Time as an Aspect of Expanding Consciousness

The Virtual Reality Suit

 Perception is reality. Or is it virtual reality?

That our essential identity has difficulty perceiving its true spiritual nature while experiencing materiality can best be understood using another computer analogy.

Imagine while asleep being plugged into a very sophisticated virtual reality device. Then from the moment you awake its program actively engages your senses with pleasurable or negative consequences depending on how you choose to react.

Depending on how actively the program engages you, your sense of reality will most likely be lost. For instance a simple computer game can completely disorientate one, literally drawing the player into its virtual reality world where one totally disengages from any other aspect of one’s life until the game has finished. And unless one is able to switch off for a moment to re-orientate oneself, one’s sense of reality would largely be absorbed within the virtual environment of the game.

When one considers this scenario, unless the program engages one actively with definite consequences for one’s actions, one would not bother engaging this device at all, and one will continue with one’s normal idle business.

This in fact is exactly how it is in our own reality as well.  It is so because we experience the world around us chemically: whether it is the ecstatic joy of love-making, anger, depression, disappointment, physical pain, and even the feelings associated with being blissfully contented with the status quo.

Our body is a virtual chemical factory governed by stereotypical responses pre-programmed in our brains that ultimately is responsible for how we feel. And to a large extent, also how we think. Falling in love is one of these, while it has been denigrated as a mere hormonal overdose tasked with ensuring the survival of the species, it certainly is responsible for the most dramatic of these reactions.

Thus our body secretes magic potions of sorts in response to our behaviour and actions on earth, and this to a large extent guiding us to take a particular course of action—such as some of the crazy actions we may engage in when we fall head over heels in love.

On the whole we give off sufficient doses of pleasure stimulating hormones such as Serotonin and Dopamine to keep us reasonably happy and content. When we fall in love or have joyful experiences these levels are dramatically increased. When we are depressed, our usual dosage simply becomes reduced.

It can be equated to a person taking a regular amount of morphine to reduce pain that might have been the result of an accident, but then continuing the dose indefinitely afterwards. Should he or she stop, the physical pain would be unbearable as the body’s own abilities to do this would not be sufficient to deaden the normal pain of mere existence.

But why does our brain punish us so by reducing the levels of these seemingly essential pleasure drugs, and put us in such incredible agony as when we are depressed?

While I can endlessly speculate on this, it essentially appears to be the mind’s way of keeping us in the program, so to say. And particularly when the course of our lives are not in integrity with our higher sense of being. Though I’m certain many would not be happy with me for this explanation as they understandably may feel themselves victim of a plot gone horribly wrong. And admittedly, at times our chemical program does malfunction and some rectification needs to take place. Thus at times we do need to assist the body to recover adequately before the pain becomes unbearable and we may literally self destruct.

In Search of the Self

“The will is not free – it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect – but there is something behind the will which is free.” – Swami Vivekananda

For the purposes of understanding how our conscious being fits together, in the Section The Stuff of Life, I have logically framed reality into five layers through which we as the Inner Witness or Self experience our world. 

The Five Layers of Consciousness

 Though before this can be done, we first have to intellectually accept that there truly is such an inner essence to ourselves to begin with. And then, where it possibly may reside.

The accepted scientific argument is that our identity resides in the brain itself. Now if that is so, what part exactly would that be? And if it were to be removed, would we then cease to be in our body at all? And if we transferred that specific aspect into the body of somebody else, would the fact that it now is in that body still make us who we perceive ourselves to be?

In attempting to answer these questions, particular medical phenomenon had been observed that may give some clue to the nature of our identity. It is that it has been observed that persons who have had a liver transplant for instance, had developed the eating habits peculiar to the deceased—such as a peculiar fetish for potato chips for example. It therefore is as if those peculiarities were somehow transplanted with the liver; and hence the liver may hold that particular aspect of a person’s identity.

Despite this peculiar observation, as we commonly understand our physiology no organ other than the brain could conceivably hold a coherent appreciation of who we are. However due to a freakish occurrence, this view also is in doubt. It suggesting that the physical brain may not exclusively hold our identity, but rather that the identity itself is an aspect much deeper and all-encompassing than our mere material content. 

In 1987 Ahad Israfil lost half his brain mass in what should have been a fatal shooting. As depicted below, he had lost all the contents of his right brain. Though the most miraculous aspect of this bizarre occurrence is not that he survived at all, but that despite only some slight impairment in speech and movement, ended up living a very normal life. In fact he even completed a college degree with honours and was very successful in further studies. He therefore demonstrated above average intelligence, while also being a normal compassionate self-aware person.

Ahad Israfil

As we continue our argument it is important to appreciate that studies into early childhood development have conclusively established that our temperaments determine our personalities. And furthermore, that our temperaments are exclusively determined by the type of brain we are born with.

For example, a person with greater levels of right front cortical activity would have a more laid-back demeanour, while a person with greater left cortical activity more agitated and temperamental.

However if anything philosophical can be concluded from this, it is that: the brain may form the initial identity, but the identity that then does get formed appears to have an aspect that exists beyond its physical mass.

In any event this must be a reasonable conclusion, for Ahad’s normality without having these controlling aspects then most certainly contradicts this view. For if one still insists on arguing that such a deeper identity is not formed, then why is it that Ahad had not developed a more aggressive temperament after his accident?

As the right side of his brain was completely destroyed he by implication could reasonably not have had the supposed physical capacity for such control, unless his essential temperament had already been developed and therefore is no longer reliant on the brain.

Furthermore, if our identities were to have been exclusively integrated within the physical mass of the brain, then we must ask: Why was Ahad’s sense of Self not lost? Or why did he not become completely mentally and emotionally dysfunctional? Or as one might have expected, why did he not become a complete vegetable?

Perhaps the reason why this was possible at all is that the one portion of the brain had been so cleanly removed while still having a fully intact functioning portion. And in this particular case it is as if the remaining functional brain somehow took full control and replicated the lost part of his mental faculties. This eventually enabling Ahad to regain back almost all of his former abilities.

What this singular instance does suggest is that the individual cells of our brain must be governed by a collective intelligence which may be related to our individual identities as well.

This brings us to a very important question. If our identity does exclusively reside in the brain as the current scientific argument purports, how is it then possible that Ahad did not lose half his identity in the process as well? But rather – despite only some loss of his physical capacity – was one hundred percent sure of who he was as a human being notwithstanding the substantial loss of brain matter.

While I leave you to ponder this incredibly important incident, note that the information on Ahad was found primarily in curiosity sites such as Ripley’s Believe It or Not. In fact it is viewed rather as a curiosity than the marvellous medical miracle it ought to be. Furthermore, no real thought was given to the philosophic and scientific implications of this occurrence, and what it means for the understanding of who we are as human beings.

What I now realise is that the medical world had no answer for such a strange occurrence at the time. This is because any answer was contrary to neurologists’ accepted understaning of the nature of the brain. It is that who they perceived themselves to be, their identity, was considered to be squarely confined within the physical amorphous mass of their brain.

This singular occurrence clearly required we throw out this over simplistic notion. And I suppose at the time science was not quite ready to do so. But understandably, an important threshold must first be crossed for this to truly happen. It is because it requires the very delicate matter of discarding an old paradigm of how we view ourselves and existence in general.  

Consequently the scientific world was not ready to ask the very important question this phenomenon was begging of them. If we do not really exist in our physical brain, then where do we truly reside?   

The Afterlife Experiments

“The human consciousness is really homogeneous. There is no complete forgetting, even in death.” –

D. H. Lawrence

That some aspect of our mortal existence does survive after death is suggested by studies performed at a number of Universities. In particular the Human Energy Systems Lab at the University of Arizona.

These findings have statistically proven that mediums operating in a strictly controlled environment had gained access to information relevant only to a randomly chosen sitter (the person going for the reading). And consequently must have had access in some inexplicable way to the sitter’s personal information other than the usual sensory channels of communication.

The primary Scientists involved with the experiments performed since 1999, Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek, indicate that their research will “demonstrate that everything in the universe is alive, eternal and evolving”.

According to Schwartz – a Harvard-educated professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry and surgery, and a former Yale professor – the possibility of statistical coincidence in the experiments he and his team conducted is about one in ten million.

In his book, The Afterlife Experiments, when referring to the trickery that unfortunately is the norm regarding most who profess to be mediums, Schwartz observes.

“That's the technique of cold reading and it is, frankly, what most people who call themselves mediums are doing.

“Yet in our scientific experiments in the laboratory, we have been working with a group of top mediums who have consistently received messages, supposedly from the dead, that are impossible to explain as cold reading or any kind of recognizable trickery. We have received help from professional magicians, oversight from other scientists, videotaped scrutiny by professional documentarians ... and, at least in our later, more carefully conducted experiments, no one who has witnessed the work or examined the data has been able to point out any flaw in our procedures or rational explanation that would suggest how the mediums could be cheating.”

Although this issue of the afterlife is an age old one, we have to appreciate that the research into it is in its infancy. It also is one of the most important issues for understanding human existence, particularly since such a belief forms the basis of most religious dogma as well.

For now the most constructive way to approach this incredibly complicated and contentious issue that reason may yet prevail, is simply to readjust our understanding of what it means when we say that someone has died.

Mind over Matter

“For the mind to flower it has to go beyond what it knows.” – Mother Meera

Irrespective of how we may choose to argue this matter, when looking at the reality sandwich, all materiality is simply a projection that can only be perceived in the mind. Thus a stone does not physically exist in and of its own. Not even in materiality, but simply is a definition in the Logical Universe described before.

Intellectually it must be appreciated that materiality is only perceptible because the mind does exist; consequently our entire physical body is similarly a projection, and therefore, that we already are a ghost, even while perceptively mortal.

Be that as it may, let’s buy into the illusion suggesting the objectivity of our material world despite our new intellectual appreciation of the complex underlying informational dynamics that may be at play. 

That an aspect of life exists on the unmaterial side of the reality divide is supported by the above studies into mediumship. Thus if you are sceptical about this to begin with, then this discussion might not truly be convincing. Nevertheless these studies do show that some form of intelligence exists that can only be identified as having previously belonged to the deceased. Thereby we can infer that an aspect of the deceased identity has not died. And since it can be perceived by the brain of a medium, is prima facie evidence that this aspect of our identity is not bound to our physicality as the traditional scientific view holds.

As we understand the proposed model of existence, once the body has died, then it cannot as a consequence have any presence that is materially perceptible. Not even as any form of light energy, for it would be disconnected from its physical energy source, the body.

This understanding which iterates the old purely physical view of reality is highlighted by the MacDougall Hypothesis where Dr. Duncan MacDougall in the early part of the 20^th century attempted to prove the existence of the Soul by insisting that when we die we become lighter as the Soul leaves the physical body. This postulation was made on the assumption that if there is a Soul, it must have some measurable aspect that must be physically detectable.

Despite considerable efforts to prove and argue the results, it appears as if all research to this end were inconclusive. Nonetheless, the religious have latched on to this view that also has informed a scientific paradigm that we somehow have to physically measure the Soul to prove that it exists.

Thus the religious have inadvertently created an obstacle in their own quest to prove the supernormal that cannot be realistically proven by conventional scientific means.

This requirement however does not make any logical sense based on the understanding derived at from our Reality Sandwich. Based on the proposed reality model it is clear that extrasensory perception must be the only way such a presence can be detected, and clearly can only be perceived through the brain. Consequently, that the assessment of the statistical reliability of interpreted information received from mediums can be the only reasonable way to prove that such a deeper level of existence does exist. This of course is as Dr. Schwartz and his team’s experimental results revealed.

Evidence to date based on interpretation of psychic information in experimental situations done at credible institutions of learning indeed are very strongly suggesting that this intelligence has prevailed. And if so, it must’ve been informed from somewhere. And as it at some period in the past was an aspect of the deceased, it consequently must have existed as part of the living being while still engaging his or her life as a mortal being as well.

Importantly, observations also suggest these spiritual existences are aware of events connected to those that are still alive and that the fundamental nature of the deceased is still in tact. Thus they still exhibit characteristics such as exuberance, stubbornness and strong-willed-ness, while appearing to have intelligence and as self-awareness as well.

Thus we can infer that it was the essence of that person while a mortal being as well; and thus that our identities does not necessarily reside in perceived materiality alone; though it does seem to be its primary forming vessel.

Unity of Purpose

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances … could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” – Charles Darwin

To expand this argument further one must realise the intrinsic unity of purpose of life in general that could only have derived its coordinating power from beyond our conventional understanding of space and time.

One can appreciate this by simply observing anything around you. Whatever it is you are seeing requires considerable brain activity to make it visually comprehensible. Let’s say a million cells are involved in formulating any observed mental image. For the image to be comprehended, all the cells involved had to ‘see’ their individual portion of the whole picture simultaneously, and then to collectively have a sense of what it represents as well.

What is important to grasp is that, while all the cells may see their respective portion individually, their must be an aspect of their collective being capable of seeing all of the individual bits in their entirety.

But this is impossible if the cells are discrete entities functioning as isolated units. For what this requires is that each and every cell has a capacity to see both its individual portion, as well as the whole image. This is because their does not appear to be any singular cell that is responsible for bringing the final observed visual image together.

The physiological mechanism involved is that light falls on the retina, after which the stimulus on the respective retina cells are passed on through the optic nerve to the visual cortex in the brain. And although the visual cortex may have been specifically involved with seeing the picture, once the impulse was passed to it, no specific electrical impulse is sent to the individual brain cells responsible for orchestrating the mental image.

This resulting despite the lack of any intracellular neural connectivity between the individual brain cells (but rather to the general region of the brain) for it to eventually piece together the observed picture. Thus it is as if all the cells collectively and telepathically orchestrated the representation for it to eventually be observed as a perfect mental image. This not accounting for the fact that we usually can see it in full colour, three-dimensionally, and with all the meaning that the particular picture may evoke.

On a technical level though, this is exactly how digital optical technology works. When taking a digital picture, the minutest aspect of the captured picture has a unique location on the digital storage device. And where the respective aspect of the picture will eventually be stored has already been conceptualised in the chip that drives the logic of the entire camera. This chip ensuring that the end result is achieved without fail.

Thus every part of the camera is governed by the information template in the chip that controls all its intelligence, successfully capturing a picture every single time based on its predetermined definition. 

But what is key to the filming process is, whatever picture eventually will be taken is the domain of the photographer, not the camera.

To equate the camera analogy to our selves we can view the camera as our brain and eye; the information chip as our mind that is linked to every electronically controllable component of the camera; and the photographer is our identity, the aspect that decides what picture must be taken.

And as with our camera I believe that one’s identity does not essentially reside within the brain itself or in any single part of the body. Though unlike in our camera, the software chip and the photographer appears as one, though one can logically see them independently. And thus our identity is fully represented in every physical cell, though the cell usually is preoccupied with its specific aspect that encompasses the whole of its interconnected being.

However, while we may relate our human function to that of a camera, what is important from a philosophic perspective, is that the camera would not have been a possibility without the intelligence – namely us as humans – that had envisioned and engineered it to begin with.

In the same way, the deeper aspect of who we are as intelligent human beings had created our body and greater universe for its own consciously desired ends. This is just as we had created the camera for the very same purpose.

The One Chance

“A human being is a single being. Unique and unrepeatable.” – John Paul II

Thus our body indeed is a hologram where our full identity resides in our entire body, yet is represented in its entirety within every single cell. And for this to be so our identity cannot be physical. For like our camera chip, it has to be an information aspect that resides on a deeper level that holds the key to our physical and behavioural natures; coordinating every single cell to achieve the overall ends of the entire living being.

One has to realise that – in theory at least – an entire human being can be replicated from any human cell. Or that an ear can be replicated from a single toe cell. This of course is the process of cloning, though based on the technology available, it is only possible with embryonic or stem cells.

Nonetheless if you have it in mind to replicate yourself to so have an opportunity to live again, I’m sorry to have to burst your bubble. This is an impossibility. It is because any human being formed in this way will only be physically like the original, but certainly the evidence incontrovertibly indicates that identities are uniquely forged through our respective life experiences, and cannot be past on to another being for us to coherently know we’ve done so. Thus you will not re-emerge as yourself within that lifetime.

Splitting the Brain

“A mind cannot be changed by place or time, the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” – John Milton

Baring in mind that Ahad became whole again, able to fully be Ahad with only half of his remaining brain, an interesting question is. If we split a person’s brain physically in half, and both parts are able to survive and be placed in another body, would the two separate entities still perceive themselves to be the same person as before? 

I think partially yes as they would share the same unconscious identity and aspect of mind that formed them. Though, from that moment when the split was affected, will begin to experience very separate conscious realities. In this way they indeed will develop into two separate identities living separate experiential realities. And of course, by the very nature of brain symmetry, they will inherit different aspects of conscious brain functioning, cognitively viewing the world around them differently as well. Though I believe within time, as has been the case with Ahad, these aspects could be compensated for as well.

Most probably as with identical twins, they would have a very strong telepathic connection. But the deeper identity that had informed the initial person would most likely develop two separate and rather unique conscious aspects of itself that may in a sense be equivalent to that of a person with a split personality. Though unlike this scenario, the original identity will consciously experience itself as split, while functioning in very different experiential realities.

What we can conclude is that our deeper identity does not appear to exist in a particular location in the body as the conventional view holds. Instead it appears to be represented in its entirety in every single cell of the respective living being. Though on its own the single cell can only consciously perceive of this awesome intelligence through its very exclusive window—as a very singular entity.

 This might then seem as if the intelligence controlling our being has divided itself into billions of little parts as it controls the multitude of activities of every tiny cell. And this in a sense is exactly what has happened as viewed from our material perspective. But at a deeper level only one controlling intelligence exist. Just as there in fact is only one controlling intelligence that is responsible for the workings of the entire universe—from the dynamics of light, to the forces at play that eventually causes an avalanche. 

How all of creation logically fits together as described above might be impossible to logically comprehend. For now though it suffices for us to appreciate that our identity exists in its entirety in every cell of the body. But that the executive or conscious authority of our anatomical being – at least in the formative years of our lives – is primarily driven from the brain.

The Self Defined

“There is but one cause of human failure and that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.” – William James

The clue as to who we may be was to some extent provided a few hundred years ago by the French philosopher Descartes when he declared: “I think therefore I am”.

This to some extent implying that we exist because we can think, and specifically the ability to think about this very illusive issue of existence in the first place!

However the implication then is, because an animal cannot intellectualise its existence, does not really exist as far as it is concerned in that it never bothered contemplating the issue to begin with. It then simply is, and beyond that is oblivious to the greater meaning of its existence—this after all being a non issue as far as it’s concerned. This is unlike man who has developed this very peculiar process of thought which very often has the unfortunate down side of creating more questions than he is able to answer—specifically regarding this very tricky question of existence. 

To provide a clue to this question, it is strange that geneticists use very interesting terminology when talking about stem cells—the cells found in the early foetus before any meaningful anatomic development had taken place. Doctors use these embryonic cells for various treatments and it is believed that it holds the key to curing both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s as well as curing spinal paralysis. This is potentially possible because these cells can replicate brain and neural cells that may have been destroyed by the respective disease.

And the terminology used?

Well, it is that that they refer to these cells as not having decided what they must become. And therefore can be persuaded into becoming whatever cell it is that the body needs them to be.

What this suggests is that during cell formation, the embryonic cells similarly decide what it eventually must become. Thus depending on the exact time, and its location in three-dimensional space relative to all other similarly undecided cells, it decides what type of cell it must replicate into in order to eventually form a complete and functional living being.

We therefore can conclude that: the cells must be conscious on some level, thus having its own individual identity in relation to the entire being it had helped form.

Then again it may not even end there, for as our quantum experiments had revealed, even light photons may have a measure of intelligence. Thus building blocks of intelligence constitute the entire universe, from apparently empty space all the way to the material constituents of the of the universe.

Consequently, while a seemingly dumb animal from our human perspectives might not have the capacity to intellectually appreciate that it is a dog and what the implications of its specific actions may be – or that it even may care about it – it certainly is a conscious being with its own uniquely perceived identity. This also must be so for every single living entity on this planet, no matter how small, or that it may be a part of a much larger whole.

Ultimately, we are not truly our thoughts at all. Or that we exist only because we can think about the fact that it is so. Rather, we are beyond our thoughts. Our thoughts merely being an expression of who we are as we relate to our sensory environment. As humans we’re simply better at it than all other creatures on this planet with a capacity to consider incredible levels of complexity as that demonstrated by the great Leonardo da Vinci.

What then makes human beings different to all other living creatures is that we have an ability to be the masters of our thoughts.

We further must appreciate that the aspect which had recreated Ahad was something much deeper than mere brain function. It was his conscious will. This mysterious aspect of ourselves which through the ages have been associated with the power of the Spirit. In Ahad’s case his will was expressed through his desire to become a normal functioning human being again, and even to excel. Thus his essence was still in tact—if not dramatically enhanced by his unfortunate experience.

Thus we ultimately are not flesh, not even for the fleeting period we may appear to be while mortal. We are not even our thoughts, though we certainly can choose them, and choose to act on them. Rather, we are the awareness behind our thoughts. That is, we are Consciousness specifically expressing itself through our conscious wills. And Consciousness cannot die as it already resides in eternity to begin with—on the unbounded unmanifest unmaterial imaginary side of existence.

© Newton Fortuin – 2006

Extract from Paradox Lost and Found

Around 20 Google sites were listed, more than 90% for television shows such as Ripley’s Believe It or Not and Stranger than Fiction. The most serious article was one found on Aesthetic Surgeon commenting on the prosthetic he received to improve his appearance. The others are mainly transcripts from chat sites. No serious philosophic or scientific articles were found.

Schwartz and Russek are the authors of The Living Energy Universe: A Fundamental Discovery that Transforms Science and Medicine; while Schwartz’s new work is The Afterlife Experiments.