I heard many times from different sources the affirmation that everything that there is are thoughts. Old philosophic ideologies such as Buddhists say the mind is all there is. Many alternative new age authors have stated the same, such as Deepak Chopra saying that the only difference between our thoughts and the universe as thoughts is that our thoughts are usually linguistically articulated. Others, Skooby for instance, have their personal experiences and thoughts on what it is all about and arrived to the same conclusion. I personally have considered this many times and I still have more questions than answers in this regard.
For instance, what is the source of all thoughts? who is the thinker behind the thoughts? (very zen question ;) what's the relationship between the thoughts and the physical brain? If we don't need a brain to think thoughts what is the brain for? If we do need a brain to think thoughts, nothing existed before brains evolved? (contradiction right there ...)
I can bring more questions, but hope to get some answers to these before.
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11 comments:
Thank you Cecilia. I've been missing these discussions.
I think thoughts originate in our consciousness...and I think our consciousness is independent of our physical being. Perhaps our ability to express our consciousness is aided in this dimension by our physical body, and our brain specifically. But I get the feeling our consciousness is separate from our body and also immortal.
There's an extension of that idea - that's shared in many philosophies - that our personal consciousness is part of a universal consciousness.
It further begs the idea that our personal consciousness is merely a pinch off the whole, and manifested animately each lifetime.
At the end of this life, in our inanimate state, our consciousness may return to that collective consciousness - the whole constantly soaking up the lessons learned and adding to the collective body of information or consciousness.
In another life, another incarnation, another pinch of collective soul is deposited into an animate body, and lives another lifetime soaking up experience, emotion and information.
...wow, that sounds kinda wacky on the re-read, and it's got a lot of spirituality tied into it...but I think string theory might support some parts of the same notion. Especially since "all" at that sub-particle level, is all energy and information - and what is information, but consciousness.
...and the reason for this idea were the questions:
"where does our learning go?" "what's our purpose here?"
I figure our purpose must be to perpetuate the progress of life. I don't even think humanity is necessarily important in the equation. Life exists in innumerable forms, and I think consciousness can be in a tree as well as a river.
...not necessarily acting with free will (I hear that's reserved for humans) ;)
...but living, and dying, and regenerating, even reincarnating.
I would seek any native american shaman or chief for examples of these ideas.
Those are some of my thoughts in response.
There seems to be an undeniable truth from which we can start of: all there is is energy + information, which probably could be also said as: all there is is energy + knowledge. Curiously if we review the origin of the consciousness word in latin (which turned out to be a great source of wisdom every time I did it) we find out that it means 'con' 'scientia' which basically is to share knowledge.
Another very accepted truth of science is that energy is constant in the universe. Here is where we can start seeing a relationship between enregy and knowledge with the end result of incrementing consciousness. If the universe is energy + knowledge and energy is constant, then the only way the universe can grow (even maybe become infinite) is by incrementing the knowledge (or order or organization).
Therefore the organization goes always incrementing the complexity and connectivity among the parts. From (??) to strings(?) to particles to single powered atoms to more complex elements, to molecules, to more sophisticated chemical compounds. From the big bang to galaxies and star complexes, to planetary groups. But now that we have this distributed net of start systems and planets, they need to grow somehow their knowledge, they need to share it, they will not remain isolated but they'll attempt to connect. How? they'll pick up from atomic elements and get to more complex forms such as carbon chains, acids, to RNA, to DNA, to simple cells, to more organized cells with differentiated organs inside, to groups of cells interacting so tightly that they develop a membrane that separates them from the outside and become multi-cellular organisms and it'll keep going to more and more complex beings until they have more dominance of the environment, until they even understand and have some knowledge and until they can assure their own survival and even make machines that would extend their own capacities. What are machines after all? do they scape to the definition of life? nop, they're just organisms with a much more efficient energy management. No need to do all the energy production themselves, they just rely on an external source of energy provided by a net of organisms outside themselves (no need to eat, digest, generate energy, eliminate waste), replaceable parts, high connectivity, high on information processing and sharing. And this way planets will some day connect, from different galaxies, from different stars.
But the same need goes in many levels, so, universes also have the same need. So if there are multiple universes, the complexity needs to keep building so maybe universes can also connect and share their energy and their knowledge and it never ends, either if you look up (universes) or down (strings).
Sorry, after all there's not much metaphysics on this thoughts ... it looks like I was trying to get to somewhere and I got to somewhere completely different. It's your fault SK, you suggested that I watch those string theory movies after all ;)
I guess if I had to go back to the original question I'd think more about that collective versus individual consciousness.
I forgot about entropy when talking about the universe growing and becoming infinite. As the universe grows in complexity and knowledge it will for some reason that I still can't quite understand generate entropy and die, and then maybe be re-born again on a big bang in another level of the spiral of it's life, as we talked before. (then we go back to the spiral and the sinusoid and all that ;)
Gosh, I love it. That was a perfect addition to this thread - this string. :)
No, seriously, bringing scientific basis to the metaphysical notion that this collective consciousness does exist as posited certainly helps.
I come from that spiritual / metaphysical perspective, because it's where I got most of my training. For you to be able to corroborate some of these notions with science to support them, makes for a seemingly holistic view. We're connecting from both sides to the middle.
Before you got off on entropy, you brought credence to the idea that, since energy is constant, then the information is what expands - the expanding nature of the universe. And my earlier premise that our consciousness is what grows through our existence (the learning school of life) seems to tie those together.
The collective consciousness of the universe is known to be ever expanding, developing, progressing. This then provides an interesting purpose to our consciousness, and our contribution to the expanding awareness of consciousness. It suggests, that's why we're here - to collect consciousness for the whole through our experiences.
Did the ideas I presented in my prior comment, though, provide acceptable answers to your questions about the nature of mind vs. the physiology of brain, etc?
I'm still confused as of some of the things you stated on your first comment.
For instance, the fact that our consciousness is independent of our physical being. There are some things that would argue on favor of this affirmation. The fact that we go to sleep and loose some levels of consciousness kind of suggests that the cycle of awake / sleep / back to awake is similar to a greater cycle of life death / reincarnation as life seems to be proofed to be a pretty recursive thing it would make sense that it would repeat itself in this kind of cycle. There seem to be people that with different techniques can communicate or see other lives also suggests this. But there doesn't seem to be a proof or reasoning behind this beyond recursion that makes me think this is 100% sure, and 100% part of a universe that makes total sense to me, and as you know coming from the side of the dial I'm coming from, the more sense it makes the higher the probabilistic of being right for me ;)
So, I'm still on the look for a definite answer to that.
Also, in case of accepting that consciousness transcending our bodies (something I'd love to think, and I actually do believe as a basis for my own little personal experiments on the spiritual side of my life), there are new questions that need to be answered in order to give this affirmation a whole framing theory that makes sense with the universe as a whole. So, for instance, I'd have to ask myself, is this consciousness collective or just individual?
Even if we say it's collective we probably need to ask ourselves, collective to the universe? Gaia (as it has been called the live planet Earth?)
When I tried to think of the universe as a whole and making sense of this collective consciousness as a whole, as this is experimentation wise the theory that would make more sense to me, I'd explain it in this way:
The universe is all energy + information. I'm not totally comfortable stating that there is a universal consciousness. But, I'm more comfortable thinking that because of the evolution of life on earth, we came to develop a being that is greater than the sum of it's parts. We, humans, animals, anything that lives on Earth (not sure if including inanimate as beings as well, tending not to) are the cells of a greater being (should we call it gaia?). This being, has a consciousness in the same way I have a consciousness beyond the lives of the cells in my body. My neurons, being my most specialized cells on thought, as a community can grasp my consciousness and even reflect on it, in the same way communities of humans such as us right now can discuss collective consciousness.
Then, we could try to go one step further and say, the consciousness of life in each planet will eventually connect to other certain planets with the same kind of "intelligent" development and share thoughts on the universe's consciousness. Then, we are getting closer to the universal consciousness you were talking originally. The question that remains is the old same question of the egg or the chicken ... does the universe (or Earth for this matter) have a consciousness that will manifest on some type of thinking beings OR does the universe gain consciousness because of being an aggregation of some type of thinking beings.
Does consciousness exist and eventually manifest in different forms of recursive life or we start with simple energy that has two tendencies one to grow it's organizational level (information) and another that decays its organizational level (sinusoid!) and because of the tendency to grow it's organizational level it ends up on higher levels of consciousness?
Remind me, how do we solve this kind of issue? Is this the typical two sides of the coin issue? What would taoism say about this?
Wow, this is interesting. There are three things I want to reply with - I'll point them out and then expound upon them as I can.
1. the separateness of energy+information from their physical manifestations at the quantum level.
2. the non-deification of consciousness vs. deification of same.
3. Taoism = the way of changes; or also the way of nature = the natural order and phenomena of life.
I may not get to all of these in this post...because I'm leaving the house for a day or two...but they're there as a reminder.
1. Isn't it true, that at the sub-particle level, there is no physicality to matter. Everything exists in an energy field, and the physical manifestations are "almost" imaginary? Such that, your fingers don't actually touch the keys, but rather the energy and information that coalesce to suggest your fingers and their nerve endings, and all the elements, are merely bound together in a field of energy - and when you get down to that conspicuous level, there's just space? If that's supposed, then why not name that field of energy and its relevant information the consciousness of "finger", and the consciousness of "plastic". In this case, it supports the notion that consciousness is in fact separate from the physicality of its expression - only complicated by the nature of that expression.
I've actually gotta go, sorry. But more to come....
Was that enough on the first comment to lay a foundation for that premise?
The premise was that consciousness is what exists at the sub-particle level, that which informs the energy - and the combination make up matter. So, consciousness is beneath or before the matter itself, and by extension independent - because if the matter ceases to exist, the energy and the information are, for lack of a better phrase, caste to the winds to be regathered at some point - with different vibration and different information to beget new matter.
If that's not clear enough, we can pursue that via the quantum theory from which I gained this idea.
2. as to the deification of consciousness, I have progressively worked away from that idea - the idea that there's this superior being of sorts - in line with the "let's not call it God" thread.
The ancients all deified the way of nature - human nature, evil nature, natural occurrences themselves, etc.
In that we're talking about consciousness, and collective consciousness, the collective pool of that consciousness doesn't necessarily have to be deified. It could just be a collection of information that awaits attachment to a new energy field.
Even, as the collective consciousness grows and gains information from experience, it evolves. Could this be the key to evolution? Expanding consciousness from the school of experience?
3. The Taoism I know isn't religious but rather just a poem of observations of the natural order of things. It's the way things work. There's no deity, other than "that which cannot be named."
I absolutely agree with 2, and 3, can we say for taoism there is not a chicken creating an egg or an egg creating a chicken but both creating each other in an eternal cycle that has no start and no end or something like that ;)
On 1, it's a little more complicated. I don't necesarily mind calling the information consciousness but the problem with that is what can/do we infer from that. In modern days consciousness has a meaning associated as to being a human function of our brains. So, it could be a little confusing and allow us to make some inferences that might or might not be correct. As in most of the discussions there's a little bit of semantics involved here, but trying to set those aside, what would be interesting to see is what further conclusions can we draw from the fact that even if in our dimensional level all seems solid and stable a total different picture is happening in reality when looked in a more nanoscopic (is this not a word? it should!) level. For instance, does this validate the law of attraction or the "penny project" or many oriental philosophies stating it's all about attention.
In the quantum level there seem to be experiments that suggest that the observer modifies the observed, but I'm not totally clear if this happens because of the measurement instruments needed or because of the pure field of attention interacting with the quantum particles. Now that I write it I think it's the latter, then that opens some doors to some interesting theories.
In the end, should I understand that what you're answering with 1 is that the human consciousness pre-exists us as a race and as individuals? Do we just tune-in into thought as we tune-in into vision? or do we create reality with our thought? or again, maybe both?
Essentially, yes.
And for semantics sake, maybe we can call it the informative field - that which informs the energies at the sub-particle level. That informative field - previously suggested to be collective consiciousness - exists since the big bang, I guess. And evolution is merely an expression of the informative field developing itself through the progressive expressions of itself from the earliest manifestations of energy to the latest...from hydrogen atoms to the most complex living systems. Doesn't that define evolution to a degree?
I offer this because we can see how we ourselves evolve within our own lifetime - and note how humanity has evolved over time. Just because the animate being dies, surely doesn't mean all their learning dies with them. Our capacities are born into us, and we learn and learn more than we were given with each lifespan - all toward the eventual evolution of mankind.
I think, as an aside, this collective informative field is where people may get their past-life recollections - I think they're recalling, remembering chunks of information, that may not actually be their own, but may be an imprint of experience simply residing in the informative field. Now those imprints could be residing in the informative field of their consciousness, or it could be imprints on the matter manifested out of the field as muscle tissue, etc. Like an amputated appendage that still feels like it's there.
Intuition is also perhaps tapping into the informative field, consciously and subconsciously.
Does this make sense?
By the way, I am also all about the ideas around the field of attention and laws of attraction theories. And these are supported by the above.
Here - about the field of attention and the science of it, check this:
http://www.theglobalintelligencer.com/jun2007/scitech
Wow! And this:
http://www.livingthefield.com/
People are way ahead of us on this stuff Cecilia...this is great!
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