October and I both feel that consciousness is not inside of us, though in slightly different forms. His view is that we (humans) are "remote controlled" by an external force, that uses our brain as a sort of transmission system. A not insignificant amount of modern neuro-psychology and neuro-chemistry supports this. Scientists have been slowly making headway in how our brains are able to communicate with our bodies, but still have no idea what causes initial thoughts. We can trace how our thought of moving our arm pulses through our neurons, but cannot identify where the thought is formed. We see cascades of electricity forming our actions and responses, but there is no part of the brain that can be specifically identified as the cause of self awareness. October takes this as an indication that our consciousness is elsewhere, and transmitted to and through us (yes, this idea is taken of faith).
This is where my view begins to differ. I don't feel as though our world is actually separate from consciousness, but is a facet of it. Imagine a great gem, cut into some delicate and intricate pattern. Looking through each face you will see a different pattern (read: reality), but none of the patterns seen are actually the gem, just some part that may indeed look very different than the entirety. I am not the first to think this. The Allegory of the Cave is another way of seeing this, as is the Hindu idea of Atman-Brahman. Plato saw the world as but a reflection of the "real" world outside the cave, where our views of chairs, cats, cars, etc. just show some facet of "real" version of itself. The idea of Atman-Brahman is similar, but goes even a step further. Beyond even the objects of our world being facets of some real thing, our souls (Atman) are part of the "real" soul (Brahman). This is extended even further; none of the objects in our universe (the one of our five senses) are actually even fragments of perfect versions of themselves, they are also just facets of Brahman. This ancient religious view isn't some outdated mode of thought, either, physics is beginning to hold this view as well. People familiar with string theory (or possibly m-brane theory) know that all of our reality is just the vibrations of strings on a higher plane of existence (in this case not so much heaven, but other dimensions).
This whole idea personally speaks to me, and I have based my own philosophy and theology off of this duality between Hinduism and Physics. But I still do not believe that everything in our world is nonexistent. The actual physical things are just dream-shadows, but the intellectual and emotional content of conversations, books, music, and art are real. If all of this reality is just some super-consciousness "dreaming" (perhaps to pass the time, perhaps for some specific purpose) then as facets of the super-consciousness our own thoughts and emotions are the only truly real experiences we have. The sounds of our voices, the instruments, the paint or ink on paper, these things are not real; but the meaning behind the words, the emotions carried by music and art, the new ways for us to see ourselves and this ever-changing universe we inhabit--these ideas are real, even within our unreal world.
