[dlorde]

... So, as we are, or the self is, a function of the brain, in essence we are 'thought'. And for us to exist through time it is vital there is continuity of that 'thought'. Therefore, even while we sleep this transcendental function, 'thought' must continue. I believe this to be dreaming. For if this 'thought' were to stop, the self would cease to exist in time or space.

The problem with this idea is that self-oriented thought is not continuous. Dreaming occupies only part of sleep, and there are long periods where it is absent altogether. There are other periods, such as during deep anaesthesia, where higher level (cortical) brain activity is minimal, and sense of self is absent. This is not a particular problem for the sense of continuity of self, as it is based on the memories, habits, preferences, etc., that are encoded in the material substrate of the brain, and are accessible whenever the self process is active.

Neurological studies have shown that the sense of self is mediated by activity in particular areas of the brain, and reinforced in relation to the body (location, orientation, extent, etc) by multi-sensory integration. Disruption of this sensory integration can produce unusual sensations of self, such as dislocation (e.g. out of body experience, body transfer illusion, etc), oneness with the universe, partial substitution (e.g. rubber hand illusion), and rejection of body parts as not self (body integrity identity disorder).

There is a significant trend now in the field to view the self (or sense of self) as a transitory phenomenon which is generated or activated as required (the bundle theory of self), for which the sense of continuity is provided as described above.

As with the sense of conscious agency, this sense of continuity of self is often called an 'illusion', but that word has a lot of misleading semantic baggage, especially an echo of the dualism that is supposedly being rejected. It neglects the close integration of the system, and the functional utility of the sense of self and consciousness. There is continuity of all that the sense of self is based on, but the generated self isn't continuous. Likewise for conscious awareness, the agency is not conscious, but it is assigned or attributed to the conscious self, for reasons of obvious utility; it would be pointless to have a self that felt like a stranger in someone else's head every time it became active (though there are illnesses where this occurs), and it would be pointless to have a consciously aware interface to the world that felt like a helpless passenger on a robotic body...

Susan Blackmore has written a fair bit on the bundle theory of self (see The Psychology of Consciousness and She Won't Be Me (a bit exaggerated)), and coincidentally has also written about lucid dreams.

[Peter Steadman]

Thank you for your reply, they are some interesting reads and objections.

I personally believe the objections could be overcome by outlining a problem with the bundled theory proposed by Hume, and defining 'the self'.

 If there is no self, just a bundle of experiences, then Descartes proposition 'I think therefore I am' would mean there is no thinker just thought. This seems strange! We must define 'thought' at this point. - I interpret it to mean the content of cognition. Being as the brain facilitates, or is the seat of cognition, this leaves somewhat of a paradox. Plus, If there is no thinker, what organises experiences in memory schema, and what recalls them etc.

I personally believe there to be two semantic meanings of 'self'. One is our individual/self or independent 'conscious life' if you like, that 'Others' us from everything else that exists. For example, I can not know the thoughts or experiences of your self. And the second, the perception, sense, 'idea of self' that is formed from memories, experiences and practices. These are two distinct things, 'who we think we are' is different from our independent, self existence. Conscious life is a shared experience, yet in its self, particular to an individual being, thus, a self. It's necessary that life has continuity through time to sustain the existence of the being, experiences would not effect this continuity unless the experience is fatal. 

Conscious life can be shaved with Occam’s razor to leave the function of the brain, the brains 'activity'. The brain's function is still present during deep anaesthesia and the dream less sleep cycles. Therefore, continuity of 'thought' from the self is remaining. Though, this thought may not be creating illusionary sensory epiphenomena. The neurological studies that have found the sense of self, is just that. As the sense of self is a perception of self and not 'the self' in the entirety of the brains function.

This does suggest that there is dualism at play. It's not in the classical sense of a sole, but rather a mind, body problem. The self can be separated from the body with “Prince and the Cobbler” thought experiment.  Further evidence is provided by the material brain existing beyond the life span of  cognition. It is an odd dualism, as the location of the self is in the 'brain function' the result of the physical body. But, the body is needed, but not necessary for the function, as the body can be synthesized to artificially support the brain function.


It's quite a long-winded way of saying; “experiences and perception of self aside. For our selves/ individual entities to exist though a life time, we need continuity of thought. -Which is brain function. This happens during our waking life, while we sleep or when we are unconscious – that is a misleading word. The thought persists through life, maybe changing ideas but reaming a continuous thought, and never stopping until death.

But, there are many schools of thought.... Like Jung and Freud – each to their own. The school of scepticism would claim we could never know. Though how they know that is a mystery, lol.

[allan marsh]

Go scientific American mag July 2014 page 50 you will see where nightmares are created and where post traumatic stress has its source.   Read and learn
Allan

[serloco]

the study of anthropology has shown that many cultures have different beliefs and awareness as to what dreaming really is. For example the awareness of shamans, and the ancient seers of mexico, practiced a form of awareness that beleived they could see and study energy directly and thus formed their senses to perceive the energies of the universe directly. They honed these abilities for many many years, thousands of years, teaching their apprentices how to cultivate and control their awareness to form theor perception of reality. They discovered that awareness gets fixated into the habitual position that perceives reality to be the way it is. This their awareness formed their perceptions. Upon seeing what happens in dreaming they discovered that the position of awareness moved from it;s habitual fixated position, and began a movement into what they called the 'left-side' of awareness, commonly referred to as the unknown field of awareness. Here they discovered that many different things happened when they dreamed because their awareness was no longer in their customary position, allowing new awareness and perception to form. Forming from the potential of energy, incredible dreaming positions. Upon advancing with this discovery they began to see that they could intend the positions of their dreamings by forming true awareness of what dreaming really is, thus controlling their awareness of dreaming itself, and expanding their awareness and knowledge, thus aligning and controlling the forms and positions of their dreaming. For example western society, that is not very enlightened when it comes to awareness of dreaming and what they think it is, can easily believe and become awareness that dreams are merely the collection of the data they attained from their day, thus intending with their awareness this result in dreaming. There intent and will, which is energy they train to perceive directly, then controls the dream to form to this awareness and knowledge, willing the position of their dreams. However seers see that since the awareness position can be made to move into the unknown, beyond the habitual awareness and knowledge they have come to accept that they could use both known awareness, and unknown awareness together. With this discovery they learned to enter into the unknown, and free their conscious awareness into new dreaming positions and expiences, while also keeping the known awareness of the dreaming positions they have already discovered. Through the process of dreaming they learned to uncover different forms of reality and awareness by entering into the unknown positions creating newly discovered awareness, while at the same time mapping the unknown and charting it into known awareness. Alwaya expanding themselves in the process.

[serloco]

The problem that exists in western sciences can be easily seen in my previous post as well as in the 1st response given as an absolute fact as to what dreams 'really are'. This is the conditioning that most of western society under-goes through-out their lives. The sciences discover one truth and brand it evidence that proclaims it absolutely knows the truth and then leaves the area in question thinking that they have found the truth. This has merely fixated their awareness and thus their perception into one position of reality, whereby failing to discover that they have merely found only one way to be true out of the unformed potential of many possibilities. The failure of science to carefully study the nature of intent and will has left them in the dark to what is occurring as their state of intent and will naturally begins to support and form the knowledge they have discovered, thus forming their awareness and perception into this mold. Thus their intent and will has been set to align their awareness and knowledge into the form of intended perception. They then, thinking it is the absolute truth, proceed unknowingly to force the rest of their world into the same mold, in the process controlling the position of dreaming that many people then begin to enter into. However if you take a moment to study dreams for yourself and find your own answers you will easily discover that many people and including yourself has many dreams that are beyond what science states dreaming is. For example I do not fly into other alien worlds and perform the same splendid miracles that happen during my dreaming in the waking world. I do not travel through time, I do many things well beyond my average world capabilities, and so how can it be true that my dreams are a memory process of my daily events? Thus the truth of science does not hold up the tiniest bit of scrutiny and thus can not be considered as absolute truth.

[serloco]

Although I have not read all of the 'show', nor seen it I have to point out that science often claims that it 'debunks' things, like the myths of dreams, and other potential possibilities. And the puruit of the truth is a great cause. However often times you have not successfully debunked anything despite your actual proof that you present that looks shiny and truthful to you in YOUR awareness and perception. One truth does not have to omit another to make it true. The failure to recognize that multiple possibilities can exist, and both be true despite contradictory evidence, leaves happenings like religious wars, dogmatic religions that deny other faiths, and science that herds everyone into the same boat. A finite logic can only see within its finite boundaries, while an infinite perspective can see the existence of all things. Just because science can not prove that people use the spirits of plants and forms relationships with the plants, talk with them in their formed attentions, does not erase the thousands of years of this developed path for example. it is a gross injustice to deny a way in favor of another just because it is true for you. The finite reasoning system concludes that since it knows with absolute certainty that their way is in fact true and therefor the contradictory way can not be, is merely a limited finite reasoning that has not yet learned that awareness and perception together create the experience of reality through our intent and will as living beings. For example the awareness of biology states that we are physical beings and thus carries within the intent and will of that form that you actively apply to yourself in this moment. Your intent and will are locked into this form of awareness and knowledge as a result. It is easy to prove this and so it must be true. However the ancient culture of the mayans, aztecs, oaxacan mexicans, shamanism and more have discovered that the position of awareness of your body creates the form of your perception through your intent and will, and thus have learned to convert their bodies into pure awareness of their bodies, and thorough the guidance and control of this awareness are able to alter their forms in many ways. because their awareness of the phsyical body is not that it is physical but energetic potential that is formed as awareness and knowledge. They can reach many different positions of their body as a result because their intent and will supports this active perception. And awareness generates perception. This when they are aware that their conscious awareness projects their body they have converted the essence of energy into this form. Science however has merely proved that they are physical beings, and thus that is where they left it. The expanded path of possibilities that stem from these teaching lead to unfathomable positions of both the body and the reality we are existing within, and I couldn;t even begin to explain all the positions I have discovered let alone what these various others cultures have found during their thousands of years of explorations.

[serloco]

I just made this post and yet it did not post. So I will take my time to make it again, and this time save it before i post.

Now I haven't watched the episode and do not know what they debunked, but here is my response to debunking.

The problem I see in the 'debunking' process is as follows.

Biology clearly states that we are physical beings. It can easily prove this as fact, and thus has left it as it is and passed this knowledge as the absolute truth to everyone in their world. What they have failed in however is they have merely clung to their finite reasoning. Sure since we can prove it must be true right? This finite reasoning is the cause of many religious wars, dogmatic religions, and dogmatic sciences as well. See they fail to take into consideration the infinite potential of possibility and the diversity and propagation of many forms of life, ways, existences, that come from one source into all ways. Since they can prove that their way is right and true and they know it is they assume that this proof makes them absolutely right. However the aztecs, the mayans, the shamans, the ancient mexicans, and a great many more didn't stop there at their own truth and make a conlusion from it. Science's other flaw is the failure to examine that we are beings of intent and will, and do not look into the universe to see this energy and how it works. I will give you an example. The awareness and knowledge that states we are physical beings has contained within it the intent and will of that positions of awareness. It intends and wills the form into perception, just as awareness aligns into perception. Careful examination of awareness and perception, the known and unknown, and the potential that is released in the process can be moved into new configurations of energy, forms of awareness and perception. State of being. So these other cultures that practice converting their physical mass of their bodies into pure awareness have learned that when they become aware that their bodies are actually a projection of the awareness and knowledge that they then cast this form of percpetion. they can control their awareness to guide and control the form of their bodies. Releasing the potential of the 'physical mass' int a new freely moving form, they call fluidity. And from then they can do incredible feats of awareness and perception, practicing to shape their own forms, that have led them to many numerous truths about what the body can become, and really is. In essence they have discovered that the body is really a position of awareness that is made into a form of perception.

And so science does not always debunk as it claims it does by proving that it knows the truth of the way. But is really merely proving that the one way it present is one possible truth of many.

[serloco]

I rarely have nightmares but several years ago, I had what some might say was a premonition during a dream.

I dreamt I was seated on an airplane and turned to see my youngest brother in great distress. He was lying on his back in the center isle and vomiting. The following day, the memory of this dream stayed with me, I just couldn't shake it.

Several days passed without any improvement in my concern, so I telephoned my mother just to say hi and ask how everyone was doing. Mind you, I did not mention the concern I had been dealing with to her about my brother. During our conversation, she said; "Did anyone here tell you about what happened to Dennis?" I answered; "No, I haven't heard anything from anyone lately."

My mother told me that Dennis, my younger brother, had been to Mexico and had contracted food poisoning while there. On the plane back, he had a violent reaction to this poisoning and when they landed, was taken directly to the hospital. He almost died.

To clarify a few points. I had no previous information that he was planning a trip to Mexico and had told nobody about my dream. Coincidence......? Maybe, I suppose the answer is beyond our current technological knowledge.

BTW, My mother and youngest brother live in a different state than I do, separated by over 800 miles.

Fascinating.

I have been studying dreams fro a very long time, and have discovered much but still have many questions myself. One of my findings is that time in the dream world often merges different points in time together. For example I can have a dream form my childhood that is near to exactly the same as when i was a child, and have either the same awareness I had as a child, or I can be a child in the world as it was when i was young, while having the fully developed awareness of my present day. The people in my dreams can also be the same way. Thus merging aspects of the past and present together. Many have dreams of premonitions as well and is actually a very commonly reported occurrence. I have lad a few myself that came to be so that I found myself in the future, and then entered into my 'dream' at a later date, obviously the dream was not a dream but a premonition of the actual future. It tells me that when people are sleeping that their attention can assess time in a way that merges past, present, and future together in the present. I have seen this many times. Working with my own conscious awareness in the waking world, like many tribes I have learned from, i have begun to expand my own consciousness to perceive the merging of dream-states with the waking-state in order to bring many of my dreaming abilities to the surface of my waking consciousness. After all if the attention can connect to perceive time in this way in dreams then surely it can in the waking world as well. I won't go into great detail but the results have been phenomenal beyond belief. It becomes so that one can perceive reality to be a lucid dream state where you have great control and power in the waking world, and merely because you have shifted your awareness to see reality as a dream, and are no longer fixated within the habitual waking state of perception.

Another interesting fact I have found is that time is also compressed in my dreams, like many people also report, and so I can experience extremely long dream sequences while being asleep for merely a few minutes. One of the cultures I research have said that "warriors compress time with the focus of their attention" making time speed or slow by altering and controlling their perception of time itself. It also says "average people focus on time as it receeds away from them, after it happens, but warriors learn to focus into time as it advances upon them". "warrior" is a term I do not use but the culture does, and their teaching led me to be able to pick out things that are happening just before they happen, so that I can hear a twig snap in my attention just prior to it happening. This state of awareness progresses much further then that and can be made to actually control the unfolding of time itself to amazing and great lengths that would just seem unfathomable to the modern scientific man's reasoning so i wont go into more detail here.

[serloco]

Now i study the sciences and many fields within the great mystery of life, but I can't fathom how science could come to a conclusion that states dreams are merely the memory process of the waking day that they have lived. When I did my research I found countless informational sources and reports from countless people and cultures that all clearly state much more then that. When scientists do research do they ignore everything in the world?? How did they come this conclusion? I can't believe they didn't discover all the same information I have and so I question the why...

Is it not enough that science often ties down the world into the same awareness and perception, and often closes the doors to actual experiences and lives of thousands of(and more) people's actual experiences and truths(ways)? Is it something they are after? I mean when you look at it science controls the perception of most of the western world for a large part anyways. PLacing them together in the same collective view of the world, making everyone see the same thing. Do not get me wrong the uniformity of awareness is a good thing too, or else we have people off experiencing many versions of reality and can be a bit chaotic when people do not see eye to eye, and are actually seeing different forms reality. But to take the freedom of our dreams and tie them into the waking world as well, is a rip off and a cheat. Is it not enough to control the perception of the world, that you have take our dreams away too, and control them? Is science just another dogmatic religion in disguise designed to control the masses? Do they filter what they want to share with people in the world and prove as facts?

[serloco]

I just remember two other dreams I have had that can not be defined by science's defintion of dreaming.

Once I was expanding my awareness of my brain, and observing my attention and memory centers. I was learning from beyond my own consciousness too, because I am aware that my attention can reach outside of myself and into the world to send and receive information that is directed and guided by the control and focus of my attention. It means I can look at a book, or focus my attention into a book, and begin to receive information about what is within the book. I have become aware that the world is formed energy, and so the awareness that is within the book is present in energy, and the attention when formed and developed as a sense, can channel or absorb information into itself from outside sources.

Anyways I was developing this internal conscious transceiver I began to observe the formations of my memories, and wondered if I could experience other people's memories through this 'link' in consciousness. I had set my intent to form and experience this perception. As afterall I had already experienced and developed an expanded 'telepathic' channel of consciousness in my world.

I went to sleep that night and had a dream, and in it I was another man I had never known nor seen, in a world I had also never known. My own awareness was present in this dream as an observer however I had a complete lifetime of memories that were not my own that i could access with my own attention. And so I have proven to myself that not only are my dreams not memories of my waking life, but also has an external stimulus outside of my own consciousness.

Another dream I had I was speaking another language and knew the language perfectly. I do not speak that language in real life, and so the definition given by science is again not suffice. As well as proving that I can learn new things in my dreams that I have not learned in my waking life.

i have also read reports of many similar and even nearly exact identical reports as my own in my own research.

[dlorde]

Yers... I read Castaneda as a student, and Capra's 'Tao of Physics', etc. - entertaining stuff; and yes, it is possible to train yourself to have more control of your dreams, and to view the world differently. But what goes on in dreams, and the way you view the world, is all brain activity; whatever you imagine involves only information already stored there (although it may be information you're not consciously aware of). And there is no special energy involved in dreaming beyond the usual metabolism of neurons to repolarise their membranes.

Also, no sane scientist claims to discover truth, let alone 'absolute truth'; science aims to explore the world and provide provisional, even tentative explanatory and predictive models of what we observe.

If you claim to have some esoteric knowledge beyond what is currently known to science, all you need do is demonstrate it. It's that simple. Scientists will climb over each other to explore new domains of knowledge, for pure curiosity and excitement, for the satisfaction of knowledge, for fame and fortune, and for Nobel prizes. They're quite happy to throw out existing models and embrace the totally new, unintuitive, and even downright weird (check out quantum mechanics) - if and only if this knowledge is demonstrable, testable, and preferably has some explanatory and predictive utility. We're still waiting for some demonstration of the esoteric mystical knowledge claimed by the dreamers of novel realities, etc.

The reason we're still waiting becomes apparent when we examine what we do know of how the world behaves, modelled by quantum field theory. This is currently the best model we have. We know it's incomplete, but in the ranges where it applies, it is pretty good (when I say pretty good, it is accurate to beyond our ability to measure). We know it's pretty good, because most of our advanced technology is derived from it, it has passed every test we've devised for it, and all the predictions it has made have been shown to be correct. In other words, within its applicable scope it works very well, and this has deep implications, because it tells us the basic rules that govern what happens at everyday human scales, and knowing those rules allows us to tell what is and is not possible at these scales. This is a very significant implication, and I'll let Dr Sean Carroll explain it in more detail in his video: The Higgs Boson and the Fundamental Nature of Reality. The video link skips directly to the meat of the point, but I recommend watching from the start if you also want a lucid and amusing explanation of the Standard Model of physics and how the Higgs boson fits into it.

[dlorde]

serloco, you seem to be claiming some abilities to obtain knowledge through other than 'normal' channels; if you can tell me anything specific about me or my family that is not publicly available knowledge, I'd be impressed to hear it.

What do you say?

[Frank DiMeglio]

Here is a fundamental, fascinating, very important, original, and truthful/accurate understanding of dreams. THIS POST IS MOST IMPORTANT.

The self represents, forms, and experiences a comprehensive approximation of experience in general by combining conscious and unconscious experience. Dream experience is FUNDAMENTALLY consistent with this fact/GREAT TRUTH. VERY IMPORTANTLY, if the self did not represent, form, and experience a comprehensive approximation of experience in general by combining conscious and unconscious experience, we would then be incapable of GROWTH AND BECOMING OTHER THAN WE ARE. Now, dream experience grows/increases. Accordingly, in dreams, we are CONSCIOUS AND ALIVE in conjunction with the FUNDAMENTAL EXPERIENCE of our GROWTH AND BECOMING OTHER THAN WE ARE. Indeed, dreams balance being AND experience; and there is no outsmarting the genius of dreams. Dreams balance conscious AND unconscious experience, as dream experience is possible/potential AND actual in BALANCE.
 It all makes sense. Dream experience is that of the middle distance in/of space, consistent with instantaneity and balanced (including maximum) middle strength force/energy feeling/touch.

The ultimate unification of physics combines, balances, and includes opposites, and such a unification would necessarily and ultimately balance being AND experience. Dreams combine, balance, and include opposites. As I have clearly proven, dreams would (and do) involve the ultimate, natural, fundamental, theoretical, AND actual equivalency and balancing of gravity, inertia, and electromagnetism. This proven unification of physics/physical experience, along with all of the other overwhelming, consistent, and various truths/facts that I have identified, establish beyond any reasonable doubt that in dreams we are (and must be) CONSCIOUS AND ALIVE in conjunction with the FUNDAMENTAL EXPERIENCE of our GROWTH AND BECOMING OTHER THAN WE ARE. Again, it all makes sense.
 
Frank DiMeglio