Our mom and dad have sex, and then we are born and have consciousness.

My question: how come WE are behind the consciousness? Why is it US (as an existence) that moves around our consciousness and body? It could be any other existence in the world doing this, but we are the existing 'being' behind our consciousness and body, looking through our eyes.

Why?  

because we chose it for the learning it would offer us

Because something concious observes, which in turn causes the collapse of the wave function (lookup the double slit experiment). For example, light exists as a wave until it is observed, at which point it becomes a particle. There would be no physical without observers.

Interestingly enough, the other day while I was driving, a similar thought popped into my mind -- something along the lines of "why am I looking out of these eyes?". For what seemed like a split second, I felt as if I was just a casual observer looking through the eyes of this human I identified as myself. It was... weird.

Patrick wrote on Sep 7^th, 2007 at 2:47am:

Because something concious observes, which in turn causes the collapse of the wave function (lookup the double slit experiment). For example, light exists as a wave until it is observed, at which point it becomes a particle. There would be no physical without observers. Interestingly enough, the other day while I was driving, a similar thought popped into my mind -- something along the lines of "why am I looking out of these eyes?". For what seemed like a split second, I felt as if I was just a casual observer looking through the eyes of this human I identified as myself. It was... weird.

Patrick,
thats so interesting. That has only happened to me ONE TIME and I do so wish for it to happen again. To me it was as if in a daydreaming state, while driving ( :o ) however not looking thru my eyes, but that of another. Its been at least 20 years or more. But it was peaceful and a complete "different" viewpoint. I can`t really explain it in words, can you help with more insight?

Thanks,
Nanner

One of my early spiritual experiences was an experience where I knew without a shadow of the doubt that my body based identity isn't me. It was clear that my body and personality are just objects of perception. At the sametime I realized the World isn't the physical thing I believed it to be, and that there is no such thing as a particular moment of time or a particular location. I was already there, but this really set me on a life long quest of finding out who I am and what spiritual reality is about.

One thing that really stood out during this experience, which took place while doing motor pool guard duty one evening while in the Army, is the fact of how amazing it is that anything exists at all. For example, how did Consciousness itself come to be? It is clear that it isn't created by our bodies.

Hi Elite-
That's a tricky question!

Perhaps "consciousness" and "free will" are merely appearances, and we are actually just experiencing the natural settling of our "selves" into a more stable state through interactions - much as an ice cube melts, abandoning its initial form to settle into a more probable state.

The tricky part is that nomatter how we twist and turn the facts, there must be a way to describe our world as purely mechanistic, a matter of physics alone, AND at the same time, there must be a way that we can describe our interactions as conscious, intentional, and mentally abstract, AND at the same time, we must be able to find a description from the perspective of the Creator in which all of this is a creative activity by a sort of Cosmic Consciousness.

As an example, when studying creativity, the statistical distribution of combinations of ideas precisely (!!!) describes the manner in which information expands. (Experimentally verified.) Even the use of words follows Zipf's Law, which is a linguistic stochastic.

And, as a vote for the other side, in meditation, the moments of samadhi leave absolutely no doubt that one is participating at the point of Causality, and as a part distributed within the Cosmic Consciousness. In fact, nirvastarka samadhi places the meditator at the point of initiation of everything.

Maybe we should start with another question - Just what do we mean by "consciousness" ? :-\

d

nanner-

I think most of us experience these things.  We tend to "disassociate" from ourselves.  I guess there are lots of theories as to why this happens.

http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Helpline1/Dissociative_Disorders.htm

R

Rondele:

If you would've had the experience I wrote about above and many others, you would know it wasn't simply a matter of disassociative disorder. It is possible to understand things inwardly at a level that is much more convincing that what one's intellect could ever come up with.  For example, I wrote above how I understood that there is no such a thing as a particular moment of time or a particular location. These things are just delusions of our linear minds.  I can't come close to re-experiencing the depth of this understanding simply by thinking about it, no matter how hard I try to do so. Either one is in contact with a deeper understanding, or one isn't.

One of the reasons I believe in Christ is because during my night in heaven experience I understood that he plays a key role in the grand scheme of things. Not because I saw or heard him, or somebody told me about him. The knowledge of his significance was just simply there.    


rondele wrote on Sep 7^th, 2007 at 4:18pm:

nanner- I think most of us experience these things.  We tend to "disassociate" from ourselves.  I guess there are lots of theories as to why this happens. http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Helpline1/Dissociative_Disorders.htm R

I asked this question my parents for awhile when I was about 4 or 5 years old, saying: "Why am I I? I mean, why am I I and not that other child over there?" Can't remember an answer of my parents, and I still have no, only that I meanwhile see it together with the question what "I" is anyway. "I" never is an object, it's always an absolute subject (never a subject to anything, you know?). It's like "here". As well, it is not any specific experience or knowledge or specialty, it is the function which connects experiences, or makes them possible at all.
 Therefore, it may be not a problem at all that we would merge to one "person"; because this "I/here" function would be the same, only with a greater pool of experiences, then referred to as "mine".
 Thus, so called "disassociated personalities" is a different thing. Usually, they seem more to swap different styles (or, in heavy cases, may called different persons), while the "I-here" function is still intact in every style/person. In some cases of shizophrenia we may find the "I-here" function somehow diminished, though as long one shows orientation, preferences and aversions, the basic "me-here" still seems to be there, as, in a more rudiment form, it is in animals and other life forms as well, only not the special human add, that we can consciously attribute something to be me or belonging to me.

Quote Patrick: "Because something concious observes, which in turn causes the collapse of the wave function (lookup the double slit experiment). For example, light exists as a wave until it is observed, at which point it becomes a particle. There would be no physical without observers."
 That is only a theory, or interpretation; we simply don't know what light or anything else "is" when it isn't observed (or even if it is at all). The amazing thing of the double slit experiment is, I find, that we can see that light (or electrons etc.) has to be both at the same time, particle AND wave-field, that's a true mind boggler, or, other possibility, you have to cancel space, time, or even both- not much easier.

Spooky

Nanner wrote on Sep 7^th, 2007 at 9:53am:

Patrick, thats so interesting. That has only happened to me ONE TIME and I do so wish for it to happen again. To me it was as if in a daydreaming state, while driving ( :o ) however not looking thru my eyes, but that of another. Its been at least 20 years or more. But it was peaceful and a complete "different" viewpoint. I can`t really explain it in words, can you help with more insight? Thanks, Nanner

I don't know if I can offer more insight exactly, but I can describe the accompanying physical sensation in that it "felt" like my view point was slightly recessed, like if one were to put on a pair of goggles and pretend that the surface of the goggles represented the physical eyes even though their view point originated from behind those faux physical eyes (the goggles).

It has actually happened to me twice, though I can only remember the details (ie: what I was doing at the time) when it occured the last time; however, the question was the same and so were the sensations that followed.

I guess that unless you have self awareness (one basic definition of consciousness) that a being would just be an automaton running to a programme - free will is somehow inextricably linked to the ability to visualise alternative courses of action and to decide how to act, and to then watch ourselves acting.

There's lots of ways to talk about consciousness, but one view is that the physical body, the intellect (conventional thinking mind) and the ego (conventional sense of self you might say) it constructs are a part of the external reality.

That the pure awareness and knowing that is the true nature of self enters the body at some time after conception, and is the true seat of being.

Early in life we forget this, and mistakenly come to identify with the construct that is the conventional self as our being. With this comes the sense of individuality, and the selfish egotistical urges that lead to suffering in the world.

Not surprisingly really -  if we're to function as a physical being we have to as we grow up quickly form some sort of view as to what is 'me', what is 'not me' (not me being the reality we operate in)  - quickly followed by some sort of gameplan for how to survive in this reality. It's just unfortunate that our first shot at a gameplan is normally based on selfish urges. With time we learn a higher love based gameplan.

It's only with spiritual development (more refined seeing of the reality) that we may again start to become aware that this identification of the conventional self as me is perhaps not real.

The basic instinctive human is not even open to the possibility that he is more than the physical body, and will respond instinctively to defend or resource it.

With higher experience as Dave says it becomes clear that the awareness is separate, or is the true self - in altered states of one sort or another we can lose consciousness of our body, conventional mind and  the external reality, but there's always a sense of self. Life after death requires that it be this way too, I guess....

Experiences like Nanner's and Recoverer's where we somehow find ourselves associated with a body but not in the body are fairly typical signs of progress for people starting to access the samadhic states Dave mentions  - through meditation or otherwise. I've had this sort of disassociation happen to me too while driving (I've found myself maybe 40 ft ahead of the car), but also while meditating. (one early experience was to find myself merge with a bush in the garden)

Ability to access the afterlife, and other higher states of consciousness amounts ability to locate this awareness in other realities, or to create/dream those realities.

Realisation could be said to amount to full awareness/knowing that the conventional body and mind is not self, that reality extends far beyond the conventional physical, and what our role as a compassionate and wise being with these capabilities is. Leading to release from egotistical urges and to the ability to access and work within these realities.

This dawning of direct awareness of love and the connection to God, and knowing that conventional ideas of self interest don't work makes loving and wise behaviours inevitable...

When I read Patrick's post, I remembered something:
A few times, when I was reading a book intensively, it happened I was defocusing a bit from the book and looked at the book itself and the hands holding it. "That" hands, you know? I saw them as some hands, there; for about 20 seconds or so I watched astonished at these hands, as gradually the "my hands" perspective took over. That was strange, funny- a sort of alienation or detachment of my own body.

Spooky

"But judge, for those 20 seconds they weren't *my* hands that did it... Honest!"

Reminds me of the time I tried to use special relativity to argue my way out of a ticket (suggesting I had every right to assume that I was motionless and observed him speeding, even if it was inapplicable in a world of inertial forces and material velocities).

Nevertheless, the "your/not-quite-your hands" experience sounds about right.

At any rate, there is a considerable difference in the duration that your hands were not yours and my eyes were not mine. I can only conjecture that the risk factor for having this experience while reading a book is substantially lower than it would be while driving a car.

Very interesting topic. Lately I have been having the feeling of Disassociation from my body. I contracted Cancer a little over a year ago, went through chemo and still  feel its effects when I get really tired. Over the last month, when I push my body to its limited limits, I find my mind fully functional, relaxed, and separate from my body. I  KNOW THIS! I realize at that moment the distinct seprateness of the body from my mind. I feel very aware but I have described the feeling to my self as an experience where my mind seems as though it dis-connects from my body, but the mind, spirit, is very happy and aware and waits for the body to catch up with its self.  

I have in the past focred myself into OB's while awake and also had OB's while sleeping and I am very comfortable with the feelings as I feel I understand them.  Very peaceful, nothing to worry about and whatever happens happens.

It feels like an OB I once had when I was going around the white orbs in a purple setting and experienced complete freedom and peace.
Lardog

I said that the sense of self is never lost. Maybe not true. True if you equate self with awareness, but I should have said that in the highest states of consciousness one reportedly experiences unity, or is oneness.

Not been there, but have experienced a situation where my thinking mind was receding into the distance,  and where the prevailing feeling was of being bathed in light and being loved. I wasn't inclined to think, but when I made an observation to myself it seemed to happen in ultra slow motion, at very low intensity and to come from 'back over there' somewhere.

For sure it's not frightening, although I can imagine that might not be the case if it happened without some schooling in what to expect, some idea of what might be going on.

Some of this experience is so very beautiful......

I haven't experienced what you guys have, but I remember that when I was a kid I often felt like I fell out of the wall and into my body when I woke in the morning. For a while I was convinced that a part of me was inside the wall while I was asleep. o_O This was when I was about 5-9 years old.

wrote on Sep 9^th, 2007 at 3:47pm:

I said that the sense of self is never lost. Maybe not true. True if you equate self with awareness, but I should have said that in the highest states of consciousness one reportedly experiences unity, or is oneness. .

 Why can't we have both at the same time, are they mutually exclusive?   Perhaps it is a blind belief of mine, but i sense that the destiny of every Soul/I-there/Disk is to completely know and completely exist in both those states of awareness within any given moment.

Consciousness in terms of what the Tibetans call the Knower, or non-contingent awareness, seems to fit both the experiences of exteriorization and everyday life. I recall being rolled up in a window shade, aware, but not as I am now.

So long as we use "either-or" thinking, we'll stay stuck in these same ideas.  For example, in the "two slit experiment", consider that what is passing through the slit is the probability field for an occurrence of a spot on a screen that we later interpret to represent an electron, proton or whatever - including heavy ions. Then we have the wavelike probability (because it is a binary approximation to a normal distribution that is granular at the Planck level) by which we get the observed result. This ignores whatever is passing through the slit. As a result, we have generalized the probability to a state of "both and" in which the extremes are not exclusive. End of boggle.

Bruce's recent post about being multiply located at many places in the spirit world is of the "both and" variety - his location is not exclusive, but includes all potential locations in order of their local probability. The only reason we don't all do this is that we still cling to some kind of limitation in order to define to our own selves who we think we are. Had we the ability to relax away those contingencies, we could all enjoy multiple states of being that we now think of as exclusive.

How to do this? If I knew it, I'd do it. ;-)

d