Unconscious consciousness

Portal,

My answer is that there are not simply two states.
In some systems (e.g. Gurdjieff) what we normally call "consciousness" is called "waking sleep" . The illusion is that such a level operates within the control of the subject, but in essence it is said to be little different to sleep walking, in which the body is engaged, as opposed to "real sleep" in which the body is disconnected. Such "normal consciousness" is characterized by internal chatter and circling thoughts which randomly animate the subject (a committee of little selves), who immediately rationalizes his current modus to himself (just like a hypnotized subject rationializes when "caught" in a post hypnotic suggestion) The G system claims that such a state can be transcended but only by "correct work" and some degree of "real control" (permanent Self) can be gained, but with back-sliding the norm.

I partially subscribe to these views which are easily accessible by looking up either Gurdjieff or "School of Practical Philosophy". For a less esoteric approach I would suggest any meditational or spiritual corpus involved in "self observation".

A final point is that the division conscious/unconscious has different meanings for psychoanalysts, medical practioners, and philosophers...the latter being currently heavily engaged with the nature of "consciousness" and "reality". (See David Chalmers references University of Arizona)

truth
OZ, thank you. Very interesting, what I understood of it. Your analogy model of the mind/brain is intriguing. But, of course, the analogy does not pretend, I am sure, to exhaust the complexities of the brain/mind system. Your concept of metadata is interesting. I've always thought of simple empirical "facts" as little theories, a step above the British empircists' "sense data." Is this what the "meta" stands for?
Your model of the role of the unconscious distinguishes between the SUBconscious and the UNconscious. I think of the former as mental experience that is out of awareness but capable of being called into consciousness, like the feeling of my butt on the chair right now,, if someone brings it to my attention. Unconscious material is to me repressed material that I cannot bring to awareness without help or in disguised form in dreams.
We were talking earlier about not being able to read signs in dreams. It seems to me that since the dream is MY construction, I cannot learn anything new from reading, say a street sign. I can only see that it IS a street sign. Its content is not available to me as NEW KNOWLEDGE unlike an actual street sign in my waking state.
You certainly have given this a lot of thought. Congratulations.
By the way, does your concept of "double bind," with its connection to schizophrenia owe anything to Gregory Bateson's similar notion.

I wrote an analogy of the mind and thought in another forum that was partly similar. Very interseting. I really enjoy the google analogy. Very creative. Very indepth did you happen to just write this or had the basis's fot it. Extracting information and experience from a dream would be very contriversial as well, because everything that you would be dreaming would come from you so you would have already known or experienced, But can you set up different experiences in your dream and play them out. or would it not play out correctly. The thing with the sky was kindove intreaging too about how he dreams his conceptions of "his" sky. So I took the liberty of trying to dream up my own sky. and it was crazy. instead of clouds i decided to make what everyone knows as clouds and exchanged it with daisys. The funny thing is that it actually worked. In my dream the sky had daisy's in place of the clouds. crazy

Re: Unconscious consciousness
How about I train myself to sleep while actually being awake. Will that work?

That's a hell of a name to give yourself, I like your avatar.

This was the first time I had written the whole thing out, but I've been milling the whole dream/mind over for awhile now. It's defiantly not a solidified theory, but I also don't have time to write a whole book (not to mention it would be a little much to post in a thread ). The "Double Bind" isn't mine at all, I can't remember the psychologist name so your probably right. The Double Bind theory has always stuck out in mind, and I have found it to hold true.

About 11:00 last night my 8-year old son came out into the living room "looking for...looking for...looking...why can't you find anyone?" He says.

I realize he's sleepwalking. I sleptwalked as a kid. It's weird.

truth
OZ, if you want to look up the author of the "double bind" theory (as it pertains to schizophrenia), he is Gregory Bateson, the philosopher and psychological anthropologist--and third husband of Margaret Mead. I think the thesis is found in his book, Steps toward an Ecology of Mind (?).

As a child, i taught myself to be aware while dreaming, that i was dreaming, in order to be able to wake up if i found myself in a nightmare. I retained the ability well into my late twenties, but it has faded. I rather suspect that the "unconscious" portion of my mind didn't like that "loss of freedom," and so it switched to other matters. However, i've not had a nightmare in my entire adult life. In the period just after the last time i recall taking over control of a dream, i began to have all sorts of odd dreams. I began to have dreams for which i was entirely a spectator, as though i were watching a motion picture. These dreams would sometimes actually have "stars"--i recall that James Garner was the "star" of one of them, but i don't recall the others that well. I also had dreams which were essentially animation--i.e., cartoons. In those dreams (for which the artwork was usually a watercolor wash), i would myself be an animated character, usually an animal of some sort.

I've come to the conclusion, though, that it's not a good idea, as our dreams are likely the flip side of consciousness, in that the "other-than-self-conscious" portions of our minds live their lives then.

truth
Setanta, VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY interesting. I would simply love to be part of an animation dream.
I too haven't had a nightmare in my adult life. I used to have them as a child when I suffered my annual high fever stomach flu: usually powerful images of gigantic cosmic forces threatening to collide, like planets, right over my head.
I no longer have wet dreams either.

This was all the result of a very prosaic experience, as well, JLN. We had a "scholastic magazine," entitled My Weekly Reader. I was reading a story therein, in which a girl dreamt that she travelled into space. They spun the story out, and i was getting bored, when they got to the crunch. Her father and brother were both on the same lifeline in zero g, when the line snapped, and they both were propelled into the inky void. They posed to you the dilemna of whom she should save, and directed you to a page at the back of the magazine for their solution.

There answer was that she should wake up, she was dreaming, remember? I was so p.o.'ed that they had pulled such a cheesey trick on me. Well, not long thereafter, i was in the midst of a nightmare, when the voice of my conscious mind spoke, saying: "Wake up!" -- i did, and the nightmare was ended. Thereafter, i worked on the idea, and gained a remarkable amount of control in my dreams.

But, as i've mentioned, the ability slipped away, and my dreams became territories of such a radically different character, that such an "ability" no longer mattered. As i've also noted, i eventually decided that i was "cheating" my other than conscious mind. Now, almost thirty years after the last dream i recall controlling, i've finally returned to dreaming in what might be described as "an ordinary fashion."

Ever since i have been messing around and trying to control my dreams the less and less I have them all though when i do they are more intersesting. Has anyone noticed the time differencial between reality and dreams, sometimes you are dreaming for 8 hours in reality but it seems like 20 minutes?

I've always been told it was the other way around, the dream actually last a very short period of time, around ten to fifteen minutes, though it may seem longer. Most nights you have quite a few dreams, though most are never realized.

You want to blend your unconscious with your conscious try magic mushrooms... just be warned you can lose control, and forget what's real and whats the imagined a liberating experince none the less.

I don't know for sure but i don't that it brings out your uncontious but instead it recreates your imagination like a dream. The only thing about it is that your not uncontious, so how could you blend the two? Good thought.

well you need to be unconsious to dream... so with the aid of these guys you dreaming while you consious in a way it's the closet you will get to the unconsious while being consious, read up on this from Terrence Mckenna.

This is way sharmans enter the "spirit world" which can be seen in a way as the collective consiousness, which intself is another very intresting thought.

Don't know for sure but is there a connection between the nighmares and the sickness??

truth
Tagged___, I read in works by psychological anthropologists that shamans are often people with high intelligence and who are "infected" (I can't think of the right term) with the deepest neurotic processes of their people. They sometimes refer to these as "ethnopsychoses" (aspects of what you refer to perhaps as their collective unconscious). These shamans, we all know, also have ways to enter their unconscious--autohypnosis perhaps. Their techniques (dances, chanting, rattles, drums, drugs, etc.) also serve to steep their patients into the same "collective" state of mind. While they are "there" suggestions and other instructions may be given which are only effectively given and received in that state--not when in a normal state.

Would all those rituals be pretty much the same as meditating perhaps? I would think so; I would also think that certain people might meditate in different ways as you sort of said. Maybe being able to go into your subconscious or whatever you would like to call it comes as you become one with yourself (meaning understanding you as a person on this earth or whatever hopefully you get the idea).