Consciousness (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 06, 2010, 12:28 (5162 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: As a side note to the hypnosis conversation, I am curious as to how comparable hypnosis, self-hypnosis, and meditation are. They seem to be shades of the same color, closely related, but I wonder to what extent.-Self-hypnosis and meditation are self-induced, i.e. the mind shuts off certain areas of itself, whereas in hypnosis it appears that someone else's mind causes the loss of awareness. This to me suggests electrical waves passing from one mind to another, which raises the whole question of ESP. I don't know enough about that to launch an inquiry here, but perhaps you do or someone else does. -The quote from Poe (thank you for the source ... the statement came at the end of the first verse) raises several more aspects of consciousness: -All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.-When we go to sleep, we switch off our own consciousness. It's a kind of involuntary self-hypnosis, but how does it work?-Our subconscious carries on functioning, and that raises the question of where the dreams come from: the little grey cells having fun while we're away?
 
A third aspect is the extraordinary one of the creative process, in which our subconscious mind provides ideas, scenes, melodies, images, while our conscious mind edits and records them. We are spectators watching our own minds producing something that simultaneously is but is not ours.-Poe's brilliant lines (not so sure about the rest of the poem) capture the whole concept of consciousness within consciousness, but I guess the religious could take the meaning one step further, and say that our lives are our dream, and we are all God's dream. I'll take a leaf out of Graeme's/Shakespeare's book here:- PROSPERO: We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on; and our little life
 Is rounded with a sleep. -As Hamlet points out, though: "To die, to sleep;/ To sleep, perchance to dream."-When confronted with all the mysteries of consciousness, I'm inclined to stick with Prospero:
 
 Sir, I am vex'd:
 Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled.