Sheldrake's Morphogenic Field - Innovation (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, November 12, 2016, 12:24 (2720 days ago) @ BBella

Dhw:[..] let me try a different approach. Do you think beauty, love, thought, imagination have morphic fields? For me consciousness is in that sort of category: an immaterial quality, an attribute, a state that may form part of each individual field but has no independent existence of its own.
BBELLA: I agree, that each of those attributes you mention probably do not have a field of their own (i could be wrong) but we do know there are different degrees/levels/ of consciousness, so possibly the attributes you mention could be in one of those levels/fields.

I don’t identify levels with fields. For me a spider field will contain a spider level of consciousness and whatever other immaterial attributes it may have.

BBELLA: I think of the morphic field as an imprinted memory field. It is not the thing itself made of matter and energy, it is an imprint of the thing. Similar to what we might think of as a ghost - an imprint of what makes a thing a thing but not the thing itself.
Dhw: Yes, that’s how I see it too: the imprint of you, me, the tree, the spider, each with its own individual identity. But to follow the image, what imprint can there be of consciousness? What would be the ghost of consciousness?
BBELLA: It would seem to me, the ghost of consciousness (an excellent metaphor or title to some great work of art/ book - fiction or non lol) may only be evidenced by it's observed presence; like, "it takes one to know one"? The lines may be blurred, but by the levels of consciousness we appear to have, we have the ability to observe many different levels of consciousness in the life around us. Certain people (shamans, medicine men, etc) say they can observe even more levels than we see.

Do they observe levels of consciousness in the abstract, or levels of consciousness within beings (and perhaps objects)?

BBELLA: How would you separate life from consciousness? If we drop both words, life and consciousness, and just observe what IS; we see no life when a body dies. And we can only know a body is dead when no life is observed in the body. But, some have said, that even though no life was observed in their body, they were never without life! As far as they could tell they were fully alive. So where in what we just observed can we separate life from consciousness?

I thought unconsciousness was quite a common state among the living: accidents, comas, knock-outs, drugs…don’t they also separate life from consciousness? If the body dies and the “soul” lives on, I agree that the two are inseparable, but…see below.

Dhw: A materialist will say that consciousness dies when the body dies, and so we lose both life and consciousness.
BBELLA: And the materialist would be right, that when the "body dies" the body does lose life and consciousness - from the observer's standpoint. But clear evidence from people having actually experienced it (by NDE's and OBE's), from their point of view, they say they did not lose any part of life. They never stopped living. In every sense of the word.

I don’t see how it can be in every sense of the word. Our physical life is impossible without breathing, without heartbeats, without blood circulation etc. Do “souls” have sex with one another? It has to be a different form of life, and I suspect what they mean by “never stopped living” is that they never stopped being themselves. Perhaps you or David know of NDEs that entail bodily experiences. But again see below…

dhw: Those who believe in an immortal, individual soul will probably say we lose one form of life and enter another with our consciousness intact.
BBELLA: ….they would say they felt no loss of any kind; only their loved ones felt a loss of life, although their loved ones body was still fully there - physically. So, maybe we do not lose any of our form of who we are in any sense of the word when we "die". Though, maybe, we possibly add senses by moving into another level of life/consciousness?

That makes more sense to me. We would have to add senses if we were to communicate with and experience the new world we enter. That is why I say we lose one form of life and enter another.