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What is the nature of consciousness? Is consciousness merely a by-product of the physical brain?
Consciousness is perhaps the greatest mystery ever to be presented to mankind. My question is: What is the nature of consciousness? How can the materialistic world view of mankind explain the phenomenon of consciousness. By its nature, which is of a totally immaterial and invisible, with its inner activity of thinking, also a totally invisible activity, which the whole of the scientific world view rests upon..."Thinking". What is thinking if not a non-physical super-sensible invisible, immaterial reality. For the scientific world view to understand itself, it must examine the nature of thinking. And in doing so, the "religious" world view will be able to find something to hang onto.Science and religion can meet on this question. Because it is here where they both fall short. Science cannot explain consciousness out of the materialistic world view. Religion cannot explain evolutionary principles in nature without adapting the scientific world view. The two are locked in an unending battle. Can it be that thinking is,in fact, the "spiritual activity of man"
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Jacky Tang
Another way to think about it is that the senses tie the internal environment to the external despite a physical barrier. Though we have a physical body our senses allow information from outside the body to be continuous with the inside of the body without disruption. Perceptually we, as conscious beings, believe we are independent units separate from our environment, but we often forget that we are an accumulation of individual cells. Our consciousness is a result of the organization of these cells into a system where a grand stream of information and complex process of this information is possible.
To me, consciousness is about information. Humans are conscious through what their senses can perceive. Cells are conscious of their chemical environments. And civilizations are conscious of social phenomena. Consciousness is not specific to the brain. It is simply an organized stream of information.
daniel hehir 20+
Consciousness is perhaps, with a stretch of the meaning of the words " information put in a system".... but still... who is the observer.... who is the witness .... who am " I ".....?
As 'Cool'leen put it, there are many levels of consciousness.
My breakdown of her words is the following,
The "sleeping" consciousness or unconscious.
The "dreaming" consciousness or sub-conscious mind.
and finally
The "awake"consciousness, or every day life consciousness.... (not including the woman at the traffic light waiting to turn left...)......pardon the joke Colleen....
Linda MacDonald Glenn
Are you asking about consciousness as awareness? OR Self awareness?
You might enjoy reading "Transcending the Speed of Light: Consciousness, Quantum Physics, and the Fifth Dimension " which argues that consciousness is a fifth dimension -- and I am inclined to agree, considering how woefully inadequate
daniel hehir 20+
daniel hehir 20+
Colleen Steen 500+
I agree with most of what you've written: "consciousness is a stream of information...information accumilates in the brain and is networked". I do not agree that when we sleep, this stream is turned off.
My experience tells me that there are several layers of consciousness, and when we are asleep, our brain can be conscious on other levels, like the dream state for example. I also experienced the thought/feeling process on another level when I was unconscious after a near fatal brain injury. The program that runs my human conscious thoughts was disabled, but I was aware of much more on another level. I agree that consciousness is about information, and if we are aware on many different levels, it may be an "organized stream of information". I call this "stream of information" energy.
Daniel,
Our bodies/brains are made up of cells, are they not? Jacky feels that the stream of information is made up of cells, I call this "stream of information" energy. Do you think we could be saying the same thing and using different terms?
Sincerely,
Cool'leen................makes me smile:>)
daniel hehir 20+
Didn't you see my poem to you a little further down the list? Aren't you up pretty early this morning?
Back to the discussion,
Sleep can only be partly penetrated by out waking day consciousness. Deep sleep is pretty unaccesable for the most of us.
Sure, we are made of up of cells. But so is the plant and the animal. Consciousness is something completely different for them. Where the animal is awake in a more of a dream state, we, the human being are mostly awake in our daytime conscousness. Take a sportscar driver. He /she must be extremely awake to drive at such speeds where things happen so fast. While a person that is more or less unaware of his/her surroundings is not so awake.This awakeness is a process, that for me, begins in the morning with my first cup of coffee, and around my second or third cup I start to feel awake. What knowledge that comes to me from the outer world is "logged" or "processed" (to use computer language) and put into my "system of information" where that logging takes place is another question. I don't by any means believe that this logging is done in the physical brain, although again I know this will create controversy. We can get back to this later, just where the "logging of information takes place. The materialists are all shaking their heads, they say I'm strange... but somethings lost and somethings gained, in living every day... J.M. clouds
The cell in itself has no logging ability, nor does it know where to look for your memories. The cell level of our nature is providing the vehicle for the "energy" to manifest itself. This energy is also of different "levels" to use a physical word for a spiritual picture.
I also wrote further down that it would be interesting to hear more details about your NDE. I wonder if you also saw your whole life in review. This is a usual phenomenon for people who have NDE. The next question is then how do we "see" all these pictures as if in a tablau stretched out before us?
Colleen Steen 500+
Yes, I saw your clever poem:>)
In my experience, sleep can be penetrated by our waking day experience, and deep sleep is very accessable to me:>) An example of penetrating the sleep state with awake experience, is that years ago, I was a professional actress, singer, dancer, performing in musical theater. I found the best way to remember lines and choreography, was to review the information just before sleep, with the intention of programing my brain to remember. I found that in the morning, it was programmed, as I intended. So, you see, I believe that we can penetrate the sub-conscious and various other levels of consciousness while sleeping.
I like using computer language because I percieve the brain as very much like a computer. I believe that the cells do have "logging ability". How else is the information stored in the brain?
Yes, I saw my lives in review. As humans, we usually don't have an energy vibration high enough to carry all of those memories. It would be like plugging a 220 appliance into a plug that only accepted a smaller voltage:>)
James Robertson
edit: I also see no evidence that animals are in some sort of dream state, or that their consciousnesses are any less awake than ours. There is plenty of evidence that they are intellectually inferior, and it would seem obvious that there are qualitative differences between the consciousnesses of a human and say, a lizard. But I see no evidence of quantitative differences. My cat seems just as aware of me as I am of it.
daniel hehir 20+
The ancient cultures of the world knew this. This is what the initiation rituals were all about. To give the initiate a "glimps" of this "other" level of existence. To observe this "energy" world without the physical body. ..... I hope this isn't getting to deep now.... I've got to go and make dinner so my physical body can go on living.... All my ingredience will come from the this living world, although material, and pretty much "dead", but at one time or another everything I eat (or at least should eat) has also taken part in this "energy" or "life" world. You can eat a truck load of minerals, you can even eat the truck,... but to sustain the energy body, we must take in something that has been living itself before. The point that I'm finally getting around to is that this energy body is a "concrete"(a terribly physical word) reality that has its own existence "apart" from the system of our cells!!
Colleen Steen 500+
daniel hehir 20+
Amazing Colleen! Did you see more than the one life that the one your in now? ...as you wrote" lives" This is extremely interesting! Could you see every detail? Did you meet any other beings while you were out of your body? Have you heard of Raymond Moody and George Richie?
What can you say about the "review" of your life? It was of course an immaterial picture(s) but can you tell more details. Could you see your own energy body as you spoke of earlier. Was the review picture of the same "substanse" (again, to use a very material word) as the body that you were yourself made of? Were the pictures in any way something that you had sympathy or antipathy towards? Like judging any of your actions in the pictures or were you completely neutral towards them?
If you could just answer all these questions first.... then I have a few more.... hope you don't mind :-)
Colleen Steen 500+
Yes, I'm familier with Raymond Moody's work....not familier with George Richie. I researched hundreds of recorded cases of NDE and guest lectured at the Univ. for years on the topic. You can google NDE research for more information. I also cared for a relative and two friends when they were dying, and volunteered for a couple years at a hospice care facility to learn more about the dying process and support others through it.
First of all, I'll tell you that this experience is like going to a different country and witnessing a ritual in a different culture with different language. Then coming back and trying to explain it in terms that I know on a human level. We simply don't have the language to explain all of what I experienced.
Yes, I had a review of several lives. I saw details, but not as we describe details as humans. I was a mass of energy, without form or human characteristics. The other beings present were also masses of energy. Although I recognized them on some level, the only one I was sure of, was the energy of my mother, who had died a year earlier. Again, there were no human characteristics.
My life reviews were for the purpose of evaluating what I had learned. I was my own judge, and it was not about what I did that was good or bad, but rather, what I learned from the experiences.
Communications were similar to what we may call ESP. There were no pictures or dialogue. There was a sense of "knowing". On some levels, we can think of this as intuition or gut feeling. That is why I keep saying there are many levels of consciousness. Several of us on this thread may be speaking of different levels, and it may be difficult to pin down the "nature of consciousness" if we are percieving it from different perspectives. My belief is that we are all capable of experiencing several layers of consciousness, and it depends on how open we are to that experience:>)
I like questions...thanks for asking:>)
daniel hehir 20+
I don't have much time to write just now but will try to get back tomorrow.
This is a response to your comments further down the page, but there is no reply button down there... so I hope you find this comment. I just look for the blue words as to what time it was when the last comment was made but I see that the time frame is actually way off.
I still have more questions to you, so don't go away.!
I am together with a group of people who will be have a Saturday kafee with a lecture on NDE next weekend.
Colleen Steen 500+
daniel hehir 20+
Colleen Steen 500+
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. We often label this kind of communication gut feeling or intuition. Or we may call it ESP. Where do you think that gut feeling/intuition is coming from? Again, there are many levels in which we can communicate in this way, depending on how open we are to the possibilities:>)
daniel hehir 20+
I would like to ask if you can, from your NDE say anything about neural firing in the brain? Could you say that this energy being that you experienced yourself as is the actual producer of the activity going on in your physical brain that we call neural activity. This energy is often called electrical energy. But we know that it is something more. The electrical aspect is only one side of the coin. I wonder if you could elaborate more on this energy. When your energy body came back into the physical body, might you say that your brain was changed or transformed in any way... if so ...how?
Are you more intuitive after this experience? Do you have ESP now? Did it come after your NDE?
What colors am I wearing?.....lol ok, ok, what kind of car do I drive? Just kidding....
Colleen Steen 500+
Yes, in my experience, the energy contributes to the activity in the brain that we call neural activity.
You know, my NDE happened at the time of a brain injury, so yes, the brain was changed. Part of it was damaged, and damaged brain tissue was removed at the time of the craniotomy. The NDE provided information that I was not previously aware of on a conscious level.
Yes, I'm aware of more channels of consciousness opening because of the experience.