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Originally posted by trysts
reply to post by TheJourney
I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree, so I'll have to ask a few questions. After reading your original post, what exactly is your workable explanation of consciousness? I couldn't figure it out when I read you.
Another question is; why are you using the sleeping state as evidence for a workable explanation of consciousness? Why would you rely on a middleman(instruments showing brain waves), instead of direct testimony from the subject? I mean, how do we know a machine assigned to picking up brain waves can inform us about what is actually happening in the mind?
And finally, TheJourney, what do you mean by "deeper"? You use the word numerous times in your OP.
Originally posted by Dustytoad
reply to post by TheJourney
I agree with everything you just said.
I want to add that people get really confused about what they are.
People think that only the "wakeful" piece of consciousness, is the I..
I am all of that, and you can have multiple levels going at once. It's cool when you "merge" different streams because it's like you know all these things that you never consciously knew you knew before..
It's like merging with God.
Originally posted by TheSubversiveOne
reply to post by TheJourney
Very good OP.
Although I think the term 'consciousness' is insufficient, circumscribes nothing and should be stricken from the dictionary, your post makes some valid points to overall bodily experience and states of conscious activity.
Originally posted by Axial Leader
I have just one question which seems left out of all this:
If complexity creates conscious thought, where do feelings such as pain and pleasure come into the equation?
Any answer to that last question would be greatly appreciated, TIA. I have struggled with that question for quite some time without any progress. Sensation and feeling seem at the core of any discussion on consciousness, at least to me...
Originally posted by micpsi
Consciousness is God's partial (that is, veiled) self-awareness. There are seven global levels of this, of which four were classified by the great psychologist, Carl Jung, as his four "psychic functions" constituting the human personality: sensing (body), feeling (psyche), thinking (mind) and intuiting (soul). Each level is divided in seven in a way that is analogous to the global division. This makes 49 sublevels, or states of awareness. The lowest 26 of these are dualistic in character: they maintain the illusion of separation of the observer and the observed. The 49 sublevels are experienced whilst evolving in the physical body in the physical universe. Beyond them are six superphysical levels in which - put simply and inaccurately because they are really ineffable - the physical universe itself becomes, effectively, one's physical vehicle of consciousness. These cosmic superphysical levels are each divided into seven sublevels, making 42 superphysical sublevels of cosmic awareness. In total there are 91 sublevels. Currently, the average human being's awareness spans the 28 sublevels of the four lowest modes of being.
This cosmic spectrum of consciousness has been shown in a rigorous mathematical way to be mapped out in certain sacred geometries. Their various beautiful, analogous embodiments can be studied here.
As you get to these deeper states, you skip that slow step by step process and take larger leaps.
It is actually possible to be aware while you sleep. There are various levels of sleep, though.
The connections that your mind makes in these deeper states, as I said, may seem like nonsense. They are not. You need to understand that. It’s sort of having humility toward your own brain. Accepting that your brain is more capable and intelligent than your conscious mind. Maintaining awareness where you normally do not have it is simply becoming aware of deeper levels of cognitive functioning. As I alluded to before, this is related to meditation. Through meditation, you also learn to intentionally go into deeper states, this time not with the intention of falling asleep. Going deeper in meditation, in fact, makes it easier to maintain awareness in deeper states towards sleep. Sleep and meditation are not so different, in fact. We may, therefore, operationally define one sense of meditation as awareness. Learning to become aware of deeper and deeper levels of mental functioning. These deeper levels are lower frequency brain waves, which just means that it is skipping most of the steps of reasoning that your conscious mind deems necessary.
I'm interested in asking you something: I've heard this claim many times by mystics who claim they can maintain awareness during sleep. I find it amazing, yet when I try it, I wake up groggy and feel as if I didn't sleep...
Do you build a tolerance to this, or something? Or is there some difference between my 'awareness' in sleep and your 'awareness' in sleep? Also, is the awareness akin to a conscious awareness; do things 'pass' by according to our normal waking perception? Or do they pass by according to those wide units you described before?
You have done is a fine job of defining the parameters of spiritual experience in academic terms. But what of the phenomenology of experience? As you descend deeper into lesser frequency brain waves, you can become 'aware' of forms or creatures existent at that level of perception. Also, there are claims that there exists a 'parallel' world identical to the physical, where the apparent 'laws of physics' generally do not apply. How do we make compatible your theory of lesser brain waves - and I imagine a less definable awareness of multifarious things, with the claims I've read in robert bruces 'astral dynamics', which describes a perception of reality - what he calls real-time zone - in terms very similar to our own experience of the world?
Forgive me if I'm not quite understanding the dynamics of this level of reality. When you say there are less logical sequences between A and B in a very deep state of mind, that seems to imply that the associations - which I take to represent individual mental concepts the mind correlates - create an experience which is necessarily small in the details.
My problem is shouldn't perception, or association at that level of awareness increase brain activity? And wouldn't that contradict the differences between beta,theta, etc waves?
The exercises he prescribes to increase awareness of the subtle or 'projected' body, is tactile imaging, where the conscious mind focuses itself on a particular body part, and imagines itself 'in it'. The intention is to create an imaginative awareness of 'bodily' energy in the form of the physical body.
Also along with the increase in energy, your brain has the potential to sort this energy in any possible way. This is why you can have visions, as well as hear and feel things. You interpret the energies, and you can project them in any way, with any amount of detail really. Any perceptions you have, though, will be free-associations.
Slower speed, faster time. Similarly, more connections, less energy per connection. Less connections, more energy per connection.
So you project the realities which occur spontaneously? When you say spontaneous, do you mean, independent of the conscious will - and so like a dream - or does the aware individual possess the power to take control and project whatever thought he wants onto the world of his experience?
What is the connection between 'associations' in consciousness, and connections in brain waves? Associations essentially construct reality. If a 'real world' can be created in a trance state where someone believes himself to be 'projecting' or 'remote viewing', I imagine the associations within consciousness are as complex or similar to associations made in normal consciousness.
I'm not questioning your theory, by the way. I agree with your overall idea. I'm just curious as to how the brain registers conscious activity of another sort in terms of 'less connections'