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- Political Discussion / Debate
-- Consciousness
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Posted by venomX on Jan-30-2008 01:23:
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According to contemporary teacher Ch�gyal Namkhai Norbu, in Dzogchen the perceived reality is considered to be unreal. All appearances perceived during the whole life of an individual through all senses, including sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations in their totality are like a big dream. It is claimed that on careful examination the dream of life and regular nightly dreams are not very different, and that in their essential nature there is no difference between them.
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If you researched things at the proper place, you wouldn't post so many unsubstantiated theories. Yes, being awake and dream states are very similar because when you are dreaming you are basically awake but unconscious and with your motor system shut down. Considering 'reality' is based one electrical impulses coming from the senses to the brain, it wouldn't be weird that neural firing in the brain through the same pathways sensory inputs go through would create a sense of 'reality'. Cognitive science theories and biopsychological theories do a good job at explaining these types of phenomena. Go read up on those instead of trying to find some spiritual or mystical reason for everything that happens in life.
Posted by Trancer-X on Jan-30-2008 23:07:
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Originally posted by venomX
If you researched things at the proper place, you wouldn't post so many unsubstantiated theories. Yes, being awake and dream states are very similar because when you are dreaming you are basically awake but unconscious and with your motor system shut down. Considering 'reality' is based one electrical impulses coming from the senses to the brain, it wouldn't be weird that neural firing in the brain through the same pathways sensory inputs go through would create a sense of 'reality'. Cognitive science theories and biopsychological theories do a good job at explaining these types of phenomena. Go read up on those instead of trying to find some spiritual or mystical reason for everything that happens in life. |
Thanks for exemplifying the Dunning-Kruger effect for me. Your sophomoric comment has been duly noted. 
Now seriously, I think you're making an improper (and IMO, a highly asinine) assumption because of my html hyperlinks. I've been engaged in a long and intensive study both online and off which has so far only culminated into a relatively intertwining conglomerate of ideas, but it's also only been a couple of years now that I've taken it all that seriously.
I really just don't like to leave any stone unturned.
I don't think that anyone knows decisively what the true nature of our existence is and I think saying that they do would be both spiritually and intellectually dishonest. If anyone knows more than anyone else about it, it would probably be the Shamans, anyhow and not some scientist in a lab, using his man-made and relatively crude tools of a still very limited focus and measure, which we can only operate by using our also very limited scope of five senses to begin with.
Go read up. LMFAO 
Posted by venomX on Jan-31-2008 04:34:
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Originally posted by Trancer-X
Thanks for exemplifying the Dunning-Kruger effect for me. Your sophomoric comment has been duly noted.
Now seriously, I think you're making an improper (and IMO, a highly asinine) assumption because of my html hyperlinks. I've been engaged in a long and intensive study both online and off which has so far only culminated into a relatively intertwining conglomerate of ideas, but it's also only been a couple of years now that I've taken it all that seriously.
I really just don't like to leave any stone unturned.
I don't think that anyone knows decisively what the true nature of our existence is and I think saying that they do would be both spiritually and intellectually dishonest. If anyone knows more than anyone else about it, it would probably be the Shamans, anyhow and not some scientist in a lab, using his man-made and relatively crude tools of a still very limited focus and measure, which we can only operate by using our also very limited scope of five senses to begin with.
Go read up. LMFAO |
Who is talking here about existence? You were talking about perception and the neurological phenomena that are called dreams, both of which can be readily studied in a lab. I am in now way referring to existentialist questions about the nature of perception or why we percieve of how it came to be that we percieve. Perception as a neurological mechanism has been thouroughly studied. If you want to talk about spirituality, go somewhere else. This thread was never mean to be about spirituality, the discussion was on the way the conscious and subconscious processes operate in the mind and how thoughts are created and used in the brain. These are all neurological phenomena not 'spiritual' phenomena. If you'd really read any credible source on the matter you weren't be saying that theres magic stuff that makes thoughts happen.
Posted by Trancer-X on Jan-31-2008 17:43:
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Originally posted by venomX
Who is talking here about existence? You were talking about perception and the neurological phenomena that are called dreams, both of which can be readily studied in a lab. I am in now way referring to existentialist questions about the nature of perception or why we percieve of how it came to be that we percieve. Perception as a neurological mechanism has been thouroughly studied. If you want to talk about spirituality, go somewhere else. This thread was never mean to be about spirituality, the discussion was on the way the conscious and subconscious processes operate in the mind and how thoughts are created and used in the brain. These are all neurological phenomena not 'spiritual' phenomena. If you'd really read any credible source on the matter you weren't be saying that theres magic stuff that makes thoughts happen. |
I think you're confused. This thread is entitled "Consciousness" and not "Perception." You don't have to go into a rant just because I touched upon what is considered to be higher or elevated consciousness.
Anyway, I could have run with it a lot more if I wanted to...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consci..._%28Buddhism%29
Posted by Trancer-X on Jan-31-2008 17:54:
Whoah, how dare them try to study consciousness without scientific equipment like an EKG!!!
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Maja D'Aoust, lecturer, PRS Librarian and Masters Degree Candidate at UPR, will examine the purposes, practices and implications of the world's oldest spiritual practices. The original purveyors of consciousness studies and transformational psychology were the Shamans. As the world's oldest spiritual pursuit, Shamanism contains within its disciplines the mysteries of accessing and coming into dialogue with the hidden parts of our individual and collective consciousness. In this lecture series we will uncover the history, practices and pertinence of the Shamans over time, bringing these concepts into the 21st century. In order to truly understand consciousness, psychology, healing and spiritual studies, we must examine the practices of their earliest students that we may grow and evolve from their teaching into the future.
http://www.prs.org/events.htm#Maja |
Posted by Trancer-X on Jan-31-2008 18:08:
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Whatsoever quits the Laya (homogeneous) state, becomes active conscious life. Individual consciousness emanates from, and returns into Absolute consciousness, which is eternal MOTION (the alchemical solvent of Life.)
Whatever that be which thinks, which understands, which wills, which acts, it is something celestial and divine, and upon that account must necessarily be eternal.
- Cicero
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Posted by venomX on Jan-31-2008 20:10:
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Originally posted by Trancer-X
I think you're confused. This thread is entitled "Consciousness" and not "Perception." You don't have to go into a rant just because I touched upon what is considered to be higher or elevated consciousness.
Anyway, I could have run with it a lot more if I wanted to...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consci..._%28Buddhism%29 |
Nah mate, you seem to be confused. Firstly, the title of the thread is Consciousness, but if you read any of the posts, subey was referring to how conscious processes or thoughts compare to unconscious ones and how he believes that conscious processes just seem to be an extension of unconscious processes. Apart from some minor details I was pretty much in agreement with him/her. Then you jumped in with a post about how dreams seem to be very much like being 'awake'. The information you posted didn't deal with consciousness however, it dealt with perception, considering they emphasized how the perception part of dreams is what makes them feel so 'real'. Then I replied in kind, talking about perception. Now, if you could get what you are talking about straight instead of posting a quote by Cicero (who I think was brilliant at rhetoric, but had no clue about the workings of the brain) and another one by some person that studies shamanism, but does not study any sort of neurological sciences. Now, why don't you consctruct an argument, with your own words, on how Shamanism, consciousness and 'dreams' vs 'awake' are related, seeing as how you seem to have thrown them in here I am assuming you believe they are somehow connected. This is a challenge. Put up or shut up mate, copy paste won't save you here.
Posted by Trancer-X on Feb-01-2008 06:21:
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Originally posted by venomX
Nah mate, you seem to be confused. (...)
Put up or shut up mate, copy paste won't save you here. |
No, I fully understood you but you apparently don't seem to get where I'm coming from.
Sure, I was trying to answer Subey's question from a more Mystical standpoint, so what? The debate obviously still rages on despite all of the advancements in scientific technology.
Here, just for you. Ctrl-V
What is consciousness? Study aims to settle debate
Research would also subject claims of �out of body� experiences to strict test
May 20, 2007
Special to World Science
In science, plenty of problems are hard. But perhaps just one is so gruesomely trying that scientists themselves have termed it, well, �the hard problem.� How does consciousness arise�the living, aware experience of being?
Some theories hold that it comes from, or is even identical to, electrical and chemical processes known to unfold in the brain. Others say it arises elsewhere: in some even subtler, yet-undiscovered brain processes, or perhaps a mind-stuff quite distinct from the brain�some call it a soul.
Few on either side claim to have final answers. But they often argue passionately over who�s at least in the right playing field.
Now a group of researchers has begun a study that they say might settle the issue. �We can actually test this, and put and end to all these debates,� said Sam Parnia, a critical care doctor at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York.
Parnia has spent years studying reports that some cardiac-arrest patients keep having clear, distinct thought processes after they�re clinically dead and detectable brain activity has ceased. Patients commonly recount these mental experiences, which often include seeing a light at the end of a tunnel, after being revived.
Parnia and colleagues aim to put these reports to a test: specific sounds will be played to such patients, and they�ll be asked to recall the sounds after reviving. If they do, it would confirm the accounts of thoughts without brain activity�supporting the claims that �consciousness is a separate, yet undiscovered scientific entity� from the brain, Parnia wrote in a paper in the the April 23 advance online edition of the research journal Medical Hypotheses.
The study �looks like an interesting proposal,� wrote David Chalmers, a philosopher and director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, in an email. If the claims are confirmed, it would �pose an interesting challenge for scientists to explain,� remarked Chalmers, author of several books on consciousness.
But it probably wouldn�t settle the most basic, longstanding dispute: whether mind and brain are different things, Chalmers added. For instance, even if patients� claims are verified, they �could be due to aspects of brain functioning during cardiac arrest that are not captured by the measurements� Parnia is using, Chalmers wrote. These measurements are taken by electroencephalogram, a technique in which sensitive electrodes attached to the head record electrical brain activity.
Parnia said the trials began on a pilot basis in January at two U.K. hospitals with 10 patients; he aims to expand the study to other countries and recruit over 1,000 patients.
Perhaps the most stringent test in the study is also the one that addresses the most extraordinary notion. Critically ill patients sometimes report �out-of-body� experiences in which they feel they have floated out of their own bodies and are watching themselves from above.
Mark well: Parnia is not testing whether patients genuinely feel their minds have floated away. He wants to test whether the minds actually do float away�a controversial idea to say the least. His team plans to place pictures strategically around patients� rooms where they�re visible only from near the ceiling. Patients would later be asked about the images. �Thus, the claims of conscious awareness and out-of-body experiences will be tested independently,� he wrote in the paper.
He admitted some would find the idea outlandish. A study published in 2002 found that just electrically stimulating specific brain areas could trigger an out-of-body-like experience�evidence to some that the sensations are illusory.
Daniel Dennett, director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., wrote in an email that he�s never seen evidence that the events are anything more than hallucinations. The experiments, �if conducted with scrupulous care,� will surely confirm this, added Dennett, a philosopher who is also author of several books on consciousness.
Yet, said Parnia�in defense of the opposite view�patients have accurately reported events in their hospital rooms that occurred during out-of-body experiences, while they were clinically dead. �If we get 200 people, and all claim to have an out-of-body experience but none can identify the images, that would very much support the idea that this is a false memory,� Parnia said. �If on the other hand, 200 people identify these images� then we�d have to accept that maybe human consciousness, as bizarre as it may sound, could be non-local to the brain.�
http://www.world-science.net/exclus...nsciousness.htm
Posted by Trancer-X on Feb-01-2008 07:50:
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Consciousness
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Originally posted by Subey in response to venomX
I don't disagree in principle with any of your examples. The problem is that none of them shed light on where the conscious thought might be originating. |
Much to someone's chagrin, that's where I was trying to chime in.
I don't personally subscribe to the scientific oversimplification that is venomX's definition of consciousness. I think that there has to be a lot more to it than it's simply being a construct of our neurological mechanism.
Posted by pkcRAISTLIN on Feb-01-2008 08:52:
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Consciousness
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Originally posted by Trancer-X
I think that there has to be a lot more to it... |
^^ if trancer was a bumper sticker, that is what it would say.
Posted by DJ Shibby on Feb-01-2008 10:51:
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Consciousness
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Originally posted by Trancer-X
Much to someone's chagrin, that's where I was trying to chime in.
I don't personally subscribe to the scientific oversimplification that is venomX's definition of consciousness. I think that there has to be a lot more to it than it's simply being a construct of our neurological mechanism. |
I think it's kind of obvious that there's more to consciousness than neurological mechanism.
There are entire layers of ethereal abstract reality going on around us all the time, mostly ignored for various reasons. The collective is one example: look how economies become their own organism, or nations... like cells in a body binding together, unknowing perhaps of purpose, but solid in the structure of the overall motion of the larger organism itself.
It's really nuts to think about, because it's happening in millions of different ways in every moment, crossing and recombining in new ways.
And somewhere therein, consciousness naturally seems to arise.
I can't help but wonder what technology we are... or the planets... or any of the billions of suns...
Posted by Trancer-X on Apr-01-2008 03:50:
While still being somewhat on-topic, I transcribed this little tidbit from one of Manly P. Hall's lectures, entitled 'Jacob�s Ladder That Leads To The Stars'
The full audio lecture can be found here
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We have numerous pictures of our solar system (...)
We get no assurance or insight into what lies beyond. The ancients had one up on us. They recognized that there was something that we didn't see, that we couldn't see under normal conditions and that the visible universe is only a manifestation or a tail-end appendage of something infinitely greater.
Now this infinitely greater has up to now defied scientific investigation although every once in a while somebody lifts a corner of the mystery, takes a quick look and drops the corner again. We do not know exactly what is out there but it is becoming more evident that there is something beyond what we can see.
If there is something that we can't see then we are not in the condition to come to final estimations of the world in which we live. If we cannot see beyond the physical and THERE IS SOMETHING beyond the physical, it becomes more or less probable that whatever that is that we don't see is the cause of that which we do see.
This is an irritating thought but still you can't completely disregard it.
So we come to the idea that the ancients had and we had ourselves down to the time of Copernicus and Galileo that the physical universe was only a small part of creation. That the rest of is was just as real but not within the range of our sensory perceptions under normal conditions.
Occasionally someone with an extra sense brought back information with great interest but it wasn't possible to settle it down into science. |
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