Is the human self nonexistent?

[Ninshub]

I'm rereading Robert Monroe's first book (2nd reread, so 3rd read) and there's a moment early enough that made me think of how those infant NDEs I related earlier could be interpreted as separate streams.

This is very early on (1958) in his OBE experiments, and this one evidential OBE from his journal he later shared with this group of professionals. Dr. Bradshaw was the psychologist friend who was one of the people her first talked to about what was happening to him and the psychologist encouraged him to continue.

So in this OBE he travels to Bradshaw's house, when the latter is supposed to be in bed, and instead he finds him and his wife walking outside. There's a lot of detail here (clothes they were wearing, etc.) that afterward Monroe (later that same day/night) was able to verify with Bradshaw had all happened in conformity with what he observed during the OBE. Now back to the OBE itself, Monroe writes:

I floated around in front of them, waving, trying to get their attention without result. Then without turning his head, I thought I heard Dr. Bradshaw say to me, "Well, I see you don't need help any more." Thinking I had made contact, I dove back into the ground (?), and returned to the office (...).

Robert A. Monroe, Journeys Out of the Body, New York: Broadway Books, p. 47.

Now when Monroe told Bradshaw, Bradshaw didn't experience Monroe's presence, so it indicates potentially that another stream of consciousness (soul?) in Bradshaw communicated with Monroe while Bradshaw's mind was actually focused on other things.

[Ninshub]

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. 

I don't see how the two bolded parts necessarily connect. Let's say this model is correct (which I'm not saying it is), how are you necessarily controlled by this "entity". Why couldn't you be created by it or manifested by it but have your own free will? (In the same way that God's creatures have free will?)

[Laird]

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.

You seem to misunderstand what I was saying, and why I was saying it, and you also derive the wrong implications from it.

I wasn't talking about the ordinary state of affairs. I was talking hypothetically. For understanding's sake: this hypothetical might be realised in the case of, say, some yogis who are said to have manifested in two locations at once. In the ordinary state of affairs, we each only manifest as one form in one location at a time.

[Ninshub]

Does the following make any sense or can it be conceived in the way that Laird/Titus Rivas (and others) are conceiving (limiting?) the self?

This is from Natalie Sudman's NDE. She had her NDE when she got blown up in her Land Cruiser, after it hit an explosive device.

Here she first describes how, when we're in normal waking consciousness, we simultaneously experience things like talking on a cell phone and understanding space as we're walking through it. Then she writes, about the NDE experience (*the dais is part of the unearthly environment she suddenly finds herself in):

In a similar way, in the state or place of expanded awareness I'm able to simultaneously hold an awareness of my body in the progressive physical experience of sitting in the Land Cruiser rolling down the road after being blown up, and of me standing intrepid on the dais with all its multi-progressive experiences. I am also outside both of those focal points while observing them, and am simultaneously experiencing other dimensions not described here.

I'm able to look at each of those "me's" and at the same time look within them from the outside and out of them from the inside. I'm able to comprehend them from within the cells, within the energy, within their (my) perceptive mechanisms, back from various futures, forward from various pasts, or from any other infinite number of focal points. Because Time and Space are multi-dimensional, I am also multi-dimensional. I'm able to perceive from and within any and all of these simultaneously and with varying degrees of awareness as I choose to focus.

Natalie Sudman, The Application of Things Impossible: My Near Death Experience in Iraq, 2012, Huntsville, Arkansas: Ozark Mountain Publishing, 13-14.

[Laird]

All of that seems compatible with a view of "one self <=> one stream of phenomenal experiences". Her simultaneous experiences are not dissociated - they seem to constitute a single - although admittedly complex - stream of phenomenal consciousness experienced by a single self: Natalie.

[Ninshub]

Thanks Laird. It's helpful to me to use examples because there may be limits to my ability to just intellectually fully grasp the abstract theory/analytic part as it's elaborated in this thread.

In the case of the Robert Monroe bit, what do you make of it?

A few pages later in the book, something similar happens when he visits a female friend through OBE, and this time it's clearer to him that they are having this full discussion, perhaps telepathically (she's aware of his presence in this discussion). He also pinches her. Now when thereafter contacts her in the body and checks out this out, this conversation didn't happen (as far as her awareness goes). But she felt the pinch, and everything else matched.

On pages67-68, he explains how this sort of thing happened so frequently that he discussed it with others. One hypothesis was that he was fantasizing these communications, using unconsciously what he knows about these people. But he then writes "This theory received a setback when a number of such communications brought out data known only to the second party". (p. 68)

What do you, or what should we, make of this? Especially in the light of the theory of the single stream of phenomenal consciousness.

p.s. "I don't know" is a valid response.

[Laird]

"I don't know" goes without saying, Ian!

To hazard a speculative guess though: maybe it's got something to do with the subconscious? I'm not sure exactly what. If anything further occurs to me, I'll share it here.

[Ninshub]

Regarding the subconscious guess - do you mean the unconscious belonging to the person whom Robert Monroe was visiting while in OBE?

In that case, viz. the person engaged consciously in certain interactions with other people, and simultaneously having her unconscious talking to Monroe on the astral level, that would seem to indicate 2 distinct streams to me?

On that note, I do find it interesting when on page 75 he explains how, when you visit Locale II (basically the first level or set of the astral planes, and which includes the "place" where the newly discarnate show up), it's extremely hard to be able to go where you consciously intend to.

Your destination seems to be grounded completely within the framework of your innermost constant motivations, emotions, and desires. You may not consciously want to "go" there, but you have no choice. Your Supermind (soul?) is stronger and usually makes the decision for you.

The way he describes it and articulates it makes it sound like two different operating systems.

Regarding the subconscious guess - do you mean the unconscious belonging to the person whom Robert Monroe was visiting while in OBE?

In that case, viz. the person engaged consciously in certain interactions with other people, and simultaneously having her unconscious talking to Monroe on the astral level, that would seem to indicate 2 distinct streams to me?

On that note, I do find it interesting when on page 75 he explains how, when you visit Locale II (basically the first level or set of the astral planes, and which includes the "place" where the newly discarnate show up), it's extremely hard to be able to go where you consciously intend to.


The way he describes it and articulates it makes it sound like two different operating systems.

The existence of the subconscious mind certainly needs to be considered in this discussion as to the nature of the human self.

From this it looks to me to be as if the subconscious mind is one separate stream of phenomenal consciousness existing simultaneously or quasi-simultaneously with another, the conscious mind. The "operating system" seems to be either the subconscious mind, or (I think more likely) a level even deeper which subsumes both the conscious and the unconscious minds. Perhaps the so-called "High Self"? Hopefully the computer analogy stops being useful at this point, since with the computer system the overall operating system has complete control over what the rest of the computer processor is doing in its mainly quasicontinuous (actually time multiplexed) execution of various worker programs - they're slaves, so to speak. I don't think this is really the case in the human/spirit system design.

And of course the computer system analogy is strictly limited in its applicability because of the fundamental differences in the way the brain works at the micro level versus computers. Computers are still modeled on the original Turing machine from the late 1930s, a single digital processor executing individual instructions, one by one, furnished from a program memory, and processing outside data according these logic instructions. Modern computers are just hyper-extrapolations and developments of this overall concept. Whereas the brain is a massively parallel processor substituting slower data processing for the hyper-fast logic of modern computers, but with the brain utilizing hundreds of millions to billions of separate logic elements all in parallel to process data.

we each only manifest as one form in one location at a time.

Sorry, experience shows me this is not a correct assumption about much of the phenomena I experience. As in, existing and functional in the brain or body version, and functioning or interacting elsewhere (with confirmation from other people to confirm this) at the same time.

And Ninshub

Now when Monroe told Bradshaw, Bradshaw didn't experience Monroe's presence, so it indicates potentially that another stream of consciousness (soul?) in Bradshaw communicated with Monroe while Bradshaw's mind was actually focused on other things.

Having experienced this in the same / similar format, where the other person acted out towards me, and then they felt relief (they punched me in the face because they were angry), while they were not conscious of having done this (they were driving down the road at another location), yet it happened on another level where I was capable of experiencing this and explaining to them what happened on that level. 

They had thought I would understand the rage, and they suddenly felt a wave of relief as if the anger was expelled. Yet had zero knowledge that they just psychically punched me. 

I got a different version, while I was reading in the physical, and in some astral form this information acted out as the very physical and real-feeling face punch.

I have had plenty of situations where I can hear myself, as a distinct and separate self, while that other self is laughing, and I am not laughing. Very distinct and separate operating systems.

This awareness is not the same thing as what we understand as the physical / brain awareness. I know people would like that. They want it to somehow be superior, planning, judging, and capable of other things we are used to as physical awareness. They want to take this ego self awareness and move it into astral or oobe format, do things with this mind in tow, keeping everything intact.

The ego would have you think that the only possible way to be aware is to be stuck in the mind inside your head.
The ego would have you think that this format is all important, and the only way to get information.
This "only one can exist and function at one time" thought pattern is very ego-minded. 
The idea that one is superior, or controlling the other, is also very ego and likely related to human existential panic.

The other part of that is that we think everything has to be pulled into this ego, this mind, this personality, to matter or be real. We try to make this simple ego brain the only thing that can exist. Everything has to rotate around only one function at a time. To be here and there at the same time, and have recall of both is difficult. 

I have stated before that it is my sincere belief that the human physical condition is a convenient bubble, perhaps comfortable or natural are the right words. Our sensory systems supply an easy way to experience this space and time consistently and share this with others consistently. We use up all the awareness on this fake bubble, and think that is all there is, all that is going on, and that everything else going on is not "us" or not "real"...

That would be like claiming that some subconscious mind isn't functional and operating while you are awake and aware, doing some crossword, and that this subconscious has to think and operate the way you want it to... or that it is somehow controlling you like a puppet, etc.

Most people will likely never notice the other awareness functions, or what they are doing, or how they are interacting.