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Originally Posted by Lorelyen
Really no need....
Well, I'm only an armchair neuroscientist!
Thank you for your response.
Yes, that’s the gist of it. It’s too big a subject to expand here though. I mean, books have been written about it (hugely priced and go out of date far too quickly). Every question that’s answered, everything explained, just presents more questions. People know a lot about brain anatomy and how neurons basically work but our understanding of the processes like consciousness and thinking are still poorly understood which is why I’m sceptical but not dismissive of spiritual (as in non-physical) “phenomena” (putting that in quotes though much may be noumena). Where the stuff of dreams comes from is still a mystery, things that have never been experienced in the wakeful state….somehow this stuff “arrives”. It may be synthesised through the imagination but even that, imagination, we don’t understand.
Looking at the interface with the “outside” (the external particles and waves that end up through our perceptions as reality), sense receptor processing acts both through the autonomous system and the CNS through the usual thalamus/hippocampus route once it’s passed through the pre-conscious defense actions, amygdala/hypothalamus. But the processing that leads to “experiencing” or even choosing whether to bother with the stimuli or not, doesn’t seem well understood. If choosing yes it has to be compared with and integrated with previous experiences involving memory (probably of a far wider field than the topic of the experience itself), other parts of the limbic and plasticity. If choosing no, do the stimuli linger only in STM as we move on? Since as physical people we’re individuals no generalisation can be made about what brain functions are entailed.
It’s data processing to me. Though the processing may be similar the data aren’t. Then, when I read here about expanding awareness I wonder if the commenters means being more selective about experiencing – or less by taking in more in a more general way – or pondering deeper on the implications of what’s been experienced. Which leads into other branches: thinking; imagination; the plunging into our Mysteries through psychedelic action – and on and on… And we still haven’t got into where that elusive dream material comes from; or inventiveness; creativity… I mean, where do my symphonies come from (figuratively of course).
I doubt whether we’ll ever know how we individually perceive the reality we do, so we’ll have to rely on the more simplistic mystical explanations! I nonetheless believe that much spirituality (by which I mean how we live our lives) will be found under the neuroendocrine umbrella one day. Not all but more than we know now.
A most interesting, fascinating subject.
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Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it.
I can see that you really want to know about the workings of the human mind!
You have worked yourself with reading literature on a plethora of subjects from neuroscience, spirituality etc.. Thereby with this knowledge create a lens through which you try to understand what is going on with “you”.
Simply put, you want to know
who you “are”!?
Books, people, give you explanations.
You could have experienced psychedelics(but it fades away like any dream).
You could have carefully thought out/or casually thought out explanations, perhaps tried meditation, contemplation, to understand who you “are”.
You feel that the simplistic mystical explanations are safe to hold on to and you rely on them. But deep down you are not satisfied. You feel that whatever you know is incomplete. Being incomplete you look to the future, hoping for completion, wholeness and an end to this uncertainty!
Until then, you go where the streams take you. And now it has brought you here, to this moment…
There is no need for one to say anything...
It’s your life. You will continue dreaming to be physical or spiritual , to be uncertain, to be seeking and to be knowing.