Dudes,

I can't understand why this was posted.  What this guy says in the TED talk seems to fly in the face of what NH would stand for.  The message in his talk is a religious message of warning... ultimately is talking about a  reckoning with a sort of "judgement day" after death.   

rico

I don't think it's woo-woo.

What he describes as the outcome of consuming Ayahuasca is at the root of my curiosity about DMT and replicates with unusual depth the process of meditation according to the technique I use and recommend. I get the same reactions from scientifically-minded people who can't read poetry and figure out ancient metaphors. To whom science has become an ideology. This is why I've been focusing on trying to explain how it works in the most straightforward language.

If we avoid the language of angels, demons, ETs and the afterlife, cognitively, what it comes down to seems to be: what would happen if we removed our capacity to self-repress and our crystallized emotional blocks all at once? What would it look and feel like? What would be the effects of doing so? Btw, we can ditch the word meditation: what is it that makes sitting down immobile and closing our eyes for prolonged periods of time uncomfortable? Could it be that we fear what we may find out about ourselves? Could it be that we fear our own minds, ourselves? Our memories and how they shaped us? If this is the case, what is the consequence of seeking distractions from these things we fear? What's the consequence of repressing, ignoring, avoiding self-knowledge? Is it self-improvement? Does the object of fear go away?

Funnily enough, the fearful response to this sort of material is a sort of defense mechanism against the pain that usually accompanies the self-knowledge acquired in meditation or with the use of psychedelics. This pain is the realization by our natural conscience that we're not being congruent with our real, pro-intelligence values. Now, at this point, a certain kind of people usually accuse me of trying to promote guilt. No, what happens is that when we discover a conflict between actual and beneficial behaviour, actual and beneficial thoughts, we have to make a choice to resolve this conflict. Opting for stupidity leads to mental disorders and other uncategorized vices - the name and particular shape stupidity can take doesn't matter as much as how it comes about, how to cure it and how to prevent it from happening again. Anything can be used to avoid facing our conscience. Dude in the video used marijuana for that purpose.

The more one understands how this works inside oneself, the faster results can be attained in meditation to cure disorders and increase intelligence. It gives you a hint of how to correct technique. The real enemy is a desire for immediate and unsustainable relief from conscience through distraction and self-deception, including a vain self-image littered with ethical distortions to make us look good.

Natural conscience can't be cheated. This is as literal as I can make it. =]

Hey guys, interesting stuff  ..

This are the topics that i wish to have a better english so i can express myself better, but i will try to share some thoughts ..

When this kind of topics arrives ("woo-woo" or not "woo woo") is hard for me not to think "How about if this people are just talking/trying to express their ideas or view of reality just in another "format"?

Of course someone with a very strong n3-n4 probably will not use all the terminology that a "science dude" will expect (N5) and will reject their ideas like woo-woo but as long what is saying is "true" and with true i mean the observed effects are REAL i see little point to criticize their work because they are using another language.

I see this kind of stuff when people talk about "healing energy" and for example use their imagination to feel better or heal faster etc .. it works, period, yeah we probably know better what are the REAL causes behind that (strong placebo effect, imagination makes it real etc) but probably this dudes N3 just want to express it with a symbol, and image, and not use the same words that science expect to.

I want to be clear and i'm not saying that is good or bad, just saying that as long the effect or end result claimed are real i think it doesn't matter so much the way they are mapping it .. but i'm aware that a N5 focus is probably the right tool to hunt or understand more of the "truth" behind what is observed ..

It pop-up in my mind some lines of a NH Tutorial (sorry i don't remember which one) where it says something like the unconcious (N1-N2-N3) could know/predict something (intuition?) that the concious isn't aware exactly why/how .. and maybe some people has this ability a little more developed but wihout the front end working in synchrony they doesn't have the tools to explain it in a no "woo-woo" way and just do what they can?

Probably all this makes sense .. or not .? LOL =)

Anyways .. all this is a opportunity to share a talk that i see a few days ago, and got me thinking all this.

Dean Radin and the title is "Science and the taboo of psi"

Yeah i know i know, this dude receive a lot of criticism because he seems to study "paranormal" stuff, but bear in mind with me for a second ..

Again, i really care very little if the "reasons" that this dude could come about WHY it happend what it seems that happend, we are talking here about the empirical evidence of his finding ..just that ..

Looking at this talk it seems that, maybe, same of the reason behind the results of his experiments could be explained with brain process like sync and embodiment ..? but not so shure with others .. of course being a NH student is hard for me not to think that "all" that are tricks that somehow the brain can pull it off .. even if we still don't know enought about it to explain it ..

But that is the problem, this dude works seems to be "hey others cool dudes out there, here are my findings, seems like my science is not flawed, is anyone interesting in seeing if you can replicate my results, i don't have a fuc*** idea what is the reason behind the results observed, so i will just invent the term quantum englament and explain that maybe all our brains are like antenna receiving data from an unknown source and call that entangled minds ...... oh and please if you come with a better idea or theory about it PLEASE let me know"

...So far nobody come ..??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_O9Qiwqew

Seems like a few other scientist replicate their findings with positive results, but again, if the results are real (i mean, is good science and their experiments are not flawed) why nobody come and say "look you are right BUT the reasons behind that phenomena is ...... " and end of the story ???

Another unrelated question: After dozen and dozen of hours invested in meditation i'm starting to reach a moment in my practise where i feel like very focused, "clean" of thoughts, but the more distinct effect is like i feel that i don't have body or it's very light .. the sensation start like i'm floating LOL =) is similar to the state when you are starting to enter a dream landscape/state but is different because i'm very awake and alert .. so i think that probly is the sign that i finallly reach the "alpha state"?


Thoughts welcome ..

Hi dudes,

There's a difficulty here...Whilst I totally get 'Model dependent realism' (where one 'frames' a situation in different metaphoric constructs), there's a huge difference between 'eyes open' and  'eyes shut' modeling of reality.

If I let you know I am going to call the collective processes of intelligence 'god' in an essay, that's 'eyes open' modeling; you understand that I'm looking at intelligence as responsible for creation (in the sense of natural laws and stuff like emergence, spontaneous order, etc. You know and I know that I do not believe in a giant invisible human in the sky typing out life's program. We have congruity.

If however I DO believe in this invisible giant programmer, and that she lives in Valhalla, that's 'eyes shut' modeling and my model will not match reality (we have incongruity).
This difference really matters when we try to do something practical, like medicine or prediction.
Science can still pull us out of misunderstanding -you could design experiments to test the validity of my model.

Persinger does a good line in looking at what's going on in the brain when people have 'spiritual' experiences. This approach renders the details (how each individual 'explains' those experiences) irelevant; we can say,when this person has experience x, the brain does stuff at locations y and z. Numbers don't lie.

The safest approach in lectures etc., is to tightly define exactly what we personally mean when using ambiguous terms like 'god'  or 'magic' or 'telepathy' (and actually even 'cholesterol'.) This gives others a clear picture of our model, which is then open to proof or refutation. If some dude says, 'I define 'god' as here meaning, 'the process of spontaneous order & emergence'', we are all clear on what is being expressed and discussed.

Without such definitions we are left forever guessing what the experimenter might mean by the terms they are using.

Part 2:
I need to make a short excursion into tutorials not written yet  :  )
In reality it looks like we need a contribution from all networks; and to understand that we need to drop 'either-or' thinking and embrace 'both' as a concept.
I explain: starting from Sakiro's  comments below:

"How about if this people are just talking/trying to express their ideas or view of reality just in another "format"?
Of course someone with a very strong n3-n4 probably will not use all the terminology that a "science dude" will expect (N5)
but i'm aware that a N5 focus is probably the right tool to hunt or understand more of the "truth" behind what is observed ..

Consider: every network has it's own way of representing things. N3 uses stories and pictures, N5 uses words and numbers. But all the other networks have their formats too. N6 is designed to coordinate all these different inputs as the 'whole' representation of an anything, context or event. ALL of the networks contribute their representations, for the whole picture.

If we know the scientific explanation for classifying what a rose IS, that's declarative information. We still don't fully conceive (form an accurate concept of) a rose  until we've had the sensorimotor information (eg, what a rose looks and smells like), the spatial/temporal information (where & when do roses occur and what is their life cycle?) (the eidetic information (what emotions roses evoke in us, what they represent in stories) and the metaphoric information (eg, poetry about a rose, what can one do creatively with roses) and all of this together gives us our 'rose' concept -all are summoned on memory of a rose to create between them the 'big picture' of reality.

From research, it appears that this it what should be going on.

From anxiety and miswired networks, those affected begin to believe that on;y one form of input is valid and all others are dangerous (incongruous & not understood, they are 'unknown'). So N5 academics fear N4 poets and N3 storytellers scorn 'cold' academics and everybody in N2  'knows' that reading is for wimps because its much more sensible living in the real world of eating and sex and thumping anyone who disagrees with them.

Back with more later...
AR

Thanks dude, i will check the book out if i find something useful .. btw i have it in my computer (don't ask how it get there don't remember LOL) "School out of body travel - I" that exactly the title in my pdf 227 pages.

Anyways, i really have difficult to understand what means or the difference between out of body experiences - astral travel , because reading a bit about it they just seems "lucid dreaming" experiences? i mean .. you are just dreaming leaving your body and going somewhere else? maybe they just call it in others terms because you start the process being awake? (but that has a name in lucid dreaming too, WILD (wake inducing lucid dreams)

For example from the ebook i have (don't know if it's the same than you)

Chapter 9 - Translocation and Finding Objects

I'm confused, taking a quick look seems like the author suggest that you can really go outside your body and travel to another real places? (i mean not like in a dream state).

Sorry if i'm confusing his words, but this is what i'm understanding, educate me if i'm wrong!

Edit: Hi dude i just take another look at the intro of the book reading this :

"Such a question can only arise from not fully understanding the properties of the phenomenon and its nature.
When one suddenly understands at a certain moment that he is just as real as he normally is, and is standing somewhere that is not in the physical world with his same hands and body, and can touch everything around him and discern fine details, such much emotion stirs up inside him that no questions arise at all. This is the most amazing experience that a person can attain!"

Seems like he IS talking just about lucid dreaming? (WILD) 

Edit 2: And last one LOL now after reading this one i'm shure he is talking about dreams

Other worlds: The phase space is similar to the physical world, and a practitioner may be inclined to think that the soul has left the body. Sometimes the phase takes on an absolutely unnatural form. As a result, the practitioner may decide that a parallel world has been entered: the world beyond, the astral plane, mental space, or the ether. Although travel in the phase can lead to many places, this does not mean that the phase allows travel through or use of actual, alternate worlds. The practitioner should be reasonable.

But maybe this book teach a better way yo enter and control lucid dreaming stuff, so probably will take a look =)

In my experience is a lot easier to be aware inside a dream and to that point enter what the author call "the phase" (but i will just call it, you become aware that you are dreaming? hehe) than with the method described? i say that if maybe you have time issues to play with this ideas, could be an alternative, except that, again, we could be talking about different stuff!


Cheers!

Hi dudes,
Re: "Science and the taboo of psi" 

Now managed to catch up with watching this; I share my thoughts:

AT first, I found this disappointing (but read on).
The story at the beginning describes (in the woman) the classic symptoms of a mini-stroke. The fact that this event occurred coincidentally with her son's demise does not prove any causal connection. If everybody (or even lots of people) had a stroke @ exactly the same time their loved ones died, we'd have noticed that by now. A one-off is no proof of anything but coincidental occurrence.

It's a 'sample-size' problem, and the second study here (MRI) has the same problem. Nobody is going to take any notice unless an effect is consistent across populations.

95% of a population believing something (or not) is irrelevant unless the experiment is about belief. 95% of the european population in medieval times believed bathing was harmful, knew that witches and demons caused diseases, and thought that crapping out of the window was a pretty neat idea.

Surprised he missed out 'imagination' and even 'emotion' in the list of taboo subjects, but I guess for this generation both are losing their taboo status as effects become measurable. Once upon a time, to do anatomy was taboo, so there's progress for you  :  )

I don't go with the 'either-or' assumption in brain/mind relationship. Current research in epigenetics & plasticity has already shown this is a reciprocal relationship; the architecture of the brain shapes the mind, and the mind shapes the brain's architecture. The new paradigm answer is 'both are true', this is a dynamic-equilibrium system; and researchers are gonna have to keep up with that.

The initial test 'for telepathy' has problems; it could be written off as time-related intuition. (The unconscious 'keeps time' of how often we communicate with allies and brings them into conscious awareness when it estimates it's 'about time' we got in touch. With close allies sync occurs and both/all parties tend to remember each other around the same time.)

Sender-receiver experiment has too many confounding variables, one example is the possibility of EM field change and/or brainwave modulation due to the phenomenon of a flashing monitor registering unconsciously on both subjects. If this were so, we would expect the person most distant from the monitor would have a reduced unconscious response. Which is exactly what's seen here. Control data could rule this out (ie, if I'm right, you'd expect the same response from two people NOT trying to contact each other).

The 'color phi effect' doesn't take into consideration after-image and the known fact that it is projected onto any white space as the opposite color to that seen (in the case of blue, that's orangey-red). We're not 'anticipating' the color red; we're perceiving the afterimage of the color blue and 'filling in the details' as the brain tends to do.

THEN (around 35:00) it got interesting:
The ensemble analysis is good. Although it's drawing from preset data, the date is randomized. Obviously the response measured is an unconscious one, it would be great if we were consciously aware of it; then we'd have something way more valuable than time-related intuition (although even this is pretty cool). I've seen similar studies with rats on a 'trick or treat' basis.

Questions arise about the cause of the response, whether it is time-related, whether we have an unconscious predictive system that takes the 'random' our of random (and this would be a good explanation). If we do, it would also explain why animals and subsistence gardeners (and worms) can predict the weather better than meteorologists  :  )  However, I think the claim “somehow we knew it was going to occur” is misleading, as there is no conscious knowledge conveyed here at all.
Consider: What would happen if we trained people up with biofeedback to recognize these unconscious signals consciously? 

I started wondering why didn't he discuss why the baseline measures for 'calm' and 'emotional' prior to any button pushing were also (sometimes wildly) divergent? Looking at the graphs, it almost seems like the mind is 'weighing up' probabilities throughout the entire time, then shortly before the stimulus they coordinate around -2 and from there a 'probability decision' separates them -1s before the stimulus. I realized this is during the 'calming down' period after the last image but I wanted to know, did the same patterns emerge during the first ever attempt (which had no memory of the last image)? The next studies mentioned filled in that bit of info for me, as 'First-time shots' can't have a related memory backlog association. I couldn't see the 'coordination period' in these examples though...?

I never got the philosophy of “nothing but a pack of neurons”, it's simply nonsense; like saying a computer is nothing but a pack of electrical components. It's what the neurons/electrical components are DOING that leads to the emergence of the phenomena we seek to study and the experiences we find so worthwhile.

This talk was recorded in 2008; the Randi offer was cancelled in 2010. Coincidence? LOL  :  )
Best,
AR