CONSCIOUSNESS, THOUGHTS, MIND AND SPIRIT: HOW REAL ARE THEY?

 CONSCIOUSNESS, THOUGHTS, MIND AND SPIRIT: HOW REAL ARE THEY?

 “Not everything we know is real. Some of them are and some of them aren’t” E.S.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• PART 1: KNOWLEDGE                                
• PART 2: DEFINITIONS
• PART 3: IMAGES

Preface:

All materials covered in this article might seem unbelievable for those of you who are not familiar with these topics. However, the more you read the more everything you
have doubts about will disappear. Enjoy.

PART 1: KNOWLEDGE

I remember how 50 years ago my dad, who was an amateur magician, said to me after visiting the latest mental magic show: everything you saw here tonight my son was nothing but trickery: nothing is real, only your impression is. Many decades later, after I became an engineer, a scientist, an inventor, and problem solving professional, I finally understood what my father was trying to convey to me. I will try to do the same to you. It might be difficult for some of you to accept my explanations, however, the sooner you develop a new approach to the terms outlined in this article, the better.

Let’s start from the beginning and see if can visualize several aspects of our perception:

Stage 1: a baby was born. This baby has no memory of the past, no memory of the possible future, and a very little memory of the present. We can draw a simple picture
to display this situation as follows:

Note that the length of a rectangular below represents the Total
Knowledge timeline a person can possess during his or her life time.

a. This is what baby knows.  b. This is what baby believes.  c. That is what baby doesn’t know                         

As you can see an amount of knowledge a new born baby has is very small. The same amount is what they believe, if they can. This ratio stays as it is for several months and it doesn’t change much for years until a child starts understanding a concept of time, space and knowledge. This unique ratio is just a rough approximation of a baby’s mind setting in terms of acquiring knowledge from the moment they are born.

When a child is getting older his or her knowledge time line moves into a different stage where the relationship between. item a, b and c become really noticeable. Starting with the stage we call Stage 2 the actual knowledge is the smallest among the others. The unknown part is still greater than any other part.

Stage 2: a teenager.  The older baby becomes, the more the ratio of all three components changes. Here is what happens to a teenager and his knowledge span during school years:

a.   This is what a teenager knows.   b. This is what a teenager believes   c. This is what a teenager doesn’t know                       

 Stage 3: a college student. Let’s assume that some of you have a college education.  What will be the Total Knowledge timeline of such a person and the ratio of all three components? Here is what happens to a college student and his knowledge span during college or university years:

<!   a.  This is what a college student knows. b. This is what a college student believes c. That is what a college student doesn’t know                       

Stage 4: an adult.
Let’s go a bit further and see what an adult who has spent his or her life by studying,
learning, experimenting and constantly updating own knowledge. What would it be
his or her Total Knowledge rectangular in relation to other components? Let’s
take a look:

a.      This is what an adult knows.   b. This is what an adult believes    c. That is what an adult doesn’t know                       

Knowledge Timeline

Are you wondering what happens when we put those 4 tables into one? Allow me to do that and them we can see something totally unexpected:

child

teenager

student

adult

 Something very interesting can be easily observed from the last three timelines:

• An acquire knowledge in the Stage 2 is equal or more to the unknown knowledge and stays almost unchanged.
• A college student has the all knowledge components are relatively equal to each other.
• An adult has highest level of knowledge and the lowest level of unknown.
• All levels of human development show similarity in only one component. That is where almost every man and woman is trying to replace knowledge, facts and truth of nature with their own believes. Well, people brain looks awfully similar, which means that people believes are also similar. That is why all blue components in people knowledge timeline s are also similar in size.

Now, we can make several observations from the images above:

1.       The amount of knowledge any man or woman can acquire during their life time is finite. There is no exponential time span of knowledge. In fact, our knowledge can reach a plateau (flat area) where our knowledge doesn’t increase any longer. That is why the knowledge, in general, is finite to every one of us. It is different, but limited.
2.       .     Knowledge that we acquire is growing in time, the older we are the more knowledgeable we become.
3.              An amount of knowledge we did not acquire is getting smaller and smaller with time. It is obvious: component “a” and “c” are inversely proportional.
4.       Components “b” stays the same. This is what we believe instead of using our knowledge (or knowledge of others).
5.       A visible improvement to this ratio can be achieved only by reducing component “b” or even by eliminating it altogether.

Let’s discuss Item 5 above:

How are we going to achieve reduction of component “b”? How can we make sure that our personal knowledge will grow? How long will it take? Well, the answer to these questions is not too complicated to find. All we need to do is to assume that Component B is mistaken and can be eliminated in part or altogether. Why?

PART 2: DEFINITIONS

To find an answer to this question we need to agree to the following definitions:

It is imperative for all of us to use identical or similar understanding of all these terms in order to speak ‘the same language’, as we say. I am planning to simplify the process of using definitions for the words listed above as much as possible, so we don’t get confused.

Word vs. Reflex

Let us start with the most important language symbol, the WORD. According to the modern child psychology, the Word is an image created within our brain to identify an object, a motion, a sensation, or anything else we can consume (by observation, by hearing, by tactile, by smell, by temperature, and by any combination of those). As you can see the process of consuming information by our brain is nothing more than a simple and elementary sensations called reflexes.  As you can see, a reflex is nothing else than
our acknowledgement of any sensation we consume, observe, see, touch and so on.
More about reflexes is in Part 2, Perception.

The more our brain becomes developed, the more words we consume, and the more complicated their internal parts tend to be. Here is an example of simple reflex: you touch a heating element of electric stove. The sensation of this process will create a new reflex consisting of many little reflexes being included into the fact that from now on you will refrain from touching a stove, such as: a burning sensation, you need to put a patch on, you might need to keep your hand in the buckle of ice, you won’t be able to use your computer, or you will need to go to your family doctor for help. What do you think this new reflex you created is different form the simple temperature reflex we have right from our birth? It is just bigger and consists of other reflexes. And, as you remember from the first definition of Word, this new reflex is just a reflex.

Emotions/Feelings

I want you to become as honest to yourself as possible and agree with me that the new reflex described above doesn’t have a word in our vocabulary, like any other word in terms of objects, sensations, etc. However, it’s still a reflex. We just accept the fact that this reflex is without any name as such. What about emotions? Are they reflexes? Yes, of
course. There are about 10,000 known emotions. How many reflexes from those 10,000 emotions could be? Do we have names for those reflexes? Just imagine for a moment that each and every emotion consists of hundreds of little components. Those components could be part of another emotion right? As we have agreed above, they are all reflexes.

Please take a look at Part 3, Item 3 and observe dozens of feeling created by our reaction to external events. In fact, those feelings are nothing else than emotions. By analyzing them you can see that those feelings do not stay in our memory for a long time, opposite to senses, which are permanent. They are temporarily by nature and disappear in time. In other words, they seize to exist. This fact, in turn, tells us that emotions and feeling
are pure imaginary and do not exist in real world outside of our brain.

Illusions

Illusion could be different. The most popular illusions are visual (by observation) or mental (by assuming or using human logic, which contradicts with the nature most of the time). The most popular illusion is an angular size of the Son or the Moon at horizon. They look at least 2-3 times bigger than in zenith. There are 28 different explanations to this illusion. All of them lead to believe that the angular sizes of those two objects are the same regardless of what we observe. Mental illusion is more complicated than a visual one. A good example of a mental illusion is hypnosis. When a person is in the state of hypnosis he or she could have a suggestion that they have never smoke before. As soon as our memory is practically chemical, we can’t forget anything being created in our brain, and as a result it works for those who want to quit smoking.

Facts

For scientific community any fact becomes a fact when it has been confirmed by a number (usually 6 or more) other scientists and their discoveries have been published in renowned magazines. Until it has been confirmed, it is just a message, not the fact. It has happened recently with “discovery” of cold fusion, a process whereabouts a nuclear reaction can be achieved at a room temperature. On the same topic, when we read online articles about any progress in medical treatment and all without reference to scientific research – those
articles have no value and should be treated accordingly. A good example is alternative medicine, which has never been accepted by medical community, both scientifically and otherwise.

There is a classification of existing facts that have been already tabulated into a huge list of human achievements, inventions, and discoveries. They are all divided into three categories:

•       Principles
•       Effects
  
•       Phenomena.

Any of them could belong to different disciplines, such as: mechanics, electrics, electronics, chemistry (organic and non-organic), structural, environmental, quantum, etc. There are more than 5,500 chemical, mechanical and electrical principles, effects, and phenomena presently known to the science of TRIZ with over 3,000,000 inventions being analyzed today. If you decided to reduce or eliminate blue Component C  on your own timeline all you need is to do is to study this science. Read more…

Your knowledge timeline could change it shape and looks like this:

Here the amount of unknown and your own believes becomes similar in size to your unknown   component until you try to reduce them again.

Here is what you can do to get rid of blue component altogether:

1. Stop applying human logic into any process or event outside of human presence. Here is example, which explains this approach:

“If the book of knowledge is on the surface of the Neptune planet, then what is it? Regardless of you possible answers, which will be incorrect no matter what you say, the proper answer is that is and object of a specific shape and thickness with many other flat inserts covered with graphite particles placed in some kind of order. This answer means the following: there is no human who could read this book and understand what it is. There nobody who tell that there are letters on the surface of that object. And, finally, it is total unknown what it is.

2. If our Universe is infinite (it is still unknown) and if we apply the theory of big numbers, it doesn’t mean that there is a planet somewhere within our Universe where intelligent creatures whom we can establish some sort of communication.

3. If we have an ability to think and communicate to each other there is no possible way to have mind-to-mind communication. See below Consciousness for details.

4. If there is no any scientific fact, which confirms healing effect of chiropractic, therapeutic  touch, acupuncture, shiatsu, homeopathy, chi, or meditation, then, probably for you, they do not exits and most of the time are real fraud.

Please continue reading all other parts of this article to get better understanding of many other so–called phenomena.

Well, I need to admit that you might need special knowledge on several subjects
to build a proper opinion about many things in our life – those which  majority
of people have no idea about.

That is why this article is written for. Enjoy!

Laws of Nature

There are a handful number of physical laws that are considered fundamental to the mankind. Let me list the most important ones:

• Three laws by Isaac Newton (Motion – 1^st Law, Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation – 2^nd Law, Reaction – 3^rd Law), 1687  (Watch this…)
• Four laws of thermodynamics (Zeroth Law, 1^st Law –  Energy Conservation, 2^nd
  Law – Entropes Increase, 3^rd Law – Entropy is zero at Absolute zero
  temperature)
• Six Laplace transforms by Pierre-Simon Laplace), it is a function of a complex function of a complex variable.
• Ohms Law in its integral form (plus another 17 electrical laws).

All the others are treated as theories, postulates or hypothesis until they become confirmed being universal. Not even every science is an exact science, like math for instance. Medicine, by the way, is not an exact science. Another example of experimental science is the strength of materials, one of the most critical and popular methods adopted by structural engineering. Another example is the Theory of Relativity. It is still a theory,
not a physical law. We need to see the difference between law and dogma, facts and illusion.

Logic

Logic was very popular in high schools back in the fifties. Today, logic becomes more and more attached to computer science. Many industrial processes are designed and developed using Programmable Logic Controllers where all functions of the controller have been accomplished by conventional logic using statements such as: AND, OR, NAND, XOR,IF and THEN.

Any other type logic is divided into psychological (IQ test), aptitude (logical test), and conventional human logic, which we apply to solve our day-to-day problems. In many instances we are trying to apply our human logic towards processes and events outside of human realm. This is the place for mistakes. For instance, our perception of infinity of the universe forces us to speculate on existence of human live on other solar systems similar to ours. Another example, if we have consciousness, it means that we can communicate to other humans or even non-human life form, such as animals. That is where we
substitute facts with human logic, which are not compatible.

Perception

Perception and illusion could be synonyms in terms of being seemingly identical and often mistaken. Here is a very important statement I want to make: among millions and millions (I am not kidding) reflexes we have developed in our brain, only less than 1% of our brain capacity is occupied. The rest of it is free for our knowledge to be chemically recorded. The latest calculation shows that the capacity of an average brain compared to computer storage will be able to hold the entire Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and it won’t
occupy more than 5%.

Now, we need to realize that anything in our brain, such as reflexes, sensations, emotions, feelings, and even thoughts do not exist outside our brain. In other words, they do not have any physical entity. They are just reflexes. In addition, the complexity of the neuron-synopsis structure of our brain cannot be identified and assumed to be divided into simple
components like we have in our computers, as an example. Our reflexes, and that is all we have, are nothing more than images. Also, we do not have any mechanism in our brain that is capable of transmitting images.

As soon as we agree (probably, not all of you) on non-physical (read spiritual) processes in our brain (read mind) we can make a logical assumption that if you have nothing to transmit it means that no communication from brain to brain is possible.
It means that the following investigation on the subject of paranormal makes no sense whatsoever. The short list of the “paranormal activities” is here:

telepathy, clairvoyance (extrasensory perception), telekinesis (moving objects
with mind) , channeling (mental communication), faith healing, therapeutic
touch, two-way communication to ‘high spirit’, superstitions, and hundreds
more.

All of them have no value. None of them works simply because there is no substance in any claims of paranormal evidence and no documented proof. Watch James Randy on YouTube.com and you will be shocked to see how much fraud is any claim of paranormal. There are several other popular practices known to mankind. They too do not have much sense. Instead of believing in anything you’ve been told or demonstrated, try to search for a proper explanation to any phenomena, which has questionable
appearance. Good example is Uri Geller with his bending keys and spoons tricks.

Knowledge                                                                                                                                          Knowledge is collective efforts of people who ever lived on the planet of Earth. The following 13  questions about the essence of knowledge must be answered by all of you:

• Does the Internet search provide facts or knowledge?
• Is knowledge absolute, that is one and only?
• Does it come from a group of people or from one individual?
• Can someone question the accuracy of any specific knowledge accepted by majority of people ?
• What is the difference between knowledge and facts?
• Does the knowledge become fact and vise-versa?
• How can we distinguish facts from knowledge?
• Who said that there was a difference between two words, knowledge and fact, both created by man?
• Do we actually try to discover the true meaning of the word knowledge?
• Does the knowledge actually exist outside of human brain?
• Is the book of knowledge, the bible, in reality a book, knowledge or both? Maybe, it is just a history book?
• How real is the knowledge? Is it tangible?
• Does it exist within us or outside of us?

There are many questions and there are no answers yet. You need to answer those questions. You should be able to explain your answers to anyone who doesn’t understand them.

Inventions

In accordance to Wiki:

“Invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition or process. The invention process is a process within  engineering and product development activity. It may be an improvement upon a machine or product, or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a completely unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field. An inventor may be taking a big step in success or failure”.

Let’s leave this topic for the future discussion.

Senses

We have a total of 12 different senses, starting with those listed under section Word
above. Let’s identify them all and see what they are:

Senses are related to primary reflexes being acquired with our birth. As an example, a catching reflex, which is a part of a motion sense, needs to be there just to protect a newborn baby from falling. It is mostly noticeable in primates. As you can see, there are no other senses, an extrasensory perception and alike that have been detected in humans or animals.

All of the senses we possess are a product of millions of years of evolution of
our DNA code.

Consciousness

It is the most complicated question since the appearance of homo-sapience on Earth: what is it? In simple notion Consciousness is the ability to think and analyze thoughts. In
addition Consciousness is the ability to create new totally mental images (read reflexes) and to use them like words or symbols. As I said, it is just ability not a reality of creating a tangible product or entity. Ability cannot be converted into anything, nor transmitted
to any other person unless it is a word or a symbol.

A similar example of a common misconception is the word energy. People use this word for describing energy flowing across human body.  Here is what the fundamental mistake of this misconception: Energy is ability to produce work, an action. There is nothing else.

Energy doesn’t exist on its own. When we say “a form of energy” we mean ability to do something. That is why all claims of energy transfer from one person to another are fraudulent, maybe even deliberate.

Consciousness has never been located in any part our brain. There is no trace of it anywhere rather in our literature. Are we in the position to say that consciousness is a reality or just a term, which explains our ability to think? Well, an ability as we said above, is not a physical reality. For this reason, consciousness doesn’t exist in its physical sense.

An example of a similar phenomenon is an Abstract Thinking, a highly respectful term in modern psychology. Let’s ask ourselves a question: does it actually exist anywhere? Maybe it is only an ability. If it is, then it is only seems real in our mind. If we consider our brain as a ‘factory’ of our mind, then our mind doesn’t exist outside of our brain, which means that it doesn’t exist at all. It is again and again, including Abstract Thinking which is pure spiritual, i.e. it exists only in our imagination and not in reality.  The same we can say about our consciousness. It is only our imagination, not a reality. That is why you can’t transmit consciousness including any known part of it and, of course, you can’t receive those parts. In terms of consciousness there is nothing to transmit and nothing to receive!

State of mind

These two words that are quite common among people who say to you “feel better”. What they are trying to say is an offer to you to change your mind to fill better. In fact, it is a quite complicated process as it looks. Let us get into the state of mind classification to be able to understand the meaning of the mind states.

Here it is: there are two major states of our mind that has been recognized by medical profession. It is sleep and awakening. There is also another state know as lucid state when a person is in between sleep and awakening. Read more here…

Some 20 years ago the author of this article conducted thorough research on this topic. The result of his research was quite unexpected: we, humans, have only one state, not many states, as we learn in high school or in college. That state is a combination of many states. On the contrary, there are dozens of states of mind being claimed by many groups from shiatsu to relaxation response and from chi to yoga and meditation. In addition to the universal state of mind being a combination of any other known and unknown states, there is a very simple method to get into any state you are familiar with. In fact, it will take about 2 hours of exercises to achieve that universal state of mind with no brainwashing, no any reading, and without following anybody footsteps and meditation.

If we take a look into a therapeutic hypnosis we can find that yet in the middle of the last century it has been known 12 different mind-states artificially created in a patient mind by implementing  a power of suggestion just for the sake of eliminating several mental disorders, one of them being insomnia.

Thoughts and Spirit

There are plenty of definitions of those two terms however, all of them are treating thoughts and spirit as something real. Yes, they are real. But they are real only in our mind. As we understand now, even the word mind, the way we understand it, is nothing but our imagination. It has, as well as our consciousness, never been found. What do you think about thoughts and spirit, which are a product of our mind? Same thing. Sorry to say to those of you who still believe in illusion and miracles. They exist only in our imagination. You can’t transfer any of your thoughts other than by words, image, sound or text. That is where ability to think becomes converted to a media for transmitting it to others.

Thank you for your understanding. Hope, you and I will start speaking the same language one day.

Truly yours,

Emil Sagal, P.Eng., Professor

Call me any time:  USA 847 693 4308, Canada 647 693 4308