As if my introductory post wasn't boring enough

I bought a new book yesterday, Consciousness Explained, by some guy. I'm too lazy to go get it so I can see the author, but if anyone wants to feign interest they can ask me. I've only read the preface so far, but it's already a pretty good read.

He gets into how if we were able to take a brain, and remove any nerve inputs to it, it would essentially be in a perpetual coma. He then tosses out the idea that if we were somehow able to stimulate the brain in exactly the same manner as it would be stimulated in a normal brain, then the isolated brain would not be able to perceive a difference. Think "The Matrix". The computational power required to completely simulate this experience(no matter what it is) would be so astronomically large that it would be impossible, according to the author. He goes on to discuss how although certain chemical changes in ones neurology can produce hallucinations, they are usually relatively weak. If any of you have ever taken LSD or another hallucinogen, you should know what I'm talking about. To believe that a hallucination is real requires suspension of disbelief, because they always fall short of reality. You might be seeing your carpet moving as it were alive, but if you reach down and touch it, you realize that it's not, and that should be enough to cause you stop perceiving it as such. Truly strong, engaging hallucinations SHOULD be impossible. As powerful as drugs and certain neurological changes can seem, they can never be a replacement for reality. A couple trillion synapses misfiring does not a universe make.

After I put the book down, I started thinking about dreams. What are dreams if not some wonderfully realistic hallucination? In a dream state your body virtually is cut off from reality. Sensory input is reduced to an absolute minumum level to maintain survival during the dream state.

If no computer out there, including our own brain, will ever be able to simulate reality to a convincing degree, then where in the hell do dreams come from? I've read volumes on the subject, and it seems like every theory relies on our psychology to explain where they are produced. Scientists have studied the physiological origins of dreams to an exhausting degree. We understand what changes our body and brain go through while we sleep. There are some rather ill-conceived ideas that dreams are nothing more than random synapses firing, but that does little to explain the level of detail one experiences in the dream state. Things in dreams can be felt, smelt, heard, tasted and seen. They are experienced actively and fully. Emotions are felt full force, and thought processes function normally. Lucid dreamers will even tell you that it is possible to control the entire dream state, as if it were an interactive movie. Dreams are more than the illusion of experience, they are the continuance of experience.

So obviously, either our current understanding of the brain underestimates it's full potential by a longshot, or our conception of consciousness as something that occurs from the brain is wrong. I have heard it said by practitioners of certain types of meditation that it is possible to temporarily shift consciousness from where it normally seems to reside, in the skull, to other parts of the body. People who have experienced Out Of Body Experiences claim to have experienced full consciousness completely outside of the body. To take the idea even further, individuals who have found enlightenment through whatever practice claim that it replaces your own consciousness with that of God's.

All this seems to suggest that consciousness is not a product of the mind, or even the body, but perhaps something not yet fully understood by science. Perhaps it is a product of the atomic energy possessed by all things, living or non-living. While this concept might seem foreign to scientists out there, it is a long established idea in eastern philosophy. Everything operates on vibration, or wavelengths. Sounds like the concept of sound, right? Well, from my understanding, it is almost exactly like sound. In fact, many if not most skilled meditators will focus on a particular sound, usually a short phrase or syllable, known as a mantra. The most powerful of these mantras is the sanskrit word Aum. This word is so powerful that it not only means the whole of creation, but it's vibration IS the whole of creation. It is said that if one can tune into this vibration, he or she will be brought to the God consciousness I talked about a minute ago. Furthermore, tapping into any vibration is going to bring about a shift in consciousness.

If all this seems absurd to you, then you are probably a pretty sane individual. But science is beginning to get a better grasp on this vibrational thing. If any of you closet physicists out there are familiar with String Theory, you might be on the right page already. It postulates that beyond the most elemental of all particles, the universe may be composed of vibrating "strings", which depending on their particular vibration may form an electron or a quark. String Theory aims to be the Grand Unified Theory of everything. And if it proves to be right, it will basically be confirming what eastern philosophy has told us for millenia. The Upanishads laid all this out almost 1000 years before Christ.

So after much delineation, let me stop boring you to tears. What I'm trying to say is that of course no computer could ever simulate consciousness. Consciousness is something much more than our senses. It is the totality of EVERYTHING, from a distant star to an electron passing from one atom to the next. It is the infinite. It is Aum. It is God. It just plain IS.