I shared a while ago an experience I'd had while driving my car through mountain roads, and wanted to share another one I had the other night:

In the early morning, probably about 3 or 4 I was in a dead sleep and dreaming. I woke up suddenly to find myself lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, but everything was different than usual.

Instead of being "in the body" I experienced being everything in the room, and a part of me was the body lying in bed.

The entire space seemed like one solid object, just one thing, including the space between the body and the ceiling.

I experienced the sensation of being me, but not identifying only with the body.

I was still me, but not in a normal sense of being kolobian, but rather being a deeper me?

I can't know how long this lasted, but I remember moving my arm in front of my face, and instead of feeling like my arm was independent of the room and space it was as if the one solid space was transforming itself to appear as if an arm was moving through it, and while I could feel and control my arm, it wasn't like right now as I type this post. I was at the same time independent of the arm and also the arm at the same time.

The overall feeling was ecstatic. Not associating with just the body, but rather with the one solid space was like a bliss I can't describe. Not a good feeling, or like being on a drug, but a different kind of bliss that felt rather mundane and normal.

Eventually I transitioned back into feeling like I was inside the body and stopped associating with everything else. I stayed awake for the transition and the best way to describe it was like a gestalt shift. Like seeing the beautiful lady in the picture and then suddenly seeing the old hag again.

I can remember seeing the beautiful lady, but I don't see her now. Now I just look at the picture and see the old hag, even thought I know the beautiful lady is there too. Right?

Anyway, I didn't solicit feedback just to hear, "cool man. sounds like psychedelic" or anything like that. Instead, I wanted to share some conclusions I made about it as I was laying there after it happened.

I was thinking, and I promise I won't get all solipsistic about it, that we know that consciousness is probably the result of a physical brain, an output of experience based on sensory data obtained and filtered through the brain.

What we don't know is how that happens, where exactly consciousness is, or exactly what it is.

I personally think it's all based on physical phenomena, but that's not what this is about. That's a different debate.

Instead I wanted to get your thoughts on this:

If the brain creates consciousness, it seems to me, based on a few experiences like the one above, that the consciousness is one thing generated by the brain.

It's one thing that re-creates the reality around us, but is totally independent of said reality. We assume the representation in our consciousness is a 1:1 representation of reality, but it's pretty impsossible to know for sure.

Anyway, my experience was that I am the consciousness itself, although over time I learned to associate with just one aspect of the consciousness: my body.

But the consciousness itself re-creates the reality around you, so the consciousnes is just as much the ceiling, the air, the bed, the table as it is the body.

If I am the consciousness itself, and I'm able to experience being the total consciousness created by the brain, and not just associate with the body re-created by the consciousness, then I have the real experience of being "everything" or being "nothing" at the same time.

That's what all these gurus and so-called enlightened beings always say: they become nothing (not associating with one single thing) or everything (since they're the consciousness and therefore everything within the consciousness).

My tentative conclusion is that there's nothing woo at all about enlightenment. It's totally natural. The conciousness is the conciousness, and therefore it is everything that it re-creates.

As small children we probably have that experience but lose it as we are taught to associate with the body, which makes perfect sense since it's the physical body in reality that is the source of all the sensory data used to create the consciousness.

I think reverting back to the natural state of being the total consciousness created by the brain is what enlightenment really is. It's not some abstract becoming one with the universe, rather it's the conciousness being what it is, and simply discontinuing the association with one object of its awareness: namely, the body.

Thoughts?

I have long been open to the idea of a shared consciousness. We are all more connected than we can know and communicate in ways we don't understand. There is a "wireless" element to the subconscious that is part of a greater whole that we cannot separate ourselves from that is far more sophisticated than today's communication technologies and yet remains natural and timeless--all part of the universe and needs no tower to send signals.

In this life we need to be separate from the whole in order to function, but maybe you got a glimpse of what really is.

Anyway that's what popped into my head when I read your experience.

Or maybe you're just descending into madness?

“I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”

― Bob Dylan, 1962

What you experienced isn't quite as "mysterious" as some might think. And a number of neuroscientists have done experiments and tests concerning brain-body mapping and connections, and found some interesting (and entirely physical) information that expands our knowledge of how this all works.

I suggest you read the book "Phantoms in the Brain" by V.S. Ramachandran. It has some fascinating research about this very phenomenon.

I get more than a little frustrated by the "there's a soul/spirit" folks (as I do with the "there was an actual Jesus" folks), largely because they use "soul of the gaps" arguments, which are fallacious and rather silly. What we know and can demonstrate about the brain doesn't *rule out* a "spirit" or "soul," but there's no evidence such a thing exists or is necessary. They take "we don't know yet how this works" and turn it into "it has to be an external soul/spirit," which of course is not correct. It just means we don't know yet. :)

Totally agree. My conclusion is that this is all very natural and not mysterious or woo at all.

My contention is that it's less likely that we are a body that is conscious, and that it's more likely that the body creates consciousness and that we are the conciousness itself. That is, the body exists but it is not itself concious, rather, the conciousness that the body creates is self-aware and simply associates more with the body recreated inside itself than it does with itself.

I'll look into the book. Thanks for the tip.

I'm inclined to think the body is part of consciousness, just like anything else we take in via our senses is part of consciousness, and maybe just like our consciousness is part of consciousness.

Regarding enlightenment, whatever it may mean, I don't think there's anything mystical about it. I view it as peaceful existing as much as possible - not a pure state or an absolute state, but something more like happiness or joy, it comes and goes, can be cultivated, and can be obliterated in one horrific moment.

Personally, I think the value in finding a way to separate from your self (or to feel part of the whole) is to have the insight that your normal day to day sense of self is not any deep truth but just one perspective. And, this insight, I think, can free someone from the attachments to ideas and thoughts that may be destructive - that destroy the possibility of peace in the moment.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/26/2014 09:57PM by thingsithink.

I don't trust any experience (of my own) immediately upon emerging from dream state. Such moments have produced my far-and-away most beautiful musical compositions, yet none of them ever make to paper. Too late; gone.

Oh God, I love this board. There is alot of emotions running wild around here quite often, but evcery once in a while, you get these gems that just seem to lob over and will take the greater part of the night to come to terms with. I love the way you think Kolobian.

There are many of us who watch for Kolobian's posts.

I have heard of a theory of consciousness being non-local. I can't remember where, though. Your description of the sensation was vivid, kolobian.

It's Friday What ya all been drinking?

We are trained and enculturated to see ourselves as separate from everything around us. But this is only one way to perceive things. Sometimes I will gaze at a tree with leaves being tossed by the wind, and try to feel a oneness with that tree, a feeling that we are part of one being.

When I took Aikido lessons for many years, I was likewise trained to perceive the world in a different way. Instead of looking for discrete physical bodies, I was trained to perceive patterns of motion.

When I was trained in art, I came to realize that what I *thought* I saw and what I actually saw were often two different things. Breaking apart mental perceptions is a huge part of fine arts training.

Thank you for sharing your experience.

I don't know if this relates or not, but when I was a teen and was sitting at the dinner table one day, someone in the family recounted a recurring dream they were having. It was a rather disturbing dream. Someone else incredulously said they were having the exact same dream. I was shocked. Had to believe them though because I was having that dream regularly myself. Turns out we all were.

Of course at the time we all tied it into the Mormon church and a connection to the spirit world. But now that I don't believe that anymore I have always wondered why the shared dreams occurred and have always felt that we are all more connected than we conceive . And because of that I do consider the concept of a shared consciousness, even with plants and animals.

One of my aspirations in life is to see if it's possible to meet up with someone in a dream. How cool would that be?

But then the "old hag" view of nature, our typical consensus reality, is not 'natural' at all. A famous guru in recent times was a seemingly quite ordinary Indian cigarette maker until he was introduced to his spiritual teacher and applied the "self-remembering" instruction intently so that there was an enlightenment threshhold crossing in just 3 years, and he was called Nisargadatta--meaning 'the natural given state.' I too have had vastly expanded senses of being, where I could see my whole linear life as an already completed tapestry, recognizing the design of the different threads which we "normally" see only piecemeal and sequentially. And it dawned on me that this IS my natural state, everyone's state, if we don't let ourselves be distracted by 'phenomena,' the objects of consciousness in daily life.

One thing I think you might try to clarify: if the body is generated by consciousness, and so are the rest of the body's experienced objects, AND consciousness is generated by the brain--then it becomes circular, since the brain is part of that body. You seem wedded to the biological notion that the brain creates consciousness so can't dispense with that model. But why shouldn't consciousness itself be the source?--that it can be experienced and indeed IS independent of the body, so why not of the brain as well?

By the way, under the influence of drugs, hypnosis, or meditative practices, people have experienced a "brain" in their solar plexus or gut. The head brain can be asleep, so to speak, yet there is a full but differently registering awareness associated with the other energy vortices of the body.

It seems like you have experienced things that concocters of the medical model of physically-based science have not experienced, so why assume that their model has your experience covered and armchair-explained?

Richard Foxe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But why shouldn't
> consciousness itself be the source?--that it can
> be experienced and indeed IS independent of the
> body, so why not of the brain as well?

Because no evidence of any kind shows that notion correct, and a great deal of repeatable evidence shows it false. That's "why not." If you'd like to promote that idea, then show evidence it's correct. Otherwise, the idea has no merit.

>
> By the way, under the influence of drugs,
> hypnosis, or meditative practices, people have
> experienced a "brain" in their solar plexus or
> gut. The head brain can be asleep, so to speak,
> yet there is a full but differently registering
> awareness associated with the other energy
> vortices of the body.

Under those "influences," people have also experienced demonstrably false "memories," alien abductions, and a great many other imaginative, demonstrably false hallucinations. I can't imagine why you'd consider such "experiences" anything other than the hallucinations they clearly are...

By the way, bodies don't have "energy vortices" either.

I totally understand your point about the concept becoming circular, but it's difficult for me to entertain the notion of consciousness that is self-generating.

As always I'm open to changing my mind if I can be persuaded.

I like the idea of consciousness generating itself, because that implies that consciousness is making everything up as it goes along, like a game, which is consistent with what I see the universe doing all the time, although I don't assign intent or meaning to what the universe is doing.

Anyway, liking the idea isn't enough for me. I'd love to know what persuaded you that consciousness is independent of a physical brain. Thanks for replying :)

>demonstrably false hallucinations.

So how does one demonstrate true hallucinations?

Shummy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >demonstrably false hallucinations.
>
> So how does one demonstrate true hallucinations?

They're the ones you have when you're high or wasted on something (or hypnotized), and have no idea whether what you're seeing or not is "real" -- but objective evidence can confirm they were, indeed, real. Usually people on stuff (or hypnotized) can't tell which are which :)

I like when you post this sort of thing.


I'm just getting back into the swing of things, rising from the post-holiday brume. So this must be short and from the sleeve:


"Genius is childhood recaptured."

--Charles Baudelaire--

Yes.


So what is it that is being recaptured? Often it is our sense of self *before* all the 'data input' that we gather via the body over time. By the time we're six, say, we're done for, since the data input was largely controlled by others, at the beginning mainly our parents.

So what is the self before the 'data'?

This takes me back to the days of reading Locke and Hume and Kant and Burke and Rousseau and Hobbes, which lead me to favour the Romantic correction of the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment could not see beyond its abstractions and lost sight of the individual. Romanticism jumped past the Enlightenment, reclaimed the middle ages from Enlightenment's snarky straw-man portrayal of it, and reasserted the individual. What is the difference between the abstraction 'Human' and me? One difference is that the former cannot receive data while the latter cannot help but to do so.

So what is the me that cannot help but receive data via the body? Well, we know it isn't only a creation of *this* body. Locke's psychology has been repudiated. We do not begin as blank slates. Today when we talk about 'human nature' we often talk about our body's nature that has evolved over time, from one generation to the next. But this still doesn't get at the me before the data input, since evolution is nothing more than an explanation for the constricting/expanding nature of the body and its ways and means of inputing data. The me that gets carved out over time, my life time, is subject to how the body inputs data, and how that happens has been subjected to evolution. Evolution is an explanation for how the body, my body, came to be what it is.

But still, what is 'me' before the input? What is the nature of the 'childhood' that has been recaptured? Well, without too much of a tautology it is the 'genius'.


You along with -kolob deny the existence of such a thing based on the idea that there isn't any evidence for such a thing. Okay. What evidence are you looking for? You seem to be clearly asking for a formal argument, --in your previous language, an explanation for the "bridge" that some build from one idea to another. Well, since premises control the conclusion, beginning on the bank of "the brain creates consciousness" controls what kind of bank you will find your bridge ending upon on the other side of the river.

Abstractions are phantoms of the mind, and so are *all* our observations. No one sees 'straight' (your "one to one ratio"); something bends what is seen into an unique shape. What is this 'something'? Evolution, many will say. The body bends the seeing.

Your premise can only lead to the 'something' being 'the body'. The body bends the seen into a unique shape. But you seem to want evidence that there is a different bridge than the one you use.


I doubt that that bridge can be built out of words (abstractions). Your experience was not the same as the words you used to describe it, nor was it the same as the thoughts that processed it moments after the experience. Thoughts, words, etc are *always* restrictions of that which they are meant to represent. This is unavoidable, and is part of our unique "bending" of that which we experience.

So what is this something that does the bending? You would like to say it is the body that does the bending. And I will say your body told you that, but why do you trust that the body is telling you the truth?


We trip on words, and in no other pursuit is this more true than in the study consciousness, 'enlightenment' etc. Here's an example, from an abstract for a book I think you might find interesting:

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/waking-dreaming-being/9780231137096

The last paragraph:

"Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness the dissolution of the self with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives."

The first sentence doesn't make sense. What is it that can 'witness' the dissolution of the self?

Now, you can read all the books like this one and get no closer to answering that question. Incidentally, the author Evan Thompson is very interested in the brain studies that interests Henry Bemis, the ones done on the Tibetan Monks:

http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16369.full

Not only is the question and possible answers mired ineluctably in a loop, the brain telling the brain what it is and isn't, but the means used to pose the question and the possible answers are ineluctably reductions of that which is being discussed. The argument/evidence you seek is unavoidably lost in this fact.

But there *was* your experience. You had that. It is only a memory now, but when it *was* it was an *Is*.


So what does recapturing childhood recover? Genius. In the Roman sense, you ask? Yes, at least as far as saying that the closer we are to childhood the closer we are to ourselves sans 'data' input. Quibbling along the lines of that 'at least' isn't the same thing as that which you experienced, not even remotely. (And to assert myself here, poetry is better than quibbling.)

So what is genius? Well this, for one:

http://genius.com/Walt-whitman-song-of-myself-original-1855-version-annotated#note-3592181

Human

(I believe in you, my Soul—the other I am must not abase itself to you;
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass—loose the stop from your throat;
Not words, not music or rhyme I want—not custom or lecture, not even the best;
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.)


kolobian, thank you for this re-entry into the everyday world. Now to that world, alas...and a little delayed...pleasantly so.