Pseudoscientific theorist, author and reporter Graham Hancock, whom I respect greatly, shared his opinions on consciousness, saying the following:

"Within our brains are mysterious minds, we have the capacity to re-tune the receiver wavelength of the brain, and to pick up other realities which are there, but which are normally not accessible to our senses or to our scientific instruments. So what I'm suggesting is that supernatural experiences are another modality of perception. Just as we have eyes and ears, and we feel things and taste things, that there is another modality of perception that allows us to tune in, if you like, to other dimensions and this can happen spontaneously to people, some people's brain chemistry is such that they can just spontaneously, in an instant, at the drop of a hat, tune into the supernatural realm.

Others of us may be affected by the atmosphere or environment in a particular place, and this is what I think has a lot to do with haunted houses, that that will have an effect on our consciousness that will allow us to access these other realms of being. And last but not least, the shamanic cultures, shamans from tribal hunter-gatherer cultures around the world for thousands of years, and this is where the Amazon is really important, because the Amazon is still a home to ancient shamanism. Those shamans have developed a variety of techniques, among which are the uses of visionary plants, that we call hallucinogens in the West. A variety of techniques which will re-tune the receiver-wavelengths of the brain and allow us to make contact with, what has traditionally been called the spirit world, the spirit realm, and allow us to make contact repeatedly and in a testable and reliable way with those other realms.

And shamans are the masters of these technologies. It isn't only hallucinogenic plants, it's also rhythmic dancing, certain kinds of music, fasting for forty days will put you into a visionary state. Our scientists who are rooted and grounded in the materialist paradigm, which says that there is nothing more to the world than the material reality, our scientists who think that these visions, these so-called hallucinations, are just illusions of the brain, cooked up in the brain, they haven't considered the possibility that the brain may be a far more sophisticated instrument than we imagine..."

To me, even though this is just his theory and opinion, this is the only and ultimate truth, as far as something can be called "truth" at all. Our minds are indeed capable of much, much more than we think they are, and it is only when we dive headfirst into the depths of our subconsciousness and experience a complete ego dissolution that we can truly start having a grasp at that possibility.

What are your opinions on consciousness. Where do you think it comes from? What creates it? And what IS it?

Thanks for sharing this.

Consciousness is nothing more than colorful Play Dough! God is also a colorful Play Dough!

When big bang occured it was a big piece of Play Dough that came rolling upwards a black hole and then exploded all over the place..

Now you can smoke 30mg of dmt and see this colorful Play Dough.. Swim has also smoked Changa many times and met the colorful Play Dough God, which seems like a really cool dude!

Me and my dog seems as well to be made of this colorful Play Dough and the rest wherever I can look as well..

Probably will not get any nobel prize for this theory..

Where does it come from? Where ..exactly?

The observing body of intelligence that's looking out onto the world from behind my eyes, where does that focal point of localized awareness come from? What's the source?

And I'm not simply talking with respects to fMRI, binding affinities/assays, receptor activity, specific regions of the brains and associated blood flow, or any of the other analytical methods we have currently have to measure and probe into the mental region/s.

Where... e x a c t l y

I feel that it's very very complicated..



Just some random thoughts, not that I have any clue. Surely don't.

<3

There are theories the Big Bang never occurred actually. As far as I know, those people speculate that the Universe has always existed - no beginning, and no end - the Ouroboros, Infinity, The Endless Void.

tatt - I know man...I've been asking myself this question many, many times... WHAT creates it, or rather what IS it.

If any of you remember my trip report with my brother where I mentioned the primordial crab-like being SWIM claims is ALL there ever was, is and will ever be...that might be the answer, especially considering the latest things he told me.

Your crab in my world is Conscious Play Dough!

Well, in THIS world, the one in wich you're sitting behind a screen reading this, counsciousness is a not yet fully understood product of brain activity. Not yet fully inderstood brain activity, that is..

The theory on predictive coding, wich i find strongly resonating with the psychedelic experience on multiple levels, says that the brain is a multi-layered structure where each layer is constantly making predictions about the layer below it. The bottom layer is fed by information of the senses, so the more 'senior' layers are in the end making predictions about the outside world. Real sensory information will correct for errors, in this system.

The point is that this model implies that on a very basic level, the brain is aware of the concepts of truth and falsehood. It knows that it can make mistakes. This leads to the notion of things being real or unreal. The idea of counscious experience 'being real' is a very important characteristic of human counsciousness, i think.

Another aspect of this model, is the occurance of feedback loops. Both backward and forward feedback loops. I think feedback loops play a role in the idea of continuity of counscious experience, as well as to the infinite dimension of it: by the time you're counsciously experiencing that you're reading this, you have already read and experienced it hundreds of times. You have already verified the 'realness' of it hundreds of times.

If hyperspace is real and if the brain is indeed, just a receiver, the implication of that is that this material world is just a simulation though. Within the simulation, materialism is the truth. Withing the simulation, the brain generates counscious experience.

In that case, consensus reality is a subset of greater reality, but both are separate worlds. Both are equally true in their own right, although they may contradict eachother. The only thing that could bridge the gap between the two worlds, in that case, is counsciousness.

Everything other than IT is the resistance of IT, many techniques induce a slipping state which leads to less resistance and increased experience of IT.

I misread the title:

"Graham Hancock on the brain" - as in, constantly thinking of GH -
"as a wavelength-receiver for consciousness" - only by always thinking of Graham can we receive the consciousness wavelengths.



I think Hancock lifted this idea from some other mystical thinkers, like Michael Talbot, author of "Mysticism and the New Physics", as well as the morphic resonance guy, Rupert Sheldrake.

Like Osho said: "There is no god - only godliness." He pointed out some things cannot be grasped by putting it into noun. Some "things" are actually processes and are dynamical in nature.

It's like asking "what is energy?" - can you put it in a can and look at it? No. Does it exist? Yes.

In physics, the purest form of energy is a photon. Although it's a considered a particle, it has no mass and it must be in constant movement at the speed of c - remove its momentum and it will disappear. It cannot be stopped and looked at under microscope.

It can be the same with consiousness. Nature seems to have some basic stuff in a form we cannot grasp with a noun-based language and reductionistic thinking.

Quantum physics got closer to the real think I guess but our primitive language and way of thinking fall short of transcending polarities.

So IMO consciousness might be an emergent phenomena of the universe unwinding itself in the process we call Big Bang, that continues to this day.

What is wrong with the sense of reality you have while you are dreaming? You may be dreaming of something quite impossible, for instance, of having a happy chat with a dead person. Just for a moment, you may doubt in the dream, asking yourself, 'was he not dead?', but somehow your mind reconciles itself to the dream vision, and the person is as good as alive for the purposes of the dream. In other words, the dream as a dream does not permit you to doubt its reality.

It is the same in the waking state, for you are unable to doubt the reality of the world that you see while you are awake. How can the mind which has itself created the world accept it as unreal? That is the significance of the comparison made between the world of the waking state and the dream world. Both are creations of the mind, and so long as the mind is engrossed in either, it finds itself unable to deny their reality. It cannot deny the reality of the dream world while it is dreaming and it cannot deny the reality of the waking world while it is awake. If, on the contrary, you withdraw your mind completely from the world and turn it within and abide there, that is, if you keep awake always to the Self which is the substratum of all experiences, you will find the world of which you are now aware is just as unreal as the world in which you lived in your dream.