Consciousness

Discussion in 'Existentialism' started by LovePeaceMusic, May 7, 2010.

  1. gendorf

    gendorf Senior Member

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    ego is an illusion. then we are one.
     
  2. Monkey Boy

    Monkey Boy Senior Member

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    It seems like you are identifying with your mind.
     
  3. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    Yes--to an extent I think you are right---but the understanding I attained was not one of mind as much as it was of reality itself----everything around me, and the universe itself.

    There is a common element in many peak experiences that one suddenly finds himself to be intricately connected to all of reality (even Maslow talks of it). This unity with all of reality is also a significant part of the Eastern religious experience. Brain scans of monks and others who can induce a peak experience, have shown that during this ecstatic experience, the part of the mind that creates boundaries of the self shuts down. How this physiological aspect of the mind fits in with the psyche as we experience it, is obviously a bit fuzzy.

    Is that the actual ego that shuts down (again, I use ego based on the Jungian definition which I am sure I stated earlier), or is it simply the part of the mind that enables us to identify the boundaries of the objective (vs the subject) in a physical sense, or even the part of the mind that, if we live in a holographic universe, plays a significant role in giving the 3-dimensionalness to a flat holographic reality?

    One of the implications of this is that the single-mind-unified-reality concept of Eastern Philosophy and mysticism, is simply an illusion resulting from the shutting down of a portion of the physiological structure of the brain.

    This peak experience I described could have been a face to face meeting with my physical mind, which only seemed spiritual, partly because of the same shut down of the same part of the brain.

    I however have come to believe that the mind is multidimensional, and that what we consciously experience is an ego-filtered tip of the iceberg. If we can shut the ego down, or open it up (so it is less of a filter), and experience the multi-dimensionality of our own individual mind, we are suddenly trying to understand a 5- or 6-dimensional being from a 3-dimensional context (with time as the 4th dimension). Of course it would seem that we are a part of everything if our boundaries suddenly expand beyond the physical dimensions. This is another way that in the ecstatic experience I spoke of here, I may very well have been identifying with my own mind.

    But I am an essentialist and believe that essence, rather than existence, is the basis of being. Therefore I would say that there is something to the universal atman, the Tao that can’t be spoken, Aristotle’s nous (mind), the cosmic consciousness. We are all interconnected and intimately related. At a deep level we are as one. But I do not think that this means that we should repress the subjective and meld back into one with the universe. I believe we are here to experience life, and our subjectivity---our individuality---is our greatest gift and should be stressed.

    But, on the other hand, I treated my other ecstatic experiences as also identifying with my own mind. Especially when it involved the shamanic spirit journeys----I argued it away as my own meanderings through my own subconscious, and coming face to face and interacting with my own archetypes. But it was clearly pointed out to me---many times (and not by humans) until I finally got the point----that I was interacting with things that were well beyond my own individual consciousness. Many Westerners seek proof of the beyond, the supernatural, ---God.

    Indigenous people around the world who walk the traditional path have ongoing proof of greater dimensions and powers and beings beyond ourselves. There is no question, for example, to a Native American who walks the Red Road, of the existence of God. They do not need to take an existential leap of faith to believe. Western man has always had such a difficult time understanding that Native Americans truly experience the reality they speak of. They see proof in ceremony all the time. There are no hallucinations; no strange coincidences that are taken to mean what they do not; no illusions built upon blind faith; no tricks and tomfoolery. It is very real. This is one of the greatest reasons that they hesitate to let a westerner participate in their ceremonies.

    Anyway---reality is not at all as simple and physical as it seems.
     
  4. Anaximenes

    Anaximenes Senior Member

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    The mind always works better than reality as much as we see it practically substantialized in the chambers of man's highest achievement, Injustice.
     
  5. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    Let me just ramble on a bit....

    Reality is vibration, movement, nothing more. We are intimately connected through this vibration to everything else as all is merely part of one vibratory pattern.

    Indra's Net.
    The human brain accesses this net through its system of sensory data retrieval. In my opinion, as we exist within this net on a constant basis, and can not escape it in any way, the human brain and its related neural network and compliment of five senses is nothing more than a filtering system which restricts access to the majority of the vibratory "patterns" that the net possesses.
    Or maybe more accurately the human brain develops pattern recognition based upon mutual interaction (learned and heredity) in concert with other human brains of which the single human brain is only one part or aspect of the whole net.

    A single human brain, or mind, can not be separated from the whole of the realm of human experience or the complete net. If that makes any sense. The individual brain (and the social brain system) filters out, or conversely, "makes sense", through the senses, of the continuous vibration. "Seeing" patterns and thus ignoring the rest of the vibratory background.

    A Peak Experience is an escape from the limits of the brain's filtering system and a glimpse at the entire vibratory Net of Indra. Established patterns are overridden and the "individual" "artificial" construct (the ego) is given the opportunity to pierce the Veil of Maya.

    I put quotes around "individual" and "artificial" because they are not really "individual" or "artificial" as they too are merely a part of Indra's Net and thus just as real as any other part or supposedly "Peak Experience" or divine revelation.

    Peak Experiences can not be related, or defined, as by their nature they are outside the realm of the normal pattern recognition system of the human brain; or they would not be "Peak Experiences".

    Hopefully this little trip through the looking glass has sufficiently confused everyone's normal thought process to allow them to understand that all the above is a bunch of BS, just like everything else ever written on the subject.

    Finis
     
  6. Anaximenes

    Anaximenes Senior Member

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    Come on, Marshall McCluhan is not BS. We communicate for the brain in the brain. We can marvel the language back into the communication, instead of apply communication for the language. And thus the Ego is bullshit instead.
    All that psychoanalysis stuff, you know, is for a quick cure all.:2thumbsup:
     
  7. thedope

    thedope glad attention Lifetime Supporter

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    Peak experience is an egotistical apprehension. I mean egotistical in terms of vain apprehension or the hierarchical view of phenomena. Experience is experience or the constant state of living creature. What is the same is the same and what is different is different and not the same. The least concern is the same as the greatest devotion in respect to any single moments attention as the least irritation is the same as the greatest catastrophe. We figure the variables of a complex problem by simplifying or finding the lowest common denominator. Special circumstance is the fractured minds greatest defense against whole understanding.
     
  8. Monkey Boy

    Monkey Boy Senior Member

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    Yes it is. I hope you experience it.
     
  9. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    Yes---the past 10 or 15 years of my life have been filled with such crazy stuff, that it is like I live in two very different--almost alien---worlds: a rational Western world ruled by science and common sense, and a very enchanted mystical world of Native Americans and other indigenous people filled with animal spirits and otherworldly forces as real as the people around me.
     
  10. Monkey Boy

    Monkey Boy Senior Member

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    When you experience everything around and the boundaries between the outer and inner disappear what are you then?

    Peak experiences come and go, but if what is being experienced at that peak is reality than how can reality come and go? What produces the eventual dis-connection with reality and is that disconnection real at all?

    I would say the part of the brain that shuts down is what produces thought. So what is more real, imagination produced by the brain or what is actually being experienced around and within you?

    Who is the "we" that shut's down ego? The "we" is the ego trying to shut itself down. The mind is just the ego again trying to understand itself. It's like a dog trying to chase it's own tail. When we just stop and allow the mind to stop then everything just is. It's so simple and maybe too simple for the ego to handle.

    I'm just interested in truth. There's nothing wrong with imagination as long as it is recognized as such. I remember years back searching for hours and days and days for truth is spiritual books and religions. Then I went for a walk in the forest and looked around and asked the question "why can't it just be this?" It's only when you wake-up that you realize you've been asleep.
     

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