Consciousness Explained. (Not about Dennett)

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
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Because low frequency = less energy = more difficult for H2O molecules to break free from other H2O molecules = H2O molecules holding each other in a stable latice = ice. ← See that, Trixie, that’s called an “explanation”. Given that your high frequency atoms = light theory is your own, you might want to invest some time in coming up with an explanation so that other people might take you seriously.

I’m not sure how this got into a discussion about my fragile ego, but I interpreted your concentrated-air-in-front-of-the-plane analogy as the present being a bit in the future–the tip of the plane’s nose would be the present and the concentration of air in front of it would be the “now” experienced by our consciousness (i.e. a bit in the future). I know time always goes foreward, but that’s not what I meant by: why do you think the present gets shifted a bit into the future? It sounds like you’re saying our consciousness is already a bit in the future despite the present not actually being there yet.

What does this mean? When there is no perception, bliss is had?

The fluidity of the self–yes–this is one way of dismissing the reality of the ego–but it kind of implies that none of us ever maintain an ego. So what is ego-loss? It implies having an ego and then losing it. What is it to have an ego if it is all fluid anyway?

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already explained the mumbo jumbo of it in earlier post. quantum physics is like a something fluctuating so fast it appears in two states at the same time. photons are not at 100 c they run into particles and gravity at space. the state of the fluctuation is not predictable for this reason.

poor sentence structure. “present gets shifted” does not convey your intended meaning. like i explained below time approaches zero. you can sense the future but it is fuzzy and unclear, but you can sense it because part of you perceives it already.

zero is the same as infinite. time flies when you are having fun. (though really time doesnt move at all, it approaches zero.)

all that matters is pleasure. if an ego interferes with obtaining pleasure, it is a problem. the only actual problem is lack of pleasure. this is the absolute truth.

23

Gib,

I do not think that the real cause is high/low energy. There is one more basic rule that plays its part here.

And, that is to try to maintain harmony with the ambient. That is the universal law that applies everywhere. That is the default outcome of any intraction between two or more entities. That will happen every time, without an exception, if no outside force would be applied.

With love,
Sanjay

24

please be more clear. i dont understand you.

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I honestly think you simply don’t understand orthodox quantum theory. The multiple states of quantum theory (what they call “superposition”) is a result of the state of a particle unfolding according to the mathematics of wave dynamics. I know that’s a mouth full but look up the double-slit experiment. It will explain it better than I can. Essentially, it will tell you that a particle can exist at two places at once (superposition) not because it “fluctuates” but because it travels as a wave.

As for photons not being at 100 c, I don’t know what that means (100 times the speed of light? ← Who said that?).

Do you believe that you are explaining quantum theory, or do you acknowledge that this is your own version of it?

Yes, we both agree on this part, but you also said this sense of the future concentrates consciousness more so than that of the past:

This is what I thought your plane analogy was about.

You’re right about my poor sentence structure. You’re gonna have to tolerate that.

So no perception = being one with everything? No perception = infinite perception?

“time flies when you are having fun.” ← Does this mean that the faster time goes by (i.e. approaches infinity), the closer to bliss you get?

What happens when time slows down?–if it approaches 0, then it also approaches infinity according to you. Should it not therefore also approach bliss? Or does it not work this way?

Well, despite that this doesn’t answer my question, it implies that bliss might be attainable with an ego–but we all know this. However, it is always temporary. But then again, everything is temporary according to Eastern thought, and I don’t see why this wouldn’t include any bliss attained from ego-loss.

But I’d rather not get side tracked on a discussion of the importance of pleasure. I’d rather stick to ego-loss.

Me neither.

Sanjay,

What I’m explaining is pretty basic physics. I don’t see the need to bring in anything extra like a universal law of harmony.

26

100 percent c. Orthodox slit theory is basic stuff, do you understand what a (sine) wave is? A fluctuation. a particle in thousands of places at nearly the same time would appear to generate a wave like pattern, using the law of averages it would appear as a smooth wave, due to it’s size and power level constraint it would have a width of 400 nm at some constraints, 700 nm at other constraints. Its exact state cannot be predicted since light does not travel at 100 c due to remote gravitational forces and non uniform scattered particle’s friction.

nothing from what i said is inconsistent from the already existent stuff.

Poor sentence structure i suppose. What i meant was that the majority of consciousness is nearer to future side of things, and because of this, it is hard for most to sense the future because they are at the helm so to speak. one must also realize that the future is not special, therefore “being nearer to the helm” is not some magical thing granting great powers, nor is sitting near the rear anything great either, since you could sense the future but the future is neither special nor would you feel any depth of control.

You’re right about my poor sentence structure. You’re gonna have to tolerate that.

time does not exactly exist. time is simply the complexity of perceived experience. if there was no substance to your experience, time could be argued to be going extremely fast, or extremely slow. since time is not a real mathematical thing in the realm of consciousness, time cannot be described by mathematics in the spiritual consciousness sense without some degree of inconsistency. with technological upgrades it would be theoretically possible to measure the percieved rate of conscious time by measuring photon and emotional activity in the brain. this would be a very innaccurate and vague science.

Pleasure is the highest thing. pleasure is gravity, anything you reject is pain. repulsion is pain, one should not be repulsed by ego or thoughts, just acknoledge them for what they are, and let them be. however its not so simple, there is no such thing as free will and there are mechanisms even beyond the control of your non-free will causing repulsion in you at the atomic level. this is why schizophrenics living in hades or hell realms despite them having openminds and during times free of ego and thoughts, are still not living lives of pleasure. same reason mindless zombies arent in pleasure, simple egolessness is not the key to pleasure itself.

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The premise (which is also a fact) is very simple -

Every entity/ambient (set of entities) tries to move towards harmony from entropy, within or with its surroundings.

Means, harmony is the natural/default state of existence, while entropy is temporary. Thus, when two entities of different nature/energy interact with each other, they would always reach to some sort of agreement/harmony, sooner or later. They cannot remain different forever.

with love,
sanjay

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Not sure about that, i’d say its more like samsara, constant sine wave flow of harmony to disharmony harmony to disharmony harmony to disharmony.

harmony is not the same as pleasure, after all chaos introduces novelty which is why this samsara continues.

as for the default, evolutionary mechanisms suggest that human harmony is mostly a rare thing, used to continue survival of the species. for example most of the time you are unsatisfied, since satisfaction is a tool developed to promote longevity of the species. longevity of the species, longer suffering.

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I am talking about even more basic things.

Gib, you may not realize that but without taking that premise of harmony as a given, you will never able to successfully explain a simple event like melting of ice at the quantum level by pure conventional physics.

Even physics does not disagree with what i am suggesting-

Even this explanation is incomplete. It talks about the maintaininy harmony/equilibrium but that cannot be explained further if we do not assume that at some point, at very minisule level, all things are made of same ingredients, have no rigid boundries and are always in the state of flux, not constant.

with love,
sanjay

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Black bodies absorb photon energy. Is it so spontaneous or is it simply releasing energy that was stored and biding after a while?

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True (maybe), but now you’re explaining it as: superposition → wave-like pattern → frequency/fluctuation.

Before you were saying that it was the fluctuation which causes superposition: frequency/fluctuation → wave-like pattern → superposition.

Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s just a rephrasing of the existent stuff.

Might a better analogy be a shooting star? The tail represents the past which is still felt by consciousness, the thin layer of flame around the front represents the future which is being felt by consciousness, and the rocky core at the middle the “now” which is the center point of consciousness.

Time, subjectively speaking, is the projection of three key experiences: motion, memory, and anticipation. The perception of motion gives rise to a sense of time going by in the present, memory a sense of time in the past, and anticipation based on conditioning, a sense of things looming in the near future.

It’s interesting that you target emotional activity in the brain as key to measuring the subjective rate of time.

I agree.

So what do you think is? Why do you think so many describe the state of egolessness as blissful?

Well, there’s a lot of things I take as a given (for granted) and that remain implicit in my explanations. There are even things I don’t understand that well, or at all, but that doesn’t negate the basic explanation typically given for why water turns to ice below 0 degrees C.

What threw me off was the way you phrased your statement:

I think high/low energy is a real cause, but I’ll certainly agree with you if you mean to say that there’s a lot more to the picture than just that.

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Well, I am pretty sure about what I am saying. The traffic is always one way, form choas to harmony, not the other way around. Choas is an extraordinary event, not natural, thus requires some effort. But, things will move to harmony if left alone. No outside input is required. And, that applies to the both of physical and metaphysical entities.

That is precisely what Buddhism suggests via the notions like emptiness or detachment.

Secondly, there is nothing rare about humans. It is merely a stage of evolution and as ordinary or special like millions of other species.

With love,
Sanjay

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Nothing special indeed. My signature says “humans are basic” yet you feel the need to teach me it again. I’m done here.

Also you have zero scientific evidence that there will be any harmony in the future only blind faith. We all want harmony, but how can you guarantee it’s permanence? second harmony is not the same is Pleasure and im only interested in that.

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there is no sequence of events. its just is. when a molecule is frozen it is ice. we dont say there is a sequence of events, we dont ask did the vibration cause the ice or did the ice cause the vibration.

Because either they are blissful, or they don’t know no better. And they probably only care to share the times where they are blissful, and omit the negative times from statistical relevance cause they dont wish to be slapped on the buttcheeks for being a negative nancy. you see what it is they have been listening to the narrative so much that they associate thoughts with energy itself, and when the negative thoughts stop, they believe they are positive when they might be still negative.

35

Ah, yes, they all form an identity.

But in your own words:

you make it sound as if it is the fluctuation which is at least the basis for the appearance of superposition.

This description almost sounds like you’re saying that the “fluctuation” of the particle consists in the particle alternating between the various positions that collectively take the shape and move as a wave. I can tell you that is not the orthodox rendition of quantum theory that I’m familiar with. The fluctuation of a wave (otherwise known as a frequency) has nothing to do with particles alternating between positions, but with how frequently each wave passes by a certain point.

I like your style Trixie. This is a very down-to-Earth answer. One really ought to take all the world’s religions with a grain of salt. Even the calm tranquil mind that Buddhism promises comes to us in the form of a religious myth. Doesn’t mean it’s not true, but it should be taken with a grain of salt nonetheless. The calm bliss that is said to be experienced during the state of mind of deep and well practised meditation could just be a placebo effect (but as placebo effects go, I’d still like to be there). It could be exactly the same psychological effect of liberating joy that fundamentalist Christians claim to have when they surrender themselves and open their hearts to Christ. Who knows.

But you didn’t answer my question: what more than egolessness is required for pleasure?

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a man meditated for 40 years so that he could become egoless and free. he says he has no ego and he is like a zombie that does thing. he works at a business and says he is the top employee, he has lots of creative ideas and has never been happier.

but is his happiness from being egoless or the 40 years spent rewiring his system trhough meditation? his ego system has been rewired, that part of his brain is shutdown, he has no seperation between him and outside events, but perhaps other parts of his brain are different as well. some say the pleasure center of the brain is in the limbic system, but what about it makes it so pleasurable? some say dopamine, but i say love. love is gravity, and we all know pain is whatever you reject and repulse. but i say this is even on the atomic level, that your very neuronal branches, when they are moving the opposite way of a stimuli (like a magnet repulsed) it is pain. why is this well id say it splits your consciousness.

the thing about light it is a quantum thing. light is in 3 different places at the same time, but not 3 different times at the same place, only 2 different times at the same place.

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See, that I find hard to believe. I think even Sanjay once told me, in a discussion, that man can reach a state of egolessness through meditation, but it’s never a permanent thing. One comes out of it and returns to one’s ego-governed life (though not as bogged down by the attachments and the tricks of the ego). True (and permanent) ego loss is something only the fully enlightened achieve, and that is said to occur to one person in maybe 100 years. Even to say “I have no ego” requires reference to an “I”. I think your friend is suffering from a typical case of placebo effect (though I wouldn’t pull him out of it–he’s probably better off where he is).

Let me see if I can paraphrase–the reason your friend says he’s so happy is because he’s split his ego off from his consciousness and all the pain that goes with it. Is he really miserable unconsciously?

You’ll have to unpack that for me.

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his name is chris weber and im not his friend. second if he still has sentience he can still feel pain of course he denies this in the video, he says having no ego makes him invulnerable to all kinds of pain, which i find ridiculous. numb but only so numb as his level of sentience. second i dont see what egoloss has to do with enlightenment, enlightenment is simply a kind of awareness. total egoloss seems like radical consciousness alteration in the hopes to avoid either pain or the cycle of rebirth. the arhants require 8 things for total salvation, radical brain alteration not being one of them, but many believe that radical brain alteration and loss of duality will remove all pain from your life (though i dont understand how, seeing as how the outside world is suffering, how would becoming one with the outside world reduce suffering.)

the original video is here youtube.com/watch?v=bEOujFKnHwc

enlightenment en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenm … iritual%29

arahants dhammawiki.com/index.php?title=10_hindrances

he associates the DMN network with suffering, which is also the ego network, thought network. However if one has no thoughts, no ego, how can one really understand suffering? Demonizing the DMN offers no real insight over the nature of suffering, and the test space is too limited to make any conclusions. (How do we know his suffering was alleviated by ego loss and DMN shutdown, and not his comfortable lifestyle, and or his years of meditation?) How do we know he is truly in bliss? How do we know shutting down the DMN network will work for everyone?

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Trixie,

I watched the video. I now have a different impression of your friend. The way he describes his “awakening” (if we can call it that) is as though he had a stroke. He says he no longer thinks–that all this speaking and gesturing and behaving in a social and predictable manner are all taken care of by themselves, as though put on auto-pilot–and that this is a result of two key brain centers shutting down. If this is the case, and if it happened to him suddenly and forevermore after that, then it sounds to me like a stroke or something similar (makes me wonder if the changes in the brain brought on by deep meditation can, on rare occasions, have a similar effect).

This is plausible to me. The picture you painting for me before was that of a man who meditated for 40 years and thereby gradually came to a place of no-thought and no-ego… more or less permanently. That to me sounds like someone saying: I’ve train for 40 years to sprint, and now I can make the 100 meter dash in 5 seconds. I don’t care how much you’ve trained, there are certain upper limits to how fast you can run. But if the story that’s told is that the person took steroids or that he was born with some genetic aberration that gave his leg muscles ultra super strength, then it becomes a bit more plausible.

I’m no Chris Weber, but my approach to pain and suffering has always been to try to accept them as a part of life. The hope is to thereby rise above my pain and suffering and appreciate them for what they are, even see beauty in them. The goal is not to get rid of them (that would defeat the purpose of appreciating and finding beauty in them). I agree that the first principle of Buddhism–that life is suffering–cannot be embraced without embracing suffering itself.

We don’t–doesn’t mean anything.

One of the key differences between Western types of religion and Eastern types is that Western types deny man the ability or the access to the spiritual or mystical realm (except perhaps in the afterlife), whereas Eastern types of religion promise that it is within man’s reach, that it can be attained within this lifetime. It makes the whole prospect of striving for it, or being open to it and wanting to explore it, worth taking more seriously.

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I agree in the sense that the inability to feel pain or pleasure (anhedonia) is worse than being normal ( suffering most of the time for a little bit of pleasure. )

We must ask ourself is Weber truly blissful or just anhedonic?

We must ask ourself why does the universe create life which mostly craves rare conditions, and it’s success conditions are hard to come by (for example, universe makes life forms that are only happy with a narrow body temperature range, even though the majority of the universe is hostile to that range.)
why does the universe natural selection streamline suffering, why not make a lifeform that’s happy when it is starving, happy when it is cold?

(my opinion is that too much happiness is suffering)

(my opinion is that all experience is suffering)