Alex Tsakiris, Four Questions About the Future of Skeptiko |414|

This goes along with my thinking, as well. And as the little bits that we call our body are all also conscious minds, though little, they have their thoughts and dreams, too. Our self-awareness is focused on our governing unit of consciousness, which is a combination of the primordial consciousness fractal that knows ALL, and our ego, which is a by-product of our overall aggregated body parts all looking out for numero uno. The governing unit of consciousness, "spirit," reaches out to others in a selfless way to contribute to the overall universal consciousness, whereas the ego is me-centered and its job is to watch out for me, me, me. I like to think of myself as a giant hierarchical structure composed of countless little units of consciousness all working to keep "me" alive and functioning. I call it "Whoville," or "Meat Mountain." Consciousness is inherent in all of Whoville's bits, and they lead their own tiny lives not much differently than we live ours, but on fractally smaller scales. Ego, on the other hand, is an artifact of the aggregate of the entire structure of Whoville, that's why it seems to operate somewhat out of our personal control, even though it seems very personal. Ego doesn't care about others; only me and Whoville.

Hypermagda,

We experience the time/space dimension because it is a real possibility in the realm of mind. Mind can conceive of it and it can, therefore, be created by us. It is part of the totality. Therefore, we, being mind (not having mind, but being mind) experience the very real time/space dimension as part of the totality of potential experiences available to entities of the human consciousness mold.

No one/nothing is putting us here or forcing us here or using us here. We are here because it is part of our over all mind. We'd be incomplete if we didn't experience this. We experience other types of consciousness/reality as well. We are experiencing them now; only our ego mind that dwells in time/space/material isn't paying attention to the other realms we exist in. It could and does for some people. It's all a matter of focus.
 
thanks for joining us... and what an awesome first post!

I'm totally with you on a lot of this, but am currently hung up on the idea that our space-time reality is probably not the best position from which to collect and sift through this data. of course, we're all just working with these tiny, tattered shreds of a feedback from the universe, but I'm struck the fact that everything seems so well-ordered... until it's not. why is the paranormal so weird?

I research data by looking at large-scale trends and by reading scientific journals and seeing unanticipated commonalities across disciplines and projects. I research myself through introspection and contemplation. To me, the philosophical aspect is a real as what people here seem to call "reality."

Perhaps the paranormal is weird because these are units of consciousness that have used their Free Will to not work according to plan. They have come up with their own agendas and are running with that. In religious terms that would be a definition of "Fallen." To not work according to "Divine Plan" but to do one's own thing out of egoic drive/will for domination.
 
This goes along with my thinking, as well. And as the little bits that we call our body are all also conscious minds, though little, they have their thoughts and dreams, too. Our self-awareness is focused on our governing unit of consciousness, which is a combination of the primordial consciousness fractal that knows ALL, and our ego, which is a by-product of our overall aggregated body parts all looking out for numero uno. The governing unit of consciousness, "spirit," reaches out to others in a selfless way to contribute to the overall universal consciousness, whereas the ego is me-centered and its job is to watch out for me, me, me. I like to think of myself as a giant hierarchical structure composed of countless little units of consciousness all working to keep "me" alive and functioning. I call it "Whoville," or "Meat Mountain." Consciousness is inherent in all of Whoville's bits, and they lead their own tiny lives not much differently than we live ours, but on fractally smaller scales. Ego, on the other hand, is an artifact of the aggregate of the entire structure of Whoville, that's why it seems to operate somewhat out of our personal control, even though it seems very personal. Ego doesn't care about others; only me and Whoville.

Hi Dr Cyd,
Everyone wants to attach religious meaning and moral judgments to what is actually just a simple process.

Everyone into this stuff has heard NDE stories, etc wherein the spirit has no concern for the physical body. People want to take that as a sign of some kind of ascended consciousness. It isn't. It's the same as the ego structure being focused on the physical and having a body and not caring much about (or even denying) the spirit.

When you are focusing the attention of the totality of you on being a spirit, then there is little or no reserve energy or attention to create and care about a body. When you are focusing the attention of the totality of you on being a physical being with a body there is little or no reserve energy or attention to create and care about a spirit.

You can't understand this stuff via the every day physical world paradigm. There is no "there". It's all placement of the attention/focus of awareness and the energy of your mind. That's all there is to reality and to the nature and form of your being.

Image a sphere comprise of many small magnets. The magnets are arranged such that they all touch. There's no space between them. The entire surface of the sphere is covered with these magnets. Except the magnets aren't actually energized. They're not magnetic all of the time. The can be turned on and off. Now imagine that this sphere sits in a huge field full of iron filings. This is a loose analogy for what we, and the world, are.

When we energize one of the magnets, we attract and are attracted to, a subset of the iron filings in the field. Note that the magnet we choose to energize is somewhat arbitrary. We could choose to energize all of the magnets, but that takes a lot of energy, more than most people have - and you'd have to know it's possible in the first place.

Now imagine that the "iron filings" aren't actually iron. They are basic perceptual elements. They themselves are energy. And the magnets aren't actually magnets. We're really talking about your awareness narrowly focused. But it all still works a lot like magnets and iron.

Except that the energetic basic perceptual units hold your awareness and much as your awareness holds the basic perceptual units. This lock/key arrangement creates a reality. The lock/key arrangement will encompass as much of what is available (the iron filings) internal/external as needed to create a complete - meaning internally consistent - world.

It is silly to say one set of iron filings is more "real" than another. What is more real is the totality of your being. The fact that you can perceive different fields, create different worlds, etc. But that point always seems to get lost in the perception and thinking of beings of this world which require gods and religion, etc.

Thus we are always living a myth. There is no perceivable ultimate truth to be discovered other than the totality of yourself. There is no divine plan - or, if there is, it's so far beyond our ability to comprehend that it might as well not exist. We can - and must - chose something (a myth) to live by and we should chose well, but we should keep in mind that it is, ultimately, something we have chosen and not a finality. We should also remember that the myth we chose is going to cause us to maintain a certain reality/totality limiting focus if we become too concrete with it.

Yes, there are entities other than yourself out there and they are doing the same things you are in perceiving and creating worlds. But that doesn't make them any more or less gods than you are.
 
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infer from googling the theory of night vision operation that the goggles were taken apart and just the screen was exposed to the phenomena directly? Otherwise it'd be interacting with the electrons coming out of the photomultiplier. That's pretty wild. I don't know much about emission spectra, but I'll take your word for it

No, a photomultiplier does not attenuate gamma rays substantially, nor can it produce a gamma ray level of energy itself. It will sequester a visible or UV photon of course (as you imply here) and translate it to a representative electron, but those electrons do not carry energy sufficient to ever surpass the Compton effect excitation energy of the phosphor screen into an Xs2 blue. A gamma ray is taken through the optical aperture and passes right through the photomultiplier. No disassembly required. This mystery drove me nuts as to how it could possibly have occurred, the first time I saw it happen.
 
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The Thin Red Line is one of my top favorite movies. :)

1. How and why are elites promoting the idea that we're biological robots in a meaningless robots and/or the idea that consciouness doesn't exist?

If you mistake abstractions for experiences and believe in the supremacy of deductive logic, you will inevitably be led to logical absurdities (like "consciousness doesn't exist" - said the conscious being) because the universe is either circular or infinite or both. So your axioms will either become your conclusions or float on nothing or rest on the backs of turtles. Those who recognize this inadequacy of logic either learn to acquire faith in their experiences and their direct personal connections and begin constructing their own structures of thought, or they refuse to have faith and become existential nihilists. Those (such as NDT) who do not recognize this have mistaken their abstractions for experience and do not follow their deductions far enough to realize they rest on nothing. So they exist on an island of structure afraid to explore beyond their own horizons and like a remote tribe or a homeschooled kid unexposed to life elsewhere, they can be a little nutty and say things like NDT said. They don't venture over the horizon to see what is there because they are afraid of being wrong because they have achieved status by teaching things that are safely within the domain of the known.

Then there's the gnostic hypothesis... that we are truly powerful creative creatures with great potential magical ability to change reality with our thoughts and those in power need to keep us convinced of the opposite so they can have more concentrated power.

Or maybe the oppressive hierarchy has been put in place as a power limiter on this segment of reality because too much individual power in this zone would destroy the purpose of this zone as a kind of middle school level place.

The Tree of Life still exists but is deliberately kept from us and guarded by the hierarchy with a flaming sword because power comes in dualities. The power to live for ever is the power to destroy all life. Free energy is the power to tear the world apart. Perhaps the oppressive hierarchy requires that we humans take a test and acquire a Concealed Anti-matter License to prove we can shoot straight and be trusted to shoot the right people (on rare occasion) before we can take also from the Tree of Life.

2. Are people fundamentally discontent? And if so, is it possible for us to transcend that discontent or achieve some higher level of consciousness.

Yes and Yes.

There is no skyscraper without gravity. There is no progress without resistance. There is no hero without a disaster. Negative forces propel us into the positive.

Transcendence can be achieved and it is very nice, but it is even better to find that place of contentment and leave it and then come back to it. And then do it again.

3. What is the relationship between "this reality that is bound in space/time" and "that reality that transcends space/time"? And if this other reality transcends space/time, what does it tell us about our reality that is confined by space/time? Does it suggest that his reality is a lesser reality?

There's a lesser reality below us and a greater reality above us. Wherever we are, we are in the middle. Unless we are at One. If we are at One all boundaries have dissolved so there is nothing and everything and there are no secrets and that isn't very interesting and it feels like bliss and it feels like hell, but that is where it all starts and ends. It is wonderful to go there but you can't go there if you're already there. So we are in the midst of an oscillation between leaving and coming home... somewhere along the hero's journey.

We are bound in space and time. But it is interesting to break boundaries, so we probably will.

There is no structure without boundaries and limitless power is quickly boring, so our restrictions enable new kinds of experiences.

4. What is the role of deception in this process?

If we have all truth then we are back to Oneness which is simultaneously wonderful and dull. In order to have an experience as a limited being within a structure, things must be hidden from us.

The deception is multi-layered and with many smaller individual and corporate motives some of which occupy the segment of reality which we would call "evil", but closer to the top of this hierarchy is the galactic or universal hierarchy which is guarding with that flaming sword, the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life, the Anti-Matter free energy power generators and the mother of all weapons and the magical power inherent within your own creative being.

______________________________

I could be wrong about all of this...
 
I am not saying people don't have free will. I am saying people who feel like they have it need to come up with a better way of explaining their feelings.

How about that feeling of resistance you sometimes get to thoughts or emotions that arise? If you didn't have free will would that feature of conscious experience be necessary? Why even have the ability to do meta cognition?
 
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Fascinating. The intuition with EVPs is that spirits are bypassing the transducer and working with the electrical signal or even manipulating the storage medium directly (which means in the case of computer recording they're conversant with file systems and sound file formats). And if they're doing that then they'd have to simulate the acoustic properties observed. Sounds like a lot of work for not a lot of benefit. The time thing makes more sense on some level. How do they get their voices into our time stream? Via the past?

My conclusions based on the many reported phenomena where whole chunks of reality are altered in a way that is discontinuous or acausal implies to me that we are living in something analgous to the simulation where chunks of reality are created in this way: a linear storyline describes the platonic forms to be created and then something analogous to a generative adversarial network instantiates the form in a similar but unique physical manifestation.
 
However, I can't prove Dr Martin never said something that contradicts my statement about discontentment by presenting data. What am I supposed to do, copy and paste everything he ever wrote and transcripts of all his videos and say, "See he never said that?".

here's my take on jeff dr. Jeffrey martin:

1. is he who he says he is? Is he a harvard-trained social scientist who left a successful marketing career to pursue the question of enlightenment / awakening. as near as I can tell he is.

2. did he really go around and conduct dozens of 8-12 hour interviews with enlightened masters from a variety of different traditions / religions? I don't know for sure, but it sure seems like he did.

3. did he use that information to develop a methodology that would allow people to achieve the positive aspects of what these great masters were talking about? it seems like he did.

4. did he use best-in-class psychology / personality testing to measure his results? I don't know but as someone who's signed up for his course and didn't complete it because I was bombarded with psychological profiling test I assume that he did.

5. are his results significant? he claims that people who go through his course experience a significant shift in "wellness" as measured by the standard psychological tests that he uses. he claims these shifts happen at a level that is unprecedented among those who care about these social science metrics. from what I read in his book and by watching his presentations at professional forums he's backed up these claims... but maybe I've been duped.

-- what part of this don't you agree with?
 
Good stuff Meurs. I carry this construct as one of my models of consideration. In several EVP's (still considering the reliability versus probative nature of that type of data) I have heard, in the right circumstance, an acoustic echo consistent with that of the room in which the observer was located, to be contained in the EVP wav form signal - curiously, the voice was still imparted directly to the electronic medium - yet it contained the acoustic tail form (echo) of the room in which the voice was captured. As if the 'person' in the EVP was actually standing in the room in which the EVP was collected.

For instance, if the people doing the investigation, when speaking, produce wave forms which carry a 25' plate and 20' side hall reverb form - a complex setting in most acoustic engineering software, then why would an EVP, imparted directly to an electronic device in that room (and not heard by any of the investigators, and also assuming EVP is real), carry that same exact 25'-plate/20'-side hall reverb acoustic signature?

The only way this could happen is if the origin of the voice is standing in the room in which the EVP was collected - thereby falsifying the notion that the voice was generated in another location, or was radio frequency interference.

What this inductively suggests (it is not conclusive), is that the originator of the EVP is standing in an exact duplicate/essence of the 3 dimensional space in which the EVP was observed - yet without a time-constrained set of dimensionality, or in a time accelerated/decelerated one. It may be that as we leave this 4 dimensional prison, the first bars to fall are time. Thereafter the three dimensions of space fade at a later point.

Nearby.

There are also relativistic implications with this. If time extends into our Planck horizon, independent from space - then
1. It can be manipulated independent from space.
2. It can be non-linear in its natural form (does not have to follow the linearity of natural space inside a common single frame of reference).

I think my previous post also applies here.

The recent advances in AI have given us new analogies and metaphors to help us understand the mechanics of the creation of our present reality. LIke I said in previous post, whole chunks of reality can be altered. What is that like? It is like people training a network on Jordan Peterson's voice or Joe Rogan's voice, then entering some text and having that voice come out. It is like a GAN producing original life like images complete with ray-tracing. If we can do ray tracing, why can't someone playing with the Unreal Engine Editor of this reality insert a voice in a certain location in a room and have the echos generated as well?
 
1. How and why are elites promoting the idea that we're biological robots in a meaningless robots and/or the idea that consciouness doesn't exist?

If you mistake abstractions for experiences and believe in the supremacy of deductive logic, you will inevitably be led to logical absurdities (like "consciousness doesn't exist" - said the conscious being)
or maybe it's a social engineering conspiracy :)

The Tree of Life
don't think you're going to slip another Malick reference in without me noticing :)

 
My conclusions based on the many reported phenomena where whole chunks of reality are altered in a way that is discontinuous or acausal implies to me that we are living in something analgous to the simulation where chunks of reality are created in this way: a linear storyline describes the platonic forms to be created and then something analogous to a generative adversarial network instantiates the form in a similar but unique physical manifestation.

So the discarnate being is outside this simulation and hacks it, or some aspect of you and the being co-create that sequence?
 
3. What is the relationship between "this reality that is bound in space/time" and "that reality that transcends space/time"? And if this other reality transcends space/time, what does it tell us about our reality that is confined by space/time? Does it suggest that his reality is a lesser reality?

There's a lesser reality below us and a greater reality above us.
perhaps. But I think the distinction between our space-time reality and realities that transcends space-time might be an interesting way to look at the question. i.e. we are lesser because we're trapped in space time, they are more because they're out of space-time. way oversimplify, but you get the point.
 
So the discarnate being is outside this simulation and hacks it, or some aspect of you and the being co-create that sequence?

Exactly who has admin permissions and how those permissions are acquired (lawfully or in violation of some code) is not clear yet. We know that emotion is involved. We know that dissolution of boundaries is involved. We know that will is involved at the boundary where the mechanism interfaces with the Abyss. No beings are truly discarnate because if they were, they'd be merged with the Oneness and we couldn't distinguish them - that said, their flesh might be of another type not fully understood by us.
 
No, a photomultiplier does not attenuate gamma rays substantially, nor can it produce a gamma ray level of energy itself. It will sequester a visible or UV photon of course (as you imply here) and translate it to a representative electron, but those electrons do not carry energy sufficient to ever surpass the Compton effect excitation energy of the phosphor screen into an Xs2 blue. A gamma ray is taken through the optical aperture and passes right through the photomultiplier. No disassembly required. This mystery drove me nuts as to how it could possibly have occurred, the first time I saw it happen.

What do you make of NDE out of body (usually pre-tunnel) reports? They are still able to perceive our space time, but can't materially affect it.
 
Hypermagda,

I propose and entirely different paradigm; one that isn't so paranoid/conspiracy minded.

We experience the time/space dimension because it is a real possibility in the realm of mind. Mind can conceive of it and it can, therefore, be created by us. It is part of the totality. Therefore, we, being mind (not having mind, but being mind) experience the very real time/space dimension as part of the totality of potential experiences available to entities of the human consciousness mold.

No one/nothing is putting us here or forcing us here or using us here. We are here because it is part of our over all mind. We'd be incomplete if we didn't experience this. We experience other types of consciousness/reality as well. We are experiencing them now; only our ego mind that dwells in time/space/material isn't paying attention to the other realms we exist in. It could and does for some people. It's all a matter of focus.

There is no deception or conspiracy. We are doing it to ourselves based on what we focus on and how much energy we put into maintaining the focus.

Of course we are here to speculate, so nothing wrong with your theory. But, respectfully, I don't find it satisfactory.

What it boils down to, for me, is this : are "things"/all that is (I think you call it mind, some would say "God", or "Nature", the "Universe", etc etc) as it is "just because", ie, "it is as it is, warts and all, so just live with it", or does this "MIND" have choice, agency, and does not just somewhat incontinently give rise to 'whatever it can conceive of' (including this material dimension of space/time which we all struggle to come to terms with - otherwise we wouldn't be here discussing these issues, frankly).

I don't think it's just a question of focus, of paying attention to other realms. You can pay attention to other realms as much as you want, but sooner or later you'll have to go to the toilet or have some food or water or sleep etc. It's not our ego. It's the body - ie, the material dimension our minds are stuck in for as long as we live. And unless we all drink the Kool-aid right now :-) and decide to go and see what lies beyond, we cannot leave our bodies by focusing on other realms.

Btw, I am not at all paranoid or conspiracy minded actually. I was off Skeptiko for months when its main focus was on conspiracies in fact, because frankly I am not interested in them at all. You may be surprised to hear that I believe in benevolent metaphysical intervention in our material world as well - and have experienced it. I just do not feel at all that, just because of that, "it's all good" - I see a lot that's not good at all, and I would like to understand what metaphysical force(s) are at play in the material world. (Wish me luck - I know that there can be no certainty about these things, let's say that I simply want to convince MYSELF that I have reached a sufficiently good idea of what is going on, something that makes sense as much as possible and fits the data)
 
I think my previous post also applies here.

The recent advances in AI have given us new analogies and metaphors to help us understand the mechanics of the creation of our present reality. LIke I said in previous post, whole chunks of reality can be altered. What is that like? It is like people training a network on Jordan Peterson's voice or Joe Rogan's voice, then entering some text and having that voice come out. It is like a GAN producing original life like images complete with ray-tracing. If we can do ray tracing, why can't someone playing with the Unreal Engine Editor of this reality insert a voice in a certain location in a room and have the echos generated as well?

Because they must then do that every time, and thereafter be enslaved to their lie. 'Oh what a tangled web we have wrought...' Whereas elegance, is the principle wherein this happens naturally as a feature of the medium, without any intent directly manipulating the phenomenon.

The Nature of Elegance
 
What do you make of NDE out of body (usually pre-tunnel) reports? They are still able to perceive our space time, but can't materially affect it.

The real answer is - I do not know - that is part of the reason why I am here at Skeptiko. I cannot get probative information from 'skeptic' influenced sources; only propaganda. Here we get information which is less reliable, sure. But the key is that it is PROBATIVE - and that is what an intelligence specialist looks for. :)

A fake scientist exclusively filters for only reliable information and attempts to make that information then probative, from the comfort of their cubicle.
A true investigator favors probative information, and then undertakes the laborious field work of increasing its reliability.
 
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Of course we are here to speculate, so nothing wrong with your theory. But, respectfully, I don't find it satisfactory.

What it boils down to, for me, is this : are "things"/all that is (I think you call it mind, some would say "God", or "Nature", the "Universe", etc etc) as it is "just because", ie, "it is as it is, warts and all, so just live with it", or does this "MIND" have choice, agency, and does not just somewhat incontinently give rise to 'whatever it can conceive of' (including this material dimension of space/time which we all struggle to come to terms with - otherwise we wouldn't be here discussing these issues, frankly).

I don't think it's just a question of focus, of paying attention to other realms. You can pay attention to other realms as much as you want, but sooner or later you'll have to go to the toilet or have some food or water or sleep etc. It's not our ego. It's the body - ie, the material dimension our minds are stuck in for as long as we live. And unless we all drink the Kool-aid right now :) and decide to go and see what lies beyond, we cannot leave our bodies by focusing on other realms.

Btw, I am not at all paranoid or conspiracy minded actually. I was off Skeptiko for months when its main focus was on conspiracies in fact, because frankly I am not interested in them at all. You may be surprised to hear that I believe in benevolent metaphysical intervention in our material world as well - and have experienced it. I just do not feel at all that, just because of that, "it's all good" - I see a lot that's not good at all, and I would like to understand what metaphysical force(s) are at play in the material world. (Wish me luck - I know that there can be no certainty about these things, let's say that I simply want to convince MYSELF that I have reached a sufficiently good idea of what is going on, something that makes sense as much as possible and fits the data)

Hypermagda,
I don't think I'm speculating all that much. I have spent years analyzing my own experiences and credible accounts from others.

You are still missing my point.

Has anyone ever had an NDE or OBE in which they had to "get up and go to the bathroom"? Do ADCs report having to go to the bathroom?

Going to the bathroom is what physical bodies - the reflection of your focus on the physical model - must do. The you that doesn't have a physical body, doesn't go to the bathroom.

IMO, you are still conflating the physical body with the totality of You. It isn't you. It is an aspect - a small aspect at that - of you that you are focused on experiencing at this time.

I am not equating Mind with God, Nature or any of that stuff. I am equating mind with awareness and with the real you and with reality itself. God, nature, etc are constructs created by the mental structures associated with entities engaged in the experience/focus of having a physical body.

Also, I am not talking about "paying attention" to larger reality. What you mean by that is thinking about these things. What I mean is actually shifting the focus of one's attention such that one experiences and lives these things. Thinking is in the realm of the focus on the physical. Thinking about not being physical is like a snake chasing its own tail.
 
IMO, you are still conflating the physical body with the totality of You. It isn't you. It is an aspect - a small aspect at that - of you that you are focused on experiencing at this time.
.

I most definitely disagree that the body is a small aspect. But I see where you're coming from.
I'm on a different kind of quest.
 
That said, I think the function of the trickster might be partly something like, “well, no I’m not going to allow you to show proof to the rest of the world nor am I going to allow you to understand. Just know that reality isn’t even remotely what you’re making of it.” There’s no better way to stop people in their tracks and make them reconsider their notion of reality by throwing some of these episodes of “high strangeness” and synchronicity at them.

There must be some sort of “rule” in place which governs all of these entities interaction with us.

I couldn't agree more!!!!!!!!
 
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