Consciousness, reality, and states

also meant to say this.... will put it here before i forget...

not only must we ask, "what are the parameters of reality?"… i think we have to consider that there are different kinds of realities?…. mind, body and spirit are three that immediately come to mind…

for example… i know that i cannot fly through the air in this physical body…. but it appeared as if i did just that when i was a child or more recently when dreaming or astral travelling… also, plants like henbane, have been ingested by some, and accurate descriptions of the lay of the land have been obtained… so what part of that physically manifest being was able to transcend the physical anchor and actually fly?

 

i feel the same way! my parents were pretty crap, bless 'em, but the one gift above all others that my mother gave me, was that she never dismissed anything i told her regarding what i'd seen/heard/sensed.... some other parent might deem these same experiences as flights of fancy or imagination.... ofcourse the reason she was able to do this was because she too had seen some very unusual things in the course of her long life...

 

We create our own reality within a certain bandwidth of energy which is modulated in frequency by the earth itself. In this way we are all more or less on the same page, our hearts beating in time with each other.

The condition of embodiment has rules, the parameters by which it operates, but the specifics are highly variable due to subjective line of sight. For example, from one perspective we see nations with boundaries, but if your line of sight is from high above, as in an airplane or spacecraft, you see there are no such lines.

Our effects are not specific but more along the lines of atmospherics, a sort of tension we hold through which interpret all phenomena. That is, when we are in a bad mood the specifics of life take on an unpleasant character, when we are in a good mood the opposite is so.

The extent to which we create our own reality is bound by the requirement that it be shared, as knowledge is, being shared. It takes at least two for a condition to exist. They enter the ark two by two, male and female principle, each according to their kind. For a pursuit to exist takes the pursuer and the pursued and if either one of these is absent then you have some other condition.

 

Jung felt that dreams were the easiest and most important tie between our unconscious and our consciousness. He said that one can experience meaningful things through free association, but he stressed the importance of dreams.

 

We can entertain but one thought at any moment. You cannot fly if you are convinced you can't. How real is the ether body, or for that matter the sub or unconsciousness?

To learn how to do something novel we need to give up our previous learning. The mind is extremely powerful.

 

No, you understood perfectly clear. I contradicted myself. I should have been more clear. When I say that something doesn't exist when it is not present, I mean that it technically isn't a part of reality, which is always the present. It likely does exist elsewhere, considering we all share the same consciousness, but it doesn't in that moment exist to the perceiver.

It's like the, "if a tree falls in the woods..." question. Say for example when I die, technically everything and everyone I knew will no longer exist because I'm not there to perceive it. We can't prove that things exist when they're not in our immediate consciousness.


I started re-reading 'Man and His Symbols' and I found something interesting that addressed something you or I brought up about how consciousness and the unconscious are connected and how "real" certain dream/awake visionary experiences are;

"The two fundamental points in dealing with with dreams are these: First, the dream should be treated as fact, about which one must make no previous assumption except that it somehow makes sense; and second, the dream is a specific expression of the unconscious."

"Let us look a little more closely now at the ways in which the conscious and unconscious contents of the mind are linked together. Take an example with which everyone is familiar. Suddenly you find you cannot remember what you were going to say next, though a moment ago the thought was perfectly clear. Or perhaps you were about to introduce a friend, and his name escaped you as you were about to utter it."


There's another great quote in that Bertrand Russell book I mentioned where he describes consciousness like a spot light shining in the dark. The dark around it is the unconscious and anything that passes in front of the light, we become aware or conscious of.

What I'm wondering, which you brought up before, is how does one go about consciously bringing things into the light? The only way I know of are dreams and entheogens. Do you have any ideas on how to do this?

 

Good post

About the part I put in bold, would you say then that our mood or mindset creates those aspects of life that take on an unpleasant character, or is it only our interpretation that changes?

 

I agree partly, but I'm not sure that reality can be separated. I don't think any single thing exists separate from anything else. It's all one.

I do think though that reality can be altered when we do something to put our mind's on another track, a different way of perceiving. Our mind's can and are separated while at the same time existing as one thing. And I think that multiple realities can and do operate at the same time, but they're not separate from one another. They're probably connected by something, probably the collective unconscious.

If I'm sober and caught up with the world around me, I'm a lot less likely to perceive anything metaphysical, spiritual, etc.

However if I ingest some sort of drug, I change the way my mind reacts, responds to, and creates my reality. I'm more likely to be open to visions, spirituality, things of a metaphysical nature, and I'm a lot less likely to get caught up with the superficial aspects of the world.

About the flying part you wrote. I don't think the body does/did transcend any physical barrier and fly. The mind can be separated and fragmented into many pieces if need be, the most useful part is used for whatever is desired. Part of the mind travelled, and things like accurate descriptions of the lay of the land are likely because we create reality, we create what is. Naturally someone is going to be able to physically describe what they created.

Anyways, I think that astral travelling is possible by part of the brain, meanwhile the body and mind are being operated elsewhere by another part of the mind. Sort of like daydreaming, your mind can be elsewhere while your body is doing something else.

 

sure, sure- but it still has nothing to do with the collective unconscious. It's pretty obvious dreams are much of our subconscious however, just seems like the brains way of processing day to day memories/sightings/feelings.

 

These characters are real to the observer because he insists that it is so, but we are never upset by facts, but the interpretation of facts.
It often does not appear to be the case but nothing appears without our whole hearted consent that it be so. Many say there is no way that they would have happen some of the things that happen to them but will not consider that those may not after all, have happened the way they said.

 

The collective unconscious is where all our information, symbols, and knowledge is stored. It relates to all our knowledge. Things from the collective unconscious slip into our personal unconscious, then from there, through drugs, dreaming, and psychic events, they become a part of our consciousness.

The collective unconscious is also what ties everything and everyone together. How is it that seemingly separate individuals can experience the same things in life having never met one another? This is because of the collective unconscious.

 

The human body is common biological stock. The I am I call myself is the same I am you call yourself. Consensual consciousness is more descriptive than collective unconsciousness. Our motives are quite conscious but unexamined.

 

Here's how Jung described his theory of the collective unconscious;

“My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”

 

What I am saying is the common psychic experience mirrors the common physical experience.

 

Many psychic experiences reveal the ways in which we're all connected. For the most part our physical experiences are based on the notion that we're separate individuals.

 

i'll have to get back to you on that one

as i remember it, it was someone else making it possible for me to fly up and sit with him near the ceiling... it was a gesture he made... he sort of drew me up there to sit with him... can't be sure though... i was only a very young child at the time (about 18months old)... wish i could remember if i could see myself down on the floor, still playing with my toys, then i'd have known now that it was more likely an OBE... maybe i did physically fly... i don't know... are you saying that could've been the case?

i'll have to get back to you on this too, other than to say that i have a suspicion that when i am particularly stressed, both mentally and physically, i think my body lends itself to altered states of consciousness... think i mentioned before about that book that Rick Strassman wrote on DMT... he suggested that our own bodies can make DMT or release hormones in the pineal gland that then make it or something like that...

also, briefly, it's interesting what Bertrand Russell wrote about when describing consciousness as a spot light, shining in the dark... i remember many times when really stressed as a child, that i would go hide and curl up and would become this bright little light, seemingly in a universe of darkness... well, that's what it seemed to me at the time... i also remember a weird sensation in my body... kind of prickly all over my skin... like pins and needles but much more gentle... i used to do this quite often...

well, yes, they do seem to be about that for most of the time, but how does one explain prophetic dreams?

 

I think the big problem here, is you read something some revered theorist wrote and take it word for word. It's only a theory- I personally don't agree with a lot of what I learned of Jung, though it was interesting.

 

and for what it's worth, I don't think anybody has the ability to dream of future events- dreams are so vague people can relate them to anything.

a man saw a black cat in my dream, he died. In hell, he figured he should have taken heed of the warning. However, in reality, he may have just dreamt of a black cat for absolutely no reason. And who really decided black cats are an omen of good or bad luck, anyways!!??

Only my opinion anyways, no one has a right or wrong answer here.

 

I think you underestimate the important purpose of dreams.

Why would the brain spend the night processing things it already processed thoughout the day?

Yes, some dreams are vague. That's the whole purpose in trying to understand them. They can have specific meanings, shown to us through symbols and abstract ideas. Same idea as experiences on drugs.

You have to remember, consciousness is something that mankind developed over thousands of years as a way to explain things. Considering the fact that we use only a portion of our brains and the fact that the brain is capable of things we can't consciously take seriously, it'd be a little foolish to just think dreams are wacky pictures with no real purpose.

Considering the things that our everyday sober brain isn't aware of, things that are revealed to us through psychic events, drug use, meditation, etc. we shouldn't just assume that any of these things are useless byproducts of the brain.

I don't see any problem. Lillally and I started a discussion because we found out that we both read and really enjoyed the same Jung book. That's how the conversation started, and that's why this discussion is based partly on his theories. If it makes sense, which it does to us, then we're likely to discuss it further and try to relate to it.


As you said, these are just opinions and there is no right or wrong answer. But I wouldn't say that taking a theory seriously, which we've experienced to be true, is a problem. That's the whole idea of the discussion. If we didn't take anything seriously, there'd be no use for discussions period.

 

I didn't mean it was a problem, just think it's fair to argue every opinion. I mean, rather ironically, you just told me that I underestimate the important purpose of dreams. I just don't believe they mean very much, or not as much as some believe they do.

And when I say process, what was meant was perhaps the way the brain might order things. Imagine revising for a test- you can learn everything and be done with it, but your brain might use trigger words, orders, anagrams, whatever, to aid your memory. It could be a case of put useful memories in different mental filing cabinets, so to speak.