There is never a loss of consciousness in your life

I would beg to differ. When I have a fit I can be unconscious for up to 15 minutes. I'm pretty definitely unconscious.

When I have a petit mal the lights are on but nobody's home. Once again, pretty damn unconscious. Sometimes people like to poke my face just to make sure. They probably do worse things too, but thankfully I'll never know about it.

Unconsciousness is a real thing. It's different to sleeping. You can wake somebody up when they're asleep, but you can't wake up someone who's unconscious. Trust me, I'm an expert in temporary brain deadery.

And you don't dream whilst you're off the clock either. Or if you do, you don't remember it. Your brain's not taking in any outside information. You don't just piss off to some mystical spirit world for a bit and then come back with a story to tell, I'm sorry to say. Otherwise I would be Jesus-level by now.

a reply to: Volchitsa

Well, I am talking about consciousness in the form of being able to think.

Even if your body is not able to wake up and you are not able to sense anything from it (people poking you etc) you might have a conscious mind which is thinking about stuff.

The problem I think is that we can't remember it when waking up again, hence we use the word unconscious.

What about under General anesthetic? Pretty sure your not conscious?

originally posted by: ParanormalGuy
a reply to: Volchitsa

Well, I am talking about consciousness in the form of being able to think.

Even if your body is not able to wake up and you are not able to sense anything from it (people poking you etc) you might have a conscious mind which is thinking about stuff.

The problem I think is that we can't remember it when waking up again, hence we use the word unconscious.

Well I sure hope that you're wrong, since I'm looking at a 4-6 hour surgery in a few months. My second surgery in less than 14 months. I really don't want a single part of me aware for that.

a reply to: theantediluvian

A great thought experiment, but we still can't know for sure if new carbon copies would even function. Is some sort of consciousness required that cannot be merely copied and if so how does it come into being.

It would also be the alternative answer to being made unconscious and coming back.

There is not an answer yet. Consciousness does seem to play some special role in the universe like in quantum mechanic observer effects.

Some interesting reading resides in reading about 'brain states' and how even when we're in some sort of trance, such as a long distance drive or a long walk, we're still allowing our reactions to be responsive to this so called auto-pilot state.

www.toolsforwellness.com...

www.finerminds.com...

a reply to: Volchitsa

In those moments would you consider yourself non-existent?
but you do come back or you feel you did.

Do you essentially travel through time?

Are you the same consciousness? or are you more like how buddhist put it. You are a energy always moving, like a stream

originally posted by: woodwardjnr
What about under General anesthetic? Pretty sure your not conscious?

I had that once and I don't remember being conscious, no dreams, nothing.

But what if I just forgot what I was thinking while under it, I feel that I can not be certain.

originally posted by: ParanormalGuy
In a dream I usually forget about who I was before that dream, basically I have no point of reference outside the dream. Hence I don't know any better than to believe whatever I dream. I can dream about all kinds of silly nonsense but without having a reference point outside the dream I can not know any better.

Basically the same can be said about my life in this body/reality. Think a bit about that and your mind might be blown!

Dreams might actually be "local realities" (where you are the only creator) while this reality is a shared reality with several creators (all of us) maintaining its stable state. Maintaining the laws of physics (which we all agreed upon) in a way...

Very interesting thought. I agree with your conclusion, that while we are dreaming we have no point of reference to our "real reality", and that this explains why we experience these dreams as if they were true.

Funny... in dreams we can't remember reality, and in reality we can't remember dreams.

But here is another interesting one... in reality we can remember things from the reality, and I experienced that in dreams I can remember things from dreams. Weird, huh? Especially the last one... that in dreams you also have a dream memory.

Why are these 2 realities disconnected? Is the consciousness/soul out of the physical body so it can't access the brain?

Memory is just a tool i think it works 3d . Real memorys are in you and around you,i think its hard job to mak e sense of all your experiances with 3dmemorys.

a reply to: anotherdaytoday

Why are these 2 realities disconnected? Is the consciousness/soul out of the physical body so it can't access the brain?

Here is a very insightful talk which speaks about what you have written.

a reply to: ParanormalGuy

Every time I wake up from being asleep I have faint memories about what I was dreaming which quickly just fades away. Sometimes they fade away so quickly that I don't even believe that I have dreamt anything! So I had an illusion of being unconscious.

This phenomena is very interesting to me and I've come to the conclusion that any experience I have may be forgotten about and then it will seem like it never happened! And I do believe that this plays a big part in the whole "alien abduction phenomena" going on in this world... But I don't think that the memories are lost forever though, just that it is outside our access for a while.

oh I see what you mean now and I agree!
No memory is not lost, they are all somewhere off limits for now. Dunno why, but I think there is a reason why all dreams are not remembered. But even so, I think every dream leaves a bit of an imprint on us, even if we don't remember.

Waking consciousness is not all there is, we are just used to it the most. But it is just one part. Then you have also dreaming and deep sleep and another state when we die. But in my opinion they are all of the same type and beneath it all, there is one "main consciousness" which is like an hidden overload or silent observer. It knows all and have been with us from first incarnations and it will be till the last. But it is not like us, it has no ego or other attributes we like to impose on it!

Every dream, thought, emotion, experiance is registered and noticed by it, and I think we would crush if normally we would have access to all information. So we need to train our minds if we want to find out this about yourself. Many advanced spiritual practitioners have stated that they remember their past lives and so on...I think this goes for past dreams also.

I meditate a lot and naturally my dreaming is getting more awesome and crazy. One time I had a lucid dream where I could manipulate time and reverted back the surroundings around me from my past few dreams. What is wired, that in waking state, I do not remember those dreams, but when I was doing this and saw past dreams, my memory was not lost in "the dream land" as I immediately remembered each dream in full. But when I woke up, the memory of rewetting time was still in my head, but not the other dreams I reverted to, just small bits of them : )

a reply to: ParanormalGuy




I think you are on to it, and when your body finally wears out, as bio mechanical machines do eventually, the other half just kicks up to full awareness. Its the simplest versions that make sense.

originally posted by: anotherdaytoday
Very interesting thought. I agree with your conclusion, that while we are dreaming we have no point of reference to our "real reality", and that this explains why we experience these dreams as if they were true.

Yeah, we are not aware of it being a dream because we believe too much in it.

originally posted by: anotherdaytoday
Why are these 2 realities disconnected? Is the consciousness/soul out of the physical body so it can't access the brain?

That is a very interesting question!
It might be some truth to that, or that it is at least more disconnected from the body than normally.

Maybe lucid dreaming is a result of it connecting more to the body/brain and remembering the other reality and then figuring out that the dream is "false".

I remember having a lucid dream once just to go back to the state where I believed the dream again (non lucid), that was weird.

originally posted by: anotherdaytoday
But here is another interesting one... in reality we can remember things from the reality, and I experienced that in dreams I can remember things from dreams. Weird, huh? Especially the last one... that in dreams you also have a dream memory.

Very interesting indeed, I too often dream about stuff and then remember that I have dreamt about it before (or at least it feels that way).

originally posted by: UniFinity
No memory is not lost, they are all somewhere off limits for now. Dunno why, but I think there is a reason why all dreams are not remembered. But even so, I think every dream leaves a bit of an imprint on us, even if we don't remember.

That is my experience. I seriously feel that I have learnt a lot about the nature of reality by whatever happened to me while asleep. I know that I don't remember most of it, but sometimes I do have these weird dreams that I do remember. And sometimes the feeling of knowledge that I'm not sure where is coming from.

When I was a child before even knowing about ideas like a "soul" I remember having a dream where I stood in front of a mirror and could see myself in it. Then suddenly while watching the mirror I "fell out of my body", I was then near the floor and in the mirror I could see that my body was still standing tall.

I remember thinking a lot about that dream because it felt so weird, I didn't understand why I would dream such a thing!

Later I have also had a dream about telekinesis/psychokinesis which kinda explained to me how to do it. In the dream I got some dishes to fly up in the air, and it was not by trying to do it, it was by knowing that I could do it. So I kinda felt that was like a message to me.

And lately the message "do you believe what you see?" came to me in a dream which I didn't know was a dream before it was pointed out to me. In my dream I remember that message together with the character which was my father suddenly for half a second became my mother and then turned back into my father with me just sitting there confused as hell and then saying "sorry dad, I am a bit confused now" and then waking up.

That was the dream that led me to the idea that because of no point of reference outside of the dream I will believe whatever nonsense in it. And then I knew that the same could be true for this reality too.

originally posted by: UniFinity
Waking consciousness is not all there is, we are just used to it the most. But it is just one part. Then you have also dreaming and deep sleep and another state when we die. But in my opinion they are all of the same type and beneath it all, there is one "main consciousness" which is like an hidden overload or silent observer. It knows all and have been with us from first incarnations and it will be till the last. But it is not like us, it has no ego or other attributes we like to impose on it!

Every dream, thought, emotion, experiance is registered and noticed by it, and I think we would crush if normally we would have access to all information. So we need to train our minds if we want to find out this about yourself. Many advanced spiritual practitioners have stated that they remember their past lives and so on...I think this goes for past dreams also.

I meditate a lot and naturally my dreaming is getting more awesome and crazy. One time I had a lucid dream where I could manipulate time and reverted back the surroundings around me from my past few dreams. What is wired, that in waking state, I do not remember those dreams, but when I was doing this and saw past dreams, my memory was not lost in "the dream land" as I immediately remembered each dream in full. But when I woke up, the memory of rewetting time was still in my head, but not the other dreams I reverted to, just small bits of them : )

That mostly matches my feelings about it too. : )


Thank you all for an interesting discussion btw, this is a fun thread! : )

originally posted by: ParanormalGuy

originally posted by: anotherdaytoday
Why are these 2 realities disconnected? Is the consciousness/soul out of the physical body so it can't access the brain?

That is a very interesting question!
It might be some truth to that, or that it is at least more disconnected from the body than normally.

Maybe lucid dreaming is a result of it connecting more to the body/brain and remembering the other reality and then figuring out that the dream is "false".

I remember having a lucid dream once just to go back to the state where I believed the dream again (non lucid), that was weird.

Hmmm... this actually makes sense. Most lucid dream experiences are very brief and then people wake up. So it's like lucid dreaming is a state where you are connecting to the real body again. And then it has access to the "real brain". A brief moment, where you can control which way you go.

And sometimes you can flip back into the dream world, like you said. But then this lucid state will also be gone soon, because you'll fully disconnect to experience the dream world.

On a sidenote: I once read, that when you are in lucid state you can maintain the lucid state if you rotate/turn around yourself counterclockwise 3 times in the lucid dream. And every time you feel the lucid state drifts away into a full dream or waking up, you can repeat this ritual. Strangely, I soon had a lucid dream after reading this and recalled the thing with 3 rotations... and it worked. Multiple times the lucid dream started to fade away and I "stabilised" it with this ritual. It only worked that night though, can't remember other lucid dreams (and they don't happen too often).

Another thing which I read a year ago was an experience of a coma patient (can't remember his name though): he said when he was in coma he felt like he was a single point of existence in a darkness. A single point of awareness... maybe that's what we all are... small, undefinable points of existence. But which also means we are conscious, even if we are dead. I'm not sure if he remembered in this state his "real life" or if he was just "there" floating around... (PS: it ended with lightbeam and he came to heaven (which is always nice to hear, but diffcult to verify))

originally posted by: anotherdaytoday


Another thing which I read a year ago was an experience of a coma patient (can't remember his name though): he said when he was in coma he felt like he was a single point of existence in a darkness. A single point of awareness... maybe that's what we all are... small, undefinable points of existence. But which also means we are conscious, even if we are dead.)

Awareness is conscious of what is appearing. Right now you are what is aware. You are not the body - you are aware of the body and the thoughts and the sensations - you are aware of this text. When you are in deep sleep there is nothing to be aware of. In deep sleep there is nothing and then there is light (on waking).
What you really are cannot die because what you really are was never born. You are the ever present conscious space in which all states come and go. Your true state is the background to all existence - you are present knowing the deep sleep state, you are present knowing the dreaming state and you are present knowing this waking state. But what you are does not appear to be seen in any of these states - you are just the witness of the movie.
What you are is never not here. Awareness/consciousness is ever present.

I want to correct my statement from before with rotating 3 times to stabilisize a lucid dream. I don't remember exactly which direction to rotate, either clockwise or counterclockwise. It stands somewhere in the internets


Anyways... back to the topic, I'm coming back to the very first post:

originally posted by: ParanormalGuy
There is never a loss of consciousness in your life, there is only the loss of the memories of consciousness.

Yesterday I tried to maintain awareness between waking state and sleep state. I tried to observe what happens during this transition of falling asleep. If there was a point where a "blackout" happens and I lose my consciousness.

Actually it seemed I always stayed conscious, even though random thoughts and pictures appeared in the mind. It's probably true. We are only the witness. Like @Itisnowagain has said in the post above:

originally posted by: ItisnowagainYou are not the body - you are aware of the body and the thoughts and the sensations - you are aware of this text. When you are in deep sleep there is nothing to be aware of. In deep sleep there is nothing and then there is light (on waking).

We observe all this sh#t happening and experienced by the body, but we are not this sh#t. However I don't understand what you mean with deep sleep and that we are not aware of anything. Aren't we at least aware of our own dream?

originally posted by: anotherdaytoday


Yesterday I tried to maintain awareness between waking state and sleep state. I tried to observe what happens during this transition of falling asleep. If there was a point where a "blackout" happens and I lose my consciousness.

The thing is - you do not have to try to maintain awareness - awareness is what you are! There is no 'you' and 'awareness'.
The idea that there is a 'you' that has consciousness is an assumption.

We observe all this sh#t happening and experienced by the body, but we are not this sh#t.

The body does not experience - the body is experienced!
How do we know there is a body present? It can be seen and sensed. What is sensing that there is a body cannot be sensed - so it gets overlooked - but it is always here - awareness is ever present.

However I don't understand what you mean with deep sleep and that we are not aware of anything. Aren't we at least aware of our own dream? !

In deep sleep (not dreaming state) there is nothing to be aware of - nothing is appearing - no things are present to be seen/known. Just because there is nothing appearing does not mean there is a loss of consciousness - consciousness is always present - in deep sleep there is just nothing to see/know.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Wrong.

Over the next half hour or so, brain activity alters drastically, from deep slow wave sleep to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, characterized by neocortical EEG waves similar to those observed during waking.

It is almost the same state as awake.link