Thread: Why aren't we always lucid

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

But now that you've brought this up, I am very curious as to where the 'observer' is located. Is it in the conscious or the unconscious? Maybe it straddles both, or exists somehow between them? We may never know, or possibly science already has the answer and we just haven't got the memo on it yet.

How about this? Without going into the dual/non-dual perspectives, which I think of as more philosophical than physical subject*, I think that there probably is no "observer center" in the brain at all. Instead the whole brain is churning away, using all its parts in a powerful enough manner that produces an individual entity -- a Self -- that can do far more than than any individual piece of the brain could do on its own. In other words, there really is no "left" or "right" brain, consciously speaking, though both sides may make unique contributions to the Self's actions, including observing.

By the same token, I really don't think of the unconscious as a unique entity that operates separately from the conscious (aka, in this context, the waking-life self); instead, it is a facet of the overall Self, contributing what it does to ensure that we're, say, observing as best we can...things like finding and routing memories, handling all the reptilian brain activity, and inspiring emotion, all of which are important to the act of observing. To separate the unconscious from our overall Self, even if you're just doing so to better understand the machinery, is to separate a deeply integral contributor to our Self that is active all the time, very much an aspect of our conscious existence, and not a separate entity making contributions when necessary. So for me it isn't so much that our Observer is straddling the unconscious and unconscious portions of our minds, but rather that we draw upon tools to make and define our observations, and two of those tools are the conscious and unconscious aspects of one mind. Rational** observation cannot happen without both aspects working together, just as, in terms of sentient awareness, neither aspect can operate completely on its own (including in dreams).

And yeah, until science learns to grasp the physically ungraspable, or builds a machine that can map and interpret a brain's activity in a holistic manner, it will likely never be able to define the roots of our self-awareness.

* Though it does tie right into the OP, since, in my opinion, a non-dual perspective is decidedly anathema to our genetic design, which is what makes it -- and LD'ing -- an unnatural perspective that can be difficult to develop and maintain.
** Simple observation, or basic awareness, can operate completely on an unconscious/autonomic level, though: a housefly exercises an enormous amount of awareness, but no one ever accused one of being self-aware, I'm pretty sure.

Originally Posted by Sageous

In other words, there really is no "left" or "right" brain, consciously speaking, though both sides may make unique contributions to the Self's actions, including observing... So for me it isn't so much that our Observer is straddling the unconscious and unconscious portions of our minds, but rather that we draw upon tools to make and define our observations, and two of those tools are the conscious and unconscious aspects of one mind. Rational** observation cannot happen without both aspects working together, just as, in terms of sentient awareness, neither aspect can operate completely on its own (including in dreams).

Well said. When I use the terms left and right brain, I do understand they aren't completely separate, and that they both in many ways do the same thing, but it's a simplified way of referring to the fact that they both operate in different ways. The left brain works 'in serial', so it computes things (if I may borrow the term) one at a time to allow a much more logical and rational analysis. This is conscious thought. The right brain method of thinking is 'in parallel', meaning it works holistically (synthesis) and doesn't separate things into pairs of opposites. I do understand though that they tap into each other and work in tandem all the time, I just use the terminology right and left brain to separate the 2 different modes of thinking, the conscious and the unconscious. Really left and right brain for me are symbols - though I suppose conscious and unconscious might be better (and less confusing) symbols. Sorry if that leads to confusion - maybe I should stop saying it that way. It just makes it easier for me to remember the way each part of the overall Self operates.

But I suppose you're right, that the observer or the Self can't be located in either the 'left or right brain', and that science is utterly incapable of locating it in the physical brain. Sort of silly of me to suggest it now that you bring it up. And sometimes I do forget that the Self is the full mind - the conscious Ego as well as the unconscious. Thanks for the reminder!

This is quite possibly the best discussion I've ever had on DV.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Wow, that is really fascinating! Is it scientifically validated? Spiritualists like Buddhists etc will often use scientific terminology but in a very loose way. I wonder if they're just saying that's the source of the Observer (etc) because it looks like the Eye of Horus?

I'm pretty sure it's all scientifically mapped out, but I don't know the details. I used to be very scientific minded, then slowly as I built my spiritual-thinking up, I found that same results can be found by spiritual-thinking as scientific-thinking, and scientific-thinking takes a lot of energy. I guess in the end I found that to be unnecessary energy to spend. But I'm a bridge builder so I gotta boost my scientific thinking again.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Without going into the dual/non-dual perspectives

Funnily enough, everything you said there works nicely with non-duality.
Indeed I like to take the perspective that the whole brain plays its part in creating that feeling of self. (I say feeling of self, to distinguish from true self). The way I see it is, *everything* makes up self. And that is the nondual truth.

But still the third eye is interesting. If you just look at your own experience and investigate your own third eye, it's very tangible. It's like you've got a floating eye that sees your sight from your two eyeballs, joined into one image. Plus if you really pay attention, you can feel the space of your other senses, and your thoughts, all being encapsulated in this one "eye".

Agreed - this is an amazing discussion.

Originally Posted by slash112

I used to be very scientific minded... But I'm a bridge builder so I gotta boost my scientific thinking again.

Yes, it's about keeping the 2 in dynamic balance. Your understanding will shift one way at times and then the other, but the point is when that happens to try to nudge it back toward holistic balance. There's a very strong tendency for each view - the logical (conscious) and the spiritual (unconscious) to each try to dominate and wage war on the other, so it can be difficult to find that balance.

Originally Posted by slash112

But still the third eye is interesting. If you just experimentally investigate your own third eye, it's very tangible. It's like you've got a floating eye that sees your sight from your two eyeballs, joined into one image. Plus if you really pay attention, you can feel the space of your other senses, and your thoughts, all being encapsulated in this one "eye".

Very true. I did some meditation for a while, and also messed with Chakra meditation and a few related things. I definitely became aware of the Observer. Very interesting what you say about it being able to see the views of both eyes merged into one. I don't really want to get into it too deep, but if you've ever heard of experiments done on split-brain patients, who had the Corpus Callosum severed (nerve bundle connecting left and right hemispheres), this is where scientific understanding about the differences between left brain and right brain thinking emerged from. And interestingly, each eye is connected to one hemisphere, though the connection is crossed (left eye connects with right hemisphere and vise versa). Fascinating stuff, but like I said, I don't want to write it all up here. Do a search if you're interested.

Indeed, there seems to be a balance in all things to be found. I'm getting better and better at finding these balances. And in fact I do still use scientific thinking a fair amount, come to think of it. I jump from perspective to perspective and compare, all the time. I do it naturally for communication purposes, but there are elements of scientific thinking involved in that process.

Wow, that's fascinating, about the split-brain!

Here's a quote from a website I was reading just there:

Show a familiar face to left eye, and they'll recognize it, picking up a picture of the person, but they'll say they saw nothing. Show the face to the right eye, and they'll say that they saw a face, but it will just be a face - not a face they know.

That pretty much sums it up. Really fascinating.

Somewhat related: My ex's brother, half his brain is dormant. I can't remember which side. But his body functions just fine and is really smart. Hardly leaves his bedroom, but that's no different from me right now xD
I think one of his eyes is almost blind, but not fully blind, I think he can see blurs out of it.

What really blows me away about the right brain/ left brain thing is this video, a neuroscientist named Jill Bolte Taylor who had a stroke that cut off blood flow to the left side of her brain, and what she experienced as a result:

Haaaaaaaaaaaaah! I'm not even half way in and this is amazing.
Stoke Induced Enlightenment! That's a new one to me!

Third eye stuff again Nice thread. There was a long one on the topic a few months ago slash, I'm sure you'll find it if you just search for third eye

When I did my presentation on third eye stuff this fall I did read a bit on the eye of horus. It's definitely intriguing. But I found that it only resembles the eye of horus a little bit in certain models. In an actual cut brain however, they don't look the same at all. Too bad the egyptians used hieroglyphs. Seems like we could learn so much from them if they hadn't.

I agree with the observer not really being subject to time/space. I like to think of it more like a lightbulb, inside a globe thats full of tiny holes. The universe being the globe, the holes are entities with senses. And the observer shines through all of them. I don't think it requires a "seat" in the brain. If there are senses then there are holes and the light should be able to pierce through, no?

Watching that video makes me realize that right brain and left bran are more than just symbols - they really are very different minds and personalities. It's only through the Corpus Callosum, - Hermes the messenger of the Gods, that they communicate.

Darkmatters, shortly after I posted that reaction, I realized that her experience sounded almost exactly like my experience that landed me in mental hospital. But it happened after I was already enlightened, it was almost like a second "first time enlightenment", it was truly amazing, but my family were scared for my life, basically.

I can't thank you enough for posting that video because as it just so happens, it is perfect for me to send to my dad, to help him understand. We were just talking today about my spirituality and he's pure worried about it. It's not easy to explain this stuff to him cause he butts in and I lose my train of thought, and when I do say something important it goes right over his head.

Seriously, this video is perfect. It gave me shivers.

LighrkVader: That's an awesome perspective! Completely agree with it!



EDIT: Btw, at this moment in time, I'm 2 likes away from 1111, and you, Darkmatters are 2 likes away from 5555

EDIT 2:
Angel number 5555 means:
"a message from your angels that it is time to break free from old restraints and constraints that have held you back in the past."

Angel number 1111 means:
"Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts are manifesting instantly into form. Focus only upon your desires and not upon your fears."

Dunno bout you but, my message resonates with me. I realized earlier that I manifested strawberries magically into my life today, by an intention made yesterday.
(btw, these angel number messages are to be read lightly. It's the energy behind the message that matters. Like, you might already be breaking free from constraints, and the angels are supporting you)

It's fun to look at angel numbers xD I test for "more than coincidence" all the time. It's like a side-investigation I've got going on.

That does resonate with me - I've been feeling like I've almost absorbed enough of this Jungian stuff to stop all the reading (well ok, at least slow way down on it) and start to put it into practice. Oh, also there are other ways in which it's getting to be time to change my life as well.

I just noticed earlier today, on this thread in fact, that my posts are approaching 6,666. I also noticed at the same time how close my likes are to 5,555. I suppose they sort of balance each other out..

EDIT: There's always been a close association between what we call madness and enlightenment, aka spirituality or prophecy, as in direct communication with the Gods or spirits. Mental illnesses of certain types seem to bring enlightenment, just as psychoactives like Ayahuasca seem to also bring enlightenment but at a great price of temporary pain and illness.

2ND EDIT: I just realized - and I'm not saying this is definitely what happened to you (I have no idea), but I think it's worth mentioning. Sometimes during the process of Individuation people experience temporary psychoses or strong neuroses, because the breaking-out of Archetypal forces can be too much or come on too fast. In other words, it's possible that a 'mental illness' could actually be enlightenment that sort of put too much pressure on you too fast.

Angel number 6666:
"The repeating number sequence 666 tells us that it is time to focus on your personal spirituality in order to balance and heal any issues in your life."

Repeating 6's usually refers to an excess of materialism in one's life. It's time to free yourself a bit from the worries of materialistic things, like money worries.
Sometimes it means it's time to shift inward instead of looking for answers outwardly all the time. Which sounds like what you just said.

But I mean, I'm gonna reach 6666 one day too, but the question is, will it be so synchronistic? Will it pop out the page at me?

EDIT: Ah yes indeed, I've since heard of many cases of psychosis (and other mental problems) linked to spirituality.

EDIT 2: Ahh yeah I've thought about that before. Indeed I think that's what happened. I dived into it full-force. (with the power of sleep deprivation to amplify it)

I'm not Liking that post so you can remain @ 1111 for a while - and when I get one more we'll both be in sync.

Yas, we're in sync! the angels are talkin to us

EDIT: "Pics or it didnt happened":

Awesome!! Well done! And I still ain't Liking it... at least not officially!

Some little bugger is gonna come along and screw it up eventually.

Also, about the video, I'm just thinking before I do send it to my dad, I think he'll still find a way to think enlightenment is a bad thing through-and-through.
I mean c'mon, any normal person would join the dots. Illness = enlightenment. Enlightenment = illness.

Which is of course very short sighted.

It's only through the Corpus Callosum, - Hermes the messenger of the Gods, that they communicate.

Damn.. Hermes getting all the kudos I didn't know he had his own brain part. Elements, Planets, Gods, Brain parts... Leave some for the rest of us Hermes! Why bother to become a saint if all the good stuff has already been named. YOU'LL MAKE A DEMON OF ME HERMES!!!

I am slowly getting into hermeticism. Reading about the basic prinicples. I find it's dificult to set it all into a single view, but it gradually takes form and some of the teachings are pretty fun to use.

For the video what she said about her hands looking like primitive claws made me giggle. That's something that always strikes me on psychedelics, or just some times when I'm feeling especially "right-brainy"(as I imagine she might call it). Hands really look like something dinosaur would have. Right now I can't see it, but if I took some time to get in the zone.... dinosaur hands.

It's fascinating how enthusiastic and emotional she is about sharing her view. Normally I tend to lean more towards the side that says: "Lets not give away the show/let the cat out of the bag". But in the end it doesn't matter, it's a cool story, and she seems like she's really expressing herself, so I like it.

Slash: That's a difficult situation to deal with. I don't know exactly what you are trying to make your father understand. But it sounds a bit like you want to speak the unspeakable. I won't tell you what to do. I don't know your situation. But remember that a lot of the things she said sounds like nothing at all unless you already know what she's talking about. There are very few who can effectively communicate these things with words. And this woman is a scientist. Not a master of words. In the end your father might just see a woman flailing her arms in the air in joy.

Then again maybe there is not a better thing to show... if he can accept that what you have might be beautiful, even though it doesn't make sense to him.

idk. haha never mind me

Edit: As for the light and the globe. I think that might be something I heard in some Alan Watts lecture a very long time ago that stuck with me. An example of a person I consider as a master of the art of communicating these things.

Hermeticism is cool, I wanna look more into it.

And you're right I do try to communicate something that's beyond words. More and more I find it's actually part of my life purpose.
But if I can at least communicate the benefits, it would put a good dent in it.

But yeah I don't think I'm gunna send him the video. It could do more harm than good, I'm best just letting it go for now until a proper solution unfolds. This will come through my balancing back towards scientific thinking. Get that left-brain workin'

A dream is like an octopus. Like an octopus, a dream can appear like many things. It can be difficult to identify a dream or an octopus when they appear like something other than what our schema of them dictates.

Just getting back to the original question, I think there's maybe a simple answer to why we don't always get lucid when dreaming, and that is just simply that we might otherwise consciously confuse dreams for real life.
That makes sense to me, because if we were normally lucid during dreams, that is, we had our full consciousness, memories and sense of self, we would not be able to distinguish dreams from real life, and then might end up thinking we could fly off a cliff in waking life, or approach a tiger etc..
Having a suppressed consciousness during dreams avoids this confusion, and also makes dreams less frightening.

I like that. It kinda bends into a very strange but also fun idea on evolution and epistemology: As we all know natural selection only works towards one goal... To copy the genetic material as efficiently as possible. In other words, the organisms experience mirroring the external reality 100% is secondary to reproduction.

Now, common sense tells us that successful reproduction depends on a realistic world view. But that's not necessarily true. There could be strange phenomena in the "real/unseen" world that would be unpractical or straight up lethal to observe as they truly are. Could be a trap, or maybe just something so incomprehensible, confusing and maybe mezmerizing that it damages the organisms focus on reproduction and survival.
If these things could be filtered to appear as: a huge vortex in the water, a fire, a tiger or maybe just nothing at all... problem solved. It's a funny thought that you can take really, really far.

This can also be applied to dreaming. And lucid dreaming would defeat the purpose.

^^ That's all good, but I think there might be one more step to consider here:

Natural selection as I understand it (organisms who find better ways to survive tend to be more likely to breed, so their "better ways" find their way into the common genome) pretty much doesn't work for humans anymore. Thanks to medicine, technology, and civilization in general, pretty much anyone can breed with anyone, and mutations -- even helpful ones -- don't tend to hold the sort of sway they once did... in other words, we've gotten smart enough to survive without the help of natural selection, so we've collectively discarded it. [We didn't discard evolution, of course; we just redefined its parameters,,, but that's probably for another thread]

So, to your point I think: Though it is still quite handy for other things, like connecting with our unconscious activity, or helping ourselves with dream interpretation, the "natural" stuff you list above really isn't needed for survival or natural selection anymore. We've become collectively bright enough to differentiate -- as say, a pre-homo sapiens primate never could have -- our dreaming worlds from our waking-life worlds, with lucidity being the decision to make that differentiation. And as lucid dreamers we have consciously risen above the rules laid down by eons of evolution, but still must contend with them (or, perhaps, defy them) in order to put our dreams to a new, decidedly unnatural use.

You're absolutely right of course We are at the point where the we can imagine our DNA handing the keys over to the brain saying.. I'm proud of you, remember to not always use a condom. hahaha.

Thats why I wrote organisms... if a mechanism like this is real it would have to be much, much older than humans. But I'm not so sure it would have been selected away from humans if it was already there. The person who is able to see all sorts of weird stuff that nobody else sees would probably not be very succesfull in reproducing. ESPECIALLY not in humans... -"did you hear that crazy kid Borgar walked straight into a burning house mumbling something about being Gods chosen one.. I mean, everybody knew he was crazy...but really?"

And depending on how much we assume is filtered out and altered, life might be straight up impossible or incomprehensible without the filter.

I'm a bit unsure if I adressed your point about what you're saying in your last paragraph...