Conciousness

[Chandran, Nanda (NBC)]

I was reading the Brhadaranyaka yesterday and in one instance
Yagnavalkya states that the conciousness itself will eventually
disappear. S Radhkrishnan in his commentary quotes Shankara about
'particular conciousness'.

I thought about this and it struck me that whatever conciousness that
I've is only with relation to some object or the other. Let me explain :
I'm concious of this computer before me. The same way I'm concious of
the guy sitting next to me. Even when one watches a movie, it's
remarkable how one's almost transported to a state where the
conciousness seems to merge with the movie itself and makes us feel like
a character in the movie. Even when we say "I" conciousness, it's only
the conciousness relating itself to the name, form and mind complex. So
do we really have conciousness for the sake of the conciousness itself?
So how justified are we in giving a seperate identity to this
'conciousness'?

The Vijnanavada or the Yogacara school of Bouddhas who interested
themselves in the phenomenon of conciousness, argue on similar lines.
But let not my questions be confused as being inspired by them. What I'm
asking is straight out of the shruti itself.

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