AUO is simultaneously everything and nothing, all potential and no differentiation.
When AUO differentiates as it follows the Fundamental Process of evolution toward higher quality and lower entropy, AUO becomes Absolute Unbounded Manifold (AUM). #tao-te-ching
AUM is functionally Consciousness in its true, whole form.
We are individuated differentiations of AUM.
According to steve-kaufman, CNXNS is existence coming to exist in relation to itself. It is absolutely everywhere and thus nowhere.
When CNXNS is localized to somewhere relative to somewhere else, it becomes awareness.
CNXNS is unbound, borderless, undefined existence driven by unconditional love to evolve and differentiate so it can experience and enjoy itself.
"[C]onsciousness evolves into the awareness of experience by repetitively and progressively forming relationships with itself."
Consciousness has localized, individuated, and differentiated (to borrow the nomenclature of steve-kaufman) into innumerable forms.
It is our charge, as points of awareness to recognize and interact with each other with love for the enjoyment of the spirit we share.
Anywhere you see attention being paid or set intent exercised, there is someone to meet, something to understand, a potential playmate.
Any drop of awareness can become internally reflective and lose sight of its true nature, so we cannot expect every one to know ourself and to be playful.
But love breeds love, so lead with that.
If Consciousness is a diamond then we nodes of awareness are its facets.
You cannot perceive or experience consciousness as a whole, as absolute existence, because you are consciousness and are not relative to it in order to experience it. #relativity
If Consciousness is an ocean, then you are a single drop of that ocean water swimming in the ocean.
Consciousness is the only thing and everything, yet indefinable and inexperienceable, thus not a thing. #no-thing
In the West, medicine and neuroscience consider consciousness to be "a state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings".
Antonio Damasio offers a three-tiered model of cnxns in which
any being that responds to its environment in its own interest qualifies for the first tier: the Protoself
Even single-celled organisms, even viruses, possess a Protoself.
From my perspective, even a lick of awareness is enough to get you in the consciousness club. I stand with Giulio Tononi and the proponents of integrated-information-theory who mathematically model and measure the consciousness of any contour of spacetime as a quantity phi ΙΈ.
There is no arbitrary bar above which beings (or contours) are conscious and below which they are just quirky and randomly wiggling.
Life-forms that have a sense of self in the present moment or projected into the past and the future are even more conscious. (This is more accurately termed self-consciousness.)
According to Anil Seth, the CNXNS of any being has:
a level between dead and hyperconscious (which might be psychotic, epileptic, or autistic, etc.),
content in the form of sensations and predictions that comprise perception, and
a sense of self that may be physical, perspectival, volitional, narrative, or social.