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If we were supermen, we all could fly.

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EternalCowabunga said:

The only sense there is, is the one you make...

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If we were supermen, we all could fly.

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Like lucid dreaming!

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I wear a red cape to bed.

EternalCowabunga said:

The emotions don't need to be controlled, only understood.

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Quote:

The emotions don't need to be controlled, only understood.

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Quote:

Droz said:
If you are smart enough you could figure out how your brain works by entering into the overmind. This would be a state of enlightenment. When one reaches the structures of his mind, he is able to overlap them with another structure, the overmind.

Conquer yourself, break away, learn it, control it!

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Here is related idea that is kind of difficult to explain.

The brain controls behavior via electrical signals that form impulses in response to stimuli.  In animals, their behavior seems to be dictated directly by their brain.  If a person rubs them the wrong way and they have an impulse to bite them, they do.  Their brain is the structure that determines their behavior, and they are unable to detect and change the programs which they are running (I realize there is no way to accurately know how introspective animals are).

In humans however, most are able to *observe* what their brain is telling them to do and are consciously able to detect and manipulate social and instinctive programs.  This ability to psychoanalyze oneself is only apparent in human beings (once again this is hard to test without understanding the language of say, Dolphins).

Here's the point (and the tricky thing to describe): How can a creature observe that which does the observing?  How can a creature observe the functions of its brain, without simply being the function of its brain?  It is difficult to determine if this phenomenon is somehow just a characteristic of our evolved, complex brain, but when you look at it from the philosophical standpoint, it is almost necessary that there be another component to consciousness separate from the brain.  It seems to me that there is another (higher?) vantage point from which we can observe and exist.