Subconsciousness and Humanity.

[JaysonR]

I see doubt as not belief, but more setting a requirement to show plausibility: why should I believe this? What is the merit for the belief?

To accomplish this, someone has to be shown how it can make logical or evident sense which is comparable to other ideas which they accept by their same level of threshold for acceptance.

If someone accepts things very easily, then there will be very little to convey to remove any doubt they may have as their standard is more willing to accept something as plausible than not; just on the occurrence of coming into contact with an idea.
If someone accepts things very hesitantly, then there will be a much larger volume to convey to remove any doubt they may have as their standard is not really willing to accept something as plausible just on the occurrence of coming into contact with the idea.

A belief, in the context of this discussion, is a conviction that something is existent as true in spite of the lack of supporting information to evidently show that thing's existent state as true unambiguously to all humanity equally.

I'm more someone who doubts first, and awaits for the material that can convince me that something's state of existence is true; holding it to either not be true, or very unlikely to be true until otherwise.

I don't hold, for example, that pink unicorns exist on Earth just because the idea can be articulated.
Instead, I hold that no such thing has a state of existent until there is any sufficient amount of material presented which can convince me there is a reason to entertain the idea of the thing's state of existence as true; or even plausibly true.

I don't class unknown as "plausibly true", however.
Plausibly true would be convincing me there's an actual probable chance of something being true in regards to existent by some material presented.

Unknown, for me, is false until shown to be plausible to consider as having some probable chance of being true.
Then such will remain as such until shown with further material that such is shown to be true.

For instance, I had this approach to the Higgs.
I doubted such even existed.
I read a lot of the material supporting the idea and found nothing that was convincing in regards to switching the state from false to probable, so I never moved it to probable.
Then, rather abruptly, LHC found the Higgs-like boson.
This moved it to probable as true.
Later, they confirmed multiple times and probable became true.

For something like disembodied consciousness, I can only propose the previously mentioned test environment as a way to move the idea from the false category into the probable category.
Until then, it just remains false, but possibly plausible (at least the physics involved can be imagined).

 

[Navigator]

I see doubt as not belief, but more setting a requirement to show plausibility: why should I believe this? What is the merit for the belief?

I see belief and doubt as unnecessary.

Once I see the truth about something. I simple know.
Not knowing is not the same as doubt.
Knowing is not the same as believing.

If I don’t know, I don’t need to doubt.

Some situations might require taking a persons word for something (believing) or not taking a persons word for something (doubting) but then knowing and not knowing don’t come into play in such situations.

If someone accepts things very easily, then there will be very little to convey to remove any doubt they may have as their standard is more willing to accept something as plausible than not; just on the occurrence of coming into contact with an idea.
If someone accepts things very hesitantly, then there will be a much larger volume to convey to remove any doubt they may have as their standard is not really willing to accept something as plausible just on the occurrence of coming into contact with the idea.

For me accepting is something like knowing. Until then I just gather data. There is a lot of data available on OBEs and my own personal experiences. (Also data) I guess in this I accept all data.

I can correlate the data to form an overall picture of what might be happening and thus am at least able to speculate which is what I did in relation to this thread topic and OP

Some of that data is expressed as certainty, often by those identifying themselves as ‘skeptics’ or ‘spiritual’ and I include the data from these with all other data.

So in taking the data from these different sources, some of which appear to be diametrically at odds (which is also data to consider) I can piece together the data to form a picture and from this I can speculate.

It is not a question then of accepting data easily or hesitantly. I would say that belief/doubt is what makes certain data easy or hard to accept.

Data is data. I either know or I don’t know.

I don't hold, for example, that pink unicorns exist on Earth just because the idea can be articulated.
Instead, I hold that no such thing has a state of existent until there is any sufficient amount of material presented which can convince me there is a reason to entertain the idea of the thing's state of existence as true; or even plausibly true.

When it comes to pink unicorns articulated as existing on earth, the articulation is data.
I would look at horses (which are similar) and because these are all over the planet, why are pink unicorns not?
Perhaps it might be because they do not reproduce as easily. But this would not explain why no pink unicorns, or in fact no unicorns of any color have been discovered, nor for that matter have any fossils which might be identified as being unicorn ever been discovered and we have discovered a large portion of the earth already so they should have turned up if they exist or have existed on the planet.

So entertaining the idea and articulating that unicorns even possibly exist or existed on the planet is something to leave to Hollywood, as entertainment

However, if the articulation was that pink unicorns exist in the universe, I would agree unreservedly.

This is simply due to the astronomical. It is very likely somewhere in the universe, pink unicorns do exist.

It does not matter that physical evidence is not available to back up the possibility, or certainty that pink unicorns could possibly or do probably exist somewhere in the universe. It does not impact on anything here on earth.

For something like disembodied consciousness, I can only propose the previously mentioned test environment as a way to move the idea from the false category into the probable category.
Until then, it just remains false, but possibly plausible (at least the physics involved can be imagined).

In relation to individual consciousness existing after death I remain neutral. It does not impact on my life in terms of belief or doubt. It is fairly simple. It is highly unlikely I won’t know until I die.
Then I will only know if upon dying, I discover I still exist. Otherwise I won’t know ever.

So this reasoning allows for me to examine all data related to the subject, not to formulate belief systems but to formulate a picture of what might be happening which can be useful for speculation purposes, but also because I don’t know absolutely so when I die and it turns out I still exist, whatever data I have accumulated might be very handy to have in such a circumstance.

From the data I have collected to date, I would not be surprised if when I died, I discover that I still exist.

But that is not belief.

ETA:

For instance, I had this approach to the Higgs.
I doubted such even existed.
I read a lot of the material supporting the idea and found nothing that was convincing in regards to switching the state from false to probable, so I never moved it to probable.
Then, rather abruptly, LHC found the Higgs-like boson.
This moved it to probable as true.
Later, they confirmed multiple times and probable became true.

This data allows me to see that it is best to remain neutral in all cases. If people didn’t, then discovery would be greatly hampered.
Speculation often helps to uncover truth eventually. Without that, Higgs boson would have remained undiscovered.

In this, it is not about saying ‘now you can believe it is real’. Now you KNOW.

 

[dlorde]

For something like disembodied consciousness, I can only propose the previously mentioned test environment as a way to move the idea from the false category into the probable category.
Until then, it just remains false, but possibly plausible (at least the physics involved can be imagined).

Can you describe what you imagine the physics involved to be?

It's always seemed to me that the lack of a plausible physical model for disembodied consciousness that tips the balance of prior probabilities into special pleading even before lack of evidence is considered.

 

[tsig]

I see belief and doubt as unnecessary.

Once I see the truth about something. I simple know.
Not knowing is not the same as doubt.
Knowing is not the same as believing.

If I don’t know, I don’t need to doubt.

Some situations might require taking a persons word for something (believing) or not taking a persons word for something (doubting) but then knowing and not knowing don’t come into play in such situations.



For me accepting is something like knowing. Until then I just gather data. There is a lot of data available on OBEs and my own personal experiences. (Also data) I guess in this I accept all data.

I can correlate the data to form an overall picture of what might be happening and thus am at least able to speculate which is what I did in relation to this thread topic and OP

Some of that data is expressed as certainty, often by those identifying themselves as ‘skeptics’ or ‘spiritual’ and I include the data from these with all other data.

So in taking the data from these different sources, some of which appear to be diametrically at odds (which is also data to consider) I can piece together the data to form a picture and from this I can speculate.

It is not a question then of accepting data easily or hesitantly. I would say that belief/doubt is what makes certain data easy or hard to accept.

Data is data. I either know or I don’t know.



When it comes to pink unicorns articulated as existing on earth, the articulation is data.
I would look at horses (which are similar) and because these are all over the planet, why are pink unicorns not?Perhaps it might be because they do not reproduce as easily. But this would not explain why no pink unicorns, or in fact no unicorns of any color have been discovered, nor for that matter have any fossils which might be identified as being unicorn ever been discovered and we have discovered a large portion of the earth already so they should have turned up if they exist or have existed on the planet.

So entertaining the idea and articulating that unicorns even possibly exist or existed on the planet is something to leave to Hollywood, as entertainment

However, if the articulation was that pink unicorns exist in the universe, I would agree unreservedly.

This is simply due to the astronomical. It is very likely somewhere in the universe, pink unicorns do exist.

It does not matter that physical evidence is not available to back up the possibility, or certainty that pink unicorns could possibly or do probably exist somewhere in the universe. It does not impact on anything here on earth.




In relation to individual consciousness existing after death I remain neutral. It does not impact on my life in terms of belief or doubt. It is fairly simple. It is highly unlikely I won’t know until I die.
Then I will only know if upon dying, I discover I still exist. Otherwise I won’t know ever.

So this reasoning allows for me to examine all data related to the subject, not to formulate belief systems but to formulate a picture of what might be happening which can be useful for speculation purposes, but also because I don’t know absolutely so when I die and it turns out I still exist, whatever data I have accumulated might be very handy to have in such a circumstance.

From the data I have collected to date, I would not be surprised if when I died, I discover that I still exist.

But that is not belief.

ETA:



This data allows me to see that it is best to remain neutral in all cases. If people didn’t, then discovery would be greatly hampered.
Speculation often helps to uncover truth eventually. Without that, Higgs boson would have remained undiscovered.

In this, it is not about saying ‘now you can believe it is real’. Now you KNOW.

How do you know they're not, they're invisible you know and absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

BTW: you have used up your quota on the word "data".

 

[Navigator]

How do you know they're not, they're invisible you know and absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

They are pink and are unicorns, two clues which suggest they are not invisible.

Here is an actual picture of one, which proves they do exist on this planet, but only as stuffed toys.

BTW: you have used up your quota on the word "data".

............................................Data.

Nope, apparently the evidence ^ suggests otherwise.

 

[tsig]

They are pink and are unicorns, two clues which suggest they are not invisible.

Here is an actual picture of one, which proves they do exist on this planet, but only as stuffed toys.


............................................Data.

Nope, apparently the evidence ^ suggests otherwise.

Do statues of Jesus prove there wasn't a Jesus? How are they able to make these stuffed toys if the concept doesn't exist and since the concept exists in the human mind you have to give credence to the possibility of the existence of the actual IPU (blessed is Her Essence)

 

[Navigator]

Do statues of Jesus prove there wasn't a Jesus?

No.

How are they able to make these stuffed toys if the concept doesn't exist and since the concept exists in the human mind you have to give credence to the possibility of the existence of the actual IPU (blessed is Her Essence)

How is anything which comes from human imagination able to do so, and even be created by humans?
Who knows - one day Scientists might find the way of growing a pink unicorn although how they will make it invisible is another thing entirely.

The most likely reason the concept of a pink unicorn (or even just a unicorn - color unimportant) may be through dreams or OBEs and astral experiences. If you have read a number of experiences individuals share about those experiences, you would understand how this could be the likely explanation.

We just don't know, but because the likelihood of there being unicorns somewhere in this vast universe, perhaps those dreams, OBEs/astral experiences are connected in ways which we do not presently understand and what people experience are images of different planets, species, environments etc...and in the awakened conscious state these images come through the imagination and take form through human creativity, such as stuffed toys and video games etc.

We just don't know.

 

[JaysonR]

This data allows me to see that it is best to remain neutral in all cases. If people didn’t, then discovery would be greatly hampered.
Speculation often helps to uncover truth eventually. Without that, Higgs boson would have remained undiscovered.

I think it takes both types of approaches.
We need those who are willing to take that leap and give it a shot, and we need those who cast that doubt strongly against that leap's results in challenge.
Together, this produces volatility and from this; progress.

Though I am a skeptic, I would not wish to live in a world survived by only skeptics.

 

[JaysonR]

Can you describe what you imagine the physics involved to be?

It's always seemed to me that the lack of a plausible physical model for disembodied consciousness that tips the balance of prior probabilities into special pleading even before lack of evidence is considered.

The only way that I can imagine disembodied consciousness (DEC, for short since we're writing it a lot), is in reflecting on how other forms of data may be without a container or "body".

So I look at the invention of vocal transmission and EM, how the vocal frequency bounces on EM (in the radio wave spectrum) for a piggy-back ride; similar to how gamma waves in our brain pile up seven at a time and hitch a ride on a delta wave for transmission (gamma waves being the processing frequency of cognitive effort).

So if I borrow this idea, then there needs to be a transmission source.
Well, we have the angular gyrus which when charged and excited abnormally causes OBEs.

Since the idea is that OBEs represent DEC and not just an illusion of DEC, then the approach I imagine would be to see the angular gyrus as the transmission origin; or at least closely related to some calibration of the transmission.

So, the physics imagined would be that the gamma waves would be breaking off from delta waves and instead moving off to radio waves in the air, much like our vocal frequencies can be packed up onto radio waves and hitch a ride (using electronic equipment to patch the two together).

The test, I would imagine, would place an electrode upon a subject's angular gyrus, stimulate an OBE and see if there is about a 25-100 Hz diviation in the surrounding air where their impression of their self reports to their mind as being (if they say ceiling, check there).

If a change is found, the next step would attempt to disrupt that frequency (without telling the subject) and see if the OBE by the subject suddenly is disrupted.

It's not terribly difficult to disrupt these ranges, and if the idea is that DEC exists floating around, then the consciousness would still need some landscape to exist within, and since it appears to appreciate, and respond very much to, electrical frequency ranges well within the radio wave scope; it would seem this would be the most likely landscape that a consciousness would move over to if it was to not have its resident brain to burst around within.

This, of course, is providing the axiom that DEC exists, and then from that axiom imagining how that might work so as to reverse from that a possible means of testing the idea.

 

[Navigator]

I think it takes both types of approaches.
We need those who are willing to take that leap and give it a shot, and we need those who cast that doubt strongly against that leap's results in challenge.
Together, this produces volatility and from this; progress.

Though I am a skeptic, I would not wish to live in a world survived by only skeptics.

You are a ‘mild’ skeptic, if I remember correctly.

Being truly sceptical is really not having any belief one way or the other. So ‘casting strong doubt’ is not the role of true scepticism, any more than mocking, ridiculing or any other type of putting down of individuals is what true sceptics involve themselves in.

That role goes to others, although admittedly they can and do call themselves whatever they will, including ‘skeptics.’

I just found it interesting that you called yourself a ‘mild’ skeptic so perhaps that has something to do with your personality and thinking that being a skeptic has to do with doubting the unknown or believing the known and not feeling the need to resort to personality attacks on others who don’t doubt or believe what you do.


I certainly wouldn’t mind living in a world of sceptics, but detest the thought of living in a world full of NPDers or BPDers...THAT would be a waste of a planet and certain regress.

Fortunately, it isn’t so.

 

[JaysonR]

More or less, I think we're understood on the matter.

 

[dlorde]

So, the physics imagined would be that the gamma waves would be breaking off from delta waves and instead moving off to radio waves in the air, much like our vocal frequencies can be packed up onto radio waves and hitch a ride (using electronic equipment to patch the two together).

OK, so this seems to presume that consciousness actually consists of or is carried in these waves, which as I understand it, are effectively a gross and lossy summary of the 'switching noise' of the coordinated activity of billions of neurons in the networks of the underlying tissues. At first examination, it sounds analogous to thinking you can run a web browser on the RF noise from your computer...

But moving on, let's assume the angular gyrus (or some appropriate structure) is excited to be a focus of these consciousness waves, it's tissue particularly active. Normally, brain waves are damped by the meninges, skull, and scalp, so that they are barely detectable at the scalp surface by sensitive instruments (e.g. EEG). The strength of EM fields falls off with the square of distance from the source, so even if we assume the brainwaves at this locus to be 5 times stronger than normal (high metabolism 'broadcast' neurons?), the waves will probably still be undetectable, even by EEG, less than a centimetre or two above the scalp.

OK, so this tiny, low frequency, EM perturbation immediately above the scalp is somehow entrained into passing radio waves, modulating them as carriers by some kind of interference effect. One would think such modulation would be extremely attenuated.

What then? All I have described so far is a far-fetched means of making the conscious activity of the brain detectable by decoding radio signals - wireless EEG. EM 'consciousness waves' produced by and in the brain. How could they do anything but reflect brain activity? How they could be active extensions of consciousness, somehow remotely, independently active? - there's no mechanism for that, they're just EM waves. There's no feedback to the brain, and no new sensory modality for remote sensing - how is it possible to sense remotely without sensors? there are no eyes or ears made of EM waves. So how does the sense of disembodiment occur if not in the brain?

If you managed to detect and record these waves, could you recreate the original consciousness, replay its thoughts, or would you just have very faint radio noise?

Finally, how would such a capability arise in the first place? What evolutionary pressures would be sufficient to drive part of the brain to be specially dedicated to this occasional and resource intensive facility of unproven utility? There were natural radio waves before we developed radio technology in the last 100 years or so, but they were random, and sporadic, not coherent carriers. Was it just a lucky fluke - an extraordinary 'whirlwind-in-a-junkyard' effect awaiting coherent radio?

Even with the most generous assumptions and turning a blind eye to physical practicalities, it seems quite absurd... what am I missing here?

 

[JaysonR]

You're not missing anything at all.
I don't expect that such a test would produce supporting conclusions for the hypothesis.
Namely for the reason you elaborate at length about; even granting everything, there lacks a cellular receiver on the other end to respond to the gamma wave stimulations, and there is a lack of something to unpack the gamma waves off of the radio waves.

At best, I would predict the result to show an indeterminate difference where the only difference that may show would fall in the ranges of normal deviation from test to test.

This is simply an imagining of what it would be like if something like that were to be the case.
But if so, then the amplitude should be higher on the output and something in nature would have something that matched as a receiver.

I don't see anything like this outside of biological life (structures tailored to respond to electrical stimulant to generate organic output for computational and actual product), so I don't expect DEC to work out.

I think DEC is a concept driven by evolutionary motive to transcend biological need and weakness.

That said; personally, if DEC were possible, I would think of it as lesser than being embodied.
DEC is a product of conciousness thinking it is all that is and is needed to be "I", when instead "I" am everthing that is within this body; not just my concious self awareness.
Even reaching to include subconciousness is not enough to be "I".
"I" wouldn't be. Something else would be; at the very least.

The old paradox:
If I die and you replicate me perfectly as a hologram or clone, then the hologram or clone won't be me.

The same is the case for the concept of DEC or ghosts or anything other than literally human; and even as human I'm not guaranteed to always have "I".
I could lose myself to neurological disease and no longer be this "I".

I will be something else that has pieces of this "I" in it, but I won't be there.

 

[dlorde]

You're not missing anything at all.
I don't expect that such a test would produce supporting conclusions for the hypothesis.

OK; I submit then that, under minimal analysis, this hypothesis is not even 'possibly plausible', and that 'the physics involved can be imagined' has not been substantiated - rather the opposite; So testing should be deferred until a physically plausible, testable, hypothesis is proposed

I agree about the motive for proposing DEC, it's also a pillar of most religious belief systems.

 

[Navigator]

But it still doesn't explain why OBEs happen to people.

If it is 'just the brain tricking'...what is essentially itself (the "I") then WHY would it? Why would the 'I' trick the 'I'?

And the complexity of the tricks themselves.

I agree about the motive for proposing DEC, it's also a pillar of most religious belief systems.

So we have any number of brains essentially doing the same thing, and not just to religious people.
Even if religion was removed from the world (people changed their beliefs) brains will still continue to do this.

It does not include what was spoken of here either:

The important word here I feel is the word ‘trick’.

I think though what is being implied is that the brain thinks it is consciousness but that is its own self created impression.

Many brains having created that impression of being consciousness are now able to look at a brain and see a grey mass of biological material.
In examining that material deeply, it has discovered that a tiny single neuron internally has the complexity of something the size of San Francisco.

If the brain tricked itself into thinking it exists as consciousness but that consciousness does not really exist, then does the brain which that non existing consciousness examines also not exist?

Or if it still can and does exist, does it really even look like what the non existing consciousness sees it to look like – at a glance, a small mass of biological grey matter – deeper – a complex universe?

When the brain looks at itself, what does the brain really look like?

How does the brain know that what it is looking at is actually what it looks like?
If the brain had not tricked itself into thinking it exists as consciousness, what actually does it exist as?
How would the brain see itself without its illusion of consciousness?
Would it see itself?
Would it know it existed?

How do ‘we’ (consciousness created by the brain which thinks it exists but does not) know whether we are the most knowledgable part of the brain or the most ignorant?

For example, How do we know that the consciousness is the most intelligent part of the brain and not simply something which has come about from an infinitely more intelligent part of the brain and are simply little babes hardly aware of anything in comparison to what the brain actually knows and is unable to express to the wee ignorant thing called consciousness that the brain created?

How do we know that what consciousness sees as the brain (and body and Earth and Galaxy and Universe) is no more or less than a construct of the brain in relation to consciousness which we as consciousnesses cannot see (through the understanding of) other than as graspable analogies (the physical universe) which altogether vaguely represent what a brain actually is – but only as a rough outline, rather than the real thing?

These are all current neuroscientific and neurologic philosophical questions at this time.

Specifically, all of these quandries and paradoxes center around:
"When the brain looks at itself, what does the brain really look like?"

That's a very big question.
We don't have the answers to these questions yet because we haven't yet empirically verified consciousness, nor properly been able to quantify it as a definition.

 

[dlorde]

But it still doesn't explain why OBEs happen to people.

If it is 'just the brain tricking'...what is essentially itself (the "I") then WHY would it? Why would the 'I' trick the 'I'?

I don't think it quite works like that. 'Trick' is slightly ambiguous with its connotation of intentional deception, but in this context it's more a case of mistaken perception, as in 'trick of the light'. It seems that the sense of self, identity, location, and physicality is generated by a bunch of brain processes from internal and external sensory information, and assembled into a coherent whole. This is known as 'multisensory or multimodal integration'.

Glitches in these processes or the assembly of their output can give rise to weird effects like believing your arm isn't yours, or doesn't exist, or Cotard's delusion, where you believe you're dead, or don't exist. The rubber hand illusion shows how messing with sensory input can fool the system into adopting a fake limb.

The body transfer illusion shows how it can be fooled into changing the apparent locus of consciousness. There are various ways to achieve this in fully conscious, healthy people, typically using VR goggles, e.g: OBE Recreated, or Heartbeat generated OBE.

Why it happens spontaneously in some people, I couldn't say, but it does seem to typically occur when semi-conscious, e.g. on the edges of sleep, or under partial anesthesia, when other glitches in coordination of integration and control also appear (sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming, confusion between dream events and real events, e.g. thinking dream sounds are real, or voce-versa, making physical actions corresponding to dream actions, sleepwalking, etc).

Jayson can probably correct any errors there.

And the complexity of the tricks themselves.

Don't follow what you mean by this.

So we have any number of brains essentially doing the same thing, and not just to religious people.
Even if religion was removed from the world (people changed their beliefs) brains will still continue to do this.

Yes, but an OBE is a particular type and instance of DEC; the concept of disembodied consciousness also covers life after death, reincarnation, supernatural visitations, etc.

It does not include what was spoken of here either:

It can't cover everything... there are a lot of questions there, most of which need a lot more discussion.

 

[JaysonR]

Nav;
I'm pretty much with dlore here.

But it still doesn't explain why OBEs happen to people.

If it is 'just the brain tricking'...what is essentially itself (the "I") then WHY would it? Why would the 'I' trick the 'I'?

And the complexity of the tricks themselves.

The "why" is easy to answer: there is an surge or cross-over of information taking place in the angular gyrus.
Why?
"◊◊◊◊ happens".

Things misfire in the brain rather frequently, and the brain is folded up on itself.
Synesthesia, for instance, is nothing more than a thin membrane between two adjacent sections of the brain so that when one area processes information, both areas process the information rather than the typical single area.

For OBE, it's a matter of sticking to the subjects and studying them, rather than looking for explanations that don't have any current indication of being the case.
Just because the experience feels real, doesn't mean the experience is real.

For instance, all OBE's documented so far have been through affecting the temporal-parietal junction (TPJ).
This is where the temporal lobe and the parietal lobe meet up.

If there are any cross-over's (surge or short) between temporal processing and parietal processing regions, then there will be an extra charge in the TPJ region.
What's in the TPJ region? The angular gyrus.

That's pretty important.
A heck of a lot of your sensory input comes through your temporal lobe, and your parietal lobe translates the various sensory input into a coupling with spatial navigation.

Hitting the TPJ with a surge or short (which is right over the top of the angular gyrus) would really screw up the ability to correctly identify where you are and what you sense.

Why would a brain do this?
Again; "◊◊◊◊ happens"...a lot.

The brain is incredibly complex, yet it only runs on a very small amount of energy.
To accomplish the amazing efficiency, the brain has fail-safe re-routing so that if data cannot be processed normally, it still processes the data through the next possible opening (regardless of what that opening may be), and (more importantly) the brain takes an incredible amount of shortcuts even normally.

The resting state charge of a neuron is 70 mV.
That is incredibly tiny.
It takes very little to accidentally fire off a cross charge when those systems are close to each other like this.

OBEs, essentially, are similar to Synesthesia, and synesthesia doesn't always exist as a brain disorder.
For example: early on the brain starts cutting neural connections (within the first few years of life) to create the regions we end up with and their connections.
Sometimes, some of those synapses weren't cut all the way and there remains a cross connection between brain regions.

With 7 billion people on the planet, it could very well be the case that OBEs by folks that don't have lesions in the TPJ (the number one neural finding in OBE cases), it really could be rather easy for some OBE cases to be from a tiny percent of people that have more synaptic connections in the TPJ tying the temporal and parietal lobes' processing together; resulting in an occasional OBE.

Just 0.1% of the world's population would still be 7 million people, so it really doesn't take that many.

The other part is that this just happens; it doesn't have to be an abnormality to brain development.
It can be just a part of how our brain works, and in error due to imagination.

Imagination allows us the ability to place our self as someone else or somewhere else, or sometimes something else.
For instance, we can imagine being on top of a building and have vertigo sensation from this imagining.

How?
Because we employ the temporal and parietal lobes in the process of imagining.
Why?
Because it's helpful to problem solving to be able to imagine ourselves somewhere other than where we are currently.
If we couldn't, then we would be like many other mammals that completely lack the ability to solve spatial puzzles that require imagining what something may look like in a location we cannot currently see (I need to jump over that blind drop off, but what should I look for to grab as an anchor so that I don't fall off the cliff; what will that cliff look like as I fly down it?).

We do this so often, in fact, that we're not even aware of it.
We assume what the street looks like around the turn; we assume what the hall looks like around the turn.
Our brain imagines us being there, and as we approach there, that imagined reference in our brain (thanks in no small part to things like our TPJ) affords us the ability to respond to abnormalities that arise that are not within that imagined prediction and make corrections in our path as needed.

Further, when we sleep or recall memory, we employ this spatial transposition.


So why does an OBE happen?
I would more marvel at how little an OBE actually happens considering how sandwiched the brain is, and how mind blowingly often the constituents that cause an OBE are used for exactly that same purpose.

That more OBEs aren't experienced is a testament to how amazing the brain really is.
One tiny difference and we'd all be having OBEs constantly and failing to navigate regular reality.

 

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I don't think it quite works like that. 'Trick' is slightly ambiguous with its connotation of intentional deception, but in this context it's more a case of mistaken perception, as in 'trick of the light'.

I would agree with the connotation re the word ‘trick’ as it does imply intentional deception and is better left to describing magicians.

Often the word ‘trick’ is used by individuals who call themselves sceptics when they are arguing against belief systems which people ascribe to various experiences, often referred to as ‘spiritual experience’ and is used purposefully in this regard to convey that they are being deceived, or intentionally deceiving themselves and/or others.

It seems that the sense of self, identity, location, and physicality is generated by a bunch of brain processes from internal and external sensory information, and assembled into a coherent whole. This is known as 'multisensory or multimodal integration'.

From what can be observed, yes it seems to be what is happening. However, please keep in mind that what is doing the observing and explaining is Consciousness.

Glitches in these processes or the assembly of their output can give rise to weird effects like believing your arm isn't yours, or doesn't exist, or Cotard's delusion, where you believe you're dead, or don't exist. The rubber hand illusion shows how messing with sensory input can fool the system into adopting a fake limb.

Yes Jason explained about the missing limb and how some people still feel like it is there and they feel the pain as well. Some have been helped through this with the mirror, to help the brain readjust – obviously consciousness understands that the limb is missing but for some reason the brain does not agree.
In this case then, the brain is tricking itself and it is probably not because of any ‘trick of the light’ but some other reason, perhaps associated with unconsciousness...the person is conscious the limb is gone, but unconsciously wants the limb to be where the limb has always been...perhaps the brain is confused by conflicting messages.

The body transfer illusion shows how it can be fooled into changing the apparent locus of consciousness. There are various ways to achieve this in fully conscious, healthy people, typically using VR goggles, e.g: OBE Recreated, or Heartbeat generated OBE.
Why it happens spontaneously in some people, I couldn't say, but it does seem to typically occur when semi-conscious, e.g. on the edges of sleep, or under partial anesthesia, when other glitches in coordination of integration and control also appear (sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming, confusion between dream events and real events, e.g. thinking dream sounds are real, or voce-versa, making physical actions corresponding to dream actions, sleepwalking, etc).

Jayson can probably correct any errors there.

As far as I am aware, I have never read of anyone – who did not at least start out experiencing these altered states while in those states you have mentioned (semi conscious etc).
I have read though, that once the person realises it is possible, they can induce the altered state fairly easily and consciously. Tom Campbell talks of this – he is so adept he can be out walking and do so.

It appears that once the shock of the unusualness (and often extremely terrifying) of this spontaneous altered state settles down, some people become extremely curious and want to know what it is about and develop ways of finding out more and learning how to induce the altered state.

Once they are able to do so, the exploration begins and that is a whole other level, of which – as I have said, Tom Campbell is someone who had spent many years exploring and documenting and I have found his experiences and subsequent theories to be the most in-depth and complex than any other I have read.
It may well be that what he and others are experiencing is The Brain as it truly is rather than as consciousness might observe it in normal circumstances within the physical universe – it is small and grey and is positioned in the head.
This may be how the brain through normal consciousness in the physical universe ‘sees’ itself – or a representation of itself, rather than truly what it actually ‘looks’ like.

It is also able to Consciously see that representation of itself in greater detail by means of instrumentation designed for the purpose, in which it also discovers ‘areas’ where it is active during different processes.

Even down and into single neurons – only to discover vast landscapes of activity within those single neurons.

A conscious representation of something which is otherwise incomprehensible.

For all we know, there is only one ‘Brain’ in all of existence and it looks nothing at all like a human brain.
And our physical universe is but something happening within one ‘neuron’ of that Brain, and thus our singular consciousnesses – our state of individuality is indeed something of an illusion and the information from that illusion has to fit the illusion, and these ‘glitches’ are aspects of that illusion failing to keep the illusion intact.

In relation to the Simulation thread, where everything goes back to the Void, everything Tom and others say about this could all be just One Brain and the AUM(Absolute Unbounded Manifold) is the One Brain and the consciousness is the The One Consciousness which at some point understood its AUO (Absolute Unbounded Oneness) – it slowly awoke to itself.

In terms of normal development, we each can identify with this process because it happened with us in our individual experience as a human being within this physical universe.

The point being is that if we are to take explanations of ‘what consciousness is’ in terms of measuring consciousness within the physical universe and decide that it is a function of the brain which is necessary in order to experience the physical universe, and that any abnormal experiences (OBEs) are caused by the brain and experienced by the consciousness as ‘tricks’ or ‘illusions’ and therefore are not ‘real’ we are doing so within an illusion or simulation in the first place. We are measuring ‘reality’ from within a possible simulation – so we are measuring through the lens of illusion and deciding that what we see is actually real.

We cannot take one explanation for OBEs and not apply that to everything else – to what we regard as being ‘normal’.

Because we just don’t know.

Quote:
And the complexity of the tricks themselves.

Don't follow what you mean by this.

The complexity of the OBE experiences – they are not really considered by those who have experienced ‘Astral’ or whatever name these experiences are given – as actual ‘leaving the body’ – that is just how it appears to the consciousness. This is from data I have discovered in my searching for and compiling that data in relation to OBEs/Astral experience from those who are very adept at exploring those ‘realms’.

Every one of them when first experiencing the ‘Out Of Body’ believes that they are leaving their bodies. I can identify with this because that is how it appears for the one experiencing it and that is why it is known as OBE.

However, what those who are adept with this process say is that they are not ‘leaving the body’ at all.

The body itself is an illusion and they are experiencing and exploring that which creates the illusion, which is not the brain (because like the body it too is illusion) but something else entirely.

Essentially – in my own words – they are experiencing the Mind Of *GOD.

Ah oh...there is that word again – but panic not. The illusion/simulation of the Physical Universe is all happening within – within *The One Consciousness.

And that is the complexity I am referring to. The human brain, with all its experience of the physical universe (which isn’t much really) is incapable of creating these ‘illusions’ – some of the things experienced are simply outside the realm of the physical universe.

They are thus inexpressible. They cannot be described from within the context of the physical universe because there are no words or concepts or physical similarities which can describe the experiences. Therefore the human brain (as we understand it) while obviously not incapable of producing the odd illusion/trick of the light stuff, cannot possibly conjure up the type of complexities experience, and that is what I meant by ‘the complexity of the tricks themselves’.

Such experiences (the content of) cannot be explained by simply conscious scientific observation.


So we have any number of brains essentially doing the same thing, and not just to religious people.
Even if religion was removed from the world (people changed their beliefs) brains will still continue to do this.

Yes, but an OBE is a particular type and instance of DEC; the concept of disembodied consciousness also covers life after death, reincarnation, supernatural visitations, etc.

Correct. The problem being is that most often people experiencing such things automatically associate the experience with the ‘reality’ of the physical universe and thus consign ‘things’ to the experiences based on their experience within the physical universe. – These things become ‘supernatural’ and various types of God-concepts, visitations from aliens etc...all quite natural from the point of view of the physical universe – in order to explain – and those explanations very quickly become belief systems – much as scientific observations also become belief systems in the minds of many (so called) skeptics. However, to remain skeptical is to NOT form beliefs but remain in the ‘I know or I don’t know’ zone.



It does not include what was spoken of here either:

It can't cover everything... there are a lot of questions there, most of which need a lot more discussion.

Without a doubt. I agree.



ETA

Why?

"◊◊◊◊ happens".

LOL! Jas - that has got to be one of the worst scientific 'explanations' I have ever seen! (yep I did read the rest of your post but hey it all amounts to "◊◊◊◊ happens" We want to know WHY ◊◊◊◊ happens!

 

[dlorde]

That more OBEs aren't experienced is a testament to how amazing the brain really is.
One tiny difference and we'd all be having OBEs constantly and failing to navigate regular reality.

True; although it would be a tiny difference with a big impact on survival, so natural selection should ensure it's pretty rare - as indeed it is! Ta-daa!

 

[dlorde]

...And that is the complexity I am referring to. The human brain, with all its experience of the physical universe (which isn’t much really) is incapable of creating these ‘illusions’ – some of the things experienced are simply outside the realm of the physical universe.

Don't underestimate the creative powers of the imagination & subconscious. Consider the paucity of information that comes in through the senses, and the apparently seamless world the brain generates from the timing of those electrical pulses. Consider the extraordinary environments and constructions of dreams.

I see no reason to suppose what you have described is not similarly a product of the imagination - not necessarily a conscious or deliberate act of imagination, but an internally generated construct all the same.