Week Six/ Expert Lecture

The discussion with Daniel Dennet was intriguing. His ideas of philosophy on consciousness were within the realms that I could agree with. I liked how he was saying that we could not possibly comprehend our own consciousness as well as someone who was observing us from the outside. I also liked how we can’t possibly understand consciousness even though we keep trying to. The concept of consciousness and its definition needs to come a common meaning between the science and philosophical studies. The idea of us being able to understand it is obviously unattainable at this time because we do not have the technology to visualize consciousness in multiple organisms if it exists.
The video on Ramana Maharshi was stimulating in the sense of self absorption into ones environment. The fact that he gave up in the sense of taking care of himself and letting himself go was absurd. You can be one with the environment around you but you should take care of yourself in the process. It was interesting to see how people that were in his presence found a sense of tranquility because of his profound oneness with his environment and that nothing around him affected his spiritualistic being of the world around him. I give him props for telling his crying mother that what is destined to be can’t be affected in any way of form from what is to be. I think that this is a little absurd because we are in control of our destiny and we make our own conscious decisions.