How do I know that YOU have consciousness?

Originally posted by bsbray11
Right. This is also what Jung wondered about it a lot of his work, and it's extremely fascinating. Animals are more demonstrably linked to some "hive mentality" where all of a sudden a whole community of animals will change their behavior at the same time, whether it's running away from a disaster before it happens or even at least one case of monkeys isolated on various islands all learning to wash their food in the river at the same time, and without contact with one another.

Oh right, I remember reading about those animals. Ah ha .. then I think it's easier to assume that subconscious mind is actually linked instead of individualized.

I also read an article by YouAreDreaming (I think that's he's username) on Precognitive dreaming. It's basically talking about how some people's dreams turn into reality in the future. And he did experiments to show that using lucid dreaming to change a precognitive dream, one can actually change the future when the precognitive dream happens in real life.

That article also supports the idea (or my theory) that perhaps dream is a realm of subconsciousness that is actually shared between all of us. So when we dream, our souls or consciousness enter into this dream realm where we each have our own room to create whatever we want. But then there are certain rooms that are dreams of the events that will happen in the future. So the dream realm (aka collective subconscious realm) is like a blueprint of the real world. If you become lucid in dreams and change whatever events happen in the precognitive dream rooms - then you get to alter the future that is shared by all consciousness (people).

Hmm .. much to think about ..

Originally posted by yic17
I also read an article by YouAreDreaming (I think that's he's username) on Precognitive dreaming. It's basically talking about how some people's dreams turn into reality in the future. And he did experiments to show that using lucid dreaming to change a precognitive dream, one can actually change the future when the precognitive dream happens in real life.

Ah, deja vu! I had this all the time as a child and thought it happened to everyone. It still happens from time to time but much more rarely. At one time it even started annoying me it happened so often!

The first time I remember it happening to me, I was in kindergarten or 1st grade. By the time I was in 2nd grade, I remember once that the deja vu came on and I knew it, and I tried to think of everything in order to change the outcome... and the result was me going through a sequence of ridiculous activities and gestures. By the time it passed, I had still done exactly what I had done in the dream! I was frustrated at my apparent lack of creativity.

Later I heard people trying to explain that we only think we had remembered our dreams as being the same as what really happened. Having experienced it personally I'm not very quick to buy that explanation. It is an extremely peculiar feeling to say the least.


Your ideas about how these precognitions in dreams relate to reality is also very interesting to me. I was almost thinking, maybe the dream and the 3D experience are really the same locality of space-time, and I had just visited it remote viewing-style ahead of time. If I could afford to sleep in all day I really would like to get back into lucid dreaming. There's too much there to explore that I can't access from here you know?

Originally posted by bsbray11
Ah, deja vu! I had this all the time as a child and thought it happened to everyone. It still happens from time to time but much more rarely. At one time it even started annoying me it happened so often!

The first time I remember it happening to me, I was in kindergarten or 1st grade. By the time I was in 2nd grade, I remember once that the deja vu came on and I knew it, and I tried to think of everything in order to change the outcome... and the result was me going through a sequence of ridiculous activities and gestures. By the time it passed, I had still done exactly what I had done in the dream!

I was frustrated at my apparent lack of creativity.

Later I heard people trying to explain that we only think we had remembered our dreams as being the same as what really happened. Having experienced it personally I'm not very quick to buy that explanation. It is an extremely peculiar feeling to say the least.

Your ideas about how these precognitions in dreams relate to reality is also very interesting to me. I was almost thinking, maybe the dream and the 3D experience are really the same locality of space-time, and I had just visited it remote viewing-style ahead of time. If I could afford to sleep in all day I really would like to get back into lucid dreaming. There's too much there to explore that I can't access from here you know?

lol .. I feel like you're describing my experience of deja vues. I also get them a lot. but not when I was a kid. when I was a kid, I got about .. one or two per year. but since high school/college - I get about 1 per month. and during college there was a time I practiced meditation and awareness - I was able to get like 5 per week.

and yes, with so much personal experience with deja vu, I do not buy into the generic scientific explanation at all. they have no idea what they're talking about. deja vues are not some lag in the brain and it using past memories to fill in the blank. it's literally seeing the future (imo). unfortunately, future that we cannot change .. lol.

I haven't started to learn lucid dreaming .. but I am interested in looking into it.

reply to post by yic17


i believe the answer is simple, we are all one consciousness the consciousness of god which puts its self back together after the big bang , hence the big crunch which again leads to the big bang ang so on.

Originally posted by yic17
Okay, here's a philosophical question I have read many times but haven't gotten a solid answer yet.

So I know that "I" have consciousness. But how do I know that YOU or any other living being on Earth/Universe also have consciousness?

Is there any way anyone can show solid proof that you have consciousness besides of saying "I know because I do!"?

How do I know that I am not the only conscious thing in the Universe and that everything is just within my mind?

Thanks.

Communication is the key! I know that you and others "exist" or have consciousness because I am able to implant a thought into your mind and you are able to do the same to me.

A more interesting question that is relative is; Does the world outside of what I am currently expieriencing exist? Well essentially no, atleast not to you.

ALS

reply to post by yic17

Vic17

I faced this existential delimia when I was young. Not having read Descarte I had none the less arrived at I think therefor I am, on my own. But this left me with the question you pose in your op. I then questioned the existence of everything beyond my immediate senses. I found later that this also was an age old philosophical question.

Anyway one night when I was about 19 my brother and I had our first deep philosophical conversation, he was 17 and we shared a bed room. We talked for hours about everything. It seemed in a way that we had just met. Well finally I had to go to the bathroom so I told him I would be right back and walked out into the hallway.

I was overcome with great trepidation. What if my brother ceased to exist when I left the room. What if he was just a figment of my imagination I said to myself as I walked down the hall. My newly discovered younger brother. Surely he had to be real. Surely.

But what if wasn't. What if he wasn't. What if I was really all alone in this world of my own making ,my own imagining. That two minutes in the bathroom were the longest two minutes of my young life.

As I walked back up the hallway the fear arose within me that if he ceased to exist when I was not perceiving him then he might not re-exist when I came back to the room. Well, as I opened the door I held my breath. Oh please oh please oh please. AND

There was my 17 year old brother standing on top of our clothes dresser, stark naked posing as the statue "Winged Victory". Talk about outside reality and someone else's consciousness slapping ya upside the head. I understood in that instant that I could never have dreamed that action of his up myself. It had to have come from somewhere outside of myself. I also understood the incredible gift I had just received. To have been hurdled over this existential boundary, one that I had labored behind for a while.

Now almost 50 years later I just wish I could get that image out of my mind.

Anyway if you are only asking this question academically I hope you enjoyed the story. If you ask it from the deep philosophical hole I was in, then I hope it helps you along.

Yours
T

Originally posted by bsbray11

Originally posted by yic17
I also read an article by YouAreDreaming (I think that's he's username) on Precognitive dreaming. It's basically talking about how some people's dreams turn into reality in the future. And he did experiments to show that using lucid dreaming to change a precognitive dream, one can actually change the future when the precognitive dream happens in real life.

Ah, deja vu! I had this all the time as a child and thought it happened to everyone. It still happens from time to time but much more rarely. At one time it even started annoying me it happened so often!

The first time I remember it happening to me, I was in kindergarten or 1st grade. By the time I was in 2nd grade, I remember once that the deja vu came on and I knew it, and I tried to think of everything in order to change the outcome... and the result was me going through a sequence of ridiculous activities and gestures. By the time it passed, I had still done exactly what I had done in the dream!

I was frustrated at my apparent lack of creativity.

Later I heard people trying to explain that we only think we had remembered our dreams as being the same as what really happened. Having experienced it personally I'm not very quick to buy that explanation. It is an extremely peculiar feeling to say the least.


Your ideas about how these precognitions in dreams relate to reality is also very interesting to me. I was almost thinking, maybe the dream and the 3D experience are really the same locality of space-time, and I had just visited it remote viewing-style ahead of time. If I could afford to sleep in all day I really would like to get back into lucid dreaming. There's too much there to explore that I can't access from here you know?

The nature of precognitive dreaming from my personal experience is literal future events observed first in a dream that exists in a past state. The locality of the precognitive dream at run-time is not physical. It is a non-linear, non-temporal state where by we are for the most part unconscious participants in the co-creative process that underlies the larger scaled up version of dreaming that we often mistake for physical reality.

It is not some case of post-dictation or selection-bias or any of the lame arguments to try to dismiss it for anything other than what it is. It is a future event first observed in the past during a dream that occurs when the body is asleep.

Through lucid dreaming I have been able to consciously explore this particular type of dreaming, so not only do I have the first-person view of a future event from my own eyes but the choices I can make in that dream ultimately affects causality and occur when the dream actualizes later on in the future.

Having explored this extensively over the last 23 years I am satisfied with what I have learned about the nature of dreams and how they ultimately can scale up into larger reality systems including this one. Everything is interconnected and part of a much larger reality system.

Quite amazing really once you see it all in action.

Originally posted by TerryMcGuire
reply to post by yic17

 

Vic17

I faced this existential delimia when I was young. Not having read Descarte I had none the less arrived at I think therefor I am, on my own. But this left me with the question you pose in your op. I then questioned the existence of everything beyond my immediate senses. I found later that this also was an age old philosophical question.

Anyway one night when I was about 19 my brother and I had our first deep philosophical conversation, he was 17 and we shared a bed room. We talked for hours about everything. It seemed in a way that we had just met. Well finally I had to go to the bathroom so I told him I would be right back and walked out into the hallway.

I was overcome with great trepidation. What if my brother ceased to exist when I left the room. What if he was just a figment of my imagination I said to myself as I walked down the hall. My newly discovered younger brother. Surely he had to be real. Surely.

But what if wasn't. What if he wasn't. What if I was really all alone in this world of my own making ,my own imagining. That two minutes in the bathroom were the longest two minutes of my young life.

As I walked back up the hallway the fear arose within me that if he ceased to exist when I was not perceiving him then he might not re-exist when I came back to the room. Well, as I opened the door I held my breath. Oh please oh please oh please. AND

There was my 17 year old brother standing on top of our clothes dresser, stark naked posing as the statue "Winged Victory". Talk about outside reality and someone else's consciousness slapping ya upside the head. I understood in that instant that I could never have dreamed that action of his up myself. It had to have come from somewhere outside of myself. I also understood the incredible gift I had just received. To have been hurdled over this existential boundary, one that I had labored behind for a while.

Now almost 50 years later I just wish I could get that image out of my mind.

Anyway if you are only asking this question academically I hope you enjoyed the story. If you ask it from the deep philosophical hole I was in, then I hope it helps you along.

Yours
T

Great post!

I have heard many times of people saying how you will feel very lonely if you know you are the only consciousness existing. But I never really understood or felt that statement at heart. Your story made me feel that way - that if I am really all alone in the universe, it'd be pretty lonely and eventually get bored out of my mind.

Now I can see how the supreme consciousness (or God) would rather trap us (or itself) making us (itself) stupid enough so it cannot understand the power or the truth it has. It rather chooses to be ignorant and think others exist (and have their own consciousness) than be lonely in the universe having all of its power.

Even though your story still doesn't prove to me that others do have consciousness for certain - it does make me understand the above (possibility of why the supreme consciousness did what it did to make us ignorant). Which opens my mind to new ideas and is something for me to explore further.

So thanks for sharing

Originally posted by yic17
Okay, here's a philosophical question I have read many times but haven't gotten a solid answer yet.

So I know that "I" have consciousness. But how do I know that YOU or any other living being on Earth/Universe also have consciousness?

Is there any way anyone can show solid proof that you have consciousness besides of saying "I know because I do!"?

How do I know that I am not the only conscious thing in the Universe and that everything is just within my mind?

Thanks.

How do you know that you have conciousness?

Originally posted by demonseed
How do you know that you have conciousness?

Because I am conscious and aware?

Originally posted by yic17
Okay, here's a philosophical question I have read many times but haven't gotten a solid answer yet.

So I know that "I" have consciousness. But how do I know that YOU or any other living being on Earth/Universe also have consciousness?

Is there any way anyone can show solid proof that you have consciousness besides of saying "I know because I do!"?

How do I know that I am not the only conscious thing in the Universe and that everything is just within my mind?

Thanks.

You are the only conscious being, everyone else is your creation.... How do i know that i actually did not start this thread myself to answer my own question????? que twilight zone musiq

Originally posted by yic17

Originally posted by demonseed
How do you know that you have conciousness?

Because I am conscious and aware?

What makes you conscious and what are you aware of?

Originally posted by demonseed

Originally posted by yic17

Originally posted by demonseed
How do you know that you have conciousness?

Because I am conscious and aware?

What makes you conscious and what are you aware of?

I don't know what makes me conscious. I just am.

I am aware of being conscious and the things around me.

Originally posted by yic17

Originally posted by demonseed

Originally posted by yic17

Originally posted by demonseed
How do you know that you have conciousness?

Because I am conscious and aware?

What makes you conscious and what are you aware of?

I don't know what makes me conscious. I just am.

I am aware of being conscious and the things around me.

So in your case being conscious is just knowing that you are?

Originally posted by demonseed

Originally posted by yic17

Originally posted by demonseed

Originally posted by yic17

Originally posted by demonseed
How do you know that you have conciousness?

Because I am conscious and aware?

What makes you conscious and what are you aware of?

I don't know what makes me conscious. I just am.

I am aware of being conscious and the things around me.

So in your case being conscious is just knowing that you are?

Umm .. yeah.

Our I am function never takes a brake. It never sleeps, it never ages even though our finite body's age.

Our I am function gains knowledge from our conscious state of being a wake, and our unconscious state of "being a sleep.

But never at the same time. Because your "I am" can't be in two locations at the same time.

How do i know that i have a consciousness? Because I am.

Originally posted by yic17

Originally posted by Nostradumbass
Personally the best way I could explain it is to slow down time as much possible. Take notice of the one million things going on around you right now instead of just focusing what your going to have for lunch or what your co-worker is probably whispering about you. And as vague as that sounds...Start by eliminating words from your thought process, then comes from slowing down your breathing at an accelerating rate, focusing on a single object in the room room, and feeling yourself consciously drifting off in a world where you don't have to worry about cashing anything into your memory bank (you know, like when you constantly analyze every little thing that happens and take note of it in case it happens again.).

This sounds a lot like Eckhart Tolle's method. Is it the same you're describing?

I never labeled his method as meditation. I always thought of it just as being aware. But I suppose it is one type of meditation. I used to follow this practice a lot - for a few years. It does help me eliminate my ego and connect with others better. But I wasn't able to use this power to create everything I want in life? lol

Practicing this awareness meditation did allow me to enter this state of oneness once. Where I felt complete peace like never before. It was definitely an altered state. But it only lasted for like 10 minutes or so. Is this the state you're talking about?

I try not to read any serious philosophical/spiritual work, most are just poor bastards who have glimpses of pure enlightenment that they are able to put into words...only to find that later, those same words aren't able to stir up the meaning they once did. The more you repeat what someone else says, the less feeling it evokes, sort of similar to a high school whore.

And the power I'm talking about is just taking control of your life and those around you. Do you honestly think me and you have control over our lives right now? People like me and you walk around life in the present moment, recounting memories that we believed to be more grandiose then they actually were at the time. You know what I'm talking about...when you remember a fading memory and no matter how dull or awful you may have felt at the time, it now seems a little enticing.

We are just pawns in our own game right now, afraid to take responsibility, afraid of change. We may not be able to rig the next election simply by meditating on it, but we can pinpoint our desires and beliefs into reality. A lot of people call this "psychic ability", to be able to predict what will happen by simply believing that it will happen with full belief and knowing it to be thoroughly true. But I choose to believe it's of a more self-directed nature...

It starts by being able to control the energy of a room, to direct what moods everyone feels based on what you're feeling. Then you will be able to think about someone, miles away even, and they will be reminded of you...sometimes you might even get a call from a long lost friend. Then you will be able to heal those in great pain, or bring great devastation on someone...the choice is yours.

That's the beautiful thing about people, as daft and stupid as they seem at times, you live deep inside everybody. You can bring anyone to your level if you know how to work your way into their trust and know how to communicate with them. No one is as stupid as they seem, everyone puts on a social mask just like you do. We might be connected, but we will never be alone.

reply to post by yic17


I am because we are and therefore we are because I am

Originally posted by yic17

Originally posted by demonseed

Originally posted by yic17

Originally posted by demonseed

Originally posted by yic17

Originally posted by demonseed
How do you know that you have conciousness?

Because I am conscious and aware?

What makes you conscious and what are you aware of?

I don't know what makes me conscious. I just am.

I am aware of being conscious and the things around me.

So in your case being conscious is just knowing that you are?

Umm .. yeah.

In this case your question will never be fully answered. The only way you can get proof is to actually enter the physical consciousness of someone else and see if they are conscious in the same way as you.

Originally posted by yic17
Okay, here's a philosophical question I have read many times but haven't gotten a solid answer yet.

So I know that "I" have consciousness. But how do I know that YOU or any other living being on Earth/Universe also have consciousness?

Is there any way anyone can show solid proof that you have consciousness besides of saying "I know because I do!"?

How do I know that I am not the only conscious thing in the Universe and that everything is just within my mind?

Thanks.

Considering the entire universe as you know it, and as you ever could know it is created entirely by electrical impulses from your sense organs which are then interpreted by your brain, which then goes on to recreate its impression of what those impulses may mean.....the ENTIRE universe as you know it, and as you ever COULD know it exists completely, and in full, inside the tiny bit of grey matter that you carry around in your own head. So by that definition the Universe as you experience it is only yours and you are indeed the only conscious thing within it. For example...if you take a mild dose of '___' the Universe itself will change quite radically while you stay pretty much the same from your perspective. We are all, and forever will be completely and entirely alone....our consciousness existing as a construct inserted into a universe which exists within our own head....and within that head, which exists within the universe which itself exists only in your own head, is another complete image of the universe....and in that universe is, yet again is your own head, with the entire universe sitting within it....and of course its only logical to conclude that this universe as well has a head within it, which has another image of the universe projected within it, which indeed will contain its own head, containing its own universe......and on , and on, and on, into infinity.............