Apparently, consciousness – as defined by deliberate focus – is somewhat fragmented:
The reason why we experience reality as a movie when it’s only a collection of pictures can be at least partially explained by our rhythms of attention. About four times every second, the brain stops taking snapshots of individual points of focus — like your friend on the corner in Times Square — and collects background information about the environment. Without you knowing it, the brain absorbs the sound of the crowd, the feeling of the freezing December air — which it later uses to stitch together a narrative of the complete Times Square Experience.
This reminded me of U G Krishnamurti’s philosophy of ‘natural state’ – although what he said is not exactly what the article above describes. He described himself as living (after a realisation he calls the ‘calamity’) in this manner:
“… he claimed to be functioning permanently in what he called “the natural state”: A state of spontaneous, purely physical, sensory existence, characterised by discontinuity – though not absence – of thought.”
It has always seemed to me that after that event in his life he became very aware about the constant lack of awareness, or wakefulness, in what we call human consciousness. Only very infrequently are humans aware that they are observing the world around them. Most of the time the brain is on auto-pilot, rapidly alternating between focus and distraction.