Hi Dude,

I see no conflict here.  You see science does not recognize that there is a human soul or consciousness.  Of course we all know that we operate on conscious and deeper subconscious levels at the same time.  When a concert pianist plays flight of the bumblebee (a complex and extremely rapid music), much of it is done subconsciously or by memory.

Yet I think of the brain as a receiver, like a radio, and our consciousness as the real person.  So you are saying that we respond before we say our physical body is aware of the stimulus.  Not surprising to me at all.  Your followup thought, that this means someone else or something (a distinct entity from "me") else must be responding makes no sense to me, given what I understand about the human brain. 

My conscious spirit's perception of the stimulus is not  reliant on the speed of transmission of a nerve cell or an electrical impulse.  That is why an aura may change or a response may come out at different times.  You are assuming that the brain produces thought, and therefore you find a paradox.  I assume only that the brain manifests and receives thought for purposes of interacting on what we know as the physical plane, so the studies you mention make perfect sense to me, without invoking a loss of my will.  It has been well documented that on the mental/spiritual planes, much information can pass between people almost instanteously since "mind" is not at all related to the time electrochemical impulses take to travel from point A to point B.

Matthew

Doc

I agree that the brain is a receiver of consciousness. 

However, my follow up thought is not that someone or something else must be responding, but rather, another portion of our being is doing the responding, likely an unconscious or superconscious aspect of our minds. 

You say that the conscious spirit's perception is not reliant on the speed of transmission of an electrical impulse from the brain, and this is true when our spirit is not one with our physical body during normal waking consciousness.  However, when we are physically active, our consciousness is filtered through our brains and therefore our physical bodies, and so when we are physically aware, this awareness is dependent upon our brain and physical body system.  This is why our consciousness is distorted when we use drugs and other mind-altering substances, and why those with physical defects cannot fully use their minds.  Heck, this is why none of us can use the full potential of our true, higher minds while physical.

I don't assume our brain produces thought.  However, it is clear that my thoughts come from my spirit consciousness via my brain while I am physical, and in this way the brain is a necessary and integral part of my physical thinking self.

And so back to my point.  Our bodies respond before our physical conscious selves tell it to.  And our energy field/spirit responds before the physical body.  So it is apparent that our actions are not dictated by what we believe is our physical conscious self, but instead by a higher aspect of our self, and somehow the true mental activity of this higher aspect is filtered through our brains, and what we believe "we" are thinking is actually a translation of what this higher aspect of our selves are thinking, and being that the body moves not only before "we" tell it to, but before we are even aware of the movement, it is apparent that this action is likewise a dictation from this higher aspect of our being. 

I don't view this as a paradox.  Rather, as a new and more true way of viewing the relationship of our higher self with our bodies.

What's interesting, and that many people will not be able to except despite the overwhelming evidence for it, is that when we decide to make an action or even think a thought, it is actually already taking place before we are even aware of deciding to make the action or think the thought, and therefore these physical and mental actions are being dictated not by what we think is our conscious self, but by an aspect of our being which we are, for the most part, unaware of while physically conscious.

Dude:
I think these experiments just show nothing else than, well, what they show. There's a signal flow and a signal processing within the body. In my view it is a total mistake to try to answer mind-philosophical questions through means of natural science. I'm always saying I can think even while I'm not a brain scientist. We will never find any thought inside a brain. There a cells and what not all. But no thoughts.

   I agree with what you seem to say, in my words: Our thoughts are earth-style interpretations of what just has happened, we, so to say, tell ourselves constantly what might have happened, as Bruce described it as "the interpreter". So everything we are conscious aware of, and have structured in words (or similar bits) is always already a re-construction, or description of what initially has happened.
   Maybe you have experienced a phaenomenon like I sometimes did: You are in a meditative state and ask a question. Then you wait for the answer. Nothing happens. You try to become more clear and receptive and try again. In the moment you start (or are about) to ask your question, you notice something, a very brief subtle change, and when you focus on it in the next try, you notice it is the answer in a very compressed form. What is confusing is, that it comes before you even have ended to speak out the question, and is hard to get as it needs to be interpretated. I think this fits together with that delay of conscious thought you told of.

----------------------------------------------------

My rejection of the phrase "free will" is not related to natural science, but to my finding that "someone has free will" is contradictive, as I have laid out at the " The True Nature of Reincarnation " thread
http://afterlife-knowledge.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1262226775/75
.

Spooky

Hmm, Recoverer, I'm not convinced that it makes sense to say that there are "decisions made" while there is no time, because making a decision is a process and requires time, and in a no-time-realm everything is "there", nothing happens. In one no-time variant the past, present, maybe the future, everything would be there simultaneously. And in another variant (the one Parsons and Sylvester tell of) there is only the present, and in this present stories of a past may occur, and in this variant nothing happens as well.

Spooky

Yes, that's almost exactly what I found in my "phasing-mind-journeys" as well. I still would speak of "time" over there, as at least there is still the distinction of "old, I know that, familiar" and "new, exciting, unfamiliar, learning experience, evolution", so there is an order of events, and I think it's adequate to call it "time", although it's different to the physical.

Spooky

Thank you, Juditha, for the impressive description of how different we can feel and perceive in different times and circumstances. In different times, we see a different amount of possibilities, of options what we can do, sometimes we feel like we're moving on railroad tracks, we don't need to think much but it's very limited and boring, and sometimes we feel like we can go wherever we want to, we feel more free, but often with a bit of anxiety and confusion about all these options we then have to think about.
   This is what I call stages of freedom, or relative freedom. There is as well a thought model of "absolute freedom", meaning absolute independence of anything, and this is meant when there is the talk of "free will" in a more philosophical way, at least from my understanding. I think this absolute freedom only God has, as we humans are always dependant on our surrounding, our personality, our history and all that.

Spooky

Everyday we make a myriad of small decisions ('shall I have that last donut', 'I can't be bothered to study tonight' etc etc), both conscious and unconscious which shape our future path.Hopefully those decisions become more conscious as we gain in wisdom.

We have freewill within the reality system but not of the reality system. From my perspective these are the rules we 'sign on' for when we choose to enter the Earth-life reality system.