Experience:

Okay, I was lying on my bed doing the "spiritual exercises" trying to get out of my body. I wasn't having much luck.

I could feel and see my astral arms and legs floating upward but I could not pop completely out.

I was becoming mentally exhausted trying to get out of my physical body. So I gave up and relaxed. My astral hands and legs fell back down into my physical form.

I decided to get up and do something else. But there was a problem. My physical body was totally asleep and only my mind was wide awake. This is called "level 10."

I thought I (my body) was awake. It was not. This means that it does not respond to the brain's commands to move. It is like when you are dreaming, and in the dream you have the illusion of moving through space. If your body responded to those dream brain commands you might be sleep walking all over the place.

But I wanted to get up. Suddenly I was up. Way up. I found myself up in the sky above the cloud cover. Looking down I could see the earth below and fluffy clouds about 20 feet below me. I was certain that somehow I had projected my entire physical body into the air and I was about to fall to my death.

It was that real.

I said to myself, "Oops... I don't belong here..." Then suddenly in the blink of an eye I was in the grass on the ground. I must have been very small because the grass was taller than me and it was like I was in a forest. Like the scene from "Honey I shrunk the kids" when they were lost in their lawn.

I thought, "I don't belong here either..." then in the blink of an eye, once again I was lying on my bed.

That is my experience of being aware or shifting point of view... without the use of the body or any of the (physical) senses. I was the observer... nothing more.

P.S. When in that state of awareness, this is sometimes called "remote viewing" or "soul travel" and you can direct your attention 360 degrees in any direction.

What it is truly is simply a shifting of attention or shifting of consciousness.

You see without eyes.

JB

Jb and James,

Webster indeed has a good definition of awareness. I would like for you two to look at this definition intently. The following contains a much more thorough definition which is had simply by using the different definitions of the specific terms contained within the definition of awareness. As this is recorded, I will re-write the definition, while replacing those terms with their own definition.

This should increase the awareness level here.

1.) Awareness... having knowledge of(concerning) something

2.) awareness... having the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through the use of reason concerning something

3.) awareness... having the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through the use of the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking, especially in orderly rational ways, concerning something


Awareness is necessarily dependent upon conscious thought processes, by definition.

I hold that perception is not, and it is therefore falsely defined as to attain awareness. I will irrefutably display this to be the case right here in this post.

As a matter of fact the attaining of awareness is actually consciousness. The state of being aware.


Think about this...



A Venus flytrap.



Does it have awareness, by Webster's definition? No!!!

Does it have perception, by Webster's definition? No!!!

A Venus flytrap clearly displays the ability to sense(perceive) a fly landing on itself. It then instinctively closes itself upon the victim, which is in turn digested.

Now then, was the Venus flytrap attaining knowledge through reason? Did it think in an orderly and rational way? Was there one single element of a conscious thought process involved, by definition?

Of course not, therefore, since none of the necessary elements which comprise the definition of awareness(as shown above) do not exist, then it only follows that awareness cannot either.

However, the Venus flytrap obviously unconsciously perceived the fact that there was a fly which had landed upon itself, and it then reacted instinctively, based upon this perception of actual reality, which came through it's physical senses.

I believe that this clearly shows that perception can and does exist without awareness, irrefutably so.

Unless of course, you choose to not honour Webster's definition of awareness.

Curiously enough, the definition of aware is as follows...

Aware, having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge.



Of course awareness implies the observer, as does perception.

Perception equates to the experience?

I suggest you two rethink that one.

Perception equates to the sensing of the experience not the experience itself.

Awareness equates to the understanding of that which is being perceived.



observing to watch carefully especially with the attention to detail or behaviour for the purpose of arriving at judgement

An observer would be observing.

So then you have concluded that without an observer there is no experience?

What do you think about all of the situations where observation is not a part of an actual experience?

Observation necessarily depends upon cognitive thinking skills.

So then, all experience contain these, or there is no experience, according to your descriptions, which I hold have no actual basis in fact.

I have no problem with this Michael,

Whatever you'd like to set forth as a premise is fine with me.

I offered you that a long time ago.

So where are you going with this?

What's the epiphany?

What's your point?

You seem to be demanding that only living beings can percieve.

And that awareness can only arise in living beings that have brains.

Is that your original epiphany?

Creative:

All things are conscious to some degree.

Consciousness comes in degrees. Awareness comes in degrees.

Observation does not necessarily imply vision.

I define awareness on the quantum level.
Awareness = The ability to sense vibration.

Webster defines awareness from the viewpoint of the human experience.

I am defining it on a quantum level where all things in existences are made up of vibrations and frequencies.

A Venus fly trap is aware and conscious and it senses the vibration of the fly and it responds. It has knowledge of the fly.




"Reason" is not required. Only awareness is required. (Reason was in your #2. definition)

1.) Awareness... having knowledge of(concerning) something.

The Venus fly trap is aware, has knowledge of the fly, senses it and responds.




By my definition ~that I have given you before, ~yes there is consciousness. Yes there is thought.

Thoughts are waves. (A thought is a traverse self propagating electromagnetic wave)

(I said I had respect for Webster, I did not say I worshiped him like a god.)

You would probably need to get down closer to the quantum level of reality to understand what I am talking about.

JB

His point? I'm not really sure what it is except that he may be looking for proof one way or another to support his beliefs or disprove them.

Or maybe he just can't stand loosing an argument and is trying to convince us that there is no intelligent consciousness or source behind all of creation.

Well if that is what you are doing Creative, I don't think you will find the answers in the Webster dictionary.

Personally, I cannot imagine a plant responding to sunlight if it is not in some small way aware of that life giving energy.

Consciousness exists in all things, in all degrees. The universe is alive and conscious.

That is my conclusion.

I am re-reading the book "The Holographic Universe." If I have to adjust my world view again, I'll let you know.

JB

Absolutely. Webster's dictionary isn't a precise science book, it's just a dictionary for laymen.



Again we're on the same page.

If a android every becomes alive and conscious it will do it on it's own. When I say that I could build one, what I really mean is that I could give it all the right stuff. It's ultimately up to the machine to become aware. In others words, all I would do is give it everything it needs to perceive, and think about those perceptions. It would be up to the android to say, "Hey! I'm alive!".

Would that very realization constitute consciousness?

James...



I am simply attempting to provide a sound argument which makes a valid distinction between those two concepts. This could the basis of a very interesting inductive ontological construct.


JB...



Your definitions seem to be supportive of your belief structure. This, in and of itself, I have no issue with... just so you know.

You claim all things are conscious to some degree?

This is interestingly curious to me, yet I cannot find the connection which you make.

Consciousness is the quality or state of being aware.

Awareness is not the same as aware, and the former is entirely dependent upon conscious thought processes regarding the perception of experience, whereas the latter is only dependent upon an unconscious perception(sensing) of, at the least.

Being aware without conscious knowledge is possible, by definition. Witness the previous example of the Venus flytrap. A plant has none of the physical elements required to facilitate a conscious thought process(which is required for awareness), yet this one does display a perceptive faculty.

Curious indeed.




Why not? How else is anything observed, by definition?

The only Webster's definition I have logically found flaw within is the one for perceive(perception). I have displayed why this is the case.

The following definition given in your post is highly suspect for accuracy.



That actually is a fine definition for perception, as it does not require consciousness, which is only had through sensation, emotion, volition, and most importantly conscious thought.




The above quote has truth in fact contained within it. I underlined that truth accordingly. The rest is merely unsupported opinion, as far as I can tell. Do you have the ability to support this conclusion with valid and concise evidence?

I find no evidence which suggests that a plant can be aware, conscious, or capable of attaining a mental state which is required to attain knowledge of any kind.

I find those quantum leaps in logic unsupported by reason.

Reason is absolutely required for awareness. The definition itself describes this. That second definition replaced the word knowledge with it's own definition. The third did the same with reasoning.

Awareness... by it's own definition... requires knowledge which requires reason.

Therefore, reasoning is absolutely required for knowledge which is required for awareness.

I don't see any basis for any ontological construct here. Construct for what? What's your goal? What are you trying to construct?

It just appears to me that all you could possibly come up with is your own dictionary.



This is where you go off the deep end Michael.

You're demanding that perception be awareness (the ability to sense vibration), yet you refuse to recognize that it as such.

You claim that computers can't sense vibration, and what you mean by that is that they aren't aware of it.

Clearly computers can sense vibration. You can connect sensors up to a computer and the computer will respond to the input signals of those sensors.

That's 'sensing' vibration in the must technical sense.

You're trying to claim that it doesn't count because the computers can't really be 'aware' of the sensations like living things are.

But all you're really saying there is that living things are 'aware' of what they sense.

It's just a semantic merry-go-round you're on. It's not going anywhere but in circles.

The only way you can get off the merry-go-round is to accept that computers can indeed percieve. Adjust you're definition of percieve accordingly. Recognize that things like plants and amoebas etc, aren't truly any differnt from comptuers.

If you do that, then you can step off the merry-go-round and maybe construct something meaningful. But until you do that, you're just chasing your own tail. You're just demanding that you begin with beings that are already aware of what they sense.

Computers???

Why are words that I quoted directly from the most popular and widely accepted dictionary in the world regarding the English language misconstrued as me going off the deep end?



You two were the ones who insisted upon my using Webster. JB even praised the accuracy of the book until my last post.

Why am I going off the deep end?

That was JB's definition.

The followimg quote is of a more personal nature, which is ok... but can you support it with my words?



First of all... Awareness is not the ability to sense vibration in any reputable dictionary.

Secondly, that was JB's definition...

So then, why is it that I am the one off the deep end here?

And this quote James, is quite the ironic mirrored effect.



Webster is now considered my own?

Honing your skills by pointing out flaws which are existent in your own argument is not becoming of you James. I liked you better before, when you seems to recognize who I am.

ok so .... after all that ... where are we?

computers sense but do not feel...

amebas feel but do not sense ...

and human beings do both ... and neither ...

zat about right?

By golly, I think you're the only one who actually undertood the conversations.

Creative,

Actually that was my shortened definition of awareness. I gave the longer more accurate one to you in a previous post, but I get tired of repeating myself and going in circles with you.

I told you I have a lot of respect for Webster, but I do not worship the book as an absolute authority.

I define awareness on the quantum level. Webster does not.

You know what my conclusion is. The universe is conscious and aware. Consciousness is in degrees. Awareness is in degrees.

And yes that is my opinion. Everything is opinion

Creative, if you don't agree with me, I have no hard feelings about that. You can believe any way you want. But you aren't going to prove that I am wrong, so stop trying.

I am not going to prove that I am right either, and I really don't care about that either. I'm not starting a religion or trying to prove the existence of god or an aware universe.

JB

I am just deliberately attempting to make a valid distinction, which is supported by the knowledge at hand, between the two concepts.

I have no desire to disprove your personal belief.

Please clarify what you think the two concept are.

If you are not trying to disprove or prove anything, why do you ask me for proof?

JB

Perception and Awareness(consciousness).

Please clarify what you think the two concepts are.

What point are your ultimately trying to make?

Does there have to be a point?

The clarification is what I have been working, along with the help from friends and this forum.

A thesis will follow, or perhaps an inductive argument, which most likely you would reject as a result of the premise.

No, they are taught.



No, they are digital computers. They use a system that is meant to mimic analog, but it's nowhere near as discrete.

I would hope so.

You don't seem to have one, and you don't seem to have any useful information either. I guess its all been a royal waste of time.



Well have fun with it.