Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

Heavenly Hitchins on the Afterlife

As mentioned a couple of weeks back, I’m currently writing a book exploring the evidence for an afterlife – which you can help me out with, by pre-ordering eBooks, or signed paperbacks/limited edition hardcovers. One of the reasons for this project is to correct some of the misinformation that is spread by scientism-ists and the mainstream media, and I haven’t seen much more of a better (worse?) example than this article in Washington Monthly, in which Art Levine ‘channels’ the spirit of Christopher Hitchins to debunk any idea of an afterlife. In doing so, he seems to take particular aim at the near-death experience (NDE):

What was clear enough before my death was that visions of an afterlife were no more verifiable than any other bedtime tales designed to offer false hope to toddlers frightened of the dark. They are the ultimate embodiment of the solipsism at the heart of all religions. This infantilizing fiction comes in various guises, from orthodox religions with their fabricated consolations of fairytale heavens — whether it is the Islamic fanatic’s seventy-two celestial virgins or the Christian fantasia of winged angels — to the modern pseudoscientific “research” into so-called near-death experiences (known with ridiculous technicality as NDEs). These hallucinatory claims, originally popularized by a Dr. Raymond Moody for Me Generation readers of the 1970s, rest on numerous banal and repetitive testimonials about floating above one’s body, hurtling through a tunnel toward a bright light, vividly reviewing episodes from one’s past as if watching a holiday slide show, and encountering various beings lit up with an unearthly glow. These latter apparitions can range from one’s surprisingly youthful-looking relatives to an omniscient spiritual guide, including the ubiquitous Jesus if you’re a Christian, not-so-coincidentally matching your own faith or lack thereof.

There’s nothing in these visionary tall tales that can’t be either simply explained through an understanding of basic science or discounted as the unprovable “revelations” of individuals with no legitimate claim on our belief. That was my position before I experienced my own peculiar hallucinations after death, and I have seen no evidence since then requiring me to recant my position. Was I wrong on the afterlife, as so many among the bien-pensant brayed for me to admit that I was wrong on Iraq? Plainly, no.

As the psychologist Susan Blackmore has persuasively shown, the near-death experience is a product of the dying brain and shaped by the individual’s cultural expectations. The temporal lobe is especially prone to inducing hallucinations, memory flashbacks, and other visions after death when undergoing anoxia, or oxygen deprivation. In concordance with this understanding, virtually every one of the phenomena I experienced after my own death has a clear-cut neurological or biological cause or an obvious cultural antecedent. As Blackmore wrote recently in the Guardian, “If human consciousness can really leave the body and operate without a brain, then everything we know in neuroscience has to be questioned.”

I really don’t know where to start with the sheer number rebuttals this thing demands, and the book is definitely where you’ll see me detail all of that. From the anoxia explanation, to claiming that Susan Blackmore has “persuasively shown” the near-death experience is a product of the dying brain, Levine gets everything wrong apart from the final statement in the blockquote above.

I should remark though that the book will *not* be a simple propaganda job for the afterlife conclusion. The goal will not be to assert that any particular conclusion is “true” – just that, on the current evidence, any rational person could certainly ‘believe’ that there is some sort of existence beyond death, and so perhaps we should all be discussing this possibility.

Support my book project (seriously, don’t let apathy rule – I need your help!) at IndieGoGo.

Editor
  1. Hmmm…much of what I’ve
    Hmmm…much of what I’ve deduced from the research on near death experiences is that similar to how we affect the quantum universe by our observations, we affect the entire afterlife universe through interaction with our consciousness. Meaning all these atheists who expect nothing and to be snuffed out may very well get their wish not from a spiteful creator, but from their self-fullfilling belief system 🙂 That would be validation of God’s infinite wisdom if not his wry sense of humor.

    It’s not so much the atheist’s point of view, rather their intellectual elitism and superiority complex that is so annoying. They fit in perfectly with a great book I’m reading called Mindset by Carol Dweck – about fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets. How destructive fix mindsets are and stem from deep insecurities from constantly having to feel validated, versus growth mindsets where we continually grow, learn, improve and evolve. A nice analogy to an eternal soul on a journey of improvement and ultimate reunification with its creator versus the pompous egomaniac fixated on defending and justifying their greatness as that is all they have since life is finite and they must maintain their charade until the end. Explains a lot…

  2. Reincarnation and Survival of Consciousness
    I don’t think there will ever be sufficient proof for hardcore skeptics, who seem constitutionally bound to keep moving the goalposts; but for me, one of the most compelling arguments for the survival of consciousness after death lies in the research on reincarnation, by figures like Ian Stevenson (which even Carl Sagan found intriguing). If even a single case were shown to be inexplicable by ordinary means, it would strongly support the possibility of consciousness independent of the brain.

  3. I Stand Corrected – This Book IS Necessary!
    Up until now Greg I was wondering if your book was really necessary – reading this it clearly is.

    (Even if these guys never read it I take the Buddhist/Sufist/etc position which goes everyone explains the recent Arab Spring as being down to the Blackberry/iPhone/internet/etc but that doesn’t explain the fact literally the day before it happened the CIA still didn’t have a clue both the Berlin Wall in particular and Communism in general was about to topple in Eastern European countries [all without use of the Blackberry/iPhone/internet/etc] ie simply by putting stuff out there verbally as well as in print somehow changes the dynamic [which’s of course what Levine and co themselves’re unconsciously try’n’o do]).

    I particularly love the way Levine concentrates on the 72 virgins stuff – not the fires of Hell stuff – or the fact from Sumerian civilization onwards even the likes of Gilgamesh were promised nothing but a diet of shadows dust and horror when they died. Even all the reincarnation stuff boils down to endlessly being reborn until you’ve suffered enough to realise you need to make the effort to make amends.

    And the huge cosmic joke’s the reason why members of his own family and friends started try’n’o murder Muhammed was because until he came along they thought it didn’t matter how many orphans you robbed or people you slaughtered to get your way because ‘immortality’ was simply to have the poets recount your splendid battle exploits (much like in Narcocorrido).

    But suddenly Muhammed was saying oh no you don’t get off that lightly – there IS life after death and what’s more you suffer the consequences of your actions and it’s only if you’ve done the right thing you get the 72 virgins (an idea they found so appalling they were willing to slaughter someone they loved and trusted in every other regard just to stop him saying it anymore).

    That’s why I love the Sue Blackmore quote “EVERYTHING WE KNOW in neuroscience” would have to be questioned.

    We KNOW bugger all about neuroscience!

    (Hence the use of statistics and every other magician’s trick in the book in an attempt to make the data they don’t like vanish).

    And apparently Art Levine knows BUGGER ALL about religion.

    1. I agree with Alan Borky: “We
      I agree with Alan Borky: “We KNOW bugger all about neuroscience!”

      Humans in their infinite narcissism repeatedly presume their knowledge in the present is the pennacle of wisdom and extrapolate all sorts of erroneous conclusions from it. And we never learn to slow down, be humble and forge ahead lightly. Yet in our arrogant hindsight we frown and mock the beliefs and conclusinos of yesterday as so much foolhardiness, yet in amnesiac bliss we repeat the same mistakes of arrogance again and again…

      Returning to and elaborating on my earlier post about Mindset, I believe this explains a lot about atheists and skeptics. The book Mindset is filled with examples and numerous controlled studies on the effects of fixed versus growth mindsets. Multiple examples are given of CEOs who destroyed their companies – Enron, Chrysler, etc… all resulting from fixed mindsets. The fixed mindset is the result of individuals with fixed belief systems – their belief intelligence is fixed, talent rules over hard work and effort, and mostly fixed mindset people are people who were told from an early age how great, smart or talented they are, the result being they now measure themselves by sustaining this belief. Anybody or anything that threatens their fragile self image, i.e. any occurrence of them making a mistake or being proven wrong, lessens their worth, undercuts their value, threatens their worthiness. So they attack, they defend, they ridicule, they do all in their power to shut out any opposing or threatening veiw points. This applies to CEOs of billion dollar companies to your retail clerk at your corner market – it matters not. A fixed mindset is a closed mindset bent on defending its beliefs at any and all cost.

      Know anybody who fits this mold?…

      1. from the Mutable-Non-verbal-Reality-Dept.
        i agree with General Semantics that there needs to be a common language that is more true to reality as opposed to the language we use commonly right now. Non-aristotlean language.

        i notice that we don’t have to know or understand why for our theories and investigations to work — quantum mechanics, ferinstance, we don’t really grok yet, but the equations work precisely in ‘real life’

        i think a similar thing is going to be happening with neuroscience. we have mind-machine interfaces right now where people can move machines just with their ‘thoughts’ and we are investigating ‘dream machines’ where we look at people’s dreams on a screen.

        Maybe in my culture monotheism of a sort still holds sway, in that there seems to always be some hidden Truth that no matter how we investigate, it is always there, always unknown…

        I don’t know :3

  4. The Murder of Mystery
    I like to keep a stack of old magazines in my bathroom, to the point that for me having reading paper close at hand is almost as important as having rolls of its softer and more disposable counterparts.

    Anyway…

    In one of my old Discover magazines, I found this wonderful editorial by Jason Lanier: The Murder of Mystery. In it, Lanier expresses his disdain for the way Silicon Valley geeks (and neuroscientists) are always so eager to regard the human brain as nothing more than a complex & mushy computer, and how their views have driven many inquisiting minds away from the realm of science to find more suitable answers in the also murky waters of religious fundamentalism.

    These days I feel as though I’m walking on a tightrope, with a crowd of ravenous faux robotic nerds on one side and a gaggle of sentimental antiquarians on the other. I try not to fall to either side.

    One could easily edit the paragraph by replacing ‘robotic nerds’ for ‘rude antitheists’ & ‘sentimental antiquarians’ for ‘close-minded Bible thumpers’, no?

    So Lanier talks gives a useful guide on how to spot an idea that came from fake rationalists: when the result is a “premature decline in mystery”:

    Intelligent design falls into this category. If you believe a biological structure is nothing more than a fashion decision made by God (or an alien), there’s nothing you can do to explain it beyond that; you’re done. While it might at first seem to enshrine mystery, intelligent design actually insulates us from the endless, intriguing mysteries of nature by providing one answer in advance for everything.

    I would submit that the expression “NDEs can be simply explained by Neuroscience” falls equally into the same fallacy, along with “After we die we go to heaven or hell” one might add.

    That’s why Greg’s book will be important: to remind us that we shouldn’t be to quick to murder the mystery of death by either contemptuous dismissal or gullible fantasy.

    1. from the Apocalypse-of-the-Imagination-Dept.
      Well-put, rpj :3

      a metaphor i like to use is that of Catholic vs. Protestant. In the Catholic myths, they venerate saints, they still believe in spirits, there is a whole economy and ecology of them.

      In protestantism, there is only the trinity.

    2. Good Evening RPJ!
      I thought I’d have a quick look at the Grail just to see what has been going on.

      My take on this issue is that

      1) People on both ‘sides’ are going well over the top.
      2) We should separate consciousness theory from far too widespread criticisms, like neuroscience is myth, or scientists know nothing about neuroscience. These stand out as obvious over-statements. What I would say is that we currently know very little about consciousness, not about the brain. I’d be tempted to say that using consciousness studies alone as the yardstick as to whether we know anything about the brain is quite a faulty premise – it just means we know little about consciousness.
      3) For those of us interested in the science the fault of this rests firmly at science’s doorstep. From the sound of it the literature is full of over-estimations of success. Note that I do not necessarily think this is evidence against consciousness being a brain phenomena – I think it is more complicated than that. My take on it (based on what I have heard so far) is that technologically we are no-where near the sophistication we require to study consciousness scientifically. Everyone is left in the dark when the devices necessary to perform the required measurements do not exist.
      4) They may not exist for a very long time – quite possibly outside of our lifetime.
      5) If that it true then we will be spending the next 30 years arguing over correlations compatible with multiple hypothesis, and obviously that will result in ‘camps’. What intelligent person would expect otherwise? I’ve yet to be swung either way precisely because neither side has really cracked it.

      6) Ethical Theology – It’s not too hard to spot people who are cross at being disagreed with. Not just standing up for other positions, but are actually annoyed. There are commenter’s on this post making claims they have no evidence that purport to punish billions of people just for not agreeing with them. Though people have a right to claim that mere disbelief in an afterlife is going to result in those people not getting one (as an example of a deities irony) it isn’t making the most of their position if they belittle people based only on their theology (and not arguments of ethics etc). That’s as helpful as me saying that only atheists and non-believers will get an afterlife because God is really an infinitely ironical God. (And don’t people know that someone who doesn’t believe in any God’s, and hence is an atheist, doesn’t necessarily hold the same disbelief regarding an afterlife in general. Hell, as is often pointed out there are atheistic religions for crying out loud). Sometimes it feels like ‘skeptic’ has replaced ‘heretic’ for some people (mostly since science is not claiming that portion X of the population will suffer for not believing in it in any way other than not studying physics will likely mean you don’t get a job in it, and not being good at math or language will likely mean the same relating to those as well). Arrrrghhhhh. Seriously though, I think it is better to confine disagreements to ethics, since this is something we can talk about. Whether any hypothesis is true (and hence who the ‘true-believers’TM and the skeptics even are) isn’t known at this point. Certainly not enough to be telling large swathes of the planet they face non-existence for disagreeing, or will burn in hell etc.

      1. Yronical Yahweh

        😉

        Srsly now, if our lack of knowledge about consciousness is not a good indicator about our knowledge of neuroscience, then why is Neuroscience the only field presently endorsed to undertake studies about consciousness?

        To me it is as absurd as the thought of SETI carrying out their search for smart ETs with *just* a team of radio-astronomers. That’s why SETI is comprised with a vast (but not that much) eclectic (but not iconoclastic) group of exo-biologists, mathematicians, cosmologists and so forth.

         

        PS: Always a delight to read your comments, dd ^_^

        1. Ola
          [quote]Srsly now, if our lack of knowledge about consciousness is not a good indicator about our knowledge of neuroscience, then why is Neuroscience the only field presently endorsed to undertake studies about consciousness?[/quote]

          To answer this I’d need to know the bounds of the question. It’s made very interesting progress on many features of the mind, so I don’t begrudge it for that. I don’t know whether it is evidence of possible future success in the field of consciousness, since Neuroscience’s success is primarily related to the sense and to movement. It appears from the evidence that both the inputs to the mind (sensory cortex’s; visual etc) and the outputs (motor’y) have had much greater evolutionary pressures to remain modular.

          I listened to a fascinating review of the literature of cognition in the Neuroscience’s a couple of days ago that trashed much of it and drew this distinction. This was also where the technological limits were explained. Right now we can actively monitor a hundred or so neurons, with one thousand neuron monitoring on the horizon. This is enough to glimpse into the sensory and motor apparatus of the brain and even now gleam a little information of what is occurring. However thought is quite probably occurring over the entire brain with a single thought spanning much of the brain. The evidence to suspect this, from within the material paradigm, is the high plasticity even in single thoughts even in an individual over one day to the next already shown on fMRI – it’s lack of resolution has at least ruled out the material paradigm at that resolution. Plus the very nature of a single thought, involving decision, rationales, beliefs, memories, sensations and emotions.

          We’re apparently screwed because fMRI smooths data over regions and so smooths out neurons over the sort of scale we might need to look at. I.e it works incredibly well for what we use it for, but is going to be next to useless in studying consciousness.

          So to know one way or another regarding the neural network hypothesis we will have to wait until the technology can sample large proportions of the brain at one, with each neuron, and until we have the computing power to analyse that much data (we don’t yet) – before we can scientifically rule it out (which would still be one hell of an accomplishment).

          So thats whats is working, and what isn’t in that field; from the sound of it – which would roughly explain the output of the field I think (discluding the normal experiments you hear about once and then never again as a normal part of the endeavour in any field).

          As far as endorsement of any other field to me personally it depends what is being done in each experiment and subsequent follow ups (Note that the way to tell that Neuroscience is not as competent as some people in it claim is the lack of repeatability – but if that is a valid criticism in Neuroscience it is in other fields as well). What makes any field over time respectable? A breakthrough could come from anywhere if any field is on the right track. There are experiments from the ‘non-brain’ side going on that I am very interested to hear the results from.

          1. Qué pasa

            So thats whats is working, and what isn’t in that field; from the sound of it – which would roughly explain the output of the field I think (discluding the normal experiments you hear about once and then never again as a normal part of the endeavour in any field).

            Hmm, it kinda feels like the 90s all over again, when everybody was very excited about the Human Genome Project, and how we were promised that after they finished decoding our DNA a deluge of miraculous custom-made remedies would rain upon us delivering us from the tyranny of Cancer, Alzheimer’s and Diabetes. It all seemed like a simple matter of data crunching and computing horse-power.

            20-so years later and I’m still wondering if I’ll get to benefit from an Alzheimer’s cure by the time I’m ready to collect my pension.

            Obviously it wasn’t a waste of time. Like you said, the lack of easy answers regarding gene expression is slowly forcing us to change the paradigm of Biology, while people like Rupert Sheldrake are waiting for the rest of his colleagues to catch up.

            So, for now we’ll have to wait and see if all the money funneled to Neuroscience intended to improve the efficiency in body-count during battle situations might yield a unexpected tangential benefit in our understanding of consciousness. But perhaps, after scientists finally reach the necessary potency (Moore willing) to simulate and/or scan a matrix of neurons amounting to a complete human brain, and they still fail to hunt the ghost in the machine, they’ll begrudgingly start formulating new more interesting questions.

          2. Quote:
            But perhaps, after

            [quote]But perhaps, after scientists finally reach the necessary potency (Moore willing) to simulate and/or scan a matrix of neurons amounting to a complete human brain, and they still fail to hunt the ghost in the machine, they’ll begrudgingly start formulating new more interesting questions.[/quote]

            I think that that will definitely be part of the research no matter what. It is such an obvious question that the idea of not testing it just isn’t going to happen. Even if we had another working hypothesis testing vast groups of neurons is just begging to be done and is a question staring us right in the face, and who knows what it will reveal, perhaps some thing that will amaze us both. What I mean is that I think it is a perfectly reasonable avenue of research no matter whether it reveals anything about consciousness. We might as well just let the arguments about consciousness continue and consider that at the moment we don’t have much more than stage 1 as far as neuroscience goes as far as full cognition goes.

            The line of research is important to continue irrespective of consciousness is what I mean. The fact that it is revealing interesting realities about inputs and outputs to/from our consciousness is ‘groovy’, so to speak, so I definitely want it to continue. An actual understanding of consciousness seems a very long way down the road though, but i’m happier saying the brain has something to do with it than say the big toe. I’d hope I could justify that belief using some sort of evidence, as well as some from neuroscience – even if we can consider it in its infancy regarding cognition, if not regarding sensory input and motor function.

            On a personal note I’m actually pleased that both sensory and motor look like they are going to be much easier eggs to crack – for all those affected by issues with them, though again it will no doubt be a while. Already though some few involved in small scale testing are reporting that their quality of life is being improved by this part of neuroscience, so I would only go so far as to consider consciousness as probably outside its grasp right now as a question (the answer may be much further from it’s grasp).

            For all we know though the soul could be in the right big toe. The brain could be housing everything that is happening materially with a gateway through another part of the body – or not through it at all. Speculation is useless, we need real usable and testable hypothesis, or woe to anyone who loses their right big toe!

            What are you favourite 3 testable hypothesis for cognition outside of neural networks?

          3. Sentience
            Oh boy…

            3 favorite testable hypothesis for cognition.

            I dunno. IMO Sentience is more important than cognition. Cogito Ergo Sum is deceptively simplistic. You need to be aware of the fact that you are thinking so that you can recognize yourself as a cognitive entity.

            As for that, like Greg, I’m inclined to think of the brain using the ‘TV transmitter’ metaphor, for lack of a better model. Unlike materialists, I’m not really that worried about the fact that physical or physiological alterations can elicit behavioral changes, the same a way a faulty or uncalibrated TV monitor can yield an image that is too red, or too dark, or maybe even lack sound.

            But don’t think that I have very concrete ‘hypothesis’ as tho how this occur, or that I have read the hypothesis of some scientist that has left me fully convinced, or even that such ideas might be testable!

            Penrose’s ideas about quantum interactions inside neuronal microtubules are interesting, but maybe irrelevant when it comes to the bigger problem of consciousness.

            I think the testable hypotheses about consciousness would have to consider the piling amount of evidence supporting the existence of PSI phenomena –precognition, remote viewing, non-local communication (telepathy), clairvoyance, OOBEs, etc.

            My suspicion is that Consciousness is a ‘field’ that permeates and impregnates all of the universe. I suspect that Consciousness and Information are the true building blocks of all the exists, unlike the current paradigm of Matter & Energy.

            So, maybe our brains act as ‘nodes’ where a confluence of consciousness arrives to such a ‘critical mass’ that a person is able to experience life. The more complex the sustained matrix (the brain) the more potent the node. In that sense yes, Consciousness *is* an emergent behavior allowed by the biology of neural networks, but not caused by it per se, the same way a working Tv monitor is built to tap into an electrical grid in order to receive the transmission from an exterior broadcast –you shouldn’t be able to receive a TV image with your microwave oven 😉

            I don’t have much time at the moment to elaborate further, but I hope this suffice to understand where I’m at –and how CONFUSED I am– regarding these matters.

          4. Hay RPJ,
            I’m not too

            Hay RPJ,

            I’m not too worried about differentiating between say cognition and sentience, or emotion and cognition, emotion and sentience, memory and sentience etc. Not until we can say the differences really are differences. From the neural network hypothesis we can probably differentiate the somewhat, especially from the point of memory, which I think our understanding already localises to a degree that the others are not. I guess though that we will not be able to confirm or deny any of this until we can map much more of the brain.

            My feelings on the Ariel Hypothesis are complex as well. If some features of what we consider the self are not occurring in the body then there is little option than saying they are occurring out of it. If we had no brain then I would be all in favour of it, or if our brains were not neural networks. I am unsure of what research into neural networks tells us about why the human brain cannot be whatever it is we are discussing here – that unpinned down entity. Neural networks seem incredibly, and surprisingly, powerful given the relative simplicity of the ones we have built. We could argue that they are also acting as aerials to a universal consciousness field, but this denies the fact that they are built from physics principles, from the ground up – or does to me. It feels alot like we have to admit two spheres into the equation with the Arial Hypothesis, one for the observation that neural networks can make decisions and coordinate behaviour and one for being aware of that behaviour.

            Perhaps it’s just the self aware part coming from a universal field, rather than from complexity. Though I find it no less amazing if it emerges from complexity. And of course we also don’t know anything about any consciousness field, how stable it is, etc. It reminds me of the TV series Flash Forward!

          5. Consciousness Field
            Yeah, sure it sounds pretty wacky, even unnecessary —IF you are only interested in the brain as an isolated decision-making unit that is linked to the outside world exclusively through the five senses.

            But, as I wrote earlier, the idea that the mind can ‘connect’ to other minds, or can retrieve information without the conventional limitations of space and time, suggests to me that we should take this into consideration when modeling neural networks.

          6. Hi RPJ
            I don’t think there is a fixed requirement to define it quite like that. We needn’t be interested in declaring minds as isolated to impartially look at the idea that sentience is occurring in a universal field since it isn’t the only possibility in explaining paranormal phenomena.

            At the very least it is fair to ask how such a field relates to what we see in the diversity of nature, and what nature might mean for a global sentience field. After all the vast majority of animals we can see with the naked eye have neural networks and there is a very clear development in brain anatomy through evolution. Sometimes it is easy to feel that OBE’s, NDE’s and telepathy are being used as the only input into what nature is, instead of actually looking at the whole of nature to draw conclusions. Just looking at paranormal phenomena alone can lead to things like the Ariel hypothesis, but after the hypothesis is formed it is then fair to ask what its ramifications are for everything else.

            So for example, is conscious behaviour coming from such a field? Is emotion? If they are then what conclusions do we draw about the difference in behaviour between different species? What the recent experiment into vole behaviour where one species bonded for life and another one didn’t and experiments showed that there was different expression of oxytocin and vasopressin between the two regulated by gene’s. Researchers changed the gene’s and hey presto the oxytocin and vasopressin expression changed and they were able to control whether the species bonded for life or not. Do we declare that oxytocin and vasopressin are regulating reception of a conciousness field? Or if we do that are we just declaring that human attributes are better attributes? Is social co-operation a ‘better’ access of this universal field? And so have crocodiles evolved not to access it so much as it is detrimental to them, or actually is the universal consciousness not socially co-operative and crocodiles are more in tune with it and our reception is being limited by oxytocin and vasopressin expression? etc

            I am sure there are many versions of the Ariel hypothesis, from strong to soft versions. Strong would begin to look like the soul to me with some sort of universal backup of the individual occuring outside the brain such that a stroke here doesn’t impair you for immortality (ouch) – else we might have a moral obligation to protect the universal consciousness field from strokes and brain damage, weaker versions might pass attributes such as decision making, emotions, memory etc back to the brain and body.

            Your idea that all matter and energy is a type of consciousness might get us some way out of the above quagmire and everything down that road, but at this stage I don’t think I even know what that would mean – apart from said as a sentence. Like the difference between saying the sun is very bright and the physics of nuclear fusion.

            How to tie the Ariel idea to anything we do understand? Not just the speculation that it would make an interesting answer to NDE and OBE, like is so often seen.

          7. I don’t know

            How to tie the Ariel idea to anything we do understand? Not just the speculation that it would make an interesting answer to NDE and OBE, like is so often seen.

            I don’t have the foggiest 😛

            Perhaps beings in this world are just the tridimensional iceberg tip of a larger multidimensional corpus. That way, what we interpret or imagine (or aspire) as a ‘field’ is in reality an extension of ourselves that we can’t perceive from our tridimensional boundaries.

            Like Grant Morrison’s talk when we said everything in this universe is a larvae; and that we only perceive them to be independent units because we can’t see into other dimensions.

            The asnwers you seek are UP there, little square! 😉

          8. You know me!
            I like asking questions using what we’ve got as the principle tool for looking at what we don’t. Not the other way around unless it is just for fun and hypothesis generation (but then there would remain a difference between saying ‘I believe this hypothesis is possible’ and the very common ‘I believe this hypothesis is what is fact’ or the even stronger ‘I believe this hypothesis no matter anything understood that disagrees with it’).

            We can however, I think, agree that whatever the universe is its some pretty far out there wacky thing well outside of our experience and seemingly our imagination as well. Granted we imagine quite a lot, but of all the science I have learn’t 99% of it would not have been imagined. I’m good at imagining starships and dragons though! I mean really, the idea that we are holographic projections from the edge of the universe seems as far fetched as anything from a fantasy book to me.

            I heard a fun quote the other day. I didn’t catch who it was from, but he was a science fiction author. He said today sci-fi writers have to work ten times as hard, because science is catching them up. I liked that.

            I’m as intuitively guided as you are, I think, that underpinning the universe is a single ‘something’ (obviously words like substance or field are probably word games at this point, just us filling in the blanks with socially and scientifically appealing and appeasing sounds from our mouths). Though that might be coming from the appeal to simplicity and parsimony, and of course nature does not owe us that. Even more so if that appeal is really just the lowest energy usage configuration in the brain, the configuration that requires the least amount of cognitive effort and so we find it comfortable and easy, or even beautiful. Who knows.

          9. Who knows indeed
            But it is quite a ride ain’t it? 😉

            Thank you for this lovely exchange,

            Miguel

    1. Oh, for heaven’s sake’s –
      Oh, for heaven’s sake’s – here we go again. A bunch of snooty academics who refuse to mine one of the most enormous reservoirs of evidenece staring them right in the face.

      “Long Island Medium”
      http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=long+island+medium

      “A Haunting”
      http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=a+haunting+discovery+channel+full+episodes+&oq=A+hanut&aq=1s&aqi=g-s10&aql=&gs_l=youtube-psuggest.1.1.0i10l10.2961l7597l0l10845l16l12l2l0l0l2l184l954l3j5l10l0.

      “Paranormal Witness”
      http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paranormal+witness&oq=paranormal&aq=1p&aqi=p-p2g8&aql=&gs_l=youtube-psuggest.1.1.35i39l2j0l8.27053l31882l0l36663l51l25l0l0l0l12l175l2006l15j8l25l0.

      My Ghost Story
      http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=my+ghost+story+season+1&oq=My+Ghost+Story&aq=0p&aqi=p-p2g8&aql=&gs_l=youtube-psuggest.1.0.35i39l2j0l8.31830l37922l0l44229l31l21l0l0l0l4l178l2061l8j11l21l0.

      “Ghost Adventures”
      http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ghost+adventures+full+episodes&oq=Ghost+Ad&aq=3&aqi=p-p2g8&aql=&gs_l=youtube-psuggest.1.3.35i39l2j0l8.55731l59775l0l68048l30l17l0l0l0l6l157l1394l8j7l17l0

      “Psychic Investigators”
      http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=psychic+investigators+full+episodes&oq=Psychi&aq=0p&aqi=p-p2g8&aql=&gs_l=youtube-psuggest.1.0.35i39l2j0l8.72617l76661l0l79094l35l17l0l0l0l8l170l1492l8j7l17l0.

      To name but a few excellent television series.
      If these moribund old farts want to live in a bubble and argue from some dusty shelf out in nowheresville that is their privilege, but I am done being civil about this.

      .

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal