03 01 08 A New Model of Human Consciousness
Sat Mar 01 15:04:02 2008
A New Model of Human Consciousness
We are gradually spreading the word throughout our system of sites, blogs and phlogs that we beleive that we have developed a coherent and new model of human consciousness. We came across the idea during an e-mail discussion with an Associate of the OC and that was about ten days ago. Since that time we've been slowly working out the ramifications of it and it goes like this:
It has long been thought that our consciousness - which we shall define here as that which we know, think and feel - is located in our brains. This has been the "standard model" since some time before the Enlightenment and today nearly everyone accepts it as a given. Much research has been expended in psychology, biology and neuroscience to find just where in the brain human consciousness resides. We are proposing that this is just so much barking up the wrong tree.
Human consciousness uses the human brain. It does not originate in the brain nor is it in any way a permanent feature of the brain. Human consciousness resides in the unobstructed universe, that realm which so many of us cannot see yet is around us all. In this place where live those who have passed on, those yet to be born and those devic or angelic beings which were here before us - it is from that very place that our individual human consciousness uses our brains. We have been enculturated not to be aware of this. Yet we "use" our brains much as radio signals "use" a radio or a computer's operating system "uses" the computer's hardware. I might be taken to task about the seantics of the last part of the last sentence, being corrected with "the computer uses the operating system;" but in reality it boils down to a choice of perception.
This would explain a great deal about a number of things which we as living human beings experience in our lives:
- it would validate the sense of personal immortality with which even the staunchest atheist is embued; if we were here before our mortal lives, and likely we were, then we shall continue after
- it would explain a great deal about those things which our culture views as psychological abberations such as paranoia, schizophrenia and especially "multiple personality" phenomena. If a mind using a brain becomes so convinced of the reality of its permanent location within a brain it will take very seriously certain fear-producing events which can occur. A beating or rape, being involved in a wartime incident will certainly affect how you view the world even though you are a personality in an ethereal location which is using a living brain. Schizophrenia might well have nutritional and other biological causes but the implication is that if you found that your brain was physically malfunctioning you would still attempt to use it. This would be like shouting into a cell phone that is out of its range of coverage, or using a computer that has a malfunctioning hard-drive. That human consciousness would be affected during life would account for depression and some forms of paranoia. The analogy here would be a corrupted operating system, or one with a virus. In computer operating systems there really is not a "virus" in the biological sense; it is well understood that certain kinds of code perform in a similar manner to the biological virus. Multiple personality phenomena - as opposed to using the word "disorder" would be explained by saying that a human consciousness has been so traumatized as to refuse to any longer use the brain or body in which it operates. The brain then would either attract a new consciouss entity or, a new conscius entity would at least part of the time use the same brain. The analogy here is like a hard-drive partitoned to use more than one operating system on a computer in a series of "virtual machines."
- it would explain why some people have what are called "out of body" experiences - OOBE's - because such individuals have learned, usually on a subliminal level, that they aren't really tied to their brains. Human brains are not used to processing direct information from the unobstructed universe, which would explain why such experiences are often innacurately portrayed when verbally reported. This segues into dreaming.
- our dreams are usually not pleasant and this would be an habituation of a mind residing in a brain but experienceing the unobstructed or numinous world; unaccustomed to the "different reality" thus experienced the brain's various perceptual centers - visual cortex especially - will produce paradoxical and sometimes upsetting imagery. The stuff from which nightmares are made.
- to conclude this proposition I suggest that certain drugs which affect the brain do so in a manner which gives our immaterial minds numerous options of perception and action. Thus chemicals like DMT and LSD-25, which are commonly called "hallucinogenic" - "generating hallucinations" - will have a mind using not one part of a brain but many at the same time. For whatever reason empathogens such as MMDA, MDA and MDMA would for whatever reason make those areas of the brain through which emotions and feelings are processed by the mind seem most inviting.
We have just begun exploring the implications of this idea and welcome comments.
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