Consciousness after death

Some wonderful comments from Michael.

As for what happens after death, John Eccles wrote:

Quote:

"...we can regard the death of the body and brain as dissolution of our dualist existence. Hopefully, the liberated soul will find another future of even deeper meaning and more entrancing experiences, perhaps in some renewed embodied existence . . . in accord with traditional Christian teaching." --Evolution of the Brain, p. 242"

Sir James Jeans said that he thought the world wasnt so much a giant machine as it is a giant thought process. Jung wrote that the physical brain is perhaps a kind of transformer that allows our selves to manifest.

As a non-scientist, I can only guess that the dualism of the mind-body paradox might be no more unique in our reality than mass and energy coexist, or particle-wave duality, or the electric and magnetic field components of current flow through a conductor. The physical brain apparently has to obey certain laws of physics as they are known, and perhaps some laws which are not yet understood.

<a title="Fireflies" href="http://rabble.ca/babble/body-and-soul/consciousness-after-death#comment-1058715" target="_blank"></a><a title="View user profile." href="../../user/7680">Michael Nenonen</a> wrote:

The more I've read, the less I'm convinced there's a fundamental difference between an NDE and our everyday experience.

Whether you accept the NDE as to having any substance or not,  is not the point, but that such conceptual differences do arise from perspectives about that process. So you look for some "universal relation" that does not disregard all the possibilities of race, religion, or gender, science in social constructiveness that conforms to responsible inquiry, but that we recognize "with respect" that each has come forward with a "gravitating experience" that forms the relations and future prospects toward that future.

I think in this way one does not find fault with anyone other then to know that forward looking processes contained toward the future are elements of the now. These shape those same prospective and possible futures. How could one judge another for what they them self can experience,  rests no differently then the realization that in life, new beginning,s happen everyday.

Your conclusions, "set the tone?" Scientifically, or not?

Time traveler understood tone to be "his state of mind" he is in?  His feelings were predicated on other things and without speaking those feelings directly,  he revealed a posting. It was a conclusion drawn that set up the posting. His tone.

Acceptable or not to science, feelings can contain "no substance" to a man of science? Yet, how can "explicable thinking" that we use, use such an excuse without a science basis?

martin dufresne wrote:

Why I have given up, by Susan Blackmore

Darn!  Your story is probably all over the "Amazing" Randi's website for pseudoscientific skepdics and rightwing crackpots. Ta Susan.

martin dufresne wrote:

Why I have given up, by Susan Blackmore

Good stuff, Marty.  Thanks for that link.  I'm going to have to read more of her writings.

_______________________________________

[b]Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!![/b]

[url=http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/an_evening_with_james_randi_a... Blackmore:[/url]

Quote:

A life changing out-of-body experience whilst a student at Oxford sparked her interest in the paranormal and prompted her to pursue a PhD in parapsychology, but eventually a lack of positive results, as well as the discovery that researchers at Cambridge were obtaining such results by cheating, led Blackmore to become a sceptic. One might think that someone who started off earnestly searching for proof of the paranormal but changed her mind in the face of the evidence (or lack thereof) might be respected for having the strength of character to admit a mistake. But for Blackmore this was not the case. She spoke of receiving vindictive hate-mail from believers accusing her of being closed minded (the irony of this obviously having escaped the authors of such communications).

I know I'll be sending her some nasty hate mail. It goes without saying. 

[url=http://www.examiner.com/x-16975-Grand-Rapids-New-Age-Examiner~y2009m7d21... 'Debunkers' and 'True Believers' discourage serious paranormal research[/url]

Fidel wrote:

[url=http://www.examiner.com/x-16975-Grand-Rapids-New-Age-Examiner~y2009m7d21... 'Debunkers' and 'True Believers' discourage serious paranormal research[/url]

When I was a young lad and thinking seriously about a career investigating paranormal claims, I invested in one of those foot-measuring devices you see in shoe stores.  My goal?  I wanted to prove, once and for all, that Sasquatch really does (or does not) have big feet.

So, with the arrival of my foot-measuring device in the mail, I got Sasquatch on the blower and arranged for a mutually agreeable time for me to swing by his place and get a foot measurement (he even offered to throw a couple of steaks on the grill and chill a few beers so that we could make an evening of it).

Well, then I started to think, "Geez, given that the world is neatly divided into "Debunkers" and "True Believers", I'm afraid people will laugh at me if I try to make a serious effort of measuring Sas's feet."

So, discouraged, I called Sas back and told him, "Let's just have the steaks and brewskis but let's forget about the foot-measuring thingy."

He was cool about it -- he had not skin in the game -- and we had a nice evening talking about our recent trips on UFOs and how our spirits will live on after our temporal bodies have died.

The sad thing?  I'm pretty sure his feet are about, well, too feet long and nearly a foot wide.  It would have been cool to write an academic journal article about that critical foot measurement, if it weren't for those derned "Debunkers" and "True Believers"!!!

_______________________________________

[b]Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!![/b]

I mean sure part of the process is understanding what your doing. Figuring out why you say the things you do and why this reflects on,  all that came from before, to have thought about it now. Is it your thoughts you are speaking, or is it some eclectic group that is exchanging information that is relevant, or,  are they repeating a mantra of skepticism, so that they feel good about  belonging?:)

Anyway back-country talk and creative writing is a little different then presenting information for thought production. It's just another benign attempt at "practicing a tone" with out providing good information to consider?

Quote:

So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the "we" inside of me.

Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading..Stroke of insight: Jill Bolte Taylor

So while we consider the content of brain matters and their relations, what relevance to emotive substance that course through the body, so to speak,  to thought processes embedded "in feeling about" that we not only say it has emotive substance, but also has an intellectual facet too, that is much finer. Much finer then the fluid that moves in ways that a endocrinologist might map.

Physiologically matter distinctions set to organs, and messages that move  the body can be "ancient exchanges in primitive anger issues," yet, it is in the heights of mental clarity that substance toward perfection is acceptable? Fight or Flight, but we are better then that, with our cognitive thinking capabilties? Much better then, animals?

How fine indeed substance then,  that we can clarify that "elements of science" can go from an almost gross state of existence( our evolutionary mothers and fathers) to attributes mistifying ether held in underlying mathematical schemes that only the smartest educated can see the truth?? Act responsibly? Oh, we see how that is played out.:)

Quote:

So I got up and I jumped onto my cardio glider, which is a full-body exercise machine. And I'm jamming away on this thing, and I'm realizing that my hands looked like primitive claws grasping onto the bar. I thought "that's very peculiar" and I looked down at my body and I thought, "whoa, I'm a weird-looking thing." And it was as though my consciousness had shifted away from my normal perception of reality, where I'm the person on the machine having the experience, to some esoteric space where I'm witnessing myself having this experience.Stroke of insight: Jill Bolte Taylor

Spectrum wrote:

Fight or Flight, but we are better then that, with our cognitive thinking capabilities? Much better then, animals?

Hi Fidel,

Interesting piece on the animals. Living with them for a majority of my life I do not think them "less then" the standard of the human species. Yet, I do contend that the danger signals are closer to the surface for some animals then others at times. We are no different, when our emotive states can become unruly. It is very hard to "think clearly" sometimes when in such emotive charged states, that it has to be practised before hand that what existed "in memory" is met in different ways to prepare for the future and change that we want.

What came to mind quickly is when one of my dogs chooses not to want to go where we would like her to go, when we have to leave. We find this characterization in her very amusing and one would think there is some cognitive abilities there.:)

Rupert Sheldrake has some interesting books about animals that are worth reading. I have one in front of me right that you might find interesting, called, "Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home."

Awesome Fidel, my Coucoune is doing the very same time as I type! Could it be... synchronicity? Is your cat's bubble reaching out on the Web and pollinating mine, I mean that of my minou?

Quote:

String Theory, Universal Mind, and the Paranormal *

 

Brian D. Josephson

Department of Physics, University of Cambridge

A model consistent with string theory is proposed for so-called paranormal phenomena such as extra-sensory perception (ESP). Our mathematical skills are assumed to derive from a special ‘mental vacuum state’, whose origin is explained on the basis of anthropic and biological arguments, taking into account the need for the informational processes associated with such a state to be of a life-supporting character. ESP is then explained in terms of shared ‘thought bubbles’ generated by the participants out of the mental vacuum state. The paper concludes with a critique of arguments sometimes made claiming to ‘rule out’ the possible existence of paranormal phenomena.

Yes apparently he has met with much disdain, even though his scientific principles seem to be still intact? That is a "matter of opinion" of course in their community.

The Squid is an interesting piece of equipment, in that the sensitivity of brain workings seem to be measurable to some degree? MRI.s

When doing some research into Thomas A. Harris,M.D. book I'm Okay Your Okay(In reality, however, the reported episodes of recall occurred in less than five percent of his patients, and these results have not been replicated by modern surgeons,)1 I saw some interesting correlations to Venn diagrams that I thought would work indeed in how we can "cloud the circles of our "child, adult and parent" that one would wonder indeed what it is that is original and what passes from our parent to our voices in the current days(Susan Blackmore and Memes)? Why we fall into our childish behaviours? The struggle then is to move toward an adult to adult relationship, whether in "scientific garb" or not.

Well what work went into this research psychology was the beginning of Penfield's work was to probe the brain for results from electrical stimulation. Think today then, that inducement of particular results in frequencies on the brain would have it's affect from Persinger's own research for one to consider "the influence these fields" can have.

The God spot?:)

1-Quote from Penfield wiki

Fidel wrote:

I think it was Aristotle who first mentioned atomic structure of a sort and beyond which nothing could be reduced further. The idea of indestructible and irreducible bits of matter held until Bohr and Heisenberg etc. Some physicists believe today that atoms are tiny models of the universe around us, and perhaps even multiple universes in what is an ever expanding ocean of universes.

[...]

And they tried to tell me my taking a class in pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy was pointless...

The atomic theory is usually credited to Leucippus, and its elaboration on his pupil Democritus. Aristotle would have been well aware of it though.

You are quite welcome... you have no idea how much of a kick I got from being able to contribute that little nugget of knowledge... I have tried passing on similar tidbits of information at regular social functions... you should see the look of relief on their faces when I go out to have a cigarette.

Never saw 1 episode of Lost, thought I would save myself the blessing of being able to see the reruns as if they were something new and special, in my old age.  So don't tell me the ending....

Said the same thing about Seinfeld too though and never even watched it in reruns, suppose I will have to watch the second run of reruns....

So if Lost is anything to go by, we have the option of exploding a nuclear bomb in order to cancel this path and plane of existence and thereby changing our destiny. Is that right?

[url=http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/there+life+after+bodily+death/276... there life after bodily death?[/url] A.J. Ayer's near-death experience

hm, just found this thread. I like Michael Nenonen's ruminations on consciousness. I may have been stoned on pot when I figured out that the glint of recognition one experiences when scanning the eyes of a passerby - in the act of passing by - isn't merely one hairless monkey determining the threat or copulation potential of another - but is, on a more fundamental level, consciousness recognizing itself: the consciousness one seeks to find in the other pair of eyes is not the individual consciousness of a given personality but rather, one's own consciousness seeing itself in the consciousness of the other...a mutual recognition of a shared attribute. The universe connecting with itself, through the medium of our consciousness. No...universal consciousness, reconnecting with itself through the transient medium of the human mind.

Fidel wrote:

So if Lost is anything to go by, we have the option of exploding a nuclear bomb in order to cancel this path and plane of existence and thereby changing our destiny. Is that right?

SPOILER ALERT:

Lost as in the emotive experience, as the "physiological and mental connection of being" winds down.

I thought what was very special was the recognition of all the memories traveling one path, all the fabrications of six years of Lost, to realize that they all could had been traveling in the after death consciousness. I mean, the fabrications of the island was a mass illusion, to support experience,  while all the emotions are played out with each of the persons involved "until they finally recognized each other enough" to gather one more time in the church.

What was special is that as each person is awakened to the reality of where they are, by thefinal  touch of love that connects the souls to that deeper level of recognition, while the memories of all that the had gone before was moved through flashes of realization that brought the experience together, culminating in the chance to go through the final gate to the light.

The island was hell. To burn out the light was to extinguish any hope of the light to support the illusions of the island and of the life of those in the after death consciousness.

I mean there are a lot of discrepancies once you realize that not all the people are there. A plane did escape, yet, there is no record of those people, while the focus was on a core group. The main actors I guess.

Best,

I would think that consciousness after death is very similar to consciousness before life.

jas wrote:

I would think that consciousness after death is very similar to consciousness before life.

With a jacket ready to be put on maybe. That once you do, you forget about the the way the other world works? The jacket could be a book cover in Benjamin's case

The Epitaph of Young Benjamin Franklin

The body of
B. Franklin, Printer
(Like the Cover of an Old Book
Its Contents torn Out
And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)
Lies Here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be Lost;
For it will (as he Believ'd) Appear once More
In a New and More Elegant Edition
Revised and Corrected
By the Author.

One, when put on,  we forget about the duration of time in experience and gravity?

How about those Blue Jays?

If the mind could exist independently of the body, people would not have different personalities after suffering physical brain damage. The fact that they consistently do shows that the mind (if it exists) is inextricably part of the body, and as such, no dualism exists.

remind wrote:

That is a erroneous binary and faulty logic.

 

Never heard of the Id, the middle conscious self and the super consciousness?

The id, ego and super ego are Freudian concepts about how the psyche is structured. I am sorry, but I do not see the relevance to my claim concerning the correlation between neurological damage and changes in mental states. I would be grateful if you could elaborate on your position. Thank you.