Is the human self nonexistent?

The phenomenal stream of the physical incarnation that I feel is "me" right now, is not accessing the other experience that is occurring in a higher dimension, it is all the same "me", the same self.

Trying to move the framework from a rich metaphysics to a limited one of science.  Reading the posts - I see the mind actively changing the field of focus.  We start out with at least 5 sensory systems.  Using the mind in abstract and reasoned ways is another environment (dimension?).  You can be in the physical environment of sensation, but lost in thought.  

Is meditation the training the self in exercising the ability to focus, allowing the mind to be perceptive in a "higher" field of experience?

Controlling focus (or the lack of it) is a researched in psychology.  Mind evolved and command and control of focus has billions of years of development.

Thanks Laird, that makes sense to me also.

Would the following meet that understanding? The phenomenal stream of the physical incarnation that I feel is "me" right now, is not accessing the other experience that is occurring in a higher dimension, it is all the same "me", the same self.

I guess that doesn't make sense to me. It seems to me that a fundamental aspect of consciousness is that it is one core single unitary stream of experience and intentionality, one self. If it is split up into two separate ones, then rather than being one greater self, there are two separate selves. For example, it is impossible for one single person to, all at once at one moment in time, appreciate the taste of a fine steak, knock a billiard ball into a designated corner pocket, and recite a well-loved poem. Human consciousness is one unitary stream of awareness and mental action.

If knocking the billiard ball into the designated corner pocket is one stream of phenomenal consciousness, then the simultaneous reciting of the poem would be by necessity a willed experience and action of another separate unitary consciousness. 

It is like the analogy with Windows 10 executing five different program apps at once via time multiplexing. In this situation, only one program (the Windows 10 operating executive) is monitoring and controlling all 5 of the subsidiary apps. If all these different programs were each conscious, then only Windows 10 (the executive boss of them all) would be "aware" of and control the others. To further pursue the analogy, the Windows 10 executive operating system by definition would be the definitely separate "Oversoul" program, and the five application programs would be the subsidiary and definitely separate "human selves". The stream of consciousness of the Windows 10 executive controller would be separate from those of the subsidiary ones. The only sense in which they all would be "one" is that they all occupy the same physical circuit chips though at different exact times.

[Ninshub]

I recognize the puzzle/quandary.

A few dissociated thoughts:

a) Are Titus Rivas and Laird the first human beings to ever have come up with this insight and argument? I can't believe that among the gazillion of writings and communications through mediumship/channeling, OBE/astral travel, advanced NDEs, non-dual or idealist spiritual thinkers or philosophers, etc., etc., that there hasn't been someone able to come up with a satisfactory answer to this challenge. (I'll see if I can contact someone in the "know" and get an "answer".)

b) If we think of God (Source). Does adopting the SSOCT (single stream of consciousness theory) mean that God cannot experience one of his creatures' streams of consciousness? Is God a SSOC?

c) NDEr Nanci Danison (and perhaps Natalie Sudman, I forget now) talked about in the "afterlife", in her light being identity, she and her friends could "merge" into one another's experiences - experience everything, from the perspective of that being, that that being had experienced in its incarnations. Christian Sundberg says something similar in souls sharing each other's incarnate experiences this way. Does the SSOCT make this impossible?

d) again, there's gazillion of writings about higher selves, oversouls, etc. Take this example from Jeff Street on his site www.divine-cosmos.net:

Source consciousness is the intelligence that is/created our Universe, and it INDIRECTLY created all our souls.  One of the fundamental capabilities of consciousness is the ability to subdivide itself — to create smaller individualized copies of itself within itself.  Source used this mechanism to create the first level of sub-threads of its consciousness, what in effect could be thought of as sub-selves.  It did this to explore and experience many-ness, rather than oneness, but more importantly, as a strategy to accelerate the exploration of itself and existence — to accelerate its evolution.   

The mechanism that Source used to accomplish subdivision and individuation of its consciousness was primarily that of lowering the frequency of portions of its energies, stepping them down into the lower frequency bands of the energetic field.  This is part of the reason why subdivisions of consciousness operate somewhat independently of, yet are inherently part of and connected to, the 'higher' consciousness that spawned them — they are simply portions of the parent sentient energies at a significantly lower frequential level.   

The subdivisions of consciousness that Source created within itself, in a very real sense, can be considered its sub-selves. And here is the really cool part, anything that a sub-self experiences is also experienced by its parent/higher-self and thus forms the basis for an evolutionary strategy — massively parallel experiences!

Jeff Street
The Multidimensional Self: The Soul, OverSoul, and Beyond

Is every single channel (in the largest sense) of such communication just plain wrong and bewildered?

e) could this provide a clue? I think, but I can also be aware of my thinking (simultaneously?). Some meditators are even able to be aware of the awareness. Are those different streams?

f) is the brain-filtered mind a result of different streams?

How to Turn Five Discrete Streams of Consciousness into a Murky Commingling Bog

[Laird]

Thanks anyway, but I guess at this point it is about as clear as mud.

Huh. I tried hard to be clear. I'm not sure what went wrong.

[Laird]

Just for interest's sake re previous discussions on the notion that there is only one Self in reality:

Now, all we have left is the self: that which looks out at reality from a unique perspective. This is what I meant by "pure subjectivity" - "subjectivity" in the sense that this self is the (true, core) "subject" with a unique perspective. It doesn't have any other distinguishing characteristics because it is prior to both personality and soul.

Arguably, we can go even further, and strip out even the "looking out at reality from a unique perspective"-ness, and thus reduce the self simply to the "that" which looks out (from that unique perspective).

My original thinking, before @Titus Rivas convinced me otherwise, was that it is possible that this "that" is the same "that" looking out from all of the different perspectives. It needn't be, I figured, but it was at least possible.

Having written that out explicitly, I guess I'm due for another "vaccination" from Titus (haha), because my original thinking seems reasonable enough.

I've managed to resolve this problem to my satisfaction, thusly:

It remains - in my view - possible that it is the same self ("that") underlying every "that which looks out at reality from a unique perspective" once we strip even the "looking out at reality from a unique perspective"-ness from our notion of a being, however, once we add perspective back in, as well as consciousness, then, Titus's contention holds. That is to say that, given that an actual conscious self necessarily has a unique perspective from which it "looks out" on reality, it is analytically true, as Titus points out, that a conscious self - with its own perspective in reality - can only be associated with a single stream of phenomenal consciousness (unless multiple streams are multiplexed into a single stream).

I've managed to resolve this problem to my satisfaction, thusly:

It remains - in my view - possible that it is the same self ("that") underlying every "that which looks out at reality from a unique perspective" once we strip even the "looking out at reality from a unique perspective"-ness from our notion of a being, however, once we add perspective back in, as well as consciousness, then, Titus's contention holds. That is to say that, given that an actual conscious self necessarily has a unique perspective from which it "looks out" on reality, it is analytically true, as Titus points out, that a conscious self - with its own perspective in reality - can only be associated with a single stream of phenomenal consciousness (unless multiple streams are multiplexed into a single stream).

Even if the separate streams of consciousness are multiplexed into a single stream, they still maintain their separate identities as separate streams of phenomenal consciousness. That's the whole point of multiplexing, in the first place, to maintain separate processes while running in one central mainframe processor (to merge into the admittedly inadequate but useful computer system analogy).

This is the analogy of the Windows 10 executive operating system program managing and controlling which time slices of the single main digital processor are occupied by the execution of several different application programs all running approximately simultaneously on the one processor. The whole point of the system time multiplexing is to allow the user, for example, to read and rip a music CD using the application program Windows Media Player, while to a close approximation simultaneously accessing and displaying different selected Internet web pages, while to a close approximation simultaneously doing a lot of other processes and app programs. The underlying purpose of the whole system is to simultaneously maintain multiple separate steams of computer processing (analogy to streams of consciousness) on one central processor, with one user-controlled top-level executive program (Windows 10 for example). Maybe the "user" plus the one central processor and Windows 10 operating system program could be the final analogy, that is, with God, the ultimate unitary Consciousness.

[Laird]

@nbtruthman, you seem to be confusing multiplexing with multitasking, but that's not a major problem because they're similar.

In any case, I could express it without borrowing that word from telecommunications: all I'm suggesting is the possibility of two (or more) apparently separate selves who are really the same self manifesting in different forms. That singular self is conscious of all that both of its forms are sensing/experiencing and is also in wilful control of both of its forms.

Maybe, as you seem to suggest, "multiplexing two streams of phenomenal consciousness" isn't quite the right way to describe this - maybe it's more that the senses of the two different forms are experienced simultaneously by the singular self (and that singular self is also in wilful, simultaneous control of both forms), which, perhaps, doesn't imply separate streams of phenomenal consciousness, but only one, right from the start, and thus no need to multiplex.

I recognize the puzzle/quandary.

A few dissociated thoughts:

c) NDEr Nanci Danison (and perhaps Natalie Sudman, I forget now) talked about in the "afterlife", in her light being identity, she and her friends could "merge" into one another's experiences - experience everything, from the perspective of that being, that that being had experienced in its incarnations. Christian Sundberg says something similar in souls sharing each other's incarnate experiences this way. Does the SSOCT make this impossible?


e) could this provide a clue? I think, but I can also be aware of my thinking (simultaneously?). Some meditators are even able to be aware of the awareness. Are those different streams?

The merge of experiences is strongly represented in visionary literature.  I think it a valid event and speaks to all the Psi events where other(s) show a teaching experience.

Focal awareness of sources and signals is studied aggressively, but is seen as different than William James's - stream of consciousness. 

The "stream of consciousness" can be the mind wandering or intense attention.  The stream can be a quick switching between two sources of interest.  Mind can be on itself while being told a story, but still experience empathy by rapid switching between the story and self.

@nbtruthman, you seem to be confusing multiplexing with multitasking, but that's not a major problem because they're similar.

In any case, I could express it without borrowing that word from telecommunications: all I'm suggesting is the possibility of two (or more) apparently separate selves who are really the same self manifesting in different forms. That singular self is conscious of all that both of its forms are sensing/experiencing and is also in wilful control of both of its forms.

Maybe, as you seem to suggest, "multiplexing two streams of phenomenal consciousness" isn't quite the right way to describe this - maybe it's more that the senses of the two different forms are experienced simultaneously by the singular self (and that singular self is also in wilful, simultaneous control of both forms), which, perhaps, doesn't imply separate streams of phenomenal consciousness, but only one, right from the start, and thus no need to multiplex.

If, as you suggest, the soul and the human self are really one and the same powerful and complex entity, one unitary conscious self, able to experience and act simultaneously in two (or maybe more) different forms, one of which is presumably my human self, then since I am not conscious of that superhuman soul entity (or of any other manifestations of my soul entity other than myself), in my rudimentary consciousness I must be a totally controlled robot or puppet manifested in the world for my soul's benefit. I don't think I like this hypothesis. 

It is hard or impossible for me to imagine that soul entity as literally being myself - it seems to be another entire entity it is so different. Again, what seems to me to be a vast separation in consciousness and identity between the soul and the human. Yes, with this hypothesis in one sense we are one, but that sense is in which the soul entity entirely encompasses and subsumes the human, and controls and benefits from the human, which is a puppet with no true free will. Not in my opinion a very palatable notion.

[Ninshub]

If, as you suggest, the soul and the human self are really one and the same powerful and complex entity

I don't know if this is what Laird is saying. (When I have the proper time, I'll go through this thread and make sure I try to acquire the proper understanding of what Laird is saying.) However, if that's what is being said, or if what is said rather (and I gather as I'm writing this that everything I'm saying just here hinges possibly on this "rather") that the soul and the human are the same, that's completely out of whack with the "data". It's a common saying among NDErs, for one thing, to say we're not humans having a spiritual experience, we're spiritual beings having a human experience. NDErs experience (or many of them) "I was the same me", but not "I was the same human".