Out Of Mind, Out of Time
Written by Major Tom
Filed under: Personal and Family, Science & Technology
August 24, 2007
What is a mind? It is not yours; therefore it is “mine”. No, not the right term usage here. Sorry.
Is mind synonymous with brain? Sometimes, having a brain does not necessarily mean one has a mind, like for example when one could not even count from one to ten or spell the word “photosynthesis” (many thanks to the gritty Microsoft spell check for helping me with this one).
Where is your mind? How come your thirty-five years old with four kids and your just sitting there infront of the computer all day long doing God knows what you’re doing with that square contraption in your face? Now that’s my wife with her usual vitriolic tongue aiming and shooting at me and observe carefully how sometimes she thinks I am completely of no mind.
We all know what mind is. It is something within the brain that is impalpable and ethereal, having no physical form. It is the one thing that controls another formless fact of our being, consciousness. See also how consciousness is as formless as mind and examine circumspectly how we all feel it and know it but just could not see it or touch it. Yet we know it is there, our consciousness, like a timeless shadow.
Any old guy with a whiff of something between his ears would surely realize this, that we are a being mostly dependent on consciousness for every movement or act that we make, even those we do without intending like breathing or blinking our eyes, for they just become automatic and routinely. It is like Sting—watching us with ‘every breath we make’ or ‘every vow we break’.
We have all gotten so extremely familiar with consciousness—so familiar in fact that we hardly give a thought about it most of the time. If it is true what many says about familiarity breeding contempt, then we’d be trashing and elbowing and smacking-down our consciousness like hell by now. This despite that it is probably the most startling reality of our own being, and perhaps the most important of all.
Even scientists are far from certain where consciousness comes from or how it actually permeates from the material brain. They have already uncovered the minutest element of the brain and had discovered how the cells inside it emits varied and myriad of electrical pulses that allow the whole human body—and being—to function as it is. But how this happens exactly is what they are at a lost. Perhaps like a computer’s central processing unit, the electrical pulses send commands and programmed codes in order to move the hand, to instill feelings, to smile or frown, to cook, or blog, to ride a jeepney or eat a budget meal, to love and hate—such and such things.
Now scientists have actually delved into an in-depth examination of the consciousness, as neuro-scientists in Chicago have deduced how out-of-body experiences are not so outlandish afterall, contrary to popular belief. By using virtual computer technology, they have observed how subjects put under a virtual mindset have actually felt their virtual selves being threatened as they were beaing approached at (virtually). I am not so particular at how the experiment really went but generally, it was reached as a conclusion that even in mind—without physical structures of the body involved—human beings would react positively to non-physical intrusions or introductions and thereon bolsters the probability that out-of-body experiences might just be a probable human experience. Read this very concise discussion on consciousness and the attempt to uncover it.
Easily, this could be set aside as merely the result of extreme imagination for the mind could imagine possibly everything and when it perceives a threat even just in mind, the body reacts accordingly—physically and mentally.
Yet despite of this major loophole, the study abovementioned is a major headway into the investigation of the human consciousness and then, ultimately of the soul.
Previously, information on out-of-body experiences have been collated solely through accounts by those who have experienced traumatic experiences, mostly by those who had cardiac arrests, as they gain full consciousness after being declared clinically dead. We must note very well how in every such experience, it is extremely startling how every account of an out-of-body experience consists of one very unifying theme, that of seeing tunnels and a bright light at the end of it. As an empirical basis, these testimonies from those “who have came back from the dead” are generally weak and undependable, but as a circumstantial evidence, it is pretty strong and establishing; for how could one effectively explain the astonishing similarities in those accounts despite that they have came from different people living in different geographical locations, having had no contact with each other, and those traumatic incidents being separated by years in occurrence.
When I was so young, way before my highschool years, I was once told a story or rumor by older cousins about how a woman in Subanipa (my grandfather’s hometown in Olutanga Island just south of Pagadian City) died and was about to be buried (probably in the islands before, when one dies, embalmment would be so inconvenient that sometimes those who died are buried on the soonest time possible) yet the woman suddenly rose up from where her cold body was laid and just walked away from the vicinity. Everyone present at her wake was startled to no end of course. As the rumor goes farther, she went on to tell everyone that had inquired about the circumstances of her amazing ressurection how she had seen a long dark tunnel and a bright light at the end of it, so bright in fact that the light was so bright and she had to adjust her sight because of this, but the light she said, had been very comforting, and very pleasing to the senses that she had felt a joy she had never felt in the living world.
Now—whether this story was merely fabricated or not—this account of an out-of-the-body experience approximates what were collated all over the United States throughout the years and it had happened when our world does not yet communicate as effectively as now, no Internet or cable news yet, and that was way before I have started to read similar accounts on Reader’s Digest. Those who had been an ardent Reader’s Digest reader over the years would surely know what I am saying.
For certain, it is not possible that those who have out-of-body experience in America have heard about this rumored woman in Subanipa and replicated her story about death and dying.
Such is how startling these out-of-body experience accounts—we have heard many of them every so often from time to time, through those who have gone thru very traumatic physical incidents and had read or heard how they all had testified to the same circumstances, of tunnels and light, and yet whether we like it or not, we could not just as easily believe this as an incontrovertible truth.
Like how we can always believe that there is a sun circling above or below us, but we just do not know exactly how it came to being or what actually consists it.
According to my grandmother, her father died but woke up on the second night of his wake. He narrated of the same tunnel vision, but a sound of baby’s cry (carried by one of the mourners) forced him to look back.
Comment by lazarus — August 24, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
Yung kumare ko nagkaroon ng Allergic Reaction sa blood transfusion sa kanya. yung time na nirerevive sya ng mga doktor, sabi nya nanaginip sya ng batang lalaki na tinatawag syang nanay. Pinapatawid daw sya sa ilog. Sa kabilang pampang may malaking bato na may lalaking nakaputi daw at nakangiti saa kanya.
Comment by Richmond — August 24, 2007 @ 1:54 pm
kakaiba naman yung sa akin, yung lolo nagkwento ng masasarap na pagkain nung time na malapit na siya at sinasabi niya na sinusundo na siya.. tapos yun na nagpaalam na nga. totoo kayang ang mga dying ay may nakikita na sumusundo at pagkain na marami? hmmm.
Comment by iskoo — August 24, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
i’ve heard of such stories. perhaps they really can see that the end is coming and they see other things as well.128
Comment by ipanema — August 24, 2007 @ 8:11 pm
lol…nakasama yung anti-spam numbers.
Comment by ipanema — August 24, 2007 @ 8:13 pm
To lazarus: many have heard the sound of a tinkling piano and string music…they has variations I guess…
Comment by Major Tom — August 24, 2007 @ 9:49 pm
To richmond: the hair on my skin stood a bit as I read your comment; it’s eerie but very cintemplative, like it has a divine message or meaning.
Comment by Major Tom — August 24, 2007 @ 9:52 pm
To iskoo: Medyo kakaiba nga ang vision niya, kakaiba sa mga nakakarami. Parang magandang pangitain kung pagkain ang pinapakita ibig sabihin masagana ang pupuntahan niyang lugar or sphere.
Comment by Major Tom — August 24, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
To ipanema: Most importantly, these accounts give us some precious hints about life after death, and the real nature of consciousness or soul, for possibly it has the capacity to exist on even after the physical body ceases.
Comment by Major Tom — August 24, 2007 @ 10:12 pm
Well wouldn’t it be nice if out of body experiences are proven to be true? Because it would only mean that there really is life after death, and not just a dark void of nothingness…
Comment by snglguy — August 25, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
ako personally im afraid of death….
pero yung prof ko dati sa philosophy kinukwentuhan kami na nagagawa niya raw na humiwalay sa katawan niya…
nakalimutan ko na yung term, parang astral projection ata tawag don… pero yun, ang weird… thru meditation daw nagagawa yun…
sinubukan ko yun.. nga lang hindi ako nagtagumpay.. ang hirap eh… kailangan ng mental discipline… mind over matter kung baga…
Comment by kingdaddyrich — August 25, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
To sngl: That’s what I am saying bro…if it could be proven verifiably, then there’s hope after life, and not just going “pfft!”…
Comment by Major Tom — August 25, 2007 @ 9:07 pm
To kingdaddyrich: Yeah I’ve heard and even read about astral separation of the soul and I am mostly inclined to believe that it could happen if there is enough determination to concentrate and meditate.
Comment by Major Tom — August 25, 2007 @ 9:09 pm
Shortly before my mother passed away at the hospital, she mentioned two dead relatives were in the room smiling at her. She never told us though what those relatives were wearing. Totoo kaya na may nakita sya?
Comment by Abaniko — August 25, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
To Niko: This is so eerie but hopeful. There’s just so many hints about life after death that it ain’t so hard to believe in it fully—like I do now.
Comment by Major Tom — August 25, 2007 @ 11:14 pm
Once again. Interesting post here. It warped me back in time when I was heavily sudying such things on the paranormal, OOBE, Dreams and the subconscious.
The question of the mind is like a question of the soul. Where is it? Is it physically located? Where is this consciousness coming from. Hay daming tanong. hehehe. But na lang there are people who are really studying into these things
Comment by Ferdz — August 26, 2007 @ 1:29 am
out of the body or zombism, i would hardly believe, but for experiencing it myself, a brain could sometimes just seize and you could move and go about without knowing.
few years back (2003) without any trigger, I lost everything, memory, names and I could be looking at someone and try as hard, nothing works and it lasted for 2 to five minutes, my friends will time them… me neu immediately suspended my driver’s license and run me all kinds of test, found nothing, except a little lesion on my left side. after two years of therapy, everything back to normal, I did my own researched and the closest case similar to mine was one retired astronaut, whose doctors could not explain the experience, but himself deduced that it was starvation of Cholesterol. I was in massive statin therapy at that time too. But it was an experience that as close to “out of body”.. lucky during a few episodes, i avoided traffic accidents, just because my brain can not communicate with any part of my bodies.. the car would just drift until it hit the curves and stopped…
Comment by vic — August 26, 2007 @ 2:26 am
According to a BBC article about one in ten people claim to have had an out-of-body experience at some time in their lives.
But I fear this doesn’t prove anything about an after life.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4271018.stm
Comment by Sidney — August 26, 2007 @ 10:47 am
To Ferdz: This well-publicized reserach may not be called a breakthrough in the strictest sense but it’s a good headway. Who knows maybe, there’d be a major breakthrough on this. If that’d be possible.
Comment by Major Tom — August 26, 2007 @ 7:02 pm
Your affliction seems mild but could be scary if left to worsen…Once I was driving a car at medium speed and all of a sudden, I just felt sleepy and almost lost control of my driving. I don’t know if this was similar to your affectation.
maybe our brain could play some tricks on us once in a while.
Comment by Major Tom — August 26, 2007 @ 7:06 pm
To sidney: That sounds like teh prsumption about homosexuality where I read once that in every individual, in a stage just before adloescence, we would at one point feel strong attraction at a same sex individual.
Indeed, this recent study would be far from proving anything and I realize now that there might just be no instance, even in the future that we could really prove an existence after the physical body ceases unless someone would invent a machine that could send us into the paranormal and then back again.
Comment by Major Tom — August 26, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
well, there are people who have brains but do not have minds. the brain is practically a part of the body which do the ‘minding’.
it is difficult for me to believe things like out of the body experiences.
Comment by bingskee — August 26, 2007 @ 11:38 pm
bagong lay-out ah, nice!
Comment by iskoo — August 27, 2007 @ 12:18 am
To bingskee: I can’t blame you for that. But it’s worth a second look.
To iskoo: Medyo habit-forming itong redesigning. Please bear with the inconvenience.
Salamat sa notice of this template that I have originally designed also.
Comment by Major Tom — August 27, 2007 @ 2:07 am
I’m not surprised with the findings. The mind is a very complex entity and the processor of what we perceive as reality. As they aptly say - “it’s all in the mind” !
Comment by bw — August 27, 2007 @ 8:02 am
To BW: And I believe in its power, the capacity that it holds and the hidden energy within it.
Once a friend told me that he had read how humans are estimated to be just using 5% of brain’s or mind’s capacity at any one time. I can’t help but wonder if ever we could use the rest of the 95%. Maybe we could bend spoons just like eating peanuts.
Comment by Major Tom — August 27, 2007 @ 11:03 am
Very Interesting.
I have always been intrigued by all these mysteries. We only understand like things in between… we do not know how big the universe is… (what is infinity?) and we do not fully understand the smallest parts of us and the rest of the world.. atoms and it’s smallest components. I think the fact that we’re clueless about basically everything in this world makes life fun. (in a dysfunctional kind of way)… hehehe…
Comment by Alternati — August 27, 2007 @ 3:45 pm
This is really a very complicated subject matter that is hard to prove using scientific metrics.
That i guess is the reason why very few have attempted to conduct a really in-depth study. It could be too brainy and too wide to formulate a scientific basis for a scientific result.
Comment by myepinoy — August 27, 2007 @ 4:27 pm
To alternati: Ignorance they say is bliss. If we understand all, it won’t be the same, like there’s no more pleasuere in discovering the unknown or some hidden frontiers.
Comment by Major Tom — August 27, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
To myepinoy: Towards the paranoemal, it is indeed a very difficult science and I realize now, as I said in my comments earlier, that there might not come a time that we could really prove materially that there is a spiritual world out there, or a parallel universe to which our soul would traverse to once the human body ceases, for it couldn’t just be possible for one to really invent a machine or formula that would bring us to then other side and then back again, to prove once and for all that indeed, there is a life after death.
Comment by Major Tom — August 27, 2007 @ 6:58 pm
All I know, Major Tom, is that it is through the mind of men in which the universe is able to discover what they ask of life.
Fascinating entry you got here!
Comment by eric — September 2, 2007 @ 6:47 am
tatay ko days bfore he died,sabi nya nkita nya dw yong co teacher nya na patay na,,,pati yong nanay nya n patay n rin nandun din daw,,,the following day he died,,,on good friday,,,
Comment by ma.donna pacis — October 17, 2007 @ 1:46 pm