The best analogy I can use regarding our physical brain in relation to our non-physical consciousness happens to be what I know best--a physical computer and the non-physical (intangible) software that makes the computer “do stuff”.  Our brain is so very much like a computer and our sub-consciousness is so very much like computer operating system (OS) software designed to be an interface between the computer hardware and other externally added, higher level software that communicates directly with the OS software.  Our upper consciousness (awareness) can be compared to this higher level software. In fact, I believe that the reason as to why these similarities exist is far more than just a striking coincidence.  However, the topic of exactly WHY I believe they are so similar, I will get deeper into later, but now for HOW they are similar. FUNCTIONING COMPUTER:   (high level software)<=>(OS)<=>(computer hardware) FUNCTIONING HUMAN:           (upper consciousness)<=>(sub-consciousness)<=>(brain) SIMILARITIES:    (externally added/shared information)<=>(deep/root level information)<=> (physical machine) Let’s now quickly go to wonderful Wikipedia for a general definition of “software”: “a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions telling a computer what to do and how to do it.”  Now, more specifically, we see a definition of “computer operating system software” as: “software that performs the functions of the programs it implements, either by directly providing instructions to the computer hardware or by serving as input to another higher level of software.” The term “software” was coined to contrast the older term “hardware” (meaning physical devices). In contrast to hardware, software is intangible, meaning it "cannot be touched" or is non-material and non-physical. Within software’s definition, the term “instructions” can be equated to “information” which is, at its root form, undeniably non-physical.  As such, the OS software is stored information that provides specifically structured messages directly to the computer hardware such that the hardware can interpret the messages properly and perform desired functions or computations and return results back to the OS and, if applicable, from the OS back to the higher level software that called the OS for the function to be performed.  Any/all additional higher level software stored on the computer will only interact with the OS itself by informing it what task it is trying to have performed, but never directly interacting with the computer hardware. What is a powered-on computer that has no OS or any software from which to receive instructions or information from?  It's truly a useless, unintelligent, and unaware, yet intricately designed and constructed physical heap of metal and silicon that has no function other than to consume energy (electricity). What is our brain without any consciousness from which to receive instructions or information from? It is truly a useless, unintelligent, and unaware, yet intricately designed and constructed 3lb physical heap of wet jelly that has no function other than to convert the energy we release from our food into tiny electrical currents which “power “it.  Consciousness = Information.  This fact is indisputable.  For our brain to do anything it needs first an operating system (the sub-consciousness).  This non-physical interface to the physical brain will kick start the brain and provide it basic instructions and sub-routines on how to communicate with it.  Yet without any added external software (consciousness) your brain will not perform much of anything. Kind of like a new computer that has nothing but the most basic components of Windows XP on it or perhaps just ancient MS-DOS alone.  The brain needs a consciousness connected to a sub-consciousness.  It requires information fed to it in order to do anything.  This information is consciousness and it can come from many places and is always evolving AND CANNOT BE LOST-EVER!  The brain itself will process all information sent to it yet it has no awareness itself as to what it is processing just as a computer playing a software chess game with you has no idea it is playing chess nor even a concept of what chess is. FACT: Cognitive Science has believed for a very long time that to understand the nature of consciousness we must first understand the brain because they are locked in a false belief that the ‘we’ is comprised of the brain and body only.  They believe that the brain somehow creates consciousness. THEY HAVE BEEN WRONG! It is the opposite.  We must understand consciousness! The brain does NOT create consciousness. The brain is actually a “receiver” and processor of consciousness. The belief that what makes up the ‘I’ is just the brain and body is totally inaccurate. Since consciousness equals information then quantum mechanics gives us further proof that consciousness must be capable of existing without a body or brain. Quantum mechanics states that information cannot be irretrievably lost. To show otherwise would be violating a commonly assumed tenet of science: unitary conservation of information. From Wikipedia: “A postulate of quantum mechanics is that complete information about a system is encoded in its wave function.  The evolution of the wave function is determined by a unitary operator, and unitarity implies that information is conserved in the quantum sense.”  THUS MY ULTIMATE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION: “CAN CONSCIOUNESS EXIST WITHOUT A BRAIN?” IS “ABSOLUTELY YES!” BUT CAN A BRAIN/BODY EXIST WITHOUT A CONSCIOUSNESS? I’M UNSURE….so let’s go to the movies!... From “The Matrix”: Neo: I thought it wasn't real. Morpheus: Your mind makes it real. Neo: If you're killed in the matrix, you die here?  Morpheus: The body cannot live without the mind.    David Icke has stated: “we are not our bodies and the body is not the origin of consciousness. Get that straight and the body can be a computer without 'us' being so. Why? Because it is a vehicle for consciousness, not the source of it.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following is a cool excerpt from an article written by the great mind of David Icke: I have been banging on for years now about the body being a highly sophisticated, indeed staggeringly advanced, holographic computer — the 'biological' kind that can assess information and think for itself up to a point. I may have been pretty much a lone voice on this for a long time, but the tide of perception is beginning to turn, albeit not yet among song-sheet scientists. They appear to have a filter system in the brain that throws a shield of invisibility around any large grey creature sipping tea on the sofa. Today, I am reading story after story in the media that confirms what I have been saying, but no-one dares to use the 'C' word. There are many reasons for this. One is the song-sheet mentality that will not challenge the party line, but another relates to the so-called 'mystery' of consciousness and the association we have with the body being 'us'. The thought process goes like this: 'If we are our bodies and our bodies are computers that means 'we' must be computers. Can't be!' But this perception is fundamentally flawed because of a fundamental misconception — we are not our bodies and the body is not the origin of consciousness. Get that straight and the body can be a computer without 'us' being so. Why? Because it is a vehicle for consciousness, not the source of it.   I am facing a desktop computer as I am writing this. Note as 'I' am writing this, not the computer, which is the means through which I communicate the words.  If you think of 'me' as consciousness and the computer in front of me as the body, that's pretty much the relationship between the two. It's a little more fluid with the connections between consciousness and the body-computer because that is also conscious up to a certain level, in that it assesses incoming information, like changes in the environment, and re-adjusts accordingly. But it is not conscious in the way that the 'I' is infinitely conscious — at least potentially. This week American scientists announced that they had developed a means for monkeys to control a bionic arm using their thoughts. They were trained to move the arm to bring them marshmallows and pieces of fruit How amazing! How do they do that?  Simple. They connect two computer systems. One is the monkey and one is the technology that moves the arm. As a newspaper report said: 'Researchers implanted a grid of tiny electrodes into the animals' brains, in the area which controls movement. They then used sophisticated computer software to pick up and interpret signals from the electrodes. When the monkeys saw some food they wanted to eat, the computer decoded their brain activity and sent commands to motors in the electronic arm. The animals quickly learned to use their thoughts to make the hand, or gripper, take pieces of food off a spike.'     I have to chuckle when I see how this constant confirmation that the body is a computer is cooking the noodles of scientists and science correspondents. There was one guy recently, Michael Hanlon, Science Editor of the London Daily Mail, who was left utterly bewildered by the findings of research conducted by Professor John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Ironically, the research revealed what I mentioned in my books years ago — that the processes within the brain to produce a thought begin before we consciously even have that thought. We become aware of a thought or decision only after it has already been made. As Professor Haynes said: 'The impression that we are freely able to choose between different possible courses of action is fundamental to our mental health. If we are not in control after all, then that makes humans little more than automatons.' The writer of the piece, Michael Hanlon, calls this a 'disturbing picture' because 'it reinforces the view that we are mere machines, pieces of biological clockwork that have no more free will than a Swiss watch'. Then comes a song-sheet classic and the encapsulation of why mainstream science is never going to 'get it' until it has an enormous shift of perception. Hanlon writes: 'It is still completely unknown how 3lb of wet jelly, plus tiny electrical currents powered by the energy we release from our food, can give rise to consciousness. But it does. Few modern people believe that the brain is pervaded by some sort of mysterious "soul"; but how the neurons and synapses of the mind can generate subjective experiences of color, smell, hate, fear and love is an utter mystery.'   'Few modern people believe that the brain is pervaded by some sort of mysterious "soul".' To think this guy is 'Science Editor' of a national UK newspaper. Firstly, that statement is blatantly not true and secondly it reveals why 'science' is so irrelevant to answering the big questions about life and reality. Then there is the claim that 'It is still completely unknown how 3lb of wet jelly, plus tiny electrical currents powered by the energy we release from our food, can give rise to consciousness. But it does'.  (a) It is not 'completely unknown', except by the concrete minds of the song-sheet 'scientists', and (b) it is simply not the case that consciousness arises purely from 'tiny electrical currents powered by the energy we release from our food'. What baloney.   Mind over matter: But do we make conscious choices?, asks the Daily Mail. Yes we do, but at what level of the 'I' are these choices made? That's the real question.     The Morpheus character in the movie, The Matrix, said that fate is 'not without its sense of irony'. Neither, it seems, is song-sheet 'science' and those who write from its perspective. Hanlon, like the 'scientists' he reports, asks the question: 'What is consciousness?' But he then ensures that he will never find the answer by dismissing without questioning the possibility that 'the brain is pervaded by some sort of mysterious "soul"'. Put another way: I have a question for you, but I don't want to hear the answer because I won't believe it. I seek, but I don't want to find unless it agrees with my perception of reality. The electromagnetic 'auric' field that pervades the body-computer. This is what some people call 'the soul', but that is not the only 'non-physical' level of the 'I'.   The body-computer, what they call the 'conscious mind', is the level of the 'I' where decisions made at other levels of awareness are played out in this holographic 'world' that we appear to daily experience. I type the keys on this computer a split second before they appear on the screen because the person sitting one step back from the computer is making the decisions about what to type and the computer is 'playing out' those decisions. So it is with consciousness and the body-computer. I am to this computer before me what the subconscious mind is to the body-computer and the 'conscious mind'. It is therefore correct in this sense that, as 'Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It: 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players'. I have been aware of this for a long time now because of personal experiences that showed me this was the case, but if you take the whole multi-dimensional 'I' as one interconnected consciousness then we are not 'merely players'. We do have free will and choice, but at what level of the 'I' does this take place and, with serious relevance to the global conspiracy, can we be manipulated to hand over that free-will and choice? Oh yes, would be my reply and we have. If we look again at this image it depicts what I call 'body consciousness'. The 'physical' body itself is an energy field vibrating slowly enough to give the illusion of density, but another aspect of the body is the auric field which operates in many ways like the magnetic field that holds the information on computer disks and so on.     The 'physical' body and the 'auric body' or field operate as one unit — 'body consciousness' — and decisions made in the auric 'mind' will be made before they impulse through the body as a 'conscious thought'. Thus, the bewilderment of Michael Hanlon and Professor John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute is produced by their own refusal to look at 'humans' as anything more than a 'physical' body. It's like having something lost in a house and then complaining that you can't find it when you refuse to look in the room where it is. 'I've looked everywhere and I can't find it.' Well, actually, you haven't, that's the point. This is what closed minds do. They set the limits on where they are prepared to look and, even further, they dismiss, ridicule and condemn those who reject such limits. That's why I am dismissed as 'extreme' by even most of the conspiracy research community. Too bad, but that's the way I will always be - NO LIMITS TO FREE THOUGHT. To open our minds — conscious and subconscious — we need to reject such limits because, if we don't, that very acceptance will, of course, close our minds. This is why rigid belief systems, religious, 'scientific' or whatever, are so deadly to human understanding. They limit the flow of free thought by deciding where we will look and where we will never look. The vast majority of conspiracy researchers will not go where I go because their religious beliefs would collapse if they did. So they don't. The belief is more important than the truth. Better to dismiss me as a 'loony' or 'Satan' than to open their eyes to all possibility     Opening the channel to a higher awareness, a greater range of infinite consciousness — all possibility — also reprograms the software of the body-computer. We should not underestimate the importance of this to true freedom and escaping from the box. As thought and emotion passes through the body-computer to become what we call the 'conscious mind' it can be edited and distorted by the programming of the computer system. By this, I mean not only the brain, but the whole crystalline genetic receiver-transmitter system that is the 'physical' form. I have before me a newspaper article, for instance, detailing more scientific research that concluded that humans are 'hard-wired' to care about their social status. It found that an area of the brain 'lights up' when we are asked to think about a person's 'class' or when we are confronted by 'someone higher in the pecking order'. The body-computer is full of software programs — behavior traits, reactions, senses of self and the world — that are constantly editing and directing our perception of reality and kidding us that these programs are who we are. They give us a mask, a false sense of identity, which identifies self with the body-computer, and its actions and reactions, when often it is just the playing out of software programs in the genetic 'hard-drive'. When we free our lower minds from pre-conceived ideas and rigid belief, when we move our point of observation from 'I am the body' to 'I am infinity', we consciously connect with far higher levels of awareness and this can sweep away the genetic programs of limitation and reaction by pressing the delete button. If we don't do this and we get caught in body-consciousness alone, we end up in precisely the state that Professor Haynes described earlier: 'The impression that we are freely able to choose between different possible courses of action is fundamental to our mental health. If we are not in control after all, then that makes humans little more than automatons.' Exactly. And what have humans overwhelmingly become? Automatons. Why? Because they are disconnected from their higher awareness — Infinite Consciousness. We can talk about banking scams and political scams and the New World Order, and we should because we need to understand these levels of the agenda. But what I have been talking about here is the only level at which freedom — infinite freedom, not a vote-every-few-year's 'freedom' — can be unleashed across this crazy illusion. It can be summed up in three words: FREE YOUR MIND. -- David Icke

  thank you Bryan. Charity promos is a cool idea. See if you can find any and we'll see about getting little banner ads for them in various places. Street interviews always sounds fun & we should do it. we'll need a decent camera. I dont have one. I do have some good video edit software we both can use for making our own videos. I'll need to get u a copy of it.   This post was edited by superadmin at February 26, 2011 10:46:51 AM GMT"