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 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.

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.

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

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...

"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.

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......