Functions vs. Consciousness

2 days ago
2 min read

Functions vs. Consciousness

A little poetry from our friend John Craig sheds a shard of light on the idea that functions can exist without consciousness, and that consciousness can exist without functions.

Not the Mind

Are you in love with your mind? Do you marvel at its ways –

How it applies logic to problems, makes analogies,

Retrieves experiences and abstracts meaning from them?

It’s a wonderful if at times ungainly and sluggish

Scout for exploring planet earth. But it lets you forget.

Does that pain you? Does what you’ve forgotten right now hurt you?

And what would that be? Why, the fact that you are not the mind.

The mind beguiles you into believing you’re it. You aren’t.

Aren’t you bothered by that? And it runs on all by itself,

Chattering and imagining, distracting you from being.

You must really love it to give it that kind of power.

Aren’t you supposed to be in charge, monitoring the mind,

Being aware of its function? As we speak, it woos you

From under your balcony, tempting your heart to elope.

And one more poem from John Craig lifts the veil to reveal the Real I, the Real You. You are not what one observes; you are the observer. Higher states of consciousness.

The Book of Who One Is

When children finally sprout, come out from under the dirt

Their parents have buried them in, they realize they are

Their parents – bodies, minds – remixed and extended in time,

And those identities will move on to be their children.

Thank God that’s not the whole story. The book of who one is

Has another part – a reader. Is anyone reading

Your life? Has your soul emerged to observe your flesh’s plot

And see that who you think you are is just a knot of thoughts?

You can’t be aware of what you’re in unless you’ve been out.

So child, before your children bury you, might it not be

Of worth to go beyond your parents’ faith and hope and know