Did My Brain 'create' The 'observer'?

[WhatAmI]

Ive been readig a lot about chemicals in the brain. The feelings and experiences that 'i' think I'm having are not actually feelings created by me, they were created by my brain.

After trying psychedelics, i realised that I create my own reality. What I am seeing, i will never know if it is actually true. Its only true for me. A blind person or a deaf person will have a different experience of reality.

But the common thing that all humans share is that we can observe our experience, once we draw our attention to the "thing" thats observing. We can all be aware of our experience, even if all our experiences are different.

 

But is consciousness actually real?? Is the thing thats observing my reality actually real? To me, at this moment, i feel that the observer was created by my human mind. And that it is just a spiritual concept that humans used to be content with the fact that they can be aware.

Animals cant observe themselves, though they can feel their experience. So would you say they are not conscious?

And that humans that are enlightened are simply attuned to their brain chemistry and nervous system to such an extent that they feel that connectedness fullyand long term, in a similar way that psychedelics make you feel it short term?

I know everyone on this forum is a human with a human brain and human experience and human capacity for observation so naturally we will never know beyond what our brain is capable of.

I just wanted to get this off my chest and if anyone has thought about this or has any counter points to suggest the observer is in deed REAL and not a figment of my imagination then i would love to hear it xxxx

[vizual]

The observer and the observed are the same thing, or rather no-thing. When you watch your thoughts, thoughts appear. But no one separate is aware of these thoughts. The same as you watch out of your window and birds appear, no one is watching these birds, yet they appear. True consciousness is not a thing that watches over everything, true consciousness is everything. It's what is called unity. 

 

[FirstglimpseOMG]

Consciousness is absolutely real. I think it's beginning to understand the difference between consciousness and the thing that you think is perceiving things in your physical body. You know that that feeling of experiencing the world with your senses sort of feels like it resides just a little way in behind your eyes, kind of in between your ears. It's a little floaty sometimes, but generally it feels like the senses all kind of compile in your skull right? And that experience of the senses providing input to your brain so it can process it all and construct a live-able, relatively safe representation of the environment around you, combined with 'your' AWARENESS that you are a physical being in the physical world that also is capable of pondering this awareness, pondering the past and future, making long-term plans, etc. (unlike animals, an order lower, so we'll leave them out), adds up to human consciousness right? That's the 'you' right, the individual, free thinking guy within the mind, experiencing life and physical reality through all the senses of the human body right?

No, man.

Whew, run-on sentence guy needs a breath, hoooo...

I'm going to be bold here and go with my gut feeling that I can tell a story that may get you a little closer. I may bomb, so be nice. The analogies I'm going to try are flawed, but I believe they may suffice to get some truth to hit you and sink in. Okay, here goes....

Picture a big, fat being. An intelligent BEing that's as big and round as they come. So big and massive was this being that if you were a wee, wee, wee being inside it, you couldn't even see the inside walls of the being's guts that you were in. You were very aware of your little immediate surroundings, the thing they were sitting on, and that there was a LOT of space between that thing and whatever the hell you were inside, a part of. You knew a little bit about the space and what was in it, to a degree, but it's boundaries were so far away their nature was a mystery. 

Ok, now please try and picture the big-ass (likely infinitely big), BEing as not really a physical thing, but a natural force... Nature, The Universe, God, The Ultimate Light, the label gets less important.

I know this sounds like a goofy description of us within the universe, but bare with me maybe...

Now, more bad metaphors and analogies but they may work if you stick with me.

Now let's shift the little being to not just be within this big ass entity, but a PART of it. The attachment isn't really on the outside of the Universe BEing's skin, we pictured the little being within the Universe BEing somewhere, but now for pure demonstration purpose we make him a single cell in the makeup of the big, mysterious Universe BEing, and we'll have to put him outside the Universe BEing's body, but not literally, only for making a point in the story.  ..This single cell, we'll call 'he' is a hair cell, at the very end of a chain of hair cells that make up the smallest, furthermost hair on the tip of the Universe BEing's big toe.  Let's, for demonstration's sake only, give this single hair cell at the very tip of the furthermost hair a brain. A little quicker-than-light fleshy quantum computer and call it a brain. The cell, miraculously enough has a few senses to feed info into the brain, but there's limitations to this little single individual cell's senses. For demonstration purposes (bare with me, this is a fun read anyway right?), we have 'him' only able to see straight ahead, and his sense of touch is mucked up, he can't feel or be really aware of anything going on behind him. 'He' is aware of a few cells around his environment though, and they seem to have brains too. Now, the brain's emergent state is 'mind', and the mind in this little single cell has constructed a framework of reference due to it's limited experience of 'life', and it's natural surroundings and what it's part of, and has used the sum of all the senses and experiences to complete a since-birth, thoroughly effective and consistent illusion of what's around it. It even takes credit for being this cool individual with so many senses and abilities and thoughts and knowledge and opinions and on and on.   It also has concluded that life as a single cell in a big-ass universe can be really lousy often.... sometimes it gets scraped up against stuff and feels pain and distress, sometimes other cells fuck with it a bit, and threaten that illusive framework thing that the wee single hair cell's fleshy computer/compiler constructed at great length and cost, and maintains strongly. Now, usually, this very SELFish little single, smartypants individual of a cell can't really detect and understand it's immediate surroundings that well due to it's limited but still really cool, individual senses, and certainly is unaware of it's REAL nature as well.... BUT!!  ...One day, simply by chance, for the first time, a wind bends that little hair around backwards a bit, it curls around and faces inward. Just by chance, or because the wee cell's a little tired of only seeing and feeling and percieving forward and he leans into the wind in order to bend a little further and have a look in a completely different direction. This happens to be the same day that the little cell got a wickedly, unimaginably powerful telescope to peer through when facing this new direction.

Remember, this is one cell and it's fleshy computer with it's killer illusion of individual separate self and free will is absolutely connected to and obviously 'part' of the makeup of this infinitely huge, Intelligent and Omni-Present BEing, but it's awareness of it's true NATURE due to the illusion created by the mind that emerged from the fleshy computer, is cloaked and clueless. There is no TRUTH, or REALITY in it's concept of itself!

The wee 'individual' single cell among trillions of others with limited awareness, gets a freaky break with that wind passing by though, bends with it a bit to see in a new direction with it's new, incredible magnifying optical tool, and what does it see when it looks carefully, and with a somewhat quieter, more still, illusively individual 'mind'?

It/'he' sees clearly and all at once that he is not an individual, separate from that big-ass Universal BEing. Holy crap, he is attached. No, wait a minute, more than attached, he is... an important, perfectly natural part of it. So... this individual cell is, simply, very simply and straightforwardly, the Universal BEing. Holee, then it 's individual awareness illusion and the computer/compiler and the senses and ability to percieve, aren't really anybody. They are an effective, physical extension, feeler, tendril, remote probe, well-equipped gatherer and reporter of physical and remote, local experience to the big-assed Universal Being it is somewhere in the midst of. The single cell possesses a fleshy quantum computer and emergent compiler/illusion builder egoic 'mind', but to call this little, naturally connected, experience gathering, learning, physically interacting with and percieving with tool, an individual, would be preposterous. 

The Universe NATURALLY evolved the emergent, carbon-based, higher order life-form that is us, on the perfect location and environment for it, in order to to provide an outlet for, a conduit of, and return feedback for IT'S conciousness. Not so a single, individual, infinitesimally tiny aspect of itself can get all cocky, build a weak-assed sense of individual self, and then act up when the fact that it dosn't know what it is and what it's for, causes the illusion to fight with and contradict, and ultimately undermine itself, then perpetuating the individual misery experienced by the mind/ EGO. 

Sorry, I blew it didn't I? Did I muddy the waters with the flawed and fractured analogies? 

Aw man. You are the universe.

[WelcometoReality]

@WhatAmI I'll answer your questions with more questions. Can this observer be seen? The brain can be seen and thoughts it produce can be seen can it not? Can something that can be observed create the unobservable?

[WhatAmI]

@FirstglimpseOMG

omfg!!!! How did you seriously experience that? That's so amazing that you didn't just read it somewhere, but that you EXPERIENCED it. 

In this body, it feels like I am that cell with the brain/computer and I am literally so attached to it that I can't see myself as part of a universal being. I don't FEEL infinite, or universal. Every time I meditate, I feel my senses, and I can't feel anything beyond that. I know that I am aware of all feelings, but that awareness still feels within me. No matter how much I focus on my breath and focus on being present etc the awareness still feels within this body.

How did you make the shift from awareness being in your brain/body, to awareness being everywhere? 

What type of meditation helped you? did you concentrate on your awareness? how many hours did it take until you could feel yourself as the universe?? what was your enlightenment experience like? 

I really really want to experience that so badly! being attached to this human body is so limiting. I want to feel apart of everyone and I want to see myself in everyone all the time, not just separate things/objects sharing the same space.

Any tips on how I can do it would help so much.

I just can't get out of this space of feeling like this being is me, because I can 'feel' myself being aware in this body. I can think in this body. The observer doesn't see/feel/look like anything, it's just aware. But how can you expand that awareness so you don't just feel aware within your body, but also so that it expands outside your body and into your environment?

 

[WhatAmI]

@WelcometoReality

in literally two lines you just destroyed my entire argument lol. 

I guess I am not my brain. But awareness still feels within me. How can I feel awareness everywhere, when that feeling of omnipresence will be felt in the body?

if that feeling of omnipresence/universal connectedness (found in enlightenment) is experienced in the body, and that can be observed, how do we know that that is what is real?

[jjer94]

1 hour ago, WhatAmI said:

@WelcometoReality

in literally two lines you just destroyed my entire argument lol. 

I guess I am not my brain. But awareness still feels within me. How can I feel awareness everywhere, when that feeling of omnipresence will be felt in the body?

if that feeling of omnipresence/universal connectedness (found in enlightenment) is experienced in the body, and that can be observed, how do we know that that is what is real?

Notice how you're searching for an experience of enlightenment. You're expecting fireworks: some FEELING of connectedness or bliss. Realize that those experiences are fleeting. 

Your True nature is always here. If "Truth hath no confines," you already are connected to everything! Your present experience unfiltered by belief is enlightenment. 

I suggest you stop searching for a drug-hit of bliss. Instead, start by examining the belief that there is a "you" looking out at an external world. You'll soon find that Awareness, as you like to call it, is already not confined inside the body. 

Cheers!

Edited July 26, 2016 by jjer94

[WelcometoReality]

8 hours ago, WhatAmI said:

@WelcometoReality

in literally two lines you just destroyed my entire argument lol. 

I guess I am not my brain. But awareness still feels within me. How can I feel awareness everywhere, when that feeling of omnipresence will be felt in the body?

if that feeling of omnipresence/universal connectedness (found in enlightenment) is experienced in the body, and that can be observed, how do we know that that is what is real?

What @jjer94 suggested is one place to start. 

Examine what you experience and toss the belief of oneness out the window.