mind blowing thought

[melanie]

Hi everyone.

Check out this video>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kqVy4T3Wzo

[austintorn@aol.com]

Of course Deepak is inventing… about a transcendental realm. It would take more than that to transcend dental medication.

I' making a Deepak spoken word video for you, Mel, in which he is probably reading Tagore. He sounds cool—a fine speaking voice. You will love it.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Unconditional Love

[SteveA]

Of course Deepak is inventing… about a transcendental realm. It would take more than that to transcend dental medication.

I' making a Deepak spoken word video for you, Mel, in which he is probably reading Tagore. He sounds cool—a fine speaking voice. You will love it.

Actually you pointed out another good example of why brains are not the same as minds. Brains are imagined to exist outside thought, whereas this isn't something verifiable and similarly, under anesthesia the brain is suppose to still exist, along with continued electrical activity, whereas thoughts are assumed not to. The actual experience is none of these though - thoughts and experiences never stop. Atoms come and go all the time in the body and the mind arises as a distributed property. Obviously all these things are connected and atoms are not independent of thought or conscious experiences etc. nor in a reciprocal sense can consciousness be seen as anything independent of the things its conscious of, but the brain does not create consciousness or thought in itself. If we were to talk of such an entity it would have to include much more than solely a brain. What would one brain look like to another brain and how do these see each other without sharing something and what is that shared property and what does it appear as to these?

Along similar lines, we can ask where ones body exists and what it looks like. Can one see anything outside the brain or experience anything outside the body?

[austintorn@aol.com]

Certain, specific molecules of anesthesia, when reaching certain, specific areas of the brain prevent the brain process of consciousness. The brain still does its analysis and so forth, both of what would be thoughts and feelings, as well as its other functions of keeping the hear pumping, but the thoughts and feelings can't make into consciousness, for that is prevented so that you will not feel the pain of the operation. Attendants also monitor your blood pressure and other bodily functions.

Consciousness is a tail-end of a process that has been shown to take about 200-300 milliseconds, so, consciousness is not first—this is not even close, for it is last. Of course conscious experience becomes a part of your memory and so its experiences get referenced by subsequent actions.

95% of what the brain does remains subconscious, which is fine and well, for it would be rather nerve-wracking to be constantly informed of all the electr-chemical processes of body maintenance.

Just because we only ever see the inside of our heads is no reason to make an unwarranted leap to saying that nothing is out there beyond. We manipulate external reality all the time, also to make devices that work—and so it is that we have a fine understanding of external reality, which knowledge is ever increasing by leaps and bounds. Now there is even a 4-D microscope that can look at DNA/protein folding/unfolding.

Are you saying that every time we look at something, that it's like a dream, some kind of DVD projector movie then playing that exactly matches what would go on if all were real?

Take your spark-plugs out of your car and it won't run. If the so-called dream always matches, then it's all about a difference that makes no difference whatsoever; thus, they must be the same, eliminating the dream. Besides, wouldn't there have to be something real down the like, like, say the dream projector mechanism? Wouldn't it be tough to simulate everything in real time, not to mention sending the signals over infinite distances?

[SteveA]

Certain, specific molecules of anesthesia, when reaching certain, specific areas of the brain prevent the brain process of consciousness. The brain still does its analysis and so forth, both of what would be thoughts and feelings, as well as its other functions of keeping the hear pumping, but the thoughts and feelings can't make into consciousness, for that is prevented so that you will not feel the pain of the operation. Attendants also monitor your blood pressure and other bodily functions.

I can see quite a few problems with this explanation though:

1) How long does unconsciousness last? Has anyone measured unconsciousness? The person seeing time pass is not unconscious. A discontinuity in events between one experience and the next does not mean that a period of unconsciousness existed.
2) Do dreams occur while sleeping, yet someone may not remember them? If so, the lack of a memory of being conscious of anything does not mean that there was no consciousness present.
3) The brain in an external physical sense is something perceived by the senses and mind and would not inherently contain the mind itself, just as a photograph or reflection in a mirror is not the actual object but a projection of a subset of properties of it.
4) When you refer to specific molecules and specific areas of the brain that influence consciousness, can you describe what physical property we could observe in these that is consciousness specifically? Is consciousness like a flow of electricity in space that we can consciously see and witness? How could one determine they weren't simply believing that such a thing represented consciousness?

For example, if someone said consciousness arises from matter, then should we assume all matter is conscious? Can a river be conscious? Notice that these are all products of and integrated by ones own awareness of these and knowledge of a brain first requires consciousness in order to construct such a representation of thought etc.

Consciousness is a tail-end of a process that has been shown to take about 200-300 milliseconds, so, consciousness is not first—this is not even close, for it is last. Of course conscious experience becomes a part of your memory and so its experiences get referenced by subsequent actions.

Actually I don't think you can detach cause and effect here. Which causes what? Does consciousness cause electrical activity in the brain? I'd have to assume it does and it's shown in MRIs. Conscious influences alter electrical flow in the brain.

I believe you're mistake about the time delay. The person observing this experiment saw nothing happen before they were consciously aware of it. The observer themself would have to be consciously delayed and neither person witnessed anything happen before they witnessed it.

If we assumed a symmetric situation, the observer of both of these would also be delayed. The differential in timing that observer sees is based upon their own conscious beliefs regarding when someone else experienced an event and not truly representative of when the event was experienced in an external sense (notice we can't tell when someone else is conscious of something except in terms of our own beliefs about when conscious experiences occur externally ... I also happen to have a lot of questions that time progresses in parallel for everything the same as oneself observes it, but that's a side issue).

95% of what the brain does remains subconscious, which is fine and well, for it would be rather nerve-wracking to be constantly informed of all the electr-chemical processes of body maintenance.

Yes, and like writing any decent program it's a benefit to put in subroutines to automate things for you after a while. Notice that while learning to read or perform some athletic skill, a conscious attention needs to be paid in order to construct those abilities that later become coordinated sequences of reflexes.

So we could say that the subconscious mind is consciously constructed.

Just because we only ever see the inside of our heads is no reason to make an unwarranted leap to saying that nothing is out there beyond.

I thought you were saying that ... didn't you basically say that we're only experiencing a small area of information in the brain? What about holographic views of the universe? Do we have to begin rewriting everything again in order to say that we can see what "really" lies out there? If so, how would we know whether we were seeing what's "really" out there or what appeared to be "here" instead?

I don't think there's a way to separate mind, body and consciousness etc. The entire thing, including the void beyond is all the same "substance" and that substance is not isolated to a small section of experience as only physical experiences. Reality needs to include the entire thing - how large or small that is in some abstract "objective" sense is irrelevant.

We manipulate external reality all the time, also to make devices that work—and so it is that we have a fine understanding of external reality, which knowledge is ever increasing by leaps and bounds. Now there is even a 4-D microscope that can look at DNA/protein folding/unfolding.

That's excellent and as you likely know I enjoy seeing diverse growth in technologies, but recognize that once again, tools can basically be extensions of the same construction of subconscious activities.

Are you saying that every time we look at something, that it's like a dream, some kind of DVD projector movie then playing that exactly matches what would go on if all were real?

I don't think there are dreams either, except in an abstract sense. I don't see objects that say they are dream objects versus real objects. What does a dream object look like compared to a non-dream object? Also, how would you determine which is which?

It seems better to simply say that all experiences are real and reality is constructed from all of this and that reality is not just contained by some little corner of things.

Take your spark-plugs out of your car and it won't run. If the so-called dream always matches, then it's all about a difference that makes no difference whatsoever; thus, they must be the same, eliminating the dream.

Ok, if you take consciousness out of the picture then what's left of reality? If you were unconscious what would the universe be like?

Besides, wouldn't there have to be something real down the like, like, say the dream projector mechanism? Wouldn't it be tough to simulate everything in real time, not to mention sending the signals over infinite distances?

Distances are related to the properties describing the dimensions of a space. All dimensions of physical space are described in terms of consciously perceived properties. For example, if nothing in the universe had a color we could consciously see then vision would for all intents and purposes not exist and meter sticks wouldn't exist, much less an ability to measure the speed of light etc.

If we were to be consistent with the brain idea then the entire space of the universe would fit within a volume spanning nanoseconds across.

Has anyone considered what neural activity might look like if projected into the form of an external space?

So basically there are a lot of loopholes and I believe enough paradoxes that this approach is never going to work. A solid model needs a solid foundation and we should have that model include as wide a range of phenomenon as possible and not exclude some components as being illusion/unreal/unimportant. The best model, as Melanie has been recommending appears to be the awareness witnessing everything as a single coherent space. From there we have a solid point to begin with and can build a lot of structure via. appending conscious qualities to this to generate orthogonal directions in a mental space and similarly in a physical space etc.

The closest thing to the stuff that's "really" out there, in an objective sense, is just the future and it appears that at least the illusion of creativity is pretty convincing.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Anesthesia, when done properly, induces complete unconsciousness. Doctors and nurses are ever amused when the patient awakes and asks when they are going to start the operation, being incredulous that it has been completed.

In night dreams, we are semiconscious, but have muscle paralysis, except for sleepwalkers, and may or may not remember dreams. If one wakes momentarily and makes a few notations in a dream log then one can reconstruct the entire dream, even years later.

Consciousness arises from the arrangement of brain matter, not just from any old matter in any old form. The higher the brain, such as in man, the more consciousness. A snail’s consciousness may but perceive light and dark, warm and cold. Brian injuries or drugs can alter consciousness. No brain, no consciousness.

We have senses because their really is an external reality to be sensed. The eye, for example, isn’t just there for show, as complicated as it is, with several brain visual modules behind it. No eye, no vision of external reality. The brain does a face-lift on the waves and molecules of external reality, turning them into qualia. Some people have degrees of color blindness, even just gray, maybe (like cats), since some or all of their three types of cone proteins don’t work (and rotate according to the amount of respective primary color present, all of this again pointing to a real reality out there).

Consciousness does have a built-in time delay, just like the broadcast of a live TV show.

If you take consciousness out of the picture you would be a zombie.

All the loopholes are in the realm of invisible imaginaries of “consciousness floating around by itself”, with no evidence, to boot.

[SteveA]

Anesthesia, when done properly, induces complete unconsciousness. Doctors and nurses are ever amused ...

Notice that noone's actually able to verify a state of unconsciousness though. The doctors and nurses are consciously measuring their own time during a period the assumed period of unconsciousness (which is not even verifiable).

In other words, unconsciousness is simply an abstract concept that is never actually experienced and reflects a discontinuity in perceptions.

when the patient awakes and asks when they are going to start the operation, being incredulous that it has been completed.

Yes, as I said ... notice that the patient didn't even experience unconsciousness but instead a transition of state in consciousness.

You're basically saying the same thing that as the rest of us.

Just FYI, yes, I'm intentionally trying to put together what the unconventional explanation is. Similar to current cosmological theories, there has been a large effort to layer explanations on top of each other to match the latest set of inconsistencies that crop up and supposedly millions or billions of man-years have been devoted in their construction, but there remains little logical explanation as to why things are as they are (it's largely empirical data without much explanation) and various fields in science describe phenomenon that are qualitatively disconnected without having them tied to a fundamentally singular mechanism that allows all these things to exist together and that's where it appears we have to look outside the convention sphere of science and include a broader range of phenomenon and experience as well as consciousness and first hand observations etc.

So for me, it's going back to square #1 to see if this more unified view really does appear capable of describing how everything can be fit together and it appears capable of doing it, though similar to how theories in science have evolved in isolation and grown to explain a broader range of phenomenon, a similar approach (along with a bit of effort, though I believe less because the inherent conflicts are removed) can be used to reorient all of those theories to connect them together as phenomenon arising from a single logical basis.

Fundamentally everything in science is based upon information and transformations of it. Reality at any moment is simply whatever set of this one happens to be using. Logic regards the preservation of information and its structure and mathematics and information theory describe the (inherently creative) transformations that can be applied to this, as the application of an informationally conserving transformation is actually a source of information creation because it appends the context of a transformation to the remainder of the preserved information.

The approach to science that it is solely a process of passive observation has no value and appears to be impossible as, at a minimum, a choice to perform some action that is believed to be passive is still an active participation (the transformation applied is the "passive" one ... whichever operation that is).

So it's interesting to see that if such manners of observations could be considered contextual transformations and that if memories of such manners remain, then we could begin with a "passive" observation of nothing and bingo - a construction of something (the passive observation) from (an observation of) "nothing" has occured.

Notice that such a view containing oneself as the creative influence appears to be a logical necessity, otherwise we have the somehow/vague/random "origin" from a literal nothing, which appears to be impossible despite claims by some people that such a view is "scientific".

From there we can simply work with information being transformed with various contexts as constructive layerings of spaces and determine which components are visible in any representation and within what context etc.

It's simple, it's got a persistent track record, not particularly original, agrees with a lot of the views presented by some of the most insightful people around and ... it happens to be cool (major plus) on top of it

So we could try to figure out how things are suppose to exist in some unknowable and inexperienciable "objective" fashion and continue to wait and see what photon happens to impact our inertia, or go the other way and put it together as it should be (and these "should be version" should also happen to match up for everyone).

In night dreams, we are semiconscious, but have muscle paralysis, except for sleepwalkers, and may or may not remember dreams.

Notice again that you're creating virtual objects here. Who is imagining that someone else is dreaming? If someone told you that ghosts exist and we can verify this because they make the leaves of trees flutter, would you accept that as valid proof that ghosts exist?

I recognize that we're socially conditioned to look at things in certain ways and that there's value in this, but we also have to be able to see problems and conflicts when they exist and not simply follow the herd.

The duality is not physical, it's a mental conditioning that creates two perspectives that can be in conflict (similar to the left/right brain, though the creative aspect is not actually in the form that the logical form perceives it to be - the logical side sees a dynamical asymmetrical reflection of itself in time, much like motions in a mirror of similar objects) though we can use logic to derive what must exist in reality and still retain the value of experiencing it from the inside out as well, but believing only one side or the other exists as completely true in isolation continually leaves loose ends. The only "loose end", if any exists, is what should be now - logic has no preferred direction, except the desire to retain everything in coherent relationships - conservation laws in the universe arise from that common desire between things to remain coherently related in a common space of interaction. Transformations over time applied to this increase the available degrees of freedom as well as allow for a greater inclusion to exist as additional properties are appended to existing one and this can be seen as breaking preexisting symmetrical properties (for example, observations of dark matter and energy can be seen as representative of this and these can allow for a greater diversity of properties to exist within a single space which allows for it to be extended and include a broader range of phenomenon within it - time is a growth and requires this occur along with increased perceptions - basically we're watching number theory unfold from a specific context - the "common language" of the universe across space and time is just logic (the desire to remain) and mathematics (the desire to interact and grow) and creative freedom is the rule (observer independent observations in both contexts of time and spacial positions). The "cost" of time and freedom is that nothing drags anything else along and time lines can be interwoven and not run parallel to each other - one determines their own state and methods of interactions and the mind/universe coordinate these motions to construct dynamic spaces of interaction. Physical laws are the "cost" of retaining those motions related to self - as the properties of that self determine the spacial context and degrees of freedom in a space and the "cost" of remaining as a coherent self is the existence of individual perceptions).

When the logic is lined up right, it all fits in perfectly and has no paradoxes or conflicts and matches with both individual first hand experiences, science and metaphysical/spiritual views.

In a sense, life is enjoying the show but in order to keep the lights on a bit of growth and intelligence can be required. It can go for a long time, but personal upkeep isn't entirely unavoidable and it can be useful to recognize that ahead of time and orient ones actions toward preserving the place as an enjoyable recreational spot ... or heck, even get into adding new attractions . Obviously we all do this in our own way already, though it can still be enjoyable seeing it in other aspects as well and I know you do this too with your explorations, so it does actually fit together quite well ... as it should. Once again, it's rather beautiful seeing how things pan out and some of the possible directions we can be heading as well

[austintorn@aol.com]

One cannot experience unconsciousness because experience is inhibited during that time. This is not indicative of anything deeper, further, or wider.

[labelwench]

I would only remark that I have experienced anesthesia and sat bedside watch for persons coming out of the effects and also during an end of life situation.

Additionally, I have worked with several horses under the influence of anesthetic and assisted with various surgeries including, gelding, abdominal and wound suturing.

There are different classes of anesthetic for various applications, mainly to temporarily block sensation for as long as required by the procedure.

In the same manner that jobs pile up in a queue when one's printer is not enabled, from my observations, I rather suspect that there is considerable brain activity, even if there is no mobility or obvious sensory input/response. The consciousness may be bound, gagged and blindfolded, but my thoughts are that it is very much still there.

The Doctors that I worked with advised that one should not speak of anything that may be distressing to the patient, even when apparently unconscious, as we are not entirely certain if they are capable of hearing while under anesthesia, even if incapable of response.