Consciousness: the mystery you're using right now
You're reading these lines. There's something it is like to be you while you do it: a sense of being here, of these words being presented to you, of there being a point of view from which all of this happens. That is consciousness. And even though it's the most intimate thing we have, it remains one of the great open questions in science and philosophy.
At RILOFU, consciousness is the territory that connects all the others. The mind and emotions appear in it. Relationships are lived from it. Non-ordinary states are, precisely, variations of it.
What we mean by consciousness
The word consciousness is used for quite different things, and it's worth separating them.
Sometimes it means being awake and responding to the environment, as opposed to being asleep or anaesthetised. Sometimes it means noticing something, being aware of a thought or an emotion. And sometimes, in its deepest sense, it means subjective experience itself: the fact that there is a "what it's like" to see the colour red, hear a song or have a memory.
It's this last sense that interests us most at RILOFU, because it's the one we understand least and the one that opens the most questions.
The hard problem
Neuroscience has made enormous progress in describing what happens in the brain when we perceive, think or feel. We know which areas activate, which networks coordinate, which neurotransmitters take part. What we still don't know is why all that activity comes with experience. Why we aren't simply machines processing information in the dark.
The philosopher David Chalmers called it "the hard problem of consciousness", and decades later it remains unsolved. There are serious theories that try to explain it from different angles, and there are also more speculative proposals. At RILOFU we try to stay informed about what science knows, distinguish it from what is still being investigated, and not fill the gaps with certainties nobody has.
Science without reductionism, spirituality without dogma
Talking about consciousness means entering a terrain where scientific research, philosophical reflection and contemplative traditions coexist. Each contributes something and each has its limits.
Science offers method, data and the ability to discard what doesn't work. Its risk is reducing experience to mechanisms and losing sight of the fact that, for the person living it, that experience is the most real thing there is.
Philosophy offers conceptual rigour and well-formulated questions. Its risk is staying in the debate without ever touching direct experience.
Contemplative traditions offer centuries of first-person exploration and highly refined methods for observing consciousness. Their risk is loading that observation with metaphysical interpretations presented as unquestionable truths.
Our position is simple to state and hard to hold: curiosity without naivety, science without reductionism, spirituality without dogma. What interests us is the dialogue between these worlds, not one of them winning.
Exploring consciousness in the first person
You can read about consciousness for years without getting a millimetre closer to it. Because consciousness isn't only an object of study: it's the place you study from. And exploring it requires, at some point, turning attention towards itself.
Meditation as a laboratory
Meditation is, in essence, a method for observing consciousness with some systematicity. No prior belief is needed. It's enough to sit down, pay attention to what appears, and notice how attention itself moves, wanders and settles.
With practice, things that usually go unnoticed start to become visible: that thoughts arise on their own, without anyone summoning them; that the sense of being a solid "I" is more intermittent than it seems; that experience changes constantly even though we have the impression of continuity.
None of these observations proves anything definitive about the nature of consciousness. But all of them loosen certainties and open questions, and that is already an important change.
Non-ordinary states
There's another way to explore consciousness: change it. Dreaming, breathwork practices, fasting, sensory deprivation, ritual, trance and, in certain contexts, psychedelics, produce non-ordinary states of consciousness that show directly that our everyday way of experiencing the world is only one of the possible ones.
These states can be deeply revealing and also deeply confusing. That's why at RILOFU we insist on context, preparation, harm reduction and integration afterwards. Exploring consciousness through intense means without an adequate framework is like heading out to sea without knowing how to swim.
Consciousness, meaning and experience
When someone goes through an intense experience of consciousness, whether in meditation, on a retreat or in a non-ordinary state, they usually come back with a question: what does this mean?
This is where the exploration of consciousness meets the meaning we give to our experiences. Because an experience, on its own, doesn't come with its interpretation included. Feeling that everything is connected doesn't prove that everything is connected. Feeling that the self dissolves doesn't prove that the self doesn't exist. And, at the same time, those experiences can transform the life of the person who lives them in very real ways.
Holding both things at once, the value of the experience and caution about its interpretation, is one of the central tasks of the support we offer at RILOFU.
Questions that don't close
Where are you when you're not thinking about anything? What's left of experience if you take away thoughts, emotions and perceptions? Is consciousness something you have or something you are? Has the way you're in the world changed after some intense experience?
We don't have closed answers to these questions. What we do have are spaces to ask them in good company: talks, gatherings, retreats and a community where the exploration of consciousness is shared, discussed and lived.
How to keep exploring
Consciousness crosses all the other territories we propose at RILOFU: the mind, emotions, relationships, non-ordinary states and the meaning of experience. And if you want to go beyond reading, here are two ways to continue.