Just prior to experiencing the nearly fatal heart attack that spontaneously arrived as all such events do, one night I had an extremely lucid dream. I found myself standing in a semi darkened tunnel and while there was a some illumination within it irradiating from a distant source, I could not determine how it was I was standing. The sensation I felt was that of an inner vertigo as if I were in vertically oriented environment, standing upon it's wall at a right angle, seemingly defying gravity. A gentleman of a similar age,(about fifteen feet away) was crouched and looked back at me. He slowly and carefully stood as I was and then shouted, "I cant believe this!" I was in a state of severe disorientation and I took a few moments to consider my dilemma. I could either remain where I was, or begin walking toward the opening up ahead (as was my unknown companion began to do) or forceably wake myself from what an extremely unsettling situation. I often recall this situation when I discuss the field of the paranormal as it seems to be in a similar point of decision between past and present mythologies, searching for a direction.
As we walked forward, the light became extremely intense, so intense that it was blinding as the only way I knew I was moving forward was the locomotion of my feet. Just as blinding as this was it quickly diminished into a light that is nearly impossible to describe. The quality of the light was suffused, much like the light that appears just before dusk in the late afternoon. We ( about six individuals) were standing in a room that was all windows, and we looked at each other sizing one another up in a confused communal and wary manner, too disoriented and fearful to speak, as if we all looked at one another as being a figment of each other's dream....Internally, it felt very much like one does on the first day of first grade...One fellow in a rumpled business suit grew impatient and spoke up. "Does anybody know we are here?"
I can provide you with what is best, a one dimensional account of the remainder of my experience, but then again this is simply what I recognize it to be, that is, a story without a direct linkage to the reality you are within while reading this account. We as a species look out over the void of space amidst the glitter of distant galaxies and ask our selves the same question. Dr Edgar Mitchell has as well,and whether you agree or disagree with his views one cannot escape the impression than this gentleman has the courage and the integrity to speak his mind sincerely which over rides the more common approach of scientists who are either self censored or as Brain Josephson observed would say "I wouldn't believe this if it were true." He is the founder of The Institute for Noetic Science. You may recall him. The exploration of frontiers and the borderlands is his calling in life.
Dr Charles Tart is striving as one of the major pioneers in this field to study these experiences in relation to the theoretical application of our traditional sciences, which, as we noted in the previous post concerning Brian Josephson and Dean Radin,is a daunting task in the cultural dissonance that envelopes this field.
Science is a neutral agency that is dependent on the choices made by those who utilize it either to create a more efficient means of weaponry for us to destroy one another, or to explore and enhance the experience of life.
The death of an individual within a species has been superseded by the proverbial Sword of Damocles being held by a hair as thin as one can imagine and Dr Tart has joined others of his profession in a remarkable organization founded by Dr Edgar Mitchell that reaches beyond both our individual concerns to those of a more global nature, which we ignore at our own peril. One may think the era of the scientist as a philosopher as well as that of being a humanist are a quaint historical footnote, with the notable exception of our Mr Einstein whose remorse toward his creation was expressed over the remainder of his lifetime, but this is not so, and in this, perhaps we can hope against hope, that this quest of the scientists who place their resources and skills toward coherency prevail. If you want to read further on Dr Tart's work, use the link on the right sidebar if you chose to familiarize yourself with his work. He is one of the many scientists who are associated with The Institute for Noetic Sciences. I am an optimist by nature who also suspects everything is a red herring, however, hope, whether it is poised in us as individuals or in the larger community of our species, is a precious commodity.
The Third International Symposium for Science and Consciousness took place in Ancient Olympia, 4-7 January, 1993. One hundred and four scientists and specialists with multidisciplinary backgrounds from 20 countries participated in a conference whose purpose was to explore the relationship between science and consciousness and to build a bridge between them by means of cooperative dialogue. One of the outcomes of this Symposium is the following:
"The Olympia Declaration
Authored by Dr Charles Tart
January 7, 1993
As every informed and concerned person knows, our planet Earth is undergoing ecological and social crises which may destroy much of humanity and other life within the next few decades.
We believe it is vital to recognize that the basic problem behind these crises is a lack of understanding of more profound aspects of human consciousness and a dangerous denial of spiritual values. We speak especially of the realization of our fundamental interconnectedness and interdependence and the deep values of cooperation which arise from this realization.
Therefore we, the participants in the Third International Symposium on Science and Consciousness, call for intense, world-wide efforts by all people, especially scientists, educators and decision makers, to increase out understanding of consciousness and to foster the development of spiritual values in our lives.
If we do not do so, we are unlikely to survive. "
Perhaps the world itself is making a transition toward what we so called romantics of the fringe element see as a possibility rather than a dream which is shared by such scientists who choose the exploration of the nature of life as their calling, when indeed we may come closer to "Earth as it is in Heaven." The late Dr Elizabeth Kubler Ross, one of the pioneers of exploring the transition between life and death, speaks of this transition that perhaps also applies equally to a transition of our species.
In esoteric terms this passage from life to death is called the Lesser Resurrection, while from death to life on this planetary surface is the Greater Resurrection. One can only imagine the promise of which we are vouchsafed to keep.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
The Veterans of The Psychic Wars
"The free, unhampered exchange of ideas and scientific conclusions is necessary for the sound development of science, as it is in all spheres of cultural life." (Albert Einstein)
"Textbooks present science as a noble search for truth, in which progress depends on questioning established ideas. But for many scientists, this is a cruel myth. They know from bitter experience that disagreeing with the dominant view is dangerous - especially when that view is backed by powerful interest groups. Call it suppression of intellectual dissent. The usual pattern is that someone does research or speaks out in a way that threatens a powerful interest group, typically a government, industry or professional body. As a result, representatives of that group attack the critic's ideas or the critic personally, by censoring writing, blocking publications, denying appointments or promotions, withdrawing research grants, taking legal actions, harassing, blacklisting, spreading rumors."
(Brian Martin, Stamping Out Dissent, Newsweek, 26 April 1993, p.49-50.)
The Psychology of Cultural Signal Noise and Paranormal Physics
I was musing over the life and times of one of my favorite and irascible scientists, the iconoclastic Brian Josephson, winner of the Nobel prize. From his Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, he has explored the paranormal, an area staked our and inhabited by the barkers and sideshow tents of popular culture, where the most tenacious angels of our better nature fear to tread. However, when we use the word paranormal,it is shorthand for the demonstrative and unknown relationship(s) between mind and matter.
The skirmishes over the existence of psychic phenomenon, as a portion of the paranormal as well as the relationship between mind and matter is akin to a proverbial intellectual war that has a fascinating cartography where the whims and appetites of popular culture, the self censorship of scientists, the self serving interests of power wielding editorial censorship,the cranks and lunatics, the laboratory protocols and the entertainment industry dart and dash, hide behind trees, take defensive positions, exploit the others weaknesses and perform a ballet of considerable mayhem. Brian Josephson stands there in the thick of it, yielding no ground.
"I call it "pathological disbelief". The statement "even if it were true I wouldn't believe it" seems to sum up this attitude. People have this idea that when something can't be reproduced every time, it isn't a real phenomenon. It is like a religious creed where you have to conform to the "correct" position. This leads to editors blocking the publication of important papers in academic journals. Even the physics preprint archive blocks some papers on certain topics, or by certain authors."
-Brian Josephson
We shoulder our way through the crowded midway, where we bump into the rigged and proverbial toss games, the pitchmen, the hyper ventilated emotions to consider the issue of credibility,in a arena of bread and circuses dominated by David Blaine, The Amazing Kreskin or David Copperfield, we consider that credibility is the only commodity a scientist possesses which allows him to pursue his vocation.
Then we have another entanglement within popular culture that serves as a intermediary nexus where reality, subjectivity, fact and fiction become entangled. As having some experience with the psychic nature of the paranormal in how it manifests itself in an opportunistic manner, one must seek answers for oneself as a valuation of one's experiential reality versus that of a larger consensus. It has been noted by others that, at times, under the proper conditions we experience a paradox in that a fiction can reveal the kernel of truth around which it has been innovated.
"Essentially the phenomenon can be divided into two parts. The meandering nocturnal lights are the real mystery and still remain unexplained by astronomy. The objects and apparitions seen on the ground, or close to it, comprise the second part. These range from complex hallucinations to elaborate transmogrifications, often accompanied by incredible distortions of reality and manipulations of time and space. Such manifestations have been known, and recorded, throughout history, and their true nature was recognized and defined thousands of years ago. Collectively, American ufologists are ill informed and poorly educated in history, philosophy, and the behavioral sciences. So they have failed to recognize what is actually happening (in contrast to what they think is happening). Ufology is essentially a new system of belief, not a new system of scientific fact. As such, it is no more substantive than the study of angels and the medieval cataloging of chimeras. Indeed, the deeper one penetrates into the ufological problems, the more he finds himself rediscovering Heraclitus."
-John Keel
This is what keeps most scientists away from the paranormal as a matter of pragmatism, guilt by association by entering a field ripe with a variety of lunacies and Trickster elements of the human psyche which conceal the enormous potential that the paranormal jealously shields, as Keel infers. Then at the same time, the persistence of the paranormal provokes a tunneling of reality wherein it becomes demarcated as a fiction wrapping itself in truth or a truth enveloped by fictions.
Then again, we see that there are some notable exceptions of some who chose to take a preeminent risk by pursuing the intangible made material. This video is an excellent primer on the relationship between physics and the paranormal.
Another veteran of these theoretical boundaries between heresy and doctrine is Dean Radin who has persistently insisted on walking back and forth over this disputed territory with a intellectual courage that one would reasonably admire, whether you agreed with his views or not.
The transactional nature of knowledge is that it must be purchased. It does not drop from the sky as if it were pennies from heaven. The price is a combination of sacrifice and self motivation toward the work required in order to grasp it. While the nature of the paranormal is largely confined to it's tabloid coverage, it should give us some hope that there are those individuals who have the intellectual courage and temerity to persevere in the face of ridicule, or worse, censorship, certainly a sin of omission.
Perhaps it is not the truth we pursue that is either blame worthy or praise worthy but ourselves as those who have been left with conviction it wants nothing more from us than to present choices. What we chose may in the end may be more important than the nature of the truth we seek.
I remember a discussion I had nearly forty years ago around a campfire outside of Walnut Creek, California, that we has built out of dead fall. Someone said "whenever there are more than two people in a room, you have a political situation." Not much as changed either institutionally or otherwise, unless you place your ear to the ground, and fall willingly into the dream we all co-inhabit, listening to the a hundred voices, a thousand anecdotes that ripple like waves on the shore of an island
yet uncharted, that we drift toward, carried by the arms of a current whilst we sleep. Here's to the navigators and the explorers, the tides and currents moving them toward a future that we are composing on a blank sheet of paper..we carefully seal the bottle and let it drift away atop the sea. The night watch remains posted, and the rumors of land just beyond the horizon accompany us like a talisman that seals us within the promise of the first light of morning.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Self Science and The Veritas Project
The Measurability of Accounting From The Dead
For my friend, Dr Coral Hull and our many exchanges on the Numinous.
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
-William Blake
Changing the field of focus from The Global Consciousness Program at Princeton University, we now move Southwest to the University of Arizona, to encounter Dr Gary Schwartz, who, as the project itself describes, manages "The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health (formerly the Human Energy Systems Laboratory) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or personality or identity) of a person survives physical death."
For several weeks now, I have to confess,in the moments when I was not occupied by the practical utilities of existence or the reflections of my own life in relation to my family, I kept hearing an insistent phrase opportunistically inserted in my mind when it was not so occupied.
Over and over, almost as if it were a mantra, I heard the phrase, "the well at the end of the world." I thought this obsessive phrase out of the air was intriguing as it was persistent...perhaps it would make for a good title for something or perhaps some sort of poem.
When I began this post whose subject came to me some days later, I found a synchronicistic echo hung in a retrocausal frame, which I was about to place on this wall for your consideration.
Some of you may already know what I did not, is that Veritas (meaning truth) was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn and the mother of Virtue. It was believed that she hid in the bottom of a well because she was so elusive. Her image is shown as a young virgin dressed in white and for our purposes, at this point in our explorations,the truth may as well be a ghost, perhaps one that dwells within us. If there is a science of the self, when I lean over the edge of the well, all I see is a distorted ripple reflecting some distant light that provides my shadow.
In regard to the elusiveness of truth as applied to both the possibility of an afterlife as well as the veracity of mediumship, we find oddly enough, to some, a scientist involved in the daunting issue of measurability. One can view this measurability in terms of establishing a theoretical consensus in either personal or cultural terms.
To this writer, this project is certainly a refreshing change from chasing ghostly phantasms with flashlights in a ritualistic form of predation, despite the feigned and false pronouncements of "assistance" which are not only self proclaimed but without merit or efficacy as innovated rationalizations toward the production of adrenalin as an entertainment. To me this is a matter of valuation one must consider, not from our own perspective, but from that of humility in the face of mortality, particularly our own.
Roughly three years ago I had a spontaneous and massive heart attack, and as I lie prone on the stainless table, watching the banks of monitors, the bright operating theater lights, listening to the muffled dialog between physicians as if all this circulated around someone other than myself, I remembered the words of Ibn Al Arabi in regard to my former daily practice of The Remembrance of Death...it isn't the bad you've done nor the good you've done...its the many days when you did neither are the ones you regret as you walk into your grave. Time is counted.
One cannot discount oneself as an arbiter as well as an observer of published accounts or personal experiences. If one relies solely on either side of the demarcation between science and the metaphysical in all it's forms where it intersects the paranormal, one misses the full dimensions of either one.
From Ms.Goodfellow to David Ickes, one is submersed in a sea of bewildering incoherence when one compares these to...well, what?
One of the laments in the paranormal community is the lack of scientific inquiry into the many facets of the anomalous, which is simply not true. Science and the metaphysical as well as the paranormal all share one guiding principle in relation to one's participation with them, the search for truth. Your correspondent has personally determined that science and the metaphysical are not counter opposed as some would suggest.
However, one only has to read "Forbidden Science" by Jacques Vallee that the emergence of reorienting the theoretical postulates of science can be a daunting undertaking. One hundred years from now, I have little doubt that some of these scientific pioneers will have provided tomorrow's scientific and theoretical orthodoxy.
Many of the research papers associated with VERITAS are listed below can be downloaded by following the link provided on the sidebar.
Rock AJ, Beischel J, and Schwartz GE. (accepted). Thematic analysis of research mediums' experiences of discarnate communication. Journal of Scientific Exploration
Beischel J, Schwartz GE. Methodological advances in laboratory-based mediumship research. Proceedings of the Rhine Research Center 2007 Conference: “Consciousness Today,” March 23-25, 2007.
Beischel J, Schwartz GE. Anomalous information reception by research mediums demonstrated using a novel triple-blind protocol. EXPLORE: The Journal of Science & Healing. 2007;3(1):23-27.
View On-line
Beischel J, Schwartz GE. Are research mediums real? A triple-blind study of anomalous information reception. Toward a Science of Consciousness 2006, April 4-8, 2006.
Schwartz GE (with Simon WL). The Truth about Medium: Extraordinary Experiments with the Real Allison DuBois of NBC’s Medium and Other Remarkable Psychics. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company; 2005.
Schwartz GE, Beischel J. Survival is in the Details: Emerging Evidence for Discarnate Intention from Mediumship Research. 2005 Parapsychology Foundation International Conference, Charlottesville, Virginia, January 28-30, 2005. (Proceedings not yet published.)
Schwartz GE. 2003. How Not To Review Mediumship Research: Understanding the Ultimate Reviewer's Mistake.
Schwartz GE, Chopra D. 2002. Nonlocal Anomalous Information Retrieval: A Multi-Medium Multi-Scored Single-Blind Experiment.
Schwartz GE (with Simon WL). The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death. New York (division of Simon and Schuster); 2002.
Schwartz GE, Chopra D, and Grenard S. 2002. Evidence of Accuracy and Specificity for Long-Distance Mediumship: The “Double-Deceased” Multi-Medium Paradigm.
Mac Tonnies recently authored a incisive piece on the true nature of skepticism, wherein he wrote; "Skeptics are thinkers. Skeptics neither debunk nor believe -- unless they are able to establish that a given phenomenon deserves to be debunked. “Belief” is not a luxury the true skeptic can afford; the mechanics of skeptical thought are rooted in probability and open-mindedness. Being a skeptic requires courage and intellectual flexibility. What looks like a neat idea may turn out to be unsubstantiated nonsense; conversely, it might be the real thing."
From the metaphysical side of our equations, G.I Gurdjieff correctly noted that most people are neither skeptics nor self-motivated, and that many are easily duped. One is reminded of two of his Aphorisms,which were inscribed in a special script above the walls of the Study House at the Prieuré.
One is "Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself—only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity."
The other is directed to our subject at hand; "One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind."
In the intermediary position between birth and death, we assemble our experiences and equations in perhaps a quest not so much to determine what these phenomenon represent but what we are ourselves. In this, it is perhaps a traveller's tale best told on a journey between way stations.
"How much you have voyaged through the stages of created beings until you were generated as blood in your father and mother! Then they came together for your sake, either with or without the intention of bringing you into manifestation. You passed from being sperm; then you passed from that form to a blood clot, then to a tiny piece of flesh and then to bone. Then the bone was clothed with flesh. Then you were configured in another way and expelled into this world. You passed to infancy, and from infancy to childhood, from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to adulthood, from adulthood to middle age, and from middle age to old age, which is the most despised age."
-Ibn Al Arabi
At one point in my life I underwent six months of therapy for having been the child who underwent certain traumatic experiences and during that time I was taught a visualization technique wherein I saw myself as that child and spoke to him as an adult, which was a very powerful healing process. As I write this I can only speculate that as I lie in some remote portion of a field, my grave marked by some headstone whose writing has long since worn away,what will I be saying to whom that I am now?
"The capacity for doing non-local and multi-process activities is just easier than when you are in the physical and located in a very specific place. That’s something that has been universally observed."
-Dr Gary Schwartz
Indeed.
For my friend, Dr Coral Hull and our many exchanges on the Numinous.
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
-William Blake
Changing the field of focus from The Global Consciousness Program at Princeton University, we now move Southwest to the University of Arizona, to encounter Dr Gary Schwartz, who, as the project itself describes, manages "The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health (formerly the Human Energy Systems Laboratory) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or personality or identity) of a person survives physical death."
For several weeks now, I have to confess,in the moments when I was not occupied by the practical utilities of existence or the reflections of my own life in relation to my family, I kept hearing an insistent phrase opportunistically inserted in my mind when it was not so occupied.
Over and over, almost as if it were a mantra, I heard the phrase, "the well at the end of the world." I thought this obsessive phrase out of the air was intriguing as it was persistent...perhaps it would make for a good title for something or perhaps some sort of poem.
When I began this post whose subject came to me some days later, I found a synchronicistic echo hung in a retrocausal frame, which I was about to place on this wall for your consideration.
Some of you may already know what I did not, is that Veritas (meaning truth) was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn and the mother of Virtue. It was believed that she hid in the bottom of a well because she was so elusive. Her image is shown as a young virgin dressed in white and for our purposes, at this point in our explorations,the truth may as well be a ghost, perhaps one that dwells within us. If there is a science of the self, when I lean over the edge of the well, all I see is a distorted ripple reflecting some distant light that provides my shadow.
In regard to the elusiveness of truth as applied to both the possibility of an afterlife as well as the veracity of mediumship, we find oddly enough, to some, a scientist involved in the daunting issue of measurability. One can view this measurability in terms of establishing a theoretical consensus in either personal or cultural terms.
To this writer, this project is certainly a refreshing change from chasing ghostly phantasms with flashlights in a ritualistic form of predation, despite the feigned and false pronouncements of "assistance" which are not only self proclaimed but without merit or efficacy as innovated rationalizations toward the production of adrenalin as an entertainment. To me this is a matter of valuation one must consider, not from our own perspective, but from that of humility in the face of mortality, particularly our own.
Roughly three years ago I had a spontaneous and massive heart attack, and as I lie prone on the stainless table, watching the banks of monitors, the bright operating theater lights, listening to the muffled dialog between physicians as if all this circulated around someone other than myself, I remembered the words of Ibn Al Arabi in regard to my former daily practice of The Remembrance of Death...it isn't the bad you've done nor the good you've done...its the many days when you did neither are the ones you regret as you walk into your grave. Time is counted.
One cannot discount oneself as an arbiter as well as an observer of published accounts or personal experiences. If one relies solely on either side of the demarcation between science and the metaphysical in all it's forms where it intersects the paranormal, one misses the full dimensions of either one.
From Ms.Goodfellow to David Ickes, one is submersed in a sea of bewildering incoherence when one compares these to...well, what?
One of the laments in the paranormal community is the lack of scientific inquiry into the many facets of the anomalous, which is simply not true. Science and the metaphysical as well as the paranormal all share one guiding principle in relation to one's participation with them, the search for truth. Your correspondent has personally determined that science and the metaphysical are not counter opposed as some would suggest.
However, one only has to read "Forbidden Science" by Jacques Vallee that the emergence of reorienting the theoretical postulates of science can be a daunting undertaking. One hundred years from now, I have little doubt that some of these scientific pioneers will have provided tomorrow's scientific and theoretical orthodoxy.
Many of the research papers associated with VERITAS are listed below can be downloaded by following the link provided on the sidebar.
Rock AJ, Beischel J, and Schwartz GE. (accepted). Thematic analysis of research mediums' experiences of discarnate communication. Journal of Scientific Exploration
Beischel J, Schwartz GE. Methodological advances in laboratory-based mediumship research. Proceedings of the Rhine Research Center 2007 Conference: “Consciousness Today,” March 23-25, 2007.
Beischel J, Schwartz GE. Anomalous information reception by research mediums demonstrated using a novel triple-blind protocol. EXPLORE: The Journal of Science & Healing. 2007;3(1):23-27.
View On-line
Beischel J, Schwartz GE. Are research mediums real? A triple-blind study of anomalous information reception. Toward a Science of Consciousness 2006, April 4-8, 2006.
Schwartz GE (with Simon WL). The Truth about Medium: Extraordinary Experiments with the Real Allison DuBois of NBC’s Medium and Other Remarkable Psychics. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company; 2005.
Schwartz GE, Beischel J. Survival is in the Details: Emerging Evidence for Discarnate Intention from Mediumship Research. 2005 Parapsychology Foundation International Conference, Charlottesville, Virginia, January 28-30, 2005. (Proceedings not yet published.)
Schwartz GE. 2003. How Not To Review Mediumship Research: Understanding the Ultimate Reviewer's Mistake.
Schwartz GE, Chopra D. 2002. Nonlocal Anomalous Information Retrieval: A Multi-Medium Multi-Scored Single-Blind Experiment.
Schwartz GE (with Simon WL). The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death. New York (division of Simon and Schuster); 2002.
Schwartz GE, Chopra D, and Grenard S. 2002. Evidence of Accuracy and Specificity for Long-Distance Mediumship: The “Double-Deceased” Multi-Medium Paradigm.
Mac Tonnies recently authored a incisive piece on the true nature of skepticism, wherein he wrote; "Skeptics are thinkers. Skeptics neither debunk nor believe -- unless they are able to establish that a given phenomenon deserves to be debunked. “Belief” is not a luxury the true skeptic can afford; the mechanics of skeptical thought are rooted in probability and open-mindedness. Being a skeptic requires courage and intellectual flexibility. What looks like a neat idea may turn out to be unsubstantiated nonsense; conversely, it might be the real thing."
From the metaphysical side of our equations, G.I Gurdjieff correctly noted that most people are neither skeptics nor self-motivated, and that many are easily duped. One is reminded of two of his Aphorisms,which were inscribed in a special script above the walls of the Study House at the Prieuré.
One is "Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself—only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity."
The other is directed to our subject at hand; "One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind."
In the intermediary position between birth and death, we assemble our experiences and equations in perhaps a quest not so much to determine what these phenomenon represent but what we are ourselves. In this, it is perhaps a traveller's tale best told on a journey between way stations.
"How much you have voyaged through the stages of created beings until you were generated as blood in your father and mother! Then they came together for your sake, either with or without the intention of bringing you into manifestation. You passed from being sperm; then you passed from that form to a blood clot, then to a tiny piece of flesh and then to bone. Then the bone was clothed with flesh. Then you were configured in another way and expelled into this world. You passed to infancy, and from infancy to childhood, from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to adulthood, from adulthood to middle age, and from middle age to old age, which is the most despised age."
-Ibn Al Arabi
At one point in my life I underwent six months of therapy for having been the child who underwent certain traumatic experiences and during that time I was taught a visualization technique wherein I saw myself as that child and spoke to him as an adult, which was a very powerful healing process. As I write this I can only speculate that as I lie in some remote portion of a field, my grave marked by some headstone whose writing has long since worn away,what will I be saying to whom that I am now?
"The capacity for doing non-local and multi-process activities is just easier than when you are in the physical and located in a very specific place. That’s something that has been universally observed."
-Dr Gary Schwartz
Indeed.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Is There A Global Consciousness?
Global Consciousness Project: Is The Earth Dreaming?
In terms of the field we call the paranormal, we find that this phenomenon appears to be random and lacking any coherence as to a repeatable cycle or pattern that could be utilized as a means of establishing coherence from what data we have gathered. As related to the Global Concioussness, according to the original theory of Vladimir Vernadsky, the Noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the Geosphere (inanimate matter) and the Biosphere (biological life).
Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the Geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's Noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements. One recalls the emergence of the UFO phenomenon during this period.
Of course, all of this is entangled in the relationship of what defines the observer as a random determinate as to what is observed, or more accurately what is experienced.
This leads to Chaos Theory, and in particular deterministic chaos. Small deterministic systems are easy to visualize, such as the cascading effect of falling dominoes, but are necessarily linked to the rest of reality by an initial cause and/or final effect. Is the Noosphere a party in the emergence of certain paranormal phenomenon?
To go back to the dominoes, something outside the system has to cause the first domino to topple. The last domino falling might cause something else outside the system to happen. And the system itself must be considered in isolation--if external forces such as hurricanes, earthquakes or the hands of nearby people were taken into consideration, the final domino toppling might not be a predetermined outcome. One looks at the UFO phenomenon perhaps as a reactive poised against the effects of habituation, causing certain deterministic dominoes to fall....
The "Butterfly Effect" is the propensity of a system to be sensitive to initial conditions.Such systems over time become unpredictable,this idea gave rise to the notion of a butterfly flapping it's wings in one area of the world,causing a tornado or some such weather event to occur in another remote area of the world. Comparing this effect to the domino effect,is slightly misleading.
There is dependence on the initial sensitivity,but whereas a simple linear row of dominoes would cause one event to initiate another similar one,the butterfly effect amplifies the condition upon each iteration. One is reminded of the flaps in UFO phenomenon.
However while all this is well and good in terms of the relationship to symmetrical phenomenon to the asymmetrical as well as pointing out that the two are interrelated as the building blocks of an architectural model of events in space-time, but then we have what's called a Lorenz Attractor. The Lorenz Attractor, is a 3-dimensional structure corresponding to the long-term behavior of a chaotic flow, noted for its butterfly shape. This reality map shows how the state of a dynamical system (the three variables of a three-dimensional system) evolves over time in a complex, non-repeating pattern. Here is a representation of an Attractor.
On a smaller scale, one could almost visualize the deterministic chaos of language in relation to the social order, as well as to the non repeating patterns of thought which again leads to the relationship between chaos and coherence. Is the incoherence of chaos an attractor, which we organize into coherence, and/or are we also an attractor of this phenomenon ourselves?
The Global Consciousness Project, which is the outgrowth of Princeton's Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory has been collecting data from a global network of random event generators since August, 1998. As summarized, "The network has aquired 65 host sites around the world running custom software that reads the output of physical random number generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over months and years. The data are transmitted GCP data via BrainPaint over the internet to a server in Princeton, NJ, USA, where they are archived for later analysis. Statistical results are complemented by visualizations. Individual data create a random tapestry. The dot color shows their global coherence. Global brain paintings display their complexity."
Is this an accurate representation of information as an energetic field?
For more information, visit http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
In terms of the field we call the paranormal, we find that this phenomenon appears to be random and lacking any coherence as to a repeatable cycle or pattern that could be utilized as a means of establishing coherence from what data we have gathered. As related to the Global Concioussness, according to the original theory of Vladimir Vernadsky, the Noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the Geosphere (inanimate matter) and the Biosphere (biological life).
Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the Geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's Noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements. One recalls the emergence of the UFO phenomenon during this period.
Of course, all of this is entangled in the relationship of what defines the observer as a random determinate as to what is observed, or more accurately what is experienced.
This leads to Chaos Theory, and in particular deterministic chaos. Small deterministic systems are easy to visualize, such as the cascading effect of falling dominoes, but are necessarily linked to the rest of reality by an initial cause and/or final effect. Is the Noosphere a party in the emergence of certain paranormal phenomenon?
To go back to the dominoes, something outside the system has to cause the first domino to topple. The last domino falling might cause something else outside the system to happen. And the system itself must be considered in isolation--if external forces such as hurricanes, earthquakes or the hands of nearby people were taken into consideration, the final domino toppling might not be a predetermined outcome. One looks at the UFO phenomenon perhaps as a reactive poised against the effects of habituation, causing certain deterministic dominoes to fall....
The "Butterfly Effect" is the propensity of a system to be sensitive to initial conditions.Such systems over time become unpredictable,this idea gave rise to the notion of a butterfly flapping it's wings in one area of the world,causing a tornado or some such weather event to occur in another remote area of the world. Comparing this effect to the domino effect,is slightly misleading.
There is dependence on the initial sensitivity,but whereas a simple linear row of dominoes would cause one event to initiate another similar one,the butterfly effect amplifies the condition upon each iteration. One is reminded of the flaps in UFO phenomenon.
However while all this is well and good in terms of the relationship to symmetrical phenomenon to the asymmetrical as well as pointing out that the two are interrelated as the building blocks of an architectural model of events in space-time, but then we have what's called a Lorenz Attractor. The Lorenz Attractor, is a 3-dimensional structure corresponding to the long-term behavior of a chaotic flow, noted for its butterfly shape. This reality map shows how the state of a dynamical system (the three variables of a three-dimensional system) evolves over time in a complex, non-repeating pattern. Here is a representation of an Attractor.
On a smaller scale, one could almost visualize the deterministic chaos of language in relation to the social order, as well as to the non repeating patterns of thought which again leads to the relationship between chaos and coherence. Is the incoherence of chaos an attractor, which we organize into coherence, and/or are we also an attractor of this phenomenon ourselves?
The Global Consciousness Project, which is the outgrowth of Princeton's Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory has been collecting data from a global network of random event generators since August, 1998. As summarized, "The network has aquired 65 host sites around the world running custom software that reads the output of physical random number generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over months and years. The data are transmitted GCP data via BrainPaint over the internet to a server in Princeton, NJ, USA, where they are archived for later analysis. Statistical results are complemented by visualizations. Individual data create a random tapestry. The dot color shows their global coherence. Global brain paintings display their complexity."
Is this an accurate representation of information as an energetic field?
For more information, visit http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
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