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Alright so I've never had a LD before so this is just from lurking and reading posts. My theory is that DC's(dream characters) are really other people's dream self, like when you LD and you see a DC thats someone else's dream representation. same goes for when you non-LD things start acting crazy because someone is LDing and controlling you. kinda like it's all one world. That's the best I can explain my theory any better than that, if it makes any since I'd like to know what you think of it.
DC are people that your subconcius creates, or are people you allready seen, DC are not other people dreaming, if it was, do you think you were posting that question here?
I personaly dont believe in shared dreams, there is no proof of it except some 2 guys in here... for believing in shared dreaming i need to experience myself.
BTW, the dreamworld is the world your subconsicous or (if you are lucid) you create, you can do everything in your dreams, so if the DC were in fact, other people, they would have total control of the dream too
You need to beleive to actually get one is my guess. I mean, if you doubting that shared dreams exist how is mind your going to be able to create it. I heard a story once of a couple that kept a secret word from each other. They both wrote it down and were able to acheive shared dreams before. In the dream they told each other their secret words. Then they woke up and both knew what the others word was. It was a long distance relationship : ) I personally beleive that the mind is much more powerfull then we can even imagine. But also agree with you on the point that the DC's are created subconciously and arn't actually people. But i'd be interested in hearing some more in depth thoughts on your theory.Quote:
Originally Posted by LipeMarques
-zerk
No.
In agreement with the other posters, no. There is no proof on this subject (proof is not similar DJ entries, it's communicating a secret word). However, it would be pretty cool.
I like that theory. Nothing goes against it, does it?
I also like to think that our dreams are real in some other dimension.
in this AM's dream, i didn't recognize anyone in my "gaggle of gals" dreams, all DCs... but i recognized a certain energy i could attribute to a certain group of friends.
Your theory sounds more like it belongs in the beyond dreaming section, but I suppose anything is possible. I'm not sure of the full implication of your meaning, but I have often wondered if the DC's were actually my mind, or where they there own separate entities. I suppose there is no way to find out for sure.
Try to ask the Beyond Dreaming people, they are generally more open to this and would most likely recommend some fine literature for you to pursue.
Happy Dreaming
Ive never realy given it much thought before but I don't think you can figure this out with an "either-or" theory. There is more to this than "are they real or not?" You are seeing the mind in too limited of terms. I'm not going to go into this too far here because there is more involved than what you think of as just dreaming and this probably belongs in beyond dreaming section.
That being said; me and my wife have had shared dreams that we both remembered in the morning.
There's an old saying, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." However, this is flawed logic. There is no evidence that there isn't a flying spaghetti monster, after all. Rather than believing fantastic claims and trying to disprove them later with evidence, we should adapt a more skeptical lens and view these claims with a skeptical eye until evidence for their existence comes to light. Keep in mind that every mystery ever solved in the history of the world has turned out to be not magic.Quote:
I like that theory. Nothing goes against it, does it?
I also like to think that our dreams are real in some other dimension.
And no, your DC's aren't other dreamers. They're constructs of your imagination. You know, unless you have some nice, empirical evidence to back up your idea...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario92
We are talking about subjective reality here, you can't prove anything.
Can you prove to me the content of one of your dreams?
Can you prove that youve ever encountered a "DC"?
Can you prove that you have ever remembered a dream?
Can you truly even prove that you have ever even had a dream?
Maby I am the only one who realy exists and you are all just my DCs. The only experience I can ever truly know is my own.
I am not saying that we should just go around believing every thing every one says, but if you want to expand your awareness in the direction of experiential reality and you don't want to become an island unto your self, (which there is nothing wrong with) then you need to at least let the concepts flow unimpeded by the need for scientific proof.
Just stop for a minute. Everyone is acting crazy. Even those who believe in some of the crazier dream theories are happy to admit DCs are nothing more than manifestations of the subconscious.
I'm happy to accept and attempt a lot of the odd theories and occurrences in dreams, but DCs being real people is beyond sane and all of you need to rethink this before everyone thinks you are mad.
Mario92 makes a perfectly decent point.
Can you always tell the differience between a DC and somthing from the astral plain?
Do you think that you only exist in your head and that when you sleep your only experience is within your "Subconscious mind?"
If I get out of my body and see my wife cleaning the house in the morning and wake up to find the house clean should I say that my experience of her was just that of a DC?
If we both wake up in the morning and remember the same dream, where we both just eachothers DCs?
In one sence every thing in reality is just a dream creation, I can only experience my own counsciousness. If I look at another person, the only experience of them that I can ever truly have is what flashes across the surfice of my own counsciousness, I can never see them from there own perspective of them selves. So I experience my own interpitation, or creation of what I think them to be. (Does this make them less real?)
All of reality is truly only a supjective experience and we are the ones creating it.
Almost always, yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1495
If she often cleans the house, then yes.Quote:
If I get out of my body and see my wife cleaning the house in the morning and wake up to find the house clean should I say that my experience of her was just that of a DC?
Shared dreaming is a completely different case from saying every character in a dream is a person or entity.Quote:
If we both wake up in the morning and remember the same dream, where we both just eachothers DCs?
I'd get in on this, but everything that logically needed to be said, HAS been said. DC's are something your brain is creating for you to see. When you're dreaming, you're seeing with your mind rather than your actual eyes, but to us it just looks the same; this, however, doesn't mean that what we see in our dreams can be real. In this way, I can't believe that DC's are real people. It's a fun thought to entertain, but that's as far as it goes for real practicality.
Let it be known that, since this is in Beyond Dreaming, I don't discount the possibility of shared dreaming to be real, but DC's are just that. Dream characters.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Loaf
I never said that every caracter in you dream is a "person or entity."
But rather that not every thing you experience in a so called "dream" is a DC.
If you simply want to define a DC as a personal cretion then enough said.
But if the question is: can you meet real people while dreaming/projecting and you want proof before you can even begin to consider it you are going to limmit your potential for exploration and expansion.
I never said I didn't believe in the possibility of that.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1495
Plus one to what Loaf said. To all posters in this thread: Please assume good faith from each other, and stop attacking one another. You're getting nowhere.
Just to point out the obvious...
If DC's were actual people, then don't you think people would have found out a few thousand years ago that the people they encounter both in real life and in their dreams have very similar dreams? If DC's were actual people, then you could expect to run into people in real life and start shooting the breeze about how awesome or strange or weird last night was. But, you never encounter this. Why? Because dreams are invididual entities 99%, if not 100%, of the time.
And 1495:
Dreams can be confirmed in that a truly incredible majority of the world population, in all cultures and settings, experience dreaming, sometimes without even knowing what dreaming is. Ergo, we can conclude within a very reasonable degree of certainty that dreams are real. As for personal experiences, there really isn't anything to be gained from lying about them. You could hook me up to a polygraph, ask me if I've ever interacted with a DC, and the test will show that I am telling the truth. Of course, you can never prove it true, but you can look at the millions of similar stories, as well as some scientific, empirical evidence supporting the notion of dreaming, and draw a reasonable conclusion that I have, in fact, interacted with DC's before.
Exactly.
I often dream about my family and tell them my dreams. They never remember - ever - even if they have had dreams that night too. Thats pretty conclusive to me.
Not to say shared dreams aren't possible - but dreams being a single world that we are all involved in every single time we sleep... no.
Sorry to jump off-topic, but I really like that video, solely for the message it sends. I'm taking a critical-thinking course in college right now, and this speaks volumes of truth to what I've learned in that class.
Personaly I think that this is a great thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clyde Machine
I have respect for all of you guys, If I didn't I would not stay on this forum. Why would I try to express my self to anyone who I didn't think could understand me. This is me, its who I am, its how I experience reality and I am tryinhg to understand how you all experience your own reality.
Its not about right or wrong, its about personal experience.
I hope no body thinks that I am attacking them as I do not feal atacked. That is not anybodys intention. My intention is to broden the scope.
I don't know about the rest of you but I feal like I have alot from this thread.
If all we are ever going to do is to just agree about limited small concepts and never push the envilope then whats the point?
Love and respect:
1495
this all ties into what one believes is truly "real".
Ditto. whats to say that, dreams arent just us visiting/phasing to some other dimension while asleep? you cant prove half of the theorys that most people take for granted. newtons laws have even been defied by certain circumstances.Quote:
I like that theory. Nothing goes against it, does it?
I also like to think that our dreams are real in some other dimension.
humans like to believe we understand what the hell is going on, but in reality we dont really. as far as we know, all of us could be in a coma and our life is just one big long, dream that someday we'll wake up from.
I like your theory, itd be cool if DC's were actually other people's dream selves.
Well, actually, there is considerable evidence that contradicts the notion that all DC's, even some small percentage, are really other people. If they were other people, you'd be bumping into gents speaking in Russian all the time, you'd be talking to your best friend about whatever the hell it was you did last night, and so forth. Consider, too, that not once in the recorded history of the world has it been shown that dream characters are directly tied to real life characters in any way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Skydreamer707
Just because I like posting videos:
While we cannot really be sure of anything, we can make observations and draw reasonable conclusions based on those observations. Knowledge changes all the time, but there are some observations that are very solid and very concrete. Shared dreaming, unlikely though it may be, may yet be possible, but if so, it is a very rare occurrence. Not saying it isn't possible, but I'm really disinclined to hold it to be true.
I am suprised there is split decision to whether or not this theory is true, especially since it was probably just a random thought that popped into gohan3499's head.
Guess what guys? If that applies to humans, I guess I can have a fully interactive dream with my dog, because logically if I see my dog in my dream its him. Theres no other explination at all, right? [/sarcasm]
A reply to lipsmarque: (who said)
"...you can do everything in your dreams, so if the DC were in fact, other people, they would have total control of the dream too"
This is not necessarily true, they may have total control over you maybe if they were lucid. We know in dreams many things can happen, you can actually think you are a butterfly or a cat, etc, that explains odd behaviors of DC's if they are real humans.
So DCs being real does not necessarily mean that they will act real.
Lets look at the phenomenon of shared dreaming, in those cases, the DC are real.
In conclusion, DC may be real humans, but are they all real? That is uncertain for now.
Heres where we are starting to get lost. When using the term DC it does not refer to a human dreamer. Just means a fake character, generated by the dream.Quote:
Originally Posted by elucid
Same way we don't refer to people in online games as NPCs.
Now a shared dreamer is a totally different case altogether. Anyone who has had a shared dream will tell you that even in a non-lucid state, human dreamers will not appear or act entirely the same way as a DC will.Quote:
DC | Dream Character
A character produced by the mind that appears in your dream. They can range from mindless drones to intellectual equals depending on what purpose they serve in your dream.
This guys theory appears to be that everybody all dreams in the same world. We all interact with each other every time we are dreaming. But that is obviously wrong. If it was true, shared dreams would be very common and well known.
we cant just generalize the behaviors of DC, who is to say if they are acting like a DC or not. DC may act unrealistically, and so can real humans in a dream state, so it is hard to tell from their behavior whether or not they are real.
(sorry about the edit thing, I swear I pressed quote)
But in response. We can generalize. DCs do have typical traits about them, and other dreamers do come across differnetly.
If you're lucid dreaming, and you are controlling a DC, who is actually a real person (assuming this theory is true), and that person suddenly becomes lucid, what would happen? I'm sure, if this theory were true, someone would have had this experience at some point, since there have been plenty of lucid dreams reported here.
Do you watch Penn & Teller? I remember them talking about the flying spaghetti monster at some point, and a lot of these points seem to be direct quotes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario92
It's fine to push the envelope, but doing it by suggesting things that are unreasonable, that we can tell are unreasonable with some amount of significant certainty, that's not "pushing the envelope", that's just being backward and unaccepting of clear realities.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1495
There's such a thing as being open-minded and willing to consider new ideas, but that doesn't mean that every new idea is worth considering or is plausible.
I actually haven't seen Penn and Teller...the spaghetti monster came from an episode of South Park. It's actually a fairly well-known internet phenomenon. :PQuote:
Originally Posted by Dogod
If sombody came up with a new idea I would consider it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clyde Machine
Women are really space aliens, determined to seek out and destroy men.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1495
The flying spaghetti monster will join forces with the swimming brownie muffin and kill you in your sleep tonight.
The ~ is sentient.
A kamehameha wave can be unleashed by consuming at least 60 shots of 5-hour energy.
You see a problem with considering every single idea that somebody comes up with? Keeping an open mind is important, but if you keep it too open, your brain will fall out.
Knew it. Lets go post this on Wikipedia.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario92
I see no problem in considering every idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario92
I am not threatened by ideas, they do not diminish my sense of self.
My reality is inclusive and all is welcome here.
I am looking to expand my self, not limit it to what I think might be true at this time.
If all I wanted was what I already have I would stop looking.
Maby women realy are space aliens looking to destroy men. They do seem to have thare own kind of power. (And a beautiful one at that).
Maby I would like to have a dream where a beautiful woman (who was realy a space alain who deceived me and saught to destroy me) seduses me and kills me in the end. I would still wake up with a smile on my face.
But I would not have this smile if I didn't read what you had to say.
Don't you see, every resource I can gather up and bring home to my studio is just another tool in my repertoire that I can draw from when I want to ctreate my raeality.
Its about learning to create your own experince, not defending at all cost what little you and I think we do have.
Because I could not have stated it better myself:
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence
I consider myself an open-minded individual, and I will not defend my arguments if I find them inherently flawed. Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Now, if you can show me an observation that the ~ is, in fact, sentient, I will give consideration to that idea. But, to assume something to be true, without a single iota of empirical evidence and much to the contrary, is ridiculous.
You don't have to give consideration to what I have to say, only I do.
I am not trying to convince you that I am right, I am defining what to me is right, (which apears to be every thing.)
You see; this Is what I like about you. You (the scientist) give me (the artist) a wall to bounce my Ideas off.
Intriguing. But, suppose we are all artists? What makes you think that you are not yourself a scientist in your own right?
For that matter, are we JUST walls to bounce ideas off of, or are we people to speak to and to teach to and to learn from as well?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clyde Machine
Well put.
If you actualy go back and read what I have posted without thinking that I feal the need to convince anybody (even though it my not always apear that way). You (or at least I can) see how my understanding of this has grown. In my first post I said that I had never realy thought about it before. As I did think about it and attempt (however poorly) to explain it I felt my ideas bounce back to me from an unmovable stiffness again and again. This turned out to be a good thing because I realized that I don't want to have the wall of "rational thinking" and the need for proof in my way, its too limiting. If I find somthing and experience it as reality, well, thats good enough for me. The only proof I need is my own experience.
We live by the rules of the reality that we find ourselves in and forget that we are the ones who created those rules to begin with.
I can not even atempt to explain all of this clearly by making black marks on a white screen and hoping that you will desifer a reality that extends beyound the one tryng to explain it; But it sure has been educational to try.
Alright, I'll say that's fair enough, to accept that proof isn't required to believe every little thing in your life. If it were, we'd be pretty slow to learn new things, now wouldn't we? :)Quote:
Originally Posted by 1495
A mind is like a parachute... it needs to be ready to open immediately when needed, but you wouldn't want to walk around town with it open ALL the time...
Every slightest breeze would be disastrous. :panic:
I'm an artist too, and IN MY ART - if I'm creating something surreal or fantastical, I can't be bound by rationality. And I suppose, as you mentioned, I also don't want to be bound by it in my dreams.
But if I'm making an important, life-altering decision for instance, I want to make sure I clearly understand the elements as well as possible, not just making stuff up or confusing fantasy with reality.
All this said, since joining this site 3 months ago, I AM making life-altering decisions, and a big part of that is to gradually change my conception of what reality and dreaming ARE. But that doesn't mean I just accept any and every idea somebody makes up willy-nilly and treat them all with equal consideration. I've been reading up on Shamanism and Buddhism, both of which include lucid dreaming and both of which state that reality is basically a dream and can be altered by we the dreamers. But it takes a sustained effort of adjusting your views of reality, just like learning to become lucid does. It doesn't happen automatically just because one day you say "Hmm... forget everything I've learned about reality, I'll just make up my own rules". Instead you have to begin to really LEARN that reality is subject largely to our intent and will, which means unlearning much of what western society has hammered into our heads form birth (Castaneda's Tonal) and opening up to the natural world and the intuitive mind (The Nagual).
YOu can't just make stuff up and then say "This is just as real as what we call Reality"... it doesn't work that way. Illusion is confusion. It's not about making stuff up and then the power of belief makes it real... it's about finding our way through the illusion... both illusions of what we call Reality and illusions we throw up as fantasies we'd like to believe. The true essence of life is beyond all those illusions.
But like I said, I'm an artist too (we're all artists AND scientists) and I love surrealism and fantasy stuff, and that's very important to me in my work, so I pay a lot of attention to it. I accept it for what it is, and that SOME of it (irrationality) might even surprisingly lead to revelations. But I don't think all of it is equally valid.
:)
Theres really nothing that goes for it either. It would be like me saying the reason people get the flu is because a bunch of malicious cosmic pears that live on Jupiter enjoy tormenting humans.Quote:
Originally Posted by Folqueraine
When I do finally have a LD, I will have more than just a theory, but till than thats just what it is, a theory, but I've been reading nomad and ravens shared dreams and thats basically my theory, except its happening every time you dream. sorry if that didn't make sense, I'm really tired.
Well, there's no proof for the "subconscious" either. The subconscious is a theory, a concept, a thinking model, not a measurable instance, just like "coincidence" or "luck". Your statement is just as speculative as anything else. Actually the subconscious stands for something that is outside of consciousness, something we cannot grasp. It could as well be a shared connection (see C. G. Jung) or an intervention from another dimension or the influence of God. It's kinda ridiculous when people use utterly vague words and try to appear scientific. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by LipeMarques
I have no elaborated conclusion about entities - as I like to call them, but there seem to be different classes of them. With some, it seems impossible to communicate. We may be speaking the same language, but the words are used in a different context, just like it would be with people from a completely different cultural background. With others, it seems no problem to understand them and to be understood, but they get confused when I bring up certain topics and especially if I have them do reality checks. Then there is that special kind of entities who seem to have a much greater understanding, possibly much greater than I do. Those usually appear when I'm causing trouble, for example confusing the 2nd class I mentioned. They usually lead me away then, pretending to show me things or give explanations. Sometimes I cause trouble just to attract them. Some actually try to help, but most of the time their duty just seems to keep me busy and out of further trouble. There is also a 4th class, but those I only meet in OBEs. They actually seem to be other travelers and they often approach me directly, asking various things. One time I even got pulled out of the body by one who wanted me to get involved in their business. But first he asked ME questions about what I was doing in that state and what my intentions were. Well, there is another class I should mention. I use to refer to them as "planar wildlife": Animalistic creatures of low intellect, often insects or small furry beasts. They can be frightening if you're not used to them. Apart from those categories I had encounters with utterly alien beings - nice and bad ones.
That's the true scientific and productive way. Categorizing, collecting experiences, examining... not simply saying: "Ah, it's all subconscious stuff, doesn't matter, all just made up." That's just blatantly ignorant. I hope you don't mind me expressing my point that clearly.
First off, I'd like to open with the statement that there is a great deal that science does not yet understand about the human brain, human psyche, and human body. Much of it is still untapped, and awaits further research. Now, the brain is relatively unknown; psychology and other fields strive to try and figure out the brain. Freud first formulated the idea of the unconscious mind. To date, much evidence supports a similar notion, and not a lot, if anything, says it can't be true. At the moment, the sub-c is a very real thing, generally recognized by the scientific community. Should further evidence come to light, science would be happy to adjust its views on the subject. That said, considering the evidence in support of it (this being the key factor in the whole affair), and the lack of evidence against it, I doubt it will change any time soon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Planewalker
I think you are not quite grasping the idea of the subconscious, too. Basically, the subconscious consists of all the brain processes that we are not directly aware of; things like emotions, memory storage, etc. It has never once been connected or linked to some sort of "outside identity" or connection. Keep in mind that the brain is an incredibly complex structure, and we are only now just beginning to understand how it works. The way I view it, humans are small, insignificant, ignorant bits of carbon. We could be wiped out tomorrow, for all we know. Why are we so special in this vast universe that we can seemingly defy all known laws of physics and communicate via a special subconscious pathway that only we are privy to when we sleep? Really, the notion is utterly ridiculous.
You have experiences with your subconscious and your dreams, and I'm not denying that. But, considering how complex and utterly powerful the brain is, is it so far fetched that it was all internal? Is it so impossible that your brain was able to create such scenarios? Please, inform me, why must there be some outside force directing consciousness and intervening in your dreams?
As Tim Minchin put it:
Quote:
Isn’t this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?
If you’re so into Shakespeare
Lend me your ear:
“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly”
Or something like that.
So just because "not a lot, if anything, says it can't be true", it is right? That's bullshit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario92
"Scientific community" is just another vague replacement for the term "someone".Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario92
Yeah, sure, if I don't agree, I haven't understood it. Where have I heard that argument before?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario92
O yes, it has. I even gave a famous example.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario92
Then I feel sorry for you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario92
Where did I say that there "must [...] be some outside force"?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario92
What we know about the brain is pretty much irrelevant. The important question is: What do we know about reality?
I'll answer with a citation from Aleister Crowley's Liber ABA, where he wrote on Dhyana:
"It is, then, difficult to overrate the value that such an experience has for the individual, especially as it is his entire conception of things, including his most deep-seated conception, the standard to which he has always referred everything, his own self, that is overthrown; and when we try to explain it away as hallucination, temporary suspension of the faculties or something similar, we find ourselves unable to do so. You cannot argue with a flash of lightning that has knocked you down.
Any mere theory is easy to upset. One can find flaws in the reasoning process, one can assume that the premisses are in some way false; but in this case, if one attacks the evidence for Dhyana, the mind is staggered by the fact that all other experience, attacked on the same lines, will fall much more easily.
In whatever way we examine it the result will always be the same. Dhyana may be false; but, if so, so is everything else.
Now the mind refuses to rest in a belief of the unreality of its own experiences. It may not be what is seems; but it must be something, and if (on the whole) ordinary life is something, how much more must that be by whose light ordinary life seems nothing!
The ordinary man sees the falsity and disconnectedness and purposelessness of dreams; he ascribes them (rightly) to a disordered mind. The philosopher looks upon waking life with similar contempt; and the person who has experienced Dhyana takes the same view, but not by mere pale intellectual conviction. Reasons, however cogent, never convince utterly; but this man in Dhyana has the same commonplace certainty that a man has on waking from a nightmare. "I wasn't falling down a thousand flights of stairs, it was only a bad dream."
Similarly comes the reflection of the man who has had experience of Dhyana: "I am not that wretched insect, that imperceptible parasite of earth; it was only a bad dream." And as you could not convince the normal man that his nightmare was more real than his awakening, so you cannot convince the other that his Dhyana was hallucination, even though he is only too well aware that he has fallen from that state into "normal" life."
You missed the bit about "large quantities of evidence support the notion." I never said it was absolute truth, just that to date, there is not only a lack of contradiction, but also evidence in support of it. Pay attention.Quote:
Originally Posted by Planewalker
You seem to be fiercely skeptical of science, and don't appear to have a solid grip on quite how it operates.Quote:
"Scientific community" is just another vague replacement for the term "someone".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_community
"The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method. Peer review, through discussion and debate within journals and conferences, assists in this objectivity by maintaining the quality of research methodology and interpretation of results."
It is not one person, as you so assert, but rather a large group of individuals educated in the appropriate fields, constantly checking and revising one another's works.
If you don't agree, that is your opinion. If you are making assertions, such as that consciousness stems from an outside entity, expect to be criticized or to be asked of evidence.Quote:
Yeah, sure, if I don't agree, I haven't understood it. Where have I heard that argument before?
Where? Your personal encounters? Sorry, but in the real world, those don't stand up for a minute. You'll have to do a bit better than that.Quote:
O yes, it has. I even gave a famous example.
Don't. It's the truth. Have you any idea just how vast the cosmos is? We don't know diddly squat about much at all; we don't even understand how we as humans operate. As for the insignificant portion, really, what makes humans so special? The fact that we can reason? So can monkeys. You don't bump into them in your dreams all the time. The fact that we have consciousness? All it means is that we're the most mentally developed known organism to date. That is it. There will be future generations and future species with mental capacities we cannot even fathom. Now, please tell me, why should we, complex collections of organic molecules, be privy to an immortal afterlife or the power to bend space and time in our sleep, when no other creature is?Quote:
Then I feel sorry for you.
Where did I say that there "must [...] be some outside force"?
Note that "complex system of neural pathways not yet understood by science" is not a given option.Quote:
It could as well be a shared connection (see C. G. Jung) or an intervention from another dimension or the influence of God.
By understanding the brain and how it operates, we learn more about reality; if it can be shown that consciousness stems from the brain and nothing more, it sort of makes the idea of a soul rather obsolete. Not saying it can't be true, but it certainly mitigates its plausibility.Quote:
What we know about the brain is pretty much irrelevant. The important question is: What do we know about reality?
I'll answer with a citation from Aleister Crowley's Liber ABA, where he wrote on Dhyana:
I don't suppose you'd care to elaborate on what this "Dhyana" is? From what I gather from the quote, it sounds like the author is speaking of very clear or vivid dreams. Are the dreams not just this: clear and vivid? Is there any reason to suppose otherwise? Again, it seems you rely solely on personal experiences. What am I to make of your fantastic tales? You have no proof nor evidence; am I to take your words at face value?Quote:
"It is, then, difficult to overrate the value that such an experience has for the individual, especially as it is his entire conception of things, including his most deep-seated conception, the standard to which he has always referred everything, his own self, that is overthrown; and when we try to explain it away as hallucination, temporary suspension of the faculties or something similar, we find ourselves unable to do so. You cannot argue with a flash of lightning that has knocked you down.
Any mere theory is easy to upset. One can find flaws in the reasoning process, one can assume that the premisses are in some way false; but in this case, if one attacks the evidence for Dhyana, the mind is staggered by the fact that all other experience, attacked on the same lines, will fall much more easily.
In whatever way we examine it the result will always be the same. Dhyana may be false; but, if so, so is everything else.
Now the mind refuses to rest in a belief of the unreality of its own experiences. It may not be what is seems; but it must be something, and if (on the whole) ordinary life is something, how much more must that be by whose light ordinary life seems nothing!
The ordinary man sees the falsity and disconnectedness and purposelessness of dreams; he ascribes them (rightly) to a disordered mind. The philosopher looks upon waking life with similar contempt; and the person who has experienced Dhyana takes the same view, but not by mere pale intellectual conviction. Reasons, however cogent, never convince utterly; but this man in Dhyana has the same commonplace certainty that a man has on waking from a nightmare. "I wasn't falling down a thousand flights of stairs, it was only a bad dream."
Similarly comes the reflection of the man who has had experience of Dhyana: "I am not that wretched insect, that imperceptible parasite of earth; it was only a bad dream." And as you could not convince the normal man that his nightmare was more real than his awakening, so you cannot convince the other that his Dhyana was hallucination, even though he is only too well aware that he has fallen from that state into "normal" life."
Well, it matters not, any way you look at it. We'd both might as well be back 20 minutes in time for all the chance we'll change our minds.
My answers to your points are made in the quote in bold. I'll copy-paste them out of context here so that people can quote it, but if you want to see the exact point I'm replying to, look in the quote.Quote:
Originally Posted by Planewalker
-If you read his post, you'll see that he said that there is a lot of evidence supporting it, which is a phrase you seem to have skipped over. This is a prime example of selective quoting.
-While that is very true, the subconscious is recognized by actual scientists, who have real PhD's, and who have spent their lives studying human behavior
-The thing is, it seems like you legitimately don't understand the subconscious. If you're being influenced by outside entities, that's not subconscious. To be subconscious, it has to be a part of you. The subconscious can be manipulated by basically anything, though - if you see your friend shot and killed, or if you are in an accident, having a casual conversation with someone, seeing a tree, though to a lesser degree - all those can manipulate your subconscious, but none of them are your subconscious.
-What is this example? (I can't argue for or against this because I don't know what you're talking about)
-It's true, though. What good have we ever done in the universe? We kill each other, destroy anything we see, kill animals for no reason, then elect people to tell us exactly what to destroy next, politicians who would not hesitate to nuke the world to oblivion if it would get them more power.
-So if, in 10 years, you have some brain disease, and you are told that you're going to die because funding that could have gone into researching the brain went to finding more out about the ocean, instead, you won't be in the slightest bit annoyed?