What is "Mind?"

This local reality thought matrix was originally engineered as a paradise. However it has been hijacked by cosmic parasites i call the controllers, as a spiritual trap for their purpose of harvesting certain specialized frequencies of spiritual energy.

Jan: I prefer the Indian view that all of this is lila, God's play, and that we are just actors on a stage until we wake up. Sometimes we are actors in a drama, sometimes in a comedy, and mostly we don't know where we are.

I don't see humans doing anything different from any other dominant species, sort of the definition of dominant species.

Perhaps the only difference is that humans are fully capable of seeing this inevitable consequence of their species' success, and are powerless to do anything about it.

“Being awake” most occurs when one perceives consciousness without content.

fundamental problem of humans on Earth?

TomCochrane wrote: I grew up within a very conventional American middle class family and educational system, apparently similar to views staunchly defended by several contributors here. My intense lifetime self-directed study program may not impress you, and I certainly make no claims to universal understanding. However I have gradually come to understand that conventionally accepted views of reality have so many gaps and inconsistencies and inadequacies, that it is inappropriate to assume any firm understanding of the basics. Surely only some very nonconventional systems models moving beyond conventionally accepted models will have a chance to explain these gaps, inconsistencies, and inadequacies. The ridiculous failed gyrations of string theory and multiverses seem to reinforce this claim. If you don't like my explorations of the holographic universe and universal consciousness and multiple intelligences, then I'm certainly open to alternatives, which is why I keep tabs on this discussion. Even scientific greats like Hawkins, Sagan and Einstein managed to trip over their own tale. In order to keep your head in the sand, you have to stay on your knees. In an infinite universe, the percentage that we understand is zero

Jim: Where do humans belong, Werner ?

Tom: Even scientific greats like Hawkins, Sagan and Einstein *managed to trip over their own tale.* [Emphasis added.] 

Healyje: I can be just as fully in the flow both with and without content - the flow is different between deep levels of intense programming and say distance swimming, but both share a deep perception of consciousness.

Jogill: I have assumed you refer to meditation as the study of mind.

a human affectation, what is the use of finding out how the universe works if you cannot apply it to solving the fundamental problem of humans on Earth?

with the crash, what good will the knowledge of the smashing atoms be?

one might hope that such technological prowess would save us... but we cannot be saved by ignoring our excesses.

FACTS SO ROMANTIC ON BIOLOGY
What William James Got Right About Consciousness
POSTED BY MICHAEL S. GAZZANIGA ON FEB 07, 2018

More than 125 years ago, James wrote a landmark article simply titled “What Is an Instinct?” He wastes no time in defining the concept:

Instinct is usually defined as the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance…[Instincts] are the functional correlatives of structure. With the presence of a certain organ goes, one may say, almost always a native aptitude for its use. “Has the bird a gland for the secretion of oil? She knows instinctively how to press the oil from the gland, and apply it to the feather.”

The definition seems straightforward, and yet it is cleverly dualistic—an instinct is both a behavior and a physical structure. Yet using the structure calls upon an “aptitude,” which apparently comes along for free. Finding the physical correlates of an instinct is doable, but how do we learn whether a behavior is instinctual? Does it just happen? Not a very scientific answer. Does the bird start out with a reflex to press the oil from the gland and, over time, learn that, as a consequence, everything works better? Clearly if there was no oil gland, there would be no oil and no opportunity for learning to use it to fly better. One can see the blind loop of natural selection and experience working together to form what we would call an instinct.

Bird behavior is one thing, but does this really apply to human cognition and consciousness? James offers a rationale for how it might all work:

A single complex instinctive action may involve successively the awakening of impulses…Thus a hungry lion starts to seek prey by the awakening in him of imagination coupled with desire; he begins to stalk it when, on eye, ear, or nostril, he gets an impression of its presence at a certain distance; he springs upon it, either when the booty takes alarm and flees, or when the distance is sufficiently reduced; he proceeds to tear and devour it the moment he gets a sensation of its contact with his claws and fangs. Seeking, stalking, springing, and devouring are just so many different kinds of muscular contraction, and neither kind is called forth by the stimulus appropriate to the other.

As I look at James’s work now, I recognize a schema that fits the module/layering ideas. James appears to suggest that the structural aspects of instincts are modular. Each instinct can function independently for simple behaviors, but they also work as a confederation. Individual instincts can be sequenced in a coordinated fashion for more complex actions that make them look an awful lot like higher-order instincts, like language, as Steven Pinker argued in The Language Instinct. The avalanche of sequences, I argue, is what we call consciousness. James adds a description of the animal’s experience of obeying an instinct: “Every impulse and every step of every instinct shines with its own sufficient light, and seems at the moment the only eternally right and proper thing to do. It is done for its own sake exclusively.” It sounds like a lot of bubbles are conjoined by the arrow of time and produce something like what we call conscious experience. Each bubble has its own ability to render a feeling about the capacity being expressed at that moment.