Is calling everything on one side of the debate “suggestions” and everything on the other side “knowledge” intellectually honest in your opinion, lekatt?
If a nail rusts, does it become aware that it has changed from iron to iron oxide? If so, how does the process work?
I don’t know, but it could be possible. Everything comes from the Oneness into the physical duality. When its life or usefulness is over here it returns to the Oneness. Nothing is lost. The universe is love creating and recreating itself over and over.
Could you please answer the questions posed in posts #201 and #281, lekatt?
Writing?
Actually, it’s “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” said by the Queen, referring to the Player Queen going on and on about never marrying again.
That’s funny-I thought the original quote was " The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
Alright, I’ve read about 5 pages of this thread. Lekatt, you believe that “consciousness”, is separate from the brain. You have some “evidence”, although, it’s all really anecdotal, which is evidence, but it’s not strong evidence. Strong evidence would be double blind, placebo controlled studies.
So the evidence is weak.
Let’s just move on and hypothetically assume what lekatt believes is TRUE.
Lekatt, I don’t know what happens when I’ll die. I’m terrified of the event just like everybody else, but it seems like you know what happens.
Tell me about the world after death? Where do we all live? Is there a Heaven or a hell? Are there actual sexes? Are there genders? Without mouths, how do we communicate? What do we do with our time? Do we go to jobs? Earn money? Watch tv? What is life like being a bodiless spirit?
Dean.
I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure we must scream.
I asked earlier, and I ask again - how do I go about having one of these NDE things myself. Preferably, without throwing myself in front of a bus. How do I get a risk-free OBE like lekatt had? I’ve tried napping, but that hasn’t worked; all I have are ordinary dreams.
I wanna spirit guide. I’d have it check the mailbox for me each day to see if there was anything worth getting up and going and fetching.
I’d have to echo Czarcasm’s sentiment, it seems disingenuous to dismiss the findings of qualified neurologists as simply their opinion, yet claiming your own side as concrete fact.
Are you aware of a man named Roger Sperry? He won the Nobel Prize Physiology or Medicine in 1981, for his ‘Split Brain’ experiments, which gave us a greater understanding of brain hemispheres, which most definitely effect conciousness:
Where is the outside force in all this?
“Energy” is one of those annoying vague new-agey words that can mean whatever you want. If you’re referring to electrical charges in the brain, well yes, we can actually measure them with EEGs and know what causes it.
Again we know that neurons form this “energy”, if you want to call it that, by themselves.
I forgot wiki in talking about information regarding conciousness, slightly easier to understand if you ask me. Part your believe curtains for this:
The wiki cites two books on this specific subject;
Llinas R… (2001) “I of the Vortex. From Neurons to Self” MIT Press, Cambridge
Llinas R.,Ribary, U. Contreras, D. and Pedroarena, C. (1998) “The neuronal basis for consciousness” Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London, B. 353:1841-1849
We don’t know all there is to know about the brain, but this doesn’t give credence to non-sequiturs and wish-thinking. The ‘I’ could indeed be described as electrical charges/neuron signals, but it requires a physical component.
Well, some people believe long-distance (like, parsecs) communication is possible by separating the components of a photon and manipulating them in some kind of code. But I doubt it.
Also- I seem to remember that the mathematics describing the Big Bang required something like 22 dimensions? Is this really true? What kind of dimensions are they, and if they exist could they not make the kinds of limitations you describe irrelevant? A Universal Mind would necessarily contain all the dimensions of a Big Bang, even if they are not accessible to us. Or, yeah, the concept may be so problematic that it isn’t workable.
To clear this up, let me repeat just one line:
You might say that a neutron can perceive things in its immediate environment, but has no memory or identity. So it only expresses a constituent part of mind. Perhaps in concert with the greater whole it plays a constructive role.
So no, they aren’t pyschologically shut-in, senseless beings. They’re bits of brain-lego.
Well, I did try to give an introduction with some historical thought on the subject. Apparently a complex organism has this ‘prana’ stuff running all through its nadi. Something might happen and the prana spills out, and you’re left with a dead critter. A computer is a contrasting case- you can turn it on or off and on again, it isn’t an active structure relying on prana. Theoretically speaking.
How ‘all over the place’ do you think minds are? Don’t you consider it the least bit possible that ‘mind’ is itself a constituent part of matter? Before you answer, realize we’re materialists, and we also experience minds.
Yah I know.
It is a confusing topic for me. The article says prana is not a material thing. But I’m told kundalini energy is in fact physical energy. Kundalini flows through nadi just like prana, so it is possible that prana is in fact material too. But prana is compared to qi. Qi has been exposed as not physical (as a prelude to cracking down on Qi Gong). Its defenders retreated to metaphor and other techniques, and pointed out that Qi Gong is pretty close to just hanging out in the park.
The whole reference is part of an attempt to define living, in the context of death and near-death and experience and all that. And to argue with you, too.
The nadi lines correspond to acupuncture meridians. Did these two studies arise independently, or were they in concert? In any case both systems appear to refer to the same ‘knowledge’, or idea or whatever it is. Apparently acupuncture really works: stick real needles into the actual lines to get predictable results. So… if it isn’t physical, it reacts to physical stimuli… All this is kind of ‘woo’, but not so much that I can’t keep a straight face. And the symbology for this was adopted as the symbol for Western medicine, as if maybe these concepts are the starting points of modern medical science.
Well… neurons do have the capacity for massive connectivity, while transistors do not… neurons literally live their function, while a circuit board is matter hammered out to the outlines of science concerning just one part of matter: electrons. To me, neurons have vastly more depth compared to transistors.
Alive. Conscious. Self-aware. If some kind of cognition isn’t already implied, throw that in.
It is like the abstraction I described in the first post. Maybe scientists will figure out the secret to life and what machinery of matter makes it possible. Still, a computer simulation of the model would only be so much math. It wouldn’t literally exist as a personality in the physical world. It might be a perfect description, but it would not be the thing itself. Not that it might not be cool anyway, or pass for a mind say, interacting on a website or something…
Maybe I wandered a little bit there. But the blueprint for neurons (and beings, really) is found in DNA. The blueprint for circuit boards is circuitry. Seems like a major difference to me.
Sensors, but not senses.
Yes, but that is what is really interesting about this debate. You’re right. The machinery seems to be an integral part. But the experience itself, the actual, subjective experience, does not seem to have the aspect of matter. Doesn’t it seem to be another category of ‘thing’?
But you are going right back to the beginning of the debate here. We’re materialists, but we experience mind. To resolve the conflict, it appears that something like at least panprotoexperientialism is required:
The “I” is pure energy, and so is everything else, remember Einstein, so the spiritual “I” could contact the brain at the level of where energy becomes matter. No one can prove the brain creates the activity measured on its surface. Is there activity on the surface of the liver?
What kind of energy is the “I”? Is it measurable, like electricity, or heat, or other forms of energy we are familiar with?
None of the evidence is anecdotal, stories are not researched. What is researched is can a person who is clinically dead still observe and report events that took place while he was clinically dead. The answer is yes, multiple times. There are called veridical NDEs.
Speaking from the point of a classical near death experience, you will find yourself out of your body and looking down upon it. A realization will set in that you are dead, but you will feel the same as you always did, but lighter, you will be able to think clearly, and see clearly. You will notice a light and be drawn into the light, as you near the light you will feel loved, cared for, accepted, like a prodigal son returning home. The best of everything layed out for you. Huge amounts of knowledge will be yours for the asking. You will recognize the place and acknowledge you have been here before. You are home.
There is no gender or sex in the spirit realms. Communication and movement is done by thought, thought is very important here in the physical also. There are plenty of jobs, but no money. Jobs must be earned through spiritual growth. A lot of things are similar, like museums, hall of records, schools, houses, etc. Some pursue art, or poetry and great literature. Some just rest up from the stress of the physical. There are no banks, or money, but barter is ok. No justice system, no politicians, the spiritual world is run by natural law. The law of you will receive what you give. The law of love.
There are different levels, and you will find yourself on a level with others of similar spiritual growth. As you gain spiritual knowledge and grow you will move to higher levels. Folks from high levels can visit you, but you can’t visit them until you have earned the right.
Not sure why you’re bringing up Einstein’s name, his most famous equation directly contradicts your idea that pure energy just floats around completely undetectable;
“The equation E = mc2 indicates that energy always exhibits mass in whatever form the energy takes.[3] It does not imply that mass may be “converted” to energy, for modern theory holds that neither mass nor energy may be destroyed, but only moved from one location to another. In physics, mass must be differentiated from matter. In cases where matter particles are created or destroyed, the precursors and products retain both the original mass and energy, which is unchanged. Mass–energy equivalence also means that mass conservation becomes a restatement of the law of energy conservation, which is the first law of thermodynamics.”
I suggest you re-read my prior post, as we can prove that the brain creates activity measured on its surface, see action potential. You asked if the liver has activity…of course.
From the wiki on action potential.
Not to mention all the chemical and heat energy in all parts of the human body. From that question I’m not sure you understand what ‘energy’ actual is in the human body. You might want to read up on chemical thermodynamics on chemical energy (we get our energy from food, in other words chemicals. Then we turn it into kinetic energy for movement, heat energy exhibited by body heat, electrical energy in our nerves, etc).
What is your response to research done my qualified neurologists that conciousness does reside in the brain, and that the prefrontal cortex (seriously, there are books about this stuff) is crucial in forming conciousness, in addition to research suggesting that the entire brain and workings of its neural links are involved (see this; “Neuroanatomical and neurophysiological evidence is offered in support of the existence of single neurons that may individually receive dendritic input of sufficient complexity and diversity to account for the full content of conscious experience, and of an arrangement in which the output of multiple such neurons summate to achieve amplification of the individually emitted messages. An ultramicroscopic extension of the theory is suggested as a way of moving forward on the philosophically difficult aspects of the mind/brain problem.”)?
Two questions about your last posts - firstly, how do you know all this stuff, and secondly, is this universal and eternal? The ‘energy’ of rapists and murderers floating alongside that of doctors and charity workers?
I appreciate all the links to “suggested” ways the brain may create consciousness, but they are all models, opinions, and such. There is no evidence that the brain creates consciousness. But there is evidence, and a lot of it, that consciousness can live outside the brain after the brain ceases to produce activity. After the brain and body are dead. Why not pay some attention to the real evidence instead of the opinions.
I know this stuff through my near death experience, and subsequent spiritual experiences afterward. I think I have said that before. There are millions of near death experiencers. Some with greater spiritual knowledge than others, it just depends on how hard you work at it. Your energy just don’t float around, there are specific things to do, and I don’t judge others, I am not the one who says.
According to your own blog, you didn’t have and NDE at all. If what you wrote down was true, at best what you experienced was an OBE, although it reads as if you had a waking dream.
Energy is a convenient physical word. I have heard the word “vitality” or “essence” used as synonyms for energy. No, it is not something we are familiar with nor can measure. At least as far as I now know.
I thought you might focus in on the language, which is also present in a paper by Sperry;
"Challenges the assumption that the subjective phenomena of conscious experiences do not exert any causal influence on the sequence of events in the physical brain process. A theory of mind is suggested in which consciousness, interpreted to be a direct emergent property of cerebral activity, is conceived to be an integral component of the brain process that functions as an essential constituent of the action and exerts a directive holistic form of control over the flow pattern of cerebral excitation. "
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/rev/76/6/532/
Again, you’ll likely pick holes in this - “theory”, “suggested”, “interpreted”. This is simply scientific language, and appropriate for the topic. I’d wager a point of agreement is that the brain (like most of our universe) is not yet fully understood, meaning any theory about it requires this type of language. Like I said earlier, the essence of scientific method is that any theory it is open to scrutiny and revision as new evidence comes up, nothing is absolute 100% concrete fact, as you are claiming for your side. You are dismissing offhand the findings of Nobel Prize winning neurologists as ‘opinions’.
re: post #201, what was the surgery you refused to go to the hospital for? You implied it had something to do with your OBE, but you’ve also said before you didn’t go to a doctor anytime soon after the incident.