Closer To Truth
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We feel as if our consciousness is unified—we integrate sight, sound, all the senses. Our minds feel as an indivisible whole. But eye or brain injury can alter or eliminate sight. A stroke can destroy subtle aspects of language capacity—you can write and not speak, speak and not write. The brain is compartmentalized. So is unified consciousness an illusion?
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Russ Hurlburt is a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He received his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of South Dakota.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
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Consciousness is unified, mind is not, there may be a multiplicity of perceptions and thoughts in the mind, consciousness is the foundation from which they operate.
If multitasking made consciousness disunified then wouldn't brain injury increase multitasking? And yet it's the opposite. Therefore this disunity idea is bunk, sorry.
Is there only one type of logic? One type of math? Geometry, algebra, knot theory, Boolean algebra, etcetera?
How then is concensus …possible? By coercion, naive agreement, by trial and error?
His statement that these events involving simultaneous multiple experiences occur in a couple of percent of the overall data sample demands further exploration.
His data is limited to self reported observations from his subjects, and, for an individual to be aware of such multiple experiences occurring simultaneously requires an atypically well developed mindfulness.
He might look to see if the frequency of those reports correlates with a subject's experience with meditation or other practices that increase mindfulness.
In my experience, there are multiple "experiences" occurring simultaneously, and they are being had by separate conscious entities.
God.
See ya.
Who knows?
No
Consciousness is the fundamental field of reality that is experienced through individuated forms of being.
It is like air in the sense that it is invisible and pervasive, but can be separated from the unified field by capturing it in a bottle. The bottle is like our body that shapes our experience of consciousness. Once the bottle breaks, the air simply returns to the unified field, just as consciousness returns to the source when the body dies.
Cognition, or mental activity , is not a single, simple process focused on anything. For examples, consider the following:
First, cognition and meta-cognition can be discovered at certain times to be working together; and meta-cognition can be brought closer to normal awareness by being taught and exercised.
Secondly, think of yourself as an owner of an auto repair facility. You have ten stalls. There are several cars in the shop. As the owner, you think of all of the stalls, the day's workload, etc. Each vehicle requires attention. If you just have one specal vehicle in the shop, it will take up enough of your thoughts to seem like the only thing going on; but you are also working a background process of keeping the business profitable and the employees satisfied,
At the same time, you might have a problem brewing at home, Your mind is essentially working on all of these things to varying degrees at the same time.
Moving the analogy from the repair shop to the toolbox. (This is an example of using a tool (the analogy) for different purposes). The actual logical processes that are going on in the mind are composed of smaller routines that are your toolbox for all problems, big or small. So you could use a wrench for several processes at the same time. The qualities of your tools will vary with experience. A new application for a tool might show up after years; and it might take some time before you realize that you can use that tool for completely different purposes in the same way. Your peronal mental bandwidth will play a considerable role in how you apply and integrate capabilities.
Switching onto another bus: Now, you go down into the basement of your house into your wood shop, where you also have an old refrigerator for some extra stock that will not fit into your refrigerator in the kitchen. You need a new carton of soy milk. On the way down the stairs it occurs to you that since you are climbing down there, you might as well get that spare light bulb for the bedroom. It takes time and energy to go down the stairs. You are not getting any younger; and your knees don't like the trip. You still intend to get the soy milk. You find the light bulb after a little searching; but you see a small pile of stuff that you need to recycle; so you pick that up too. Then on the way back to the area of the stairs, you see that there is some water on the floor. It rained last night; so you turn on the fan. Since you are down there, you figure that it is a good idea to get on the exerciser for a few pullups and leg raises for a set or two; it will only take five minutes; and you may not have time later to just go down and do that. There was something else that occurred to you during all this; but you can't remember at the moment. It will have to be addressed later. You get back to the main level and install the light bulb. Then you realize that you forgot the soy milk. You start to think about getting ready for work while reminding yourself that you need to remember to not forget things like the trip for the soy milk.
This is how the mind works and sets priorities, or at least one way. They are all processes that include consciousness to varying degrees. The same set of brain components, sensory afferents and efferents, data sets, and operational matrices of neurons and so on is used for anything and everything depending on how logically the warehouse of everything up there is set up, from the time when the DNA instructs the brain on how to form, through gestation, birth, childhood, and onward through experience. At certain key points, emotion provides a punctuation effect on activities that has an effect on all activities from these processes up to the human as an individual. The internal storage of the brain is not the only source of data and procedures. Increasingly, for the modern human being, we rely on external sources of data and building blocks from our access to libraries, the experiences of others, the internet, the news, and literally anything that we come across or can incorporate into the complex model of the reality that we have internally which is our identity and which seeks to keep itself alive by doing and adapting. I am not sure where what I call the soul resides; but there is a definite sense of wanting to continue sentient existence once there is enough going on for it to experience awareness of itself, or i might call this meta-awareness.
“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” ~ Charlie Chaplin
As someone who has experienced simultaneous dual consciousness/mind, I can say russ Hurlbert is correct it can happen and both minds consciousness are the same self complete and not diminished in any way, each experiencing reality from their own individual reality while being the same self, I am aware of possibly three incantations of the dual mind phenomena. 1: asleep and dreaming while simultaneously awake and conscious. 2: awake in a state of being the observer and the observed (observing myself in the moment while being in the moment) similar to the description of the person feeling that they were observing from the ceiling. 3: focusing my mind on a single point while focusing my mind on a separate point simultaneously (each mental focus is completely separate and independent from the other). 1 and 2 duplicate and share their experiences between the two, 3 doesn’t, creating a separate unique experience of its own.
Hi Closer To Truth, listening to the start of this video I am wondering if this unity you discuss should perhaps better be called singularity. The concept of unity seems to me to imply some form of common consciousness shared by all sentient beings that has some material form external to the individuals.
As it happens I am satisfied that there is no clear unambiguous evidence to support either assertion, in fact that observation of personal plurality is well documented and also one should not ignore the extended periods in our daily and nightly lives when we have no sense of our own person at all!, the me that I think of as the singularity who is posting this comment is a very transient entity. I am not even sure that when there is a 'me' in my mind that it exactly the same me as it was yesterday!. While none of this qualifies as reliable empirical evidence the implications that suggest no singularity are strong. The other option, that of some existential universal consciousness that we share seems to me to be a purely imaginative proposition with no evidence of any sort.
Of course the fact that we observe no evidence could just be due to limitations in human perception but since all we actually have is those limited perceptions we have no choice but to operate within those boundaries, after all while we seek truth all we cab expect to find is demonstrable falsehoods, the only way we can advance our general knowledge.
Cheers, Richard.
If you watch something on TV, while listening to something else on Youtube, while thinking about a 3rd place, while laying on the couch, it's just like being in 4 places, but unified. 4 tracks. All simultaneous.
Sry, but he's wrong.
speak for interdimensional
WHEN GOLD IS YOUR I
GOD GUIDE YOU THE GATEWAY
LETS GO OLD IDS
YOU LOVE I
AND WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND SPRITULITY OF
I LOVE YOU
ALL ARE INTERDIMENTIONAL BEING HERE
…I would like to another actual happening. Having suffered a severe hyperthermia incident. I was I freezing river water for almost an hour. I experienced for several weeks the sensation of, living daily married life, however seemingly at the same time, watching myself from a separate section, sideline, observing myself from the corner. My wife told me my body felt and stayed cold for about 2 or 3 weeks after my being dumped in the river, from my canoe, by a squall storm in the winter, respectfully, Chuck…captivus brevis…Blessings…
…Interesting discussion, observations. It would seem to me this is evidence concerning Multiverse existences, not Parallel in nature, but co-existing. The option that the Multiverse exist simultaneously, not Parallel stacked, respectfully, Chuck…captivus brevis…Blessings….
Unified Conciousness is exist but in higher dimension of conciousness
Consciousness is everything you can understand & also all that you don't understand , yes when a separated DROP unit of vast Consciousness ocean which has a property of dissection , try to identity undissected consciousness , it create stages, level, as per its understanding & definitions,
Listen God ,
Enjoy Today is 7th Feb God G Day
Why Are You Getting Gussy Gums, G is Glue , which fix & Fill the damage created by the consciousness while avoiding the Flow of Gods Awareness, when God show fear of punishment , smart Consciousness send mindful hand to face God in the form of karma, O My God, its look Very Confusing unless experience personally,
O RA RA RA RA RAY RAY
"It is stranger than we can think" JBS Haldane. Good fun trying though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane
Consciousness is based on an integrated state of information (as starting point).
We can observe this from the quality of being a witness within our awareness, as well as from the electric fields in the brain that emit electromagnetic waves. These days, these waves can be translated and linked to your thought content. Without an integrated state, how could the information of your thoughts be integrated into the electromagnetic waves of the brain's electrical fields? This demonstrates order arising from integration.
At the same time, the brain also has specialized centers. Thus, wouldn't it be logical if it's both? Consider it like a coin with two sides: one side is unified as its an integrated state of information, and the other side is engaged in coupling and decoupling information from the outside and from processes created inside consciousness and the brain.
So, why choose one over the other. Why not both? When we take in information, for example a vacation picture, we look at it, information enters our brain, we couple it, integrate it within our consciousness, give it meaning, and integrate it. However, a lot of data and information is useless, so we decouple it again. An interesting feature here is people with a holographic memory.
The phrase "the brain tricks us"….. isn't "us" the brain? So really, I would say that th part of the brain that is the focus of our conscious attention is presented with a curated presentation by the unconscious brain. That is not a trick but simply the way it works. A better question would be why this presentation is passed through that conscious part of the brain – for what purpose? Does the conscious part have any effect? Why is it there? When did it evolved? Those are the questions that have exciting answers !
They are confusing consciousness with the content of consciousness. Obviously, the content of consciousness is highly fragmented as one routinely experiences ambivalent feelings. Meanwhile, the thinking process seems incapable of proprioception. The nature of consciousness is revealed when the mind becomes quiet. Life and consciousness are indeed very special phenomena. We have not found a single trace of Life or Consciousness in the solar system or anywhere we have bothered to look in the Universe.
4:14 Can’t think of two things at the same time. You can alternate between thoughts so quickly, you feel like you are, but in reality, thoughts only occur one at a time.
They don’t know 😂
I chuckle reading all the variations of "we are special" comments here. If hubris told time, it would be more accurate than the most precise atomic clocks. 😏
"Is Consciousness Unified"
Yes it is… You only have one self, which is your free immortal aware soul, to save from returning to a cold dark empty state (hell)…
…but confusion can happen when you start believing something that does not make any sense such as believing that your Original Mama is Darwin's IGUANA, that you have no free wil, that you are a slave to natura laws and so unaccountable…
.. this kind of belief can damage the normal processes of your physical brain that may convey poorly processed data to your Awareness that could make you think your consciousness is fragmented… This can develop multiple personalities which is one of the reason why so many Godless Physicists are hallucinating multiple Universes worse than a fairy tale…
…and this problem can get worse when old age starts dulling up your senses…
Is it possible that I could have sex with 2 different women in 2 separate locations simultaneously? 😂
Why do normal individuals have a feeling and concept that they are a Self, one unified Self and not multiple Selves?
Consciousness of pain, for example back pain can be chronic and persist for decades. Awareness of pain, pleasure are signals that your body is relatively healthy or in a disease state. Consciousness has evolved to give organisms more awareness of their environments and to better survive.
I'm conscious that Im special!!!😂
These type of nonsense is only barked by those who do not understand the meaning of word unity
Consciousness is not unified. On the other hand, it can be amplified by the seeker via active grace to reach others. This will be delving deep into the esoteric realm of being. We are breath, but many don't and can't successfully apply it to their consciousness at the right time. The seasons are reminders, but they have been used for selfish goals that over weighs parts of us that require both active breath and strength.
"Is consciousness unified?" Is a river unified? Yes and No.
what is unified consciousness? what does it mean for consciousness to be unified? can be a number of awareness by one consciousness?
We only exist as a single thing-as-a-whole to the extent that the mind controls the body accordingly. Otherwise we would just be a huge cluster of diverse cells that happen to be clinging onto each other. Therefore in consciousness it is fundamental that at any one time we are running with a single hierarchical set of controls of action and attention. (This doesn't exclude holding multiple things in mind, as long as the resulting physical or mental actions are not actively conflicting).
We are a natural organic world build system not a logical mechanical build system. Stuff like unification is a mental logical construct. Also we are highly complex, likely way more complex than we can understand and it is unclear to what degree science is capable of to systematically objectivate a human system.
consciousness is just self-awareness at a higher level, every species has it to survive. It's just that we have a higher level cause we understood our environment better and when our survival wasn't based on environment, we explored lots of things so we have bigger view.
“Illusion” as a concept is still man made. And isn’t any more clear a thing than consciousness