What causes us to loose awareness?

[shaman]

That's a great question, especially that I don't see there is an answer to it. I personally believe that we are probably most of the time aware, but that we are losing the memory of it. There was a similar posting not so long ago about "where does our consciousness go". Our awareness is really more of a "focus" kind of thing, in that sens that we focus ourselves to the moment we live, the person we are, our memories, etc...

The best example I can find to make you understand what I mean is with a very unusal case: schyzophrenia. A person with schyzophrenia has multiple peronnalities. At one moment that person is person A, with the character of A, the memory of A, the behaviour of A. At another time it is B, C or even many more others... When the schyzophrenic person is person A, he/she does not know anything about person B,C, etc.. A has a complete different memory of than B, C, etc... so that A does not know what B did, etc... That really means that what makes us ourselves with our personnality is the collection of memories that happened to us and that we remember and that affected us. In the dream world where we drift at night we are actually slightly different. We are a person a little different, as we do and live different things. Our consciousness shift from our awake personnality to the asleep personnality. In general both are very similar. However, there is a lost of memory between the two. We usually hardly remember our dreams, and in the dreams we often are not aware of things that normally we would be aware of. I am pretty sure (convinced) that we are always aware of everything, but that we are losing the memory of it (a little bit like the schyzophrenic case).

The real question is really not so much what happened to our conscious awareness, but more like what makes us what we are as individual person with a collection of memories. Our conscious awareness is visiting that collection of memories and identifying itself with it during the awake state of mind. During the sleep it visits the asleep part of our mind, and other regions of our consciousness, but it completely loses the memory of it, or more precisely the conscious awareness has not any more access to these memories, but only access to the collection of memories that makes us as indvidual person. As I wrote, comparing this with the schyzophrenic case makes us understand that much more easily than trying to see just 2 states of mind awake versus asleep, but it is basically the same principle: the conscious awareness has access to the memory, and it has to do with which memory it has access at one time (awake) and at another time (asleep) that makes us feel who we are and what we are experiencing.

[Graupel]

Hm I remember my dreams every single night.. but I just have no conscious awareness or lucidity in them to control them how I want.

Same thing happens when I drift off to sleep.. at some point I loose the memory of how I fell asleep exactly and then slip into a dream.

[beavis]

The cause is melatonin.

[wizard]

Shaman,

A person who is schizophrenic has different symptoms than what you describe. What you are referring to, a mistake many people make, is split personality. A schizophrenic or paranoid schizophrenic usually hears voices, thinks there is an extravigant plot against them, thinks the television and radio are sending them special messages, is sure they are someone importent or biblical and there is a conspiracy against them, feels their food or medication is being poisoned and other symptoms, not a split personality disorder you are referring to in your post.

I like to correct people, and often do, when they mix up a personality disorder such as split personality with schizophrenia. It happens a great deal. Otherwise, your post was interesting, as they usually are.

[Nagual]

What about day dreaming, when you just think of something and get "lost" into your thoughts...?  You kind of loose consciousness too... no?

[shaman]

Thanks Wizard,

the problem is that historically many patients that were diagnosed as schizophrenic had in fact multiple personality, and this is because the symptoms of one illness Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) are similar to the symptoms of the other illnes Schizophrenia. So I took my information from an old source where some schizophrenic patients were diagnosed to have multiple personality. The thing is that this is a matter of definition in the field of Psychiatry/Psychology, and that only more recently the issue has come to the surface. This explains why many today are committing the same mistake as I did. It was a mistake from the psychiatrists themselves if I might say....a professional mistake.

Here is an extract from a professional journal on the mistake:

Furthermore, MPD may be misdiagnosed as some other disorder for a number of reasons. Because its symptoms also meet the criteria for many other disorders and because any of the various altered states in multiplicity may closely resemble any known disorder, MPD is frequently mistaken for schizophrenia, psychogenic amnesia, psychogenic fugue, borderline personality disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, somatization disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance abuse, eating disorders, and several others (Benner & Joscelyne, 1984; Bernstein & Putnam, 1986; Bliss, 1980, 1984, 1988; Boor, 1982; Coons & Sterne, 1986; Coons et al., 1988; Dell, 1988a; Franklin, 1990; Giancarlo, 1991; Greaves, 1980; Rosenbaum, 1980; Ross, 1989; Ross & Anderson, 1988; Ross et al., 1989a, 1989b; Solomon & Solomon, 1982). In fact, Putnam and his colleagues (1986) have found that an individual with MPD will, for an average of 6.8 years, be misdiagnosed and unsuccessfully treated before being correctly diagnosed as a multiple (Franklin, 1990; Giancarlo, 1991; Ross et al., 1989a).

In particular, Rosenbaum (1980) concluded that MPD is most often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. In his literature review, Rosenbaum noted a sharp decline in the number of reported cases of the disorder in the early part of the twentieth century; this decline was attributed to psychiatrists' increasing doubts about the validity of MPD. Similarly, Rosenbaum (1980) noted that an important event in the history of psychiatry also took place around that same time period; the term "schizophrenia" was introduced to replace the use of the term "dementia praecox."

Rosenbaum's recognition of this coincidence led him to believe that, in addition to psychiatrists' new doubts about MPD, the introduction of the term schizophrenia had also played a substantial role in the decline of MPD diagnoses due to the prevalence of MPD being misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. He, therefore, conducted a review of clinical reports, psychiatric textbooks, and the Index Medicus to assess his hypothesis. The results showed that many patients with MPD had, indeed, been diagnosed and treated as schizophrenics (Rosenbaum, 1980).

... end of citation ...

Thanks to you too Beavis,

Melatonin is the chemical involved in the memory and its lost, the question of why we lose the memory of one thing rather than of another is more difficult to explain, and this is what I was refering to.

[wizard]

Thanks Shaman, it was very interesting what you quoted.

[Graupel]

So what do you think is the real cause for us loosing conscious awareness, lucidity, etc.?  I'm not an expert on sleep science but perhaps it is a natural mechanism for the body to shut down the conscious mind and let it sleep while accessing dreams from the subconscious?  It's weird because in the dream you are still playing out your dream scenario by making choices, etc.. but you aren't aware where you access your memories from the day life and subsequently want to say "oh.. im dreaming i am in the state i can now try to have an OOBE".

Interesting.

If I can understand what exactly causes us to loose consciousness in a natural sleep cycle (meaning.. "dozing" off into sleep), maybe that can help me to find a way to fall asleep but remain awake.  Because once you understand how something works there's always a way around it.

[Graupel]

This morning I was able to remain awake longer and I think I know what causes me to loose awareness.. it eventually feels like there is some sort of natural mechanism that causes me to drift further and further into a non-awareness state (zonking out).

Would just holding a thoughtless mind and passively watching the void work to stay awake into F12?  If it's not passive enough, I simply remain awake.  But if it's too passive, I just simply loose consciousness (fall asleep).

[jilola]

The cause is the mind split effect of a variant thereof.
What we experience during a dream is only recalled when we successfully manage to integrate the experience into our original selves.
Most of our dreams fall into oblivioin when our 'normal' selvels regain consciousness during the process of waking up.

2cents & L&L
Jouni

[Graupel]

But with continued practice, it is very possible to fall asleep consciously every time, and always be able to enter that state?

[shaman]

Some dreams are exactly as you said Jilola, in that sens that only when we wake up we "recollect" the dream, remember as much as we can from it, sometimes it is not very much, sometimes it is a whole story/plot. However, other dreams are very vivid and their memory is exaclty the same as the memory of an event that has been lived, or even more vivid. In some of these dreams I remember myself very clearly acting exaclty the same way as when I am awake. And there the recollection is clear like crystal, with every little details. These dreams can even sometimes turn into lucid dreams, and then it is obvious that the dream is not just a "recollection" of something, but it is rather a memory "print" in our mind. In dreams often what also happens is that at a given moment in the "story" of the dream we remember something related to the dream itself. For example the dream is about someone walking in the street in the morning, and then suddently when that person (the actual dreamer) passes in front  of the facade of the movie theather (still in the dream) he/she remembers (in the dream) that he/she went the night before to see a movie there, eventhough in the dream itself the person did go to the movie the night before. So here we have inside the dream a recollection of an event that chronologically happened before but takes place later during the dream.  This kind of process happens quite often in dreams, as we recollect during the dream the memory of things that belong only to the dream world (and are not memories of actual event in the life).  These collections of memory inside the dreams are the ones that make the environment in which the dream takes place. These meomries inside the dream should not be confused with the memory of the dreams.

According to psychology, as we grow up, we create a barrier in our unconscious that stops some of our natural impulses. This barrier is actually created by itself as a little child is often told "do not do this, that..", so that inside the little mind there is a voice that will say not to do this or that and stops many of the "impulses" we have. At night, in our sleep while the barrier is weaker, our unconscious part of ourselve that generates the impulses will try again to cross the barrier, but this time the impulses will come in the form of messages: dreams. These are smart messages as they are disguised (with symbolism) and therefore they kind of cross that barrier. When we wake up that barrier becomes stronger again and not only stops the messages from the unconscious part of ourselves, but it also erases the memory of these messages/dreams. So that is one way we lose awareness, by having the memory of our dreams erased as we wake up.

I guess we would really need the comments of a professional on this, both from the point of view of the psychology as well as from the point of view of the biochemical in the brain.  The real question is that awareness is consciousness and the question becomes what is consciouness, where does it take place in the brain... and even today  
the answer has not been found. There was a very good article in a   professional journal of medicine called "The Lancet"  
( http://www.thelance.com/  the original article in the Lancet journal of medicine is here in pdf format, you will need acrobat reader to open it  :   http://www.zarqon.co.uk/Lancet.pdf   )
about NDE (near death experience) where a person (in a car crash) who had a flat electro cardio gram (no heart beat) for already a little while and was therefore completely unconscious (and clinically dead)  who, after being brought back to life, could tell the ambulance nurse where she had put some of his belongings  as he saw himself "float" above the scene of the accident.  In that article the researchers conclude with the remark that "where consciousness takes place is still a mistery" as it appears that it could even take place outside the body?? (here it is obvioulsy an OBE). Anyhow I think that article is very intersting. You can register freely to the Lancet online and then you can make a search on NDE (or any other topic) and find the article in question.  The main point that I tried to bring up here is that we do not know what exactly is consciousness and where and how it takes place.

[quetzalcoatl]

I think we are just mesmerized/fascinated by our dreams.  Especially if they are embodiments of our repressed desires, fears, etc...  Very similar to day dreams but without physical reality to distract us.  

I think waking up like in a nightmare is a reaction of our mind not wanting to accept what the subconscious is giving it.  It follows that part of the key to lucid dreaming or at least getting good at it is the ability to face anything the subconscious throws at us without having an uncontrollable reaction to it.

[LogoRat]

Think about this, maybe you ask the same question when you are on the other side.
Maybe you think, why cant i get lucid in the physical world..why..
And why cant i be more aware in the physical.

The problem is recall.
You need to bridge the memoryconnection between the 2 dimensions.

What i suggest is to be more aware of the otherside, learn your memories from it.. learn who you are in the dreams, get to know yourself both here and there.

Maybe when you are at the other dimension you are aware of your physical self, and you try to figure out all the time how to get the information down to the body of what you have been doing.
Maybe you dream, and then ..oh excrement, i better enjoy the lucid dream while im at it, and then you try many different things to get the information across.
Problem is that when most ppl wakeup, they scan the alarmclock and thats it, then they move to work.

If you write down your dreams and read them over and over again, you create new patterns and new wrinkles in your brain to take care of the information.
The brain will never store information and will not make room for anything that you dont consciously are focused at(except commercials and other subconscious programming).

Dont just write down your dream, read them over and over again, by doing this you create stronger patterns in your brain so you have easier and easier to get the information down.

So, you can enjoy many adventures on the otherside, but because you dont know much about it in this dimension..you only think you live a vivid and lucid life here and over there is just fuzzy strange images.

[eeb]

Good answer Logorat, I agree completely. I can comfirm from own experience that just to pay more attention to dreams and trying to recall them after you wake up, makes them become clearer and easier to grab.

First when I was busy with physical life i used to have no memory of my dreams at all. But now I also busy, but I pay attention also to my dreams and am honestly interested in them.

Funnily enough now I wake up in the middle of the night (before never) to go to pee, and either then or otherwise in the morning I recall one or a couple of dreams.

When I wake up in the middle of the night and go to sleep again, I try to get the 3D darkness, but unfortunately till now I still didn´t succeed: I always fall asleep... But hey, I remember my dreams!


Ebele

[Graupel]

Interesting.

Why though do we "fall asleep" and loose lucidity (awareness) without just taking our conscious minds, thoughts, wills, and full lucidity into the dream state naturally?

I'm thinking that without the proper practice and training to keep the mind awake as long as possible.. it is just a natural reflex programming that is built into our minds to shut off any conscious thought during the waking world?

And to break the natural rule of falling asleep to the point where we can fall asleep every single night with our conscious minds fully intact (to do lucid dreaming, OOBE, AP, or whatever we want with full lucidity) just requires a strong will to try to fall asleep passively and keeping the "being" active and the mind passively awake?

[ralphm]

Lack of trained awareness? After trying to do obe's and waking in the middle of the night to do obe's i have found that i have more lucid dreams and some of what i would call epic dreams- dreams that have a good degree of continuity and which i can remember relativly easily.

[LogoRat]

Well, we never loose awareness, our brain just dont put the transition experience to the memorybank.
You may fall asleep and then you are aware of every moment to the dreamland, but the only thing that matters when you are here is the memory of it.
You need to remember.. you need to make the brain open up new channels to store information.

A good way is to keep records in your dreamdiary or whatever on how long it took until you fell asleep, if you had any strange sensations before falling asleep etc etc.
Keep record and try to make the brain accept and create new memorypatterns and storage room for those memories.

[Risu no Kairu]

Maybe it depends on what you consider "awareness."

I've noticed that when I wake up in the middle of the night, or when I'm really tired and stuff and I start to drift off that my senses start to leave me.

If I'm thinking, I usually get lost in my thoughts, unless I notice, "hey, where'd the radio go?" And that's when I zoomp back to full sensory awareness of my body.

I've also noticed that my thoughts start to slow down, and disappear.

It's kind of like that whole void thing. Just there, no thoughts.

Since time seems to become less fluid the higher the mind goes, maybe you don't lose awareness, but phase into a higher realm. Then, eventually, while you're not thinking about anything, just... existing... and your dream mind double is doing stuff, and maybe you have a projected double (or two, or three) wondering around, your body automatically starts to call your mind back.

Mind: "..."
Body: "Hey, buddy. I gots tah pee! Come back and wawk me to da westwoom!"
Mind: pulled from where it is "Huh? Wha? Oh, uh, sure..."
Dream Mind: "Wait for me!!" fades into oblivion
Projected Mind: "Well, uh, let our powers combine!" refuses with energy body, but memories supressed due to Mind being aware.

[Graupel]

Well.. in the simplest way I'll define what I think of consciousness:

Consciousness is the full lucidity that you have while awake.. you can think, react, predict, feel, etc..  

I want to be able to fall asleep consciously and take that lucidity with me so I can think later "Oh I'm ready to begin inducing the vibrations to have a full blown OOBE.  I'm in the state!".  I don't want to fall asleep and loose lucidity.  When we fall asleep, for some odd reason.. a our mind shuts down and a barrier is drawn between the conscious and subconscious.. and the unpracticed mind has absolutely no control over any dream.

I remember every one of my dreams, but I just don't want to fall asleep and loose my lucidity consciousness as defined above.  I want to be able to always fall asleep with a conscious mind intact and immediately have control over any dreams or do experiments with OOBE.

Basically I want to do a controlled W.I.L.D and experience the hypnagogic images whenever I go to sleep (although not totally W.I.L.D.. I want to be in the lull state to experiment with OOBE), somehow stopping my waking mind from going to sleep with my body.

[LogoRat]

Well...about loosing consciousness.
You seem to loose it because you have the automatic operation activated... in a way, you dont give a excrement and just fall asleep.
Most ppl (like me) start sleeping on their back to get WILD and stuff, but after a while they get boored or think "excrement i really need to cut the crap and fall asleep..i need to be full of energy for work".

Cut the Crap and just do it!
Keep records of how long you think you where awake before you fell asleep etc.

[Graupel]

And with time if you continually practice staying awake and keeping the mind clear "passively" and going with the flow.. you'll eventually create a new neural response in your brain's network that makes falling asleep with lucidity intact a "natural" response?

[LogoRat]

Yes, correctly.
The brain is not used to handle this kind of information.
Its main purpose is to handle the data in this dimension that we are in right now.
So we have to consciously create that memorybank.
The brain will with conscious effort create that memorybank and activate more and more networks to it.
The Connections can only be made possible if you want it to be.

The memories will not get mixed tho, cuz it will create a new network for the dream/astral activities.

[Graupel]

So when you say the memories are separate.. we can still carry the lucidity and awareness from the waking state into the astral/OOBE dimensions right?

I just want to be able to have the same thoughts and wills that I currently have in the waking state, so that I can be in the other state and automatically try different OOBE experiments based on what I learned in the waking state.

[LogoRat]

You will still have access to the physical memories yes.
But the thing is that your consciousness in the dreams are not like the one in the physical.
Most people when they are in the physical almost always go through their historical data and the possible future data and scan it back and forth disturbing the concious present moment.
That kind of thing is not something that happends when you are lucid.
When you are lucid you decide when to collect data and what kind.
You can access your physical data because the memories are carried over to the dreamscape.
So you see, most people are dreaming in the waking physical world also.. they are not lucid very often so they never really understand who they are.
You will still be you, even if you dont create mental movies of your memories.

You may have some created personality when carrying out a dream scenario, but when you get lucid in it you will understand who you are. You may still have the characteristics of your created character, but you will still be you.

The physical you is very hard to calm down, most thoughts and ideas from the brain will make you follow the status quo and not do the things like killing other people and stuff because that is not allowed there. But in the dream you can do it like eating candy.
There are no barriers.

Feeling bad about killing another beeing is just a physical created idea. It is a good rule because the physical is not as flexible and if you kill one there it will be very hard for that soul to jump down again,.. it takes a while
Your mind in the dreams are more flexible, you can change it to suit your needs.

You will have the memories of you physical self if you want to, but you dont need it to be yourself.

When you are in the present moment you are more aware of yourself and understand who you are, but when you have thoughts running through your mind all the time you actually only are a character.

When you are lucid you will be aware of your physical self if you want to..its up to you, and most times you will be when you get lucid.

Because if you are not aware of your physical self you would not be able to get the understanding that you are dreaming.