Dean Radin, Quantum Consciousness Experiments |545|

[J Randall Murphy]

No we can't. Until we can measure consciousness, we can't even claim that it's brought about at all.
Sure we can say that whatever it is we're conceiving as "consciousness" is brought about by the brain, but that's not a confirmation of consciousness.

Just because I give a name to the space outside of the universe doesn't mean it exists.

Simply using "No" as a counterpoint, isn't sufficient. Neither is wilful ignorance of the facts.

 

[Michael Larkin]

I found Dean to be a bit of a mixed bag in this interview. Whilst I applaud his openness to psi phenomena, I found his attitudes in some areas to verge on scientism. He may not be aware of this, to be fair, but I personally will henceforth tend to take much of his stance with a pinch of salt.

 

[J Randall Murphy]

For what it's worth, I favour the superpsi explanation for psi phenomena. I think it fits in well with Tom Campbell's Big Toe model of the universe (and he does admit it's only a model), which I find rather persuasive. Everything that anyone's ever been, done and said exists in the memory database of the universe ("Akashic record") and can be accessed under suitable conditions, be those intentional or accidental.

When we die, we die. Or at least, our avatars do. We as individuated units of consciousness (iuoc or"souls") never die. Living people can connect with memories of avatars of previously existing people as they once were when alive, or if still alive, their present experiences. This can account for reincarnation memories, mediumship, precognition and so forth quite adequately, imho. The database is continually being updated in real time, which accounts for synchronicities and so forth.

The thing that grows and evolves is the iuoc (Bernardo Kastrup's "dissociated" unit of universal consciousness). Life is like a game simulation offering opportunities to learn. When an avatar dies, it returns to its primordial and evolving state, and "reincarnation" happens when it gets re-instantiated to carry on playing the game in a further attempt to advance its own evolution. Both universal consciousness and iuocs can access the database, the first to aid in its "data processing", as sometimes can the second, which accounts for many intuitive and paranormal experiences.

In my view, something like the model of a "game" simulation theory offers a more cohesive and less seemingly disparate set of explanations for psi phenomena. But YMMV.

Keep working on it. Then you'll evolve your view. If anything is an avatar, it's these afterlife apparitions, not your material body — although I suppose that there could be simulations within simulations, in which case we'd have to assign some sort of hierarchy to the levels of "reality". So your current body could be a level 02 avatar, while your afterlife body is a level 03 avatar — but why complicate things?

 

[Robbedigital]

Simply using "No" as a counterpoint, isn't sufficient. Neither is wilful ignorance of the facts.

I hereby declare you have a brother named Henry Murphy. Congratulations, you now have a brother named Henry, better let the rest of your family know. Hell, maybe if we repeat it enough he'll pop into verifiable existence.

 

[J Randall Murphy]

... t's not that psi experiments have proven a moral imperative, it's that they falsified the long-standing claim that morals can never be more than a social construct.

Depending on how you look at that, it seems to me that they can both mean the same thing. That is to say that if moral imperatives are based on a Kantian Categorical Imperative deemed to be some sort of law of nature, are the psi experiments not strongly implying that to be the case, thereby falsifying them as a social construct? Please elaborate on your interpretation so as to clarify.

 

[Enrique Vargas]

Wow... another satanic Frankenstein. I'm sure he's triple-jabbed though. The universal karma will take care of people like him and other satanic psychopaths, be they Fauci, Collins, Bourla or this freak.

 

[Robbedigital]

For what it's worth, I favour the superpsi explanation for psi phenomena. I think it fits in well with Tom Campbell's Big Toe model of the universe (and he does admit it's only a model), which I find rather persuasive. Everything that anyone's ever been, done and said exists in the memory database of the universe ("Akashic record") and can be accessed under suitable conditions, be those intentional or accidental.

When we die, we die. Or at least, our avatars do. We as individuated units of consciousness (iuoc or"souls") never die. Living people can connect with memories of avatars of previously existing people as they once were when alive, or if still alive, their present experiences. This can account for reincarnation memories, mediumship, precognition and so forth quite adequately, imho. The database is continually being updated in real time, which accounts for synchronicities and so forth.

The thing that grows and evolves is the iuoc (Bernardo Kastrup's "dissociated" unit of universal consciousness). Life is like a game simulation offering opportunities to learn. When an avatar dies, it returns to its primordial and evolving state, and "reincarnation" happens when it gets re-instantiated to carry on playing the game in a further attempt to advance its own evolution. Both universal consciousness and iuocs can access the database, the first to aid in its "data processing", as sometimes can the second, which accounts for many intuitive and paranormal experiences.

In my view, something like the model of a "game" simulation theory offers a more cohesive and less seemingly disparate set of explanations for psi phenomena. But YMMV.

Superlative explanation. I have a beef with what I perceive to be BK's labelling of consciousness. He seems to insist that consciousness is the base component of the universe simply because we can't verify otherwise. Then I perceive him to blanket-label consciousness as a core component of the interconnectedness of the universe, which to me could easily be gravity, displacement, or any number of yet-to-be-discovered forces.
His position seems to me as a great/irrefutable retort against anyone claiming there must be a unit smaller than consciousness, but just because they're wrong about what we don't know doesn't mean there is no we-don't-know, and it sure as hell doesn't mean everything we don't know is consciousness..
Curious if you've delved into this line of thinking.

 

[Michael Larkin]

Superlative explanation. I have a beef with what I perceive to be BK's labelling of consciousness. He seems to insist that consciousness is the base component of the universe simply because we can't verify otherwise. Then I perceive him to blanket-label consciousness as a core component of the interconnectedness of the universe, which to me could easily be gravity, displacement, or any number of yet-to-be-discovered forces.
His position seems to me as a great/irrefutable retort against anyone claiming there must be a unit smaller than consciousness, but just because they're wrong about what we don't know doesn't mean there is no we-don't-know, and it sure as hell doesn't mean everything we don't know is consciousness..
Curious if you've delved into this line of thinking.

Thanks for the compliment. As regards Bernardo, I regard him very highly. Personally, I don't believe he thinks consciousness is fundamental simply as an exercise in nomenclature. Language is a fickle thing, and the word "consciousness" is based, like all words, on how we experience the world. Still, language is all we have to be able to converse. You could call it floccinaucinihilipilification if you wanted to, but plainly, whatever consciousness is, it isn't anything material. Nor is gravity, for that matter, but leave that aside.

"Consciousness" is the nearest concept we have to an intelligent underlying principle of the universe that in the end is absolutely every"thing". Nothing we perceive, in my opinion, is a true representation of aspects of reality. Rather, our perceptions, like the dashboard on an airplane for the sky being navigated, merely represent whatever is external to our psyches.

To see reality as it actually is would, as Bernardo puts it, dissolve us into an entropic soup. We just couldn't handle it. So we see the world as it appears (neglecting psychedelic or spiritual experiences) in order to help us adapt and survive. But none of it is real, rather just consistent from person to person, and luckily, enough for us to be able to learn about ourselves and others and so evolve as dissociated alters of universal consciousness. Or as floccinauccinihilipilifications, call it however you will.

 

[K9!]

That's my take away as well. theme seems to be making some obvious logical/scientific blunders.
- the superpsi survival thing is just silly... but then he does a double-down by citing the latest phony nde research... how does he not spot this is being fake: https://www.skeptiko-forum.com/thre...help-the-grieving-513.4730/page-3#post-161091
- his comments about the dod epidemiological database were really shaky. and he again doubles down by saying that it was probably a good idea for big brother to respond to the controversy by removing the information from public view... clueless. after the interview he emailed me a link supporting his position. I think he was a little embarrassed when I pointed out that the link was from his longtime, dogmatically psi-skeptical adversary steven novella.
- he also didn't handle the moral imperative question (i.e. it does evil matter question) very well. he's well spoken on the relationship between science and philosophy so I was really surprised he whiffed on this one. it's not that psi experiments have proven a moral imperative, it's that they falsified the long-standing claim that morals can never be more than a social construct.

I've always really liked Dean, but he is starting to sound like this guy...

Dean Radin has turned to the dark side of the force.

 

[Kim]

What I like about Radin is that he gets out there and does the experiments that he thinks will provide evidence for his hypotheses. The other thing I like is that his attitude takes critical thinking to a depth that most people don't dive to. It's very challenging. I've wondered now and then if because he knows this, he wishes he'd get more consideration when looking for funding. After all, quantum physicists have been milking that cow for years to the tune of billions of dollars, and his investigations are no less important.

That being said, I would caution those who want to interpret Radin's work as evidence for afterlives against mapping their own biases onto his work. I could be wrong, but Radin himself appears to have recognized this as well, and to his credit, has applied it over the years to his own assumptions. With respect to some of the show's content, I would say that the concept of materialism allows for a lot more wiggle room than was suggested. It's not really as binary as it was made to sound.

The reason is because there is no consensus among philosophers as to what exactly constitutes materialism. Some see it synonymous with physicalism, in which case, all of Radin's experiments at the quantum level are material, and therefore, whatever they they provide evidence for, are by extension, also material.

When he got into his comments on mRNA, there was some messy logic going on involving an allusion to utilitarianism, and what sounded to me like a bias in favor of continuing to use the general public as research subjects, but I'd need to have a longer conversation with him about that before knowing how far he'd go in that direction.

Given that he seems to apply so much significance to his own small statistical anomalies, one would think that given at least one study that has utilized multiple vaccine injury databases and concluded that the mRNA vaccines are statistically much more prone to causing serious injury and death, that he'd be willing to take that evidence much more seriously — but he seemed to be happier to deflect it. I wonder if any of his funding is coming from big pharma or its funders?

I don't see how Radin could avoid having some connection to shady money. Big Pharma outspends everyone on lobbyist money to Congress, for example. The biggest lurid investment groups, like Vanguard, have their tentacles practically everywhere. I love it when ppl try to scoff at D. Whitehead's 300 top-of-the-pyramid ppl as non-existent.
You might find this interesting. A filipino friend of mine who went back to work as a security guard told me he thinks filipinos are immune to COVID. He's talked to many, many ppl about the plandemic & practically no one is aware of someone on Cebu Island that's had it, but there's plenty w/ friends & relatives who've got very sick or died from being vaxxed. CNN carried a story about rural Romanians who refuse the vaccines b/c no one's gotten sick. The catholic priest they interviewed said he learned quickly to shut up about it when he tried to tell them the poop wanted them jabbed. Did you see that story that the poop considered it a 'moral issue' to be vaxxed? Of course he wants HIS flock jabbed. The catholic church & Jesuits are tied to Big Pharma through the Knights of Malta.
After watching several programs about venom from all kinds of sources, I think I've found the source of the chemical they're spraying to sicken masses of ppl & stampede them to doctors. I bet they've synthesized a modified snake or spider venom to deliver in crowded situations like airports that sickens but doesn't kill. Leave that to incompetent docs & nurses in the hospitals.
What evidence do I have beyond the patterns I see? None. That's what makes this plandemic so very confusing, but eerily consistent. After a period of relative calm on the subject, there are first news reports of a scary new variant, OMG 8 or whatever. This is soon followed by at least 2 stories of noted anti-maskers or vaxxers who are in ICU w/ COVID or have died from it. Then there's a booster recommendation. Infections are reported climbing. Then the cycle repeats.

 

[Robbedigital]

Thanks for the compliment. As regards Bernardo, I regard him very highly. Personally, I don't believe he thinks consciousness is fundamental simply as an exercise in nomenclature. Language is a fickle thing, and the word "consciousness" is based, like all words, on how we experience the world. Still, language is all we have to be able to converse. You could call it floccinaucinihilipilification if you wanted to, but plainly, whatever consciousness is, it isn't anything material. Nor is gravity, for that matter, but leave that aside.

"Consciousness" is the nearest concept we have to an intelligent underlying principle of the universe that in the end is absolutely every"thing". Nothing we perceive, in my opinion, is a true representation of aspects of reality. Rather, our perceptions, like the dashboard on an airplane for the sky being navigated, merely represent whatever is external to our psyches.

To see reality as it actually is would, as Bernardo puts it, dissove us into an entropic soup. We just couldn't handle it. So we see the world as it appears (neglecting psychedelic or spiritual experiences) in order to help us adapt and survive. But none of it is real, rather just consistent from person to person, and luckily, enough for us to be able to learn about ourselves and others and so evolve as dissociated alters of universal consciousness. Or as floccinauccinihilipilifications, call it however you will.

Excellent. You brought me back a bit. BK was lovely and inspiring on Curt Jaimungal's podcast a year ago.
That said, I think he (like many leading minds these days) are too invested in their sales pitch giving us flowery pictures of how "even though I'm also not sure, I can convince you that my conception is less wrong and far more beautiful that the other guy's conception." which leads to words like floccinauccinihilipilifications which have the effect of making us comfortable with "maybe we'll never know this one", as opposed to "Hey! we might be right around the corner".

I was using gravity only as an analogy to say that we don't know whether the underlying principle of the universe is physical, or local-non-physical, or non-local, etc. And until we do, I'd argue that's where the investigatory efforts belong, you agree? and then once we nail down a mechanism and it's physicality/locality, we can go out on the various limbs about how potentially it might spill over from the physical to the non or vice versa. and then eventually throw darts at whether our new discovery is truly the furthest/most underlying principle of the universe, or maybe just a step closer to it.

So, in thinking, I think I've answered myself as to that these leading minds have, by overinvesting in the sales pitch, allowed themselves to grow weak in the muscle that pulls one toward the unknown, as opposed to dancing and singing around it's perimeter (of which I'm also guilty even as I type, but I'm no leading mind).

 

[Kim]

this is equivalent to claims by skeptics that there is no evidence for PSI. It basically involves ignoring any evidence that contradicts the claims.

I suppose that depends on how you interpret the phrase "how IT is brought about". When it comes down to it, on a fundamental level we don't know how anything is brought about. We simply have to accept that is is brought about, and then establish the relationships between whatever IT is, and everything else.

Again, I defer to the electromagnet analogy. We can say that the electromagnetic field is "brought about" by the electromagnet's construction and operation. Similarly we can say that consciousness is "brought about" by the brain's construction and operation — and we have a few billion examples to prove it, with more on the way every day, and we have a pretty good idea how those were "brought about" too.

Thanx for your persistent support of a brain being necessary for consciousness, but there's far too much evidence that, at best, it's a filter & fantastically complex sensory processing unit. I'm thanking you b/c this discussion is motivating me to get back into H. Percival's Thinking & Destiny.

As Michael Cremo has pointed out, in many ways we still don't have a sound idea of what a human being is. Percival has contributed greatly to solving that puzzle.

 

[Kim]

I came here after a long presence over at The Paracast where we have thread on this subject longer than most books. To answer the question regarding proof, we first need to establish what we mean by the word "proof". Essentially, it's simply evidence that's sufficient to justify belief in a claim. Some people require different kinds and different quantities of evidence than others, so "proof" tends to be a lot more subjective than most people think.

That's why I prefer to use the word "true" in the context of the philosophical position based on correspondence theory. Truth is then that which is the case with respect to a given claim. By looking at problems that way, we are then put in the position of finding ways to determine what the case is from an objective perspective, which is what I always attempt to do. Applying this process to the question of consciousness, brain function, and the question of afterlives, the resulting objective truth becomes one where they are impossible — at least the way they are usually interpreted, which is as a continuity of personhood following the death of the body.

I found the idea of "dying," the permanent end of my monkey suit, easy to accept. Of course, my ego revolted at the idea, & for a long time I thought that was all it was, a mind-based reflection of the need to live or survive and/or to avoid the pain of injury, disability, or death. There are other parts of me that quietly affirm that the body's & ego's death are not the end of me. This is supported by a common NDE report of the One As Many or the Many As One. I believe it's A. Moorjani who described it as being being one tiny facet in a hollow "disco ball" of infinite proportions. Another NDEr said, while experiencing having a seat in an unlimited auditorium of 360 degrees, he heard the entire "thing" tell him "I love you, Andy." So, I don't have an end to worry about b/c my Knower aspect is one of the Many as One. The One as Many never is born or alive, but the Many can have the experience. I hope that helps.

 

[David Bailey]

So how do you see his anecdote about Swami Veda's using his "insides" to control the light? Is this similar at all in YHO to Alex's story of the saint who responded when questioned about her service to this world, said, "World? What world?"

OK, I have ploughed through more of this interview now - not quite all because it is crammed with ideas, and I'll probably listen again in a few days.

My best guess is that this remark makes sense if we assume that reality is at bottom Idealist - i.e. that everything, including matter is actually just an aspect of consciousness itself. From that point of view, there is no outside or inside.

This is strictly only an analogy, but imagine a vast computer that could simulate everyone and the environment. Normally the chunks of software that simulate your mind and mine are normally kept distinct, and only interact via mechanisms like the internet, but the separation is ultimately not real.

Now that doesn't push me towards simulation hypotheses like those of Rizwam Virk, because any form of simulation does not generate actual experiences. Chalmer's "Hard Problem" still applies.
David

 

[David Bailey]

That's my take away as well. theme seems to be making some obvious logical/scientific blunders.

Don't forget he may be beyond his best. We all deteriorate with age.

To me, the argument against superpsi is very simple. There are always an infinity of ways to explain anything or any evidence. Always in science Occam's Razor is applied implicitly or explicitly to weed that down to a small number of possible explanations - ideally just one. Superpsi should fall immediately by this criterion. It requires a huge advance in psychic powers to explain survival after death which is only super implausible within materialism - which has already been breached by introducing psi of any sort!

David

 

[David Bailey]

OK, now I am at the end, and I have to say that Dean's response to the m-RNA vaccines shocked me. I mean one of the problems with the m-RNA technique (with either the Pfizer or AZ approach) is that the m-RNA may end up in other kinds of cells - not just in the muscle cells. That means for example, the endothelial cells which line the blood vessels might get this m-RNA inside them and start expressing spike protein. If the immune system targets these cells, a blood clot will form - which is exactly what seems to have happened to many young people - particularly sports people who have keeled over dead or dying on the pitch.

However, it seems to me that everything we know about the afterlife (assuming it is real) suggests that we do have direct consciousness interconnections between ourselves and others in that realm. I suppose that could be called the 'hive mind'.

David

 

[Robbedigital]

However, it seems to me that everything we know about the afterlife (assuming it is real) suggests that we do have direct consciousness interconnections between ourselves and others in that realm. I suppose that could be called the 'hive mind'.
David

I believe there are at least two hive minds:
1. The universal interconnectedness in/of our physical realm.
2. Our higherselves operating outside of the physical realm.

 

[David Bailey]

Superlative explanation. I have a beef with what I perceive to be BK's labelling of consciousness. He seems to insist that consciousness is the base component of the universe simply because we can't verify otherwise. Then I perceive him to blanket-label consciousness as a core component of the interconnectedness of the universe, which to me could easily be gravity, displacement, or any number of yet-to-be-discovered forces.
His position seems to me as a great/irrefutable retort against anyone claiming there must be a unit smaller than consciousness, but just because they're wrong about what we don't know doesn't mean there is no we-don't-know, and it sure as hell doesn't mean everything we don't know is consciousness..
Curious if you've delved into this line of thinking.

I am not a fan of BK either, and yet I do strongly suspect that ultimately Idealism is true!

First, I really don't like scientific discussions that seem to consist solely of verbal reasoning with metaphors. That just seems to be too fallible to my way of thinking.

Second, Idealism pure and simple can explain any set of physical facts. You explain observation X by stating that that was what some particular piece of consciousness chose to do - maybe just for fun! It is extraordinarily similar to the way some people argued in the bast - why does X happen - well God willed it that way!

It is important to realise that physical theory is layered, one layer depending on lower layers to explain it. Even if Idealism is true, we don't know if we are even close to the realm at which that would be obvious. The last thing that Science needs is a form of reasoning that doesn't depend on things happen for a reason (or pure chance in the case of QM).

David

 

[Starmonkey]

Thanx for your persistent support of a brain being necessary for consciousness, but there's far too much evidence that, at best, it's a filter & fantastically complex sensory processing unit. I'm thanking you b/c this discussion is motivating me to get back into H. Percival's Thinking & Destiny.

As Michael Cremo has pointed out, in many ways we still don't have a sound idea of what a human being is. Percival has contributed greatly to solving that puzzle.

I have that book. Haven't gotten into it yet. Have a few of his others as well. Same.
Trying to finish Journey Into the Light by Isha Schwaller de Lubicz (fourth or fifth time) and The Zelator by Mark Hedsel (first time) first.
And I have this beautiful oversized hardcover copy of Le Pater by Alphonse Mucha compiled by Thomas Negovan I got for Christmas...
T&D reminds me of other approaches, perhaps Theosophy related. Or A Vision by WB Yeats.
I'd be interested in discussions. Clif High's favorite book to read and reread T&D is.
Mine is Opening of the Way by Isha.

 

[Robbedigital]

Just finished listening to the episode. Totally enjoyed it. Highly recommend anyone who may have been turned off at the beginning to carry it though. There's some great classic Skeptiko pushback, and Dean stands his ground pretty well.
I think particular conversation should have a "Round 2: Level 3"