S
Sciborg_S_Patel
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.
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.
I always feel uncomfortable with physical explanations/analogies for non-materialist phenomena.Could it be that we are holographic projections from the light of our consciousness?
Jurgen,@ 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.
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.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.
Well seriously JKMac, would you want me to ban someone just for expressing doubt about one of the SKEPTIKO guests?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.
I always feel uncomfortable with physical explanations/analogies for non-materialist phenomena.
David
This felt pretty clear to me, Sci:It's not clear to me he ever says Jurgen is a fraud?
I think the mods should have stepped in at this moment.I am seeing outright fraud with Jurgen however.
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.Could you explain why?
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.This felt pretty clear to me, Sci:
I think the mods should have stepped in at this moment.
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.My feeling is that a reasonable amount of robust debate is normal. People do need to be able to challenge things.
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
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.
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.
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
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
Ginko clearly crossed the line in my view and in the view of plenty others, yet you seem to be defending his opinion.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.
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?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.