Questioning Consciousness

[Sounder]

Lily Pat Too wrote...

I would love to see the board return to that discussion. When I first began to post here, it was such a relief to find an intelligent and discerning group of people with an interest in the odd things that fascinated me. Not True Believers, but questioners whose minds were as open and inquiring as Jeff's. But then there definitely was a shift. And not in a good direction. It's not just that I had a personal reason to want to know more about the true nature of consciousness, but also I wanted to be able to understand the adamant, don't-need-to-look-at-the-evidence pseudo skeptics' stance better too. And that isn't going to happen if the group dynamics includes too many of those voices and they're dismissive in a sufficiently authoritative way.

It does seem that there was a shift, however it’s understandable given most folk avoid liminal states if they can, preferring the dominant narrative as that does provide many certainties and social benefits.

I also want to be able to understand the adamant, don't-need-to-look-at-the-evidence pseudo skeptics' stance better so I put up with the rudeness by repeating in my head; they are good people, they have simply chosen the wrong imperative by which to judge other people. It seems like the flak will always be there so maybe it's better to see it as a challenge rather than as an imposition. Showing in a clear way the manner in which a certain thing is propaganda and social engineering material can turn an effective technique into a farce.

Then the group dynamics can change some more.

[slomo]

Understanding (vaguely) how some of the AI algorithms work, or at least the fundamental ideas behind them, and watching what's been happening in AI over the last few years, I am less confident than before that we won't see whiz-bang-AI of sci-fi proportions in the next decade. Perhaps it's already here (maybe the Google is already sentient)?

If so, that still doesn't deny that "consciousness" is something more fundamental than matter.

The new-new thing for attempting to explain consciousness from a "scientific" perspective is "integrated information theory":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrate ... ion_theory

[slomo]

I might add, that I don't believe it will ever be possible to reach a general consensus about what consciousness "is". Like all liminal/trickster phenomena, it evades reductionist explanations. I do think that at an individual level, it's possible to get a better feel for what it is, and what it is not. Meditation is vastly helpful in that regard.

[Wombaticus Rex]

FWIW, I spend most of my free time in drug-free altered states these days and I've been very interested in the boundary state where dreamwork and meditation get hard to distinguish. In the past few years I've experienced dramatic first-hand confirmation -- no such animal as "proof" out here in the woods -- of an even dozen concepts I had previously written off as absurd.

And for the most part, that experience has been a solitary one, like so much of my life. It's a good thing humans learned to write, innit?

My stance towards ESP / Psi phenomena is lot like Anarchism: it sure as shit does not require my assistance in defending it.

On that Edmund R. Thomson wavelength: "I never liked to get into debates with the skeptics, because if you didn't believe that remote viewing was real, you hadn't done your homework."

Consider that almost absurdly huge print brick of social signaling, Zen and the Brain. I think I bought that twice before I read it the first time; my initial purchase was just a matter of trying to look smarter than I could afford to be, aka, filter for and attract mates by any means necessary. It turned out to be slow but hugely enjoyable stuff, and I cannot pretend to have comprehended more than half. Still, my takeaways are that meditation / mindfulness training can create remarkable states in experimental subjects - measurable, repeatable, provable results that impressed a large number of neuroscientists enough to both speak strongly & speculate feverishly. Interesting in terms of New Age / The Secret horseshit-entrapment-matrix parlance, despite every guru's insistence we "only use 10% of our brain," the most robust result of all these measurements is that meditation seems to reduce brain activity rather than ramp us up into some super-powered state.

Although that part happens, too.

[MacCruiskeen]

Last night I had a dream, a nice one. At one point I thought, "Wait a minute... am I dreaming?" So I reached over to a silky-looking curtain, and sure enough it felt exactly like silk. Then, to make absolutely sure, I felt my cheek; and sure enough, there was my beard, just as big and bushy as ever. So I thought: "Great, that proves it! It's not a dream, it's real!" Things went on happening for a while after that, and eventually I woke up.

I don't have a beard, I haven't had one since (god forgive me) trimmed goatees were in fashion, and I have never had a big, bushy beard.

I wonder what cognitive processes allowed no-proof (in fact: refutation) to appear to be undeniable and incontrovertible proof.

ON EDIT: Longwindedness deleted.

[minime]

The Secret horseshit-entrapment-matrix parlance, despite every guru's insistence we "only use 10% of our brain," the most robust result of all these measurements is that meditation seems to reduce brain activity rather than ramp us up into some super-powered state.

Although that part happens, too.

"the problem is that God gives man a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at at time."

- Robin Williams

[tapitsbo]

Apologies if this is OT, but bear with me for a moment. I had a very vivid and very pleasurable dream last night. Too convoluted to describe, but it involved a lot of really funny, entertaining people in a big beautiful house. Great atmosphere of joy and love. There was nothing the least bit "weird" about it (no bizarre transformations or episodes of flying or anything like that ); it just felt like a great new place in real life. At one point I thought, "This is too good to be true... am I dreaming?" So I reached over to a silky-looking curtain, and sure enough it felt exactly like silk. Then, to make absolutely sure, I felt my beard; and sure enough it felt exactly like my beard in real life, just as big and bushy as ever. So I thought: "Great, that proves it! It's not a dream, it's real!" The dream went on for a while after that, and eventually I woke up.

I don't have a beard, I haven't had one since (god forgive me) goatees were in fashion, and I have never had a big, bushy beard.

I wonder what cognitive processes allowed no-proof (in fact: anti-proof) to appear to be undeniable and incontrovertible proof.

Something about beards obscuring the powers of facial recognition algorithms

[Elvis]

I had a very vivid and very pleasurable dream last night. Too convoluted to describe, but it involved a lot of really funny, entertaining people in a big beautiful house. Great atmosphere of joy and love. There was nothing the least bit "weird" about it (no bizarre transformations or episodes of flying or anything like that ); it just felt like a great new place in real life. At one point I thought, "This is too good to be true... am I dreaming?" So I reached over to a silky-looking curtain, and sure enough it felt exactly like silk. Then, to make absolutely sure, I felt my beard; and sure enough it felt exactly like my beard in real life, just as big and bushy as ever. So I thought: "Great, that proves it! It's not a dream, it's real!" The dream went on for a while after that, and eventually I woke up.

The thing I would say right off is: the house is your big, beautiful psyche.

Just to throw out some ideas, I have some "dream symbols" books, and one interpretation of the beard is "uncertainty." The gesture of bringing your hand to your chin agrees with that—you know, "hmm." Have you been uncertain about something?

Another entry just says "male masculinity" (apparently there are other kinds of masculinity). Have you been reading a lot of RI gender/feminist/men's-world threads? In this reading, the act of checking your big, full beard, in a comfortable place inhabited by a pleasant society, would mean you're comfortable with your male masculinity, as it were.

If the beard were, say, very long, or white, that would suggest something different.

Separately, did you note the color of the beard at all?



Edited to fix quote attribution (oops sorry, tapitsbo!)

[Joao]

the most robust result of all these measurements is that meditation seems to reduce brain activity rather than ramp us up into some super-powered state.

But are reduced brain activity and super-powered states truly in opposition?

"I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad: "[...] The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful." According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.

[...]

That which, in the language of religion, is called "this world" is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language. The various "other worlds," with which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large. Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate "spiritual exercises," or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-passes there flows, not indeed the perception "of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe" (for the by-pass does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of Mind at Large), but something more than, and above and something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality.

[Grizzly]

“The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there's no ground.”

~chögyam trungpa

[coffin_dodger]

Funnily enough, I've been thinking (more like experiencing, really) about existence - and consciousness - tying it all together with Nature, the past and future, how everything works, 'occult magic' & 'open magic' (systems of control), sentience, mind as a tool (inc. cog dis, double bind & 'mind blindness'), the subversion of previously discovered fundamental truth to specific agendas and why, dreamstate, ancient clues, moments that bleed from the future backwards to the present, and by extension - beyond - to the past, evolution, numbers, alphabet, speech, power structure, shape, form, opposites, opposite thought, creation, life, death, reincarnation, cosmology, biology, electrical fields, light, dark, 'weight', substance, the seeking of balance, motion, the majesty of stillness, The Gap in The Space Between - which led to The Guilded Cage; The Thing No One Talks About; 3state and Spell (there will be more) - and how, at this critical juncture in the development of sentience (yes, you really are alive in 'interesting times' and always have been), Nature itself is inviting, cajoling us to step up to co-creation along side it - the next stage in sentient evolution - an ability always within but dormant, kept beyond immediate grasp by a benevolent, teasing Nature that never overplays its hand.

The above sentence is, without doubt, the longest single sentence I have ever written. Or likely to.

It's a paradox - that to fully explain the most simple fundamental, enormous complexity is required.

Equally, to fully explain the most complex, simplicity is required.

A conundrum. Ah, the curse of deep thinking, eh?

But then, nothing less could be expected - it's the Nature of Things.

[Sounder]

Huxley wrote...

To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.

It would seem like consciousness is the better candidate for reducing valve. Funny word; candidates are seldom candid, but anyway the brain and NS process the inputs the best they can, it is consciousness with its attendant use of categories and correspondences that provide the fodder for our thoughts. Or the limitations on said thoughts as our categories and correspondences, our understanding is to a large degree shaped by precedent become habit (split-model) .

Hopefully, Mind at Large has some tricks up its sleeve to help us mundane humans learn to use consciousness in ways that are, lets say, more creative and less destructive than are our current habits.

[guruilla]

Hopefully, Mind at Large has some tricks up its sleeve to help us mundane humans learn to use consciousness in ways that are, lets say, more creative and less destructive than are our current habits.

I resisted the urge to challenge Huxley as a source so far but can hold myself in check no longer:

While it was true Huxley got his title from Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was anything less Blakean than the idea of God as a great big Mind. Blake had despised philosophers like John Locke and Rene Descartes; I was pretty sure he would have derided Huxley’s phrase for its obvious head-o-centricity.
...

Huxley is most famous for two works: his technological dystopia novel, Brave New World, and The Doors of Perception, which advocates the use of hallucinogens as a means to shut down the “reducing valve” of the brain and enter into an experience of what he calls “Mind at Large.” (In passing, psychedelics might be seen as a form of chemically-induced trauma to the body.) Huxley, as Kripal points out, was one of if not the major influence on “the human potential movement” which eventually became the New Age movement. Along with organizations such as Esalen, he was responsible for introducing Eastern spirituality to the western world. Huxley belonged to a famous aristocratic family, and his brother, Sir Julian, was a member of the British Eugenics Society, a fact that has been largely stricken from the record. Sir Julian also coined the term “transhumanism”!

For all the Eastern spiritual jargon favored by these individuals and institutes, the aims they put forth (in common with those of transhumanism and the Singularity) are really indistinguishable from the aims of western occultism (and groups like Scientology): namely, the development of super powers. In the West, we tend to confuse psychism with spiritual attainment. Yet from an Eastern point of view, they are seen as at odds with one another—hence the many warnings about “siddhis.” Enlightenment is liberation from the false self—the defensive ego-self created by trauma. Psychism—which can easily be confused with “human potential”—is all about enhancing and improving the self to create a kind of “super-self.” Enlightenment is said to entail a total openness and the corresponding vulnerability: the sensitivity it brings isn’t just psychic but emotional, psychological, and physical/energetic. Psychic superpowers—including the power to leave the body (dissociate) à la remote viewing—seem like a movement in the opposite direction, towards becoming invulnerable. Which is a traumatized individual more likely to gravitate towards? What are Strieber’s tales of power but accounts of a kind of siddhi-wielding, alien-engineered übermensch in which the mind is the only weapon he has?

Huxley took the title The Doors of Perception from Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which is presumably why Kripal refers to Huxley’s work as “Blakean.” But compare Huxley’s term, “Mind at Large,” to this, from Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. Energy is Eternal Delight.” Where is mind here, little or large? Huxley and the perennial philosophers posited “Mind at Large” as an understandable reaction against the reductionist equation of consciousness with the brain, combined with a (equally understandable) rejection of religious dogma about the soul. (I don’t necessarily include Strieber here, since as a Catholic, he is “all about” the reality of the soul.) Instead, they posited a mind that is everywhere. By choosing to use the word mind, however, they appeared to equate consciousness with the structure and content of their own minds.
...

Huxley’s Mind at Large is another way of saying the Godhead, the quasi-religious concept that God has a head (or penis), which presumably is where His Mind (and Brain) is located. This phallocentric view brings us to the core of the matter (pun intended): the de-eroticization of spirit.

(Prisoner of Infinity)

Just saying...

[LilyPatToo]

Thanks, guruilla. I had a feeling the answer would be to do more reading here...and I haven't had the time to do that lately. But I'm going to make an effort and will look up those threads (which I otherwise wouldn't have chosen, so thank you). Even when I don't have time to respond, I like seeing your blog pop up in my (stuffed) email inbox and always try to read it. We're both interested in that trauma/consciousness intersection, though I no longer can justify devoting the time to exploring it that I used to--not in the changed climate here. I'm still in touch with other people like myself though and we still discuss the things that we've personally experienced.

RI was once my go-to place when I wanted thoughtful input on a "paranormal" experience, but as each mention of it was treated more and more as "woo" I began to avoid posting. My need to understand isn't just idle curiosity, since the people who interfered with my life for many years were deeply interested in those experiences and I once had a handler trigger one deliberately. I have a feeling that if I could just get a clearer picture of the experimentation that was going on in the 50's through 80's, some of my personal mysteries would be solved. And we'd be a step closer to understanding consciousness, too.

When I began to perceive the shift in attitude here, it was frustrating, since other online communities focusing on the paranormal either are populated by too many credulous True Believers to be interesting to me or I suspect that they're being "managed" and used to track people like me. RI was it--a place where a higher level of discourse was possible in a safe environment--and then it began to seem that the attitude here was changing in a less-productive direction. I've not given up on the possibility of another change of direction here, but without new blogs from Jeff to set a standard of discourse, I'm not counting on it. It's always been easier to smirk and dismiss than it is to start a respectful, serious inquiry into an unusual event.

LilyPat

[Joao]

I resisted the urge to challenge Huxley as a source so far but can hold myself in check no longer

No particular attachment to Huxley or the vague concept of "mind at large", but I do find him interesting and worthwhile despite the growing trend in para-circles to dismiss him as an "aristocrat." It's odd that such dismissals seem to come from corners which otherwise display no class consciousness, but I guess everybody's gotta start somewhere.

Due respect for the quoted passage above, but I find the whole thing replete with non-sequiturs and bizarre assumptions.

Huxley’s Mind at Large is another way of saying the Godhead, the quasi-religious concept that God has a head (or penis)

That's a hell of a leap.

This phallocentric view brings us to the core of the matter (pun intended): the de-eroticization of spirit.

The transformation of a parenthetical non-sequitur in the previous sentence ("or penis") into the "phallocentric view" at "the core of the matter" makes it difficult to take the expressed notions seriously. Phallocentrism leads to de-eroticization? In any case, no connection between this whole line of thought and the previously quoted Huxley passage has been shown. It's tilting at windmills.

Eroticization of the spirit sounds like something I could get behind. Cheers.