Your brain on dimensions?

[Pharoah]

Xanth, I didn't say I thought the brain was consciousness.  I was sarcastically stating that what I meant should have been obvious.  That you are catty is one of the first things I learned when I joined this forum.  That the entire rest of my post would be ignored over a misnomer, well.... tsk.

[Xanth]

Meow...

[Summerlander]

Hey Pharoah, do me a favour... if I asked you to please point to your consciousness... where exactly would you point to? 

Good question...

[dotster]

Actually, it is also believed that every cell in the human body does the thinking, not just the ones in the brain.

It's not just believed but proven actually by microbiology. "Think" is the word that causes the debate here though. Humans, being self-aware, tend to correlate thought with self-awareness when in fact the thought process and self-awareness are two entirely different things. To be self-aware you must be able to think, but to think you do not have to be self-aware. A clear example are animals. They are conscious beings like us, also capable of "thinking" but they are not self-aware (that is, they don't think things like "why am I here?" or "what is the purpose of life" etc). The cells that make up all living things are considered by science to be the smallest form of conscious matter. When cell's need more energy they communicate with the brain. So cells DO in FACT think. Fascinating world we're making here yeah?

[Summerlander]

I agree. BINGO!

[manwesulimo2004]

It's not just believed but proven actually by microbiology. "Think" is the word that causes the debate here though. Humans, being self-aware, tend to correlate thought with self-awareness when in fact the thought process and self-awareness are two entirely different things. To be self-aware you must be able to think, but to think you do not have to be self-aware. A clear example are animals. They are conscious beings like us, also capable of "thinking" but they are not self-aware (that is, they don't think things like "why am I here?" or "what is the purpose of life" etc). The cells that make up all living things are considered by science to be the smallest form of conscious matter. When cell's need more energy they communicate with the brain. So cells DO in FACT think. Fascinating world we're making here yeah?

I don't like your use of the word "conscious" here. Following your terminology a computer is also "conscious". I prefer to use "conscious" to refer to self-aware beings.

But beside that I'm not sure if action --> reaction (e.g. cell needs more energy --> send impulse to brain) is a sufficient condition for classifying something as "thinking".

[Summerlander]

As I said earlier...intrinsically, we are just a blank channel (see the channel analogy). It's pristine cognition. A radiant nothingness where concepts and meaning thrive. Take the film out and turn the sound off and you get nirvana...blissful static.

By the way, something relevant from www.obe.com originally posted by Jeff:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/50999697/Brains-and-Realities-by-Jay-Alfred

[dotster]

I don't like your use of the word "conscious" here. Following your terminology a computer is also "conscious". I prefer to use "conscious" to refer to self-aware beings.

Well conscious is a very debated on word because it is a name that we have given to a concept that actually branches off into several sub concepts (that we still don't fully understand, mind) and this is not by any means "my" terminology, it is terminology used worldwide. There are different levels of known consciousness. Humans cannot exist without the sub-conscious, it keeps us alive. Self-awareness is encompassed in consciousness but self-awareness is not all that consciousness is, or we would just call it self-awareness and not consciousness. If your dog passed out would he not be considered unconscious? When he wakes up he is considered conscious again yes? Let me break down for you the concepts that I mean to convey when I use words like self-aware, (self-)conscious etc.

Self-aware to me means that you are aware of being aware. Without self-awareness you wouldn't be able to question your thoughts, you would simply perceive them and accept them and act accordingly. Being self-aware means you can CHOOSE thoughts instead of just thinking the thoughts stimulated from the collection of the events leading up to the current perceived moment in time. This is how we view the thought process of dogs and cats and MOST other animals on the planet (there are a few other animals that scientists think have the capacity to be self-aware as well).

And in my opinion a computer would not be considered to be conscious any more than a rock would be considered conscious because it is not alive. The cell is the building block of life and a computer is not comprised of cells so it cannot in my opinion support consciousness in the macro-physical, but on a quantum level who knows?

Bio mechanics is coming out with some pretty interesting things though, maybe full blown organic computers will be a possibility one day. Wetware computers, or artificial organic brains, already exist. They are made using living neurons so yes, in my opinion they are conscious on some level; conscious, not self-aware.

[Summerlander]

You make a lot of sense, dotster. You won my vote! LOL! I also think that we are still evolving as we don't yet fully control the flow of thoughts in our minds. Meditation can provide a great control but not full control. I see a spectrum which differentiates us from animals. If we compare our current state with a possible entelechy in the distant future, we see that we are only partially self-aware. And then compare our entelechy with the present state of animals and they almost appear to operate like mere computers.

A lot of people seem to think that we are this consciousness that can seemingly exist outside of the physical body and that probably survives physical death, but the thing is, we can also be unconscious too. We can be the conscious and the unconscious, or identify ourselves with both, but, intrinsically, there is no self. It's an illusion produced by many excitable cells that communicate with each other and react to the environment both on a macro and on a quantum level.

So...if intrinsically we are neither conscious nor unconscious, who are we? I speculate we are the void itself. Death would thus be the return to the pre-birth state. Taking into account all of what was said as a possibility, why worry about dying? When you are dead, you won't even KNOW it. You won't know anything. There isn't even a you...

On the other hand, perhaps this illusory self escapes to a non-physical reality where it sustains its ego by holding on to illusions that closely resemble the conceptual physical world in which it ceased to exist. This would mean that the self would gradually work its way into non-existence from the non-physical level of reality (the unborn reality as I like to call it) as there is no more physical body to sustain the low entropy and the abstract or high entropy mode of consciousness starts to take over as the self disperses. This would be a temporary afterlife.

Whatever the case, it seems logical to think that, if death means going back to the pre-birth state, then one might be reborn. Like in a computer where the deleted files are placed in a recycle bin and then the data is reconfigured.

[dotster]

I also think that we are still evolving as we don't yet fully control the flow of thoughts in our minds.

I agree here completely. One common misconception is that humans only use around 10 percent of their brain when in actuality we use our entire brain, just not simultaneously. What would happen if we were able to use our entire brain at the same time? The human brain is able to process about 2 million bytes of information just PER EYE, so that's around 4 million bytes of information sent to your brain just through your eyes, and we only use around 2,000 to 3,000 of those bytes of information, if i'm not mistaken. I will have to double check that later. The point is, we process a ridiculous amount of information using all of our sense yet that portion that we use consciously is miniscule at best.

I see a spectrum which differentiates us from animals. If we compare our current state with a possible entelechy in the distant future, we see that we are only partially self-aware. And then compare our entelechy with the present state of animals and they almost appear to operate like mere computers.

Yes I agree here as well that we are only partially self-aware. There is all of this mumbo-jumbo voodoo mysticism surrounding the word "enlightenment" but in my opinion enlightenment is really just a word that we have given to the concept of expanding our self-awareness (and I use the term expanding because I cannot think of a better word).

A lot of people seem to think that we are this consciousness that can seemingly exist outside of the physical body and that probably survives physical death, but the thing is, we can also be unconscious too.

Now we start getting into dimensional theory which is one of my favorite subjects because it's a step into infinity that really is just mind boggling. If there were to be other dimensions that exist above/below/layered onto our home in the 3rd dimension who is to say that the 3rd dimension is the only one in which consciousness resides? In the end is everything not made of energy? Perhaps when someone is "unconscious" here in the 3rd dimension due to the instability of their physical body to handle consciousness at the time , perhaps their focus (<-- perhaps a form of phasing?) is simply situated in another dimension where maybe a form of self-aware consciousness also exists as well. I personally feel a sense of "self" when I phase, yet at the same time that sense of self is interconnected to everything as a whole as well.

I speculate we are the void itself. Death would thus be the return to the pre-birth state. Taking into account all of what was said as a possibility, why worry about dying? When you are dead, you won't even KNOW it. You won't know anything. There isn't even a you...

On the other hand, perhaps this illusory self escapes to a non-physical reality where it sustains its ego by holding on to illusions that closely resemble the conceptual physical world in which it ceased to exist. This would mean that the self would gradually work its way into non-existence from the non-physical level of reality (the unborn reality as I like to call it) as there is no more physical body to sustain the low entropy and the abstract or high entropy mode of consciousness starts to take over as the self disperses. This would be a temporary afterlife.

I do agree with you that there is no need at all to worry about death, but I semi-disagree with you on the "There isn't even a you" and I say semi, because I believe that who you are is just a 3dimensional cut-out of a multi-dimensional consciousness.

I have been meaning to ask someone this for a while but never got around to it, so if you'll give me a quick minute I'd like to ask your opinion while also explaining why I think this. If you will take a step back to the entanglement and double-split concepts that we were talking about earlier, an electron can be both a particle and a wave which to me correlates with entanglement between electrons perfectly because if it exists as a multidimensional wave/shape then maybe the entangled electrons are really just separate "points" on that wave that we have collapsed due to observation. I believe that these phenomenon are explained by a multidimensional universe and that an electron is also just a 3dimensional cut-out that we observe and call a "particle" or "electron" of a multidimensional shape/wave. I'm not sure if this has already been thought up or what, but I've been contemplating it for a while and I would really appreciate some other opinions.

 
Anyways, back from my wild tangent (sort of), so this is why I say "semi" because I like to think of consciousness as multidimensional like the multidimensional electron wave/shape, and me here this body and who I am now is a collapsed point of a wave of the greater consciousness, and if the first law of thermodynamics holds true multidimensionaly and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, I believe that I will always exists as I am in this state now at some "point" within this greater consciousness, but I will also exist in every other form that I have been and will be. That is to say if we consider time to be the 4th dimension, then my 4th dimensional "body" will always exist within the greater consciousness, but at the same time I am every bit of that 4th dimensional body as I am every other 4th dimensional body that exists in this greater consciousness because it is all one and the same, separate yet the same. Kind of whacky I know, but it's a concept stuck in my head.

And now really back to the subject, I do believe people most likely create constructs of what they think death to be as a form for them to once again "expand" their awareness until full self-realization or "the greater consciousness" has been achieved.

Whatever the case, it seems logical to think that, if death means going back to the pre-birth state, then one might be reborn. Like in a computer where the deleted files are placed in a recycle bin and then the data is reconfigured.

Once again I agree completely here, just going back to that greater consciousness and choosing another 4d "body" to hop into perhaps?

Fun food for thought anyways.

[Jon_88]

It is hypotised that during sleep the pineal gland floods the brain with DMT , when they tried to inhale DMT wich is natural in our bodys everybody had the experience of being shot out of their body into other dimencions (spiritual) wich they rapidly forgot about their experiences when they came down from their 5 minute trip.