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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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what the mind was yesterday,
it is not today.
you're pursuing a dynamic dream with
a static stare.
you are failing to see the rainbow because
you seek only grey matter.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Some folks spend too much time thinkin' about their thoughts and not enough time living......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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you are failing to see the rainbow because you seek only grey matter.
Maybe it's just that you are failing to see the rainbow in the grey matter.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Exactly. In tech parlance, what are the discovery and loading protocols? How does a 'universal' consciousness mutate / differentiate into an individual consciousness? And if consciousness is 'universal' (and survives the meat), why the local [memory] storage? Why is consciousness so utterly dependent on the health of the meat?
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jstan
climber
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"Universal" is a dangerous term to use when describing anything involving the brain. Everyone learns daily, and early in life especially, this means customization of each person's brain. A study of what parts of that functional unit are changed only slightly over time would, however, seem a very interesting field. I expect there is copious literature out there on precisely this.
In a discussion when informed our problems arise from some sort of personal inadequacy, one has to ask whether further effort is likely to have good result. A question none of us wants to ask.
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PP
Trad climber
SF,CA
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Most of my thinking is about how i think things are affecting "me" . probably a necessary survival mechanism. example I'm hot or I am cold or this is the perfect temperature etc. or sizing people up whether I feel comfortable around them or not. I also find that the mind keeps going even when i am not in that situation any more , the thinking keeps moving on , the mind just keeps going places even though I may be in the same place the whole time, like trying to go to sleep.
The thinking mind makes an opinion about things and it is rarely 100% correct and is often 100% wrong.
I have been doing Zen style meditation for many years and occasionally drop into a mind that is mostly just observing and not making up stories about the observation or feelings. It's a facinating mind state just to observe with very little thinking. Things area just as they are, not good or bad not hot or cold just the sensations of hot or cold . hot and cold before thinking.
In Zen and I am sure many other traditions they talk about "before thinking mind" ( Suzuki Roshi called it beginners mind) some people call it Don't Know mind. This can be misinterpreted that the goal is to try not to think but it is really about not being hindered by your thinking. Not being attached to your thinking.
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PP
Trad climber
SF,CA
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NWO if you really want to explore your mind go check out several teachers/groups and then do alot of actual practice. In the long run books won't help much. retreats can really help to you get started. The teachers job is to point you in the right direction you have to do all the work. Avoid people that are seeking special powers or higher states of conciousness that is typically just spiritual materialism .
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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So it is not a step back, or a question of superstition, or anti-science as some perceive JL's question to be but instead a step forward. A step that requires, at least if you want an intellectual understanding of what is going on, a fairly advanced understanding of much of the science we understand so that the imagination can make the intuitive jump to what is really going on around us.
Can't say I agree as I believe the leap JL is advocating actually leaps out of what is really going on and into an abstraction of his own [boundless] imagining. In fact his bias, which almost entirely excludes and dismisses meat from the exploration, is in itself as telling as his conjecture.
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nutjob
Gym climber
Berkeley, CA
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Alright, I'll stir the pot on the philosophy sub-thread.
From what little philosophy I've read, I get the impression that philosophers are insecure and try to justify their existence in general and being philosophers in particular. I form that impression after trying to read long-winded and obfuscated discussions and dissections of issues which can be stated more plainly and directly. I see a parallel to 13th century monasteries using libraries as prisons for knowledge rather than dissemination of knowledge. (I know this not from direct experience but from a casual reading of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. So if he's full of sh!t then the parallel I've drawn is utterly baseless.)
In our modern world, I see philosophers as trying to use a style of communication that excludes common people to maintain some claim to power over knowledge and use this currency to purchase appreciation or a sense of worth.
It could also be that I'm just lazy and ignorant, and there's a deeper current that I'm not tapping into. Or maybe the answer is somewhere in the middle.
I guess I'm also excluding the possibility of simply enjoying the process of exploring the borders of our mind, however we end up defining it. I'll shut up now, and get in the car if Tami tells me to, so carry on!
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nutjob
Gym climber
Berkeley, CA
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If there is a universal consciousness then the brain must have some circuitry and receptors and transmitters with which to connect to this ethereal cloud. Where are they? Is it magic?
That question is formulated by an engineer.
What if "universal consciousness" is not a specific entity to which one can connect, but an emergent property of a system of automatons (civilization/internet/humans/cells/atoms/quarks/....)? It's possible our interaction with the "universal consciousness" is a simple act of following our scripted life and interacting with our neighbor automata.
Consider The Game of Life (Cellular Automatons):
This "game" is just a grid of values where the presence/absence of life (a "yes" or "no" state at a given grid spot) at the current time interval is a function of which neighbor grid spots had life in the previous time interval. It is a simple model for stuff like bacteria spreading among petri dishes arranged in a grid. It spreads to it's neighbor cells at each generation, unless there are too many neighbors that eat all the food then it dies.
Well, with this model you have simple rules and means of construction, and you can get cool complex results (such as in the picture, with "gliding guns"). Taken on a grander scale, I think this model can explain a lot of crazy and inexplicable stuff that creationists like to attribute to God, that others explore with science, that philosophers ponder to define "mind," etc.
But it's always a recursive argument, "who made the rules that the simple elements interact to form emergent properties?"
Hmmm.. I guess there is God after all. Somebody had to compile the kernel and set the first root password. I pray sometimes just in case.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Really though you can argue, no matter what, that abstractions of the imagination is the only place any of this can start.
And in an fMRI you'd see your meat brain lighting up while you contemplate those abstractions.
I always loved the notion in Aldous Huxley's "The Door of Perception" where he gets the idea that the meat brain is not so much a door way to reality but a filter of all reality.
I think it very much is a filter which is why we are discussing this topic on this forum instead of some other topic on some other forum.
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PP
Trad climber
SF,CA
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riley I like the brain as a filter and the mind constructing things that need to be deconstructed to see that. There are several stories about the great sutra masters(Book learned) encountering the old lady inn keeper who asks them a question that is beyond understanding (not dependent on understanding but on realization) and get the ir minds blown and thier ego's crushed.
I'm at work on a desdline so I have to go love the thread.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Consider The Game of Life (Cellular Automatons)
Back in 2002 Stephen Wolfram produced an enormous tome of 1,200 pages (of small print) in which he argued that virtually everything under the sun could be construed to be a result of the actions of cellular automata (CA). I couldn't get through more than a third of the book, and I wager that no one has ever carefully read the whole thing (correct me if I'm wrong!) It was fashionable for awhile to mention at cocktail parties that you had started the book. I think that era has passed.
Some proponents of fractals have made similar statements, that fractals explain almost everything. But it is doubtful nature's rules of iteration are necessarily eternal and changeless.
However, CA are fun to play with on a computer. I wrote several programs in VB that displayed curious runs and patterns. Enjoyable pastime. But I think I'd put my money elsewhere were I on a journey of exploration of conciousness.
Hey ... maybe not! No one knows.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Mind is where the heart is.....on the bus. With leather?
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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I have done zazen off and on for many years (not as much as I would like) I went to seshin a couple of times. During the long sitting periods I would see all sorts of crazy things, but the roshi would just say "let it go". These things are just side affects of the journey. They don't matter.
In school our comparative religions professor brought in a Zen roshi to lecture to the class, which included undergrad and grad students. He patiently recited the regular "words" associated with zen practice until a grad student decided it was time to ask a question. The question was clearly a cleverly worded, intellectual exercise designed to show how knowledgeable he was.
The roshi's demeanor changed instantly. He focused his gaze intently on the student and said something to the affect of "how can you be sure of that" (paraphrasing). It was delivered with such force that literally the whole room stopped.
The grad student was totally flabbergasted. He actually had to leave the room because he was too disoriented. The roshi instantly returned to his lecture and was serene again.
After the class, the grad student returned to ask the roshi what had happened. He just smiled and said "for a moment you were awake"
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 2, 2011 - 01:58am PT
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So it is not a step back, or a question of superstition, or anti-science as some perceive JL's question to be but instead a step forward. A step that requires, at least if you want an intellectual understanding of what is going on, a fairly advanced understanding of much of the science we understand so that the imagination can make the intuitive jump to what is really going on around us.
Can't say I agree as I believe the leap JL is advocating actually leaps out of what is really going on and into an abstraction of his own [boundless] imagining. In fact his bias, which almost entirely excludes and dismisses meat from the exploration, is in itself as telling as his conjecture.
You know, I can say in plain language that the drill is not to let your awareness get fused with qual (imaginings), to drop below beliefs and language and to let go of discursive mentalizing and still people will honestly believe that I am dealing with an “abstraction,” while discussions about meat brains are the more 1st person and straight up experiential avenues.
And my bias “against” meat brain . . .
I originally got intrigued with “mind” when I started going to Zen retreats at the Mt. Baldy Zen center right above my home in Upland. They had an old Zen master from Japan up the cracking the whip (it was a Renzai outfit with elements of martial art elements) and the experiences there were wild, austere and life altering.
Later, during my freshman year at college, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to follow dear old dad into medicine but I took a shine to one of his neurologist friends who had an EEG machine at his house and we spent ages hooked up to it trying neurofedback drills. Later, a prof. in a bio class had one of the first commercial EEG machines and I worked on that one endlessly.
That began a two decade study with brain wave and neurofedback, and I remained close to the work of Steadman and Les Fehmi at the brain institute at UCLA. They were doing all sorts of interesting stuff with deep states and working with coherence and low frequency work on the occipitals and ADD work on the prefrontal cortex and plenty of other protocols that totally took off once the faster processors became available and digital EEG and qEEG units, as good as he ones used at the lab in Johns Hopkins, became available for a few grand. I went through four or five of them over the years.
An interesting thing is that they developed protocols to totally replicate through entrainment the brain states of yogis and Zen masters or folks who had meditated for fifty years – but curiously, the experiences of those doing the training was not the same as the “minds” of those they were trying to ape – possibly because we all were trying to achieve states or insights (really cool qual) when the guru types were busy offloading all attachments to states and achieving anything.
In short, it became quite obvious to us with years of training with the qeegs and pet scans and so forth that brain states were not delivering the goods as expected, or in the way we had hoped for. Granted there is huge divergence brain to brain, but there were certain biological markers like 40hz spurts, lots of Delta, high coherence across the Alpha and low beta spectrum and little spiking across the array. But you could entrain the brain to replicate this stuff and – not much change.
Then Fehmi – a long time meditation student - found out about Open Focus and realized that conscious open focus exercises were more effective than the machines, and I started down that path as well as the Za Zen meditation which I had always done.
Anyhow, all told I must have fiddled with meat brain neuro and biofeedback devices or most every kind for close to 30 years, so when I hear reports about my bias “excluding” meat brain I chuckle.
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Largo, maybe it's the attempting to 'achieve' by whatever means that is part of the issue ('bias') I mentioned. But from my perspective you still miss the forest for the trees - or possibly it's the reverse - as in going on about how great the forest is, and entirely ignoring / dismissing the contribution of the trees.
My background is a bit different having grown up with a profoundly depressed mother who was in and out of hospitals for most of her adult life. I similarly explored many aspects of the consciousness, emotions, and brains chemistry as well as working in a crisis center, exploring meditation and spending time in isolation tanks. Ditto on zen, flow, and spending literally years on my tightrope over thirty five years for hours at a time in trance states.
I think we've traveled some similar paths and experienced similar states - the difference is clearly in what we've 'learned' or taken away from those experiences.
For instance, my experiences with my mother over decades taught me that it's essentially a miracle beyond miracles that we all operate within a conscious / neurochemical ballpark of each other such that we can interact, communicate, and cooperate. Especially so given a slight tweak in the chemistry of our synaptic gaps can alternately turn us into a raving lunatics or a near comatose depressives. In fact, I could easily script any of you such that three weeks later you'd be entirely incapable of meditation.
From my time in isolation tanks, meditating, and in trance states on my tightrope I've spent long tracts with a relatively empty mind. But I have to say my conclusions from all of the above have left me with very different insights and conclusions about mind and brain than you. My perspective - and I don't doubt your experiences - is that you extrapolate way, way out there in your conclusions such that they are indistinguishable from religion (which you otherwise seem to have little use for).
So it looks to me like in your journey to 'achieve' (now not 'achieve') you appear to have thrown the proverbial baby out with the bath water and hitched your lot to an idealistic philosophy along the lines of transcendental, subjective, absolute, or pluralistic varietals. Cool, but from where I sit I just happen to see a very large gulf in any attempt to make the leap from an empty / open mind to the tenets of an idealistic philosophy.
[ EDIT: It's also possible I've just been confusing your personal interpretation of an idealistic philosophy for religion. ]
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Riley, where we part company is here:
What the crux is, is that it is an imperfect organ giving your consciousness very limited information.
I have entirely the opposite opinion, that it is a perfect organ giving your consciousness more information than it can possibly deal with at any given moment (hence the various filtering functions and possibly the raison d'être for Open Focus).
As for "what we don't understand about the reality around us", I think that's the crux of the matter to be honest. I can now see with fresher eyes that both religion and philosophy seem to share a desperate impatience to fill that void at all cost and do it now. On the other hand, science is all to willing to simply chip away at that void and leave the unknown as just that until we have the means to learn more.
Are there questions beyond the scope of science? Sure, but I fail to see the point in establishing absolute beliefs (ala The Chief and Werner) around any of the conjecture associated with those questions.
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