Philosophy, Science, & The Unexplained - Main Thread

[smcder]

I've come across articles and perhaps a book or two discussing significant comparisons that can be made between Eastern philosophy and European and American phenomenology. I haven't pursued those comparisons yet but I think they're likely to be very important for an understanding of the complexity of consciousness. What was the source of that passage referring to the 'not-self'?

I heard it first on a Zencast.org podcast and then Googled the doctrine of not-self, but now I can't find that specific link that was in my post - BUT, this one is better/closer to what I heard in the lecture that set me to thinking:

Anattalakkhaṇa Suttaṃ

specifically, here:

Mental formations are not self. If mental formations were self, mental formations would not lead to affliction. It would be possible to say regarding mental formations, ‘Let mental formations be like this. Let mental formations not be like that.’ However, since mental formations are not self, mental formations lead to affliction. And it is not possible to say regarding mental formations, ‘Let mental formations be like this. Let mental formations not be like that.’

But . . . in The Kybalion, Chapter 3 "Mental Transmutation"

[url="http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/kyb/kyb05.htm"]The Kybalion: Chapter III. Mental Transmutation[/URL]

have a read and see if they aren't claiming the opposite, that it is possible to say regarding mental fomations, "Let mental formations be like this." and then I pointed to cognitive therapy and other techniques for changing our moods that is more in line with modern or Western ideas about the will and self.

 

[Randall]

ufology wrote: "If they (aliens) are so smart and wonderful then how about a little help? But no, never, not once have we been given any information that is beyond the scope of our present day technology that would help reduce our environmental impact on the planet. Nothing but platitudes !"

I don't think we actually know whether we have been given help cleaning up our environment from aliens. There appear to be many reports of ufos around Chernobyl after its meltdown and claims that radiation levels were anomalously reduced thereafter. If it happened would we be told about it? No we wouldn't, as we probably all realize here. Robert Hastings's research on thirty years of ufo interventions at nuke bases, nuke labs and testing areas, etc., in the US and Russia suggest a long program of intended education. Maybe things have to get still worse before some advanced race stops us. I've long thought it likely that some member of our species might have accidentally triggered nuclear exchanges and vast destruction at some point over the last 65 years and that it was stopped, not by us.

Interesting points, but intervention is different than information that would prove their existence and allow us to manage our problems ourselves.

 

[smcder]

Hi Steve. I thought that's what he meant (and I did find myself agreeing with almost everything you wrote in the first 17 pages of this thread, when I decided to join in). I also find myself in agreement with most everything Jeff Davis writes, the only exception being that I think there's enough evidence by now to conclude that some ufos are indeed material, high tech 'vehicles' that are 'not ours'.

and I did find myself agreeing with almost everything you wrote in the first 17 pages of this thread,

Oh no! You are in real trouble . . . ;-) I'm not sure I agree with it all, I have a liberal arts degree (gasp!) and grew up in a home with an incredibly intuitive mother and an incredibly "logical" father (a mathematician and college professor) - so dinner conversations could be strenuous and then I went to law school - and sometimes the Socratic method I endured there comes out . . . but mostly I am just always asking questions like I was six years old.

 

[smcder]

I've read very little of Nietzsche. Yes, exactly, "so . . . little . . . time." It gets worse every year.

Nietzsche is pretty incredible, so much there. I was fortunate to be able to read him in the German and had an excellent one on one course in college, wrote a paper on The Eternal Recurrence.

 

[Randall]

Ufology,
Can you give us that succinct definition that you have attributed to consciousness here numerous times please? To understand the roll of consciousness, the absolute most basic and underlying theme is sentience. When we observe or imagine ourselves, we experience rudimentary sentience. Awareness of the self. Sentience and consciousness are in no way separable. How can you proclaim that such a sentient experience as that which is extended consciousness observing the self is not representative of sentient consciousness itself? The subconscious mind does not imagine anything. It's strictly informational in nature. It cannot lie knowingly. It can't make stuff up.

So what do you figure dreams are then if they're not your subconscious making stuff up?

 

[Constance]

Jeff Davis, wrote, responding to ufology:

"If the individuals were not in a waking state when events occurred that they recounted, how could they have known of them afterward if someone else didn't convey as much to them? We are not talking about physical or material trinkets or equipment that was in place anytime prior to their being anesthetized. We are talking behavior or experience. Actions. There is NO WAY that what you are forwarding here could explain as much. We really don't require anything that has not already been documented many times. Please, listen and search out the evidence for yourself. I realize how intelligent you are and respect you deeply. Just look into this as deeply."


I second that motion about looking more deeply in the NDE research. Von Lommel's book is still the best book on the subject that I've read, especially good from a medical science point of view in refuting many casual explanations offered to account for NDEs. But to obtain a fuller account of the scope and nature of NDEs other books should also be read, and I agree with Jeff that ufology should read them. To call NDE cases gathered and studied by NDE researchers 'hearsay', as ufology does, indicates that he doesn't yet have an appreciation of what has been accomplished in the field.

In general, ufology wants veridical evidence of consciousness remaining alert and functional in individuals who are rushed to ERs in a flat-lined condition, considered 'brain dead'. Have you read about the one in which a man in England was found unconscious in a field on a freezing night and taken to an ER by strangers? He'd had a cardiac arrest and was revived with difficulty. After a day or two, he began asking the nurses and doctors what they had done with his dentures, but no one had any idea about where they might be, even whether he had entered the ER with them still in his mouth. A day or two later he saw a nurse in the hallway and recognized her from the night he was brought into the ER. He said "you're the one who took my dentures out and put them in a drawer in a cabinet while I was being worked on." The nurse remembered and took him directly to the drawer where she had placed them. I don't think there's any ambiguity there, and it's one of many examples of people having witnessed what went on around them while their brains were 'off-line'.

 

[smcder]

and I did find myself agreeing with almost everything you wrote in the first 17 pages of this thread,

Oh no! You are in real trouble . . . ;-) I'm not sure I agree with it all, I have a liberal arts degree (gasp!) and grew up in a home with an incredibly intuitive mother and an incredibly "logical" father (a mathematician and college professor) - so dinner conversations could be strenuous and then I went to law school - and sometimes the Socratic method I endured there comes out . . . but mostly I am just always asking questions like I was six years old.

Oh and I did manage to get a amount of mathematics in there (Cal, Abstract, Linear, Differential Eq), along with the music and languages and theatre and art and philosophy and history and psychology. An inch deep and a mile wide is a good way to characterize a liberal arts degree.

 

[Jeff Davis]

Jeff Davis, wrote, responding to ufology:

"If the individuals were not in a waking state when events occurred that they recounted, how could they have known of them afterward if someone else didn't convey as much to them? We are not talking about physical or material trinkets or equipment that was in place anytime prior to their being anesthetized. We are talking behavior or experience. Actions. There is NO WAY that what you are forwarding here could explain as much. We really don't require anything that has not already been documented many times. Please, listen and search out the evidence for yourself. I realize how intelligent you are and respect you deeply. Just look into this as deeply."


I second that motion about looking more deeply in the NDE research. Von Lommel's book is still the best book on the subject that I've read, especially good from a medical science point of view in refuting many casual explanations offered to account for NDEs. But to obtain a fuller account of the scope and nature of NDEs other books should also be read, and I agree with Jeff that ufology should read them. To call NDE cases gathered and studied by NDE researchers 'hearsay', as ufology does, indicates that he doesn't yet have an appreciation of what has been accomplished in the field.

In general, ufology wants veridical evidence of consciousness remaining alert and functional in individuals who are rushed to ERs in a flat-lined condition, considered 'brain dead'. Have you read about the one in which a man in England was found unconscious in a field on a freezing night and taken to an ER by strangers? He'd had a cardiac arrest and was revived with difficulty. After a day or two, he began asking the nurses and doctors what they had done with his dentures, but no one had any idea about where they might be, even whether he had entered the ER with them still in his mouth. A day or two later he saw a nurse in the hallway and recognized her from the night he was brought into the ER. He said "you're the one who took my dentures out and put them in a drawer in a cabinet while I was being worked on." The nurse remembered and took him directly to the drawer where she had placed them. I don't think there's any ambiguity there, and it's one of many examples of people having witnessed what went on around them while their brains were 'off-line'.

Welcome Constance! Your straight forward and lucid eloquence here are so spot on appreciated! That is the best example of an extended consciousness sentient affirmation, wherein the documentation would certainly seem to fully support phenomenally examined confirmation, I have ever become familiar with. I had no familiarity with such an extensive case prior. No question, irrefutable IMO. I am going to attempt a search for the detailed documentation. Thanks!

 

[Constance]

Interesting points, but intervention is different than information that would prove their existence and allow us to manage our problems ourselves.

Hmm, you already believe they're real, advanced, and 'not us', and so do I and most other people who read a sufficient amount of the very good evidence that exists. So why wouldn't they assume we can interpret numerous obvious warnings? Yes, it would be great if they'd teach us how to produce clean and free energy and how to safely dispose of the toxic mess we've made. Who knows what rules they follow? Maybe they're right to think that a species that can't understand and correct its own insanity should be left to perish.

 

[Jeff Davis]

So what do you figure dreams are then if they're not your subconscious making stuff up?

Consciousness. All, I repeat, all, sentient reflection is a product of consciousness. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is consciousness demonstrated by just such a virtuous universal law. Incidentally, the subconscious never makes anything up. The subconscious is in actuality an informational plenum and nothing more. It is minus determinable cognition and actually serves to facilitate the unity of composite memory access. It absolutely does not "know", nor does it create anything.

 

[Constance]

Welcome Constance! Your straight forward and lucid eloquence here are so spot on appreciated! That is the best example of an extended consciousness sentient affirmation, wherein the documentation would certainly seem to fully support phenomenally examined confirmation, I have ever become familiar with. I had no familiarity with such an extensive case prior. No question, irrefutable IMO. I am going to attempt a search for the detailed documentation. Thanks!

Thank you for your warm welcome and kind remarks, Jeff. If I could remember where I read that case I'd tell you where to look for it. Maybe it will come to me.

I think you were also the person who referred to the interdisciplinary field of consciousness studies, remarking on how much there is to learn from pursuing as much as possible of what those variously trained scholars have accomplished individually and in their interactions. I second that recommendation too.

 

[Randall]

In general, ufology wants veridical evidence of consciousness remaining alert and functional in individuals who are rushed to ERs in a flat-lined condition, considered 'brain dead'. Have you read about the one in which a man in England was found unconscious in a field on a freezing night and taken to an ER by strangers? He'd had a cardiac arrest and was revived with difficulty. After a day or two, he began asking the nurses and doctors what they had done with his dentures, but no one had any idea about where they might be, even whether he had entered the ER with them still in his mouth. A day or two later he saw a nurse in the hallway and recognized her from the night he was brought into the ER. He said "you're the one who took my dentures out and put them in a drawer in a cabinet while I was being worked on." The nurse remembered and took him directly to the drawer where she had placed them. I don't think there's any ambiguity there, and it's one of many examples of people having witnessed what went on around them while their brains were 'off-line'.

Assuming the case ( above ) is even true at all and not simply an urban myth, I suspect that the diagnosis of "brain dead" was not verified by EEG, which is fairly complex and also the standard method of determining brain death, but aside from that, even more sensitive scans have revealed that even EEGs can miss very low brain activity. So it was more likely a case of clinical death combined with low temperature preservation of an intact brain that was in fact functioning at a low level and fully capable of recognizing when the teeth that were attached to the same head it was in were being yanked out! Plus he may have even been able to actually see the people around him without being able to respond, like the state sleep walkers are in, and therefore recognized the nurse from his "dream state". This all makes more sense than assuming he actually went floating around out of his body. Not to mention that he isn't the first ( and probably not the last ) person to have been mistakenly declared dead.

 

[Constance]

Oh and I did manage to get a amount of mathematics in there (Cal, Abstract, Linear, Differential Eq), along with the music and languages and theatre and art and philosophy and history and psychology. An inch deep and a mile wide is a good way to characterize a liberal arts degree.

Sounds like an excellent education, Steve.

 

[Constance]

Assuming the case ( above ) is even true at all and not simply an urban myth, I suspect that the diagnosis of "brain dead" was not verified by EEG, which is fairly complex and also the standard method of determining brain death, but aside from that, even more sensitive scans have revealed that even EEGs can miss very low brain activity. So it was more likely a case of clinical death combined with low temperature preservation of an intact brain that was in fact functioning at a low level and fully capable of recognizing when the teeth that were attached to the same head it was in were being yanked out! Plus he may have even been able to actually see the people around him without being able to respond, like the state sleep walkers are in, and therefore recognized the nurse from his "dream state" that you're assuming was an actual OOBE. Not to mention that he isn't the first ( and probably not the last ) person to have been mistakenly declared dead.

You're a hard nut to crack, ufology.

 

[smcder]

Sounds like an excellent education, Steve.

Well, I was trying for self-deprecatory, but I really do appreciate it more and more as time goes on.

 

[smcder]

Sounds like an excellent education, Steve.

and then I've been married three times, so that's a whole other education . . . ;-)

 

[Jeff Davis]

trained observer wrote:

“What does it say that these things can be recreated experimentally? Through some simple trickery a person can come to think there consciousness is outside of their bodies or that things are part of their body that aren't. When you operate outside of your design specs expect anomalous and unusual behaviors and results.”

When I was 21, I had a spontaneous OBE and what I got from it (besides an enormous shock) was indeed a demonstration that I could function outside of what you call my ‘design specs’. I found my consciousness suddenly up near the ceiling in a far corner of the room where I sat reading. I could see the back of my physical self across the room, still bent over the book, my blue Harris tweed coat hanging over the back of the chair I was sitting on. I [my conscious point of view] moved along toward the left, up there near the ceiling, and then found myself next to another consciousness also observing me and whose thoughts I overheard. This was apparently some consciousness that had long been related to, familiar with, my biographical self. I sensed that the consciousness was female and older than me and overheard her thinking that “she” (referring to my biographical embodied self across the room) “is really in a mess.” That other consciousness was calm, not at all distressed, taking my situation in stride as if it were ‘no big deal’. I too was calm during this OBE (the only one I’ve had). But almost immediately after witnessing the presence of the other consciousness {separate from my usual consciousness but somehow contained within it}, I found my own consciousness suddenly back in my body. I was fairly mind-blown at that point, gathered up my coat and books, and went immediately to the university counselor’s office. After I described to him what had just happened, he called a nearby neurologist who agreed to see me in an hour. The latter could find no neurological explanation for my experience, prescribed a tranquilizer, and sent me back to school. I had no idea what an OBE was at the time nor did I begin to contemplate what consciousness is until much later in life. I still remember this experience as if it happened recently.

This day, although slow at work, has sure been intellectually invigorating. What a great day on the Paracast forums it has been, truly. Ufology is an amazing left brain spar. Always a challenge, and ever vexing, that damn green Vulcan! What a great guy down the middle. I'm grateful he's here, but not half as grateful as I am that you are now, cause together, we can hopefully convince the force to be reckoned with that this consciousness stuff is what his left brain has been missing all these years.

That didn't come out right. Oh well, all joking aside, here's is a really good video that oddly enough, I started watching just prior to logging into the forum tonight. I could not remember initially Constance, who it was that posted this intriguing extended consciousness report that I had read earlier and am responding to here, but I was reminded shortly after I began watching the video, before logging in, of what I now realize was your account. Cool.

If you get a chance to view this presentation by Robert Mays, you'll see why very shortly into his presentation I was reminded of the details contained in your experience. Thank you again for your intelligent perspective.

 

[Constance]

So what do you figure dreams are then if they're not your subconscious making stuff up?

````````````````````

Consciousness. All, I repeat, all, sentient reflection is a product of consciousness. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is consciousness demonstrated by just such a virtuous universal law. Incidentally, the subconscious never makes anything up. The subconscious is in actuality an informational plenum and nothing more. It is minus determinable cognition and actually serves to facilitate the unity of composite memory access. It absolutely does not "know", nor does it create anything.

I like the phrase "an informational plenum." The subconscious mind, also fed by the collective unconscious, seems to function like an archive that has stored the information our species and our forebears in evolution have received in living in and experiencing the world. It can't 'make stuff up', but the information it preserves can and does influence feeling, behavior, and thought, and becomes available to the conscious mind in dreams. Hypnagogia provides us with sometimes astonishing examples of information remote from our current biological lives, not information familiar to us but strikingly vivid and detailed. Hypnagogia occurs at the transition between waking consciousness and sleep, during which more primitive areas of the brain become active (meanwhile the language centers and goal-oriented thinking shut down). I'll try to find the source where I read about this and post it. I do think there's leakage, even traffic, between the waking mind and the subconscious.

 

[smcder]

You're a hard nut to crack, ufology.

Ufology may be nuts - but doesn't that makes the rest of us crackers?? (I'm KIDDING!) I think he does a magnificent job in his role and in the particulars, he is right . . . now, he does have an irrational distrust of philosophy but hey, we all have our little quirks. ;-) And, if you give him room - he pretty well will show you that he is open-minded, don't miss that bit.

 

[Constance]

and then I've been married three times, so that's a whole other education . . . ;-)

LOL.

Your parents and their different skills and interests seem to have provided you with an education over many years through their dialogues and discussions in your presence. That apparently set you up very well to make maximum use of all you studied in what sounds like an outstanding university. Reading Nietzsche one on one with your professor -- we should all be so lucky.