Consciousness?

Humancafe's Bulletin Boards: The New PeoplesBook FORUMS: Consciousness?
By
Socratus on Monday, May 16, 2005 - 10:35 pm:

The origination of Consciousness.

There are many theories explaining origination of consciousness.

Here some of them.

1) The God has taken clay has created the man, and then has inhaled in it consciousness.

2) 20 billions years ago all matter (all elementary particles,

all quarks and their girlfriend antiquarks, all kinds of waves: electromagnetic,

gravitational, muons:.) - all was assembled in "singular point".

Then there was a Big Bang .

Question: when there was a consciousness?

a) Before explosion,

b) At the moment of explosion,

c) After explosion.

It is more probable, that after explosion.

Then there is a question:

what particles (or waves) were carriers of consciousness?

Mesons, muons, leptons, bosons (W+, W- , Z) ,quarks, :gluons field :.. ets :?

On this question the theory of Big Bang does not give the answer.

But can be, the consciousness was formed as a result of interaction of

all elementary particles, all waves, all fields?

Then , on the one hand , the reason of origination of Big Bang is clear:

all was mixed (and consciousness : and when it is mixed

that is possible to construct all and everything).

But, on the other hand, is not clear:

why farmer John can think simply, clearly and logically.

3) Ancient Indian Veda approve, that origination of consciousness

is connected with existence of spiritual, conscious particles - purusha .

4) The modern physics approves, that Quantum of light is a privileged particle.

Quantum of light, in one cases, behave as a particle,

and, in other cases, make action which can causing a waves.

How the particle is capable to create waves?

Such behaviour of Light quanta (dualism ) is explained simply.

Quantum of light has own initial consciousness.

This consciousness is not stiffened, but developing.

The development of consciousness goes "from vague wish up to a clear thought".

* * *

If you have time and desire, I ask you to visit my site

http://www.socratus.com

Best regards.
Socratus.


By Ivan A. on Thursday, May 19, 2005 - 11:46 pm:

HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS.

Can we find consciousness by simply probing
the human brain? Does this exclude of
necessity consciousness in other living
beings? Can the firing of some part of the
brain's neurons be the cause for our self
sense of being, this "I am" consciousness?

There are both philosophical and clinical
answers for this. In his paper, Geraint Rees
explores some of these questions in:
"Can Philosophy Discover Consciousness in the Brain."
There are no simple answers,
and both the clinicist and philosopher will
take a stand that the other will fail. I think that
perhaps both approaches deserve merit, but
not at the expense of the other. We are our
brains, which is self evident that while alive
we may be conscious, but once dead, the
body is no longer. However, that may be only
a small part of the whole story, since this
consciousness has evolved over millennia to
become what it is, and this did not happen in
a vacuum. We are intricately interconnected to
all of existence all the time, from birth to now,
and preceding our birth through our parentage
back to the beginning of when life began on
Earth, and preceding that through space
bacteria to the beginning of the stars. There is
a whole lot of history out there, in terms of the
interconnections that define life today, and
forever in the past, that interrelates us back to
all of existence. Call it Mind, if you will, or a
Universal Consciousness, but we cannot
disconnect from it, ever, and perhaps not even
when we die.

Think of each living thing as connected to this
great infinite network of interrelationships
defining space and time, right back to the
origins of life. This of necessity connects us
to some form of evolution that brought us to
the present mind. We are conscious, or at
least we like to think we are, though what we
rationally understand as consciousness
might be but a tiny fraction of our potential. All
living things have some form of
consciousness, even if they had not evolved
high enough to develop a self awareness of it.
Can a snail say "I am"? Perhaps not, but it
can flee if in danger, slowly, or seek out
preferences in what it will eat, and certainly
enjoy finding a mate. These are sub levels of
consciousness, though not necessarily at the
levels we humans enjoy. And what is it we
enjoy in our self awareness? Can we see
consciously how all of life is interconnected on
our planet? Can we see consciously how all
these living things are interconnected into a
planetwide web of life, one that when
disrupted will seek to self adjust, to heal the
damage? Some call it Gaia. Can we see how
this consciousness might be connected to all
of existence in the universe? Perhaps we are
not as conscious as we think, and only enjoy
but a fraction of really Who we are in that
simple statement: "I am".

The debates as to whether consciousness is
clinical or metaphysical are trivial. They are
both, of necessity. The brain has evolved over
the eons its ability to connect. We can then
connect with everything from a self sense of
being to ideas that describe reality. It is all
connected, right down to how fire the neurons
in our brain. Damage the brain, and that firing
gets damaged with it, and consciousness
damage may result. But the interconnections
of our being to all of existence do not dissolve
with that damage, merely that the brain's
functions can no longer register it. Same as
losing our sight does not suddenly cancel all
light from existence. It merely means the
organ used to register light is inoperative. So
is it with the brain. Damage it to where it is no
longer conscious, consciousness does not
disappear. Merely we can no longer register it
with the organ called a brain. The infinite
interconnections of life and existence do not
cease, they go on indefinitely, and we simply
lose the ability to be consciously part of it.

There are many assumptions on which our
understanding of consciousness is based.
We think, in our fancy, that the universe started
with an incredible expansion from some
primordial Big Bang. But this may be no more
than a quaint mythology trying to fit a naive
genesis into how started existence. In fact, we
have no idea. The universe may be so ancient
that infinity is the only term we can ascribe to
its time span. Life may already be so generic
to it that even at the supposed beginning of
time, some 14 billion years ago, it was already
highly evolved, and conscious. The evolutions
we rationally perceive of consciousness on
Earth may be no more than a small local
phenomenon, and that it already existed both
as potential, and perhaps elsewhere already
realized, as a fully formed consciousness
spanning that same infinity. Some will call it
God, or the Creator, or Supreme
Consciousness, but these are names
germane only to us. Existence has been an
infinite interconnected, an interrelationship of
all being, throughout an infinity of space for
longer than our brains can imagine. We are
mind, at all levels of existence, and in time will
discover this to be true for all examples on the
living worlds. The universe is a Living Entity,
in which we had recently, and only very
recently, evolved the ability to look back upon
it, and wonder. Yes, we are conscious. But
our level of consciousness may be only
minuscule, in comparison to where we are
going. I suspect that in time, when we
understand consciously all the
interrelationships that define for us reality, and
our life, we will be awed beyond anything we
can now imagine. That, when we can see that
in a conscious way, will be the first baby steps
towards a full consciousness.

So yes, our consciousness does register in
the brain, and there we find it in our innermost
thoughts. But no, it is not restricted to the
brain, for mind is a universal phenomenon of
which we have now but a fractional,
unbelievably fractional, understanding of what
it is to be conscious. We are much more in
Who we are. To become fully human, as
conscious beings, will need discovery and
effort to define that consciousness, in time,
and by choice. To become really Who we are
will be the greatest adventure of our species
for millennia to come. It is a very big universe.
Unconsciously or consciously, we are in with it.

Ivan


By Ivan A. on Friday, May 20, 2005 - 05:15 pm:

SO HOW CONSCIOUS ARE WE?

So how conscious are we? Are we totally conscious at all our emotional levels? Are we conscious at all levels of empathy with the emotions of others? We can reasonably say we are conscious to some degree in our rational thoughts, but are they devoid of emotional content, even when we are at our most objective selves? Probably not. We are aware enough to know when we must make choices, but even these are often done unconsciously. We are hardly conscious of what it means to be conscious, and perhaps even less conscious how these choices are affected by various inputs received from reality, or others. How conscious are we when these inputs have emotional content, for example, such as feelings from other living things? How conscious are we of the emotional content of our living pets, or any animal? Is there consciousness even down to the level of plant life, which again of which we are totally oblivious? So many questions, so often unconscious our response. So, how conscious are we?

There is a dark side to our seeming unconsciousness. Look at the concentration camps in which we keep our livestock and poultry. We force feed them with antibiotics so they do not succumb on mass to disease, and then we kill them, and eat them. Each living animal never had a life, and worse, the increased resistance to antibiotic treatment yields a sinister dividend, that the diseases become stronger and more resilient to treatment. Mad cow is their revenge, perhaps a living planet's revenge to what we had done. Disease species jump from fowl and ape to human is another. We had not treated each living animal as a separate and conscious life, but penned it into an unnatural closed environment to increase their production, and our kill, or killed it wantonly in its natural habitat. Taken on a planetwide scale, that same unconscious apathy towards manufacturing production has yielded environmental pollution. We now face global warming, melting of immense glaciers, rising oceans, turbid climate changes, and ultimately mass dislocations of food productions on land and in our oceans. A great dying off, because we were not aware. Forests are cut to where their regeneration may take decades, oxygen becomes replaced with carbon dioxide, and precious topsoil washes off. Coral reefs are dying, the first link in a vast oceanic food web. Forest species suffer a great dying off as well, soft bodied frogs and salamanders feeling the first blow. We are killing our planet. So how conscious are we?

Then we create environmental pollutants, PCBs, dioxins, nuclear waste, DDT, concentrated farm waste, and a variety of noxious oxides. Bird life suffer from failed reproduction as their eggshells thin and break, even penguins in the far off antartic. Fish are so filled with pollutants their eating has become a health hazard. Our fresh water supplies carry these pollutants, another health risk. Cancer rates double in thirty years, but we fail to see the connections. All of Earth is interconnected, throughout the planet, and what China spews into the atmosphere will fall on Seattle, what Russia spills will show up in the arctic, and what American automobiles pump into the air will drift worldwide, all of them raising CO2 levels in the planet's atmosphere. First Bangladesh drowns in monsoonal waters, then the Seychelles, and finally European and Asian and American coastal cities get breached by increased wave activity and rising ocean levels. The ramifications to our failure in human consciousness are immense, we cannot even yet imagine them. Not to be alarmist, but we have a problem.

Africa is a special case, it being the origin of our modern human species. From whence we all migrated a hundred thousand years ago, the continent suffers under the weight of barbaric tribal wars, war lords filling in the power vacuum left behind by fleeing European colonials, mass migrations of displaced refugees who flee slaughter, even cannibalism in DR Congo, where the native pygmy population is terrorized by armed gangs. Then there is AIDS, perhaps originated there due to humans killings their closest animal cousins and eating them, so a particular species jump made the animal virus human. Or was it merely a jump from one animal to another? If we are so unconscious as a species, then where do we call ourselves human? What is the future for Africa if virtually every country abandoned by modern civilization reverts back to the jungle? How many innocent lives will be taken by wars and disease, and starvation? How many children never reaching maturity to become conscious human beings? Like the frogs dying off in the Amazon, Africa, our collective birthplace, is the first alarm sounded that we must become conscious, or perish.

So how conscious are we? Not very. We have not yet made the choice to become conscious human beings. Yes, we have the capability, but we have not yet activated it. Our education of our young neglects it. Children are not taught to see the world with the wonder of its full living interconnectedness. When a child can look into a dolphin's eyes and see a reflection of itself, of its soul there, then we had begun. When we learn to empathize with all living species, appreciate the special languages they speak, when wolves are no longer vermin but instead we know them as incredibly intricate social beings, when elephants or bears or whales can talk to us, when chimps and gorillas can tell us what they feel, as a first step, then we are conscious. It will take that first step, to understand life not as a universal physical accident but rather as a full expression of feelings and emotions, of words without language, of an extension of a whole universe of consciousness, then we will have made the first contact with Who we are. Find the Love, for all of Creation. That contact is elemental if we are to break the silence. All alien species, we have the mind. And of that we are conscious of it. This first step to remove our isolation is communications, at all levels, with Life.

We have the ability, same as each one of us feels that "I am" inside ourselves. We can be conscious beings. The technological achievements, the fabulous arts created by us, the intricate web of exchange and communications throughout the planet, our beautiful cities, all point to that ability. We can be conscious, but we had not yet chosen to be so. That will take a willful act, an inescapably difficult effort to rise above what we are now, into our Who. It only starts with human rights, something still lacking in much of the world, and progresses to laws of agreement and democracy. It will take a willed and disciplined mind to get there. First we must stop killing each other. But the real test is communications, animal rights, a special feeling for all living things both plant and animal, for the whole planet as Gaia to get us to the next rung. And then we start to see the whole universe as a Living Being, and we begin our journey to consciousness. It will be a very long road, but one worth taking, for what awaits us is still beyond our imagination. We will learn in time that each one of us is a whole living universe. Then we will step out of the darkness and become fully conscious human beings. It will be a step worth taking, because we can, and we must.

I believe it is our destiny to do so. We will.


Ivan


By Edward Chesky on Saturday, May 21, 2005 - 10:26 pm:

Bravo and well said Ivan,

Having been through 23 years of simulated and real combat operations, I concur with your statement and position on this subject

Having traveled the world, experienced diseases, enivronmental toxins and poisons rare in the developed world; suffered broken bones, skull fractures and damage to my spinal cord and CNS in the service of the forces of civilization during the height of the Cold War; I am well aquainted with the challanges we face and the need to refine our view of conciousness and move beyond the primal destructive forces in our nature that bring us to make war and continue to ravage the planet in the name of progress.

As we move further into the next century we will be tested by storms, earthquakes, famine, disease and repression. How we react and cope with these events will define us as a species for a long time to come both in the eyes of God adn among those other species in the universe that I suspect are well aquainted with us.

Having been a member of the team that helped guide us through the end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union...I am apalled by the recent scandles of prisoner abuse, desecration of the Koran and release of photographs by nameless faceless men and women that has dragged us further from global reconcilliation and undermined all our efforts at maintaining and promoting global peace and shared understanding of God, life and the universe.

I hope that the free exchange of ideas on this board will continue to help promote peace and open the minds and consciousnesses of its visitors to the fact that nothing is impossible and that all viewpoints need to be treated with curtesy and respect.

During my youth I was a nuclear targeteer and helped design nuclear fire plans that would have destroyed much of our civilization in order to deter an attack by the Soviets...it is my fervent hope that we never again to descend to that level of madness and that we break the current cycle of abuses of prisoners that threatens to exercerbate an already inflamed situation.


By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, June 7, 2005 - 07:04 am:

How do you reform a consciousness?

Having worked on the periphery of Guantánamo, not directly involved with it or its operations but with knowledge of the type of person incarcerated there, I am more than aware of the need to confine these individuals.

For the most part the indivdiduals confined within the walls of Guantanamo are the individual and collective manefestation of the worst aspects of Islamic Society. They form the basis of a consciousness that seeks only to kill, has no compassion or mercy or compunction against dying.

In his discussion of demon's in the Bible St. Paul spoke of demons being both an individual and collective consciousnesses. In effect what we have in Guantanamo is a consciousness that views the world through its own set of prejudices, doctrine and is capable of thinking and communicating with us but is set on destroying us should it be released.

To a large degree what we have in Guantanamo is what in anncient times would be known as a demon or a Jinn. A consciousness that is capable of causing great harm and yet is capable of arguing the law, holy scripture from a evil perspective. A very chilling thing indeed. A cold, rational and capable intellect with the ability to understand how to interact with the world outside of the camp in order to achieve a goal.

Again I pose the question How do we reform that consciousness that we have trapped in Guantanamo, without killing it or letting it drag us down to its level or allow it to manipulate us?

What I hope that those in charge of Guantanamo and those advocating for the prisoners inside of it, come to understand just what it is that you are facing within that facility.

Many have walked into that camp and fallen into the traps layed by that consciousness, hence the scandle over the Koran and the scandle around the Islamic Chaplin that was stationed there previously...I would submit that to start reforming it you would need a being on the stature of St Paul, to bring that consciousness under control or instill fear into it.

Food for thought....

The only one to actually face such a consciousness and force it to change was his holiness Pope John Paul II when he walked into the cell to face his asassin....perhaps we need to review what exactly it wasa that he did in the cell that had such an effect...


By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, June 7, 2005 - 03:03 pm:

Two days after Christmas in 1983, Pope John Paul went to the prison and met with his would-be assassin. The two spoke privately for a time, and the conversation between the two men remains secret to this day.


By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, June 7, 2005 - 03:14 pm:

One last bit of information on an subject that remain's a secret to this day...

In book, Pope John Paul II for the first time described publicly the minutes after he was gravely wounded in 1981, saying he was fearful and in pain, but had "a strange feeling of confidence" that he would live. The book, also says his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca following a meeting with the Pope "understood that above his power - the power of shooting and killing - there is a greater power."

What is locked in Guantanamo is no different than what the Pope faced in a cell...the question remains what can we do and how can we reform the consciousness that is resident in Guantanamo...

It takes strong men and women to walk in there on daily basis and face the darkest part of the soul that is Islam....

Food for thought


By Ivan A. on Monday, September 5, 2005 - 12:50 pm:

OUR CHOICE


Quote:

Mehmet Ali Agca following a meeting with the Pope "understood that above his power - the power of shooting and killing - there is a greater power."



This is a big issue, Ed. Is there a greater power we humans can tap into it with understanding and conscious behavior?

I think we are all given the ability to choose. This is not to validate "dualism" in the universe, but rather to be reunited with the "One", that we choose correctly. However, what is "correct" for any one person, may not be for another. Hence we have conflict, such as found in the souls of those in prison (or at Guantanamo), who would kill "correctly" as their choice. Of course, this means they obey the dictates of pure coercion rather than obeying directives of peaceful coexistence and finding agreement between human beings. In my opinion, their "(un)conscious" choice is bad.

Each human being can choose:
Some things we have no choice in:
But of all of these, our choices are not limited by the latter, since in how we choose, as long as we live, we can also create our future. And conscious choices is work. The trouble with those mentally dysfunctional beings who see themselves as assassins for a "just cause" is that they had chosen badly, right across the board, and thus are murderously suicidal. Bad choices. But we all universally live and die, and how we choose consciously while alive is what sets us apart within the One with a kind of duality: of those who do good, who raise up, who make beautiful, who heal; and those who do not. It is all in Who we are: Our choice.

Ivan

By Edward Chesky on Monday, September 5, 2005 - 02:49 pm:

Very good points Ivan,

I would submit that as you say it is a mater of choice or in more religous terms free will.

One of the problems I see with the terrorists at GITMO is that in their view of religion, as indoctrinated into them, they see themselves as instruments of God, this is particularly disturbing as the concept of free will is a concept that the people of Islam have not come to fully embrace or understand.

Although I must note that Islamics have long said that by submiting to the will of god they become one with him and that there is no free will involved in the process. Its tied to the whole fatalistic concept of Inshallah and the belief that we are instruments of god's will with no free choice in the matter.

Unlike christianity with its concept of free will which I include a discussion of it below from the following website:

http://www.rationalchristianity.net/free_will.html

How can we have free will if God has a plan for our lives and knows everything we'll do in advance?

Since God is omniscient, God has foreknowledge, meaning he knows what everyone will do in the future and what any individual would do in any given situation. This foreknowledge enables God to have a plan for everyone's life. For instance, if God wants a particular action to occur, he knows who would choose to do that action, and under what circumstances they would choose it; thus he is able to plan for it to happen. However, God's knowing what choices we will make is simply knowledge - it doesn't remove our free will, for we are still the ones making the choices.

This may be more understandable if we consider that we have a type of foreknowledge from our knowledge of history. For example, we know that the Americans won the Revolutionary War. If we went back in time before the Revolutionary War took place, our knowing the outcome wouldn't force anyone to do anything. Our knowing the Boston Tea Party would take place wouldn't mean that the colonists would be forced to throw the tea overboard, it would only mean that we'd know what the colonists would choose to do. It's the same with God: his knowing what we'll freely choose to do doesn't mean we're forced to make that choice.

Now when we couple this concept of free will to the idea that God understands us and offers us choices and challanges and tests knowing that its part of a maturing process with the ability for us to at some point let go of the hatred and killing and move on to become one with him eventually would explain in some measure the trials and tribulations we are faced with.

I would submit that in life some get the message early and progress to a higher plain of conciousness and that some do not. Buddha even identified in his teachings and that some would never learn such concepts at least in this incarnation that until they could accept the concepts he promoted that they would never be able to progress further.

In the traditional christian view those in life that don't accept the teaching of Jesus are destined to await final judgment in a place identified by most as hell. A concept of which was alien to the European Celtic peoples, who saw it as a waiting place and who also had a concept like the Buddhists of re-incarnation and a spiral progression of life and consciousness over time.

I would also submit that if god is all knowing it would not be unreasonable for him to know that eventually everyone will in time in one form or another come to accept his teachings of love and move on to become one with him or be forever seperated from him but that no matter what the nature of the being in question that God in his infinite love will offer all beings throughout an infinite number universes an infinate number of chances to come to accept his teachings regardless of the cost involved in it. Being infinite such a concept would be keeping within the nature of a loving God.

I would also submit that in this context it would make sense to that Jesus Christ was sent to provide us with proof of his love and compassion and as a way for us to shorten the process by which we progress to a higher state of conciousness.

Given this I would submit that the amount of time needed to accept the teachings of Jesus Christ is a factor of free will and that in time, however long it takes, most if not all will come to accept the teachings of Jesus Christ and the world will be a much better place and that as medical science progress many of the the issues you mention that we currently have no control over such as:

to be intelligent or stupid
to be healthy or sick
to be beautiful or ugly
to be born rich or poor

will be resolved and that the final ones

to be lucky or unlucky
to live or die

will remain with God and that by accepting the teachings of Jesus Christ and his disciples that we would in the end come to terms with the last two and understand that their are some things we will never have control over.

Ed Chesky


By Ivan A. on Monday, September 5, 2005 - 07:26 pm:

Ed, take the falling feather analogy. If God has total foreknowledge, he will know exactly where that feather will fall, though to us this would be a mystery until it actually landed. By the rules of Inshalla, that feather will fall the same, except if you suddenly reached out and grabbed it, and then let it go, it will fall somewhere other than where it was 'destined' to fall originally.

So, under Inshallah, was the human act of grabbing the feather pre-ordained by God? Or was it free willed, and thus even God did not know in advance of where the feather will fall? The Islamics will answer the first way, while the rest of us who are of European-Celtic descent (even Eastern Europeans are Scythians, a Celtic branch), will see this in the second way, that it is free willed. So is it any wonder that there is a major confrontation between those who believe in freedom, and free will, and those who believe in God's will only? One says: you choose. The other says: you obey.

Interesting, isn't it? Which is more conscious as a human being? But, what if God is not totally omniscient, but would rather 'play' with the future? Which would God choose? I can't speak for God, but if I were him, I'd choose the latter. Therefore, he made us with a free will, so we could play with God. J

The poets say Truth is Beauty. And the world of play is a much more beautiful world, for both man and God.

Ivan


By Edward Chesky on Monday, September 5, 2005 - 08:15 pm:

Perhaps the simple answere is that like a parent, god allows us free will and infinity to explore because like a parent he loves us and desires us to strive to understand and be like him.

Eventually somewhere in the multi-universe finally coming to accept his teachings and joining with him in the end:)

Ed Chesky


By Ivan A. on Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:29 pm:

Ed, another way to consider what the future will be, given God's foreknowledge, is that any choices and actions taken by us must be within the parameters of what is possible only. For example, in yours:

"This may be more understandable if we consider that we have a type of foreknowledge from our knowledge of history. For example, we know that the Americans won the Revolutionary War. If we went back in time before the Revolutionary War took place, our knowing the outcome wouldn't force anyone to do anything. Our knowing the Boston Tea Party would take place wouldn't mean that the colonists would be forced to throw the tea overboard, it would only mean that we'd know what the colonists would choose to do. It's the same with God: his knowing what we'll freely choose to do doesn't mean we're forced to make that choice."

The matrix of reality at any one moment of time, based upon the history of all that preceded that moment, is such that many possible outcomes can occur. If there were no free willed choice, then only one possible outcome exists, exactly what the predisposition of the history of the moment would determine for its next moment. However, we and all living things make choices all the time, so our actions lead to an alternate future than that predetermined simply by historical conditions. So the matrix, like a giant web of interconnection of events, exists as a state of reality that can be altered by our choice and actions. What God does is make all these possible futures an open ended matrix within which we exercise our free will. However, the conditions for the future have to be within the parameters of possibility, not merely within what it was predetermined to be, so that the future has many possible outcomes. If the Boston Tea Party participants had decided not to dump the tea overboard into Boston harbor, but sit around a warm fire and drink it instead, a very different revolutionary outcome would have occurred for the drive towards American independence from Britain. If Ben Franklin were content to remain a small printer, and not be involved in the founding of the nation, or Jefferson concentrated on growing tulips rather than writing the Declaration of Independence, we would live in a very different America today. However, because of the choices and actions taken, we have the world such as it is today. But this is not outside the matrix of reality that was possible, only how it manifest in response to what was chosen at the time. So it goes into the future, where God has foreknowledge of all possible outcomes, perhaps, but not the predetermined future of exactly how it will unfold, because he gives us the latitude to work our way through it as it is in our will to do so.

What makes this line of reasoning important is that if we were not conscious beings, meaning we had no thoughts other than those hardwired and programmed in us, then the future would be totally predictable. In the same way stones cannot stir themselves to move, but must await external forces to make them move, we too would be totally dominated by external stimuli to make us act, and choose. But because we can initiate actions based on willed and conscious choices, we influence reality in a non-predetermined manner, so the future has a lot more play in it. And the more conscious we become as human beings, the more latitude we will demand from reality to realize our will, and our dreams. But that too is within God's plan, if you will, to make the future so open ended that we grow in consciousness, and with that growth better reflect who we are in our dreams. Yet, this is all done within the matrix of reality possibilities only, or else we fail, and possibly perish. So the game is set, we are the players both as authors and participants, but the outcome of the game is unknown except within the patterns of the board where the game is played. For the rest, it is up to us how the game will be played out, with both successes abnd failures. And that is why we have free will.

In terms of the American experience, this is especially meaningful because that is what our revolution of independence was all about: to make us free to discover ourselves, to be creative, and to pursue our dreams, because there is a powerful future in that. Our nation's forefathers had the vision to make this real, made real choices of their own free will within the parameters of their reality, to give us a nation built upon the principle of human freedoms in our pursuit of happiness. I think it works, and the more conscious we become of this, the more freedom will become, and the more conscious will be our success. We choose our future within the parameters of our freedom of choice, and our free will, as conscious human beings. This is Who we are.


Ivan

By Edward Chesky on Friday, September 23, 2005 - 04:54 pm:

Very well thought out Ivan,

I agree with you regarding free.

However I have a question that comes to mind regarding a open ended universe. That question is about the nature of the soul and if our decisions take us down diferent time lines with duplicate people in them as a result of actions and choices.

Like in the movies about moving from one universe to another where we meet duplicate people. Are these beings seperate from ourselves or do we in some way share a overaching interconnected soul that transcends space and time with each of the aspects of us in the multi-universe linked into a grand counsciousness that is god like but not god.

With enlightened people able to somehow bridge the gap between the universes and the aspects of ourselves in those universes and somehow pull information regarding decisons made, future outcomes, accross that divide. Is it possible in the dream state that we are actually communing with aspects of ourselves or family and friends that have died in this universe but exist in another.

Food for thought

Ed Chesky


By Edward Chesky on Friday, September 23, 2005 - 05:23 pm:

One more thought that has occured to me regarding this concept of overaching souls is related to the work of St. Paul and his discussion of demons and how they spoke from the mounths of men and whether such things like that which are observed in this universe are the manefestation of a collective cousciousness that speaks when a person achieves some altered state of consciousness in this universe or another and then manefests itself in a way such as when you meet a stranger that speaks to you and knows things about you or appears to know what you are thinking or speaks in ancient tounges....

A thing like that happened to me today when I had a man approach me after a period of relfection about the trauma I have been through in my life and had him bend his head to me on the street in broad daylight and say I am sorry sir and then move on....was it something more or just a mentally ill individual and random chance...?

more food for thought

Ed Chesky


By Edward Chesky on Friday, September 23, 2005 - 08:16 pm:

On last thing about the man who approached me, he crossed the street from an ancient burrial ground dating back over three hundred years after a day at work where we had to deal with a number of crisis that included an unexplained electrical fire, fall and injury of and employee, and other negative things like children trying to break windows in our office complex with rocks....it was one of those days...where you think its a string of bad luck....


By Ivan A. on Friday, September 23, 2005 - 09:40 pm:

Ed, multiple universes yielding multiple beings is like a prism that breaks up the light into so many colors. But it is still the same light. So I see the soul, that though we may share an existence with parallel beings, perhaps even in the same space and time, it is still the same being projected in all the existences. I once wrote on something like this in my post on the "micro-mind" (do keyword search on left for MICRODECISIONS, no time limit, in Peoples Book 2000), that there are levels of existence of which we are not cognizant in our everyday waking mode, in our rational minds, but some portion of the mind already knows this. We are all connected, whether or not our awareness allows us to know this. Something in us already "knows". In fact, this may be why prayer works, because it is a time when we connect with that other side of the mind that is invisible to us, but is connected to all of being.

About your encounter with a man who almost knew you, I had something similar happen to me too. It is quite an event when it happens, and usually does not have a bad end, rather harmless. Beware of people who speak in tongues, however, since they may be more confused than aware.

All the best, Ivan


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