WHO IS YOU?

by Terry 38 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Lady Lee

  LRH

  in the example you mentioned I would think that so many nerves woulod be damaged that the brain would be incapable of gathering enough information to continue as the old personaity.

  Some research on people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities) has shown that when a particular personality is in charge the brain alters the wave patterns around that particular personality. There has been dispute about it but the assumption is that personailities are created while a person is in an altered state of awareness - a type of hypnosis that reaches many different levels. Each personality would exist on a different level of consciousness.

  The theory is that normally infants and young children live with this type of disunified personality (which they believe helps us understand why babies can be crying one minute abd laughing the next. There is no free flow of information and personality yet. As the child ages the brain becomes more capable of cross-indexing information to create a well rounded person who is able to express a wide range of emotions and sometimes experience more than one at a time. (This theory might also exlain the cult-induced personality that can so totally disregard certain facts presented to the person). During normal development the person becomes aware of all the different parts of the self - a very complex human with a wide range of feelings, beliefs and behaviors. Abnormal development (such as that by a cult that controls information, thoughts, behaviors and feelings) would limit the individuals ability to access all the parts of the self.

  Any physical brain trauma such as you describe might leave certain parts of the brain fully intact enabling the person to continue to function but if the rod went through the many feeling centers of the brain then those parts would no longer be accessible.
• 

  Terry

  As far as Who is "You" I would say it all depends on your concepts of you, it is all mental constructs after all. There really is no "You" it is all in your head just like the color red. The color red is just a sensation of the minds interpetation of the wave frequencies with in a certain range and that is all. It the same with ultra violet, and infra red they are invisible only because our minds don't see them. Everthing you experience with the mind is by way of mental pictures it is not really the way things are it is just interpatations, in fact it is an illusion of the mind by way of mental pictures.

  Are you saying that, objectively, there is not anything just because we conceptualize?

  The ultra violet light, after all, is the wavelength of the light wave and light is an actual physical phenomenon at the quantum level. To conceptualize RED is no different than representing the actual wavelength of reflected light. Or, to make an analogy: When I write a $20 check I am doing two things:

  1.Asserting there is a tangible value in my bank account to back up the amount represented on the check.

  2.Imputing an _actual__value to the piece of paper which is transformed by this imputation into legal tender.

  You wouldn't draw the line here and say:"The check is NOT actually money; only the money is actually money!" would you? Because, techically speaking, even the actual money has imputed value represented and imputed by the Treasury which has authority to do so by agreement between citizens. In other words, all things may be technically complex in their support network; but, the actuality of spending $20 works just fine in reality anyway.

  Terry
• 

  Terry

  From http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html#part3

  Seeking to understand the neurological basis for religious experience, researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene D'Aquili performed a simple experiment. Finding a group of eight volunteers who were Zen Buddhists, they asked them to meditate in the peace and silence of a darkened room. These Buddhists had claimed that, through meditation, they could reach a state called satori, in which they experienced a sense of transcendent bliss along with a feeling of timelessness and infinity, as if they were a deeply interwoven part of all of reality. Newberg and D'Aquili wanted to find out what was going on in their minds when such a thing happened.

  When the meditating volunteers reached the apex of this state, they tugged on a string, which was Newberg and D'Aquili's cue to inject a radioactive tracer into their blood through an IV line. This tracer travels to the brain and becomes bound to the neurons that were most active, creating a "snapshot" of brain activity at that particular moment that could later be imaged through a technique called SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography).

  The imaging was done. Not surprisingly, brain regions responsible for concentration were highly active; but there was one other consistent result that stood out like a red flag. In all eight subjects, a particular region of the brain, the superior parietal lobe, showed a sharp and dramatic reduction in activity.

  The role of this brain region was already known. As discussed in Part 1 of this essay, the superior parietal lobe is the brain's "where" system. Its job is to orient the individual in three-dimensional space and help a person move through the external world, and as part of this task, it must draw a clear distinction between "self" and "not-self". For this reason, Newberg and D'Aquili call it the "orientation association area", or OAA for short. In all eight Tibetan Buddhists, the OAA had been blocked out by their deep meditative state, deprived of the sensory information it needs to build a coherent picture of the world.

  What would be the result of such a neural state? Without the OAA, the brain is unable to perceive the physical limits of the self - unable to tell where the body ends and where the world begins. (One of the meditators who took part in the study described the experience as feeling "like a loss of boundary" (Holmes 2001, p. 26)). And "[i]n that case, the brain would have no choice but to perceive that the self is endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything the mind senses. And this perception would feel utterly and unquestionably real" (Newberg and D'Aquili 2001, p. 6).
• 

  jst2laws

  Leolaia,

  I am an admirer of your work, but I finaly get to differ with you.

  I like to think of consciousness as the brain's operating system. Like Windows or Mac OS, or Linux

  What you discribe is what I call "mind". Yes, the brain is like the central processor in the computer, the mind is an intagible entity like software that directs the processor. An operating system is only another piece of software that works in conjunction with the other programs allowing them to communicate with the hardware: keyboard, printer, monitor, disk drives, CDRs, DVDs.

  But none of this system, nor any isolated part of it is conscious of itself, there for there is no "consciousness". It is the consciousness that makes us unique, allowing for feelings (love, hate, fear) and our own self awareness. Yet as far as we know this consciousness is dependent on the brain (organic processor) containing the intangle mind (operating system and other software).

  Whle the "I am" that is me depends on the processor and the software it is clear to me they are only seperate and supporting components of what us . . well, US.

  Jst2laws
• 

  BrendaCloutier

  Do you think that you are MORE than what your brain does?

  Why? What evidence do you present to yourself?

  Who is you?

  As the yinyang, I am more than the sum of my parts.

  I had an experience once when new at doing client training at client site, that everything I learned in my life to that point prepared me for that client and that job.

  So I am what I've absorbed. But I am more.

  I believe in soul separate from body.

  Have you ever met a person, gotten to know them and hold them in high esteem, only later to realize they are physically much shorter/smaller than you realized?

  My own opinion to that is that the body that person is fitting into is too small to house who they are, or who they've become.
• 

  trevor

  And in that case, the brain would have no choice but to perceive that the self is endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything the mind senses. And this perception would feel utterly and unquestionably real

  Terry

  this seems to be a continuation of the thread - obliteration of the ego. As you are repeating your comment I find it necessary to repeat the comment I just posted on the other thread. Well it does save time! It could just be that the connection experienced with all things in meditation is real. The superior parietal lobe activity causes a separation, in order for us to perceive a separate identity, in order to function in the type of system we live in.

  Humans seem to have over developed this brain function at the expense of a more unified and connected approach to life. As a result we seem to have partially lost our telepathic powers which are still commonly active in less developed groups such as the Aborigines. It seems as though our increased academic ability seperates us from our intuition and each other.

  The question is whether meditation results in impaired awareness, that is to say losing touch with reality, or a connection with a greater reality? Are we stepping into a dream or out of one?

  This can only be answered through personal experience but then one could ask, as you have, is personal experience reliable?

  It is only when we are able to gain access to unanswered questions and to achive a greater harmony with ourselves and others as a result of meditation that we realize we are connecting with a reality that is obscured by the ego.
• 

  Terry

  I suppose if one can conjure up such things as unprovable as telepathy, telekinesis, E.S.P. and out-of-body experience and assert they exist without verifiable double blind studies----then, we can just throw up our hands and say "anything goes."

  James Randi has offered a million dollars to anybody who can pass a scientific double-blind test of any paranormal activity. Many many have tried and all have failed. I personally find this to be an indication that such assertions are purely illusory; but, your mileage may vary.

  The movies, TV, magazines and general opinion has thrown the door wide open to pseudo-science, creationism and the heartbreak of psoraisis; so, who am I to aver?

  T
• 

  Elsewhere

  WHO IS YOU?

  I's be Elsewhere.
• 

  zen nudist

  I am he who dreams his own universe into existance.

  I am the dreamer...everything I know is my dream [my perceptions of reality, never reality itself, no matter what that is]

  I am reality dreaming... am I dreaming about reality? I dont know. but like back engineering a black box, I send out energy

  and adjust my views and energies according to the feedback I get from the void which comes in many forms, but boils down to varients on pain and pleasure... much of what I see is pre-digested and handed to me from my dream maker.... hidden ideals and hidden templates tell me what is and is not beautiful for example...I dont have any choice in seeing this way, but I can understand how the mechansims work.

  the only brain I know exist in this dream of mine...is it accurate to reality? I dont know.... but I dont see how my functioning can exist without something along those lines.... if I were nothing but a single pure spirit I would have no way to contrast and compare and read the data...so there seems no reason for me to believe I am not some sort of machine like the brain...but who knows?
• 

  Preston

  I suppose if one can conjure up such things as unprovable as telepathy, telekinesis, E.S.P. and out-of-body experience and assert they exist without verifiable double blind studies----then, we can just throw up our hands and say "anything goes."

  Oh puh-lease Terry, stop being such a Minimus

  Didn't you stop and think that the lack of evidence of an after life is merely a characterstic of the material world that we live in. Maybe its best that we go through our material lives with an ambiguous view of the great beyond because it makes us appreciate our lives here that much more

  - Preston