I’ve been thinking about various issues relating to postmortem survival and the evolution of consciousness. Well, I guess I’m always sort of thinking about that. But lately I’ve been thinking that I’ve probably gotten off on the wrong track with my focus on information processing and my attempted analogies to computer systems and virtual reality.
All analogies will break down at some point (this is inevitable when comparing qualitatively different things), but in this case the analogies seem to fail pretty quickly. Trying to compare consciousness to a laser beam reading a disk just doesn’t seem to work, because a laser beam is not aware, let alone self-aware. And then what is the render engine (the thing that converts bits of data into a graphical environment)? Is that also consciousness, or is it something else?
If we say that consciousness can choose which data path to follow, then it’s not really like a laser beam (which can’t choose anything); it’s more like the person using the computer, whose choices control the direction of the game. But then the analogy fails in a different way, because we are attempting to explain consciousness by comparing it to the (conscious) computer user - which explains nothing. It's like explaining an orange by comparing it to another orange.
Or if we say there are no free-will choices and the program just plays out inexorably, then what is the role of consciousness? At best it is a merely passive observer.
Although I think there is some merit in the idea that information is fundamental to reality, it seems to me that extending this idea to computer systems, even as a rough analogy, is not helpful. It obfuscates more than it clarifies. It offers a veneer of "scientific" respectability, while actually being too vague and inherently untestable to be scientific at all
That’s one thing I’ve been noodling on. Another, related point is that it’s probably a fool's errand to try to understand "how it all works." The Flatland analogy that’s often come up in this blog is relevant here. A Flatlander - a two-dimensional being in a two-dimensional world - might, with great difficulty, be able to grasp the concept of a third dimension, at least in purely mathematical terms. It is doubtful he could visualize it except in the crudest terms. Even if he experienced it directly, as does A. Square in the novel Flatland, he could not express his insights in terms that would be intelligible to less enlightened Flatlanders, nor would he himself retain more than a foggy impression of his experience.
Now imagine the insuperable difficulties faced by a Flatlander trying to grasp the fourth (physical) dimension, or the fifth.
I think we are in a comparable position. Our brains, constrained by the laws of three physical dimensions plus time, simply aren’t capable of processing the realities of an almost infinitely higher-dimensional system. Even if, like St. Paul, we were taken up to "the third heaven," we would be tongue-tied upon our return. Eyes have not seen what we had seen; ears have not heard what we had heard. The best we could do is relate to it as a dream - Bottom's dream, because it hath no bottom.
The human mind, limited by the narrow parameters of the human brain, just can’t grasp these mysteries. We can grasp at them, like a baby trying to catch a sunray. But our fists will close on air. Even an episode of "cosmic consciousness," in which the secrets of the universe are seemingly revealed in a blinding epiphany, will last only a short time - minutes or hours - and afterward will leave only a fading, distant glow, an emotional impression, a half-glimpsed, half-remembered "something" that haunts us but eludes description. It is as if we briefly saw the whole picture in a glass, and then the glass shattered, and we are left with only splinters of the truth.
Perhaps the best we can do - this is my third point - is try to imagine a reality in which time does not operate as it does here, and in which the laws of cause and effect are altered in ways that would seem illogical by earthly standards. A tangled hierarchy, in which the end is embedded in the beginning, may be the best way of looking at it. Familiar examples include a Möbius strip, a snake swallowing its own tail, and the famous Escher drawing of two hands sketching each other.
For our purposes, we can see the evolution of personal consciousness as a tangled hierarchy (also known as a strange loop). At one end of the continuum is the Oversoul or Higher Self, the culmination of personal development, which comprises all the selves that have come before. (Although the term "before" is problematic here.) At the other end of the continuum is the mundane self, the ego-identity that you and I would recognize as "who I am." The paradox is that the Higher Self is informed by and constructed out of the experiences of the various mundane selves that make up its incarnations, and yet at the same time (except there is no "time") the Higher Self chooses those incarnations and watches over them, sometimes providing guidance.
In our earthly terms, this makes no sense - the hand is drawing itself. But from a higher-dimensional perspective in which every time is now, and the story is both fully told and still unfolding, it can (perhaps) make sense. Not the kind of sense we can truly grasp - like Flatlanders, we are too limited to make it real - our mental equipment would overload and short-circuit long before we were able to achieve real understanding. But vaguely we can discern the outlines. Perhaps.
Does this mean we lose our precious mundane self, our "I", sometime after death? No, because nothing is ever lost. Everything that ever was or ever will be always is, in the eternal now. Does it mean that we surrender our memories of this life when we enter our next incarnation? No, because our multiple incarnations all play out at once; we are alive in the 21st century, and in Ancient Rome, and in a lunar colony, and in the afterlife realm, all at the same time (because there is no time). Does it mean that our Higher Self is subjecting us to suffering that we would not have chosen? No, because the Higher Self is us; as the apotheosis of all our mundane selves, it can choose nothing that we haven’t already chosen.
A man of eighty, looking back on his distant childhood, feels both a sense of continuity with the child he was and a sense of detachment from him; he both is that child, now and forever, and is not that child, whom he has long since left behind. He may feel sorry for some of the suffering the child went through, yet also glad about it, because it made him the man he is. The child would not have wanted to suffer, but the man knows better. And the child and the man are the same. (And yet different.)
Paradox is the only way to understand it. And yet paradox by its nature is incomprehensible. Which gives us another paradox - we can understand only by the method of not understanding.
A dream that hath no bottom, indeed.
Michael,
I rather liked your laser reader analogy. However, I also critiqued its limitations all along. That said, I do think that what is happening, on a technical level, is much like a conscious laser reader scanning over reality (or potential reality in the form of information/energy bits) inputting information/energy and then forming a picture or story out of it all.
I think that's all there is to what we call "reality" and not only is reality is somewhat arbitrary (a choice of what is scanned, kept and used to form the picture), but also, no two people's reality is identical.
Yet, there lies a great mystery in what that consciousness in the laser is. That seems to me to be the unsolvable key to the whole thing. Analogies that help explain how it works are not the same as explaining what it is and why it is.
IMO, we are indeed existing on several planes simultaneously. This existence is like a dream. Like the dreams we experience every night, we can't be sure what caused them or why. One day we will awaken from this dream into a new one (summerland?) and from there into yet a newer one. Some will return to this dreamscape again as a new character. IMO, our thoughts, desires and energies have a lot to do with what dream we have (or it could be too many jalapenos in the chili).As you say, we are able to recognize that we are the same person who is awake that we were in the dream a few minutes or hours ago; albeit, often, somehow different.
Some say it's weird that we can meet others and interact with them if it's all like a dream, but then we meet and interact with others - who appear to have independent intent and thought - in our every day dream life too.
Tis a puzzlement.
Posted by: Eric Newhill | May 03, 2018 at 05:02 PM
I think there are some people who have a difficult time giving up a mechanistic explanation of higher realities and it follows that any explanations they offer must therefore be materialistic. It is fun but a waste of effort to conjecture how higher vibrational realities might work and it is easy to get caught up in one's own ideas about them, building upon a favorite explanation until one is mired in grandiloquence. Analogies comparing those realities with computers, laser readers, holograms or bureaucracies are examples of the difficulty some have in giving up materialism. Consciousness is not material and to try to explain survival of consciousness using mechanistic/ materialistic theories is, yes, " a fool's errand." - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 03, 2018 at 08:41 PM
"Consciousness is not material and to try to explain survival of consciousness using mechanistic/ materialistic theories is, yes, 'a fool's errand.'" - AOD
"I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream." - Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 03, 2018 at 09:38 PM
I think the same Michael. Parallel lives is the key. It's an eternal present. Like dreams. Like an NDE. Time is camouflage and Seth told the same things in the 60s...
Posted by: Damestrearoma | May 04, 2018 at 01:16 AM
MP: "we are left with only splinters of the truth."
That reminds me of what I posted here a few months ago: "We have shards of truth, lots of them, but they don't fit together."
Posted by: Roger Knights | May 04, 2018 at 03:26 AM
MP: "Paradox is the only way to understand it. And yet paradox by its nature is incomprehensible. Which gives us another paradox - we can understand only by the method of not understanding."
Stewart Brand famously asked, "Why haven't we seen a picture of the whole earth yet?" I've always suspected that (in addition to crusading for NASA to release a picture of earth from space), he might have been making a philosophical point: that a 3D object can't be captured or grasped by a 2D medium, and that our awareness is on the 2D, or Flatlander, level.
Posted by: Roger Knights | May 04, 2018 at 03:39 AM
And perhaps, just perhaps, our "Higher Selves" have a relationship with Source, akin to the one the different incarnated egos have with them.
Nice entry Michael, one of my favorites of recent times, and a very interesting comment by Eric.
If we are to believe those who experienced an episode of "cosmic consciousness", whatever is *really* going on here, we are going to like it and enjoy it more than whatever we can conjecture now.
Posted by: Luciano | May 04, 2018 at 08:26 AM
Yes, I'm overtly optimistic, ;)
Posted by: Luciano | May 04, 2018 at 08:27 AM
"That reminds me of what I posted here a few months ago: 'We have shards of truth, lots of them, but they don't fit together.'" - Roger Knights
Maybe that’s where I got the idea for the phrase. Sometimes these things stick in my subconscious and work their way back up to awareness in a slightly altered form.
"Perhaps ... our 'Higher Selves' have a relationship with Source, akin to the one the different incarnated egos have with them." - Luciano
Yes, that's quite possible. In which case Source itself is a tangled hierarchy. If so, then two seemingly contradictory ideas of God are both true: God is the prime mover and creator, who oversees and directs his creation with perfect knowledge ... and God is evolving along with his creation, learning and growing. (I use the Judeo-Christian convention of a masculine God, though of course we are talking about something that transcends gender or even personality in any humanly recognizable sense.)
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 04, 2018 at 12:07 PM
I think information analogies work in offering a way to understand how consciousness - which is of a higher frame - instantiates Actuality of Potentiality. It's a Dualistic explanation but this avoids the nonsense of Computationalism.
As Marcus Arvan notes in his Peer to Peer hypothesis, it explains a good deal of how we have multiple futures we choose from but everything in the physical past seems determined, why the oddities of quantum mechanics exists, why we have a sense of both Eternalism and Presentism with regards to Time.
Going beyond Arvan's own concerns, thinking of the physical world as a peer-to-peer multiplayer video game does help to explain precognition as well - the potential futures are out there, in the way code exists to instantiate the alternate paths you didn't take in the game.
Even magic as probability manipulation makes sense - you are trying to increase the weighting given to your instance in the peer-to-peer network so the final determination of what reality is like for all peers in the "game" is to your benefit.
But ultimately, to me, it's a way of describing things that isn't necessarily getting at what reality actually is.
Aa an aside another good way of describing reality (IMO) is Eric Weiss. I think he has done the best I've seen at taking the ideas of Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo and explaining the mundane physical world and how it interacts with the spirit/subtle worlds.
Notes:
https://www.p2p-simulation-hypothesis.com/
http://ericweiss.com/SubtleWorlds/
Posted by: Saj Patel | May 04, 2018 at 12:50 PM
Michael Prescott said, "... and God is evolving along with his creation, learning and growing."
Yes, when the consciousness 'Patience Worth' ( as transcribed by Pearl Curran) was asked to define God, she said that she couldn't define God because he was not the same today as he was yesterday.
I think that 'God' is learning and growing with each and every one of us as we add our knowledge and experiences in life to Source. In effect, each of us is a wee part and parcel of Source. - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 04, 2018 at 12:54 PM
Michael you got to read this article in Scientific American. It is really good. It is in Scientific American so not too shabby.
"Should Quantum Anomalies Make Us Rethink Reality?
Inexplicable lab results may be telling us we’re on the cusp of a new scientific paradigm"
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/should-quantum-anomalies-make-us-rethink-reality/
Art
Posted by: Art | May 04, 2018 at 12:56 PM
Despite being brain-bound in Plato's cave, something in us resonates with the fantastic stories told by returned prisoners. And though language lacks the subtlety to communicate what they have seen in the world outside the cave, it does not necessarily follow that their remembrance becomes “a fading, distant glow, an emotional impression, a half-glimpsed, half-remembered 'something'” Indeed, one of the striking peculiarities of near-death experiences is the searing impression made upon memory. Ineffable yes. Unforgettable no.
Our efforts to "eff the ineffable" may be like inarticulate prayers that wend their way to the ears of smiling angels, who do not mock our efforts as vain struggle, but beckon us on to clearer understanding.
Posted by: David Chilstrom | May 04, 2018 at 03:07 PM
Mike,
Your last five postings were terrific!
J
Posted by: j | May 04, 2018 at 03:34 PM
Michael: "The paradox is that the Higher Self is informed by and constructed out of the experiences of the various mundane selves that make up its incarnations, and yet at the same time (except there is no "time") the Higher Self chooses those incarnations and watches over them, sometimes providing guidance."
My intellect tends to reject this kind of thinking - which is a sort of trying to embrace paradox as the real core of reality. It seems to me this is denying the very principle of causality and determinism, which would seem to be a fundamental facet of all of reality. In particular, it is denying the principle that the purposeful complex ordered configurations of information constituting human invention and artistic creation must necessarily have had a definite origin in time in the creative thoughts and intuitions of an intelligent human (or presumably, a spiritual) mind.
This could be encapsulated in one kind of untenable time-travel paradox. Let's say that in the future a time machine is invented, and its inventor decides to shortcut human creative invention and change history by sending back a technological invention and a work of art to before their historical creators were born. Say the design of the light bulb and a Rembrandt portrait. A situation would then exist in the subsequent timeline that an invention and a work of art would exist in our world that had no creation by human or indeed any other minds, in this case Edison and Rembrandt. But we know that of absolute necessity these constructs had to have somehow been created by mind(s).
Such a paradox would seem to only be resolvable by supposing that such a scenario is fundamentally impossible. Either this is impossible, or complex ordered and purposeful configurations of information can simply exist with no intelligent creators. A magical something out of nothing.
By the same token, the High Self could not of logical necessity have both created its unique human selves and all their unique human experiences, and also be fundamentally constructed out of those experiences. Unless the very basic principles of logic do not apply at this higher level of reality. That does not seem to be tenable to me.
Posted by: doubter | May 05, 2018 at 01:05 PM
A paradox is an *apparent* contradiction. The strange loop idea of the Higher Self appears contradictory because we're embedded in a spacetime universe where time moves in one direction (or at least, such is our experience*). In this environment, effect cannot precede cause, and everything is contingent on some prior or simultaneous thing. The oak is contingent on the acorn. The acorn must come first.
But if we posit a higher-dimensional reality in which time does not operate, or at least does not operate in any way familiar to us, then the contradiction disappears. Effect does not come before or after cause, because there is no "before" or "after." There is only "now."
A spurious quote attributed to Einstein observes that time is what prevents everything from happening at once. Regardless of who said it, the point is valid, albeit tautological. In an eternal ("outside of time") setting, everything *would* happen at once. How could it not? There could be no "was" or "will be," only "is."
What about "the basic principles of logic"? Nothing is more basic than Aristotle's law of non-contradiction, which states that A cannot be non-A at the same time. The acorn cannot be the oak at the same time.
But if time is eliminated as a factor, then A can be non-A. The acorn and the oak exist simultaneously, because all things are simultaneous. We might imagine a filmstrip with the individual frames of film showing a time-lapse progression from acorn to oak. If the strip were laid out in front of us, every stage of the process would be simultaneously on display. Or imagine the progress of acorn to oak embedded as data in a computer disk. All phases exist simultaneously on the disk.
In our mundane existence, we're unable to perceive things this way, because we ourselves are also embedded in the filmstrip or disk. We're part of the show, part of the system. But a higher consciousness (outside the show or system) that could unspool the movie or study the disk as a whole would have a perspective that seems unfathomable to us — as unfathomable as A. Square's epiphany was to his fellow Flatlanders.
More on strange loops (tangled hierarchies) here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop
---
*The Kantian view is that space and time are imposed on our consciousness at a deep level, rather than being independent of us. The noumenal world (things as they are) does not operate according to the laws of space and time, but the phenomenal world (things as we perceive them) does.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 05, 2018 at 03:05 PM
Michael: "But if we posit a higher-dimensional reality in which time does not operate, or at least does not operate in any way familiar to us, then the contradiction disappears. Effect does not come before or after cause, because there is no "before" or "after.""
It eludes me how this explains how an invention or a work of art can exist without there having been a creative process of a mind (requiring time, change and causality). The implication of your explanation is that you accept the notion that in this "higher dimensional reality" such invented, artfully made, things can exist that have no intelligent origin whatsoever. In other words, it is still something from nothing, in this or any reality.
If time does not operate in this higher dimensional reality you posit, then that means there must be no change in that reality. That would make it rather uninteresting, and it certainly couldn't contain mind. If this higher dimensional reality has any time-like aspects it must have change, and therefore cause and effect.
Posted by: doubter | May 05, 2018 at 05:02 PM
If you have a DVD of a movie the whole movie exists on that disc and you can go to any scene in the movie simply by choosing which scene you wish to view. That is how reality really is. We are embedded in the movie but when we are free from our physical body we can choose to go to any scene we might wish to "see."
Excerpt from Mark Horton's NDE description:
"From this vantage point, I had to merely think of a place and time and I was there, experiencing everything about the place and time and people present."
http://www.kuriakon00.com/celestial/nde/mark_horton.htm
We exist in the holographic projection but after we "die" our soul transitions to that original holographic film from which "all that is" exists, or the original holographic film that our Universe is projected from.
http://www.earthportals.com/hologram.html
Posted by: Art | May 05, 2018 at 09:26 PM
"It eludes me how this explains how an invention or a work of art can exist without there having been a creative process of a mind (requiring time, change and causality)." - doubter
The acorn becomes the oak in stages. All the stages are real. So the oak doesn’t come from nothing; it comes from the acorn. But since all the stages are permanently in existence, the finished product (oak) and the starting point (acorn) coexist.
It’s like an animation flipbook. Flip the pages and Donald Duck hits Goofy with a frying pan. Goofy falls down. Action, reaction; cause, effect. But if you lay out all the pages of the flipbook on a table, every part of the scene coexists before your eyes. For someone caught up in the action (Donald and Goofy), things happen in sequence. For someone observing the contents of the flipbook displayed in their entirety, each separate moment is distinct and enduring.
Our mundane selves are like Donald and Goofy. The Higher Self is like the observer overseeing the total contents of the flipbook.
Obviously far from a perfect analogy, but the best I can do for now ... 🤨
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 05, 2018 at 10:44 PM
When a teacher writes out a lesson plan she writes a clearly stated objective at the top of the lesson plan. The more detailed the lesson plan the more effective the teacher. The more in control the teacher is the more effective she is. When the classroom gets out of hand pandemonium ensues and very little if any learning occurs.
If our Universe is a school wouldn't a really smart Creator create a Universe where we learn what we are supposed to learn whether we want to or not? Wouldn't this Creator embed these "lessons" in our everyday lives and all we have to do is go about living our life and we learn as we just live? That's all just live.
And if the other side is a place of oneness and connectedness, as so many near death experiencers describe, all these lessons would be shared and what one knows we'd all know? So it really wouldn't matter whether you lived one year or a hundred years because in the end this knowledge would be like a library and this Universal consciousness and knowledge would be shared by everyone?
We learn what it means to be separate here because there is no separation in heaven. We learn what time and space looks and feels like because it really doesn't exist on the other side. We learn what it feels like to have a body and be limited to that body and how to control the body here; and after we cross over we use all this knowledge to be able to understand, create, a life on the other side? The alternative being to be pure consciousness with no knowledge or understanding of anything because we had never experienced it?
Like driving a car the only way to really "know" how to drive a car is to get behind the wheel and drive it. You can't learn to drive a car simply by watching someone else do it or watching a video of it. You have to get in the car and drive it. That is what this life is all about. Learn where the fenders and bumpers are and be able to control the body.
Posted by: Art | May 06, 2018 at 08:04 AM
Michael: "Our mundane selves are like Donald and Goofy. The Higher Self is like the observer overseeing the total contents of the flipbook."
It appears that in this posited higher dimensional level of reality of the Higher Self there must still be time of some sort (that is, change), or there could be no conscious act of observation. But from this perspective all of our lower level of reality over all times and all spaces is a static tableau. From this higher dimensional perspective all striving, achieving, perfecting, etc. whether by the human or by the soul are meaningless abstractions since it all already exists.
Presumably this level of consciousness and existence is the ultimate home of the Higher Self. The question comes to mind, what possible motivation does the Higher Self have to perpetuate this scenario? Why bother?
Posted by: doubter | May 06, 2018 at 02:17 PM
"The question comes to mind, what possible motivation does the Higher Self have to perpetuate this scenario?"
The Higher Self wouldn't exist without the necessary preparation provided by various incarnations as mundane selves.
But once it does exist, it has always existed.
So it existed even before the incarnations.
Still, without the incarnations, it couldn't have existed at all.
Simple, right? ;-)
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 06, 2018 at 09:38 PM
A newborn baby comes into this world knowing nothing. Pure consciousness but without any knowledge at all. Consciousness with no experience. It is conscious but has not experienced anything so it spends the rest of it's life "tasting the universe."
The first thing the baby experiences and learns is separation from the mother, and then it uses it's mouth to explore the world around it. "Tasting" everything, and it waves it's little arms around and learns how to control that body, and what "out there" looks and feels like, and then it learns about different flavors and smells and feelings and what it's like to be in a body and the parameters of the body.
And then after it dies it will shed this body that it has used to learn about the Universe but it will have all these memories that it will take with it, and these memories will be downloaded into the collective consciousness and shared with all the other souls in "heaven."
Our memories are the only thing we get to take with us to the other side, and the more emotion that these experiences evoked, the more we will remember them because there is a connection between emotion and memory.
Enough emotion to overcome those overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness and lack of time and space and no separation in heaven so that we won't forget what it was like to be separate, unique, individual, and what it was like to have a body, and what time and space looked and felt like.
Posted by: Art | May 07, 2018 at 12:56 AM
[Out of topic] Sorry if this diverts from the line of thoughts, but has anyone read this article RE Stephen Hawking last papers on the Multiverse:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/may/02/stephen-hawkings-final-theory-sheds-light-on-the-multiverse
When trying to explain why this Universe we live in was, against our perceptions, fortuitous (even if it looks fine tuned to be suited for sustaining life) scientists used to propose a series of infinite Universes with infinite and random variations, yada yada yada, I think we all know the drill.
Now, apparently in later works, new theories point to the possibility that, even if there were an infinite number of Universes, they could be more alike than they are different. So this brings a bigger problem, not only there is one fine tuned Universe (this one we live in), but most of them would be like that. Hawking reportedly said that "it’s almost like the universe had to be like this" or something to that effect.
Just thought it could be interesting to share it here. :)
Posted by: Luciano | May 07, 2018 at 09:03 AM
\\"The question comes to mind, what possible motivation does the Higher Self have to perpetuate this scenario?"//
---------------------
Boredom? Loneliness? Love? Why do we do anything we do? If you were pure consciousness and could conjure up anything you wanted to would you conjure up an empty void with nothing in it? Or would you conjure up something fun and exciting and beautiful and interesting and stimulating?
Would you want to exist like gas filling a cylinder with nothing in it, nothing interesting, no love, no stimulation, no feeling, no flavor? That is what you would face if you existed in a place where nothing existed? It would be sort of like solitary confinement but even without the walls or doors or anything? An empty void devoid of anything? And for eternity?
I have read NDEs that describe Heaven as a place where nothing exists and everything exists but before you can experience anything it has to be first thought of.
Your thoughts control what you see and experience. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead it tells the newly departed "Do not be afraid of the demons you see because they are only projections of your mind." A.J. Ayers told a French journalist he was talking to, while describing his NDE, "you know it was strange my thoughts became persons." Mark Horton said "I merely had to think of a place and I was there experiencing everything about it."
I reiterate, the physics of the place we call heaven is very different from the physics we normally experience here. We are no longer bound by time and space and we have access to all information so that our minds dictate what part of the hologram we see and experience. If you had never been in a body and experienced time and space you wouldn't think of anything because you wouldn't even know that anything other than nothingness existed. Without first coming here you wouldn't know what it means or how it feels to be in a body, you wouldn't know what time and space look like, you would be pure consciousness just existing in empty nothingness.
Posted by: Art | May 07, 2018 at 10:26 AM
The higher self would have always existed if it was a 'splinter' of Source. - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 07, 2018 at 11:11 AM
Michael: "The Higher Self wouldn't exist without the necessary preparation provided by various incarnations as mundane selves.
But once it does exist, it has always existed.
So it existed even before the incarnations.
Still, without the incarnations, it couldn't have existed at all.
Simple, right?"
It seems that this line of thought inevitably peters out into conjectures that are fundamentally humanly incomprehensible. They are probably also inexpressible even by higher mathematics. I suppose reality may be like that - a lesson in humility.
Posted by: doubter | May 07, 2018 at 12:20 PM
Luciano: "Now, apparently in later works, new theories point to the possibility that, even if there were an infinite number of Universes, they could be more alike than they are different."
Hawking (and other materialist scientists) don't seem to realize that multiverse theories require at least as much of a leap of faith as do Theistic and other explanations for fine-tuning. It's just that the Theists (or Deists) are more honest about it. Stephen Meyer at https://evolutionnews.org/2018/04/yes-intelligent-design-is-detectable-by-science/ :
"Many have noted that this fine-tuning strongly suggests design by a pre-existent intelligence. Physicist Paul Davies has said that “the impression of design is overwhelming.” Fred Hoyle argued that, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology.” Many physicists now concur. They would argue that — in effect — the dials in the cosmic control room appear finely-tuned because someone carefully fine-tuned them.
To explain the vast improbabilities associated with these fine-tuning parameters, some physicists have postulated not a “fine-tuner” or intelligent designer, but the existence of a vast number of other parallel universes. This “multiverse” concept also necessarily posits various mechanisms for producing these universes. On this view, having some mechanism for generating new universes would increase the number of opportunities for a life-friendly universe such as our own to arise — making ours something like a lucky winner of a cosmic lottery.
But advocates of these multiverse proposals have overlooked an obvious problem. The speculative cosmologies (such as inflationary cosmology and string theory) they propose for generating alternative universes invariably invoke mechanisms that themselves require fine-tuning, thus begging the question as to the origin of that prior fine-tuning. Indeed, all the various materialistic explanations for the origin of the fine-tuning — i.e., the explanations that attempt to explain the fine-tuning without invoking intelligent design — invariably invoke prior unexplained fine-tuning."
This preexisting fine-tuning apparently (according to reports about Hawking's last thoughts on the matter) extends to it having resulted in a present multiverse consisting of universes with basically the same set of laws of physics as our own. Apparently they just had to come out that way. Obviously the preexisting meta-reality prior to the cosmic expansion had to incorporate a very high degree of preexisting complex information consisting of the potential information contained in the physics laws of our own universe. I guess he had no worry about where all this came from.
Posted by: doubter | May 07, 2018 at 12:41 PM
Art,
I am not so sure that I agree with you when you say, "A newborn baby comes into this world knowing nothing. Pure consciousness but without any knowledge at all." Depending upon one's belief system, if one believes in reincarnation an infant may very well come into life having experienced quite lot and knowing much. Ian Stevenson and others investigated many cases of children who recalled a past life.- AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 07, 2018 at 02:05 PM
Art,
I think the poet William Wordsworth said it best when, in his "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" he wrote,"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; the Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, hath had elsewhere its setting and cometh from afar; not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home:" -AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 07, 2018 at 02:52 PM
\\"The higher self would have always existed if it was a 'splinter' of Source." - AOD//
-------------------------
Excerpt from Michelle M's NDE, "I remember understanding the others here, as if the others here were a part of me too. As if, all of it was just a vast expression of me. But it wasn't just me, it was - gosh this is so hard to explain - it was as if we were all the same. As if, consciousness were like a huge being. The easiest way to explain it would be as if all things are all different parts of the same body, so to speak." http://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1michelle_m_nde.html
We are all part of the "One" and our separation is an illusion. We see ourselves as being separate in this life but the reality is that is an illusion.
Posted by: Art | May 07, 2018 at 05:50 PM
\\"Depending upon one's belief system, if one believes in reincarnation an infant may very well come into life having experienced quite lot and knowing much." - AOD//
----------------------
I believe reincarnation is a story humans have made up trying to explain the evidence we have for reincarnation. There are other interpretations.
I am not a fan of reincarnation and can't understand why so many people seem to be so enamored of it. Who in their right mind would want to come back here to suffer? It makes no sense at all. I even know older christian ladies that are fascinated by reincarnation. No thanks!
Personally I believe reincarnation is a by-product of the oneness and connectedness of the Universe. A tapping into the collective consciousness or "Akashic records" by a young child's mind, like a radio that is tuned between stations, until the time that he/she develops their own sense of self and becomes their own person. At which point they often forget those earlier memories unless someone else keeps reminding them about the stories told earlier.
We really don't understand the mind and what it is capable of or how it works. From things I've read it seems to be like a receiver and transmitter of information that "tunes into" some kind of universal field of consciousness that permeates our universe. This field of information and consciousness is "all that is", or "the great I AM." We become separate and unique here but also remain connected to the whole.
Posted by: Art | May 08, 2018 at 08:25 AM
Art: "I am not a fan of reincarnation and can't understand why so many people seem to be so enamored of it. Who in their right mind would want to come back here to suffer? It makes no sense at all. I even know older christian ladies that are fascinated by reincarnation. No thanks!"
I agree that at least most people in their right mind would not want to come back here. But you apparently believe there is no reincarnation because reality is actually set up to fit our human likes and dislikes. Because a lot of people usually or at least often don't want to come back, then we must actually not come back.
Really? The evidence compiled by investigators led by Ian Stevenson is in my opinion overwhelming that it does happen to at least some humans. This consists in large part of verified accounts of young children, and birthmark/birth defect evidence. It takes some rather contorted reasoning to explain this data some other way.
As I have contended in other posts, whether we like it or not, reincarnation appears to be a fact, but it is apparent that if choice is involved, the chooser is somebody/something else than the human. Either this, or the process is in some way an automatic mechanism. In either case it is a matter of being compelled to come back, usually against the will of the human.
Posted by: doubter | May 08, 2018 at 03:48 PM
I believe reincarnation is a story humans have made up trying to explain the evidence we have for reincarnation. There are other interpretations.
So why do not you apply that idea to your own interpretation of the NDEs?
I am not a fan of reincarnation and can't understand why so many people seem to be so enamored of it.
Ian Stevenson and other researchers do not believe in reincarnation because they are in enamored of it, but because they have reasoned that it is the most plausible interpretation of some data.
Posted by: Juan | May 08, 2018 at 04:50 PM
Art, you have said that we come here to learn. In that case, then reincarnation seems like the best way to *actually* learn things. Much more effective than a one-time incarnation.
I've had to read lessons several times until I could honestly and decidedly say "Ok, I get this now".
If we have things to learn, but we only have one life, think of the obvious: what about those who die young, without knowing what sex is? What about those who never get to fly an airplane? What about the ones who are born disabled and never get to walk?
Wouldn't it be tragic that they one and only chance to know what being inside a body feels like would be spoilt by a disability they had no control of? Or by a terminal illness?
What if those who come back are the ones who say "Hey, there are still more things I want to experience"?
Because there's more to life than suffering. Granted, there's indescribable suffering, there's sadness, there's pain... But there's also laughing, loving, enjoying. I can think of a few reasons for why someone (knowing that his/her real Self is eternal and always safe) would choose to come back.
There are so many things I would like to do in this world, one life it's just not enough.
Posted by: Luciano | May 09, 2018 at 01:16 AM
\\"But you apparently believe there is no reincarnation because reality is actually set up to fit our human likes and dislikes." - doubter//
----------------------
No, I don't believe it because it doesn't fit with what I know about the holographic universe theory and how our Universe really is. There is just no need for reincarnation. It is a silly theory that is based on ignorance and like most religious ideas it is an attempt to explain something that we don't understand. Like most religion it falls far short of the mark of what is really going on.
On the other side, because of the connectedness and oneness all information is shared. We here in this reality can't begin to comprehend the interconnectedness and oneness of the place we call heaven. It has to do with the way information is spread out in holographic film and everything interpenetrates everything, where nothing is separate, and everything is interconnected and "one." On the other side what one knows we will all know.
Excerpt from Mark Horton's NDE description: "I was unique yet I was the tiniest part of the whole." http://www.kuriakon00.com/celestial/nde/mark_horton.htm
Heaven is simply the original holographic film that our Universe is projected from. That would mean that everything that is "here" must also be "there" but the difference is that the physics of the place we call heaven is very different from the physics of where we are now.
Posted by: Art | May 09, 2018 at 08:00 AM
Luciano,
Totally agree with you. For example, I have always tried to be a better person. I've taken that mission very seriously since I started out on my own. However, I have often failed. Sometimes I get into a pattern of behavior or attitude and it goes on for a few years and then I reflect on it and I am not proud.Sometimes I truly despair over my character shortcomings.Sometimes I wish I had spent more energy developing a talent so I could express myself better and/or have more fun.
Then I try to overcome what I was doing wrong; where I was wasting energy, where I was hurting others or myself, where I was failing to spread love. It sure as heck isn't easy.
I find that situations where I failed repeat, giving me the opportunity to get it right. Sometimes I do and sometimes the old pattern takes hold and I fail again. Repeat, repeat....generally, overtime, I am cleaning up my act.
However, if I died today, I would feel like I could have, realistically, done a lot better. I would welcome the opportunity to come back and continue improving. I know it wouldn't be a cakewalk, but I'd welcome it all the same. I don't see how I could continue progress without being faced with the same fundamental crossroads, temptations, etc - and those are offered here in the material.
Maybe, for others, the opportunities for growth exist on some other dimension, but some of us, our internal challenge is more earthy. Maybe some people are so concerned with personal development. I dunno.
Posted by: Eric Newhill | May 09, 2018 at 09:57 AM
Art,
I see that your belief system does not include reincarnation. I would not want to dissuade you from your beliefs. I would just say that whether or not one 'wants' to come back to suffer in life has nothing to do with invalidating reincarnation. One may be sent back whether one wants to or not. If consciousness reincarnates either on earth or another planet or if consciousness reincarnates in a form other than human then that's just a way consciousness experiences physicality. It may be that there are millions of consciousnesses that reincarnate and do not suffer. Pain and suffering are inherent in flesh however so one has to take the bad with the good. If one has essentially unlimited chances to incarnate then whether one's life is bad or good, full of suffering or not is meaningless in the big scheme of things. It is just a life; an opportunity to experience sensation and to learn and grow.
You say that reincarnation makes no sense at all but it makes sense to me. I think that reincarnation makes perfect sense and that it is a way ordained by a loving creator for every consciousness to have unlimited opportunities to learn and grow toward divinity or Source. The maimed return whole again; miscarried or aborted consciousnesses get another chance, a person cut down in the prime of life or a child killed by accident or other tragedy has another chance and aberrant souls get an opportunity to make amends.
Perhaps you may be confusing the 'mind' with the 'brain'. You have referenced that some have opined that the mind acts as a receiver but I think the reference is to those who think the 'brain' acts as a receiver or transmitter of information but there are others who think that, perhaps additionally, the brain acts more like a filter, filtering out superfluous signals or vibrations thereby making a physical existence less erratic and more 'doable'.
There may be a collective conscious somewhere as espoused by Edgar Cayce and others as the "Akashic Records" but who knows how things are 'written' on the skein of time if at all. There are few or no examples to suggest that embodied consciousness has access to those "records" and I think that children who claim a prior life provide no comments or evidence that they are looking into the Akashic Records for information about some other person's past life. To the contrary, sometimes these children present skills learned in a past life and those skills, including use of unlearned language could not be gained simply by accessing the Akashic Records. Ian Stevenson thought that birthmarks were a carry-over from a past life of injuries suffered by the prior personality and obviously these birthmarks were not obtained by the child looking into the Akashic Records. The information apparently comes from within these children, seemingly stored in their own soul or enteric body and brought with them as they inhabit another physical body. - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver doyle | May 09, 2018 at 11:05 AM
Art,
I think the idea of physical reality being a hologram only works for me as an analogy. I have a difficult time thinking that there is a "film" upon which reality is embedded or that there is a "projector' of some kind that projects the film somehow as the reality I experience including my sense of self. Now that doesn't mean that because I have a difficult time with that idea that it is not true but I am not comfortable meshing a spiritual world of consciousness with pseudo-mechanical explanations.
My questions would be, who produced the holographic film in the first place; who embedded it with the reality of time and space and who projects it in some way and how is it projected that I experience it as my daily reality? And what is used to project it? And, why is everybody's reality different? And why am I limited to just a small part of the hologram when I should be able to access the whole thing. And why can't I travel in time within the hologram or is the hologram constantly changing so that only the 'now' exists in the hologram and the past and future are not available.(Occam's Razor might be useful here)
I do think that each individual consciousness is part of a larger whole making us all connected in some way. I see each consciousness, whether human or otherwise as part of the Source of all that is. Each consciousness learns and grows as it experiences physicality allowing the Source to which it returns to become greater. - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 09, 2018 at 12:08 PM
I just had a thought! Maybe each consciousness---a splinter of God---is just God's way of reproducing itself! Kind of like asexual reproduction of a gigantic organism or budding of a yeast cell. - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 09, 2018 at 12:11 PM
Reincarnation as it is commonly thought of now is all tied up with religion. Karma and coming back to do good and build up brownie points till eventually you get enough positive credits where you can merge with Nirvana and become one with the godhead.
In my heaven we are so interconnected and "one" we have "all knowledge" and all we have to do is think of a subject and we know all about it. That is how many people who have NDEs describe it, "all knowledge." Or access to all knowledge. Knowledge downloaded as a bolus of information.
It all depends on how stupid we think the Creator of the Universe was when He/She/It Created the Universe. Like the Creator was too stupid to be able to create a Universe where we learn what we are supposed to learn whether we want to or not.
Maybe the Creator was way smarter than what we give IT for being? What if it was able to create a Universe that was designed to teach us what we need to learn whether we want to or not? A place where the lessons were embedded in our everyday lives and we learn as we just go about living our daily lives. And by the way this is called "Holistic learning". You learn regardless of what what you are, or where you live, or what you believe.
So the way I figure it my God is way smarter than most people's gods and we are able to learn what we are supposed to learn in one go round without having to repeat grammar school and middle school and high school all over again. Everyone graduates and knows enough to make a go of it on the other side. And that is because of that connectedness and oneness where all knowledge and information is shared.
Posted by: Art | May 09, 2018 at 12:28 PM
Michael, great post again! I really love the fact that I can come here and read your musings and the intelligent comments as well!
I think that the "Splinters of Truth" are really all we can hope to get in this life. I also think that, as someone else has said, just because you're dead doesn't mean you know everything (kind of obvious IMO). There will always be more to learn and experience, whether in this world or another. Take care!
Posted by: Steven Smith from ABQ | May 09, 2018 at 03:40 PM
Eric Newhill: "I find that situations where I failed repeat, giving me the opportunity to get it right. Sometimes I do and sometimes the old pattern takes hold and I fail again. Repeat, repeat....generally, overtime, I am cleaning up my act."
Your lifelong desire and attempts to perfect yourself are admirable. Oh well, different strokes for different folks. As far as I am concerned, I, my human self, certainly never asked to come here and therefore I have no ethical obligation to carry out any such life plan. My pattern has been, in the face of many challenges, to somehow find certain creative fulfillments and openings while still following the Golden Rule, which seems natural to me.
Posted by: doubter | May 09, 2018 at 10:02 PM
So the way I figure it my God is way smarter than most people's gods and we are able to learn what we are supposed to learn in one go round without having to repeat grammar school and middle school and high school all over again.
And the unborn or newborns that die? And if we learn everything on the other side, why incarnate in the first place?
Posted by: Juan | May 10, 2018 at 09:13 AM
Correction: In my 11:05 May 9, 2018 comment toward the end I said "enteric body' when I actually meant "etheric body" - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 10, 2018 at 11:58 AM
Art,
You said, " . . . we are able to learn what we are supposed to learn in one go round without having to repeat grammar school and middle school and high school all over again. Everyone graduates and knows enough to make a go of it on the other side. And that is because of that connectedness and oneness where all knowledge and information is shared.
In your heaven if there is only one shot at life how does it work for an embodied consciousness whose body dies at birth or as an infant or child? How would they know enough to think about something and know all about it? What about people who are born blind, deaf or mentally deficient , e.g. those with anencephaly? How does it work for them? - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | May 10, 2018 at 12:15 PM
I think the evidence for reincarnation is very strong. In most cases where children spontaneously remember a past life, the previous personality died suddenly and unexpectedly - either as a victim of a crime, or as a casualty of war, or because of the rapid onset of a fatal disease. To me, this suggests that such memories are more readily recalled when the previous incarnation ended ahead of schedule - in effect, the system crashed, prompting a reboot, with the spirit transitioning relatively soon into a new body.
If hypnotic regression can be taken as evidence (admittedly, it is open to question because of the known tendency of hypnotized subjects to confabulate), then it would seem that most or possibly all people reincarnate, but that in typical cases there is a longer between-lives interval than seen in the children's cases.
Somehow the ego-personality of each incarnation seems to survive, even though one would expect it to be subsumed by new incarnations. It may be that each incarnation is like the lighting of a candle by the flame of another candle; some energy is transferred, and perhaps some sort of morphic field pattern is duplicated (karma?), but the original candle continues to burn.
Possession and psi could account for some reincarnation claims, but I doubt they can serve as a comprehensive explanation. Possession cases like the Watseka Wonder are very different in detail from field reports of spontaneous past-life recall.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 11, 2018 at 12:48 AM
Oh Eric, I know exactly what you're talking about.
I'm myself in the middle of reviewing things I took for learnt about relationships. And it's tedious.
Falling back to old habits when you know you can do better can be frustrating, but luckily, I find that it's easier to return to the "right path" once we remember we've walked it before.
Posted by: Luciano | May 11, 2018 at 06:31 AM
A *little bit* easier, I should have written. I hope you find overcoming mistakes less tedious as the time passes, too.
Posted by: Luciano | May 11, 2018 at 06:38 AM
michael,
this posts (as many of the others) offers a full plate of food for thought.
if "consciousness" created the Universe as we know it now were we immediately "conscious" or did that aspect develop over time? If one accepts the Hindu Yugas as truth, then the question would be at would point in the yuga's were we conscious for the first time. Did this all begin with a "golden age"? Questions unending...
Posted by: j | May 11, 2018 at 04:21 PM