S
smcder
Guest
In case you hadn't noticed I'm terrible with following in line, . . .
I think you do pretty well considering the standards set on this forum. ;-)
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Consciousness and the Paranormal
- Thread starter Tyger
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In case you hadn't noticed I'm terrible with following in line, . . .
I think you do pretty well considering the standards set on this forum. ;-)
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
If the Consensus Science story of human origins is correct, then human behavior was once measured by the simple metric of survival: If the behavior contributed to the survival of the individual and/or the tribe, then it was "good;" if the behavior threatened the survival of the individual and/or the tribe, then it was "bad."
Nowadays, humans are thankfully able to engage in a broad range of behaviors that would have been considered bad in the past and would likely have led to death, either from natural causes or from being expelled from the tribe. Now good/acceptable behaviors are much less about life and death (objective) and much more about what the majority thinks is acceptable (subjective). In short, we've got the culture wars.
As to my involvement with the field of mental health: outpatient counseling.
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
Ok, it looks like Bruce packed up his Intangibe Materiality site for only the ancient ones and has moved on to A Transit of Contingencies:
The location of UAP occurs in the atmosphere and that energy is transferred between the earth's surface and the atmosphere via conduction, convection, and radiation. In general, the atmospheric medium, by which the near Earth is surrounded, contains not only electric charges bound in atoms or molecules, or any form of matter, but it also contains a quantity of charge in an unbound state.
Sometimes the unbound charges are positive, sometimes negative, but as a general rule most are of an opposite polarity to that of the Earth. Different layers, or strata, of the atmosphere, located at only small distances from each other, are frequently found to be in different electric-magnetic states.
Most often UAP resemble plasmas as well as having an effect on electrical devices that resembles the effect of geomagnetic storm such as a solar flare or an electromagnetic pulse termed EMP. Another attribute of close encounters with UAP is paralysis.
It is not widely understood that "brain waves" are not confined to the brain, but actually spread throughout the body via the perineural system, the connective tissue sheathes surrounding all of the nerves. Dr. Robert O. Becker has described how this system, more than any other, regulates injury repair processes throughout the body. Hence the entire nervous system acts as an "antenna" for projecting the biomagnetic pulsations that begin in the brain, specifically in the thalamus.
The above is from his site. For those not familiar with his brand of 'academese' please consider getting acquainted with his verbosity. Lovers of Tonnies and Vallee will be thrilled...
A TRANSIT OF CONTINGENCIES
Much of what's being explored here and in the related threads regarding what are we actually seeing and experiencing via paranormality is one of his primary foci.
The location of UAP occurs in the atmosphere and that energy is transferred between the earth's surface and the atmosphere via conduction, convection, and radiation. In general, the atmospheric medium, by which the near Earth is surrounded, contains not only electric charges bound in atoms or molecules, or any form of matter, but it also contains a quantity of charge in an unbound state.
Sometimes the unbound charges are positive, sometimes negative, but as a general rule most are of an opposite polarity to that of the Earth. Different layers, or strata, of the atmosphere, located at only small distances from each other, are frequently found to be in different electric-magnetic states.
Most often UAP resemble plasmas as well as having an effect on electrical devices that resembles the effect of geomagnetic storm such as a solar flare or an electromagnetic pulse termed EMP. Another attribute of close encounters with UAP is paralysis.
It is not widely understood that "brain waves" are not confined to the brain, but actually spread throughout the body via the perineural system, the connective tissue sheathes surrounding all of the nerves. Dr. Robert O. Becker has described how this system, more than any other, regulates injury repair processes throughout the body. Hence the entire nervous system acts as an "antenna" for projecting the biomagnetic pulsations that begin in the brain, specifically in the thalamus.
The above is from his site. For those not familiar with his brand of 'academese' please consider getting acquainted with his verbosity. Lovers of Tonnies and Vallee will be thrilled...
A TRANSIT OF CONTINGENCIES
Much of what's being explored here and in the related threads regarding what are we actually seeing and experiencing via paranormality is one of his primary foci.
S
smcder
Guest
outpatient counseling . . .
That was my second guess . . . are you analyzing me yet? ;-) I've thought recently about going back to school in nursing.
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
Well, if your current occupation really is manual labour then there are other skills of yours that might be more valuable to you and others (depends on your compensation package for your current labours), but from the supreme patience you display here I can tell you would make an exceptional caregiver.
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S
smcder
Guest
Thank you - I have been called inhumanly patient (and an inhuman patient).
You'd be surprised at what some folks will pay for certain kinds of manual labor.
S
smcder
Guest
Ugh - discursivity! I always thought of Mac as being pretty straight forward - I haven't read much of his blog - read his book, and listened to him on podcasts . . .
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
It's an associative dissassociative universe. What can I say? My mind is flighty and looks happily upon disparate connections and the magic of metaphor.
S
smcder
Guest
Clearly you have the ADD - me and Soupie can get you hooked up. Ritalin, Strattera? Provigil? What's your poison? Might as well add on some Abilify while we're at it . . .
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Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
For my Advanced Disconnected Discourse syndrome I tend to prefer a dried organic herbal mixture and good ale. For some strange reason this has the habit of magnifying the problem. I also like the occasional single malt scotch and similar botanicals if i really need to slow down but never on a school night. I find all that synthetic, pharmaceutical stuff just does not agree with my temperament, or something like that.
Oh yeah, many more, both voluntarily undertaken and inflicted by the so-called 'security' agencies on unsuspecting populations. Words (almost) fail me. It is a wonder that anyone alive today maintains a tacit native recognition of reality as it is bodied forth in our commonly experienced 'lived reality' on this planet. Mind-fucking drugs combined with the computer/matrix memeplex have made it possible for people today to theorize absolutely anything, no matter how bizarre, as the possible ultimate nature of mind and world.
I'd heard about the gas hypothesis, but it was more likely to have been efficacious increases in magnetism at sites at which ancient temples and megalithic structures were built. We're still left with the really
interesting question of why the Delphic oracles were so often correct in their predictions.
A really good source on the magnetism flowing through earth faults at so many ancient sacred sites -- and the stimulation of plant growth and vigor in seeds brought to those locations by our forebears:
A very big claim that is probably a misunderstanding.* (For starters, my impression is that the wave is taken to be as real as the particle.) But perhaps you can quote some major physicists who would agree with that claim?
Just btw, I think your frequent approach to such questions through parsing of words and syntax is not helpful.
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
I know hey, isn't ufology just maddening sometimes?! Is he trickster or simply seeking clarity?
I have come to simply understand Randall's voice as one of the many, uniquely consistent waves that wash up rhythmically on the Paracst forum shores. & Consistency can have its benefits, such as finding acceptance instead of confusion.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
So instead of one analog objective reality, you argue that there are an infinite number of digital objective realities? Since the jury is still out on whether reality is analog or digital, I think we will have to agree to disagree yet again.
Btw, of what are those [subatomic] physical particles you speak of made? Analog waves, vibrating strings? (Doesn't look like we can digitize objective reality just yet.)
Also, relativity only comes into play for localized observers/experiencers. Objective reality is not localized. However, with relativity in mind, we could say that there is a local objective reality for any given human/observer. I'm talking over my head now, but their local objective reality would perhaps consist of the light cone for any given event.
All this just reinforces what we already know: that objective reality (whether analog or digital, local or omniscient) is damned near impossible for humans to discern.
Tyger
Paranormal Adept
There is a saying - an inability to see the forest for the trees.
If you go detailed enough 'reality' breaks down. The same goes for going too broadly, 'reality' breaks down [Astronomy is as inferential a science as they come.] The way I see it 'reality' is not 'out there' exactly - it is a function of our perceptual organism. Consciousness uses the perceptual organism - which it organizes - to perceive the narrow band of physical existence. [What follows is an example of how powerfully how we think about our world - 'informed' by scientific theorizing - weaves itself into an unwitting philosophy of the universe and action in that universe - biologists talking about DNA coding suggests computer coding - and the human imagination is off on construction of computer-programmed 'realities'.]
This bit of the discussion reminds me of some of the reading I've been doing in biology regarding Deinococcus radiodurans - one of a small class of single-celled organisms with extreme radiation tolerance.
Link: http://www.natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic30/shattering-the-genome.pdf
Selected sections of text follow -
"A microorganism known as Deinococcus radiodurans can endure massive doses of radiation that fragment its genome into hundreds of pieces. Its proteins simply reassemble a whole genome from the fragments. It raises a question that turns out to be universally applicable: Where is wisdom stored in the organism? No place in particular — and certainly not only in the genome. We are forced to think of the organism in its totality as an active agent in the world.
"Ionizing radiation can damage DNA in various ways, perhaps worst of all by causing double-strand breaks. These are breaks across both strands of the DNA double helix. The familiar bacterium, E.coli, not at all un-typically, dies when it suffers about four double-strand breaks per each of its four-to-eight circular DNA molecules. Deinococcus radiodurans, by contrast, can survive over a thousand double-strand breaks. This means that it continues life after its genome is broken into hundreds of small fragments. It does so by proceeding to put its genome back together again when living conditions improve — a daunting task, to say the least.
"Biologists have been intrigued by this peculiar survivor (along with some of its kin) for several decades, and of late they have clarified its story considerably. A central feature of that story is striking, because it points toward a truth about organisms in general, not merely those with extreme survival capabilities. The key finding is this: damage to DNA is not, in the most direct sense, what proves lethal about radiation. The primary issue, instead, is damage to proteins. As long as its proteins remain functional, a cell can reassemble even a badly fractured genome; but with damaged proteins, a cell is done for, with or without a working genome.
"In sum, according to Anita Krisko and Miroslav Radman, researchers at the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences who have been studying D. radiodurans, 'biological responses to genomic insults depend primarily on the integrity of the proteome ... This conclusion is the consequence of the fact that dedicated proteins repair DNA, and not vice versa.' Moreover, 'this paradigm is fundamental in its obviousness (no living cell can function correctly with an oxidized proteome) and, if it is true, must be universal, that is, hold also for human cells.'
"All this says something powerful about the longstanding genocentric (gene-centered) bias of biologists. Krisko and Radman delicately hint at the issue when they write in their recent paper: 'The science of molecular biology was dominated by the notion of information, its storage, transmission, and evolution as encrypted in the nucleotide sequence of nucleic acids [constituting DNA and RNA]. But the biological information is relevant to life only to the extent of its translation into useful biological functions performed, directly or indirectly, by proteins ...'
"It was always a strange thing when biologists, attempting to penetrate the thickly matted tapestry of cellular activity at one point or another and disentangle the threads for analysis, decided that one type of element — the gene or DNA sequence — was the place where all the activity logically begins and from where it is controlled. There is in fact no starting place and no part acting as controller, and the very attempt to think in such terms while keeping a picture of cellular behavior in mind immediately brings one up against absurdity. D. radiodurans no more shows proteins to be the “controlling” elements than it does DNA. There is an infinite range of ways a cell can shape its thoroughly interwoven processes, and while any given organism may bring one aspect or another to the fore in a particular context, the finely differentiated whole remains integral and irreducible.
"If there was one reason for imagining DNA to be the desired starting point, it was the idea that DNA carried the 'controlling information' or 'computational program' for directing everything else. But this never made any sense. Among other things, it glorified a linear string of statically encoded information while ignoring the much more profoundly informed performances we observe in the behavior, for example, of those many molecules that coordinate and collaborate in transcribing DNA into RNA — or, for that matter, in repairing damaged DNA.
"The molecular complexes carrying out these processes are not simply bumping into each other and chemically reacting in fixed and statistically predictable ways, like the contents of familiar test-tube solutions. Rather, they have intricate tasks to carry out — tasks requiring elaborate sequences of well-timed interactions. Even when these processes have been characterized in some detail, countless bright but befuddled students have twisted their imaginations into knots while trying to picture the actual textbook sequence of events in a coherent manner. This in itself testifies to the depth of directed wisdom at work in those molecular dramas.
"The work on D. radiodurans can remind us that the activity of the organism always reflects something like what we can only refer to metaphorically as a 'sense of the whole.' The coordinated elements coming to bear upon any particular part seem to 'know' how that part is to be related to its larger context. And this work also makes obvious the falsehood in all references to DNA as if it embodied a computer-like program. Arbitrarily break a large program into a handful of separate pieces (let alone a thousand of them), and you face the certainty of its total collapse. Yet every organism deals routinely with a certain number of such disruptions to its genome.
"The information we conceive as 'encoded' in DNA is a bland reduction of the living intelligence at work in cellular processes. It is (to employ a rough analogy) as if we elevated a book of words, phrases, definitions, and grammatical guidelines to a pinnacle high above Moby Dick or Faust or War and Peace, worshipping the former as 'information' while ignoring the kind of informed and meaningful activity through which mere words and phrases can be woven into soul-stirring tales.
"A phrase-book or dictionary can be an essential resource, but it is the organism (Deinococcus radiodurans in the case we have been considering) that uses the dictionary to weave its own story — and even reconstructs the dictionary when the pages fall into a disorganized heap on the floor."
If you go detailed enough 'reality' breaks down. The same goes for going too broadly, 'reality' breaks down [Astronomy is as inferential a science as they come.] The way I see it 'reality' is not 'out there' exactly - it is a function of our perceptual organism. Consciousness uses the perceptual organism - which it organizes - to perceive the narrow band of physical existence. [What follows is an example of how powerfully how we think about our world - 'informed' by scientific theorizing - weaves itself into an unwitting philosophy of the universe and action in that universe - biologists talking about DNA coding suggests computer coding - and the human imagination is off on construction of computer-programmed 'realities'.]
This bit of the discussion reminds me of some of the reading I've been doing in biology regarding Deinococcus radiodurans - one of a small class of single-celled organisms with extreme radiation tolerance.
Link: http://www.natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic30/shattering-the-genome.pdf
Selected sections of text follow -
"A microorganism known as Deinococcus radiodurans can endure massive doses of radiation that fragment its genome into hundreds of pieces. Its proteins simply reassemble a whole genome from the fragments. It raises a question that turns out to be universally applicable: Where is wisdom stored in the organism? No place in particular — and certainly not only in the genome. We are forced to think of the organism in its totality as an active agent in the world.
"Ionizing radiation can damage DNA in various ways, perhaps worst of all by causing double-strand breaks. These are breaks across both strands of the DNA double helix. The familiar bacterium, E.coli, not at all un-typically, dies when it suffers about four double-strand breaks per each of its four-to-eight circular DNA molecules. Deinococcus radiodurans, by contrast, can survive over a thousand double-strand breaks. This means that it continues life after its genome is broken into hundreds of small fragments. It does so by proceeding to put its genome back together again when living conditions improve — a daunting task, to say the least.
"Biologists have been intrigued by this peculiar survivor (along with some of its kin) for several decades, and of late they have clarified its story considerably. A central feature of that story is striking, because it points toward a truth about organisms in general, not merely those with extreme survival capabilities. The key finding is this: damage to DNA is not, in the most direct sense, what proves lethal about radiation. The primary issue, instead, is damage to proteins. As long as its proteins remain functional, a cell can reassemble even a badly fractured genome; but with damaged proteins, a cell is done for, with or without a working genome.
"In sum, according to Anita Krisko and Miroslav Radman, researchers at the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences who have been studying D. radiodurans, 'biological responses to genomic insults depend primarily on the integrity of the proteome ... This conclusion is the consequence of the fact that dedicated proteins repair DNA, and not vice versa.' Moreover, 'this paradigm is fundamental in its obviousness (no living cell can function correctly with an oxidized proteome) and, if it is true, must be universal, that is, hold also for human cells.'
"All this says something powerful about the longstanding genocentric (gene-centered) bias of biologists. Krisko and Radman delicately hint at the issue when they write in their recent paper: 'The science of molecular biology was dominated by the notion of information, its storage, transmission, and evolution as encrypted in the nucleotide sequence of nucleic acids [constituting DNA and RNA]. But the biological information is relevant to life only to the extent of its translation into useful biological functions performed, directly or indirectly, by proteins ...'
"It was always a strange thing when biologists, attempting to penetrate the thickly matted tapestry of cellular activity at one point or another and disentangle the threads for analysis, decided that one type of element — the gene or DNA sequence — was the place where all the activity logically begins and from where it is controlled. There is in fact no starting place and no part acting as controller, and the very attempt to think in such terms while keeping a picture of cellular behavior in mind immediately brings one up against absurdity. D. radiodurans no more shows proteins to be the “controlling” elements than it does DNA. There is an infinite range of ways a cell can shape its thoroughly interwoven processes, and while any given organism may bring one aspect or another to the fore in a particular context, the finely differentiated whole remains integral and irreducible.
"If there was one reason for imagining DNA to be the desired starting point, it was the idea that DNA carried the 'controlling information' or 'computational program' for directing everything else. But this never made any sense. Among other things, it glorified a linear string of statically encoded information while ignoring the much more profoundly informed performances we observe in the behavior, for example, of those many molecules that coordinate and collaborate in transcribing DNA into RNA — or, for that matter, in repairing damaged DNA.
"The molecular complexes carrying out these processes are not simply bumping into each other and chemically reacting in fixed and statistically predictable ways, like the contents of familiar test-tube solutions. Rather, they have intricate tasks to carry out — tasks requiring elaborate sequences of well-timed interactions. Even when these processes have been characterized in some detail, countless bright but befuddled students have twisted their imaginations into knots while trying to picture the actual textbook sequence of events in a coherent manner. This in itself testifies to the depth of directed wisdom at work in those molecular dramas.
"The work on D. radiodurans can remind us that the activity of the organism always reflects something like what we can only refer to metaphorically as a 'sense of the whole.' The coordinated elements coming to bear upon any particular part seem to 'know' how that part is to be related to its larger context. And this work also makes obvious the falsehood in all references to DNA as if it embodied a computer-like program. Arbitrarily break a large program into a handful of separate pieces (let alone a thousand of them), and you face the certainty of its total collapse. Yet every organism deals routinely with a certain number of such disruptions to its genome.
"The information we conceive as 'encoded' in DNA is a bland reduction of the living intelligence at work in cellular processes. It is (to employ a rough analogy) as if we elevated a book of words, phrases, definitions, and grammatical guidelines to a pinnacle high above Moby Dick or Faust or War and Peace, worshipping the former as 'information' while ignoring the kind of informed and meaningful activity through which mere words and phrases can be woven into soul-stirring tales.
"A phrase-book or dictionary can be an essential resource, but it is the organism (Deinococcus radiodurans in the case we have been considering) that uses the dictionary to weave its own story — and even reconstructs the dictionary when the pages fall into a disorganized heap on the floor."
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Tyger
Paranormal Adept
It seems clear that how science has approached living organisms - life - in the 20th century - has been key to the kind of thinking we encounter regarding humankind as machines, as computer-like beings programmed and encoded. Consider the words we have used in biology and other disciplines - genetic coding, educational programs, etc. It's like (materialist) science gave permission to the average person to think along certain lines because of the terminology that was used.
From Mechanistic to Organismal Biology
LINK: http://www.natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic30/russell-on-holism.pdf
"The Process of Abstraction
"If we consider the various ways in which, for the purposes of science, abstraction is made from the living reality of the organism, we shall see how the different theories of development have arisen, and how their character has been determined by the mode of abstraction they adopt.
"Biology occupies a unique and privileged position among the sciences in that its object, the living organism, is known to us not only objectively through sensory perception, but also in one case directly, as the subject of immediate experience. It is therefore possible, in this special case of one’s own personal life, to take an inside view of a living organism.
"When we conceptualize this living experience, we arrive at a definition of organism which, though it is abstract and schematic as compared with the experienced reality, is yet rich in content as compared with the still more schematic representations commonly employed in biology. The concept of organism which we derive from a study of direct experience is that of a continuing psycho-physical unity or individuality, which acts as a whole in relation to its environment.
"The first stage of abstraction from the concrete reality of organism as experienced is the concept of organism as a psycho-physical unity or individuality.
"The second step along the path of abstraction—namely, the elimination of the psychical—is one which nowadays is almost universally taken as a matter of course. It is a step of immense importance, for it introduces at once a dualism of matter and mind, and creates between them a dividing line which can never be crossed. To reintroduce mind into living things, to reconstitute the living unity, it is necessary to have recourse to such lame expedients as psycho-physical parallelism or psycho-physical interaction, or to adopt some form of dualistic vitalism. With the psychical aspect eliminated, the organism becomes a material system, similar in nature to, though more complex in structure than, other material bodies.
"The complexity and variety of organization naturally provoke investigation, and give rise on the one hand to the science of organic form, in which types of structure are distinguished and their variants classified (morphology), and on the other hand to the study of the functioning of the different types (physiology). Morphology tends to remain a formal and abstract science, until it is revivified by the study of function; physiology develops very soon the concept of the organism as a complicated mechanism. Here two somewhat diverse points of view emerge—the teleological and the dynamical.
"A machine is definitely a teleological construction, and the working of its parts can be fully understood only if their relation to one another and to the action of the whole be realized and grasped. The same view can be applied to the organism, which may be regarded as a teleological mechanism or machine, albeit of extreme complexity. The teleological point of view has undoubtedly great heuristic value in biology, and is in fact much used.
"But the progress of physico-chemical study applied to the living thing has shown that the organism cannot be separated from its environment, with which it maintains the closest relations of interchange of matter and energy. Hence the conception arises of the organism as a physico-chemical system, standing in closest connexion with its physico-chemical environment. The simple concept of the organism as a formed machine is then replaced by the more general concept of it as a dynamical system. From this to the application to the organism of the general philosophical concept of material determinism there is only a step, and the organism tends then to become merged in, and hardly distinguishable from, the general flux of material events.
"Abstraction from the living reality of organism reaches of course its highest degree in the mathematical or statistical treatment of living things. Here the organism is regarded merely as a numerical value—a number, a weight, a dimension. Mathematical laws of growth, for instance, may be worked out, in which the organism is treated simply as a quantity which increases in accordance with a certain formula. Clearly such formulation gives only the most general and abstract account of the process, highly useful though it may be within strict limits.
"To recapitulate the main stages of abstraction from the organism as a whole—we get from the living reality as experienced, which is our ultimate standard, first, the primary abstraction or conceptualization as psycho-physical unity or individuality, from which may be developed the organismal theory of living things, and second, by abstraction from this of the psychical aspect, the ordinary ‘scientific’ conception of the organism as a machine, or more generally a physico- chemical system.
"Of Wholes and Parts
"The use of analysis is characteristic of science generally. Given a complex body, the chemist proceeds immediately to resolve it into its elements, to determine their relative proportions, and in some cases their architectonic arrangement. The same tendency is shown very clearly in biology. Given an organism, the morphologist’s first thought is to discover its structure in minutest detail, to resolve it into its constituent organs and cells and their arrangement. The same process of analysis is applied to what appears to be the ultimate vital unit, the cell; [...]
"Now this analytic method, employed both in the study of form and in the study of function, is quite indispensable in biological research, and has yielded extremely valuable results. It is essential also for organismal biology. But we must note that it necessarily entails abstraction. The initial step which leads to abstractness of treatment is of course the isolation and definition of parts and part-processes as such. To define is to separate, and to separate is to ignore or to disregard in some measure the relations with other parts and with the whole. In the living thing there are in actuality no separate parts, no separate processes, for no part can be adequately characterized save in terms of its relations to the whole.
"By the process of morphological analysis we can, for instance, resolve the organism into its component cells, but the cells so distinguished are abstract morphological units, characterized statically, in terms of structure. Actually the living tissue-cell is indissolubly linked up, by reason of its functional activity, with the neighboring cells, and, through the milieu interne and the nervous system, with the general activities which the whole organism is pursuing. The tissue-cell takes part in the activity of the whole, and it is dependent for its own continued existence as a living part upon its manifold functional relations with the whole. If we distinguish it as an independent unit or component we necessarily abstract from its full reality; we disregard its functional connexions or relations with the whole, and form a simplified and static conception of it.
"In the living thing there are no completely separable or independent parts; if we distinguish separate units or components it is at the cost of artificially simplifying our definition of them by abstracting from their continuing relations with the activity of the organism as a whole. It is primarily because the parts or constituents so distinguished are to a large extent abstract that it is impossible fully to reconstitute from them the whole from which they are themselves derived by the process of analytical abstraction. This is true even if we characterize them physiologically.
"Contrast in this respect a machine. The machine has separate parts; it can be taken to pieces and put together again; its parts can be adequately characterized in terms of their own structure, apart from their relations to the machine as a whole. This is not the case with the organism. Here the parts can be adequately characterized only in terms of their functional relations to the organism as a whole. These relations, which are manifold and subtle, involve time and process, a taking part or merging in the total activity of the continuing unity which is organism.
"The unity of the organism is accordingly not decomposable without loss, and cannot be resynthesized in its original completeness from the abstract components distinguished by analysis. We may sum this up in the following cardinal law of biological method: The activity of the whole cannot be fully explained in terms of the activities of the parts isolated by analysis, and it can be the less explained the more abstract are the parts distinguished.
"Since analysis is necessary for biological science we must accept the fact that our biological results will be to a certain extent abstract and schematic, and we must strive to correct this abstractness as far as possible by distinguishing only such elements as are concrete and biological, not physico-chemical and abstract, and by carrying out as complete a reconstitution or reintegration of such elements as may be possible.
"It follows from what we have said that the parts cannot be understood save in relation to the whole, and so we arrive at our second law of biological method: No part of any living unity and no single process of any complex organic activity can be fully understood in isolation from the structure and activities of the organism as a whole. To regard any process or structure by itself without relating it to the general activity of the organism is to deal with something which is in large measure abstract and unreal. To re-invest it with some degree of concrete reality it is necessary to reintegrate it into the whole. Its isolation by analysis should be provisional only, and after analysis there should always follow reintegration. We know that the reconstitution of the original unity will be incomplete, but we must make it as complete as possible.
"Particulate Theories
"There is, however, a misuse of analytical or disintegrative method which leads to disastrous consequences. The organism is by this method resolved into cells, cells into their constituent parts, and the substance of the cell into hypothetical units, to which are attributed many of the essential vital functions. This fractionalization is a method of approach to the problems of heredity and development which has become traditional and habitual, so that nowadays any other way of looking at these problems is rarely considered, and it is of course the basal method underlying all particulate theories. It is generally, though not invariably, coupled with the idea that some at least of these ultimate units represent and give rise to, or at the least co-operate in the formation of, particular parts or characters of the organism. This idea of representative particles is, we have seen, a very old one, dating back at least to the Greeks, and revived again by Bonnet, Darwin, and Weismann. It derives some of its force and verisimilitude from the fact that certain characters appear to behave as units in inheritance—a particular lock of white hair, for example, may recur from one generation to another.
"From facts of this kind it is easy, but illogical, to conclude that all characters of the organism are separable in inheritance, that the organism is, as it were, a bundle of separate characters, represented separately in the germ, which can be shuffled about, so that some of the offspring get one set, some another, and so on indefinitely. It may be remarked that to distinguish separate characters at all in the organism has necessarily something artificial and abstract about it. Obviously the number of characters that can be distinguished is infinite, but yet none of them is in reality separate from the rest. The lock of hair, for instance, clearly cannot arise apart from the organism which manifests it. Separate or separable characters are therefore to a very large extent abstractions. But the idea that the organism is a composite of separate characters, each of which is represented in the germ by a separate vital unit, seems to have a perennial fascination for the human mind.
"The attempt to find an internal formative mechanism as the cause alike of heredity and development, which is characteristic of nearly all modern theories, results necessarily in this separation of agent and material, just as the attempt of the vitalists to reintroduce life into the mechanistic abstraction that stands for organism results in a dualism or opposition between the immaterial agent and the material mechanism which it in some way controls. In either case one arrives at a Deus ex machina. The nuclear organization, the germ-plasm, or the gene-complex of modern theories, is accordingly invested with semi-magical powers of control. "
There is more to the article but I will end here. The link to it is supplied above. The deconstruct of the human being and then the reconstruct - I see it like the above.
B437
From Mechanistic to Organismal Biology
LINK: http://www.natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic30/russell-on-holism.pdf
"The Process of Abstraction
"If we consider the various ways in which, for the purposes of science, abstraction is made from the living reality of the organism, we shall see how the different theories of development have arisen, and how their character has been determined by the mode of abstraction they adopt.
"Biology occupies a unique and privileged position among the sciences in that its object, the living organism, is known to us not only objectively through sensory perception, but also in one case directly, as the subject of immediate experience. It is therefore possible, in this special case of one’s own personal life, to take an inside view of a living organism.
"When we conceptualize this living experience, we arrive at a definition of organism which, though it is abstract and schematic as compared with the experienced reality, is yet rich in content as compared with the still more schematic representations commonly employed in biology. The concept of organism which we derive from a study of direct experience is that of a continuing psycho-physical unity or individuality, which acts as a whole in relation to its environment.
"The first stage of abstraction from the concrete reality of organism as experienced is the concept of organism as a psycho-physical unity or individuality.
"The second step along the path of abstraction—namely, the elimination of the psychical—is one which nowadays is almost universally taken as a matter of course. It is a step of immense importance, for it introduces at once a dualism of matter and mind, and creates between them a dividing line which can never be crossed. To reintroduce mind into living things, to reconstitute the living unity, it is necessary to have recourse to such lame expedients as psycho-physical parallelism or psycho-physical interaction, or to adopt some form of dualistic vitalism. With the psychical aspect eliminated, the organism becomes a material system, similar in nature to, though more complex in structure than, other material bodies.
"The complexity and variety of organization naturally provoke investigation, and give rise on the one hand to the science of organic form, in which types of structure are distinguished and their variants classified (morphology), and on the other hand to the study of the functioning of the different types (physiology). Morphology tends to remain a formal and abstract science, until it is revivified by the study of function; physiology develops very soon the concept of the organism as a complicated mechanism. Here two somewhat diverse points of view emerge—the teleological and the dynamical.
"A machine is definitely a teleological construction, and the working of its parts can be fully understood only if their relation to one another and to the action of the whole be realized and grasped. The same view can be applied to the organism, which may be regarded as a teleological mechanism or machine, albeit of extreme complexity. The teleological point of view has undoubtedly great heuristic value in biology, and is in fact much used.
"But the progress of physico-chemical study applied to the living thing has shown that the organism cannot be separated from its environment, with which it maintains the closest relations of interchange of matter and energy. Hence the conception arises of the organism as a physico-chemical system, standing in closest connexion with its physico-chemical environment. The simple concept of the organism as a formed machine is then replaced by the more general concept of it as a dynamical system. From this to the application to the organism of the general philosophical concept of material determinism there is only a step, and the organism tends then to become merged in, and hardly distinguishable from, the general flux of material events.
"Abstraction from the living reality of organism reaches of course its highest degree in the mathematical or statistical treatment of living things. Here the organism is regarded merely as a numerical value—a number, a weight, a dimension. Mathematical laws of growth, for instance, may be worked out, in which the organism is treated simply as a quantity which increases in accordance with a certain formula. Clearly such formulation gives only the most general and abstract account of the process, highly useful though it may be within strict limits.
"To recapitulate the main stages of abstraction from the organism as a whole—we get from the living reality as experienced, which is our ultimate standard, first, the primary abstraction or conceptualization as psycho-physical unity or individuality, from which may be developed the organismal theory of living things, and second, by abstraction from this of the psychical aspect, the ordinary ‘scientific’ conception of the organism as a machine, or more generally a physico- chemical system.
"Of Wholes and Parts
"The use of analysis is characteristic of science generally. Given a complex body, the chemist proceeds immediately to resolve it into its elements, to determine their relative proportions, and in some cases their architectonic arrangement. The same tendency is shown very clearly in biology. Given an organism, the morphologist’s first thought is to discover its structure in minutest detail, to resolve it into its constituent organs and cells and their arrangement. The same process of analysis is applied to what appears to be the ultimate vital unit, the cell; [...]
"Now this analytic method, employed both in the study of form and in the study of function, is quite indispensable in biological research, and has yielded extremely valuable results. It is essential also for organismal biology. But we must note that it necessarily entails abstraction. The initial step which leads to abstractness of treatment is of course the isolation and definition of parts and part-processes as such. To define is to separate, and to separate is to ignore or to disregard in some measure the relations with other parts and with the whole. In the living thing there are in actuality no separate parts, no separate processes, for no part can be adequately characterized save in terms of its relations to the whole.
"By the process of morphological analysis we can, for instance, resolve the organism into its component cells, but the cells so distinguished are abstract morphological units, characterized statically, in terms of structure. Actually the living tissue-cell is indissolubly linked up, by reason of its functional activity, with the neighboring cells, and, through the milieu interne and the nervous system, with the general activities which the whole organism is pursuing. The tissue-cell takes part in the activity of the whole, and it is dependent for its own continued existence as a living part upon its manifold functional relations with the whole. If we distinguish it as an independent unit or component we necessarily abstract from its full reality; we disregard its functional connexions or relations with the whole, and form a simplified and static conception of it.
"In the living thing there are no completely separable or independent parts; if we distinguish separate units or components it is at the cost of artificially simplifying our definition of them by abstracting from their continuing relations with the activity of the organism as a whole. It is primarily because the parts or constituents so distinguished are to a large extent abstract that it is impossible fully to reconstitute from them the whole from which they are themselves derived by the process of analytical abstraction. This is true even if we characterize them physiologically.
"Contrast in this respect a machine. The machine has separate parts; it can be taken to pieces and put together again; its parts can be adequately characterized in terms of their own structure, apart from their relations to the machine as a whole. This is not the case with the organism. Here the parts can be adequately characterized only in terms of their functional relations to the organism as a whole. These relations, which are manifold and subtle, involve time and process, a taking part or merging in the total activity of the continuing unity which is organism.
"The unity of the organism is accordingly not decomposable without loss, and cannot be resynthesized in its original completeness from the abstract components distinguished by analysis. We may sum this up in the following cardinal law of biological method: The activity of the whole cannot be fully explained in terms of the activities of the parts isolated by analysis, and it can be the less explained the more abstract are the parts distinguished.
"Since analysis is necessary for biological science we must accept the fact that our biological results will be to a certain extent abstract and schematic, and we must strive to correct this abstractness as far as possible by distinguishing only such elements as are concrete and biological, not physico-chemical and abstract, and by carrying out as complete a reconstitution or reintegration of such elements as may be possible.
"It follows from what we have said that the parts cannot be understood save in relation to the whole, and so we arrive at our second law of biological method: No part of any living unity and no single process of any complex organic activity can be fully understood in isolation from the structure and activities of the organism as a whole. To regard any process or structure by itself without relating it to the general activity of the organism is to deal with something which is in large measure abstract and unreal. To re-invest it with some degree of concrete reality it is necessary to reintegrate it into the whole. Its isolation by analysis should be provisional only, and after analysis there should always follow reintegration. We know that the reconstitution of the original unity will be incomplete, but we must make it as complete as possible.
"Particulate Theories
"There is, however, a misuse of analytical or disintegrative method which leads to disastrous consequences. The organism is by this method resolved into cells, cells into their constituent parts, and the substance of the cell into hypothetical units, to which are attributed many of the essential vital functions. This fractionalization is a method of approach to the problems of heredity and development which has become traditional and habitual, so that nowadays any other way of looking at these problems is rarely considered, and it is of course the basal method underlying all particulate theories. It is generally, though not invariably, coupled with the idea that some at least of these ultimate units represent and give rise to, or at the least co-operate in the formation of, particular parts or characters of the organism. This idea of representative particles is, we have seen, a very old one, dating back at least to the Greeks, and revived again by Bonnet, Darwin, and Weismann. It derives some of its force and verisimilitude from the fact that certain characters appear to behave as units in inheritance—a particular lock of white hair, for example, may recur from one generation to another.
"From facts of this kind it is easy, but illogical, to conclude that all characters of the organism are separable in inheritance, that the organism is, as it were, a bundle of separate characters, represented separately in the germ, which can be shuffled about, so that some of the offspring get one set, some another, and so on indefinitely. It may be remarked that to distinguish separate characters at all in the organism has necessarily something artificial and abstract about it. Obviously the number of characters that can be distinguished is infinite, but yet none of them is in reality separate from the rest. The lock of hair, for instance, clearly cannot arise apart from the organism which manifests it. Separate or separable characters are therefore to a very large extent abstractions. But the idea that the organism is a composite of separate characters, each of which is represented in the germ by a separate vital unit, seems to have a perennial fascination for the human mind.
"The attempt to find an internal formative mechanism as the cause alike of heredity and development, which is characteristic of nearly all modern theories, results necessarily in this separation of agent and material, just as the attempt of the vitalists to reintroduce life into the mechanistic abstraction that stands for organism results in a dualism or opposition between the immaterial agent and the material mechanism which it in some way controls. In either case one arrives at a Deus ex machina. The nuclear organization, the germ-plasm, or the gene-complex of modern theories, is accordingly invested with semi-magical powers of control. "
There is more to the article but I will end here. The link to it is supplied above. The deconstruct of the human being and then the reconstruct - I see it like the above.
B437
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Tyger
Paranormal Adept
In regards my post above talking about a radiation resistant bacterium, I will quote from the article -
"Ionizing radiation can damage DNA in various ways, perhaps worst of all by causing double-strand breaks. These are breaks across both strands of the DNA double helix. The familiar bacterium, E.coli, not at all un-typically, dies when it suffers about four double-strand breaks per each of its four-to-eight circular DNA molecules. Deinococcus radiodurans, by contrast, can survive over a thousand double-strand breaks. This means that it continues life after its genome is broken into hundreds of small fragments. It does so by proceeding to put its genome back together again when living conditions improve — a daunting task, to say the least."
How would it be doing this? Might this be a description of the Etheric or Life Force Body of esoteric/occult lore/teaching? In this context, it is the etheric life body that is 'instructing' the physical elements to assemble and become a 'living being'. It is the 'intelligence' that 'instructs' the formation of the tissues, the heart, the circulation. It is why the cells in the heart act like heart-cells and why cells in the liver act like liver-cells. The etheric body is - in esoteric science - the reason why the human body shows up as human, and the dog body shows up as a dog. The etheric is the 'master plan' or blueprint that is being followed or obeyed - and when that cohering force is withdrawn, the physical body - bereft of 'life' - returns to its constituent elements. It decays.
Further from the article -
"The molecular complexes carrying out these processes are not simply bumping into each other and chemically reacting in fixed and statistically predictable ways, like the contents of familiar test-tube solutions. Rather, they have intricate tasks to carry out — tasks requiring elaborate sequences of well-timed interactions."
In esoteric science, the etheric is the 'time body'. Time comes into existence with the etheric, with growth - and the etheric body appears for the first time with the plant kingdom, and is present in all living beings. Living beings grow - time is 'born' with the etheric body. When we die, the etheric body 'leaves' - that's why the body dies and decays - and there then is no 'time' as we know it 'here'.
I love reading stuff like these last two articles - very 'pregnant' with possibilities on so many levels.
"Ionizing radiation can damage DNA in various ways, perhaps worst of all by causing double-strand breaks. These are breaks across both strands of the DNA double helix. The familiar bacterium, E.coli, not at all un-typically, dies when it suffers about four double-strand breaks per each of its four-to-eight circular DNA molecules. Deinococcus radiodurans, by contrast, can survive over a thousand double-strand breaks. This means that it continues life after its genome is broken into hundreds of small fragments. It does so by proceeding to put its genome back together again when living conditions improve — a daunting task, to say the least."
How would it be doing this? Might this be a description of the Etheric or Life Force Body of esoteric/occult lore/teaching? In this context, it is the etheric life body that is 'instructing' the physical elements to assemble and become a 'living being'. It is the 'intelligence' that 'instructs' the formation of the tissues, the heart, the circulation. It is why the cells in the heart act like heart-cells and why cells in the liver act like liver-cells. The etheric body is - in esoteric science - the reason why the human body shows up as human, and the dog body shows up as a dog. The etheric is the 'master plan' or blueprint that is being followed or obeyed - and when that cohering force is withdrawn, the physical body - bereft of 'life' - returns to its constituent elements. It decays.
Further from the article -
"The molecular complexes carrying out these processes are not simply bumping into each other and chemically reacting in fixed and statistically predictable ways, like the contents of familiar test-tube solutions. Rather, they have intricate tasks to carry out — tasks requiring elaborate sequences of well-timed interactions."
In esoteric science, the etheric is the 'time body'. Time comes into existence with the etheric, with growth - and the etheric body appears for the first time with the plant kingdom, and is present in all living beings. Living beings grow - time is 'born' with the etheric body. When we die, the etheric body 'leaves' - that's why the body dies and decays - and there then is no 'time' as we know it 'here'.
I love reading stuff like these last two articles - very 'pregnant' with possibilities on so many levels.
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S
smcder
Guest
S
smcder
Guest
This is an extremely long thread and it seems we’ve broken into several interesting directions lately, any of which are good to pursue (I think) – I thought it was a good time for me to go back and try to re-cap where we’ve been.
I went back through and collected links and major ideas – if I’ve left anything out, please feel free to add to this:
Thread as defined by Tyger
Initially I was going to call this thread 'Consciousness and the Occult' but the title it now bears was recommended instead and I have followed the recommendation.
I did so primarily because 'occult' - a very decent and serviceable word - has been - in a sense - corrupted through extensive use in recent years in various and - in some instances - unfortunate ways. It is like the word 'gay' now being used nearly exclusively in one particular sense and not in the sense of 'happy', it's usual meaning some decades back. Thus does our language shift and morph over time - a dynamic language, at the very least. However, even so, I will likely myself use the word 'occult' every now and again, and how I am using it should become clear over the course of my posts.
Spiritualization, de-spiritualization and re-spiritualization: Questions from an ‘evolution-of-consciousness’ perspective- Martin Lockley, Professor, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Colorado, Denver
LINK:http://www.forumonpublicpolicy.com/Vol2010.no4/archive.vol2010.no4/lockley.pdf
(from Vol2010 no4 Religion
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'
No 'rules' or constraints to this thread except good-will in the spirit of classic intellectual debate - which means it will likely be pretty free-ranging, with many 'threads' of thought being pursued simultaneously - part of the fun of such discussions.
Discussion and contention regarding definition and use of the terms occult, spirituality, etc and their value – including personal experiences. Discussion of science vs magic – literal understanding of magic as the supernatural vs traditional understanding of magic as a way of working with consciousness.
The Evolution of Human Consciousness: Reflections on the Discovery of Mind and the Implications for the Materialist Darwinian Paradigm
Martin Lockley
University of Colorado at Denver, Denver CO 80217-3364 USA
Journal of Cosmology
structures of consciousness - Jean Gebser
John David Ebert Unpacks Jean Gebser's Magnum Opus
Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (Vintage): Edward Tenner: 9780679747567: Amazon.com: Books
dreams and insights
local vs non-local consciousness
Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson on 'protoconsciousness',
David Chalmers – panpsychism
David Bohm holographic universe
Shift in scientific paradigm from materialism
QM and relation to consciousness
INTERLUDE
(from Reply to Papini - Wallace Stevens)
"You know that the nucleus of time is not
The poet but the poem, the growth of the mind
Of the world, the heroic effort to live expressed
As victory. The poet does not speak in ruins
Nor stand there making orotund consolations.
He shares the confusions of intelligence.
Giovanni Papini, by your faith, know how
He wishes that all hard poetry were true.
This pastoral of endurance and of death
Is of a nature that must be perceived
And not imagined. The removes must give,
Including the removes toward poetry.
II. Celestin, the generous, the civilized,
Will understand what it is to understand.
The world is still profound and in its depths
Man sits and studies silence and himself,
Abiding the reverberations in the vaults.
Now, once, he accumulates himself and time
For humane triumphals. But a politics
Of property is not an area
For triumphals. These are hymns appropriate to
The complexities of the world, when apprehended,
The intricacies of appearance, when perceived.
They become our gradual possession. ...
Further discussions of what spirituality means, if it has been defined or even exists, does religion spring from altered states of reality, dangers of spiritual or mystical pursuits
Consciousness as an emergent process of the universe – two ways to look at this
1. consciousness as basic to the universe (panpsychism and similar ideas)
2. consciousness as an emergent process of physical activity in the brain
Link to the church of the subgenius
F.W.H. Myers - British Society for Psychical Research
Human Personality and the Survival of Bodily Deathavailable free here: Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death by F. W. H. Myers - Free Ebook
Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the Twenty-First Century
Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century: Edward Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly: 9781442202061: Amazon.com: Books
Definitions of Spirituality
Constance
Spirituality, for me, is the sense of the depth of our existential being as an integrated part of the world's being. Various types of human experience provide partial and temporary access to extensions of the integrated being in which we participate into regions beyond the margins of what is available to us in ordinary perception.
Ufology
What I mean by that is that from an objective point of view, the word "spiritual" is being used as a convenience term to express our sense of psychological well being as it relates to our particular worldview, and the arguments about what constitute "spirituality" tend to center on the differences between the associated beliefs of differing worldviews.
Jacque Fresco on religion and spirituality
Trained Observer
Living in a fantasy world is not healthy. I've read theCloud of Unknowing(actually practiced that prayer for a good while) and I know more about traversing aDark Night of the Soul(a separate work by St. John of the Cross b.t.w.) than I'd care to go into. I know where you are coming from, I've been there. It's a waste of time unless it gets you to the point where you abandon the whole mess because you finally come to understand why you must kill the Buddha should you meet him on the road.
TrainedObserver on consciousness and the paranormal
Consciousness and the paranormal? I think the secrets to most paranormal eventsmustlay in the intricacies of brain processes and their control of our perceptions. Will that be found in pseudo-scientific and supernatural coming from the likes of the Theosophy Society, its members or any other individuals of similar ilk? I think not. They might be amusing, thought provoking, and enjoyable as art and an example of the diversity of human experience and thought? Yes.
I highly recommend Barbara O'Brien's classic memoir of schizophreniaOperators and Things:The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic.
I think it contains an account that parallels many so-called paranormal events including alien visitation, communication with higher beings, a feeling of having insight in the true nature of reality, and other things associated with "spiritual" or paranormal matters.
The book is all about what is happening to the poor woman's consciousness.
Constance
"What does mysticism have to teach us about consciousness?" Evidently a great deal. This a paper presented by Robert K.C. Forman at the Second Tucson Consciousness Studies conference in 1996, since published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies
Forman2
The paper goes on to distinguish the PCE (pure consciousness experience) from what he calls the 'dualistic mystical state'. All of this is fascinating to me because I've always personally resisted engaging in deep meditation while being aware that there is much to be learned through it. I hope others will share their experiences of the kinds of states identified by the author.
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined: Steven Pinker, Arthur Morey: 9781455883110: Amazon.com: Books
U.G. Krishnamurti.The Mystique of Enlightenmentand “Give Up” audio compilation
William James'sA Pluralistic Universeavailable free here: A Pluralistic Universe by William James - Free Ebook
organizations who might use audio stimulation to bring audiences to a hypnotic state
Daniel Dennett / Cartesian Theater
The Dice Man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(may be the first mention of anti-psychiatry on this thread)
tells the story of a psychiatrist who begins making life decisions based on the casting of dice.
AODA.org - A Druid Meditation Primer - discursive meditation cf. eastern meditation and mindfulness
. . . and I believe that brings us up to about page . . . six ;-)
I went back through and collected links and major ideas – if I’ve left anything out, please feel free to add to this:
Thread as defined by Tyger
Initially I was going to call this thread 'Consciousness and the Occult' but the title it now bears was recommended instead and I have followed the recommendation.
I did so primarily because 'occult' - a very decent and serviceable word - has been - in a sense - corrupted through extensive use in recent years in various and - in some instances - unfortunate ways. It is like the word 'gay' now being used nearly exclusively in one particular sense and not in the sense of 'happy', it's usual meaning some decades back. Thus does our language shift and morph over time - a dynamic language, at the very least. However, even so, I will likely myself use the word 'occult' every now and again, and how I am using it should become clear over the course of my posts.
Spiritualization, de-spiritualization and re-spiritualization: Questions from an ‘evolution-of-consciousness’ perspective- Martin Lockley, Professor, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Colorado, Denver
LINK:http://www.forumonpublicpolicy.com/Vol2010.no4/archive.vol2010.no4/lockley.pdf
(from Vol2010 no4 Religion
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'
No 'rules' or constraints to this thread except good-will in the spirit of classic intellectual debate - which means it will likely be pretty free-ranging, with many 'threads' of thought being pursued simultaneously - part of the fun of such discussions.
Discussion and contention regarding definition and use of the terms occult, spirituality, etc and their value – including personal experiences. Discussion of science vs magic – literal understanding of magic as the supernatural vs traditional understanding of magic as a way of working with consciousness.
The Evolution of Human Consciousness: Reflections on the Discovery of Mind and the Implications for the Materialist Darwinian Paradigm
Martin Lockley
University of Colorado at Denver, Denver CO 80217-3364 USA
Journal of Cosmology
structures of consciousness - Jean Gebser
John David Ebert Unpacks Jean Gebser's Magnum Opus
Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (Vintage): Edward Tenner: 9780679747567: Amazon.com: Books
dreams and insights
local vs non-local consciousness
Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson on 'protoconsciousness',
David Chalmers – panpsychism
David Bohm holographic universe
Shift in scientific paradigm from materialism
QM and relation to consciousness
INTERLUDE
(from Reply to Papini - Wallace Stevens)
"You know that the nucleus of time is not
The poet but the poem, the growth of the mind
Of the world, the heroic effort to live expressed
As victory. The poet does not speak in ruins
Nor stand there making orotund consolations.
He shares the confusions of intelligence.
Giovanni Papini, by your faith, know how
He wishes that all hard poetry were true.
This pastoral of endurance and of death
Is of a nature that must be perceived
And not imagined. The removes must give,
Including the removes toward poetry.
II. Celestin, the generous, the civilized,
Will understand what it is to understand.
The world is still profound and in its depths
Man sits and studies silence and himself,
Abiding the reverberations in the vaults.
Now, once, he accumulates himself and time
For humane triumphals. But a politics
Of property is not an area
For triumphals. These are hymns appropriate to
The complexities of the world, when apprehended,
The intricacies of appearance, when perceived.
They become our gradual possession. ...
Further discussions of what spirituality means, if it has been defined or even exists, does religion spring from altered states of reality, dangers of spiritual or mystical pursuits
Consciousness as an emergent process of the universe – two ways to look at this
1. consciousness as basic to the universe (panpsychism and similar ideas)
2. consciousness as an emergent process of physical activity in the brain
Link to the church of the subgenius
F.W.H. Myers - British Society for Psychical Research
Human Personality and the Survival of Bodily Deathavailable free here: Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death by F. W. H. Myers - Free Ebook
Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the Twenty-First Century
Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century: Edward Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly: 9781442202061: Amazon.com: Books
Definitions of Spirituality
Constance
Spirituality, for me, is the sense of the depth of our existential being as an integrated part of the world's being. Various types of human experience provide partial and temporary access to extensions of the integrated being in which we participate into regions beyond the margins of what is available to us in ordinary perception.
Ufology
What I mean by that is that from an objective point of view, the word "spiritual" is being used as a convenience term to express our sense of psychological well being as it relates to our particular worldview, and the arguments about what constitute "spirituality" tend to center on the differences between the associated beliefs of differing worldviews.
Jacque Fresco on religion and spirituality
Trained Observer
Living in a fantasy world is not healthy. I've read theCloud of Unknowing(actually practiced that prayer for a good while) and I know more about traversing aDark Night of the Soul(a separate work by St. John of the Cross b.t.w.) than I'd care to go into. I know where you are coming from, I've been there. It's a waste of time unless it gets you to the point where you abandon the whole mess because you finally come to understand why you must kill the Buddha should you meet him on the road.
TrainedObserver on consciousness and the paranormal
Consciousness and the paranormal? I think the secrets to most paranormal eventsmustlay in the intricacies of brain processes and their control of our perceptions. Will that be found in pseudo-scientific and supernatural coming from the likes of the Theosophy Society, its members or any other individuals of similar ilk? I think not. They might be amusing, thought provoking, and enjoyable as art and an example of the diversity of human experience and thought? Yes.
I highly recommend Barbara O'Brien's classic memoir of schizophreniaOperators and Things:The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic.
I think it contains an account that parallels many so-called paranormal events including alien visitation, communication with higher beings, a feeling of having insight in the true nature of reality, and other things associated with "spiritual" or paranormal matters.
The book is all about what is happening to the poor woman's consciousness.
Constance
"What does mysticism have to teach us about consciousness?" Evidently a great deal. This a paper presented by Robert K.C. Forman at the Second Tucson Consciousness Studies conference in 1996, since published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies
Forman2
The paper goes on to distinguish the PCE (pure consciousness experience) from what he calls the 'dualistic mystical state'. All of this is fascinating to me because I've always personally resisted engaging in deep meditation while being aware that there is much to be learned through it. I hope others will share their experiences of the kinds of states identified by the author.
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined: Steven Pinker, Arthur Morey: 9781455883110: Amazon.com: Books
U.G. Krishnamurti.The Mystique of Enlightenmentand “Give Up” audio compilation
William James'sA Pluralistic Universeavailable free here: A Pluralistic Universe by William James - Free Ebook
organizations who might use audio stimulation to bring audiences to a hypnotic state
Daniel Dennett / Cartesian Theater
The Dice Man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(may be the first mention of anti-psychiatry on this thread)
tells the story of a psychiatrist who begins making life decisions based on the casting of dice.
AODA.org - A Druid Meditation Primer - discursive meditation cf. eastern meditation and mindfulness
. . . and I believe that brings us up to about page . . . six ;-)
- Status