Consciousness after death take 2

remind, I do recall reading about Yogananda many years ago and the lack of degradation of the body is similiar.

Within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition there is the concept of rebirth and within that certain very developed beings are understood to have knowledge of their past lives and the ability to determine their births.  They are then found through dreams lamas have and identified by their ability to recognize objects from a previous life.

I am not a Tibetan Buddhist although I do have contact with them regularly and can say that spending time with them has shown me the extraordinary manifested in everyday life.

As to what is consciousness? I recall a midwife describing the transition during the birth experience as a kind of shimmering that illuminated the whole space.  What is that?  I also think that with new babies it takes some time before they have really "landed". Perhaps arriving is not a sudden thing.

Perhaps death is not such a sudden exit either , in fact I am certain that death is not a sudden exit and that everyone once understood that when bodies were laid out in the parlour and family sat with the body.

Not long ago an old friend died at home and for three days afterwards his body was laid in the house and family and friends took turns sitting with him, it was obvious that when he first died his prescence still filled the room but by the third morning it was equally obvious that he had departed.  What was that?

I hope you will share some of your experience remind.

Pants of Dogs wrote:

To me, it seems more like an ability of highly trained Buddhist monks to slow down the process of death so that it lasts several weeks instead of several minutes.

More likely, that they can choose their time to depart. Also,  not having to contend with "being Lost in the fog,"in  having attained a clarity with regard to the clear light, they can move quite quickly to this mind/body termnation?

Best,

Spectrum wrote:

Pants of Dogs wrote:

To me, it seems more like an ability of highly trained Buddhist monks to slow down the process of death so that it lasts several weeks instead of several minutes.

More likely, that they can choose their time to depart. Also,  not having to contend with "being Lost in the fog,"in  having attained a clarity with regard to the clear light, they can move quite quickly to this mind/body termnation?

Best,

I would say more slowly rather than more quickly.

ennir wrote:

From my perspective, the Dalai Lama is offering teachings that those hearing can comprehend, basic teachings

Yes I agree with that from my perspective as well. This understanding can change from day to day,  as for every informative point given and is accepted, changes the way we can now look at the world we live in. It prepares us, for new insights as we move along. What page an individual reads, someone else definitely depending on their understanding, takes from it,  totally something else.

Quote:

In Buddhism consciousness is just one of the five skandhas, the five skandhas form what we call the self, the other four are form, feelings, perceptions and impulses.  From this perspective how could consciousness continue?  But are we defined by consciouness?  What is this field that we inhabit which includes consciousness but is not limited to  it?

It is part of the observance of knowing these differences in the way consciousness is? 

For westerners we understand the wording of emotions and intellect, yet we do not understand the differences that such feelings and thoughts have us "gravitating toward," while knowing, that each successive step, paves the way for a new tomorrow? A tone?

Such "intonations" consolidate things around us? We want the finer things of spirituality to permeate all our thoughts? How can we do that if we are unruly inside with these emotions? Ever the struggle to walk on stormy waters?:)

What is consciousness? Is a good question:)

Remind wrote:

As such, the accounting was done verbally with me. ;)

So many disciplines and so few disciples? A free agent and accepting the environ your in, does not preclude anyone from finding some truth in their lives. Just have to look for it. Look into one self.

The point is that anyone is capable of asking those deep questions and listening for the answers, are never to far away if you know that the answers can come from within as well. You do not need to be on another continent.

Remind wrote:

as spirituality requires no religion.

I agree with you as I wanted to see if you were actually attached to any religion per say and would had strong feeling about the interpretation of spirituality based on some form of that religion. So your answer was nice to know.

Quote:

Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or immaterial reality;[1] an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of their being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.

Could we say then that spirituality and higher consciousness, are very close in their interpretations? ennir what do you think?

Quote:

Higher consciousness is generally regarded as a developed state of consciousness in which aspects of the mind, such as thought, perception and attention, are improved, refined and enhanced. It is considered thus to be a higher level of consciousness relative to ordinary consciousness, in the sense that a greater awareness of reality is achieved. In a secular context, higher consciousness is usually associated with exceptional control over one's mind and will, intellectual and moral enlightenment, and profound personal growth.[1]. In a spiritual context, it may also be associated with transcendence, spiritual enlightenment, and union with the divine.[2]

Best,

Oops, forgot this, "It is part of the observance of knowing these differences in the way consciousness is?  I am sorry I don't know if I understand the question.  From a Zen Buddhist practice perspective understanding the skandhas allows us to pry our minds away from the conventional view of reality that we have been taught.  Think of it as layers, the deepest being form, the ground of our experience which has not yet been named, then feelings (not emotions) positive, negative, neutral and these are a kind of "gravitating toward", next perceptions (intonations)as in naming the world, followed by impulses which are the ways in which we act in the world, and finally there is consciousness which is the repository for the manifestations of the first four and within which dwells the notion that there is a fixed and abiding self which is directing the traffic of the first four.

Rethought and edited.

Spectrum, I agree with you that one can be a spiritual person without affiliation to any religion but as someone who does have a formal practice I think that it is not the affiliation with religion that is the problem, the problem is the attachment to the idea that there is just one way of being spiritual.

remind, the actual practice I find neither masculine or feminine or alternately inclusive of the feminine and masculine.  What attracted me to Zen in the first place was a Paul Reps book in which there were a number of women shown showing up men as not understanding the dharma.  However, Buddhism has entered our culture mostly through  through men and men who, in my view, took on teaching responsibilites without a mature experience of practice.  This is changing as women mature and take on those responsibilities with a different view on the power dynamics between teacher and student.  So, my answer is no and yes.  :)

ennir wrote:

My interest is how does this (higher consciousness or spirituality) manifest in a person's life?  These days it seems there are many people wanting to have a spiritual experience of life but in perceiving spirituality to be something that transcends reality they miss the opportunity to embody it.

From what I have learnt, being a free agent, is that the highest forms of spirituality already exist within ourselves. It is the becoming aware that such can exist. That we realize who "our father in heaven is?" So we are never far away from the understanding that maybe, under all these gross things of materiality,  that the degrees of our "mental finesse and our attachments," our "gravitating toward" makes way for the understanding that we can experience the finer manifestations of what spirituality means as we become aware,  much as you might trace the lineage of the five skandhas within self .

Quote:

In Buddhism consciousness is just one of the five skandhas, the five skandhas form what we call the self, the other four are form, feelings, perceptions and impulses.  From this perspective how could consciousness continue?  But are we defined by consciousness?  What is this field that we inhabit which includes consciousness but is not limited to  it?

Your answer to me about "the struggle to walk on stormy waters" that "one can sink deep beneath the stormy waters to a place of equanimity," is of interest to me, because it is in learning about oneself by awareness and observance you learn to understand your reactions. The memories you build,  and the choices one can make to learn to react differently.Oh! what a struggle.

But I think you know it is much deeper then that,  as you mention meditation, it is one of the things I have long struggled with.  I learnt to watch something else in terms of where glimpses of the higher self can manifest. Our dreams. It is a language, that we can creatively manifest and see that our actions can have deeper consequences through our review. Who might have recognized their teacher this way?

Who might of recognized that the mind in that time, is the mind of our death? If you cannot understand that chaos within self,  then how would you have learnt to interpret the actions on the face of how we lived the every day world around us? Is this how you will carry this everyday world into your death?

Quote:

I agree with you that one can be a spiritual person without affiliation to any religion but as someone who does have a formal practice I think that it is not the affiliation with religion that is the problem, the problem is the attachment to the idea that there is just one way of being spiritual.

Yes, I agree with you. So it is nice to be aware that such a "leading perspective on religion" that there is not only "one way" to be spiritual. It can manifest in everyone of us in any moment?

Quote:

Oops, forgot this "It is part of the observance of knowing these differences in the way consciousness is?

I hope I have explain this in the responses to you?

This is interesting: Bridging the Gap

Caltech Neuroscientists Find Normal Brain Communication in People Who Lack Connections Between Right and Left Hemisphere

Quote:

PASADENA, Calif.-Like a bridge that spans a river to connect two major metropolises, the corpus callosum is the main conduit for information flowing between the left and right hemispheres of our brains. Now, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found that people who are born without that link-a condition called agenesis of the corpus callosum, or AgCC-still show remarkably normal communication across the gap between the two halves of their brains.

Could the brain be using EM fields to communicate between hemispheres?

I`ve read the tibetan book of the dead and other similar tomes in my supple yogic youth and ironically(?) I believed in a continuing consciousness more then than I do in my forties.

I believe today the question for me is irrelevant.  I can from observation only be aware of my present, therefore a previous, or future consciousness is but a fantasy I can choose to believe in or not.

[quote=from the Preface to Not to be Taken at Night]

"Modern civilization consists of the living dead.  Why then should we object to the dead living?"

-- attributed to Sir Devendra P. Varma, who teaches Gothic fiction at Dalhousie University.

Quote:

Metacognition is defined as "cognition about cognition", or "knowing about knowing."[1] It can take many forms; it includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or for problem solving.[1]

Thus, primary consciousness refers to being mentally aware of things in the world in the present without any sense of past and future; it is composed of mental images bound to a time around the measurable present.[1]

By contrast, secondary consciousness depends on and includes such features as self-reflective awareness, abstract thinking, volition and metacognition.[1][2]

The AIM Model introduces a new hypothesis that primary consciousness is an important building block on which secondary consciousness is constructed.[1]

I think that's one of many possibilities for the way it is. Tip: Don't bet on winning the lottery.