Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sriram on October 03, 2016, 02:40:33 PM
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Hi everyone,
We are increasingly beginning to realize that bacteria play a very large role in our lives. The microbiome is being recognized as a very important contributor to not just our physical health but also our mental health. Bacteria can affect our state of happiness and sorrow. They can lead to depression and schizophrenia. Some mental diseases can even be contagious. Children who are not exposed to vaginal bacteria of their mothers can develop mental problems.
Lots of connection between bacteria and our minds that we are just beginning to find out.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/microbes-can-play-games-mind
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In the ultimate PR turnaround, once-dreaded bacteria are being welcomed as health heroes. People gobble them up in probiotic yogurts, swallow pills packed with billions of bugs and recoil from hand sanitizers. Helping us nurture the microbial gardens in and on our bodies has become big business, judging by grocery store shelves.
These bacteria are possibly working at more than just keeping our bodies healthy: They may be changing our minds. Recent studies have begun turning up tantalizing hints about how the bacteria living in the gut can alter the way the brain works. These findings raise a question with profound implications for mental health: Can we soothe our brains by cultivating our bacteria?
By tinkering with the gut’s bacterial residents, scientists have changed the behavior of lab animals and small numbers of people. Microbial meddling has turned anxious mice bold and shy mice social. Rats inoculated with bacteria from depressed people develop signs of depression themselves. And small studies of people suggest that eating specific kinds of bacteria may change brain activity and ease anxiety. Because gut bacteria can make the very chemicals that brain cells use to communicate, the idea makes a certain amount of sense.
Though preliminary, such results suggest that the right bacteria in your gut could brighten mood and perhaps even combat pernicious mental disorders including anxiety and depression. The wrong microbes, however, might lead in a darker direction.
Microbes have been with us since even before we were humans. Human and bacterial cells evolved together, like a pair of entwined trees, growing and adapting into a (mostly) harmonious ecosystem.
Our microbes (known collectively as the microbiome) are “so innate in who we are,” says gastroenterologist Kirsten Tillisch of UCLA. It’s easy to imagine that “they’re controlling us, or we’re controlling them.” But it’s becoming increasingly clear that no one is in charge. Instead, “it’s a conversation that our bodies are having with our microbiome,” Tillisch says.
Cryan and others are amassing evidence that they hope will lead to “psychobiotics” — bacteria-based drugs made of live organisms that could improve mental health.
Dinan and his colleagues took stool samples from people with depression and put those bacteria (called “melancholic microbes” by Dinan in a 2013 review in Neurogastroenterology and Motility) into rats. The formerly carefree rodents soon began showing signs of depression and anxiety, forgoing a sweet water treat and showing more anxiety in a variety of tests. “Their behavior does quite dramatically change,” Dinan says. Rats that got a microbiome from a person without depression showed no changes in behavior.
Cryan and colleagues have found that the microbiomes of people with depression differ from those of people without depression, raising the possibility that a diseased microbiome could be to blame.
there are hints that introducing just one or several bacterial species can also change the way the brain works. One such example comes from Cryan, Dinan and colleagues. After taking a probiotic pill containing a bacterium called Bifidobacterium longum for a month, 22 healthy men reported feeling less stress than when they took a placebo. The men also had lower levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol while under duress,
If it turns out that bacteria can influence our brains and behaviors, even if just in subtle ways, it doesn’t mean we are passive vessels at the mercy of our gut residents. Our behavior can influence the microbiome right back.
She and her colleagues are testing a relaxation technique called mindfulness-based stress reduction to influence the microbiome. In people with gut pain and discomfort, the meditation-based practice reduced symptoms and changed their brains in clinically interesting ways, according to unpublished work. The researchers suspect that the microbiome was also altered by the meditation. They are testing that hypothesis now.
Giving a name to this complex and diverse consortium could shift scientists’ views of humans in a way that leads to deeper insights. “What we need to do,” Bordenstein says, “is add microbes to the ‘me, myself and I’ concept.”
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Cheers.
Sriram
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“What we need to do,” Bordenstein says, “is add microbes to the ‘me, myself and I’ concept.”
... and not demons and devils..... sacrilege. >:(
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Giving a name to this complex and diverse consortium could shift scientists’ views of humans in a way that leads to deeper insights. “What we need to do,” Bordenstein says, “is add microbes to the ‘me, myself and I’ concept.”
This is the salient part for all those who claim 'we' are spirits inhabiting a body or any form of dualism. The truth is far more curious and complex - 'I' should really be 'we'; any particular self/person/soul ultimately derives from a transient and temporary symbiotic collective of millions of beings.
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... and not demons and devils..... sacrilege. >:(
'Daemon's would be banished with introduction of the right bacteria.
Like the Martians in 'War of the Worlds'.
Seriously, anything that improves mental health I will try immediately.
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This is the salient part for all those who claim 'we' are spirits inhabiting a body or any form of dualism. The truth is far more curious and complex - 'I' should really be 'we'; any particular self/person/soul ultimately derives from a transient and temporary symbiotic collective of millions of beings.
It has nothing to do with the spirit at all. In fact, it further emphasizes the fact that there is something unique, individual and whole behind all these billions of cells and bacteria.
The bacteria finding only shows how complicated the body and its functioning really is. It says nothing about what's behind the body.
It's like analyzing the mechanisms behind a robot or a probe. We may find any number of complexities in their functioning....but the fact that there is a human being behind it all is never under question.
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It has nothing to do with the spirit at all. In fact, it further emphasizes the fact that there is something unique, individual and whole behind all these billions of cells and bacteria.
The bacteria finding only shows how complicated the body and its functioning really is. It says nothing about what's behind the body.
It's like analyzing the mechanisms behind a robot or a probe. We may find any number of complexities in their functioning....but the fact that there is a human being behind it all is never under question.
I think you failed to understand the piece then. What the finding is saying is the opposite, that there is no unitary single being in terms of either body or mind, the word they use is 'consortium'. What seems as a single being with single point of experience and mind is in fact a consortium of billions of creatures, a constituency that is forever changing, and that feeling of being a unitary being with a single mind arises somehow out of that vast transient symbiotic collaboration.
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I think you failed to understand the piece then. What the finding is saying is the opposite, that there is no unitary single being in terms of either body or mind, the word they use is 'consortium'. What seems as a single being with single point of experience and mind is in fact a consortium of billions of creatures, a constituency that is forever changing, and that feeling of being a unitary being with a single mind arises somehow out of that vast transient symbiotic collaboration.
The 'somehow' is what I am talking about.
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The 'somehow' is what I am talking about.
AKA 'emergence'.
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AKA 'emergence'.
'Emergence' again?! It doesn't really explain anything does it? In other words, you don't know. :D
Anyway...more tomorrow. Goodnight!
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torridon,
IMO...
Body = Genes + other DNA parts + epigenes + bacteria + viruses + unknowns + unknowns.....
Consciousness = Spirit + mind + biofield + unknowns + unknowns.....
The Consciousness and body connect and merge in some unknown manner.
PS: I may not be able to discuss further today. Maybe tomorrow.
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'Emergence' again?! It doesn't really explain anything does it? In other words, you don't know. :D
Anyway...more tomorrow. Goodnight!
The principle of Emergence has many manifestations at many levels.
No molecule of H2O is wet, but put millions of them together and the higher level properties of wetness and fluidity emerge out of the way they interact.
No ant is intelligent, but intelligence emerges in a colony of thousands of ants as a higher level property of the way many ants communicate.
No neuron is conscious, but consciousness emerges in a brain courtesy of the way billions of neurons communicate through dynamic synaptic relationships.
What we find with symbiotic organisms in a body affecting mind should come as no surprise, they are all part of the larger connected system. This is why it is correct to say that mind arises from a body, rather than mind arises from a brain - the brain is an outgrowth of the nervous system providing a nexus of complexity for monitoring and control for all parts of the connected body.
Once we understand the notions of emergence and subjectivity there is no longer any need to search for something else to explain our apparent dualism, and then no more need to explain away why no such 'something else' has ever been found by science.
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Once we understand the notions of emergence and subjectivity there is no longer any need to search for something else to explain our apparent dualism, and then no more need to explain away why no such 'something else' has ever been found by science.
Do you mean "once we understand" in terms of scientific theory or just in a personal sense?
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both, I think
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Interesting points about the 'consortium', as something similar has been proposed in depth psychology, that we consist, not of a single psychological viewpoint, but of different 'selves' or sub-selves. The most obvious example of this is Freud's id, super-ego and ego, but there are other views on this. The idea of 'sub-personalities' became popular in recent years, the idea that we all contain different types of personality, which may emerge at different times. The clearest example of this is the persona, that mask which we present to the world, although in fact, it's possible to have several.
Of course, an interesting issue then becomes that of unity. In what sense am I a unified person? Well, errrm, on the other hand ...
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One of the things I wonder when people talk of there being some consistency in their perceptions of themselves is whether their experience is different to the cacophony of people that seem to inhabit 'my' experience. It's often like Prime Minister's Question Time in here.
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The principle of Emergence has many manifestations at many levels.
No molecule of H2O is wet, but put millions of them together and the higher level properties of wetness and fluidity emerge out of the way they interact.
No ant is intelligent, but intelligence emerges in a colony of thousands of ants as a higher level property of the way many ants communicate.
No neuron is conscious, but consciousness emerges in a brain courtesy of the way billions of neurons communicate through dynamic synaptic relationships.
What we find with symbiotic organisms in a body affecting mind should come as no surprise, they are all part of the larger connected system. This is why it is correct to say that mind arises from a body, rather than mind arises from a brain - the brain is an outgrowth of the nervous system providing a nexus of complexity for monitoring and control for all parts of the connected body.
Once we understand the notions of emergence and subjectivity there is no longer any need to search for something else to explain our apparent dualism, and then no more need to explain away why no such 'something else' has ever been found by science.
On the contrary I would say that'emergence' is the one reason why we need to resort to spirit or Consciousness or some such unifying and experiencing 'Subject'. Without a 'subject'.... emergence and qualia are impossible.
A car is not just so much metal, plastic, petrol, rubber etc. It is a vehicle..... and that is made possible only because there is a subject to use it. Its the same with the human body.
The more complex the design and construction of the car, the more difficult it will be to understand its mechanism. But it still remains a car and is still used by a person. We cannot say that all the metal and plastic and stuff become a CAR due to 'emergence'.
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On the contrary I would say that'emergence' is the one reason why we need to resort to spirit or Consciousness or some such unifying and experiencing 'Subject'. Without a 'subject'.... emergence and qualia are impossible.
That is not what the evidence suggests though. Work in cognitive neuroscience suggests that the 'subject' itself is an emergent product of neural activity, it is an ongoing subliminal process that creates our sense of self endowing it with apparent conscious agency and volition. It is common experience for everyone to fall asleep, and that normally is sufficient to kill off the sense of self. There are also pathological conditions in which people lose their sense of self permanently - with Cotard syndrome for example, sufferers (wrongly) believe they are dead.
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One of the things I wonder when people talk of there being some consistency in their perceptions of themselves is whether their experience is different to the cacophony of people that seem to inhabit 'my' experience. It's often like Prime Minister's Question Time in here.
A colleague of mine used to do a talk called, 'the person as crowd', but I don't think he ever published it. It's a nice phrase, although I guess that it scares people, and they think of multiple personality disorder and so on.
It makes stream of consciousness in the novel interesting, as there is that cacophony.
It is quite striking in relation to opposites - thus, I am both kind and cruel, sarcastic and tender, tough and weak, and so on.
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Sometimes you just feel that it's that others are not experiencing the same cacophony. I am reminded of Gonnagle's referencea to magical thinking, I shouldn't have any but I know I do and that seems a different me, inconsistent as Whitman in my multitudes.
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No neuron is conscious, but consciousness emerges in a brain courtesy of the way billions of neurons communicate through dynamic synaptic relationships.
Work in cognitive neuroscience suggests that the 'subject' itself is an emergent product of neural activity, it is an ongoing subliminal process that creates our sense of self endowing it with apparent conscious agency and volition. It common experience for everyone to fall asleep, and that normally is sufficient to kill off the sense of self.
Looking at it from Sriram's position, consciousness is omnipresent and doesn't emerge from anything. It enters into a relationship with appropriate matter and from it a life form emerges which becomes a 'vehicle' for consciousness. As those 'vehicles' interact and consciously unite, a unified centre of consciousness forms which might be called a 'self' in the case of an individual or a 'society' in the case of a collection of individuals. The experience of falling asleep could be just a disconnection of consciousness from the concept of being 'self' centred to it being body centred so that healing processes or maintenance can take place without the egocentric mind interfering. It seems just a matter of interpretation.
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Looking at it from Sriram's position, consciousness is omnipresent and doesn't emerge from anything. It enters into a relationship with appropriate matter and from it a life form emerges which becomes a 'vehicle' for consciousness. As those 'vehicles' interact and consciously unite, a unified centre of consciousness forms which might be called a 'self' in the case of an individual or a 'society' in the case of a collection of individuals. The experience of falling asleep could be just a disconnection of consciousness from the concept of being 'self' centred to it being body centred so that healing processes or maintenance can take place without the egocentric mind interfering. It seems just a matter of interpretation.
If consciousness is omnipresent it rather begs the question of why it hasn't been discovered. No researcher at CERN has ever seen particles of consciousness dropping out of collisions. This idea is reminiscent of ether; when scientists discovered that light was a wave form they inferred that the universe must therefore be permeated by this invisible omnipresent stuff, ether, that would allow light waves to propagate. Maybe universal consciousness is a similarly spurious idea; we already have in quantum theory the most accurate description of reality ever produced, perhaps we should be working with that rather than inventing new invisible stuff.
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If consciousness is omnipresent it rather begs the question of why it hasn't been discovered. No researcher at CERN has ever seen particles of consciousness dropping out of collisions. This idea is reminiscent of ether; when scientists discovered that light was a wave form they inferred that the universe must therefore be permeated by this invisible omnipresent stuff, ether, that would allow light waves to propagate. Maybe universal consciousness is a similarly spurious idea; we already have in quantum theory the most accurate description of reality ever produced, perhaps we should be working with that rather than inventing new invisible stuff.
You have said 'consciousness emerges in a brain' which seems imply that it has been detected by scientists, if so, it presumably has a form with qualities that have been demonstrated somewhere, in which case it would be interesting to see how they distinguish it as 'consciousness' and not something else. The other view is that it is formless and would not register as particles nor waves, but without it the scientists at CERN would not be able to discover anything nor postulate what they consider 'reality' to be.
As you say, it might be a spurious idea, but a (let's call it) Hindu approach is not to analyse it as a substance but to use it more harmoniously by identifying with it and merging with it, rather than allowing it to become 'self/ego' centred. The idea is to be more conscious and relatively free from being absorbed in mental forms and forces. To communicate this idea to others it is necessary to use words and symbols so that a practical method can be followed.
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If consciousness is omnipresent it rather begs the question of why it hasn't been discovered. No researcher at CERN has ever seen particles of consciousness dropping out of collisions. This idea is reminiscent of ether; when scientists discovered that light was a wave form they inferred that the universe must therefore be permeated by this invisible omnipresent stuff, ether, that would allow light waves to propagate. Maybe universal consciousness is a similarly spurious idea; we already have in quantum theory the most accurate description of reality ever produced, perhaps we should be working with that rather than inventing new invisible stuff.
This is a terribly restricted view of reality. Why should everything be a particle that can be detected by a particle detector? Dark Energy has not been detected yet. So also Dark Matter and Parallel Universes. Even gravity can only be felt through its effects on other bodies but cannot be detected otherwise. The Graviton has not yet been found.
Secondly, we are talking about the Subject itself here. Not about some external object that needs to be detected.
Thirdly, QM does talk of Consciousness and its effects on particles. The Copenhagen Interpretation says...."The act of measurement affects the system, causing the set of probabilities to reduce to only one of the possible values immediately after the measurement. This feature is known as wavefunction collapse."
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People commonly speak of consciousness as though it is a 'thing' and as such might be found. So there is the idea that it represents some kind of ground to reality or that it might through spiritual practice be refined to a pure state, hence the assertion sometimes made that the self is 'pure consciousness', as if consciousness could exist independently of anything of which it was conscious. The belief that it is 'formless' might suggest that there is a category of things completely independent of any physical or material basis, which sounds rather like the supernatural. This is supported by the resistance to any claim that consciousness could be emergent. Psychologically, I suspect these notions are rooted in the desire to locate the self outside of the fluid, contingent world, such that it might be considered eternal, combined with the hope that we might in some sense be perfectible through our own efforts. The Buddha's teachings on no-self (the rejection of an independently existing, eternal self) have over the centuries been subject to repeated attempts by Buddhists to smuggle in some version of the Atman (soul or self), presumably because many people find the idea that there might not be some eternal core to their being intolerable. Metzinger defined consciousness as the appearance of a world, which chimes with the traditional Buddhist view of mind. Zen is full of stories about people who found peace when they realised there wasn't a mind - or indeed a self - to be found as such and hence nothing that needed renovation. Hence the rather radical view that freedom comes with being no-one, rather than someone very special.
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Excellent post, Bramble. I like the stuff about being no-one, and the intolerable experience of there being no core.
A friend of mine, who was in a Buddhist monastery for 10 years, started to say that the question 'what is consciousness?' no longer arose for him, no more than 'what is */((' did.
But that old ego still sings its siren songs, well, let it.
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People commonly speak of consciousness as though it is a 'thing' and as such might be found. So there is the idea that it represents some kind of ground to reality or that it might through spiritual practice be refined to a pure state, hence the assertion sometimes made that the self is 'pure consciousness', as if consciousness could exist independently of anything of which it was conscious. The belief that it is 'formless' might suggest that there is a category of things completely independent of any physical or material basis, which sounds rather like the supernatural. This is supported by the resistance to any claim that consciousness could be emergent. Psychologically, I suspect these notions are rooted in the desire to locate the self outside of the fluid, contingent world, such that it might be considered eternal, combined with the hope that we might in some sense be perfectible through our own efforts. The Buddha's teachings on no-self (the rejection of an independently existing, eternal self) have over the centuries been subject to repeated attempts by Buddhists to smuggle in some version of the Atman (soul or self), presumably because many people find the idea that there might not be some eternal core to their being intolerable. Metzinger defined consciousness as the appearance of a world, which chimes with the traditional Buddhist view of mind. Zen is full of stories about people who found peace when they realised there wasn't a mind - or indeed a self - to be found as such and hence nothing that needed renovation. Hence the rather radical view that freedom comes with being no-one, rather than someone very special.
We can discuss Buddhism separately if you want. The Theravada school does talk of Anatma or No atma. But that is a self contradictory stand because it also talks of rebirth and Nirvana. If there is no atma ...what is reborn? And what is it that achieves Nirvana? What is the difference between materialism and Theravada in that case?
The Mahayana school therefore rejected the anatma concept and accepted the idea of three states of existence, the Trikaya. The Nirmana Kaya, The SambogaKaya and the Dharma Kaya.
Buddha is believed to have taught the idea of Anatma to beginners simply because it enabled the elimination of the Ego self which is a major hurdle in realization. Once the Ego self is eliminated what exists is the True Self.
In any case, I think contemporary experiences such as NDE's can be taken as more reliable than any ancient religious teachings.
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The True Self is the final hurdle to be surmounted.
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The True Self is the final hurdle to be surmounted.
By whom?
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What is whom?
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What is whom?
The one who is asking.
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Here is the Anatta Lakkana Sutta.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mendis/wheel268.html
It is no different from the Upanishadic ..'Neti'....'Neti'.
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This reminds me of the poetry competition set by the Fifth Patriarch in Zen. First a monk wrote this, highly commended:
Body is the bodhi tree
Heart is like clear mirror stand
Strive to clean it constantly
Do not let the dust motes land.
But then this shattered everyone's conceptions:
Bodhi really has no tree
Nor is clear mirror the stand
Nothing's there initially
So where can the dust motes land?
Hui-neng, who became the Sixth Patriarch, and was illiterate.
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Very nice, Wigginhall. If I remember correctly this was a competition to see who was best qualified to take over from the retiring abbot. The first author was the monastery's top scholar whom everyone assumed would win hands down, so none of the other monks even bothered to submit a poem. Hui-neng was the lowly monastery cook and not even a monk. He posted his contribution next to the first one during the hours of darkness so as to remain anonymous and only the abbot guessed who had penned it. Hui-neng was then smuggled out of the premises so he could go into hiding until things quietened down, as there were fears that the scholar might finish him off. I think we can guess which of the two still harboured a True Self.
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This reminds me of the poetry competition set by the Fifth Patriarch in Zen. First a monk wrote this, highly commended:
Body is the bodhi tree
Heart is like clear mirror stand
Strive to clean it constantly
Do not let the dust motes land.
But then this shattered everyone's conceptions:
Bodhi really has no tree
Nor is clear mirror the stand
Nothing's there initially
So where can the dust motes land?
Hui-neng, who became the Sixth Patriarch, and was illiterate.
Sounds all very quaint and profound and all that.......but how all this fits in with rebirth and Nirvana no one is able to explain. Buddha himself claimed to have taken many previous births. How it is different from modern materialism is also not clear.
Hinduism is very clear that all impermanence is of the Ego world. It is an illusionary world much like our virtual reality world. Seems very real but is only mind generated. What Hui-neng talks of could very well apply to this Ego world.
The real world is beyond the ego world and involves realizing the reality of the true self. That is Nirvana and Mukti. Freedom from illusion and impermanence.
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Real world, ego world, illusionary world... how about this world?
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True self = no self we just flip & flop between them.
Catastrophe theory... complex systems suddenly invert ... illusions ... vases become faces become vases...
Minds become matter becomes mind and is blown away.
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Real world, ego world, illusionary world... how about this world?
This IS the Ego and illusionary world. Once we are out of the body, we will realize its illusionary nature.
Just as we live in a Virtual Reality world as long as we wear the goggles. We experience all its joys and sorrows. The moment we remove the goggles we realize our true nature and realize the impermanence and illusionary nature of the VR world.
Its the same with this world. Millions of NDE's confirm that.
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True self = no self we just flip & flop between them.
Catastrophe theory... complex systems suddenly invert ... illusions ... vases become faces become vases...
Minds become matter becomes mind and is blown away.
There is something in that. But no self, as Bramble outlined, is intolerable, and as people approach it, say on a retreat, they start to sweat and shake with intense suffering. This is about letting go, and eventually, if they let go of everything, there is the 'dazzling darkness' that the Christian mystics used to talk about. It's a nothing that is full of everything.
A lot of people then experience ecstatic feelings, which can go off for weeks. But eventually, they bounce back to the ego, and this is difficult. But there is always the next breath!
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You have said 'consciousness emerges in a brain' which seems imply that it has been detected by scientists, if so, it presumably has a form with qualities that have been demonstrated somewhere, in which case it would be interesting to see how they distinguish it as 'consciousness' and not something else. The other view is that it is formless and would not register as particles nor waves, but without it the scientists at CERN would not be able to discover anything nor postulate what they consider 'reality' to be.
As you say, it might be a spurious idea, but a (let's call it) Hindu approach is not to analyse it as a substance but to use it more harmoniously by identifying with it and merging with it, rather than allowing it to become 'self/ego' centred. The idea is to be more conscious and relatively free from being absorbed in mental forms and forces. To communicate this idea to others it is necessary to use words and symbols so that a practical method can be followed.
This is a terribly restricted view of reality. Why should everything be a particle that can be detected by a particle detector? Dark Energy has not been detected yet. So also Dark Matter and Parallel Universes. Even gravity can only be felt through its effects on other bodies but cannot be detected otherwise. The Graviton has not yet been found.
Secondly, we are talking about the Subject itself here. Not about some external object that needs to be detected.
Thirdly, QM does talk of Consciousness and its effects on particles. The Copenhagen Interpretation says...."The act of measurement affects the system, causing the set of probabilities to reduce to only one of the possible values immediately after the measurement. This feature is known as wavefunction collapse."
Consciousness has been detected and measured by science, however it is not a fundamental property of nature, it is an emergent property of neural activity. Now we have found a way to detect it and quantify it, it can become the subject of mainstream science which is more comfortable with things that are quantifiable, and consciousness is measured by an index known as the pertubational complexity index, which is an indicator of the degree of integration of neural activity. What hasn't been detected by science is anything that might correspond to what people refer to as universal consciousness as this would have to be a fundamental property and not a derivative.
The above does not solve all the problems of consciousness however as we still do not understand some of the underlying fundamentals that give rise to subjective experience; how can aspect be such a profound determinant ? by which I mean, for example, the subjective experience of loudness, say, is really loud, or the taste of chocolate might be really sweet; but the exact same things viewed from a third person aspect are not remotely loud and not remotely sweet at all, all you have is ions silently flowing up synaptic gradients. To reconcile these needs a better understanding of subjectivity and emergence, but I don't think it helps to imagine some sort of ether-like substance that will solve the puzzle, just like magic.
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Just as we live in a Virtual Reality world as long as we wear the goggles. We experience all its joys and sorrows. The moment we remove the goggles we realize our true nature and realize the impermanence and illusionary nature of the VR world.
I would say that is what the brain is, in a sense, it is a virtual reality headset that is wired permanently in place, never to be taken off. It creates a personal experience of reality for the body it is attached to, without it there is no meaning. Take your head off, and you are going to be dead.
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Its the same with this world. Millions of NDE's confirm that.
NDS's confirm no such thing, that is just a highly speculative interpretation of a certain class of cerebral phenomenology; remember what the nice Mr Ockham taught us about where there are simpler explanations. Even if there were some profound universal property of the cosmos giving rise to sentience, that would not explain how it could be complexified and channelled in the absence of a brain in exactly the same way that a living working brain does when creating complex phenomenology such as vision and hearing.
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If consciousness is omnipresent it rather begs the question of why it hasn't been discovered. No researcher at CERN has ever seen particles of consciousness dropping out of collisions. This idea is reminiscent of ether; when scientists discovered that light was a wave form they inferred that the universe must therefore be permeated by this invisible omnipresent stuff, ether, that would allow light waves to propagate. Maybe universal consciousness is a similarly spurious idea; we already have in quantum theory the most accurate description of reality ever produced, perhaps we should be working with that rather than inventing new invisible stuff.
How are they doing with Dark matter Tori?
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How are they doing with Dark matter Tori?
Aha, very good; except that we have strong indirect evidence from science that something real that we have called dark matter exists. Universal consciousness on the hand has no evidence, direct or indirect, it being rather a speculative nebulous notion that some hope would solve the problems of conscious experience.
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Consciousness has been detected and measured by science, however it is not a fundamental property of nature, it is an emergent property of neural activity. Now we have found a way to detect it and quantify it, it can become the subject of mainstream science which is more comfortable with things that are quantifiable, and consciousness is measured by an index known as the pertubational complexity index, which is an indicator of the degree of integration of neural activity. What hasn't been detected by science is anything that might correspond to what people refer to as universal consciousness as this would have to be a fundamental property and not a derivative.
The above does not solve all the problems of consciousness however as we still do not understand some of the underlying fundamentals that give rise to subjective experience; how can aspect be such a profound determinant ? by which I mean, for example, the subjective experience of loudness, say, is really loud, or the taste of chocolate might be really sweet; but the exact same things viewed from a third person aspect are not remotely loud and not remotely sweet at all, all you have is ions silently flowing up synaptic gradients. To reconcile these needs a better understanding of subjectivity and emergence, but I don't think it helps to imagine some sort of ether-like substance that will solve the puzzle, just like magic.
Interesting. However the alternative approach is not about solving external existential puzzles nor imposing subjective interpretations upon physiological activity. It is more about an inner approach of remaining in a simple state of consciousness where its inner stillness is favoured rather than any notion of 'perturbational complexity'. The bliss associated with this counter balances the more frantic neural activity of the scientific and technological approach. I suspect that the imaginative universal ether-like notion results from the experience derived from e.g. meditation where consciousness feels unbounded and expansive. It invites the analogy of something like an individual raindrop merging with an ocean.