Chapter 16

Consciousness

There is a crack in the scientific egg, and this crack is consciousness. Science has no idea what it is. In physical science, the basic units of science are mass, energy, space and time (MEST).  With these measurement units we can produce most of the other units of measurement such as frequency (f=1/t).  Yet when it comes time to scientifically measure the presence of consciousness, there is no instrument to do it.

Being with consciousness are behind all works of science and the arts. We might want to add life and consciousness to the MEST formula, perhaps making it LAMEST.

Magnificent Aliens

What would happen if we were to have a Magnificent Alien come into our lives from another dimension and time. We would be as animals to this Being, and we would be like pets to it.

The strange thing is, there really is a Magnificent Alien.  We have a detector in us we call our heart. It is our only instrument we have for this purpose. In our hearts (at least some of our hearts), we can feel the presence of the Great Goodness and Beauty.   The name varies from culture to culture.  Most of us call this Being God or Allah.
 

We are Also Aliens

In each of us there is a being, our true self, that lives in our body. Some people call it the "little green man", or the witness of it all. Yet another name for this witness inside us, is the experiencer.  This is the true self, the person that sees what our eyes sees, hears what our ears hear and feels what the skin feels.

Only through the experience do we know we are here. Descartes said "I think, therefore I am." He went on to say he really meant experience. Only a fool would say they did not exist, and he would change his mind after talking to someone who likes to stand on toes.  :)

The body is only a interface that senses and manipulates the outer world through various muscles.

Tracing the Optic Nerve

The optic nerve some how presents the image the eye sees to the internal screen. The image is received by the eye-up side-down and then is flipped right side up, somewhere in the brain. Between the optic nerve, and the internal screen, the two images, one from each eye are combined to form an artificial 3D image.

Without knowing what we are seeing, we are blind. This can be proven we when we try to see a camouflaged animal in a picture.  We cannot see it until we seek its outline, even if we are looking right at it.

The optic nerve does not flow to a neat terminal, but to a series of columns in the brain. Could these be transmitters to the soul that exists on another space-time frame?

One could visualize a thought experiment to show that the experiencer does not live in the brain:

If we stick a screw driver in a television set, and the picture went away, we would be tempted to say, "the man is in the television set, because I can make him go away".  If we probe the brain, and the subject sees visual images, this does not prove the experiencer is in really in the brain.  The brain could be an emotional, smell, audio and video two-way communicator.
 
Food and The Pleasure System

When we get hungry, our pleasure system is activated.  The anticipation builds as the food comes into view.  The first bite is the best, but as we continue to eat, satiation grows until we put the fork down. If plotted the pleasure curve would look like an inverted "U".

As the day goes on, the pleasure curve continues one way or another. If nothing of importance happens during the day, the pleasure curve can be highly effected by our lunch.   If we ate too much, the curve stays depressed for hours. If we ate just the right food and in the right amounts, the pleasure curve might stay up until dinner.

Eating just for short-term pleasure can not only produce long-term unhappiness it can make the next meal less pleasurable. For example, the instrument we use to judge the food can get corrupted with strong sweets or food that is too hot. The subtle taste of gourmet food can be lost with cokes and donuts.

There are more effects.  Within the body, too much sugar makes the panaceas over produce insulin, that results in low blood sugar. With low blood sugar we will tend to get angry faster and gulp food down.

What we are saying here applies to doing good for the long term in general. An advanced being tends to stays high as they are concentrating not only on long term effects, but the motive behind the effect.  If one is not attached to food, food does not make him happy -- it is only nice.
 

Pleasure Systems and Drugs

On the other end of the spectrum, people try to short circuit life, by taking short cuts.

For example, a typical cocaine user has a great experience with his first use. Yet with succeeding hits, the cocaine user finds he must take the drug just to stay normal. Without the drug he is very depressed. The drug becomes his life at this point.

Marijuana works differently.  It makes "up tight" people mellow by changing there judgment.  Things that are ordinary look much better.  Dirt on the wall can be like a painting.  By lowering the level of what is to be judged pretty or ugly, or interesting or non interesting, it really changes ones judgment IQ.  With a lower IQ, many marijuana users never grow, and end up living with their parents when most people have started their own families.  Marijuana reduces the good in the world, by making everything seem too good.
 
 

The Three Major Areas of the Brain

During the 1960's, research on the corpus callosum, caused the investigators to consider that the each hemisphere of the brain worked together, each specializing in different modes of thinking. There seemed to be two modes of thinking, verbal and nonverbal.  In most cases the left hemisphere is verbal and analytic, while the   right brain seemed must less verbal and global.

One of the ways to investigate the left and right brains was to reduce the blood supply by pressing on the veins on either side of the neck. A more drastic method was the study of patients who had to have their  corpus callosum surgically severed.   In these patients  one hemisphere is not known to the other. It was if twin souls had been created.

Other less intrusive investigation was performed by flashing messages on left and right fields of vision at the same time.  The right brain processes the left field of vision and the left brain processed the right field of vision.  The same was true for the ear.

New evidence found by Jerre Levy in her doctoral studies showed that the mode of processing used by the left and right brains. These studies and others indicate the differences as listed in the table below.  The base brain column I added as it lies under both hemispherers and also performs separate but important functions.  

It also seemed that the the two modes of processing could interfere with each other, preventing maximal performance. J. E. Bogen reported that two hemispheres seemed to have two different way of knowing.  The results are summarized in the following table. 
 

Left Brain	Right Brain
intellect	intuition
convergent	divergent
digital	analogic
secondary	primary
Abstract	concrete
directed	free
prepositional	imaginative
analytic	relational
lineal	nonlinear
rational	intuitive
sequential	multiple
analytic	holistic
objective	subjective
successive	simultaneous

But according to Greg Hickok at University of California at Irvine: things are not all that clear. So much of left-right brain stuff is propaganda. Browse the Internet and you will see thousands of documents on left and right brain functions.  Its phrenology all over again.  Yes, there is some differences between the two hemispheres such as  motor control, speed and memory. But the concept has been seriously overblown and misapplied.  About any function you can think of involves both hemispheres.  There are networks that support visual recognition and those that enable language comprehension.  So to say the left-brain does one thing and the right brain another is so 19th century.

Other people have there ideas. It probably takes a balance between these three brain areas. This suggests that something must coordinate these brain areas. Antonio Damasio, in his book Descartes' Error points out that the brain does all our thinking and it is the brain tissue in the front of the brain that coordinates the emotions and thought originating from the right and left hemispheres.

Soul and Mechanical Connections

Brain tissues are like components and wires in television set. Pull a wire out, the image goes away. Cut brain tissue and an image or other attribute of the brain is erased.  However, the brain tissue so removed could be part of a mental highway between the soul and the body.  You can't prove that consciousness lives in the brain, only that the brain is required for communication to the outer world.  The brain could be two-way transmitter between the body and the soul. The soul (or mind) and body may live in two different space-time universes.

It would seem that a person and his body is one.  If the body gets sick or out of tune, the soul seems to follow.  But often a computer will go bad but the computer is not really at fault.  It is taken down by another computer such as a network server.   As soon as the server is fix, the computer comes alive again. So perhaps the soul can get sick and cause the body to get sick and verse-versa.

Reality and Dreams

How can we tell what is real? Is reality really a dream? The difference between a dream and reality is that reality is contiguous orchestration. One thing follows another, and one thing influences another.

For example, if we have left our shoes under the table last night, they will be there in the morning. The shoes remain and therefore are contiguous. More so in reality instead of a dream, more than one person sees the same things.

There are causes and effects and in reality there is orchestration.  Witnesses will agree, that our shoes feel like our shoes, look like our shoes, smell like our shoes.

Thus in the real reality everything is orchestrated and in agreement. In a dream, we wake up and no one else has the same experience we had. Contiguousness and orchestration are the only proofs that our waking dream, wide awake consciousness is real.  Dreams are private, and reality is shared.

Table of Contents

Updated March 23, 2013

Copyright © 1997-2013 George Norwood
Version 10