Mod+ 266. RICK ARCHER, CAN CONSCIOUSNESS CHANGE CULTURE?

I enjoyed this interview and thought Alex was spot on in exposing Rick's rose coloured view of the future by asking in effect: 'Yes but how would an enlightened society really work? What would it look like?'

I've been hearing for years about the coming shift and how few people it will take to tip the balance towards mass enlightenment.

The facts remain as Alex pointed out that the sceptics and their fellow materialists vastly outnumber the 'enlightened' and I don't think it's being particularly pessimistic to admit that that equation isn't changing any time soon.

What I do see is that whether folk are materialists, religious, new age or enlightened - 99 per cent of people are kind and well meaning and want to live in peace and harmony.

It has always been the 1 per cent who cause the trouble in the world - the hotheads aka ISIS etc.

And if overnight the 0.01 per cent who are spiritually enlightened, swelled to 99 per cent in some cosmic consciousness 'revival', society would still have to deal with the hotheads and the crazies. I think Rick said at one point he would hope in a truly enlightened society these miscreants wouldn't arise. In your dreams Rick.

For the life of me, I, like Alex, just can't visualise how the world's problems would be sorted if nearly everybody was meditating and in tune with higher consciousness. We'd still have food shortages, environmental disasters, financial problems and the rest.

Maybe we should accept that we've chosen to incarnate into a physical world to learn lessons by tackling problems and stop striving and dreaming of creating some kind of earthly nirvana.
 
For the life of me, I, like Alex, just can't visualise how the world's problems would be sorted if nearly everybody was meditating and in tune with higher consciousness. We'd still have food shortages, environmental disasters, financial problems and the rest.

Maybe we should accept that we've chosen to incarnate into a physical world to learn lessons by tackling problems and stop striving and dreaming of creating some kind of earthly nirvana.

If we assume that the last paragraph is not the reason for being here, and I'm open to the idea that it may or may not be, can you really not see a world where things are very different ?

Take it to the extreme, assume that the highest consciousness 99% of us could ever achieve to be Christ consciousness, but the remaining 1% stayed as corrupt/selfish as ever, do you think that the 1% could maintain this lower level in the face of the 99% ?

Things like food shortages and financial problems wouldn't exist because the 99% would consider it a priority to put these things right. They would not care if they owned a BMW or Mercedes or moving to a bigger house ,they would look beyond their country borders and wouldn't care that people in Iraq or India were different in some way, countries probably wouldn't exist ? Many things would be redundant,the military, nuclear weapons, large police forces(while the 1% remained!) etc People would be totally different. Take for example the kindly old woman who appears to be lovely and wouldn't hurt a fly - might at some level have pain in her heart, and hold a grudge against some group or other? The father who loves his children and grandchildren - as long as they're white! Etc etc. All that would change.

It may even be that Earth consciousness could be changed, if you conceive of Gaia , and even environmental disasters would be averted ? Who knows ?

I think the consciousness of the 99% would swamp the 1% in a short time.

Maybe Earth is indeed the way it is because it needs to be that way, kind of a large filtering system for evolving , if it is I feel sorry for the Earth, it probably would like a break from all those annoying things on its surface.

I read quite often in spiritual text that everything is perfect as it is ? :)
 
Credit to Alex for trying to keep Archer's utopianism..

But Dominic, today would seem like utopia - to the lives of people just a few hundred years ago.
Ideals should always be strived for.
It doesn’t matter that we fail often , we are continually growing , and what would have tempted us today , tomorrow we will lay down as unworthy of the level we have attained to.

What Rick was saying , is that we are not just a product of our own thoughts , but of all the thoughts that surround and impinge on us continually. Whether suggestive influences of others (conscious or unconscious),or of thought forms that have built up in areas (nice or ugly).

The greater number developed souls that are added to the mixture of the mass of humanity, the more all of us will be affected on the positive side.

You do not seem to think that there are already people around today who mostly endeavour to 'spontaneously, organically, intuitively and naturally do the right thing'!

There are going to be greater and greater amounts of them. It's called spiritual unfoldment. It is a continuous process.
 
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Listening to the podcast again and hearing Alex and Rick's difficulties in agreeing to how awakening is developing, some thoughts came to me.

Maybe the growth in consciousness is not a general growth ? I wish I could draw a picture !

Maybe the growth in consciousness and the view that the earth is 'challenging' and that it is and should be that way for a reason is compatible. Maybe both 'ends' of the 'filter' are getting stretched ? More people are reaching a higher conscious level, as Rick says they are, but at the same time the end product is increasing in quality and quantity there may be lower levels at the other end.

Although it may not look like it, especially looking beyond today's twisted media, I think that awareness is slowly , and maybe not so slowly, increasing.

I liked the bit about Sam Harris, it will be interesting to see how the devil and the angel on his shoulders finally decide on his path, maybe they will keep squabbling ?
 
Steve, I take your point to me, that if 99 per cent were enlightened some of those world problems like hunger would disappear because the whole system would be based on sharing rather than greed.

But surely in a future world where for instance we had access to free energy - it would only take one or two lunatics to hold the world to ransom.

Do you really think such people with negative ideas would be completely eliminated?

I hope you're right and for today at least I will bow to your optimism and see the glass half full!
 
But Dominic, today would seem like utopia - to the lives of people just a few hundred years ago.
Ideals should always be strived for.
It doesn’t matter that we fail often , we are continually growing , and what would have tempted us today , tomorrow we will lay down as unworthy of the level we have attained to.

What Rick was saying , is that we are not just a product of our own thoughts , but of all the thoughts that surround and impinge on us continually. Whether suggestive influences of others (conscious or unconscious),or of thought forms that have built up in areas (nice or ugly).

The greater number developed souls that are added to the mixture of the mass of humanity, the more all of us will be affected on the positive side.

You do not seem to think that there are already people around today who mostly endeavour to 'spontaneously, organically, intuitively and naturally do the right thing'!

There are going to be greater and greater amounts of them. It's called spiritual unfoldment. It is a continuous process.

Belief in progress and utopianism are not the same thing. Many people believe that things have got better in terms of hygiene, medical science, individual freedom, democracy, and so on, but that doesn't make them utopian.

Utopians think we can have a world with little or no violence, tribalism, cruelty, exploitation, rape and all the rest, and that people will become so good that the state will wither away because they no longer need laws or government. This goes beyond merely being optimistic or thinking we can make the world a better place.
 
It is interesting that some materialists are attracted to meditative disciplines that are part of the enlightenment movement because the type of enlightenment experienced from meditation involves the direct experience, the direct observation, that self and non-self are illusions, and that the ultimate reality is pure consciousness. This would seem to contradict materialism. Does anyone know if any materialists have had that type of realization? How did they interpret it? Did it dissuade them from materialism?

(I'm aware that some materialists assert that observing the activity of the mind that leads to the doctrine of non-self is consistent with the idea that consciousness is an illusion, but that understanding is far short of full realization.)
 
It is interesting that some materialists are attracted to meditative disciplines that are part of the enlightenment movement because the type of enlightenment experienced from meditation involves the direct experience, the direct observation, that self and non-self are illusions, and that the ultimate reality is pure consciousness. This would seem to contradict materialism. Does anyone know if any materialists have had that type of realization? How did they interpret it? Did it dissuade them from materialism?

(I'm aware that some materialists assert that observing the activity of the mind that leads to the doctrine of non-self is consistent with the idea that consciousness is an illusion, but that understanding is far short of full realization.)

To extend this question, Since all knowledge is symbolic in nature and the brain understands its physical reality through a representative construct contained in memory. Does the materialist allow that reality (that which is outside the brain) can be experienced directly without reflection or interpretation. This is the essence of the question of consciousness itself.
 
To extend this question, Since all knowledge is symbolic in nature and the brain understands its physical reality through a representative construct contained in memory. Does the materialist allow that reality (that which is outside the brain) can be experienced directly without reflection or interpretation. This is the essence of the question of consciousness itself.
The "materialist" position (I think) is that our brains "code" (I know, I know ;)) a representation of reality to us that most efficiently facilitates our interaction with it.
 
I did not enjoy this episode as much as most of Skeptiko's shows. I prefer it when there is someone putting across some objective data we can look at more critically. Rick's opinions seem to be mainly subjective and experiential, which is OK for the person experiencing it but little use to me. Anecdotal and personal experience does not qualify as strong evidence for me no matter how significant to the individual who experiences it.

One issue I struggled with though is the Alien abduction stuff that both Alex and Rick seemed to believe in. To my mind it is complete nonsense. It does not make any sense based on the physical laws involved that we have been or are being visited by aliens who choose not to reveal themselves.
The very fact that Alex seems to give credence to this nonsense makes me a little more sceptical about everything in his otherwise brilliant series of shows.

As far as what it will take for a shift in consciousness, you have to be kidding to think anything is going to happen in our lifetime or probably in several lifetimes. Maybe over a hundred years there may be a gradual rise in consciousness but we have to overcome war, poverty, overpopulation and climate change to name a few issues before there could be a universal rise in consciousness.
 
One issue I struggled with though is the Alien abduction stuff that both Alex and Rick seemed to believe in. To my mind it is complete nonsense. It does not make any sense based on the physical laws involved that we have been or are being visited by aliens who choose not to reveal themselves.
The very fact that Alex seems to give credence to this nonsense makes me a little more sceptical about everything in his otherwise brilliant series of shows.



Astronauts Say UFOs are Real
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/04/astronauts-say-ufos-are-real.html

High Ranking Government and Military Officials Say UFOs are Extraterrestrial Craft Visiting the Earth
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/09/high-ranking-government-and-military.html

Video: "Debunking the UFO Debunkers" in which Stanton Friedman explains why you cannot trust the "skeptics".

UFO Witness Testimony
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/02/ufo-witness-testimony-from-csetiweb.html

UFO Experiencers Speak
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/03/video-highlights-of-ufo-experiencers.html

Exopolitics Lectures from the 2010 X-Conference
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/03/exopolitics-lectures-from-2010-x.html
 
The laws of physics preclude alien visitation.
No one can exceed the speed of light and in fact even highly advanced civilizations are unlikely to be able to travel anywhere near the speed of light. Therefore to travel to our planet would take thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years. And then not to reveal themselves overtly or leave any objective evidence of their presence??? Come on, get real. Conspiracy theories and eyewitness testimony's only demonstrate the fallibility of human perception and ability to confabulate and believe what we want to be true. If Alex truly puts alien visitation on as solid a ground as NDE's and other aspects suggesting Non local consciousness then I think I will stop listening to Skepitko episodes. I like Skeptiko because it does tend to respect the science, even though it challenges its conclusions. Belief in Alien visitation crosses the line of wishful thinking.
 
As far as what it will take for a shift in consciousness, you have to be kidding to think anything is going to happen in our lifetime or probably in several lifetimes. Maybe over a hundred years there may be a gradual rise in consciousness but we have to overcome war, poverty, overpopulation and climate change to name a few issues before there could be a universal rise in consciousness.
I have two thoughts here.

One, that a shift in consciousness is the individual responsibility of each of us, rather than a generalised amorphous blurry thing applying to no-one in particular. In my view, some people will make no change at all, may even go backwards. Others may move forward slightly, particularly over the course of an entire lifetime. And maybe a few will move forward by a great amount. However, don't expect these few to be highly visible charismatic leaders or anything of that sort. On the contrary, these people are more likely to be anonymous - could be anyone, anywhere. Again don't expect them to announce their presence - those who do are almost certainly not what they claim. But equally, don't underestimate the effect of consciousness, which after all is considered (by some at least) to be non-local, thus the effect may be more widespread than the physical size of the person.

As for cause and effect, you seem to have it backwards. In your view, the overcoming of war, poverty etc. will cause a rise in consciousness. How about putting that the right way round. A rise in consciousness could help to overcome war, poverty etc.
 
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The laws of physics preclude alien visitation.
No one can exceed the speed of light and in fact even highly advanced civilizations are unlikely to be able to travel anywhere near the speed of light.

Consciousness isn't limited by the laws of physics.

How do you explain entangled particles, which in theory react to each other instantaneously over huge distances ?

I think you're limiting yourself too much by putting too much faith in Science ?
 
One can dream and hope that you are right, I don't discount what you say may be correct but as I said I don't see it happening in our lifetime. I don't think I have it the wrong way around but I think the overcoming of war, poverty etc will be a sign that there are enough individuals whose rise in consciousness starts to affect the way others in the world operate.
 
Consciousness isn't limited by the laws of physics.

How do you explain entangled particles, which in theory react to each other instantaneously over huge distances ?

I think you're limiting yourself too much by putting too much faith in Science ?

We have to stay grounded in some scientific basis. No physicist I am aware of suggests that it will ever be possible to harness entangled particles for any purpose. It is just wild speculation to suggest otherwise.
 
One can dream and hope that you are right, I don't discount what you say may be correct but as I said I don't see it happening in our lifetime. I don't think I have it the wrong way around but I think the overcoming of war, poverty etc will be a sign that there are enough individuals whose rise in consciousness starts to affect the way others in the world operate.
Here you are more or less echoing my views. Maybe we have similar ideas, but express them differently.
 
We have to stay grounded in some scientific basis. No physicist I am aware of suggests that it will ever be possible to harness entangled particles for any purpose. It is just wild speculation to suggest otherwise.

Physicists today might think this way but for a being a long way in the future ? If you're limiting your thought to mainstream science it will only get you so far imo.

Most UFO sightings can be explained away by reason of optical illusions or other such reason, but some small percentage (many) are not easily explained. The UFO stuff around nuclear facilities is really difficult to explain, when the reporters are serious minded military personnel like Robert Salas ?

http://theunexplained.tv/paranormal-podcasts/edition-177-robert-salas

Just one example from many ?
 
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