He claims to have traveled outside his body to bring back art… and much more |297|

Ginko's post seems fine to me? I mean he does got a bit HAM on the interviewee but those seem like valid questions?
 
I e-mailed Alex a few weeks ago suggesting that he interview you and he confirmed that he already did and would be posting the material shortly.I am wholly delighted that he did.Yours and Robert Monroe's material are the spiritual equivalent of popular science books like Brian Greene's Elegant Universe and Sagan's Cosmos.If it is not much trouble I would like to pose some questions that have troubled me since I began studying spiritual literature,specifically OBE,NDE and past life regression material.I know of expert meditators who can mantain a state of meditative absorption for several hours and failed to have experiences like yours.Why do you think that is so?OBErs have different accounts of what they encounter in the astral planes or other dimensions,although the core experience is almost identical.My theory is that the OBE observations are processed by the physical brain's conceptual system.Tom Campbell and Robert Monroe have physics and engineering degrees and frame their experiences in that light.Your expertise in graphic design and the creative arts enables a different interpretation.Is there any hope of understanding or experiencing the nonphysical dimensions as the Aristotelian thing in itself,
stripped of all reference points?My own pathetic attempts at triggering OBE's have resulted in two forced galantamine induced OBE's that lasted only seconds.Natural attempts have brought me into the hypnagogic state where I experienced floating sensations,insanely elevated heart and respiratory rate and 3 times electrical vibrations that enveloped my whole body.I never managed to go beyond this stage,even after using multiple separation techniques.It is like I have a mental block.Do you have any advice on this?I have many more questions but I don't want to monopolize the discussion.Your answers will be greatly appreciated.


What you call mental block could be fear of something. I have also asked myself why I have never had an OBE. Same as you, I have all types of electrical manifestations and I have even been in the light. My husband (he has had spontaneous OBEs and NDEs) thinks our brains process the experience and the knowledge according to what it is already codified in it. Ineffable aspects of the experience thus cannot be explained.
 
Well holograms are experienced spatially, and they allow access to something from the past to be experienced in the future, so they have a temporal element.

I think holograms are interesting though, mainly because they employ coherence, together with interference with that coherence. Two things which I think are fundamental to our understanding of reality through the experience of space-time.

Could it be that we are holographic projections from the light of our consciousness?
 
@ Ginko, Hurmanetar:
When you are declared as an "outright fraud" which is based on more prejudice than you can wave a stick at, drawn from the new religions of conspiracy theory which mostly hold for truth anything that can be imagined as long as it is divorced from mainstream media and is allowed to remain unsupported by tangible evidence, then I have to ask myself what am I actually doing on such a forum?

Where people make assumptions about the depth of the author's feelings and artistic integrety, misread and misrepresent statements, condemn his use of new media of art (VR) without having a clue how it is applied, when they go unchallenged in discrediting his moral integrity without having the slightest idea about his deep involvement and commitment to worthy causes and charities, (because he is already branded as a fraud and clearly as such he naturally can have no moral compass), then I have to ask myself do I really want to respond or even be part of such a forum? When defamation seems to be tolerated, remains unchallenged and even becomes the subject of serious discussion rather than the nature of our human consciousness, then it is time for me to depart which I herewith do. Obviously I can have no part in this.

So now I will have to leave you to further entangle yourselves with you deeply offensive comments, your prejudices and allow you to tend to your religions of alternative "truths". This is clearly not be a place where I belong.

I would like to say thank you to Alex for granting me this interview though.
Jurgen,

You seem to forget that 'we' are an internet community. We let everyone in unless they are regularly offensive to others - and even then it usually takes some time to ban them :)

SKEPTIKO is about different points of view - it is what makes it vibrant.

David
 
But on the other hand spiritual fraud is so easy when there can be no proof. So a healthy skepticism is paramount. But human consciousness needs and wants to believe, making fraud even easier.
Maybe this is the point. The best thing to do is to sample various thinkers without feeling you have to judge them one way or the other. Gradually you pick up an overall picture of what the other side may or may not look like, and you base your ideas on that.

I think one thing I liked about Jurgen's concept of the other realms, is that they are not simple - sitting around worshipping God - but crammed with even more complexity than life on Earth. This just feels right to me, and certainly corresponds to the varied reports from NDE's.

David
 
I mean I disagree with a lot of things Ginko calls hoaxes, but his basic question of "So it's all consciousness? So what?" seems worth answering.

It's not clear to me he ever says Jurgen is a fraud?
 
Alex- every time you allow those types to rule the day, you allow your potentially valuable recourse, this forum, to be degraded and sullied. But that's your choice.
Well seriously JKMac, would you want me to ban someone just for expressing doubt about one of the SKEPTIKO guests?

Maybe guests need to be warned that this forum is somewhat robust!

I hope Jurgen comes back.

David
 
Could you explain why?
Well because if the mental realm is (at least potentially) reducible to physical phenomena, then I think we are back with a load of paradoxes.

For example, it is generally accepted that physical phenomena can be simulated on a computer. So given a sufficiently large computer, it can simulate the physical phenomenon - so would such a computer be conscious?

I don't believe in Artificial Intelligence (AI), which I think would be indistinguishable from Artificial Consciousness if it really existed, ant that means that I don't believe physical systems can actually be conscious.

David
 
This felt pretty clear to me, Sci:
I think the mods should have stepped in at this moment.
Well first of all, "the mods", aren't all seeing and all knowing - I only discovered about this about 20 mins ago. My feeling is that a reasonable amount of robust debate is normal. People do need to be able to challenge things. Remember how many of us challenged Dianne Powell's first video of potential autistic ESP - just about everyone said that the evidence from the video was much too iffy. Since then I think she has come up with some better evidence.

David
 
Well because if the mental realm is (at least potentially) reducible to physical phenomena, then I think we are back with a load of paradoxes.

For example, it is generally accepted that physical phenomena can be simulated on a computer. So given a sufficiently large computer, it can simulate the physical phenomenon - so would such a computer be conscious?

I don't believe in Artificial Intelligence (AI), which I think would be indistinguishable from Artificial Consciousness if it really existed, ant that means that I don't believe physical systems can actually be conscious.

David

Totally agree with you David. We as beings that are alive are "aware" and so is the rest of animals, plants etc. A program running in a computer, no matter how big the computer is, is not conscious or aware, while we are conscious that we exist. I consider consciousness bigger than the physical realm, and think it is fundamental. Our brains, although extraordinary computers and data processors, are just that. They are processed data but they are not aware.
 
It's one thing to criticize and ask questions or argue, it's another to call them a fraud, especially when the guest is gracious enough to participate in the forum discussion. That was my problem with Ginko's comment.

Actually I'd agree with this. And apologies I definitely missed that line in the second comment.

And to be fair while I also had doubts about Diane Powell's work I did think the criticism here went overboard in terms of tone.
 
Could it be that we are holographic projections from the light of our consciousness?

I sometimes wonder whether saying 83 from the lambdin translation of the Gospel of Thomas has something to say about that, and perhaps saying 50 as well.

There is the suggestion in 83 that our present image is due to the light of the father, this light hides our own light. Thus the light of the father is visible to us (which hides our own light), but that means that the fathers image remains hidden from us.

So our light is concealed by his light which makes our image. But because we see his light, we do not see his image.

Effectively the fathers light, somehow interferes with our light and makes our image, but seeing the fathers light, prevents us from seeing the fathers image.

That perhaps sounds a little holographic to me... in a pre-technology sort of way. Which I find pretty weird, because he can't be talking about holograms and light as we mean it today. But it's almost as if there is an underlying truth connecting both ideas for some reason. Very strange though.
 
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I sometimes wonder whether saying 83 from the lambdin translation of the Gospel of Thomas has something to say about that, and perhaps saying 50 as well.

There is the suggestion in 83 that our present image is due to the light of the father, this light hides our own light. Thus the light of the father is visible to us (which hides our own light), but that means that the fathers image remains hidden from us.

So our light is concealed by his light which makes our image. But because we see his light, we do not see his image.

Effectively the fathers light, somehow interferes with our light and makes our image, but seeing the fathers light, prevents us from seeing the fathers image.

That perhaps sounds a little holographic to me... in a pre-technology sort of way. Which I find pretty weird, because he can't be talking about holograms and light as we mean it today. But it's almost as if there is an underlying truth connecting both ideas for some reason. Very strange though.

I didn´t know about that Max. Thanks
 
Well because if the mental realm is (at least potentially) reducible to physical phenomena, then I think we are back with a load of paradoxes.

For example, it is generally accepted that physical phenomena can be simulated on a computer. So given a sufficiently large computer, it can simulate the physical phenomenon - so would such a computer be conscious?

I don't believe in Artificial Intelligence (AI), which I think would be indistinguishable from Artificial Consciousness if it really existed, ant that means that I don't believe physical systems can actually be conscious.

David

Can the simulation produce integrated information?

I'm not sure you'll ever get it with a purely software derived simulation (absent some new developments of course). But software mixed with hardware might be a different story entirely...
 
Well first of all, "the mods", aren't all seeing and all knowing - I only discovered about this about 20 mins ago. My feeling is that a reasonable amount of robust debate is normal. People do need to be able to challenge things. Remember how many of us challenged Dianne Powell's first video of potential autistic ESP - just about everyone said that the evidence from the video was much too iffy. Since then I think she has come up with some better evidence.

David

David.
'Far from Here' received a 3day ban from Alex for going too far in his criticism of Dr Powell(Rightly on my view). It is inconsistent when this happens in one thread but when a guest is called an 'outright fraud ' in another there is silence from Alex or you. You say that you 'only discovered about this about 20 mins ago', but then you give the impression (to me at least) that you defend his statement?

I'm not advocating any ban on people, especially when they're new posters, like Ginko, a quick rebuff and deletion of the sentence would have been sufficient but as Ian says
It's one thing to criticize and ask questions or argue, it's another to call them a fraud, especially when the guest is gracious enough to participate in the forum discussion.
Ginko clearly crossed the line in my view and in the view of plenty others, yet you seem to be defending his opinion.

I pushed for Jurgen to be interviewed here, because as I said to Alex, I think that it is time to stop arguing with skeptics and move forward. I feel let down by Alex and other moderators, I don't think Jurgen should have been so quick to leave, for what it's worth, but I won't be so keen to ask for anyone else to appear as a guest on the show.
 
It's one thing to criticize and ask questions or argue, it's another to call them a fraud, especially when the guest is gracious enough to participate in the forum discussion. That was my problem with Ginko's comment.
He didn't call Jurgen a fraud straight out, but I agree he got close. On the other hand he wrote a reasoned justification for his view, and we absolutely do need to test evidence - as far as that is possible. I think Skeptiko guests should be encouraged to come on to the forum - as a few have - and discuss their ideas robustly. But look, suppose Gerald Woerlee or Richard Wiseman had chosen to post on the forum, what sort of reception do you think they would have had?

@Steve My impression is that at the moment I do most of the moderation here (something about being retired?), and I like to do other things sometimes - it just isn't possible to be there when these things happen - which is when it might have made a difference. Also judging when people go over the line is very tricky, and you can't please everyone!

David
 
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