Reality exists in your brain

by Nickolas 59 Replies latest jw experiences

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  Mad Sweeney

  When I was in Jr. High School, I was experiencing some nightmares and so got a book from the library about how to control one's dreams. I don't even recall whether it used the term "lucid dreaming" but what it taught me worked. At first, whenever I woke up from a nightmare I would go right back in, this time while conscious, and do whatever it took to defeat whatever monster was scaring me. Since it was a dream world, I could do literally anything necessary and could always come off victorious. Then as I got better at it, I could employ the same technique before I ever woke up; the consciousness would kick in mid-dream and I would defeat the enemy easily. After awhile I stopped having nightmares altogether. Now I rarely have one (that I ever recall) but I always find a way to defeat the enemy to this day.

  I wish I remembered the name of the book. It had to have been published in the 60s or 70s.

  Even though it was a kind of pop psychology book, it must have been based on real principles of sleep and dreaming because it actually worked.
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  Nickolas

  Directionally the same as Matrix, Oz, but to a much lesser degree of course.

  That is a very good question, jay. My younger son and I have discussed the subject of consciousness on occasion and we both recognise that we live our lives conscious by degrees. There are times we are more awake and aware than others. The range in variability is not great, perhaps only within a percentage point, but it is still there.

  Take for example the human tendency to extrapolate reality. This happens to most people I know. You briefly encounter someone you know, perhaps an old acquaintance, your boss or member of your family, someone who has some significance in your life, and you stop to say hello. But the person seems distant, preoccupied and disinterested in you. You find yourself thinking about the encounter for the rest of the day, adding things up. Maybe she's pissed at me for having done such and such a thing, maybe she's always disliked me and she's showing her true colours, maybe the next time she sees me she'll tell me to go to hell, I can just imagine how she'll treat me during the family reunion in June ... and so on. This sort of thing is a manufactured reality, a dream state, out of which you may not awaken until that family reunion when she is warm and happy in your presense and explains to you that when you last met she was quite unwell.

  The answer to your question, I think, is to make an effort to understand what is really happening when your life takes an unexpected turn. In this way you have a better chance of maintaining your complete grasp on reality.

  Yes, MS, same principle.
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  OnTheWayOut

  The reality in the brain is only those sensors triggering electric impulses and our "thoughts" being processed by other electric impulses. Reality is just some electricity.

  That doesn't make for a very good story. The Matrix reminded us that everything we know as reality external to that electricity could be wrong. That makes a fascinating story.

  We live inbetween those two extremes. Short of the matrix, it is possible that each one of us has a different reality. My sense of "red" may be completely different from yours. We never would know because it's total reality to each of us.

  But my sense of red being slightly or even greatly different from yours doesn't make a hill of beans of difference to our realities. When we talk reality, we talk of the human experience. Children starving in Africa or earthquakes in Japan are realities. (Positive things too, but I don't want to digress into something else.)

  Our human experience on this board has hugely to do with our human experience with our brains' realities. Many of us thought we were the only ones (as JW's) that saw reality that was being shielded from "the world" by Satan and his minions. It turns out that our brains were being deceived, just like the matrix. Only, the rest of the world wasn't in the matrix we were in, for it wasn't Satan deceiving THEM, but it was Watchtower deceiving US. And it wasn't physical reality that was withheld from us, it was "thought" reality or "belief" reality.

  I think this is part of why we are pained or disturbed so much. We had to take the red pill and discover that nothing in our own brains was really so. Then we had to admit to the world that we were deceived, not them.

  Dreams don't make us admit our deception to others, nor do they typically cause us to take the wrong life path down a false reality. It could happen, but generally not so. Dreams deceive us only for a brief moment then we wake up. I am of course refering to literal dreams. We should not confuse that with figurative "dreams" of goals and wishes and enjoyment in life. They are a huge part of our reality because they are the things that cause the positive electricity in our brains.
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  trevor

  Reality existed long before the human brain existed and will continue to exist long after our brains return to stardust. Though we perceive some of reality, much of it is as yet hidden from us. For example, we see light with the naked eye in one frequency. Although it exists at many frequencies, such as radio waves, we are almost blind to the reality of light without scientific equipment. Even sound, which is low frequency light, is heard by us in a very limited range, making us appear almost deaf.

  As scientists develop more sophisticated equipment, we are becoming more aware how limited our perception of reality has been. Many years from now, we may well have an entirely different view of the universe and our world. What happens in our mind is mostly subjective and reflects our personal conditioning and preferences. To such a point, that our consciousness is more of an emotionally driven dream than we realise.

  Modern man has made huge strides in becoming more aware but we have only scratched the surface. The average person may drive car, own a mobile phone and a computer and fly in airplanes. But our understanding of reality has changed very little.

  That’s why I sit on the fence so much. My search for truth and reality has led me to the conclusion that I know nothing at all.
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  Nickolas

  Bullseye, OTWO. Trevor gets it, too.
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  NomadSoul

  In the way chemistry rose from the ashes of alchemy. Neuroscience, a field still in its infancy, may one day subsue phsychology laying bare our inner universe which has remain hidden for so long. And that... is the cosmic perspective.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnJEzKrHdX0
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  Twitch

  Fascinating stuff really. Sight and hearing being just limited to a very narrow bandwidth in the EM spectrum. Touch, taste and small being learned stimuli interpreted a certain way by our brains. I may be a butterfly dreaming I was a man,...

  RE the lucid dream experience, I can relate as I've found it rather intriguing. Though I've not always been aware I'm dreaming while in the late cycle REM state, I've most often been "aware" and in control of the dream when first drifting off and have practised staying in this state as long as possible, sometimes waking myself to prolong and be fully aware of the dream as opposed to falling asleep. It's an early stage where the conscious mind is still partly aware and still operating but kinda half and half in a sense. I've had some fascinating dreams while in this state, most often by going to places I haven't been to, seeing people I don't know and such. It's a kind of wandering "state" if you will but some of the details are very vivid and I am surprised sometimes when I wake to find myself in my room b/c I was somewhere else. People I see can be ones I know or not but what's interesting is that they're not as you see them in reality. They're "fuzzy" for lack of a better term, not bodies per se (though sometimes it's rather clear) but more like I dunno, "fuzzy people". Hard to explain. Strange but fascinating.

  Does it mean or prove anything? No, it's just a dream. But interesting nonetheless.
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  moshe

  Nickolas- if you could just wake up at the casino and see which slot machine you pulled to win the million dollar plus progressive slot jackpot- now that would be a whopper of a tale!!
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  poppers

  My search for truth and reality has led me to the conclusion that I know nothing at all.

  That is a pristine place to be viewing life from, because to "know nothing" means you are open and available to see everything in a way which hasn't been tarnished by conditioning. It's the "manufactured" reality that is created by thoughts/mind that is so troublesome. Without that conditioned thinking operating one is open to clearly see "what is" as it is, not as it is thought to be.
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  Nickolas

  Cool video, NS. I always find what Neil Tyson has to say is fascinating, but he seems to be reading off a teleprompter rather than sharing his own thoughts.

  It sounds like you haven't yet experienced lucid dreaming, Twitch. When I have dreamed lucidly I see every hair on a person's head, feel the sun and wind on my face and smell smells. It hasn't happened to me in years, however. I might suggest you do some research into the subject, perhaps pick up some techniques.

  And then, moshe, I might just start believing in God again. Well, right after the big party.

  I agree, poppers, but the manufactured reality each of us has is our primary survival mechanism. It is for that reason we might be reluctant to let down our defenses to allow in strange and wonderful insights. I think, to give a practical example, most people don't leave the WTBTS because they are afraid to allow in thinking that threatens their utopian paradigm.