roberts. If he isn't open-minded about this, then he might not be open minded about questioning other things.

Below is what I wrote about Seth/Jane Roberts a while back.  I wonder how willing Tom would be to consider the logic of some of the things I said.

http://nondualityisdualistic.com/a-night-in-heaven/chapter-13/

I like some of the things Tom says, but it does seem like he de-mystifies things too much.  Existence is magical.

I think a key point is to not assume that everything Tom says is correct. Some of what he says sounds accurate to me, but not everything.

One time I was looking at his forum, and a poster asked what Tom Campbell thinks of Seth, and one way or the other that poster seemed to get a verification that Seth is okay (I don't remember the precise details).

I think that poster would've been better off figuring it our for himself, rather than give away his power to Tom.

The very fact that Tom couldn't see through Seth, tells me that his discrimination isn't perfect. Not that my discrimination is perfect, but I could see when Seth (or Jane) spoke nonsense.

Crossbow:

Related to what you just wrote, for a while I was heavily involved with Eastern teachings.  Because they came from supposedly enlightened and therefore infallible teachers, I believed in them to an extent that stifled my ability to think clearly.

Eventually I reached the point where I was able to think for myself again, and I tried to determine what the nature of myself is without being plagued by false concepts that came from gurus.

This enabled me to find that despite what some supposedly egoless self-denying Eastern-based teachers (including gurus from the West) said, my uniqueness, existence as a Soul is a fact.

It can be difficult to consider this matter thoroughly and clearly, if a part a person's mind, like a parrot keeps repeating, "I have no self, I am not an individual, I do not exist, my mind is just a play of aggregates," an so on.