The Deep Conscious Universe

I don't have a lot to post today, but I did come across some very intriguing links about consciousness and how our modern science is slowly asking the questions that may lead us to understand a truer (or at least more accurate) definition of living.  As I mentioned before, if we're going to truly redefine death and dying, we have to re-examine it within the context of living, which in turns means we need a better understanding of what it means to be a living being.    It obviously needs a basis in something more than just biological processes.  

Before I get to these links, I wanted to clarify an item:   my talk about death and dying should in no way come across as creepy or morbid.    If it does, then we're thinking of it incorrectly. What I want to do is find a way to dismantle the misconceptions of grief, and de-stigmatize death, so that we can find a way to learn to embrace it when it comes, and not fear it as we do now.    

Having said that, here are some very relevant narratives I came across relating to consciousness:

Here is the story of a man who is able to read letters and words fine, but cannot at all identify numbers. The essence of this is that he was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that destroys  brain cells, and it had a lasting and seemingly permanent effect on the way he visually identifies numbers.  Some of the tests in which this man was subject have shown that there can exist simultaneously high-level cognitive processing and conscious awareness, as two distinct features. So this may help us continue in our proof of consciousness as independent of cognition, which here is clearly shown to be biological (brain-produced) in nature. 

Another link, this time from the discipline of psychology, which delineates the "hard problem" of consciousness, for those who may yet be unfamiliar, and yet again postulates that there may exist biological environments (like brains) where sensory processes (and even decision-making) may exist, but in which consciousness itself does not.  

And the last link, which breaks down conscious experience to the individual level - like the taste of food, or the feeling of life as a toddler, postulates that consciousness is ubiquitous; it cannot be delineated or separated from anything because it is in everything.   

I'll tie some of the information in these resources into future discussions on consciousness and life, and what happens when we die.