Refuting the ETH: Angels/Aliens/Archetypes

[Double Nought Spy]

Just as I thought. You don't know what you are talking about.

 

[CapnG]

Just as I thought. You don't know what you are talking about.

Naturally, I disagree therefore I am ignorant. Do you understand it takes knowledge of a subject to form an opinion of it and therefore I must know what I'm talking about in order to disagree?

Nah... easier to worship at the altar of McKenna the great and learn-ed one!

OOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.........

 

[Double Nought Spy]

Do you understand it takes knowledge of a subject to form an opinion of it and therefore I must know what I'm talking about in order to disagree?

I must admit that it is news to me that all opinions are formed that way!

 

[CapnG]

I must admit that it is news to me that all opinions are formed that way!

How else would they form? Randomly?

I've seen enough of McKenna to know I'm not interested in seeing more of McKenna.

If you're as open-minded as you claim, I would point you to the story of a neurologist who suffered a stroke and lost access to the left side of her brain. It took her eight years to fully recover (amazing in it's own right) but for the first few years she lived in the right brain world exclusively, experiencing much of what McKenna describes. Unfortunately I cannot for the life of me remember her name. She wrote a book about her experience but I can't recall the title either. Pity, it was fascinating stuff.

The point however being that these experiences do not point to the possibility of some nebulous otherworld outside our regular perception, they're simply the end result of a malfunctioning brain, whether disabled by illness or purposely short circuted by drugs. That's the science and no amount of hippie ramblings will ever convince me otherwise.

 

[Jonah]

I think it important not to shoot the messenger. McKenna, like him or not, was a pioneer in the field of exploring altered realities through the use of traditionally 'medicinal' substances in the areas they are found.. Can they be abused or taken for unwise motives? Sure. But don't blame the plant...or the experience.

As to the message, no truly open minded student of the UFO phenomena can ignore what is commonly described while under the influence of DMT. Consistent descriptions of flying objects, machine elves, praying mantis intelligences, complex geometric shapes and a vastly expanded awareness seem to point to the fact that there is something built in or common to -that- reality, something triggered by a compound that is inherent in our own physiology. It boggles that it is somehow simply a coincidence.

I would prefer to explore the alternatives.

Does DMT (and what's experienced under it's influence) use explain ancient cave art depicting what many believe are physical manifestation witnessed by the artist?

Are particular images locked in a junk DNA strand somewhere, released on cue with certain amounts of said compound?

Are those images naturally occurring and it's a coincidence that they instigate a 'flying saucer/alien intelligence scenario?

Or were they put there on purpose?

If those engaging us have been here long enough to have initiated by genetic modification, the course of human evolution, could/should they be considered in a larger sense "creator". By that I mean this - say that without such modification, the human abilities we take for granted as having occurred naturally may not have. We are unique and somewhat out of place here on this planet, comparatively speaking. We almost -seem-engineered. The DMT experience being just one aspect of that.

If this is possible, might the ETH, Angels, Archetypes be all one in the same?

What do you want it to be?

As a side note, I read Mckenna's description of one of his experiences, describing an object in the shape of an egg, a "Faberge egg" I think he called it. It was being presented to him by a machine elf, IIRC. I am reminded by this engagement of John Lennon's purported experience as told by Uri Geller regarding a visit to his apartment by entities he described as "bugs" who presented him with an golden egg shaped object. Geller still claim to have the object. True or not (maybe a different thread), this most peculiar similarity in description is most interesting.

 

[Double Nought Spy]

How else would they form? Randomly?

I've seen enough of McKenna to know I'm not interested in seeing more of McKenna.

If you're as open-minded as you claim, I would point you to the story of a neurologist who suffered a stroke and lost access to the left side of her brain. It took her eight years to fully recover (amazing in it's own right) but for the first few years she lived in the right brain world exclusively, experiencing much of what McKenna describes. Unfortunately I cannot for the life of me remember her name. She wrote a book about her experience but I can't recall the title either. Pity, it was fascinating stuff.

The point however being that these experiences do not point to the possibility of some nebulous otherworld outside our regular perception, they're simply the end result of a malfunctioning brain, whether disabled by illness or purposely short circuted by drugs. That's the science and no amount of hippie ramblings will ever convince me otherwise.

That's an interesting story, and of course you are entitled to your opinion. You may have noticed in the past that people on stating their opinions (informed or otherwise) as fact, end of story, etcetera, is very annoying. If you are as uninterested in this topic as you claim, then why are you wasting your time on us morons?

 

[conor]

Well since you asked so nicely... I spit on McKenna and everything he stands for. As far as I'm concerned drug induced hallucinations are a step backwards to primitive, shamnistic, magical thinking, they reflect an era of unscientific ignorance and have no place in serious, SOBER discussion.

McKenna's following drives me nuts. "Take drugs and see crazy some shit!" Wow, thanks for the insight, professor, what's your next great discovery going to be, "Water is wet!"?

All praise the high church of science! Against all other churches other than it's own! Sound familiar......

 

[CapnG]

If you are as uninterested in this topic as you claim, then why are you wasting your time on us morons?

Two things:

1) Chris started this thread by asking what our opinions were. If he only wanted to hear from people who fall at McKenna's feet he should have phrased his request differently.

2) Why? Simple. You need to know where the edge of the cliff is if you intend to avoid falling off it.

I am open to all theories regarding the source of supernatural phenomena, UFOs, etc. but being open doesn't mean automatically accepting them all as valid however. I take in, examine and then reject those theories I find wanting (like McKenna's). It's called "critical thinking".

All praise the high church of science! Against all other churches other than it's own! Sound familiar......

Self-defeating criticism, since McKenna's supporters like to hype up how he and his brother were conducting research from a supposedly scientific point of view. Nice try though.

 

[conor]

Self-defeating criticism, since McKenna's supporters like to hype up how he and his brother were conducting research from a supposedly scientific point of view. Nice try though.

All I'm saying is that it's good to keep an open mind on this sort of thing. A critical one, but open all the same. A different sort of interpretation of the world is not necessarily a wrong one. In the words of Obi Wan "Luke, you'll find that many of the truths we cling to depend upon a certain point of view....." Sure McKenna was using science, but where he differed significantly with his championing of drug induced states whihc were highly subjective, but which he still felt were packed with meaning and could lead you down a path of greater awareness and self-enlightenment. And scientists have never been comfortable with that.

I personally think there is something to what he is saying, but not at the exclusion of the scientific method.

(Coincidentally, this was a similar thing to what Carl Jung was saying, that the highluy subjective nature of the unconscious and subconcsious could provide us with deep insights, and he is regarded as one of the founders of modern psychology.)

Anyway, I think this is what your debate in this thread boils down to, and it has nothing to do with whether they were using scientific or psuedo scientific methods or not. It's this: the objective versus the subjective. Science is constantly striving for an objective version of reality, one without bias, a formula which will work all the time under certain circumstances. Subjectivity is something which debunkers and scientists (not ALL scientists, but in general) immediately dismiss as irrational, your brain playing tricks on you, etc. Now, for someone convinced wholeheartedly, to the exclusion of all else, that science is the way, that objectivity is the way, THE ONLY way, well, in that case it's pretty easy to dismiss someone who took some dmt and saw energy beings from the nth dimension who told him something so profound, that when he returned to a normal state of consciousness, he couldn't remember it (typical dmt experience). That experience is confined to the mind, thus cannot be verified, and doesn't have any physical existance as such (and here is the leap of faith that some people take) and therefore must not have any deep meaning beyond the mind of this individual. In other words such an experience is akin to having a dream about a unicorn on a trampoline. In other words, science and objectivity is the only authority.

I know the debate is highly polarised, but consider this: for thousands of years another discipline has has been struggling with the objective vs the subjective, and that is philosophy. Descartes wondered how could I know what I experienced was real, and that my senses weren't decieving me? His answer, I think, therefore I am, gives him a basis in reality, but he wanted to know how did his experiences tie up with the truth of reality, independent of his own bias and opinion. His answer was God was the force which brought your mind in tune with what you see around you. Others weren't so quick to make the leap of faith.

Kant felt that, ultimately, there was no such thing as objective reality which was knowable, and instead held up the value of concensus. And surely he was right. But, "the thing in itself", as he called it, was essentially unknowable. So, what does that mean? Well, the goal is objective truth, a way of describing the world we live in which gives it meaning and makes it a worthwhile place to live in. I think that objective truths are concensus truths, like when you ask two different people what is justice - two different answers, but a general agreement. Science is specific, and is sometimes claimed to be 100% objective (#cough# yeah right #cough#).

So. this leads me on to the subjective life of the mind, the threat to science and rationalism (it really isn't, but it is sometimes percieved to be). The subjective realm of the mind has always been the place where scientists are most uneasy, and it is the place where they stand to do the most damage. Concensus based investigations have been unbelievably successfull in the physical world. We have found out so much. But we take these tidbits of information and put them into a grand narrative, a story, which is basically mythological, with grand archetypes all around. This grand narrative is culture, and as you go down and get to the stage of the individual, you still have a narrative, full of myth and meaning, where a smell means an old girl friend or something like that. To reduce it down, is to reduce down the very thing which came up with science in the first place. It is, in my opinion, the sacredness of the individual, of humanity, heck, even of all life. To find ones own meaning should never be something which is wrong - there may be disagreement, and that's fine.

Back to McKenna. He feels like he is a scientist in some ways. He feels like he can come to objective truths through hallucinogens. If he doesn't feel this, then he obviously feels that they are a good tool to use whilst trying to find meaning for yourself in this world. And for many science is another good tools. My problem is when people pick up a tool, put it on an alter, and start worshipping it, to the exclusion of all other tools.

So, basically what I'm trying to say is, it's no harm to keep a open mind on things, because even if your tool is working extremely well (no pun intended), it is still not the only tool around, just the one most prominent at this moment of time, and "truth" may be gained from deep within the human psyche. Who knows??

 

[Double Nought Spy]

Thanks, Conor. That was thought provoking. I think it is telling that the title of one of McKenna's books is True Hallucinations. He was very much aware of where he stood in terms of hidebound old science, as well as his place in the burgeoning New Age "movement." He looked at his methods and his biases a lot more closely and objectively than a lot of people seem to think. That's one of the differences in reading someone's books and listening to them being interviewed. It's why we still buy books.

As I said elsewhere, I don't agree with a lot of McKenna's conclusions, and I have to say I hold him responsible for some fraction of the current 2012 mania, though I think his contribution to that is taken out of context by a lot of the zealots. Of course. But as far as ufology goes, he approached it from outside, and that had good and bad effects.

Even if you discount everything McKenna experienced as "fantasy," it is still very interesting from a psychological point of view. He did a lot of thngs no one else had done, at least no one from outside the native cultures he explored, and he kept good records. The current DMT research owes a lot to him, and there is some fascinating stuff coming from that. My favorite bit is not McKenna's, but I think from that recent book, subtitled the "Spirit Molecule" or something, iirc. Different test subjects who had no contact with one another encountered the same being in the same context, a black man who serves as some kind of guide. He always had the same appearance, the same personality. The scientist came to think of him as "Mr. DMT." Scientists are always carping about the lack of reproducable results in paranormal research. Well, there you go. Whatever your religious or philisophical biases might be (and the person who claims to be without those is deluded), there is something very interesting going on there. What it has to tell us about UFO experiences or the paranormal in general is an open question and an area that should be researched more fully. Maybe abductions are "true hallucinations."

 

[Rudolf Steiner]

I don't know, been under the effects of hallucinogens doesn't strength your case, it's more, many people will think about your experience as a mere stoners rant.

 

[Double Nought Spy]

I don't know, been under the effects of hallucinogens doesn't strength your case, it's more, many people will think about your experience as a mere stoners rant.

Exactly why people like McKenna are so rare. He was not "getting high" or "tripping" just to see what happened. He was investigating shamanic disciplines--yes, disciplines--as an anthropologist as much as anything else. Not many people can do useful work under the stigmas involved, which are nothing but baggage from our own culture but nonetheless cause all sorts of hysterical prejudice. This is one of the key points that comes out in the books, but apparently does not make it into sound bites or magazine articles. In those books, he has some pretty hard core things to say about people screwing around with the substances he was given by the shamans. I got the impression (it has been a while) that he thought it would be idiotic to mess with the stuff in the wrong context and without proper preparatioin. Find the books!

 

[Rudolf Steiner]

I note how many religions have this thing of inducing the mind to an alterate state, I wonder if you see experience things because of the "drugs", or the "drugs" are door to another perception of reality, of something like that. But I speculate, "Winners don't use drugs"

 

[CapnG]

That's all very well and good, conor (no really, it's a damned impressive bit of writing) but it seems to be straying a little too far off to the side. Once you get into the realm of what "real" is, you might as well get up and leave the table, the conversation ends as any and every wild speculation suddenly takes on equal validity.

I had some other stuff written up but I couldn't seem to express it correctly, so I'll just say this about science: science is a path, it begins at ignorance and moves towards knowledge. The path is twisted and branches often and occaisionally doubles back on itself but it never-the-less moves in only one direction- forward. And some day, science will be able to explain all of McKenna's experiences, without mystery or magic, just cold, hard data. That's neither a wish nor a threat nor a promise, it's merely the inevitable, inexorable result of humanity walking that path.

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

Once you get into the realm of what "real" is, you might as well get up and leave the table, the conversation ends as any and every wild speculation suddenly takes on equal validity.

OK, why don't you define what is "real" for us. Inquiring minds want to know! Then, after you've convinced us of your definition of "real," define consciousness—the very thing you used to define "real." This should be interesting...

ome day, science will be able to explain all of McKenna's experiences, without mystery or magic, just cold, hard data. That's neither a wish nor a threat nor a promise, it's merely the inevitable, inexorable result of humanity walking that path.

And I suppose science will also be able to eventually explain Jesus rising from the dead, Tibetan Rimpoches observed leaving hand-prints in solid granite, 911 tooth-fairy theories about the official explanation for the collapse of WTC7 blah, blah, blah? Are you a card-carrying part of the problem or are we all, somehow, in some way a part of the solution?

My point in posting McKenna's UFO presentation was simple: the ETH DOESN'T WORK. Duh. Some of us have taken this "fact" as a challenge and are looking outside-of-the-box for new approaches and insights. Anyone can find fault with anything. What are WE doing besides sitting in OUR armchairs casting judgment upon that which WE have obviously not researched, not investigated and not acted upon. I'm curious: have you ever smoked DMT? Gobbled 'shrums? Been a participant in a peyote ceremony? If not, how can you objectively comment (from a place of authority) on the experiences of those who have utilized these sacred substances?

FWIW: I've spent almost two decades out in-the-field objectively investigating the paranormal and I have extensively studied the effects of shamanic substances. I'm all ears and open for your new, insightful, brilliant thoughts, conclusions, theories and ideas!

 

[CapnG]

OK, why don't you define what is "real" for us. Inquiring minds want to know! Then, after you've convinced us of your definition of "real," define consciousness—the very thing you used to define "real." This should be interesting...

No. You don't care anyway, you're just being a dick for the sake of it (which I can sort of appreciate but tire of quickly).

And I suppose science will also be able to eventually explain Jesus rising from the dead, Tibetan Rimpoches observed leaving hand-prints in solid granite, 911 tooth-fairy theories about the official explanation for the collapse of WTC7 blah, blah, blah?

Jesus? Spare me.

As for the rest, yes, it absolutely will. It may take a couple hundred years but it will, whether you'd like to think so or not.

My point in posting McKenna's UFO presentation was simple: the ETH DOESN'T WORK. Duh. Some of us have taken this "fact" as a challenge and are looking outside-of-the-box for new approaches and insights.

I'm glad you put fact in quotations since you can't actually claim the ETH doesn't work. Says who, BTW? You? McKenna? I was unaware anyone had completed a scientific study of the entire universe and found it completely barren, congratulations!

The reality (if I can use that term) is that it may work for some cases and not for others. Those others will have different explanations. But the simple truth is we don't know ANYTHING with any certainty one way or the other and to make such a claim is the height of both ignorance and arrogance.

I'm all ears and open for your new, insightful, brilliant, thoughts, conclusions, theories and ideas!

New ideas? There aren't any. Not in the entire 20th century did anyone come up with any more ideas than there are currently on the potential origins of UFOs/aliens because the existing ideas are already so vast and complex that we haven't even scratched them in terms of testing their validity. Except for you and Terrance of course and your universe wide census that was apparently conducted secretly...

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

Hey Cappy,

You duck and quack your cover well. (That was a compliment)
Uh, because you think I'm a "dick" for asking, I'll ask this again: what is your definition of "real," and how do you define consciousness? Shoot a cup of coffee (so you don't tire too quickly) and I promise to appreciate your thinking, once it has been formulated and posted.

 

[CapnG]

Hey Cappy,

You duck and quack your cover well. (That was a compliment)

Uh... thank you?

As to the rest, since you asked:

"Real" is whatever quantifiably exists. Even if it turns out "real" is some sort of construct (like, tiresome as this example is becoming, "the matrix") and that there is a superior reality beyond this one, we as prisoners of that construct have no means of measuring it and therefore cannot consider it "real" until we do. This has two consequences: 1) "real" is whatever is happening right now and 2) "real" will be different tomorrow than it was today but only slightly.

"Conciousness" in my opinion, is an illusiary condition created by the bifercated nature of the brain. It is something we think we posses (as many people believe in the existence of the soul) but doesn't actually exist per se, it's merely the state of being awake. It's a conceptual framework we use to prop up our understanding of the world until such time as we can define it more precisely.

 

[conor]

And some day, science will be able to explain all of McKenna's experiences, without mystery or magic, just cold, hard data. That's neither a wish nor a threat nor a promise, it's merely the inevitable, inexorable result of humanity walking that path.

Perhaps. But my argument is that he might be right, there may be some kind of collective unconsciousness, like what Jung and McKenna describe, and that would require science to have a paradigm shift, and try to think about such things in a different way that isn't just about "this electrical impulse in the brain produces a feeling of happiness." Other than that, science always explains the "How" and not the "Why". So therefore, IMO, it is perfectly fine to, say, follow scientific discoveries (I have a subscription to new scientist) and also to investigate other avenues of inquiry, which might be based on more of a gnosis, a type of self knowledge within yourself, or even more spiritual avenues (obviously, dogmatic, unquestioned religion isn't good either). Like it or not, these things are a part of human experience, and IMO they will always be mysterious, because they are dealing with another side of the human paradigm than science is. I'm just waiting for the day when people realise it doesn't have to be one or the other and, in the words of John Lennon, "The world can be as one".

 

[CapnG]

Other than that, science always explains the "How" and not the "Why".

How's more important than why. Why can be fuddled by belief; how is how no matter what. Unless you can prove otherwise then THAT'S how but the result is still how. You can spend forever wondering "why" the sky is blue but you can explain "how" the sky is blue simply by reading up on light refraction and the way the rods and cones in the eye work.