Does anybody know anything about this ? Are there any records of people having 24 hours a day awareness ?

awareness of what?

I mean people that never loose consciousness, i.e during dream/dreamless sleep, etc.

The closest I've come to a claim of this nature was once removed. A lama who was a student of the 16th Karmapa once relayed the Karmapa's report, in response to this lama's query, that he spent nearly 24 hours a day in Rigpa, with the exception of a few brief moments of "basic ignorance" during the deepest phases of sleep.

What do *you* think about the possibility?
-Jake

Thanks, I think this would be like trying to live without breathing ... impossible.

I'm curious about people's thoughts about it though.

Have you considered the possibility that we are all doing this? What if consciousness never comes or goes, only objects come and go?

What would you do if you learned to do that? Would you be satisfied with it?

The so called 'Buddha Boy' was filmed by discovery channel for 72 hours in full lotus. There's also a video clip of him sort of spontaneously catching on fire. Very interesting indeed!

this is what i was intending to ask by saying "awareness of what?"

I think I see what you mean, I would say this is an "absolute" perspective of things. I was talking about the periods of dreamless sleep in relative time for a relative person. In an absolute sense we could say that we are consciousness and that the relative person (object) comes and goes and that time is just an idea, but I wasn't talking about it in that way.

I have no clue !

Consciousness arises as a result of an object contacting a sense door, it's just as transient and empty as anything else. Don't be fooled, anything you can observe is subject to the same criteria but there's value in investigating that further.

; )

I know your question is theoretical, but I wonder if perhaps that questioning would be better applied, and likely more useful and informative, to what it is to be aware in this moment?

I actually see this as a very practical question. I'm talking about people claiming to never go unconscious, i.e. they are continually conscious during sleep, during the moment of shifting from awake to sleep, from dream sleep to dreamless sleep, if for some reason they faint, they're still conscious (and they can realize that they just fainted) etc.

I think Eggman might be talking about what some call "the witness" which is that which cannot be witnessed, i.e. the space (for lack of a better word) in which objects come and go. Maybe this is a different concept that consciousness as one of the five skandhas ?

Yes, it's a different concept, which provokes endless misunderstanding and attainment competition between Theravada practitioners and others!

;-)

I don't know who's ultimately right on this one, as both these experiences seem valid to me in their own terms. Others see one or the other as trumping its opposite.