What is the function of awareness?

I watched this interview on Charlie Rose a couple of weeks ago with neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10468

He touched on one of my big interests: the function of awareness versus subconscious action - aware versus subconscious neural pathways.



For example, he says, there are two different circuits for visual information - one goes to the visual cortex where one is aware of it - in cases of brain damage to those circuits, one is blind. But, if a glass is place on the table near such an individual, they will precisely pick it up - but they don't (consciously) know how they can do that. Isn't that fascinating?

All the problems that occur because we do strange things with our body without realizing it (such as my own example of throwing my travel cosmetics kit into the trash when visiting my brother, and only finding it by using the draconian measure of the St. Anthony's Prayer). What controls that? "Are we not men?" When we do strange actions without realizing it, it calls into question our human dignity. Sigh. Thus my curiosity to find out more about how all this neural circuitry works.

A friend of mind (you know who you are, Ted Garrison) likes to say "Awareness is very overrated ..." meaning, I believe, that if you can just surrender to your own nature and not try to second guess yourself you will function more smoothly in the world. Ted, am I misquoting you?

But if that were true, what function DOES awareness in fact allow that wouldn't be possible without it? J.G. Bennett (the well-known and prolific Gurdjieff student, teacher, and writer and one of my favorite authors) has very specific things to say about the function of awareness. More on Bennett later!