Consciousness as an Immaterial and Non-Objective "Thing"
Written by Jay09784691
Preamble:
A lot of what I intend to write about are subjective experiences, so these will be present here, but no real defined conclusions can be derived from them since they’re largely non-objective and non-repeatable. Take them however you want. I may elaborate on these further if considered to be of any worth.
I’d also like to include some art to help visualise some of the concepts. All of them will be original pieces created largely by my partner with a few illustrative drawings from me (the bad ones). As an example, here is one that had been drawn and painted that shows a face emerging from darkness.
What if consciousness itself is different to that? What if it doesn’t exist within the confines of the brain? Even considering this as a possibility then opens up many other potential explanations. Several ESP experiments by groups like IONS and the former PEAR laboratory at Stanford University seem to suggest that we’re able to affect matter to a very small but measurable degree. These experiments are widely rejected by traditional scientists that firmly believe that some other definition is at play, or that the ESP experimenters are somehow not performing their experiments correctly or ethically. If they are, however, performed to the strict standards of most other tests, then it may confirm that our consciousness(es) are not confined to the brain and could have some non-local aspects.
The same is also true for the double-slit experiment; it appears that we’re able to affect the outcome by simply observing the results at different stages of the test. If you’re unfamiliar I wholeheartedly recommend a video by The Royal Institution and presented by Jim Al-Kahlili that you can easily find on YouTube. The particles being fired though slits are present in something that’s called “superposition” and produce a wave-like interference pattern until they’re observed and then wave function collapses into a firm objective state. I wonder whether those particles are in something akin to a subjective state of probability, a kind of undefined and unresolved thought.
Just by sitting here and thinking about the processes involved, it doesn’t appear that the words inside my head are directly related to memories, even if I am, as some kind of secondary process, able access a pool of visual, auditory, and emotional memories in order to make decisions. It seems like there’s at least some other type of process involved which allow for imaginary scenarios or fantasies where we can mentally simulate potential outcomes in advance acting them out in our normal reality, or even flashes of inspiration. I’m also certain we have difficult to define unconscious perceptions too.
Interestingly, if we teach a rat how to navigate a maze while measuring its brain activity, we can later remove the exact relating sections of the brain and the rat can then, once its regained control of its body, later navigate the maze perfectly well as before. This seems to imply that the actual thought processes may potentially be occurring outside of the brain, even if they’re reflecting somehow on the brain. It makes me wonder if the brain is used to function the body and could also be some kind of receiver of the consciousness commands that are occurring somewhat outside of the body.
I like to try and determine for myself some potential other possibilities by using thought experiments and using the very consciousness that we’re trying to understand.
Thought Experiment:
Even writing the above paragraph I realise how strange our known existence is. I’m as guilty as the next person for desiring the-next-thing, even if I recognise the oddness of it. I can only guess that it’s a side-effect of our known existence – something always absorbing something else in order to remain in front. It appears to be the entire point to the material universe as we know it and we’re simply reacting favourably based on our collective experiences.
It seems to me that there’s more to us than the objects we so desire. I have a sense of myself, my true essence, that’s more than these things that I can grasp with my bodily senses.
Here’s an exercise that I believe helps with the understanding of the intent of this article; think of your consciousness for a minute. That sense of yourself. It seems pretty real to me, maybe even more real than the bodies that we appear to inhabit. Thinking of our bodies, we all know our exact (or inflated) heights and what our weight is (unless we’re being intentionally ignorant of it), we know the majority of the dimensions. Even inside leg lengths. Interestingly, we can’t say the same for our sense of self - our consciousness – our true selves. Those spatial dimensions just don’t apply in the way they do for our bodies. My consciousness has no height, width, or volume. I simply can’t measure it using objective spatial dimensions, so it may be something immaterial or at least have immaterial elements to it. I’d be interested to hear other opinions on this or if people think I’m way off the mark. It seems, to me, that other types of unknown parameters or dimensions may apply, or it’s a field or dimension in and of itself.
It’s very easy to overlook immaterial things, the things that we can’t so easily measure. Certainly not using the same dimensions and tools, not unless we want a rough and messy approximation.
Exploring Consciousness:
In order to get further from objective reality, we actually have to go very small - all the way down to the Planck Length where the distance between objects is, proportionally, astronomical. I wonder if something so far away from objectivity is something that’s approximating our subjective experiences. Could the fundamental consciousness be present on this scale? It could mean that we’re affecting the quantum microtubules of the brain that then go on to affect the matter of our bodies.
So what other forms of existence do we all experience? We all dream and these dreams appear so also have forms of creativity not easily explainable by considering us as purely meat-machines. In my dreams I’m able to experience Jungian archetypes or historic/symbolic imagery that I’ve haven’t consciously read or researched before. Maybe there is some collective unconscious that we all share and are able to experience through some type of morphic field as suggested by Rupert Sheldrake.
We’re also able to simply imagine, visually, some other type of reality with made-up personalities, environments, even physics that are completely different to our day-to-day lives - just by closing our eyes and concentrating. Those visuals and sounds can also be interpretations of our memories or something else entirely and we can manifest it at will. Nikola Tesla spoke of being able to simulate the workings of a device in his head and was able to visualise the working/non-working components prior to physically constructing something.
Preamble:
None of the following should really be taken as any kind of accurate representation of consciousnesses, they’re rather my own thoughts on some of the processes involved. I’m far from being an expert. I’m basing my views on the limited relating items that I’ve read/watched and of my own instincts and feelings. I consider consciousness as a uniquely interesting and unresolved facet to our fundamental existence.
A lot of what I intend to write about are subjective experiences, so these will be present here, but no real defined conclusions can be derived from them since they’re largely non-objective and non-repeatable. Take them however you want. I may elaborate on these further if considered to be of any worth.
I’d also like to include some art to help visualise some of the concepts. All of them will be original pieces created largely by my partner with a few illustrative drawings from me (the bad ones). As an example, here is one that had been drawn and painted that shows a face emerging from darkness.
What is Consciousness?:
One of the great unanswered questions. We know that we all have it, at least we assume others also possess it, but we have no firm idea what it is or how it manifests. It appears to be one of the least understood aspects of living beings. I understand that most mainstream scientists believe that we’re simply “meat-machines”, just a meat version of a computer that can number crunch in much the same way as your phone or your laptop does. You brain simply carries memories and bases its decisions on the firing of synapses where similar memories are present and that causes some kind of internal monologue.
What if consciousness itself is different to that? What if it doesn’t exist within the confines of the brain? Even considering this as a possibility then opens up many other potential explanations. Several ESP experiments by groups like IONS and the former PEAR laboratory at Stanford University seem to suggest that we’re able to affect matter to a very small but measurable degree. These experiments are widely rejected by traditional scientists that firmly believe that some other definition is at play, or that the ESP experimenters are somehow not performing their experiments correctly or ethically. If they are, however, performed to the strict standards of most other tests, then it may confirm that our consciousness(es) are not confined to the brain and could have some non-local aspects.
The same is also true for the double-slit experiment; it appears that we’re able to affect the outcome by simply observing the results at different stages of the test. If you’re unfamiliar I wholeheartedly recommend a video by The Royal Institution and presented by Jim Al-Kahlili that you can easily find on YouTube. The particles being fired though slits are present in something that’s called “superposition” and produce a wave-like interference pattern until they’re observed and then wave function collapses into a firm objective state. I wonder whether those particles are in something akin to a subjective state of probability, a kind of undefined and unresolved thought.
Just by sitting here and thinking about the processes involved, it doesn’t appear that the words inside my head are directly related to memories, even if I am, as some kind of secondary process, able access a pool of visual, auditory, and emotional memories in order to make decisions. It seems like there’s at least some other type of process involved which allow for imaginary scenarios or fantasies where we can mentally simulate potential outcomes in advance acting them out in our normal reality, or even flashes of inspiration. I’m also certain we have difficult to define unconscious perceptions too.
Interestingly, if we teach a rat how to navigate a maze while measuring its brain activity, we can later remove the exact relating sections of the brain and the rat can then, once its regained control of its body, later navigate the maze perfectly well as before. This seems to imply that the actual thought processes may potentially be occurring outside of the brain, even if they’re reflecting somehow on the brain. It makes me wonder if the brain is used to function the body and could also be some kind of receiver of the consciousness commands that are occurring somewhat outside of the body.
I like to try and determine for myself some potential other possibilities by using thought experiments and using the very consciousness that we’re trying to understand.
Thought Experiment:
We’re used to being able to describe everything in an objective way, that is to be able to measure in three-dimensional space, to accurately understand the boundaries and volumes of spatial objects we encounter. The vast majority of the world is made up of material things and they’re easily categorisable and measurable, we can take a ruler and confirm that the size of all objects. We base our entire life experience on material things, we put time and effort into work in order that we’re able to buy more objects. Objects that change very little between iterations.
Even writing the above paragraph I realise how strange our known existence is. I’m as guilty as the next person for desiring the-next-thing, even if I recognise the oddness of it. I can only guess that it’s a side-effect of our known existence – something always absorbing something else in order to remain in front. It appears to be the entire point to the material universe as we know it and we’re simply reacting favourably based on our collective experiences.
It seems to me that there’s more to us than the objects we so desire. I have a sense of myself, my true essence, that’s more than these things that I can grasp with my bodily senses.
Here’s an exercise that I believe helps with the understanding of the intent of this article; think of your consciousness for a minute. That sense of yourself. It seems pretty real to me, maybe even more real than the bodies that we appear to inhabit. Thinking of our bodies, we all know our exact (or inflated) heights and what our weight is (unless we’re being intentionally ignorant of it), we know the majority of the dimensions. Even inside leg lengths. Interestingly, we can’t say the same for our sense of self - our consciousness – our true selves. Those spatial dimensions just don’t apply in the way they do for our bodies. My consciousness has no height, width, or volume. I simply can’t measure it using objective spatial dimensions, so it may be something immaterial or at least have immaterial elements to it. I’d be interested to hear other opinions on this or if people think I’m way off the mark. It seems, to me, that other types of unknown parameters or dimensions may apply, or it’s a field or dimension in and of itself.
It’s very easy to overlook immaterial things, the things that we can’t so easily measure. Certainly not using the same dimensions and tools, not unless we want a rough and messy approximation.
Exploring Consciousness:
We can record non-material experiences or feelings onto material things; books and artwork are absolute evidence of this. In the process of creating art and writing we’re coming up with ideas and concepts that may not have been spoken about before. If that’s the case then how is a consciousness, that’s purely based on memories and logic, be able determine new concepts or abstract art? It would appear somewhat unexplained using the traditional accepted material or existential theories that are generally believed, by most, to be true. I understand that I may be over simplifying, or missing some detail.
In order to get further from objective reality, we actually have to go very small - all the way down to the Planck Length where the distance between objects is, proportionally, astronomical. I wonder if something so far away from objectivity is something that’s approximating our subjective experiences. Could the fundamental consciousness be present on this scale? It could mean that we’re affecting the quantum microtubules of the brain that then go on to affect the matter of our bodies.
So what other forms of existence do we all experience? We all dream and these dreams appear so also have forms of creativity not easily explainable by considering us as purely meat-machines. In my dreams I’m able to experience Jungian archetypes or historic/symbolic imagery that I’ve haven’t consciously read or researched before. Maybe there is some collective unconscious that we all share and are able to experience through some type of morphic field as suggested by Rupert Sheldrake.
We’re also able to simply imagine, visually, some other type of reality with made-up personalities, environments, even physics that are completely different to our day-to-day lives - just by closing our eyes and concentrating. Those visuals and sounds can also be interpretations of our memories or something else entirely and we can manifest it at will. Nikola Tesla spoke of being able to simulate the workings of a device in his head and was able to visualise the working/non-working components prior to physically constructing something.
No matter your views on the remote viewing experiments conducted by the CIA in the 70s/80s, you’ve got to admit that the prospect of viewing remote locations is enticing. It’s also very telling that the same people involved back then still believe the viewings to be very much true at the time of writing this. As far as I understand it, the viewings can be very literal or completely abstract. The times I’ve personally tried to perform it, the things I see are almost always abstract but there’s usually an interesting message, even if I don’t realise it for a few weeks or months. Now if you believe remote viewing to be nonsense, at least you should be able to agree that the outputs are an interesting anomaly at the very least.
As an example of some strange imagery that have appeared to me personally in a hypnopompic state, I’m sharing here an image that was present in my head on the morning of the 23rd of November 2018:
This is the exact drawing that I created that morning (please excuse the crapness of it). At the time of receiving this, presumably from my subconscious, I didn’t really have a great understanding of its meaning and was actually something of mystery to me for a number of weeks. I know that I’d been thinking of consciousness and wanting to better understand it for a while. When it eventually clicked for me I realised that it was solidifying something that I’d been considering for a while and that’s the example I gave earlier in the “thought experiment” section above. To clarify, the picture shows me a two-dimensional circle attached to a three-dimensional cube. This, at least to my (probably insane) self, was a personal indicator that our bodies represent the 2D circle and our consciousnesses the 3D cube, but represented in a method that I can easily understand. So our consciousnesses being something that’s greater than three dimensions contrasting to our bodies at only three. I can’t draw/comprehend 4+ dimensions, so this is obviously the best way to represent it.
It seems to me that Western society largely ignores a considerable aspect to our very nature; here in the UK anyone that talks about their dreams are quite often considered to be a bore, and yet it plays this significant part to our lives. About a third of our lives is spent sleeping and dreaming and those experiences are not considered to be of any worth at all. Much the same could be said about anomalous events that we all experience, whether that’s knowing who’s calling your phone or having something like a shared thought with someone that you’re close with. Most people consider it all as being coincidence. I wonder if we spent less time ignoring the anomalous (or "coincidence"), the more we’d find that they are common experiences and could be evidence of a misunderstood complexity to human nature.
All of my recent considerations about consciousness seem to point in the direction of us being more hyperspatial than we realise. Simply the art of imagining an environment appears to place our consciousness in something that’s different to the normal three-dimensional space that we normally inhabit from day-to-day. If most institutions were willing to admit the possibility of many of the psychic phenomena as being potentially true, it could then fundamentally cause a massive shift in our collective evolution. All we’d need to do is move ever so slightly away from a purely objectively scientific world-view.
So consciousness definitely appears to be an actual thing to me, even if it has a loosely material, or an immaterial aspect. I feel that we need to consider that some things may actually be non-physical instead of how we understand most objects to be. If only we had the language for a non-object-object, we might start to realise complexities not previously comprehended.
Good article, Jay, and you mention some of the material I've found interesting as well. Rarely do we explore what consciousness is really all about, yet we use the term across a variety of topic areas. I've been a researcher since an experience I had as a teen (www.mothershipcafe.com/messy-antics) and have had some success in understanding it. Translating that understanding into some kind of applied science is the challenge.
ReplyDeleteWe know we're all in a model based on vibration, perhaps the experience of the 'release' into the electromagnetic spectrum is reflected in the idea of samadhi or more completely by an understand of the 'sound current.' More recently I found a model, introduced in the process of preparing for an interview with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove for New Thinking Allowed. It's call the Triadic Dimensional-Distinction Vortical Paradigm, or TDVP. Developed by Drs. Vernon Neppe and Edward Close, it's premise is that consciousness, time and space are tethered across 9 dimensions.
Still, there is an experiential element that goes unnoticed that I feel is available through deep listening, first, that frequency that we all hear in the depths of our 'silence.' It seems to be there, in the substrate of consciousness, yet permeates everything and, imho, connects us to this thing we call reality in more objective ways as we understand it's purpose. I'm currently contemplating how a Type III civilization might communicate with us, barely above a .5, yet apparently in need of help from those who understand how to get along and manage a planet's resources, a kind of harmony among people and planet thing that I believe we are headed toward IF we can get over ourselves.
It is my opinion that as we understand consciousness in a larger perspective, it provides a logic path to freedom from constrictive belief systems and mismanagement of energy, spiritual and material. The process, in my experience, includes non-linear and non-local moments of realization, insights we either acquire because of the questions we ask or are part of the natural process of evolution.