Lucidity
cr...@att.net
I had a series of lucid dreams last night. Here's how it goes.
First let me say this. My daughter came into our room last
night at about 1:50 AM. She was not feeling too good because
of an illness. Finally she went back to sleep in her room.
No harm, no foul I guess. But then I couldn't for the life of
me go back to sleep. Shit!!! At least (finally) I did go to sleep.
Then I had a whole series of lucid dreams. In most of the dreams
I was practicing "lifting off" up the air. Over and over and
I did this. This is the one true way I know for sure without
a doubt that I am having a dream. God it was fun!! I was doing
it with some other people too. We both were saying how much
fun it is to fly in a lucid dream. I would do something in the
dream and then I would go back to soaring, over and over again.
It's like I was working out last night while flying. Then I
remembered what I wanted to do. This is something I've wanted
to do for years in a dream. I stopped and voiced this outloud:
"I want to see God" -- "I want to see the God!" It was night time
and I was looking up at the sky. The sky was dark and low and
behold a small picture of my face appears. It looks something
like an infra-red picture at first, then the details come into play.
This is so funny--this will be prove once for for all what a true
egomaniac I really am. I not kidding here one bit, this is exactly
how the dream goes down. The picture of me grew to be a huge picture
of me dressed in a 3-piece suit from the 70's. It was an old suit
I really and truly used to own. An exact replica of the 1978 me.
If this isn't the most giant reflection of myself I don't know what
is! LOL! So this is "god"? Oh shit, we all are in deep trouble
folks. It's some asshole from 1970's dressed like John Revolving.
Oh fuck. I've finally seen the light--and the light is me me me.
Could I have an more embarrassing dream than this? Fucking Chris
Rodgers idea of God is himself. This can't be can it? LOL!
Well maybe I will keep asking for God in my dreams again when I'm
lucid. I was dead lucid in the dream, I swear, as sober as possible.
Either I have a weird sense of humor or God does! First you lose
your ego, THEN you work like a bastard to dump your spiritual ego.
It never ends huh? Oh well, this is dreaming. Anyhow I had to
write this 'fresh' this morning. I jumped up out of bed full of
feeling so I decided to write this down as soon as possible. Hey
meet the new God, same as the Old Egomaniac! LOL! :)
cr...@att.net
" Mirror mirror on the wall of self reflection
who's the biggest narso of all?"
Why it's you Chris, who else? :) LOL!
Jenadbc
But you are G/god Chris--we all are--we aren't all there is of Spirit/God, but
I'm convinced that we are--here's my take on it
Scoop out water from the ocean--that's you--that water is as much "water" as
the rest of the ocean, it's just not the entire body of water.
I loved the flying/soaring dream--my favorite pasttime.
Did you figure out your ear dream? I thought about that dream when I read that
the Pana Wave or whatever that Japanese cult is called that is now hiding out
on this last day (May 15) before Planet X or something occurs. One of them made
reference to anyone with ears facing death. Maybe you read that and it
influenced you.
cr...@att.net
> But you are G/god Chris--we all are--we aren't all there is of Spirit/God, but
> I'm convinced that we are--here's my take on it
> Scoop out water from the ocean--that's you--that water is as much "water" as
> the rest of the ocean, it's just not the entire body of water.
A cup full or a spoonful, we are all love.
> I loved the flying/soaring dream--my favorite pasttime.
> Did you figure out your ear dream?
Yes, listening/reading Jer's giberish too much.
Who needs to be Freud to 'get' dreams? lol
> I thought about that dream when I read that
> the Pana Wave or whatever that Japanese cult is called that is now hiding out
> on this last day (May 15) before Planet X or something occurs. One of them made
> reference to anyone with ears facing death. Maybe you read that and it
> influenced you.
Never saw it or read it.
See ya. :)
Ann
see, see; do not know what to think any more, may be you were right that I
really think too much :)
For example, now I think that you are the most difficult 'case' in my
'professional' word-crushing career. Your nice lucid dream told us plain
and clear not to exclude that possibility, that you might be 'The
One'. Your hasty interpretation, though, tells us you are ashamed (or just
hate the word 'responsibility', another regular painless word) of being
'the one', the canter of the universe. Which in turn suggests that you
might still be a victim of stalking scientists. And since I love those
scientists sooo much I will share with you their next trick.
So far so good, you are God, what is so 'bad' about that. You are the
Creator and you don't like it? Or is it just this lovely 'reality outside'
that you defend? Sober laughter just whispered in my ear that it may be the
slightest glimmer of change, which makes you despise the idea of Lord
Chris?
Let us explore the word 'full responsibility for Chris' actions'. Or 'full
responsibility for Ann's actions', if you like. That word or idea demands
courage, the words 'pain' and 'fear' have to be crushed before that. I
believed they were, but who knows. If you remember (my analysis from the
previous posts and in the "mirror" and "homo-scientificus") even Jesus
fell victim to this sweet 'reality outside' assumption. He willingly
failed to recognise that the Creator was within. One of the many
possibilities for that failure is that it was his conscious choice, he was
a grown up and enlightened adult who was using no drugs or alcohol. And
what did he do?
Stopped thinking and decided he was not Lord God the Creator but only his
naughty son. The master of words suddenly realized he was not worthy of
being God. Jesus stalked himself (helped by his loving mother: did she
have a selfish mythical pride, how do you feel?) by saying God was only
his father (we made that conjecture a couple of posts ago). That was the
furthest he could fly on the wings of his imagination, these were the
confines of his reason. Earlier we hypothesised that may be it wasn't his
fault, he might have simply never heard of the alternative 'reality
within' assumption of the spiritual philosopher. Thus, he preferred to
stick to the KNOWN dogma. That is how God ended up somewhere outside,
Jesus' father was divinely directing the miraculous WORDS and feats of his
son.
The sad conclusion is that even the bravest and brightest soul at the time
refused to assume responsibility and instead unloaded the heavy burden
upon 'his father'.
The cunning detail is that it did not help him defeat his ego, not the
least. Nor did it help his mother or his students. Jesus went and died for
his mythical pride, a thought which I preferred not to entertain in the not
so distant beginning. Now I think it shouldn't be excluded. Because, he
defended at all cost his proud idea and his father (god), he wanted to
prove to us (even if he had to die for that) his righteousness. He went
and stupidly (in my opinion, I guess we disagree on that, but freedom of
speech recommends that we do not start and kill each other) died,
sacrificed himself 'for us', but actually and eventually for his dream.
That example 'was' designed to show all but one thing: saying 'I am not
God' doesn't dispose us of our ego, we may safely presume that even the
opposite happens. If we can prove that it is so then 'I am not God' would
be the most genius bullet of the Cunning.
Digression on randomly insane scientists
Look at scientists, for instance, they stalked us with their reality
outside assumption, their complex and random Nature. So much so that now
they can afford themselves to tell us anything they like.
They usually tell us some random numbers or ratios. They denote the
probability of this or that happy or unlucky eventuality to happen.
They tell us about the likelihood that it will rain tomorrow, that we will
conceive a child, the odds that the baby will have green eyes, that we may
meet an alien or cosmic intelligence, the statistical chance of catching
aids, sars, cancer, and the unlikelihood to survive the attacks of the
ultimate virus. They may even try to randomly predict the chances of an
earthquake, typhoon or whatever. The sober trick is to observe that they
do not tell us the exact time. The sense something in the air (usually
their rumourous words that spread and frighten us to the point of
'consensus reality') but cannot predict the timing, for all sorts of
reasonable excuses (usually complex Nature).
The important observation is that all they tell us now (after the
invention of modern probability and mathematical distributions in the last
century) is statistics, and nothing more precise. The game they play with
us is the safest possible. Whatever happens it is randomness and complex
nature to blame. Randomness has become their perfect escape door
(comparable with the 'infinity'; both are not that far apart if we
remember the continuously integral nature of their beloved 'normal'
distributions) and we can never prove them wrong. If we die from their
cancer they will tell us (our unlucky relatives) that it was normal, to
die was to be expected considering the tiny statistical probability of
survival. We just obeyed the overwhelming evidence (their 'ratio'-nal
number). If we happen to beat the word 'sars' or 'cancer' (like Lord Lance
Tour de France) they will chant the other song: You see, we again proved
them (their ratio) right. Because, the chance to survive was always there,
tiny but there, so to keep the divine constant ratios right someone indeed
has to survive, no miracle. The more honest of them may add "Thank God it
was you!", but most wiseacre won't but instead boast with their healing
skills, they may even create an image of a medical guru at our
expense.
In both cases we seem to be happy with their 'explanation' and stand in
awe of their randomly numbered chances (likelihood, probability, odds) of
survival.
Now back to the God-like nature of scientists. When they said 'there was
no God' and no religion it did no mean they were not selfish. Oh, what a
monumental ego they have! "Nothing compares to that!". Your "asshole from
1970's" is a flea compared to them. They just stalk us with their
distracting words of 'there is no God', 'see (count:) the independent
stars in the sky?', 'look at the infinite universe outside!', 'there is
for sure life somewhere there', 'we are just helpless humans', 'we are not
the centre of the universe'. That is, we should hate that ancient idea, to
be the canter of the universe is just 'bad'; that is what they incessantly
preach during our childhood and later teach us in school. The logical
question is why they insist to do it in such a shockingly consistent
manner?
Is it really that bad to be the centre of the universe? Even if we don't
kill anybody and allow or even help everyone to be that centre? If they
make us hate the idea with such persistence then it can't be a
coincidence, can it. We learned to expect from stalking scientists all
sorts of tricks, masters of words just do not make such paradoxical
mistakes, their maniacal attention to detail is always for a reason. And
their reason in that case is very simple: the 'centre of the universe'
idea is tangent to the one they fear the most - 'the reality within'
assumption that instantly annihilates the first axiom of their theory of
science. To deprive them of that most basic brick would mean to destroy
the scientific matrix, to stop their reasonable world.
The question is, why not leave their world 'naturally collapse under the
heavy pressure of gravitational laughter. I mean, they didn't accomplish
that much with their religiously dogmatic assumption 'outside', only
managed to hide their huge ego from the gullible public opinion (for a
long time, isn't that surprising? No, because they are genius masters of
words). That is, their grandeur words of 'we are not the centre of the
universe' were meant to stalk us, to distract us from the alternative
assumption of reality within us.
Finally, let us just not forget that science is serious, humour does not
belong to the scientific method, only numbers matter. In other words,
walking the scientific path is the shortest yet :) most certain way for
our (any) spiritual inquiry to fail.
> If this isn't the most giant reflection of myself I don't know what
> is! LOL! So this is "god"? Oh shit, we all are in deep trouble
> folks.
No trouble at all, I am even happy reading your letter, I sense freedom,
which you strangely prefer to call "deep trouble". I don't mind if Chris
turns out to be a God. Not that I will readily make you 'my god', but
won't deprive you of dreaming whatever you like. Do you really need to
limit yourself, to cut your own flight on the wings of imagination? If it
is not you then it must be your reasonable ego then that speaks in such an
abusive or ridiculing manner of the dreams of your soul.
next law of lucid dreaming
If we can imagine or lucid dream something, then it might be real, it just
cannot be excluded (at least not in the way you rushed to do). The chance
may be one in 3.9 billion (light years, neurons, stars, people, apples,
dollars) but it is there.
that is the question
And by the way, do we believe that much in chance? To paraphrase
Rainbowbird :) CHANCE or CHOICE, that is the question. Independent
wiseacre observers count the chances, whereas actively participating
living field workers make choices.
> It's some asshole from 1970's dressed like John Revolving.
> Oh fuck. I've finally seen the light--and the light is me me me.
> Could I have an more embarrassing dream than this? Fucking Chris
> Rodgers idea of God is himself. This can't be can it?
... I'll be happy to hear of more such dreams from you. Just tell me your
feeling, let us be honest for another second: Do you really feel that bad
with your god-like experience? I for one, would be the happiest soul in
the world to have your dream.
God or slave?
Shakespeare revisited
If it is so (you feel honestly 'bad'), then do your best to forget that
ugly dream :) And start dreaming you're a slave, instead. Isn't it a sweet
escape? Notice that even in a master-slave relationship there are two
sides and both have to wish to assume their role (put on the respective
mask) in order for the consensus reality of 'slavery'. Funny but we
paradoxically learned how the words 'master' and 'slave' came into being,
how the Creator said 'Be!' to the 'slave' and 'Be!' to the 'god-master'.
> LOL!
> Well maybe I will keep asking for God in my dreams again when I'm
> lucid.
In posts prior to the "mirror" (in the 'warrior past') I used to
mercilessly shut those emergency exits of reason ("keep asking for God"
and not only in your dreams:), but now I will 'only' make you aware of one
them. I did my best (or was close to it) to crush that word 'God' in my
chronicles and alas, it seems to have been in vein. Not for me, of course,
I freed myself from that word, now it is your choice to remain or not a
slave to it.
> I was dead lucid in the dream, I swear, as sober as possible.
> Either I have a weird sense of humor or God does! First you lose
> your ego, THEN you work like a bastard to dump your spiritual ego.
> It never ends huh? Oh well, this is dreaming. Anyhow I had to
> write this 'fresh' this morning. I jumped up out of bed full of
> feeling so I decided to write this down as soon as possible. Hey
> meet the new God, same as the Old Egomaniac! LOL! :)
Somebody told you that if you're God himself or the centre of the universe
you're an "Egomaniac". It must have been a clever psychoanalytic scientist
or a regular guru, that I cannot remember for you, I am afraid. From my
sober experience I can make one weather forecast: if you remember the
first acquaintance with that stalking idea you'll be free from it.
The dream of the Taoist egomaniac
Some final words on the the beautiful word e-g-o-m-a-n-i-a-c. Isn't that
selfish of me to talk all the time about my experiences and my memorable
events? To try and remember my creation and not yours or the one lying
billion years behind us (if we choose to visit that gullible extreme)? The
question is what else do I have, what else do I know for sure, can I tell
you anything else but my experience with the world?
Indeed, there are many alternatives to that 'selfish approach'. For
example, I can recite you some fat textbooks. But would they be my honest
opinion?
That is no secret, I like to explore myself, my day- or lucid dreams (not
alone here), my imagined thoughts, my laughing feelings, my lucky
memories, my witty naughty experience from an earliest age. Here is the
following fixing question: Am I an egomaniac or am I looking for the
answer of 'what I am'? Or is it both?
The curious answer I have for that fixing riddle is that I am not bothered
the least. If I am happy and feel free then it cannot be wrong, can it, no
matter what compassionate doctors or therapists (with 50 years of
experience:) tell me. You already knowingly feel when I am going to pay
them a visit.
How fixed AM I at I AM (1 o'clock:)
Imagine for a moment that in my high spirits situation a benevolent
somebody chooses to inform me that I AM a despicable 'egomaniac'. That
may mean this someone would like to stop me from my quest, but of course,
we can never be sure. Therefore, the shakingly healthy alternative
strategy would be to decide that "egomaniac" is actually not that a 'bad'
word but rather a 'good' word. All of sudden (again:) we are not concerned
but laughing, we evaded the next cunning trap of scientific reason. A
quixotic egomaniac and sturdy beggarous word-crusher, sounds increasingly
attractive to me. Aren't you curious what might come next?
Next you may decide that I was psychoanalysing you by interpreting what
shouldn't be interpreted. It is so that when we post a beautiful dream
like yours anyone can be tempted to give an assembled point of
view. Especially if we do not like the self-indictment (or self-pity:) of
the original dreamer. I helped you as much as I could and now it is up to
you: It is time to choose and crush the medical words of 'senile dotage'
and think: would you have given the same interpretation if now were the
"70's"? Imagine :)
Best,
Ann
cr...@att.net
> Hi Chris,
Hi Ann, I can't believe I'm going to attempt to answer your
post but what the hell, I feel lucky tonight! Afterall it is
a full moon. The full moon brings out the best in Shantytown.
Years ago this place was absolutely bonkers around the full moon.
> see, see; do not know what to think any more, may be you were right that I
> really think too much :)
Perhaps you have alot to say? You feel the freedom to say it here.
I think this place is one place where an individual can speak his or
her mind/body or spirit. Whether anyone reads it though is another
story.
> For example, now I think that you are the most difficult 'case' in my
> 'professional' word-crushing career.
BTW, what is your 'career'? You are a 'pro'?
> Your nice lucid dream told us plain
> and clear not to exclude that possibility, that you might be 'The
> One'.
No. No where in that summation does it say that I am the 'one'.
Perhaps Neo is the one in the Matrix Reloaded.
> Your hasty interpretation, though, tells us you are ashamed (or just
> hate the word 'responsibility', another regular painless word) of being
> 'the one', the canter of the universe.
Only a true egomaniac would believe that. I'm a small-fry egomaniac.
Since I am NOT an enlightened being, I still have an ego to tame.
In my review of this dream I had, I'm making fun of this. I hope
that you can appreciate that.
> Which in turn suggests that you
> might still be a victim of stalking scientists. And since I love those
> scientists sooo much I will share with you their next trick.
Not all that interested in stalking or scientists sweety.
This sounds 'heady' already. I'm NOT a great intellectual.
In fact, I try to use my brain as little as possible.
> So far so good, you are God, what is so 'bad' about that.
Nothing bad (in itself) about being God. Just a word so far.
> You are the
> Creator and you don't like it?
Yes I am a creator, no doubt about it. What I create is for my benefit.
> Or is it just this lovely 'reality outside'
> that you defend? Sober laughter just whispered in my ear that it may be the
> slightest glimmer of change, which makes you despise the idea of Lord
> Chris?
I love/enjoy change. Ch-changes (in my best David Bowie voice)
I'd write the rest of the lyrics here but I don't want to sound old.
> Let us explore the word 'full responsibility for Chris' actions'.
Let's not and just say Chris accepts his responsibilites here on Earth.
I'm doing it all for myself, no one else does it for me.
> Or 'full
> responsibility for Ann's actions', if you like.
You are on your own sweety. Ann's karma belongs to Ann's actions.
(that sounds like a great typing sentence for a beginning typist?)
> That word or idea demands
> courage, the words 'pain' and 'fear' have to be crushed before that. I
> believed they were, but who knows. If you remember (my analysis from the
> previous posts and in the "mirror" and "homo-scientificus") even Jesus
> fell victim to this sweet 'reality outside' assumption. He willingly
> failed to recognise that the Creator was within. One of the many
> possibilities for that failure is that it was his conscious choice, he was
> a grown up and enlightened adult who was using no drugs or alcohol. And
> what did he do?
The rap is that he descended straight from heaven to here.
No previous life for him. At least that is what the legend sez.
I'd say he did a pretty good job his FIRST time out eh? Not bad
for a beginner.
> Stopped thinking and decided he was not Lord God the Creator but only his
> naughty son. The master of words suddenly realized he was not worthy of
> being God. Jesus stalked himself (helped by his loving mother: did she
> have a selfish mythical pride, how do you feel?) by saying God was only
> his father (we made that conjecture a couple of posts ago).
Don't know and don't care. Too long ago to matter now.
Most of the old testament is horseshit except for Genesis.
Not that it matters though, I certainly don't live my life
based on corrupted writings 2000 years old.
> That was the
> furthest he could fly on the wings of his imagination, these were the
> confines of his reason. Earlier we hypothesised that may be it wasn't his
> fault, he might have simply never heard of the alternative 'reality
> within' assumption of the spiritual philosopher. Thus, he preferred to
> stick to the KNOWN dogma. That is how God ended up somewhere outside,
> Jesus' father was divinely directing the miraculous WORDS and feats of his
> son.
To know the mind of Jesus or God is not possible. Many try and many
end up frying their minds out. I'd rather spend my time worrying if
my wife is going to do me on Friday or Saturday. (i'm joking of course)
> The sad conclusion is that even the bravest and brightest soul at the time
> refused to assume responsibility and instead unloaded the heavy burden
> upon 'his father'.
Yeah I know the "fuck God himself" resentment doesn't carry much weight.
In the end it is our own Karma that comes home to see us.
> The cunning detail is that it did not help him defeat his ego, not the
> least.
If this guy hasn't enlightened THEN no is enlightened. I doubt that
he had much trouble his ego. Remember he came staight from heaven.
To be in heaven or to come from heaven one would have had dumped the
baggage long before. There are no fat asses that slide through the
'needle'.
{of course we have Jenny Craig now, things are different lol!}
> Nor did it help his mother or his students. Jesus went and died for
> his mythical pride, a thought which I preferred not to entertain in the not
> so distant beginning. Now I think it shouldn't be excluded. Because, he
> defended at all cost his proud idea and his father (god), he wanted to
> prove to us (even if he had to die for that) his righteousness. He went
> and stupidly (in my opinion, I guess we disagree on that, but freedom of
> speech recommends that we do not start and kill each other) died,
> sacrificed himself 'for us', but actually and eventually for his dream.
Maybe. Who rightly knows for sure?
The fact remains after all 'dem years those folks are still referring to
him.
> That example 'was' designed to show all but one thing: saying 'I am not
> God' doesn't dispose us of our ego, we may safely presume that even the
> opposite happens. If we can prove that it is so then 'I am not God' would
> be the most genius bullet of the Cunning.
Very hard to answer what or who we really are. Who are we? who-who?
> Digression on randomly insane scientists
>
> Look at scientists, for instance, they stalked us with their reality
> outside assumption, their complex and random Nature. So much so that now
> they can afford themselves to tell us anything they like.
Whatever. In one ear out the other. Position of the ego is
meaningless.
> They usually tell us some random numbers or ratios. They denote the
> probability of this or that happy or unlucky eventuality to happen.
Sometimes they get lucky and hit the target, other times it's just a
coincidence.
HA! Power to the placebo, power to the placebo right on!! (in a J.
Lennon voice)
> They tell us about the likelihood that it will rain tomorrow, that we will
> conceive a child, the odds that the baby will have green eyes, that we may
> meet an alien or cosmic intelligence, the statistical chance of catching
> aids, sars, cancer, and the unlikelihood to survive the attacks of the
> ultimate virus. They may even try to randomly predict the chances of an
> earthquake, typhoon or whatever. The sober trick is to observe that they
> do not tell us the exact time. The sense something in the air (usually
> their rumourous words that spread and frighten us to the point of
> 'consensus reality') but cannot predict the timing, for all sorts of
> reasonable excuses (usually complex Nature).
Yes they do.
> The important observation is that all they tell us now (after the
> invention of modern probability and mathematical distributions in the last
> century) is statistics, and nothing more precise. The game they play with
> us is the safest possible. Whatever happens it is randomness and complex
> nature to blame. Randomness has become their perfect escape door
> (comparable with the 'infinity'; both are not that far apart if we
> remember the continuously integral nature of their beloved 'normal'
> distributions) and we can never prove them wrong. If we die from their
> cancer they will tell us (our unlucky relatives) that it was normal, to
> die was to be expected considering the tiny statistical probability of
> survival. We just obeyed the overwhelming evidence (their 'ratio'-nal
> number). If we happen to beat the word 'sars' or 'cancer' (like Lord Lance
> Tour de France) they will chant the other song: You see, we again proved
> them (their ratio) right.
Only if the Los Angeles Lakers could HAVE been so lucky.
Oh well three in a row is not too shabby.
> Because, the chance to survive was always there,
> tiny but there, so to keep the divine constant ratios right someone indeed
> has to survive, no miracle. The more honest of them may add "Thank God it
> was you!", but most wiseacre won't but instead boast with their healing
> skills, they may even create an image of a medical guru at our
> expense.
With God all things are possible.
The alternative: without God everything can happen. LOL!
Shit can happen, oh yes, no doubt about it.
> In both cases we seem to be happy with their 'explanation' and stand in
> awe of their randomly numbered chances (likelihood, probability, odds) of
> survival.
Most people say to me: "Chris (my boy) YOU just don't listen".
Thank you, thank very much. You are catching on quickly, bye.
> Now back to the God-like nature of scientists. When they said 'there was
> no God' and no religion it did no mean they were not selfish. Oh, what a
> monumental ego they have! "Nothing compares to that!". Your "asshole from
> 1970's" is a flea compared to them.
I suppose. But that was then and this dream is about now.
I'm not half the asshole I used to be. Something I forgot to mention
in those series of lucid dreams from late this morning. Is that I
asked in the dream what the date was. What month is this? What year
is this? No one would answer me. "They" all played dummy.
> They just stalk us with their
> distracting words of 'there is no God', 'see (count:) the independent
> stars in the sky?', 'look at the infinite universe outside!', 'there is
> for sure life somewhere there', 'we are just helpless humans', 'we are not
> the centre of the universe'. That is, we should hate that ancient idea, to
> be the canter of the universe is just 'bad'; that is what they incessantly
> preach during our childhood and later teach us in school. The logical
> question is why they insist to do it in such a shockingly consistent
> manner?
I don't know. I don't think WE are the center of anything.
I'd say we are one of many. How many I couldn't say.
> Is it really that bad to be the centre of the universe?
There is no such thing.
> Even if we don't
> kill anybody and allow or even help everyone to be that centre? If they
> make us hate the idea with such persistence then it can't be a
> coincidence, can it. We learned to expect from stalking scientists all
> sorts of tricks, masters of words just do not make such paradoxical
> mistakes, their maniacal attention to detail is always for a reason. And
> their reason in that case is very simple: the 'centre of the universe'
> idea is tangent to the one they fear the most - 'the reality within'
> assumption that instantly annihilates the first axiom of their theory of
> science. To deprive them of that most basic brick would mean to destroy
> the scientific matrix, to stop their reasonable world.
Let them think whatever they like. When one is facing in the right
direction
all you have to do is to keep walking. There is the secret to divinity.
> The question is, why not leave their world 'naturally collapse under the
> heavy pressure of gravitational laughter. I mean, they didn't accomplish
> that much with their religiously dogmatic assumption 'outside', only
> managed to hide their huge ego from the gullible public opinion (for a
> long time, isn't that surprising? No, because they are genius masters of
> words). That is, their grandeur words of 'we are not the centre of the
> universe' were meant to stalk us, to distract us from the alternative
> assumption of reality within us.
So what? Let them go. They will find their own way. As Bobby Dylan
would say "don't you know it's not my problem"???
> Finally, let us just not forget that science is serious, humour does not
> belong to the scientific method, only numbers matter. In other words,
> walking the scientific path is the shortest yet :) most certain way for
> our (any) spiritual inquiry to fail.
Someday we will throw them a rope. Here! Help yourself out!
> > If this isn't the most giant reflection of myself I don't know what
> > is! LOL! So this is "god"? Oh shit, we all are in deep trouble
> > folks.
(Ann sweety, I'm joking/kidding here) It's only a joke
> No trouble at all, I am even happy reading your letter, I sense freedom,
> which you strangely prefer to call "deep trouble".
If i ever became a cult leader or jesus freak I'd hope someone would
spare me from my delusion.
> I don't mind if Chris turns out to be a God.
A god for myself, certainly NOT for anyone else.
> Not that I will readily make you 'my god', but
> won't deprive you of dreaming whatever you like.
Thank you. That's the nicest thing anyone has said here in a week.
LOL!
> Do you really need to
> limit yourself, to cut your own flight on the wings of imagination? If it
> is not you then it must be your reasonable ego then that speaks in such an
> abusive or ridiculing manner of the dreams of your soul.
You don't know how long it took me to just voice or ask that question
in dreaming. I'm a slow learner in the lucid world.
> next law of lucid dreaming
>
> If we can imagine or lucid dream something, then it might be real, it just
> cannot be excluded (at least not in the way you rushed to do). The chance
> may be one in 3.9 billion (light years, neurons, stars, people, apples,
> dollars) but it is there.
>
> that is the question
>
> And by the way, do we believe that much in chance? To paraphrase
> Rainbowbird :) CHANCE or CHOICE, that is the question. Independent
> wiseacre observers count the chances, whereas actively participating
> living field workers make choices.
Yes I know. We are making choices even when we are not choosing.
Scarey huh? Eye of the Tiger damnit! 24/7 with no time off, lol!
> ... I'll be happy to hear of more such dreams from you. Just tell me your
> feeling, let us be honest for another second: Do you really feel that bad
> with your god-like experience? I for one, would be the happiest soul in
> the world to have your dream.
I am quite happy I remembered to voice my question.
I was a little shocked to see my face, 3-piece suit,
70's style hairdoo plastered all over the sky.
Not exactly my idea of God, of course you have to admit
it's better than the 60's version of the "Zig-Zag" man.
LOL! Dreaming can be fun Ann, really. My dream is proof!
> God or slave?
> Shakespeare revisited
>
> If it is so (you feel honestly 'bad'), then do your best to forget that
> ugly dream :)
No. I don't feel bad. I'm loaded with feeling today.
I'm usually pumped like a 'mofo' after a lucid dream.
Ask Slider, he knows.
> And start dreaming you're a slave, instead. Isn't it a sweet
> escape? Notice that even in a master-slave relationship there are two
> sides and both have to wish to assume their role (put on the respective
> mask) in order for the consensus reality of 'slavery'. Funny but we
> paradoxically learned how the words 'master' and 'slave' came into being,
> how the Creator said 'Be!' to the 'slave' and 'Be!' to the 'god-master'.
I gotta tell ya, sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes I think
everyone
here on this planet is doing some serious time for something. I don't
think
we really are running the cosmic show all that well. It is a
'free-for-all'
here on Earth. People willing to die for 70 friggin' virgins or some
shit.
> In posts prior to the "mirror" (in the 'warrior past') I used to
> mercilessly shut those emergency exits of reason ("keep asking for God"
> and not only in your dreams:), but now I will 'only' make you aware of one
> them. I did my best (or was close to it) to crush that word 'God' in my
> chronicles and alas, it seems to have been in vein. Not for me, of course,
> I freed myself from that word, now it is your choice to remain or not a
> slave to it.
Well if that word doesn't work for ya, how about this one.
How about the term 'all that is'? That seems to include just about
everything.
> Somebody told you that if you're God himself or the centre of the universe
> you're an "Egomaniac".
No one had to tell me. Just paying my dues here Ann, passing through,
on my way to God knows where. Maybe Heaven, maybe someplace else.
> It must have been a clever psychoanalytic scientist
> or a regular guru, that I cannot remember for you, I am afraid. From my
> sober experience I can make one weather forecast: if you remember the
> first acquaintance with that stalking idea you'll be free from it.
I'm free already. No one is holding me back from anything.
Remember I take full responsibility for everything!
> The dream of the Taoist egomaniac
>
> Some final words on the the beautiful word e-g-o-m-a-n-i-a-c. Isn't that
> selfish of me to talk all the time about my experiences and my memorable
> events?
No, not really. From where else would you draw from?
> To try and remember my creation and not yours or the one lying
> billion years behind us (if we choose to visit that gullible extreme)? The
> question is what else do I have, what else do I know for sure, can I tell
> you anything else but my experience with the world?
Bingo-a-rama!
> Indeed, there are many alternatives to that 'selfish approach'. For
> example, I can recite you some fat textbooks. But would they be my honest
> opinion?
I bet you can too! LOL! Please don't bother doing it here.
> That is no secret, I like to explore myself, my day- or lucid dreams (not
> alone here), my imagined thoughts, my laughing feelings, my lucky
> memories, my witty naughty experience from an earliest age.
Give us your most embarrassing moment. You'll find if you are willing
to come totally 'clean' you will feel marvelous!! You don't know how
revealing my dream really is.
> Here is the
> following fixing question: Am I an egomaniac or am I looking for the
> answer of 'what I am'? Or is it both?
Hmmmm, someday soon you'll have the answer.
> The curious answer I have for that fixing riddle is that I am not bothered
> the least. If I am happy and feel free then it cannot be wrong, can it, no
> matter what compassionate doctors or therapists (with 50 years of
> experience:) tell me. You already knowingly feel when I am going to pay
> them a visit.
Fuck 'em. Any practice that purposely excludes spiritual aspects is not
worth shit. At best it is band aid work. Enter now Homo - Spiritus.
If you get to Hawkins book you'll follow what I am saying.
> How fixed AM I at I AM (1 o'clock:)
>
> Imagine for a moment that in my high spirits situation a benevolent
> somebody chooses to inform me that I AM a despicable 'egomaniac'. That
> may mean this someone would like to stop me from my quest, but of course,
> we can never be sure. Therefore, the shakingly healthy alternative
> strategy would be to decide that "egomaniac" is actually not that a 'bad'
> word but rather a 'good' word. All of sudden (again:) we are not concerned
> but laughing, we evaded the next cunning trap of scientific reason. A
> quixotic egomaniac and sturdy beggarous word-crusher, sounds increasingly
> attractive to me. Aren't you curious what might come next?
I'm almost afraid to ask, but what the hell, I feel lucky tonight!
> Next you may decide that I was psychoanalysing you by interpreting what
> shouldn't be interpreted.
Dah. It didn't work did it. I'm immune to two things.
(1) numero uno is guilt, (2) numero dos is analysis.
> It is so that when we post a beautiful dream
> like yours anyone can be tempted to give an assembled point of
> view.
That is quite alright with me. I don't expect anyone here to be
an enlightened master. We are what we are. Be yourself!
> Especially if we do not like the self-indictment (or self-pity:) of
> the original dreamer. I helped you as much as I could and now it is up to
> you: It is time to choose and crush the medical words of 'senile dotage'
> and think: would you have given the same interpretation if now were the
> "70's"? Imagine :)
I would have been a cult leader for sure!!
Imagine all the pussy! Mmmmmmmmmmm!
Yum. So when are you going to give the
low down on your lesbian experiences? :)
RoboDwarfe
cr...@att.net wrote:
> Ann wrote:
>
>
>>Hi Chris,
>
>
> Hi Ann, I can't believe I'm going to attempt to answer your
> post but what the hell, I feel lucky tonight! Afterall it is
> a full moon. The full moon brings out the best in Shantytown.
> Years ago this place was absolutely bonkers around the full moon.
>
>
F*** i,m missing the eclipse.
I,m gone
slider
crsds wrote :)
Could I have an more embarrassing dream than this? Fucking Chris
Rodgers idea of God is himself. This can't be can it? LOL!
Well maybe I will keep asking for God in my dreams again when I'm
lucid. I was dead lucid in the dream, I swear, as sober as possible.
Either I have a weird sense of humor or God does!
### - (roaring laughter!:))) ha ha ha chris + i can't remember just
how many books/films i've seen where right at the end it's revealed
that the answer to everything is perforce oneself? (grin;)
e.g. in: "The silent flute" (Bruce Lee's spiritual tale) when our hero
finally looks in the book of Zotan to learn/discover the answer to
everything... all he sees is 'himself'
and then he becomes enlightened heh heh heh ;-)
"You looked in the book Cord... and what did you see?
I saw Everything!"
(and then he laughs his friggin' head-off and the sound of it echos
across the mountains hehehe ;))
cr...@att.net
F*** i,m missing the eclipse.
I,m gone
I damn near missed it too!
I spent all that time answering
Ann's post. Lord have mercy.
What was I thinking? I went out
side and my wife was looking up
at the moon. It was a full on
eclipse. I have to admit that
WAS the coolest eclipse I've ever
seen. :)
Jeremy Donovan
But ... I told you that all along... :-)
In lucid dreaming, you ARE "God".
Yep. You create that world, limited as it is.
Precisely why I'm not that all-fired interested
in lucid dreaming any more. Sure, it's still fun,
like the best ride in the best amusement park, but
the vastness of the real world billions share
is soooo much more interesting...
> > Scoop out water from the ocean--that's you--that water is as much "water" as
> > the rest of the ocean, it's just not the entire body of water.
Yeah. Scoop out a little piece of that billion-year-old organic meat.
The little 50-odd-year-old piece named "Chris". That piece. It's
just as much organic meat as the rest of the animal kingdom and the
rest of mankind, it's just not all of it.
> Yes, listening/reading Jer's giberish too much.
Jerberish.
> Who needs to be Freud to 'get' dreams? lol
I agree. Imo most of the time the meaning of a dream is obvious.
If there isn't an obvious meaning, it usually (not always)
turns out to be mostly meaningless. Like ... that worm of yours
which you finally managed to free-associate some "meaning" for. lol
Took my son out for a walk in the wash to watch the eclipse.
Except for the idea of aligned planets, I think he found all the
frogs slightly more interesting...
-Jer
(Billions and billions!)
ViridianStar
>
>I agree. Imo most of the time the meaning of a dream is obvious.
>If there isn't an obvious meaning, it usually (not always)
>turns out to be mostly meaningless. Like ... that worm of yours
>which you finally managed to free-associate some "meaning" for. lol
>
:-)
I have to agree with you. I dreamed a few days ago that Chris and his wife had
a big party (I was there) and no doubt it's due to Chris's posting party
pictures on adc--that's the image I have of him--Chris on vacation--Chris
partying. :-)
Only question I have is why his appearance was different in the dream than his
pictures that he posts on adc---when I've dreamed of other adcers, like Ev and
RBB they look like themselves but Chris never does--his appearance is always
different.
Ok, freudians, have at it.
Jer, I read adc infrequently but have been reading recently & managed to
download some of your love songs--especially liked the instrumental for Uncle
Tantra. I noticed the one (Lay Lady Lay) that Rbb mentioned and it reminded me
of a few decades ago when America put out "Sister Golden Hair" and someone made
me cry when they played it for me. I no longer have it. Tell me again how this
works. Do I post a website on which I've downloaded the piece? Or do I send it
directly to you?
Thanks!
Jen
>Took my son out for a walk in the wash to watch the eclipse.
>Except for the idea of aligned planets, I think he found all the
>frogs slightly more interesting...
>
Jer
should have been in NC for frogs. We had rain--lots of frogs--no eclipse--just
strangeness and wildlife.
Jen
cr...@att.net
> Chris discovers that in lucid dreaming he is God.
Don't believe for a second that I think I am a god.
I'm just another slob trying to find his way home.
Hey, give me my bi-focals back would ya? lol!
> But ... I told you that all along... :-)
Sure, like I said, who listens? lol!
> In lucid dreaming, you ARE "God".
> Yep. You create that world, limited as it is.
It proves that self-reflection is a kind way of
saying we are narsos? No?
> Precisely why I'm not that all-fired interested
> in lucid dreaming any more. Sure, it's still fun,
> like the best ride in the best amusement park, but
> the vastness of the real world billions share
> is soooo much more interesting...
Of course. But it's fun to do at night when you're
just sleeping. Who knows, maybe those lucky lotto
numbers will appear tonight in my dream. IF I can
just remember to 'intend' the numbers. (minor detail)
> Yeah. Scoop out a little piece of that billion-year-old organic meat.
> The little 50-odd-year-old piece named "Chris". That piece. It's
> just as much organic meat as the rest of the animal kingdom and the
> rest of mankind, it's just not all of it.
Amen. Energy. Flowing to God knows where?
> Jerberish.
I want everyone to see this. Jer can make fun of himself.
He is not always a tight ass. I give you credit. I hope
the others here do.
> I agree. Imo most of the time the meaning of a dream is obvious.
Yep. If you don't get it, then you don't get it.
> If there isn't an obvious meaning, it usually (not always)
> turns out to be mostly meaningless. Like ... that worm of yours
> which you finally managed to free-associate some "meaning" for. lol
Aha ha ha! Very slick, Willy, very slick indeed.
> Took my son out for a walk in the wash to watch the eclipse.
Good for you. Showing him the wonders of the skies.
There is more up there than anyone can ever imagine.
> Except for the idea of aligned planets, I think he found all the
> frogs slightly more interesting...
Such a down to earth kid. Totally grounded. I'd pay attention to him.
> -Jer
> (Billions and billions!)
$$$$$$$$$$
Bring it on! :)
Rbb
> Only question I have is why his appearance was different in the dream than his
> pictures that he posts on adc---when I've dreamed of other adcers, like Ev and
> RBB they look like themselves but Chris never does--his appearance is always
> different.
> Ok, freudians, have at it.
You are soo lucky, all I have ever seen from Chris in dreams was his
worm.I hate to think that was god.
So now we can defend us against the Freudians back to back.
Load your gun just in case.
RBB
RBB
<cr...@att.net> wrote in message news:3EC38CCF...@att.net...
cr...@att.net
> You are soo lucky, all I have ever seen from Chris in dreams was his
> worm.I hate to think that was god.
Does it bend to the left a little?
cr...@att.net
> reminds me of that old gospel, what if god is one of us....
What if he/she/it isn't? Then what?
Trust me, 'all that is' ain't no human. :)
slider
crsds wrote
> reminds me of that old gospel, what if god is one of us....
What if he/she/it isn't? Then what?
Trust me, 'all that is' ain't no human. :)
### - no... but your 'perception' of it IS ;)
cr...@att.net
> ### - no... but your 'perception' of it IS ;)
God I hope not.
I should ask to *see* again.
What don't some of you dreamers
try *seeing* God in your dreams.
Let's see what you come up with. :)
slider
crsds@ wrote
### - because isn't there some old fable about not being able to see
god and live or something? (grin;) - plus but why can't you just ask
to see something more realistic like: where the fuck am i going
wrong/right for example... or where did grandma lose her teeth
hehehe ;))
haha i wanna see god, i mean really! heh (don't wanna lot does he;)
cr...@att.net
> ### - because isn't there some old fable about not being able to see
> god and live or something? (grin;)
Wife's tale. Do you believe everything you hear?
- plus but why can't you just ask
> to see something more realistic
More realistic? Geez.
> like: where the fuck am i going
> wrong/right for example...
You are already know the answer to that question.
> or where did grandma lose her teeth
> hehehe ;))
How about when is Slider going to get laid again?
> haha i wanna see god, i mean really! heh (don't wanna lot does he;)
Why dick around with chicken-shit stuff,
go for the gold! Go see the main man. :)
Jenadbc
(if not god then what) last night:
I was zipping along in my dream car--small and low to the ground--twice the
length of a golf cart (I usually mangage to fly but this was a futuristic model
vehicle so it was cool)
Stopped the dream car, looked up into the sky and something was covering the
sun--I thought hot damn and all this time the nonbelievers had me thinking that
there was no planet X :-D
But wait, although there was something eclipsing the sun it was not a planet
and thinking that maybe God herself was showing up (knew it wasn't the moon) I
kept looking--I saw a huge monitor like a door into another world (scenes and
stuff were playing on it) --it was mind blowing so much so that I forgot to
investigate.
ViridianStar
>
>>ViridianStar wrote:
>>
>> Only question I have is why his appearance was different in the dream than
>his
>> pictures that he posts on adc---when I've dreamed of other adcers, like Ev
>and
>> RBB they look like themselves but Chris never does--his appearance is
>always
>> different.
>> Ok, freudians, have at it.
>
>You are soo lucky, all I have ever seen from Chris in dreams was his
>worm.I hate to think that was god.
>
I never dream of worms--just snakes occasionally.
BTW, how did you know it was Chris's worm? :-)
>So now we can defend us against the Freudians back to back.
>Load your gun just in case.
>
>RBB
Done!
slider
Jenadbc wrote
>
>> - no... but your 'perception' of it IS ;)
>
>God I hope not.
>I should ask to *see* again.
>What don't some of you dreamers
>try *seeing* God in your dreams.
>Let's see what you come up with. :)
>
god and live or something? (grin;) - plus but why can't you just ask
to see something more realistic like: where the fuck am i going
wrong/right for example... or where did grandma lose her teeth
>hehehe ;))
>
haha i wanna see god, i mean really! heh (don't wanna lot does he;)
>
(if not god then what)
### - hi Jen... well i dunno, things pertaining more to dreaming + our
lives in the world really, practical things (grannies lost teeth
maybe?:)
i.e. becoming lucid (and/or maintaining lucidity) in the first place
is difficult enough i suppose, but being/remaining 'sober-minded' in
an altered-state is, i suspect, something much harder again, no?:)
I saw a huge monitor like a door into another world (scenes and
stuff were playing on it) --it was mind blowing so much so that I
forgot to investigate.
### - smile, maybe one day you'll be sober enough go though that door
to see what's on the other side :)
slider
crsds wrote
> because isn't there some old fable about not being able to see
> god and live or something? (grin;)
Wife's tale. Do you believe everything you hear?
### - heh heh, nope... i'd have to hear something at-least 3 times +
from 3 different, independent sources before i'd even start
polishing-up me' magnifying glass hehe:) - plus depending on how one
looks at things some things can kinda make sense in another way?
- e.g. one might have to be 'dead' to see god - plus seein' as we're
all going that way one day anyhoo, why rush-it is slider's
philosophy;)
- plus but why can't you just ask
> to see something more realistic
More realistic? Geez.
### - heh heh well yes, enquire of the 'available' worlds instead of
the un-available ones seems somewhat prudent to me hehehe;))
> like: where the fuck am i going
> wrong/right for example...
You are already know the answer to that question.
### - i meant in 'dreaming' ya' twit! ha ha ha (slider rolls his
eyes ;))
> or where did grandma lose her teeth
> hehehe ;))
How about when is Slider going to get laid again?
### - lol, ah but then i 'already' know the answer to that one don't
i... e.g. when i meet my poet's bride (i.e. anything less would be
like having a pet monkey ha ha ha;)))
> haha i wanna see god, i mean really! heh (don't wanna lot does he;)
Why dick around with chicken-shit stuff,
go for the gold! Go see the main man. :)
### - yes chris... know 'thyself' (roaring lol's ;-)
plus what was that 'old' story of some poor aspiring bastard slogging
it all around the planet for 50 years looking for the answer to
everything only to give-up, return home exhausted, and find it sitting
under his own doorstep all the time? (hehe ;)
Jenadbc
>Jen:
>(if not god then what)
### well i dunno, things pertaining more to dreaming + our
lives in the world
I never could tell a joke either. :-)
I was teasing Chris with the topic title--"if not god..."
what's the emotican for tongue in cheek?
Jen
cr...@att.net
> ### - heh heh, nope... i'd have to hear something at-least 3 times +
> from 3 different, independent sources before i'd even start
> polishing-up me' magnifying glass hehe:) - plus depending on how one
> looks at things some things can kinda make sense in another way?
Oh really? Why certainly, yes, (said the 3 stooges)
> - e.g. one might have to be 'dead' to see god - plus seein' as we're
> all going that way one day anyhoo, why rush-it is slider's
> philosophy;)
Sure there is no hurry.
You have to kill your ego first,
then you have a prayer of a chance.
> ### - heh heh well yes, enquire of the 'available' worlds instead of
> the un-available ones seems somewhat prudent to me hehehe;))
Never know until you try.
> ### - i meant in 'dreaming' ya' twit! ha ha ha (slider rolls his
> eyes ;))
Bowling with Slider's eyes again, geesh.
Did you get a strike or a spare?
> ### - lol, ah but then i 'already' know the answer to that one don't
> i... e.g. when i meet my poet's bride (i.e. anything less would be
> like having a pet monkey ha ha ha;)))
Shocking the monkey here boss, lol!
> ### - yes chris... know 'thyself' (roaring lol's ;-)
> plus what was that 'old' story of some poor aspiring bastard slogging
> it all around the planet for 50 years looking for the answer to
> everything only to give-up, return home exhausted, and find it sitting
> under his own doorstep all the time? (hehe ;)
Yeah, maybe and maybe not. :)
cr...@att.net
> (if not god then what) last night:
> I was zipping along in my dream car--small and low to the ground--twice the
> length of a golf cart (I usually mangage to fly but this was a futuristic model
> vehicle so it was cool)
> Stopped the dream car, looked up into the sky and something was covering the
> sun--I thought hot damn and all this time the nonbelievers had me thinking that
> there was no planet X :-D
> But wait, although there was something eclipsing the sun it was not a planet
> and thinking that maybe God herself was showing up (knew it wasn't the moon) I
> kept looking--I saw a huge monitor like a door into another world (scenes and
> stuff were playing on it) --it was mind blowing so much so that I forgot to
> investigate.
Oh it happens. Sometimes there are marvels in the way. :)
Jeremy
"RBB" <R...@shamanism.com> wrote:
>reminds me of that old gospel, what if god is one of us....
Reminds me of a strange old saying -- something like:
I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member.
Applies better than it sounds at first, for I wouldn't want to spend
that much time in any world where a being like myself was God.
Sorry to have to fly in the face of the old "everybody wants to rule
the world" theory, but quite honestly, I don't -- because I wouldn't
have a clue.
-Jeremy
slider
Jenadbc wrote
I was teasing Chris with the topic title--"if not god..."
what's the emotican for tongue in cheek?
### - hmmm dunno about that one... maybe a ;-) because of the wink?
(that's what i tend to use anyway ;)
slider
Jeremy wrote
Sorry to have to fly in the face of the old "everybody wants to rule
the world" theory, but quite honestly, I don't -- because I wouldn't
have a clue.
### - just to come at that from a different angle: i'd bet that just
about everyone in a NON-lucid dream would probably maintain exactly
that... that is right up until the moment they actually 'become' lucid
in the dream, and then considerations like that just drop-away and
no-longer apply?
slider
crsds wrote
> i'd have to hear something at-least 3 times +
from 3 different, independent sources before i'd even start
polishing-up me' magnifying glass hehe:) - plus depending on how one
> looks at things some things can kinda make sense in another way?
Oh really? Why certainly, yes, (said the 3 stooges)
### - hello hello hello... said the 3-headed policeman? :)
> e.g. one might have to be 'dead' to see god - plus seein' as we're
all going that way one day anyhoo, why rush-it is slider's
> philosophy;)
Sure there is no hurry.
You have to kill your ego first,
then you have a prayer of a chance.
### - strangely enough, just as the ego dies one has to go to all the
trouble of inventing another? (i.e. otherwise ya' can't 'act' in the
world at all ;)
> well yes, enquire of the 'available' worlds instead of
> the un-available ones seems somewhat prudent to me hehehe;))
Never know until you try.
### - aye... but start small and 'build-up' to the bigger things might
just spell safety, sobriety and stuff no? (e.g. ya' don't learn to
mountain-climb on friggin' everest for example do ya' ;)
> - i meant in 'dreaming' ya' twit! ha ha ha (slider rolls his
> eyes ;))
Bowling with Slider's eyes again, geesh.
Did you get a strike or a spare?
### - heh heh a full strike apparently ha ha ha ;)
Shocking the monkey here boss, lol!
### - lol makes a change from 'slapping' it anyway ahahaha :)
> - yes chris... know 'thyself' (roaring lol's ;-)
>
plus what was that 'old' story of some poor aspiring bastard slogging
it all around the planet for 50 years looking for the answer to
everything only to give-up, return home exhausted, and find it sitting
> under his own doorstep all the time? (hehe ;)
Yeah, maybe and maybe not. :)
### - (smile, well that's better anyway hehehe:) + yeah but ain't it
always the way that we kinda project things outward and then
go-seeking for something that's apparently (i.e. rationally)
'out-there' when it's all only coming from the inside anyway? (a bit
like the lucid dreaming situation is maybe a holodeck of sorts,
grin;))
next question then:
Just 'How Much' does dreaming reflect the waking-world and vice-versa
+ what are the implications, if any (contrast & compare my-man,
contrast & compare;)
cr...@att.net
> next question then:
> Just 'How Much' does dreaming reflect the waking-world and vice-versa
> + what are the implications, if any (contrast & compare my-man,
> contrast & compare;)
What don't you ask the really hard questions? LOL!
Christ!
Hard to say how much dreaming effects our waking world.
ALL of it is experience. The brain records everything!
How does the brain know from which state this experience
came from? Does the brain have a side that says ok this
(experience) was from the waking world and this side is
from the dream world? Or does it all get mixed together
and stored just as experience? Which experience is
more valid? Content & context, context & content. :)
Jeremy
"slider" <sli...@heh.com> wrote:
I see your point, but that's exactly what I was emphasizing -- the
distinction between the virtual world of dreaming which only you
ultimately rule (although still influenced by others), and the real
world, where you rule hardly anything at all, starting with the very
input to your perception. Remember, you are talking with a person who
has had hundreds of lucid dreams, and that's just it really -- after
hundreds of times, it even becomes a bit *boring* to realize that
pretty much anything you want to happen -- or believe might happen --
can happen. At least, that's how it is for me.
Above I was talking about something a little different. I was talking
about the idea (totally false, even ridiculous, imo) that *I* am God
of the *real* world (although humans come closer than any other
animals to being "godlike"). What I'm saying is that, much more so
than in the virtual world of dreaming, I would not have any idea how
to create a *real* world like the one we all share (in its amazing
complexity and majesty) or control it in any ultimate way, and imo
neither do any of the millions of people who flap their lips about
being God. In the real world, everything is an infinite surprise. I
have no idea what is going to happen, and have precious little ability
to control or even influence most things that do happen. And that is
perpetually ... EXCITING!
I'd be an A-1 fucking shabby God indeed, albeit a much better God than
most people, I think. LOL! :-)
Dreaming is the virtual world where you live only in the "tank" of
your own little head. In that sense, dreaming is "the matrix". :-)
But dreaming's not even a good "matrix", because you cannot even share
that world with others. Whatever illusions one may harbor, every day
one wakes up to live in the real world where one is very, very far
from being God. And how very, VERY glad I am that none of us is God
in the real world.
-Jeremy
slider
crsds wrote
> next question then:
>
Just 'How Much' does dreaming reflect the waking-world and vice-versa
+ what are the implications, if any (contrast & compare my-man,
> contrast & compare;)
What don't you ask the really hard questions? LOL!
Christ!
### - (really laughing;) - well there's no sense in dealing with just
the chicken-shit stuff huh?:)))
Hard to say how much dreaming effects our waking world.
### - errr hello? - i said REFLECTS the waking world? (we'll get to
'effects' later hehehe;))
ALL of it is experience. The brain records everything!
### - and then promptly forgets most of it apparently lol ;)
How does the brain know from which state this experience
came from?
### - it doesn't, so it creates familiar scenarios to relate
to/remember instead perhaps?
Does the brain have a side that says ok this
(experience) was from the waking world and this side is
from the dream world? Or does it all get mixed together
and stored just as experience?
### - i think we're all just creatures of habit really... and thus
it's merely a matter of what's already been emphasised (e.g. fixed) in
us to pay attention to?
how about this for example: the world can be perceived/related-to in
many-many ways depending on where one is actually standing in-relation
to it - in other words: the state (or altered-state) you yourself are
in at any one time (plus or minus your level of clarity/sobriety at
the time) will perforce determine your 'perception' of the world
around you at that time:)
Which experience is
more valid? Content & context, context & content. :)
### - let's just say it's ALL valid & that EVERY experience counts no?
(i.e. we can't afford to be complacent about ANY state of mind
no-matter HOW familiar it is or becomes, and because 'complacency'
(taking things for granted)= falling asleep;))
cr...@att.net
> ### - (really laughing;) - well there's no sense in dealing with just
> the chicken-shit stuff huh?:)))
Right! We'll leave that to the "scientists" who get paid for that.
> ### - errr hello? - i said REFLECTS the waking world? (we'll get to
> 'effects' later hehehe;))
Another grand time son of a bitch question.
We reflect in that world I guess. Look how big
my reflection got. LOL! Self-reflection at its greatest!
> ### - and then promptly forgets most of it apparently lol ;)
Yes for the time being. It becomes unconscious.
> ### - it doesn't, so it creates familiar scenarios to relate
> to/remember instead perhaps?
Yeah the past might as well be an illusion too.
Hardly ever does anyone get the recollection right.
It gets all fucked up with everything else.
And we wonder why we are nuts?
> ### - i think we're all just creatures of habit really... and thus
> it's merely a matter of what's already been emphasised (e.g. fixed) in
> us to pay attention to?
It seems to be this =======> $$$$$$$$$$$$.
Or this ==========> sex
Or maybe some of this ========> death
> how about this for example: the world can be perceived/related-to in
> many-many ways depending on where one is actually standing in-relation
> to it - in other words: the state (or altered-state) you yourself are
> in at any one time (plus or minus your level of clarity/sobriety at
> the time) will perforce determine your 'perception' of the world
> around you at that time:)
Position is everything Slider. Position position position!
Over here we have a real estate saying: location location location!
> ### - let's just say it's ALL valid & that EVERY experience counts no?
It's only valid in that world. What's valid here ain't so valid in
dreaming.
If I act like I am in a dream world here in the waking world I look like
a fool.
And if I act like I do here in the dream world I'm really a big bozo.
> (i.e. we can't afford to be complacent about ANY state of mind
> no-matter HOW familiar it is or becomes, and because 'complacency'
> (taking things for granted)= falling asleep;))
What happens if we let our guard down? Does the bogie man come and
butt fuck us? Hey I got a sale on metal trash can lids so you
can cover your ass. 50% off today. :)
slider
Jeremy wrote
>Sorry to have to fly in the face of the old "everybody wants to rule
>the world" theory, but quite honestly, I don't -- because I wouldn't
>have a clue.
>
> - just to come at that from a different angle: i'd bet that just
about everyone in a NON-lucid dream would probably maintain exactly
that... that is right up until the moment they actually 'become' lucid
in the dream, and then considerations like that just drop-away and
>no-longer apply?
I see your point, but that's exactly what I was emphasizing -- the
distinction between the virtual world of dreaming which only you
ultimately rule (although still influenced by others), and the real
world, where you rule hardly anything at all, starting with the very
input to your perception.
### - agreed if we're only talking about the objective world...
although interestingly enough, people do tend to 'share' illusions in
the real + objective world don't they... plus what i meant really was
that people are god of their own 'perception' of the objective world,
even if they're not very aware of it kinda thing - e.g. it's something
one might awaken to for example...
Remember, you are talking with a person who
has had hundreds of lucid dreams, and that's just it really -- after
hundreds of times, it even becomes a bit *boring* to realize that
pretty much anything you want to happen -- or believe might happen --
can happen. At least, that's how it is for me.
### - understood - plus going back to my other angle (as a joke?)
kinda thing; then perhaps that's even 'why' we prefer not to be awake
to who & what we really are in the real world in that sense then no? -
in other words: it's perhaps a lot less boring NOT to be the god of
ourselves;)
Above I was talking about something a little different. I was talking
about the idea (totally false, even ridiculous, imo) that *I* am God
of the *real* world (although humans come closer than any other
animals to being "godlike"). What I'm saying is that, much more so
than in the virtual world of dreaming, I would not have any idea how
to create a *real* world like the one we all share (in its amazing
complexity and majesty) or control it in any ultimate way, and imo
neither do any of the millions of people who flap their lips about
being God. In the real world, everything is an infinite surprise. I
have no idea what is going to happen, and have precious little ability
to control or even influence most things that do happen. And that is
perpetually ... EXCITING!
### - aye... for some maybe that's even true, but for others it might
be just as exciting (if not more so) to explore all those other
perceptions we might just be the god of, kinda thing no?
I'd be an A-1 fucking shabby God indeed, albeit a much better God than
most people, I think. LOL! :-)
### - heh well honest anyway, if just a wee bit vain perhaps :-)
Dreaming is the virtual world where you live only in the "tank" of
your own little head. In that sense, dreaming is "the matrix". :-)
But dreaming's not even a good "matrix", because you cannot even share
that world with others. Whatever illusions one may harbor, every day
one wakes up to live in the real world where one is very, very far
from being God. And how very, VERY glad I am that none of us is God
in the real world.
### - i think the main problem is that reason has distinct
difficulties even 'admitting' that something beyond itself may indeed
exist that it can't get hold of in quite the way it's accustomed to
getting hold of things?
for example: lucid dreaming, regardless of what it's limits maybe are,
is still technically speaking, if not in-fact; a purely 'psychic'
phenomena (e.g. it's maybe like some sort of a projection of the mind
one can then seemingly explore in some sort of sensory + seemingly
tangible manner) - and yet reason struggles to explain it if pushed to
account for it in terms of logical/rational control etc - there just
doesn't seem to be any 'point' to it...
my point being: there's no scientific 'proof' as such of lucid
dreaming existing other than the many people who have attested to
experiencing it and their description of it - and because basically
it's an experience beyond the realm of logic & reason per-se
on the other hand, what reason CAN apparently learn to do, is to
eventually 'acknowledge' the existence of strange things (like lucid
dreaming) that's not really part of its logical inventory of control,
but which nevertheless can still be explored/probed by whatever part
of us that's able to do these things while 'reason' rides shotgun for
a change:)
i.e. if there's even 'one' explorable psychic phenomena... then who's
to say there isn't a whole 'collection' of them waiting to be
discovered... maybe even a whole world of things like that :)
slider
crsds wrote
> errr hello? - i said REFLECTS the waking world? (we'll get to
> 'effects' later hehehe;))
Another grand time son of a bitch question.
We reflect in that world I guess. Look how big
my reflection got. LOL! Self-reflection at its greatest!
### - (laughing:) well you wanted to 'see' god and you saw a
reflection of yourself, and now you're all confused 'coz you didn't
want any of it (or anything come to that) to be 'your' fault and/or
'your' responsibility is all hehehe, when in fact the hint from
dreaming was that you totally IS!:)
> - and then promptly forgets most of it apparently lol ;)
Yes for the time being. It becomes unconscious.
### - sometimes even for a whole lifetime? (grin;)
> - it doesn't, so it creates familiar scenarios to relate
> to/remember instead perhaps?
Yeah the past might as well be an illusion too.
Hardly ever does anyone get the recollection right.
It gets all fucked up with everything else.
And we wonder why we are nuts?
### -heh that was the point made in the film "Blade-Runner" wasn't
it - i.e. that all the memories were just implants, plus who the hell
would be able to tell any different hehe - not even the robots;)
> i think we're all just creatures of habit really... and thus
it's merely a matter of what's already been emphasised (e.g. fixed) in
> us to pay attention to?
It seems to be this =======> $$$$$$$$$$$$.
Or this ==========> sex
Or maybe some of this ========> death
### - and really quite simple no? - i.e. $$$$= the carrot, sex the
bonus, and death the big stick lol;)))
> in other words: the state (or altered-state) you yourself are
in at any one time (plus or minus your level of clarity/sobriety at
the time) will perforce determine your 'perception' of the world
> around you at that time:)
Position is everything Slider. Position position position!
Over here we have a real estate saying: location location location!
### - aye, but one can sweat blood trying to alter that
location/position no? - whereas most people love it just where they
are ;)
> - let's just say it's ALL valid & that EVERY experience counts no?
It's only valid in that world. What's valid here ain't so valid in
dreaming.
If I act like I am in a dream world here in the waking world I look
like a fool.
And if I act like I do here in the dream world I'm really a big bozo.
### - and yet they also somewhat reflect each other... how strange;)
>
(i.e. we can't afford to be complacent about ANY state of mind
no-matter HOW familiar it is or becomes, and because 'complacency'
> (taking things for granted)= falling asleep;))
What happens if we let our guard down? Does the bogie man
come and butt fuck us?
### - heh heh heh, yes basically :-)
Hey I got a sale on metal trash can lids so you
can cover your ass. 50% off today. :)
### - heh, sounds like an alright, albeit imho 'noisy' solution
perhaps hehe... so how about a simpler answer then: like staying awake
and not falling asleep in the first place?:)
(c'mon chris, explain to the peeps why you gots such a big butt, j/k;)
Rbb
<cr...@att.net> wrote in message news:3EC5CA88...@att.net...
You are, and if all that is, is no human...
then what?
Rbb
"Jeremy" <jeremydon@socal_spam.rr_spammer.com_spam> wrote in message
news:4i6ecv44m76od4bjt...@4ax.com...
>
> "RBB" <R...@shamanism.com> wrote:
>
> >reminds me of that old gospel, what if god is one of us....
>
> Reminds me of a strange old saying -- something like:
> I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member.
A cynic expression of people that don't like themselves.
Have this mini-workshop....
Repeat after me.. Me- Them......
>
> Applies better than it sounds at first, for I wouldn't want to spend
> that much time in any world where a being like myself was God.
You not A god. You are just god.
>
> Sorry to have to fly in the face of the old "everybody wants to rule
> the world" theory, but quite honestly, I don't -- because I wouldn't
> have a clue.
It doesn't matter if you have a clue or not.
Rbb
"ViridianStar" <viridi...@aol.come> wrote in message
news:20030517105827...@mb-m28.aol.com...
> >
> I never dream of worms--just snakes occasionally.
> BTW, how did you know it was Chris's worm? :-)
I love snakes...
To the worm:
It floated by with un undertitle... :)
>
> >So now we can defend us against the Freudians back to back.
> >Load your gun just in case.
> >
> >RBB
>
> Done!
Lol. To bad....... not many real freudians in ADC.
Rbb
<cr...@att.net> wrote in message news:3EC5C985...@att.net...
> Rbb wrote:
>
> > You are soo lucky, all I have ever seen from Chris in dreams was his
> > worm.I hate to think that was god.
>
Don't know. It didn't have a knot.
I can be sure of that.
cr...@att.net
> ### - aye, but one can sweat blood trying to alter that
> location/position no? - whereas most people love it just where they
> are ;)
One can change the position.
You could say it is a position of the ap.
You better be careful when it shifts.
You might feel like you losing your mind.
Perhaps it is OUR link to the 'all that is'? :)
Jeremy
"slider" <sli...@heh.com> wrote:
>Jeremy wrote
>
>>Sorry to have to fly in the face of the old "everybody wants to rule
>>the world" theory, but quite honestly, I don't -- because I wouldn't
>>have a clue.
>>
>> - just to come at that from a different angle: i'd bet that just
>about everyone in a NON-lucid dream would probably maintain exactly
>that... that is right up until the moment they actually 'become' lucid
>in the dream, and then considerations like that just drop-away and
>>no-longer apply?
>
>I see your point, but that's exactly what I was emphasizing -- the
>distinction between the virtual world of dreaming which only you
>ultimately rule (although still influenced by others), and the real
>world, where you rule hardly anything at all, starting with the very
>input to your perception.
>
>### - agreed if we're only talking about the objective world...
>although interestingly enough, people do tend to 'share' illusions in
>the real + objective world don't they... plus what i meant really was
>that people are god of their own 'perception' of the objective world,
>even if they're not very aware of it kinda thing - e.g. it's something
>one might awaken to for example...
Imo people aren't god even of their own perception. Not at all. Our
systems of perception are automatic, involuntary. Almost all of the
actual processes of our perception are unconscious. Human
self-awareness is a tiny innovation in a billion year old process.
True, in terms of evolution, and in terms of its effect on the world,
that tiny step into self-awareness is a quantum leap. Yet make no
mistake, most of what we do is STILL unconscious, and necessarily so.
Yet your point about sharing illusions in the real world is taken.
Definitely, in the real world we share much, including our illusions.
>Remember, you are talking with a person who
>has had hundreds of lucid dreams, and that's just it really -- after
>hundreds of times, it even becomes a bit *boring* to realize that
>pretty much anything you want to happen -- or believe might happen --
>can happen. At least, that's how it is for me.
>
>### - understood - plus going back to my other angle (as a joke?)
>kinda thing; then perhaps that's even 'why' we prefer not to be awake
>to who & what we really are in the real world in that sense then no? -
>in other words: it's perhaps a lot less boring NOT to be the god of
>ourselves;)
In the sense I was talking about wrt dreaming, it is not possible to
be god even of ourselves in the real world. There are too many
unknown variables and too many potential forces impinging upon
individual human action. Thus, the idea that we can be god even of
ourselves is, to me, just another illusion, probably not something to
shoot for. Sometimes I fear you and I come from too different a place
to even talk. :-) I don't we can be awake to everything we really
are, at least not psychologically, on a moment-to-moment basis. Nor
do I believe we need to be, psychologically. We can amass enormous
amounts of information about what we are and how we function, but most
of that actual functionality will remain what it is -- automatic and
involuntary. We need to be more awake to the full effects and
consequences of what we consciously CHOOSE to DO in the world, with
our self-aware choices, yes -- but as for what we ARE, most of that
works by itself, without needing to be aware of it. The real "god",
life, built us that way.
I suppose it is an interesting question: to just what degree can
human beings become self-aware? And when and how would a particular
aspect of becoming more self-aware even be useful? (I would not
assume it always is...) In fact, being self-aware of the wrong things
would be as likely to drive one mad as anything else. One problem is
that in any discussion of self-awareness people always get lost in
stuff like "dreaming and meditation". Every time they even ponder the
question. Drat.
It strikes me that it may be very nearly an unexplored angle, in
general. Almost every person who tries to "expand awareness" goes off
the deep-end and winds up with a bunch of insane crap. Brief
speculation: a good starting point might be to catalog as many
examples as we can of facets of living that humans ARE self-aware of
that other animals are not (or do not seem to be), and then see where
each of those facets might be expanded in some realistic way. Then
again, human self-awareness is probably slowly changing naturally as
well. There may be no need at all to "work on it" beyond the
pragmatics of being as cautious as possible wrt the long-term
consequences of human actions.
Actually, come to think of it, I do know of one new way of possibly
becoming more "self-aware" which has not been very well-explored yet,
namely... as we become more knowledgeable of the way our brain
functions it IS possible to scientifically develop actual exercises
for different brain functions. I see this as a future area of
development.
Bottom line Slider: I'm not sure that trying to become more 'god of
oneself' is even a worthwhile goal, relative to other possible goals.
It would depend on how one defines that, and where one goes with it.
Just to give an example of what might be a better approach, one might
instead try to become a "god" of interacting effectively with other
beings to accomplish major goals in the world. LOL! Certainly
wouldn't be my specialty...
>Dreaming is the virtual world where you live only in the "tank" of
>your own little head. In that sense, dreaming is "the matrix". :-)
>But dreaming's not even a good "matrix", because you cannot even share
>that world with others. Whatever illusions one may harbor, every day
>one wakes up to live in the real world where one is very, very far
>from being God. And how very, VERY glad I am that none of us is God
>in the real world.
>
>### - i think the main problem is that reason has distinct
>difficulties even 'admitting' that something beyond itself may indeed
>exist that it can't get hold of in quite the way it's accustomed to
>getting hold of things?
As you probably already know, I don't care for this argument. One of
the main things 'reason' has told me is that 'reason' is the tip of
the iceberg of a human LIFE (I've just been belaboring that very
issue). Emotion isn't reason, and is much more ancient than reason.
Most of the various systems of my physical body, including the systems
of perception, aren't reason, and ditto, they are more ancient. So
saying that 'reason' will not admit to anything beyond itself is
simply incorrect.
Reason is obviously the newcomer on the block, and is obviously not
everything, but it IS largely responsible for the quantum leap we have
taken on this planet. My problem with where you come from is how you
keep insinuating there must be something "spiritual" out there which
is "beyond reason". But why single out reason? Is this
"spirituality" beyond physical perception? Is it beyond emotion?
What makes you so sure it's there at all? You clearly see how people
use "God" as a crutch, but do you fail to suspect your own crutch may
be similar (in terms of possibly being imaginary) if a bit more
sophisticated?
>for example: lucid dreaming, regardless of what it's limits maybe are,
>is still technically speaking, if not in-fact; a purely 'psychic'
>phenomena (e.g. it's maybe like some sort of a projection of the mind
>one can then seemingly explore in some sort of sensory + seemingly
>tangible manner) - and yet reason struggles to explain it if pushed to
>account for it in terms of logical/rational control etc - there just
>doesn't seem to be any 'point' to it...
What you call 'psychic' is itself well-grounded, probably totally so,
in physical processes, as Hobson could easily show you. Obviously
'reason' is ALSO struggling to explain dreaming in terms of some
"projection of the mind" or 'psychic phenomenon', now isn't it? :-)
>my point being: there's no scientific 'proof' as such of lucid
>dreaming existing other than the many people who have attested to
>experiencing it and their description of it
What? Yes there is. Laberge (and others) have scientifically proved
that lucid dreaming exists, in a manner that goes well beyond the
self-reports of dreamers. Haven't you read about that yet?
> - and because basically
>it's an experience beyond the realm of logic & reason per-se
Why do you say this? I have no problem reasoning or using logic in
lucid dreaming. Do you? Indeed, that is the biggest part of being
"lucid" in dreaming, all of a sudden having my ordinary self-awareness
and reason once again *available* to me within the dream state.
I just thought of a side point I don't recall anyone mentioning
before. Perhaps because it is too obvious. In the same way that
humans have developed self-aware behavior to a much greater degree
than any other animals (that we know of), it is probably also true
that lucid dreaming, being a self-aware activity, probably totally
belongs to the human realm. It is doubtful that any other animal
lucid dreams. It may even be a freak side-effect of the
evolutionarily recent phenomena of humans' intense self-awareness.
(Dolphins do not dream the same way humans do. They do not have REM
at all, and never fully sleep. Half of their brain stays awake while
the other half sleeps...)
>on the other hand, what reason CAN apparently learn to do, is to
>eventually 'acknowledge' the existence of strange things (like lucid
>dreaming)
I'm not with you here. Lucid dreaming IS acknowledged as existing.
It is documented. Proven. So yeah sure, obviously reason can and HAS
learned to "acknowledge" the existence of such phenomena.
> that's not really part of its logical inventory of control,
"Logical inventory of control" sounds like a little piece of
brainwashing you have yet to jettison. A useless gloss. There is
no "inventory of control". I suppose there is an inventory of what
humans believe is known, and an inventory of what humans are still
exploring (though I doubt a formal catalog of either exists anywhere,
and am sure no one individual knows the extent of either). Human
minds are perpetually scouring the cosmos for NEW phenomena. That is
one of the things humans do with their self-awareness and their
reason...
>but which nevertheless can still be explored/probed by whatever part
>of us that's able to do these things while 'reason' rides shotgun for
>a change:)
What makes you think there is some "part of us" able to do things we
do not yet know about? There may well be, historically, there usually
has been, but ... if there are still such "unknown parts" to us, what
makes you think they would necessarily be anything like what you
imagine them to be? :-)
Please do not tell me you believe this because some "nagual" or
"buddha" told you about them, because that is not an acceptable answer
as far as I'm concerned. Don't tell me it's because in some dreaming
or meditation state you "felt" it, because one can feel anything one
wants in such states (I have experienced this many times myself).
See, there is really no way around the need for objective verification
of new phenomena. Without it, chaos, delusion, and self-deception
reign. If you want to talk about unknown capacities, you must
demonstrate them, then we'll talk. Until you do, you are just
talking... and talk is cheap, especially to someone who has been taken
in as many times as I have.
>i.e. if there's even 'one' explorable psychic phenomena... then who's
>to say there isn't a whole 'collection' of them waiting to be
>discovered... maybe even a whole world of things like that :)
There may be. But if there are explorable "psychic phenomena", why
would we not be able to study them and validate their existence, just
as we have validated anti-matter and lucid dreaming? I do lucid
dreaming. I utilize reason WHILE I am doing it. I utilize reason to
analyze what lucid dreaming is, how it happens, what if anything it
means, and what I may wish to do in it. I don't see any problem. You
people keep trying to make reason into the bogey man. But I'm of the
opinion that it was some bogey man who fooled you into doing that.
:-)
-Jeremy
Jeremy
"Rbb" <r...@sjamanism.no_spam.com> wrote:
>You not A god. You are just god.
Am not.
>It doesn't matter if you have a clue or not.
Does too.
-J.
( LOL! )
Terry Firma
> It floated by with un undertitle... :)
> >
> > >So now we can defend us against the Freudians back to back.
> > >Load your gun just in case.
> > >
> > >RBB
> >
> > Done!
>
> Lol. To bad....... not many real freudians in ADC.
No wonder; we're trying to lose our human form, right? Btw. I was thinking a
bit about Freud yesterday: I've been rather sceptical to many of Freuds
theories about what defines our childhood, but letting my thoughts wonder
back to those days, I'm pretty sure I shared many of the symptoms he
described of the stages of the childhood. You know oral, and, that kind of
stuff... A very naughty boy, indeed! Probably along with half of the rest of
the human population of this planet. And knowing a little about you females
( I said "a little"!), I guess you were even worse... :)
slider
crsds wrote
### - heh, well whatever the 'mechanism' involved, SOMETHING about
awareness moves/changes (can certainly change) and that altered
awareness then perceived/experienced as-steadily as our perception of
the daily world is (e.g. as we do with lucid dreaming for example,
which imho + experience IS actually an altered state of awareness
we've become somewhat familiar with through the 'direct' experience of
rather than via the intellect)
in other words, there's a 'division' at this point in the sense that
our reason & its ideas are heaped on one side, and things (like lucid
dreaming) learned through 'direct' experience (e.g. trial & error) on
the other... this then constituting 2 completely separate fields of
enquiry + experience which kinda overlap a bit in the middle ;)
and never the Twain shall meet? ;-)
Rbb
You are trying to loose your human form?
I thought that would happen as a natural process after death -
no work required.
I can dig Freud for having some insights and trying to map consciousness
and development stages.
But I can't help thinking that his super-ego idea was purely a
translation of his coke-use.
Besides I have my doubts that all fixation are rooted in the 3 first
phases ( he mapped 5 if I remember correctly ) and I have even more
doubt of the implication that women never grow past their penis envy.
I also do not think that little girls believe their penis was removed.
To me it is just male mind saying I have got that thing, I must be
envied for it, so let's build a theory.
and id people need some explanations where their problems come from,
I guess everything will do.
In a more sense making level the theory is probably build on shaking
ground, because it is build on dreams and memories of his clients.
I have been digging into some links of a site Jeremy has been giving
and I found it interesting that nearly every well-known shamanistic
teacher and author has been listed as fraud by native american people.
To start with using the word shaman as it is from Siberia.
I also found a link about a Norwegian twig of the shamanistic tree.
Do you know anything about that?
The Sami people inhabit a land they call Sampi, stretching from the
Norwegian coast in the north west, across the northern parts of Sweden
and Finland, to the Kola peninsula in the north east, a part of Russia.
This makes for some complications on its own: The Sami people have never
had a unified nation, as such. Traditionally, they have mostly been
semi-nomadic reindeer herders and hunter-gatherers, and have had a
tradition of roaming across any kind of national borders. Only in
historical times have they mainly been a settled people.
The Sami peoples history goes back at least 10.000 years in this area,
and it has been said that it was the Sami women who started the
domestication of reindeer and other animals. Then some of the Sami
started to settle, while others became large scale nomadic reindeer
herders, some with flocks of many hundreds of reindeer.
The Sami people were organized in 'siida', or tribes consisting of
several families bound together socially, religiously and by their
recognition of tribal laws. Some of these tribes were large and
powerful, and were highly respected by the early settlers of southern
Norway and Sweden. It was a tradition among the kings of the Ynglingar,
who counted Njord, Frey and Freya as their early ancestors, to marry
Sami 'princesses', well known for their great beauty. But the Sami were
also feared for their powerful magic.
One of the great Norwegian kings of the late Pagan times, Harald the
Fairyhaired, was once introduced to the daughter of the Sami leader
Svaase, who called the king out from a Yule feast to meet her. Harald
was so taken by the beauty of Snefrid, as her name was, that he wanted
to marry her on the spot (even though he already had several wives.).
They did marry, and she gave him three sons, and then she died. While
their relationship lasted, and for three years after she died, king
Harald neglected most of his duties, first in the joy of love, then in
the sadness of mourning.
Very little is actually known about the Sami religion and shamanism,
partly since the Swedish and Norwegian authorities very forcefully tried
to exterminate the Sami culture and Christen them, starting in the 16.
and 17. Century. Thus, most of the remaining sources have been written
by Christian ministers working to convert the Sami. Today, the great
majority of the Sami people are either Protestants, many of a particular
kind called Laestadianers, or they are Catholics. But some still honor
their ancient gods, and some shamans are still practicing their ancient
craft.
The Sami shaman is called a Noaide, and are usually trained within
the family, an aging Noaide training one of his or her relatives,
starting shortly after they reach puberty. This training continues for
as long as the teacher lives, but at one stage the pupil must
demonstrate his or her skills for a group of other Noaidi, and prove
that he or she is able to command the powers.
The Noaide is said to loose some of their power in this teaching
process, as they give of their power to the young student, and also
loosing their teeth is said to lessen their power. Part of the training
involve what people today call 'travels out of the body', or 'astral
travel', 'borrowing', working with your 'power animal' and other
shamanic techniques. Particular for the Sami shamen are their relatively
small, often oval drum, 'runebommen', usually painted with magical
symbols, and their particular trance singing, the 'Joik'.
The Sami pantheon has four 'general gods' , the Mother, the Father,
the Son and the Daughter (Radienacca, Radienacce, Radienkiedde and
Radienneida). The Son of this pantheon is a creator of the earthly
realm, the Daughter a Goddess of spring and fertility. In the earthly,
or manifested reality, there is also a highly regarded horned god of
fertility, fire and thunder, called Horagales, as well as the Sun
goddess Beive and the Moon goddess Manno. The ancient, original Mother
and Father of the Sami, believed by some to be equivalent to Eve and
Adam of the Christians, are called Mattarahkka and Maderacce. They had
three daughters and one son; the daughters are called Sarahkka,
Juoksaahkka and Uksaahkka; the son, a god of the woods and of hunting,
is called Leibeolmai. Finally, they have a goddess of death and beyond,
called Jabemeahkka.
The Great Mother works in the Earthly realm through her three
daughters and the goddess of death, and the Sami religion see life as a
circular process of life, death and rebirth, like most other Pagan
religions. One Sami describe it like this: «When you leave this world,
you know for certain that you enter the 'nether worlds', from where you
reenter this world through a newborn baby.»
The Sami Noaidi can tell us that man was created from earth and muddy
water, and consists of Life, Spirit and Soul, the Soul being our
connection between the earthly and the divine. To travel in the
spiritual realm, we have to develop our soul; transform our 'bodysoul'
into a 'freesoul'. Our bodysoul gets reborn with us, but the freesoul is
the result of our spiritual development, and may perish when we die.
People who have received spiritual training, like the Noaidi, are able
to travel freely in their freesoul. When the shamen die, their freesoul
go to reside in the mountain Bassevarre, the Sami holy mountain.
It is with this freesoul the Sami Noaidi travels the nether realms
and the spirit world freely, borrow birds and animals for travels in the
wild or do battle with other shamans. For the Noaidi take an active part
in the power of their families, and will sometimes do spiritual battle
with other shamans to prove their worth or to avert evil, even send
illness or bad fortune to competing families and other 'black magic' to
protect or win power, as well as do healing and divination. But this is
in the power of any shaman, and each must live the consequences of their
own acts and judgment.
In the historical annals, it is told that a male Noaide could not
perform his magic without first drinking of the holy water, Saivotjatsi,
kept by the holy woman, the Saivoneida. And that he often needed two
women, Sharak women, to sing the holy songs (called Ijoik) for his
trance, and to follow his freesoul and bring it back. Noaidi living
today claim that this is not any part of their tradition, and could be
an erroneous interpretation made by Christian clergy not well trained in
the Sami tongue.
The Pagan Sami consider blood to be very holy and also very
dangerous, and may use it as a part of their magic. The blood from
virgins is particularly powerful for averting evil magic and for general
protection (which does not mean that they sacrificed virgins: It is
either menstrual blood or blood from small cuts). In their practice,
they often substitute this with the juice from the Aldertree, which is
blood-red. In fact they use the same word, Leibe, for alder, the magic
of bear blood and for menstrual blood, the bear being one of the most
powerful animals in Sami magic.
Sami shamanism, or Noaidevuohta, is not a religion in itself, just the
craft of their shamen. All Sami can do certain rituals, but the Noaidi
have specific spiritual training, and can thus visit places in the
spiritual world most people can not.
Central to their shamanism is the runebom, their drum, a relatively
small drum, often oval, very light and hand held, used with a drumstick
carved out of a reindeer bone. The drum may be decorated with various
symbols of the divine and the mundane, in a certain pattern for each
shaman, and as a part of its use they put a ring of brass or silver on
the skin, drum, and do divination from how the ring moves over the skin.
But the primary use of the drum is for the shaman to go into trance and
travel in the spirit world.
As a powerful, and very visible part of the Sami religion, the drum
was one of the main focuses of the Christian attempts to eradicate their
religion, so most of the older Sami drums have been crushed or burnt by
Christian missionaries and their armed escorts.
A practice concerning the drum, possibly a more recent addition, is
that the drum must always be moved by a man, even if only from one room
to the next. No woman past puberty may touch it. Nor can any women or
children be present during ritual sacrifices, but when the drum is being
used the women can sing the Ijoik. And it is no doubt that menstrual
blood is held to be of great magical power, feared and respected by all
male shamans.
It is important here to be aware of the fact that all written
sources for the practice of Sami shamanism prior to the present era has
been written by male Christians interviewing male Sami shamans. Even so,
you still find stories describing very powerful female Noaidi, usually
called Noaidekalcko or Noaidgalggo, and it is certain that women can be
very powerful within the Sami religion. In some old descriptions, women
performed a certain sacred dance prior to rituals, then intoning a song
of praise to Sarahkka, one of the three goddesses, ending it off by
stamping their feet until the ground vibrated.
On particular and very powerful Sami woman, a Gapishaldne (a Sami word
best translated as a Witch), was Rijkuo-Maja (Rich Maja), who died in
1757 at the age of 96. She was said to own many reindeer . Each autumn
she sacrificed to the god Horagales, the thundergod. Her helpers were
the raven, the eagle and the woodpecker, and she kept wolves instead of
dogs. In one tale, she ran out into a nearby marsh when her house caught
fire, and with her drumming she quickly stopped the fire.
The Sami shamen also have three animal spirits with which some of them
work closely: A bird, Saivoloddi, who guide them when they travel the
spiritual world; a fish or snake, Saivo-guelle, who follow them into the
underworld; and finally a reindeer, Saivo-sarva, who fight for the
shaman in his spirit-world battles.
After most of the Sami had been converted, rather forcefully, to
Christianity, they all had to have their children baptized by a
Christian priest and given a Christian name. But for many generations,
and in some families even today, they immediately brought the child into
a Sami ritual, after the Christian ceremony, cleansing it of the
Christian baptism, and rebaptizeing it in their Sami tradition. As a
part of this ritual, the child was given a certain ring, a 'Skiello',
usually of brass, or a small silver ball on a chain, a 'noaidiball', as
protection against evil spirits. And if you asked for divination from a
Noaidi, it was this ring or ball that would be put on the drum to tell
your fortune.
It has been speculated that the three goddesses of the Sami people,
Sarahkka, Juoksaahkka and Uksaahkka, could have been the origins of the
three Norne goddesses of the Scandinavians, Urd, Verdande and Skuld. In
the Norse sagas, it is told that the Norner were there even before
Creation, deciding the fate of all men, weaving the web of Wyrd. Like
the Sami ahkka, the nornes were originally connected to pregnancy, birth
and rebirth. A tradition among the Sami is that a woman gets 'Sarahkka
porridge' as her first meal after having given birth; among the ancient
Nordic people, 'Nornagretur' - Norne porridge - served the same
function. What is certain is that all the intermarriage between the
Pagans of southern Scandinavia and the Sami must have brought into
Scandinavian beliefs and practices several Sami customs.
In the Sami culture of today, some of the old rituals, and many of the
old symbols, are still an important part of their daily life, even if
modern houses and snowscooters have replaced their reindeer-skin tents
and reindeer-pulled sleighs. Even after hundreds of years of suppression
by the Christian church, their religion is still alive. But it is not,
and have never been, a religion of clergy and churches, like most people
of today consider a necessary part of religion. The Sami religion is a
live process of interactions with nature and the nature spirits.
Everything in nature is a part of the spiritual realm, and it all has
powers accessible to those who know how to open up and listen. And most
Sami have no problems in combining their old beliefs with a life as a
Christian, as one can never replace the other.
Today, there are very few real Noaidi left; Sami shamans who have
carried the family magic and shamanism in an unbroken tradition through
the centuries. Personally, I only know of one, and he tells me that
there may only be 3 or 4 left. This could mean that it is a dying
tradition, unless the few left make it their duty to train more than one
successor, if this is possible for them.
Rbb
> "Rbb" <r...@sjamanism.no_spam.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>You not A god. You are just god.
>>
>
> Am not.
You can think so, but your little toe is anyway.
>
>
>
>>It doesn't matter if you have a clue or not.
>>
>
> Does too.
Nope. Creation does what it does whether your little or big clues
are there or not.
>
>
> -J.
>
>
> ( LOL! )
( LOL too )
Rbb
> Whatever illusions one may harbor, every day
> one wakes up to live in the real world where one is very, very far
> from being God. And how very, VERY glad I am that none of us is God
> in the real world.
Looks like you define god as almighty and a man with a plan.
Terry Firma
> >>
> >
> > No wonder; we're trying to lose our human form, right? Btw. I was
thinking a
> > bit about Freud yesterday: I've been rather sceptical to many of Freuds
> > theories about what defines our childhood, but letting my thoughts
wonder
> > back to those days, I'm pretty sure I shared many of the symptoms he
> > described of the stages of the childhood. You know oral, and, that kind
of
> > stuff... A very naughty boy, indeed! Probably along with half of the
rest of
> > the human population of this planet. And knowing a little about you
females
> > ( I said "a little"!), I guess you were even worse... :)
>
> You are trying to loose your human form?
> I thought that would happen as a natural process after death -
> no work required.
That is indeed the normal modus operandi of nature, yeah, and I'm not aware
of any exceptions. If I remember correctly, though, "losing the human form"
is a Castanadean concept - not that I have a clear ide of what he meant;
freeing oneself from the mental boundaries of society, or something like
that, maybe...
> I can dig Freud for having some insights and trying to map consciousness
> and development stages.
> But I can't help thinking that his super-ego idea was purely a
> translation of his coke-use.
Sounds plausible. And his methods were probably less than scientific by
modern standards, I'd guess.
> To start with using the word shaman as it is from Siberia.
Yeah, but it has been adopted by contemporary anthropology as a common term
for religious practice in a lot of other cultures as well, at least by a
central figure like Mircea Eliade.
> I also found a link about a Norwegian twig of the shamanistic tree.
> Do you know anything about that?
Nope, sorry. I haven't read much about samic shamanism (but more about their
culture in general, from studies in ethnology).
> The Sami people inhabit a land they call Sampi, stretching from the
> Norwegian coast in the north west, across the northern parts of Sweden
> and Finland, to the Kola peninsula in the north east, a part of Russia.
> This makes for some complications on its own: The Sami people have never
> had a unified nation, as such. Traditionally, they have mostly been
> semi-nomadic reindeer herders and hunter-gatherers, and have had a
> tradition of roaming across any kind of national borders. Only in
> historical times have they mainly been a settled people.
> The Sami peoples history goes back at least 10.000 years in this area,
> and it has been said that it was the Sami women who started the
> domestication of reindeer and other animals. Then some of the Sami
> started to settle, while others became large scale nomadic reindeer
> herders, some with flocks of many hundreds of reindeer.
<snip>
Thanks for all this material. I read it, and it was interesting.
Jeremy
Rbb <R...@shamanism.com_no.spam> wrote:
>Jeremy wrote:
>
>> "Rbb" <r...@sjamanism.no_spam.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>You not A god. You are just god.
>>>
>>
>> Am not.
>
>
>You can think so, but your little toe is anyway.
Mighty I AM Presence
Ah, the saints
the immortal saints...
I'm thinking...
yet at once feel a stinging bite
to the back of the neck.
A quick swat
and there in a droplet of sweat
a tiny black body, a gnat
lies crushed, and dead.
That I am.
>>>It doesn't matter if you have a clue or not.
>>>
>>
>> Does too.
>
>
>Nope. Creation does what it does whether your little or big clues
>are there or not.
Was actually my original point. :-)
But it went just a bit further. Creation does what it does whether I
exist or not. It did for the billions of years before I existed, and
will continue for the billions of years after I am gone.
-J.
Jeremy
Rbb <R...@shamanism.com_no.spam> wrote:
Not even.
The Hindu concept is that the awareness of every living being is God,
therefore we are all God. The Jeremy concept is ... that is
*probably* comforting bunk. :-)
-Jeremy
cr...@att.net
> Not even.
> The Hindu concept is that the awareness of every living being is God,
> therefore we are all God. The Jeremy concept is ... that is
> *probably* comforting bunk. :-)
I guess we all are part of God. All of us together make God.
Now there's a novel thought huh? :)
cr...@att.net
> But it went just a bit further. Creation does what it does whether I
> exist or not. It did for the billions of years before I existed, and
> will continue for the billions of years after I am gone.
> -J.
You are as much a part of the big bang as anyone is.
You were "before" and you will be "after". Whatever
that means. Going, going, gone! :)
Jeremy
cr...@att.net wrote:
Thanks for illustrating the way people just keep parroting the same
mindless assertion over and over. I guess I should make a stronger
statement.
Until there is convincing evidence that the awareness of all living
beings somehow gives rise to and/or controls the structure and
functionality of everything in the universe, this popular, comforting
crutch of an idea should definitely be disregarded.
Is this equivalent to saying I believe there is no God? No, it isn't.
I am saying the same thing I said before, just being more specific,
i.e I do not believe God is the awareness of all living beings. This
is different that saying I believe God is not the awareness of all
living beings.
Although ... in this case I will admit that intuitively I lean heavily
toward wanting to outright assert there is no fucking way that is the
case. :-) I observe that one can kill off hundreds of thousands of
people and/or animals without any noticeable effect on the overall
structure and functionality of this one planet we live on. Thus in
order to even begin to show the idea is true it would be necessary to
prove that the awareness of all beings survives death. And that, of
course, has definitely NOT been done.
But intuition aside, once again, it's just that the "default" in the
absence of evidence is to disregard the idea and not base one's
actions on the assumption that it is true.
-Jeremy
karmabum
Jeremy wrote...
>>
Sorry to have to fly in the face of the old "everybody wants to rule
the world" theory, but quite honestly, I don't -- because I wouldn't
>>have a clue.
>>
- just to come at that from a different angle: i'd bet that just
about everyone in a NON-lucid dream would probably maintain exactly
that... that is right up until the moment they actually 'become' lucid
in the dream, and then considerations like that just drop-away and
>>no-longer apply?
>
I see your point, but that's exactly what I was emphasizing -- the
distinction between the virtual world of dreaming which only you
ultimately rule (although still influenced by others), and the real
world, where you rule hardly anything at all, starting with the very
>input to your perception.
>
> - agreed if we're only talking about the objective world...
although interestingly enough, people do tend to 'share' illusions in
the real + objective world don't they... plus what i meant really was
that people are god of their own 'perception' of the objective world,
even if they're not very aware of it kinda thing - e.g. it's something
>one might awaken to for example...
Imo people aren't god even of their own perception. Not at all. Our
systems of perception are automatic, involuntary. Almost all of the
actual processes of our perception are unconscious. Human
self-awareness is a tiny innovation in a billion year old process.
True, in terms of evolution, and in terms of its effect on the world,
that tiny step into self-awareness is a quantum leap. Yet make no
mistake, most of what we do is STILL unconscious, and necessarily so.
### - your 'physical' point is well taken (e.g. unconscious autonomic
processes account for much in humans and virtually everything in lower
life forms) - but in terms of human 'perception' i would contend it's
something extra that we've learned + been taught to 'groom' in a
particular way/fashion that's vastly different to that of the other
animals + also that of our intricate relation to each other within our
societies which all operates at a much higher level than that of the
animals and takes years to learn - that consequently this higher level
OF self-awareness opens doors to us humans that the animals are barred
from BECAUSE of their level (or lack) of self-awareness?
i.e. that what makes us so different is that self-awareness & its
resulting perception in humans is something that goes far beyond that
of the animals... and yes we 'come' from (originate from) the animals,
and so 'yes' we can easily be purely animalistic and totally automatic
in everything we do just by reverting to type sort of thing, but then
that 'increased' level of self-awareness in humans also takes us away
from the purely animal + automatic state, even if the rest of our
body/selves (the other 99% of our animal-selves:) is still running on
auto... it's that 1% (or whatever it actually is) that's making all
the difference - the point being once we departed from the totally
autonomic/unconscious ways of the animal in terms of our degree of
self-awareness, we kinda broke the rule-book in terms of what we can
and can't do with ourselves - plus once the rebel (i.e. humanity)
started breaking the rules, he kinda finds himself in completely new +
unexplored territory where nothing is really nailed down and/or can be
taken for granted kinda thing...
Yet your point about sharing illusions in the real world is taken.
Definitely, in the real world we share much, including our illusions.
### - and yet amazingly everyone may also have a completely different
+ 'personal' experience of the same shared illusion, creating so many
'layers' in the process that's it almost impossible to keep track of
them all (i.e. we're all together and yet we're all on our own, plus
we can share views/pov's, or oppose them, and yet we're still
altogether! - how strange hehe - perceptions can be shared:)
>Remember, you are talking with a person who
has had hundreds of lucid dreams, and that's just it really -- after
hundreds of times, it even becomes a bit *boring* to realize that
pretty much anything you want to happen -- or believe might happen --
>can happen. At least, that's how it is for me.
>
> - understood - plus going back to my other angle (as a joke?)
kinda thing; then perhaps that's even 'why' we prefer not to be awake
to who & what we really are in the real world in that sense then no? -
in other words: it's perhaps a lot less boring NOT to be the god of
>ourselves;)
In the sense I was talking about wrt dreaming, it is not possible to
be god even of ourselves in the real world. There are too many
unknown variables and too many potential forces impinging upon
individual human action. Thus, the idea that we can be god even of
ourselves is, to me, just another illusion, probably not something to
shoot for.
### - on the grand-scale of things, yes + agreed - but becoming
masters of our own 'perception' isn't really that far fetched imho...
i.e. we know for a fact that awareness & perception can be made to
change from its otherwise tendency to remain fixed - and not only
that, but-that one can, with practice, learn to perceive that
'altered' awareness in as steady a manner as we normally do the fixed
one (e.g. such as in lucid dreaming for example) - and while this
might not exactly constitute being 'god' over our awareness,
nevertheless it's a good start;)
Sometimes I fear you and I come from too different a place
to even talk. :-)
### - smile, i know what ya' mean sometimes!:) - plus in some ways we
'are' very different... but then in others (and probably referring
back to the 99% part;) we can't be all that different really - i.e. we
share a whole world if nothing else, not to mention several languages
from that world ('reason' being my favourite;)
I don't we can be awake to everything we really
are, at least not psychologically, on a moment-to-moment basis. Nor
do I believe we need to be, psychologically. We can amass enormous
amounts of information about what we are and how we function, but most
of that actual functionality will remain what it is -- automatic and
involuntary. We need to be more awake to the full effects and
consequences of what we consciously CHOOSE to DO in the world, with
our self-aware choices, yes -- but as for what we ARE, most of that
works by itself, without needing to be aware of it. The real "god",
life, built us that way.
### - the current genetic evidence is that the single strand of
RNA/life on this planet has apparently clawed its way right up to
nowadays sitting-around reading the sunday newspapers and occasionally
taking the dog out for a walk ha ha ha + weird:) - the fact that it
became self-aware in humans (the equivalent of A.I. suddenly appearing
in machines?:) - the 'quantum-leap' as you called it, just makes us
the lucky ones i guess;)
I suppose it is an interesting question: to just what degree can
human beings become self-aware?
### - indeed, THE question! - i.e. rumour has it that we can go all
the way, and/or at least to some seemingly emancipating degree ;)
And when and how would a particular
aspect of becoming more self-aware even be useful? (I would not
assume it always is...)
### - well let's not assume that's it's useful at ALL in the
reasonable/logical sense, mainly because an increased awareness
implies also an increase in one's perceived options to choose from,
the greater usually being inclusive of the lesser in the sense that
the lesser is then perceived in a new light (e.g. just like suddenly
becoming lucid in a dream whereon one finds a totally new agenda that
has nothing whatsoever to do with the former non-lucid aspect of the
dream because it's been superseded/transcended)
In fact, being self-aware of the wrong things
would be as likely to drive one mad as anything else. One problem is
that in any discussion of self-awareness people always get lost in
stuff like "dreaming and meditation". Every time they even ponder the
question. Drat.
### - well i think it's par for the course really isn't it... i.e.
meditation is 'famous' for altering one's awareness in some seemingly
controlled way, and lucid dreaming a fairly commonly known +
experienced (psychic) phenomena - plus there's also a connection in
that practitioners have apparently reported/claimed reaching levels of
lucid dreaming (WILD's probably) from within their meditations
(curious no?)
It strikes me that it may be very nearly an unexplored angle, in
general. Almost every person who tries to "expand awareness" goes off
the deep-end and winds up with a bunch of insane crap.
### - of course they do... i.e. it's apparently very easy to just get
completely lost in the woods out there (and which imho probably
accounts for the majority of humanity still living/hiding in a cave
kinda thing:) - not to mention the limitations of language to
adequately express/describe something that's possibly beyond such
attempts at limitation anyway - that in that sense: Reason 'itself'
becomes (is revealed to be) part of the lesser principle as awareness
expands - that the greater is always inclusive of the lesser and not
the other way around (which imho basically means that reason can't get
its hands on 'things' without becoming corrupt, or corrupting it, in
the process)
the answer imho being to let that expanded state of awareness explain
itself instead of attempting to 'approximate' it before-hand with &
via reason...
Brief
speculation: a good starting point might be to catalog as many
examples as we can of facets of living that humans ARE self-aware of
that other animals are not (or do not seem to be), and then see where
each of those facets might be expanded in some realistic way. Then
again, human self-awareness is probably slowly changing naturally as
well. There may be no need at all to "work on it" beyond the
pragmatics of being as cautious as possible wrt the long-term
consequences of human actions.
### - (wrt?) in the light of the greater being inclusive of the lesser
etc (e.g. the waking-up and becoming lucid in a dream effect kinda
thing) - how about first expanding one's awareness, and only 'then'
getting the gen from that 'new' pov instead of the other way around?
(it's also possible information gathered that way may 'only' make
sense 'from' that expanded pov)
Actually, come to think of it, I do know of one new way of possibly
becoming more "self-aware" which has not been very well-explored yet,
namely... as we become more knowledgeable of the way our brain
functions it IS possible to scientifically develop actual exercises
for different brain functions. I see this as a future area of
development.
### - personally i hope not, at least in the sense that it seems to me
that that's maybe just a sure-fired way of creating even 'more'
monsters and unleashing them on the world... i.e. considering the
dangers, i personally hope that this so-called 'age of reason' is just
another passing phase on the way to... well, something a bit wiser
anyway:)
Bottom line Slider: I'm not sure that trying to become more 'god of
oneself' is even a worthwhile goal, relative to other possible goals.
### - well there's 'something' to be said for self-control isn't there
(i.e. people with little or no self-control for example tend to have
limited options in life and stuff etc no?)
It would depend on how one defines that, and where one goes with it.
### - definitions are always a problem... plus where one goes with an
expanded/expanding awareness is still a very open area
Just to give an example of what might be a better approach, one might
instead try to become a "god" of interacting effectively with other
beings to accomplish major goals in the world. LOL! Certainly
wouldn't be my specialty...
### - (smile:) well at least you're able to joke about it, which in my
book basically means that you certainly have some 'choice' in the
matter, no? (in other words i think you can be nice if you want to -
you know the difference anyway:)
>
Dreaming is the virtual world where you live only in the "tank" of
your own little head. In that sense, dreaming is "the matrix". :-)
But dreaming's not even a good "matrix", because you cannot even share
that world with others. Whatever illusions one may harbor, every day
one wakes up to live in the real world where one is very, very far
from being God. And how very, VERY glad I am that none of us is God
>in the real world.
>
>- i think the main problem is that reason has distinct
difficulties even 'admitting' that something beyond itself may indeed
exist that it can't get hold of in quite the way it's accustomed to
>getting hold of things?
As you probably already know, I don't care for this argument. One of
the main things 'reason' has told me is that 'reason' is the tip of
the iceberg of a human LIFE (I've just been belaboring that very
issue). Emotion isn't reason, and is much more ancient than reason.
Most of the various systems of my physical body, including the systems
of perception, aren't reason, and ditto, they are more ancient. So
saying that 'reason' will not admit to anything beyond itself is
simply incorrect.
### - not that it wont or can't... just that it doesn't like to? -
i.e. it just feels safe (in-control + secure) holding/waving the baton
kinda thing...
Reason is obviously the newcomer on the block, and is obviously not
everything, but it IS largely responsible for the quantum leap we have
taken on this planet.
### - agreed, the only question being was it a leap forward or
backwards:)
My problem with where you come from is how you
keep insinuating there must be something "spiritual" out there which
is "beyond reason".
### - well okay let's drop the terms spiritual & reason (i.e. i don't
particularly like them either, plus we can acknowledge they're just
terms we've 'borrowed' from the world that 'allude' to certain
commonly-known aspects of awareness etc) and just deal in things in
terms of 'altered' states of awareness and perception which i
personally believe to be more accurate (expanded/contracted, different
levels etc etc, are all then just relative terms and thus meaningless
in themselves)
But why single out reason?
### - because from observation reason (an aspect of awareness) seems
to be a whole little world in and of itself - a mutually 'exclusive'
world which is thus tightly sealed from the inside (e.g. you must have
had conversations in the past with people who were boringly logical in
a very circular manner - maybe because they were just learning about
logic etc) - the point being that reason per-se, although wider, also
has it's strict limitations and/or clear boundary... a boundary that's
surpassed just as soon as one's awareness alters/expands, revealing
the workings (+ domination) of reason to have just been part of a
particular state of awareness or mind-set...
Is this
"spirituality" beyond physical perception? Is it beyond emotion?
What makes you so sure it's there at all?
### - do we perceive in a lucid dream 'physically' with our 'physical'
eyes? - when we touch something in a dream are we feeling it through
our physical nerves? - IS all perception purely physical? (+ no doubt
it affects the physical and vice-versa) - or is not perception itself
maybe even a totally psychic phenomena? - these are hard questions
indeed my-man - but let's keep askin' them anyway:)
You clearly see how people
use "God" as a crutch, but do you fail to suspect your own crutch may
be similar (in terms of possibly being imaginary) if a bit more
sophisticated?
### - i hear you... but if (for example) lucid dreaming IS then say
just totally imaginary, then it's also a kind of projection OF the
imagination no? - and thus actually more in the realm of a so-called
psychic phenomena
>
for example: lucid dreaming, regardless of what it's limits maybe are,
is still technically speaking, if not in-fact; a purely 'psychic'
phenomena (e.g. it's maybe like some sort of a projection of the mind
one can then seemingly explore in some sort of sensory + seemingly
tangible manner) - and yet reason struggles to explain it if pushed to
account for it in terms of logical/rational control etc - there just
>doesn't seem to be any 'point' to it...
What you call 'psychic' is itself well-grounded, probably totally so,
in physical processes, as Hobson could easily show you. Obviously
'reason' is ALSO struggling to explain dreaming in terms of some
"projection of the mind" or 'psychic phenomenon', now isn't it? :-)
### - heh heh, i take your point, but then we have to allude to these
things 'somehow' while we talk about it don't we;) - plus you can't
just press a button and lucid dream, it requires some particular sort
of internal 'manipulation' of awareness acquired through long
discipline/practice & familiarity with that gives rise to that state
of being & experience... i.e. the steady + lucid experience of an
'altered-state' of awareness, and the fact that there can even BE such
a thing as perceiving an altered state in some sort of coherent
manner...
>
my point being: there's no scientific 'proof' as such of lucid
dreaming existing other than the many people who have attested to
>experiencing it and their description of it
What? Yes there is. Laberge (and others) have scientifically proved
that lucid dreaming exists, in a manner that goes well beyond the
self-reports of dreamers. Haven't you read about that yet?
### - didn't perhaps know they could as-yet scientifically discern
between that of ordinary dreams and 'lucid' dreaming - plus they can't
exactly get IN there and tell you what you were dreaming about and
stuff, only that a bunch of needles were bouncing around recording
brain-wave activity and unconscious eye-movements 'conducive' perhaps
to lucid dreaming, but never what you subjectively experienced...
> - and because basically
>it's an experience beyond the realm of logic & reason per-se
Why do you say this?
### - basically because lucid dreaming (as an altered state of
awareness) occurs even in 'spite' of the attempts of reason & logic to
nail it all down to just some bunch of chemicals in our head running
around doing their thing, and because it apparently existed before
reason even appeared on the scene? - i.e. lucid dreaming is an aspect
of 'awareness' - not an aspect of logic & reason
I have no problem reasoning or using logic in
lucid dreaming. Do you? Indeed, that is the biggest part of being
"lucid" in dreaming, all of a sudden having my ordinary self-awareness
and reason once again *available* to me within the dream state.
### - seems like that doesn't it... and yet reason isn't exactly
perfect in that state, rather it's like certain aspects OF reason
allow for more control over the dream situation, whereas really it's
only riding shotgun? (e.g. keeping the lucid dream going is usually a
matter of not becoming 'too' rational in the dream lest it wakes you
right up - reason is there alright, but it's kinda held back slightly
in order to allow the dream to continue - which is something that
takes a while to find the balance of + put into practice)
I just thought of a side point I don't recall anyone mentioning
before. Perhaps because it is too obvious. In the same way that
humans have developed self-aware behavior to a much greater degree
than any other animals (that we know of), it is probably also true
that lucid dreaming, being a self-aware activity, probably totally
belongs to the human realm. It is doubtful that any other animal
lucid dreams. It may even be a freak side-effect of the
evolutionarily recent phenomena of humans' intense self-awareness.
### - possibly... or maybe just indications of becoming slowly aware
of hidden potentials we've never even dreamed about;)
(Dolphins do not dream the same way humans do. They do not have REM
at all, and never fully sleep. Half of their brain stays awake while
the other half sleeps...)
### - aye, but then we're more than just dolphins ain't we (+ only
just a little more than the chimps apparently :)
>
on the other hand, what reason CAN apparently learn to do, is to
eventually 'acknowledge' the existence of strange things (like lucid
>dreaming)
I'm not with you here. Lucid dreaming IS acknowledged as existing.
It is documented. Proven. So yeah sure, obviously reason can and HAS
learned to "acknowledge" the existence of such phenomena.
### - aye, they can't scientifically 'control' or measure what is
ostensibly a totally subjective state of experience - but we can
'acknowledge' that it occurs in an area that's not strictly rational
and/or residing under the sole auspices of reason... in other words we
may not know exactly how everything works but that doesn't necessarily
stop us from exploring/experiencing it as a thing in itself (+ that
there perforce might be other things like that that are more to do
with awareness itself rather than with reason & logic)
> that's not really part of its logical inventory of control,
"Logical inventory of control" sounds like a little piece of
brainwashing you have yet to jettison. A useless gloss. There is
no "inventory of control". I suppose there is an inventory of what
humans believe is known, and an inventory of what humans are still
exploring (though I doubt a formal catalog of either exists anywhere,
and am sure no one individual knows the extent of either). Human
minds are perpetually scouring the cosmos for NEW phenomena. That is
one of the things humans do with their self-awareness and their
reason...
### - basically i meant the 'language' of reason & logic + that of its
limited vocabulary to explain everything in well-defined + cogent
terms...
>
but which nevertheless can still be explored/probed by whatever part
of us that's able to do these things while 'reason' rides shotgun for
>a change:)
What makes you think there is some "part of us" able to do things we
do not yet know about? There may well be, historically, there usually
has been, but ... if there are still such "unknown parts" to us, what
makes you think they would necessarily be anything like what you
imagine them to be? :-)
### - because experiencing altered states of awareness is obviously
within our capacity but not within our current vocabulary to explain?
(excepting perhaps as something to be totally avoided;)
Please do not tell me you believe this because some "nagual" or
"buddha" told you about them, because that is not an acceptable answer
as far as I'm concerned. Don't tell me it's because in some dreaming
or meditation state you "felt" it, because one can feel anything one
wants in such states (I have experienced this many times myself).
See, there is really no way around the need for objective verification
of new phenomena.
### - it's doubtful that one can objectively verify a totally
subjective state - imho just like the experience of pain which also
can't be scientifically measured (well not unless one could somehow
measure + record how much people tend to writhe around on the floor or
something hehe - but seeing as everyone has different tolerances to
pain it could never be accurate:)
Without it, chaos, delusion, and self-deception
reign.
### - one would certainly (+ rationally) think so... but then in lucid
dreaming it's not actually chaotic as elements of reason still exist
and/or are still accessible from 'within' that altered state creating
a very tricky balancing-act of sorts...
If you want to talk about unknown capacities, you must
demonstrate them, then we'll talk. Until you do, you are just
talking... and talk is cheap, especially to someone who has been taken
in as many times as I have.
### - altered states of awareness we can access, plus the fact that
the world (and ourselves) looks totally different 'from' those pov's,
is what my argument is predicated on... with lucid dreaming being only
'one' of those altered states that we already have in common/share and
can thus talk about via something as limited as a newsgroup
notice-board for example:)
>
i.e. if there's even 'one' explorable psychic phenomena... then who's
to say there isn't a whole 'collection' of them waiting to be
>discovered... maybe even a whole world of things like that :)
There may be. But if there are explorable "psychic phenomena", why
would we not be able to study them and validate their existence, just
as we have validated anti-matter and lucid dreaming?
### - my point was that we can ONLY validate them in the 'same' way
we've validated/acknowledged anti-matter & lucid dreaming because
reason has reached its limits - and yet anti-matter is part of our
world whether we see it or not (i.e. we know now it's there existing
in its own kinda 'sphere' as the counter-part to the physical even
though we can't see it) - likewise with lucid dreaming as being
something to do with perception we can 'experience' even though we
can't really explain it or nail it down as we'd (from the pov of
reason anyway) like to
I do lucid
dreaming. I utilize reason WHILE I am doing it. I utilize reason to
analyze what lucid dreaming is, how it happens, what if anything it
means, and what I may wish to do in it. I don't see any problem. You
people keep trying to make reason into the bogey man. But I'm of the
opinion that it was some bogey man who fooled you into doing that.
:-)
### - hehe reason isn't the bogey man, imho it's current domination is
just an aspect of our rigid awareness - but as soon as one 'changes'
states of awareness reason obviously just isn't the same anymore -
i.e. it's still there in a useful way, but it's no-longer the dominant
force... that ultimately this 'weakening' of reason's total rule over
our being is, imho & experience, actually 'key' to experiencing
altered states of perception in the first place, and that only in that
sense is it the bogey man in that it only keeps us locked in by
convincing us we can never get out and thus we 'volunteer' to stay:)
in other words: our state of awareness must have been radically
different before reason came along and stole the whole show, no?
(pagan basically) - well maybe we can get some of that back,
especially if we were to consider that what we've learned to nowadays
rationally label & call 'altered-states' of awareness (+ our access to
them) is in fact merely the antecedence to reason's appearance and
then domination over our entire perception & being)
that in that sense: reason and rationality was perhaps, at some point
in our history, actually a step 'away' from what we used to know
(maybe even a step 'backwards' depending on one's pov;) in favour of
having a map of the familiar and the known and of experiencing
ourselves under those prevailing conditions (e.g. somewhat comical
image of the human race all slowly becoming these rational-junkies for
the buzz of 'certainty' it gave them heh heh :)
Rbb
"Jeremy" <jeremydon@socal_spam.rr_spammer.com_spam> wrote in message
>
> Rbb <R...@shamanism.com_no.spam> wrote:
>
> >Jeremy wrote:
> >
> >> "Rbb" <r...@sjamanism.no_spam.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>You not A god. You are just god.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Am not.
> >
> >
> >You can think so, but your little toe is anyway.
>
>
>
> Mighty I AM Presence
>
>
>
> Ah, the saints
>
> the immortal saints...
>
> I'm thinking...
>
> yet at once feel a stinging bite
>
> to the back of the neck.
>
> A quick swat
>
> and there in a droplet of sweat
>
> a tiny black body, a gnat
>
> lies crushed, and dead.
>
> That I am.
Don't do it again, you have upset the cows. :)
Cows At California Ranch Make Like Lemmings, Run Off Cliff
SAN FRANCISCO -- A dozen Holstein cows grazing in a field north of San
Francisco suddenly decided to act like lemmings: they ran off a 50-foot
cliff.
Motorists say they saw the cows cascade off the hilltop, with some of the
bovines tumbling end-over-end down the slate-and-gravel cliff.
Marin Humane Society spokesman John Reese says the young heifers probably
were spooked by a noise, or by a dog or some other animal.
The Marin County Sheriff's Department says a deputy euthanized two of the
cows at the scene. The others were taken to their owners at Silveira Ranch
and were checked by a veterinarian.
A ranch owner said cows will sometimes break fences, but not run off cliffs.
She said something spooked them very badly.
>
> >>>It doesn't matter if you have a clue or not.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Does too.
> >
> >
> >Nope. Creation does what it does whether your little or big clues
> >are there or not.
>
> Was actually my original point. :-)
Really ???? :):):):)
It is mine now and you are not going to get it back.
>
> But it went just a bit further. Creation does what it does whether I
> exist or not. It did for the billions of years before I existed, and
> will continue for the billions of years after I am gone.
Yes, but while you are there and we can assume safely that you are,
there is no way you can escape the elevator of creation.
You are in it, part of it, depending on it , contributing to it and you are
it.
And all creation has the same priviledge.
>Is this equivalent to saying I believe there is no God? No, it isn't.
>I am saying the same thing I said before, just being more specific,
>i.e I do not believe God is the awareness of all living beings. This
>is different that saying I believe God is not the awareness of all
>living beings.
I do not believe God is the awareness of all living beings neither.
Awareness is highly overrated. Usually by awareness of awareness.
Rbb
"Jeremy" <jeremydon@socal_spam.rr_spammer.com_spam> wrote in message
> >Looks like you define god as almighty and a man with a plan.
>
> Not even.
>
> The Hindu concept is that the awareness of every living being is God,
> therefore we are all God. The Jeremy concept is ... that is
> *probably* comforting bunk. :-)
That assertion also implies that any believer of god, or a higher force is
in need of comfort.
Besides if one doesn't believe that god is a being that fixes all trouble
for you,
what would be the comfort aspect in a god-believe?
Otherwise then the overused death-argument?
Another question that really bugs me at the moment,
Can a quark die ?
Rbb
"Terry Firma" <terry...@jeg.er.online.no> wrote in message
news:ymeya.13477$b71.2...@news4.e.nsc.no...
> >
> > You are trying to loose your human form?
> > I thought that would happen as a natural process after death -
> > no work required.
>
> That is indeed the normal modus operandi of nature, yeah, and I'm not
aware
> of any exceptions. If I remember correctly, though, "losing the human
form"
> is a Castanadean concept - not that I have a clear ide of what he meant;
> freeing oneself from the mental boundaries of society, or something like
> that, maybe...
If you have no clear idea of what he has meant, how can you try to do it?
You think you figure out trying? :)
Loosing the human form is a term that doesn't speak to my imagination at
all.
Some metaphors simply don't do it for me. This is one of them.
So time to look up what others say.
Here is an article I have found, that I don't agree with, it is one of those
"ego synonimous with the devil"
interpretation.
Even if I would have the concept of two selves to choose between, I would
probably state that I do have them for a reason in the first place and
refuse to get rid of one.
Main argument, hardware needs software to function and why should my true
self be bothered by my false self, whatever that is.
It must be happy already, if I as false self expect it to make me happier.
NO?
My conclusion would be: The only thing that can be bothered with my false
self, is my false self. ;-)
http://www.toltecmysteryschool.com/newsletter/june2002/june2002.htm#form
"Losing the human form brings the freedom to remember your Self." (don Juan
speaking to Carlos in the "Eagle's Gift.")
There comes a point in our path when we must choose between the "human form"
and the "other self." Because we live bound by the human form, much of what
we think we need or want is no more than surface desires of the human form.
We do not know what is "best" for us in terms of our growth path.
( for the rest click link)
>
> > I can dig Freud for having some insights and trying to map consciousness
> > and development stages.
> > But I can't help thinking that his super-ego idea was purely a
> > translation of his coke-use.
>
> Sounds plausible. And his methods were probably less than scientific by
> modern standards, I'd guess.
>
> > To start with using the word shaman as it is from Siberia.
>
> Yeah, but it has been adopted by contemporary anthropology as a common
term
> for religious practice in a lot of other cultures as well, at least by a
> central figure like Mircea Eliade.
It is not well received by native Indians, that is for sure.
>
> > I also found a link about a Norwegian twig of the shamanistic tree.
> > Do you know anything about that?
>
> Nope, sorry. I haven't read much about samic shamanism (but more about
their
> culture in general, from studies in ethnology).
You could have known more, but if you don't no prob.
I am not so much interested in shamanism worldwide as a religious belief, as
it differs with tribes.
More as a source of technique regarding perception-manipulation and the maps
of possible perceptions.
I think most of those people have been experts regarding dreaming, hypnosis,
druguse and in many ways also in practical psychology. The myths you come
across are often a metaphor for an actual truth though.
Example:
Remember we have spoken about Grandmother Spider? Spiderwomen said to be
creator of the world.
This was my moment of beauty today reading this:
"If one could capture the universe in a box, scientists say that the
large-scale structure -- that is, galaxies, galaxy clusters and voids of
seemingly empty space -- takes the appearance of a web. Galaxies and
intergalactic gas are strung like pearls on unseen filaments of dark matter,
which comprises over 85 percent of all matter. Galaxies are attracted to
dark matter's gravitational potential."
Terry Firma
> aware
> > of any exceptions. If I remember correctly, though, "losing the human
> form"
> > is a Castanadean concept - not that I have a clear ide of what he meant;
> > freeing oneself from the mental boundaries of society, or something like
> > that, maybe...
>
> If you have no clear idea of what he has meant, how can you try to do it?
> You think you figure out trying? :)
Well, it was sort of a joke from me in the first place... not that I think
the concept or this discussion is a joke, though.
> Loosing the human form is a term that doesn't speak to my imagination at
> all.
> Some metaphors simply don't do it for me. This is one of them.
> So time to look up what others say.
> Here is an article I have found, that I don't agree with, it is one of
those
> "ego synonimous with the devil"
> interpretation.
> Even if I would have the concept of two selves to choose between, I would
> probably state that I do have them for a reason in the first place and
> refuse to get rid of one.
> Main argument, hardware needs software to function and why should my true
> self be bothered by my false self, whatever that is.
> It must be happy already, if I as false self expect it to make me happier.
> NO?
> My conclusion would be: The only thing that can be bothered with my false
> self, is my false self. ;-)
Well the devil can be used relatively meaningfully as a metaphor for a lot
of things; cars that won't start, kids that won't behave, taxes, etc. It
seems true, though, that patterns of behaviour that has the capacity to let
one run around in circles like a headless chicken for the rest of one's
life, deserves the name 'devil' more than many other things.
> http://www.toltecmysteryschool.com/newsletter/june2002/june2002.htm#form
Oh, I hate those sites! :) (I've looked at so many of them.)
> "Losing the human form brings the freedom to remember your Self." (don
Juan
> speaking to Carlos in the "Eagle's Gift.")
>
> There comes a point in our path when we must choose between the "human
form"
> and the "other self." Because we live bound by the human form, much of
what
> we think we need or want is no more than surface desires of the human
form.
> We do not know what is "best" for us in terms of our growth path.
Well, this sounds like a metaphor for choosing oneself rather than a
stereotype fitting in with society at large. That kind of thinking I'm
familiar with, and I think it's worth something.
> > > To start with using the word shaman as it is from Siberia.
> >
> > Yeah, but it has been adopted by contemporary anthropology as a common
> term
> > for religious practice in a lot of other cultures as well, at least by a
> > central figure like Mircea Eliade.
>
> It is not well received by native Indians, that is for sure.
Well, aren't they the sensitive type. :)
Well, I don't like spiders, so that kind of imagery just don't do it for me!
:) And what the fuck is the deeper meaning of it anyway?
Jeremy Donovan
This was my moment of beauty today reading this:
"If one could capture the universe in a box, scientists say that the
large-scale structure -- that is, galaxies, galaxy clusters and voids
of
seemingly empty space -- takes the appearance of a web. Galaxies and
intergalactic gas are strung like pearls on unseen filaments of dark
matter,
which comprises over 85 percent of all matter. Galaxies are attracted
to
dark matter's gravitational potential."
What I wonder (naively I will admit) is if the "filaments of dark
matter" are somehow related to the super massive black holes at the
center of every galaxy.
-Jeremy
Jeremy
"karmabum" <karm...@anashram.com> wrote:
> in terms of human 'perception' i would contend it's
>something extra that we've learned + been taught to 'groom' in a
>particular way/fashion that's vastly different to that of the other
>animals + also that of our intricate relation to each other within our
>societies which all operates at a much higher level than that of the
>animals and takes years to learn - that consequently this higher level
>OF self-awareness opens doors to us humans that the animals are barred
>from BECAUSE of their level (or lack) of self-awareness?
Right. But it isn't perception that is the extra factor. Most of our
systems of perception are ancient. Many animals have superior senses
to humans in one way or another. Self-awareness and reason are the
main factors that separate humanity.
>i.e. that what makes us so different is that self-awareness & its
>resulting perception in humans
I don't see that perception "results" from self-awareness at all. If
either is fundamental it is undoubtedly perception.
> is something that goes far beyond that of the animals
Very often the perception of animals goes far beyond that of humans.
>... and yes we 'come' from (originate from) the animals,
>and so 'yes' we can easily be purely animalistic and totally automatic
>in everything we do just by reverting to type sort of thing
We don't have to revert at all. We still ARE purely animalistic and
totally automatic in a great many of our basic functions and reactions
to the world around us, but now have the *additional* factor of
self-awareness which itself now applies to everything we are:
perception, emotions, capacity to reason.
>, but then
>that 'increased' level of self-awareness in humans also takes us away
>from the purely animal + automatic state, even if the rest of our
>body/selves (the other 99% of our animal-selves:) is still running on
>auto... it's that 1% (or whatever it actually is) that's making all
>the difference
Yes, I agree with this.
> - the point being once we departed from the totally
>autonomic/unconscious ways of the animal in terms of our degree of
>self-awareness
Okay, but I don't quite like the word 'depart'. I think we still have
all the unconscious factors in play, yet on top of that we have ADDED
new functionality. In many ways the old and the new are in conflict,
and in many ways they harmonize. This makes for enormous complexity.
>, we kinda broke the rule-book in terms of what we can
>and can't do with ourselves - plus once the rebel (i.e. humanity)
>started breaking the rules, he kinda finds himself in completely new +
>unexplored territory where nothing is really nailed down and/or can be
>taken for granted kinda thing...
Yes. We agree on this basic view.
>In the sense I was talking about wrt dreaming, it is not possible to
>be god even of ourselves in the real world. There are too many
>unknown variables and too many potential forces impinging upon
>individual human action. Thus, the idea that we can be god even of
>ourselves is, to me, just another illusion, probably not something to
>shoot for.
>
>### - on the grand-scale of things, yes + agreed - but becoming
>masters of our own 'perception' isn't really that far fetched imho...
>i.e. we know for a fact that awareness & perception can be made to
>change from its otherwise tendency to remain fixed - and not only
>that, but-that one can, with practice, learn to perceive that
>'altered' awareness in as steady a manner as we normally do the fixed
>one (e.g. such as in lucid dreaming for example) - and while this
>might not exactly constitute being 'god' over our awareness,
>nevertheless it's a good start;)
I might agree were it not for how you seem to equate perception of the
external world via the senses with perception of the internal world
created within your mind. While those two 'modes' of perceiving
utilize many of the same brain systems, they are *very* different in
character. That 'modality' of perception makes all the difference in
the world. One may well come close to being god over the internal
world within the mind, but one does not have any significant ability
to alter external sense perception, other than to turn it off by going
within or by surfacing from such an induced altered state. Once back
in the world we all share, your perception is just like mine,
automatic and involuntary.
>Sometimes I fear you and I come from too different a place
>to even talk. :-)
>
>### - smile, i know what ya' mean sometimes!:) - plus in some ways we
>'are' very different... but then in others (and probably referring
>back to the 99% part;) we can't be all that different really - i.e. we
>share a whole world if nothing else, not to mention several languages
>from that world ('reason' being my favourite;)
We grind different axes. I don't think reason is a language. Reason
includes the capacity for making and using languages. But I do not
think that is all it is. Reason intimately relates to self-awareness.
It might even be described as "the analytical side" of self-awareness
(whereas other "sides" of self-awareness might described as "sensual",
"aesthetic", or "emotive" to give a few examples...). Reason is that
aspect of consciousness in which we reflectively differentiate among
various aspects of experience to draw conclusions about experience.
Therefore, in ANY experience wherein one is analyzing and/or drawing
ANY conclusions about what one is experiencing, one is utilizing
reason. In my experience, this includes ANY self-aware state, be it
an altered-state or a common one.
If you look up the word in a dictionary you find it has several
meanings which are all related. To have "a reason" for doing
something is to have a basis or motive for what you have chosen to do.
One utilizes reason in analyzing experience in order to pinpoint goals
and arrive at procedures for reaching them. But reasoning involves
more than simply becoming aware of physical impulses and taking the
path of least resistance to satisfaction. When one reasons it
involves apprehending meaningful sequences, causes and effects. One
utilizes one's power to reason to go beyond experiencing life to
arrive at knowledge of the processes and relationships underlying the
experiences of life.
Reason goes beyond words. It is not based entirely in words, or
syntax, or semantics.
To illustrate, consider a case (thought experiment if you will)
regarding the apprehension of relationships. Suppose we brought an
alien from a world utterly different to our own into a room containing
certain objects, and suppose this alien has never seen any of the
objects and comes from a non-technological planet so vastly different
from our own that, in particular, he has ... never seen water boil,
has never seen a clock, and has never seen anything like a TV set ...
but ... suppose this alien has the ability to reason. So you bring
him into the room where, among other things, a big clock with hands is
ticking off minutes and hours and the burner of a stove is turned on
under a beaker of water. Further suppose that at the moment the
clock strikes an hour it begins to chime and at that same moment you
turn on a TV set by pressing a button on a remote control, right at
the very moment the water begins to boil. At the moment the clock
stops chiming, you simultaneously turn off the stove burner and push
the button on the remote to turn off the TV. You immediately place
the beaker of water on a golden pedestal in the center of the room
where it ceases to boil, then you turn and walk out. Reason is what
might eventually allow that alien -- in the absense of language and
without knowing what any of those items are, IF allowed to experiment
further with the items in the room -- to determine that what CAUSES
water to boil is to place it on the burner and turn it on, rather than
to push a button on the remote, have a clock strike a particular
symbol, make a noise by chiming, or have a TV set turn on.
You might say, ha, it's obvious because the stove and the beaker of
water were in close relationship. But that is merely one of the
things reason taught you, to look first to objects in close proximity
for causal relationships, and it does not always hold. What if the
burner were sitting on top of the TV instead, and the issue was to
determine what caused the TV to come on, the boiling of the water, or
the pressing of the remote button from across the room?
One possible general definition of reason, then is: the capacity to
distinguish and utilize meaningful patterns. One immediately moves
from distinguishing and utilizing meaningful patterns to creating
them.
Reason transcends language. It transcends naming things. It
transcends "inventories". It is a more general capacity.
>I suppose it is an interesting question: to just what degree can
>human beings become self-aware?
>
>### - indeed, THE question! - i.e. rumour has it that we can go all
>the way, and/or at least to some seemingly emancipating degree ;)
Hmmm. And how often do put your trust in "rumour" and make the
objective of a "rumour" into THE question? Smacks of just the kind
of imbalance and fanaticism I now avoid. And I wonder if it does not
lead to obsessive striving to "alter" that which may well need little
altering.
The degree of human self-awareness may well be naturally and slowly
gravitating toward a point where it is best suited for constructive
action, quite apart from any such obsessive focus. Do you suppose we
all worked our asses off for centuries striving to improve our vision?
Or did the vision of humans gradually become refined over millennia,
in response to the changing needs of our species?
What if a better endeavor for humans is simply to more wisely utilize
the degree of self-awareness the majority have already obtained? This
is just an example of the kind of question I believe you may be
totally disregarding by assuming that how one might increase
self-awareness is THE question.
>And when and how would a particular
>aspect of becoming more self-aware even be useful? (I would not
>assume it always is...)
>
>### - well let's not assume that's it's useful at ALL in the
>reasonable/logical sense, mainly because an increased awareness
>implies also an increase in one's perceived options to choose from,
>the greater usually being inclusive of the lesser in the sense that
>the lesser is then perceived in a new light
Indeed, I would not assume it is useful, or even beneficial at ALL,
not in any sense, and certainly would not assume either that any new
options it MAY (or may not) bring would be in any way "greater" than
options we already have -- especially not when we are speaking so
hypothetically. If such new options even exist, they may well be akin
to adding a 51st flavor called 'purple-haze' to the 50 time-tested
delightful flavors we already have at the ice cream shop. Once
again, demonstrate some new capacity or some new option of
*significance*, then perhaps people (other than the gullible) will
want to pursue it...
> (e.g. just like suddenly
>becoming lucid in a dream whereon one finds a totally new agenda that
>has nothing whatsoever to do with the former non-lucid aspect of the
>dream because it's been superseded/transcended)
Well, I have come full circle on this one. I now quite often find
non-lucid dreams both more meaningful and more entertaining than lucid
ones. Thus, I consider neither to "transcend" the other. They are
simply different modes of dreaming, one conscious and one unconscious.
I do not simply assume that "conscious" is "better". And I've already
explained how I find the "new agenda" of conscious dreaming to feel
somewhat unexciting as compared to the real world. Now let me add my
opinion that often ordinary dreams are also more exciting than lucid
ones, perhaps for the reason that one is fully "taken in" by them,
thus making the experience in many ways more intense. Because one is
fully "taken in" by a non-lucid dream, very often the *emotional*
impact is MORE profound than that to be obtained in a lucid dream.
Hence, often regular dreams are more meaningful psychologically than
lucid dreams.
>In fact, being self-aware of the wrong things
>would be as likely to drive one mad as anything else. One problem is
>that in any discussion of self-awareness people always get lost in
>stuff like "dreaming and meditation". Every time they even ponder the
>question. Drat.
>
>### - well i think it's par for the course really isn't it... i.e.
>meditation is 'famous' for altering one's awareness in some seemingly
>controlled way, and lucid dreaming a fairly commonly known +
>experienced (psychic) phenomena - plus there's also a connection in
>that practitioners have apparently reported/claimed reaching levels of
>lucid dreaming (WILD's probably) from within their meditations
>(curious no?)
Not really. I think the states are obviously related, or at least
potentially related. It's like if you push meditation beyond a
certain threshold you click over into some of the brain states more
commonly associated with sleep stages. But perhaps we can cut this
meandering discussion a bit shorter just by asking the question of ...
what is it exactly that you would like to become more aware OF, Mr.
Slider? :-)
When (and if) I see anything beyond a bunch of semi-anti-social people
sitting in their little rooms dreaming grandiose dreams come out of
any practice of meditation/dreaming, THEN I might become intrigued.
But I suspect it will remain just that, and nothing more.
>It strikes me that it may be very nearly an unexplored angle, in
>general. Almost every person who tries to "expand awareness" goes off
>the deep-end and winds up with a bunch of insane crap.
>
>### - of course they do... i.e. it's apparently very easy to just get
>completely lost in the woods out there (and which imho probably
>accounts for the majority of humanity still living/hiding in a cave
>kinda thing:) - not to mention the limitations of language to
>adequately express/describe something that's possibly beyond such
>attempts at limitation anyway - that in that sense: Reason 'itself'
>becomes (is revealed to be) part of the lesser principle as awareness
>expands - that the greater is always inclusive of the lesser and not
>the other way around (which imho basically means that reason can't get
>its hands on 'things' without becoming corrupt, or corrupting it, in
>the process)
Hmmmm. Honestly that sounds like self-serving rubbish to me. :-)
You have merely asserted the existence of some "greater" awareness.
That's what every guru on the block does. It's very possible that
most of the "insights" one arrives at in altered brain states are not
adequately expressible in a meaningful way for the simple reason that
they are nonsensical, therefore in reality insignificant (and again, I
have a lot of experience with this, it isn't merely theoretical).
When I SEE someone in "greater states of awareness" do ANYTHING of
major significance in this world I might change my mind. But I sure
haven't seen it yet...
See the gist of it always comes down to this, Slider. You're all
talk. You're some lonely weirdo sitting in his little room all the
time (not a crime of itself -- I'm a lot like that too), and you've
fallen in love with a few unusual aspects of your own "awareness" and
now practically worship them. But ... what can you DO with this
allegedly "greater awareness" besides repeatedly claim it is
"greater"? :-) Try to look at it objectively for moment, and can
you not see how ridiculous that appears?
>Brief
>speculation: a good starting point might be to catalog as many
>examples as we can of facets of living that humans ARE self-aware of
>that other animals are not (or do not seem to be), and then see where
>each of those facets might be expanded in some realistic way. Then
>again, human self-awareness is probably slowly changing naturally as
>well. There may be no need at all to "work on it" beyond the
>pragmatics of being as cautious as possible wrt the long-term
>consequences of human actions.
>
>### - (wrt?)
'With regard to', or 'with respect to'
> in the light of the greater being inclusive of the lesser
>etc (e.g. the waking-up and becoming lucid in a dream effect kinda
>thing) - how about first expanding one's awareness, and only 'then'
>getting the gen from that 'new' pov instead of the other way around?
Because the real world has real problems we always have to deal with
NOW, and because you are saying first attain to some hypothetical,
unmeasurable (and possibly delusional) state before concerning
ourselves fully with what we know to be real and must deal with now.
Maybe that IS a big part of what is wrong with this world, though --
that most of the people sit around in some philosophical / religious /
meditative "trance" and ignore the real problems of the world until
they become insanely severe. Dang. :-)
>(it's also possible information gathered that way may 'only' make
>sense 'from' that expanded pov)
We covered already that "anything is possible but so what".
I'm so totally done with that angle...
>Actually, come to think of it, I do know of one new way of possibly
>becoming more "self-aware" which has not been very well-explored yet,
>namely... as we become more knowledgeable of the way our brain
>functions it IS possible to scientifically develop actual exercises
>for different brain functions. I see this as a future area of
>development.
>
>### - personally i hope not, at least in the sense that it seems to me
>that that's maybe just a sure-fired way of creating even 'more'
>monsters and unleashing them on the world... i.e. considering the
>dangers, i personally hope that this so-called 'age of reason' is just
>another passing phase on the way to... well, something a bit wiser
>anyway:)
So you're interested in hypotheticals that cannot be demonstrated to
be of real use or benefit to anyone, and are not interested in
improving the functionality of what you really have sitting between
your ears. Odd. And you live in hopes that reason is going to pass
out of existence (or at least prominence) somehow. Well, you are
indeed living in a dream world, Neo. :-) That ain't gonna happen.
>Bottom line Slider: I'm not sure that trying to become more 'god of
>oneself' is even a worthwhile goal, relative to other possible goals.
>
>### - well there's 'something' to be said for self-control isn't there
>(i.e. people with little or no self-control for example tend to have
>limited options in life and stuff etc no?)
True. I took 'god of oneself' to mean "total control of one's life".
And I say that is an unattainable ideal of doubtful value. It may be
much better to simply become adept at dealing with controlling
whatever one can while also becoming adept at dealing with BEING
controlled by whatever impinges upon one's life (in addition becoming
adept at controlling aspects of OTHERS' lives). Self schmelf. Let's
all get out of the friggin' bubble and acknowledge the innumerable
effects in every life external to the self.
>### - definitions are always a problem... plus where one goes with an
>expanded/expanding awareness is still a very open area
Yeah. But let's face it dude, people have been meditating for
thousands of years. Did it ever do much for this planet? Perhaps
you think so. I don't. Science has completely transformed this world
and our conceptions of who and what we are, in just a few hundred
years. Let's give science and applied reason another thousand years,
and then, my friend, you will have to stand back and say WHOA!
Because the accomplishments have been, and will be ... so abundant.
A thousand years from now we may well be halfway across the galaxy.
>Just to give an example of what might be a better approach, one might
>instead try to become a "god" of interacting effectively with other
>beings to accomplish major goals in the world. LOL! Certainly
>wouldn't be my specialty...
>
>### - (smile:) well at least you're able to joke about it, which in my
>book basically means that you certainly have some 'choice' in the
>matter, no? (in other words i think you can be nice if you want to -
>you know the difference anyway:)
Nice, huh? I wasn't talking about being nice. :-) Most of the
people I really deal with in the real world think I'm 'nice' most of
the time. I was talking about *accomplishing* something worthwhile in
the world.
> One of
>the main things 'reason' has told me is that 'reason' is the tip of
>the iceberg of a human LIFE (I've just been belaboring that very
>issue). Emotion isn't reason, and is much more ancient than reason.
>Most of the various systems of my physical body, including the systems
>of perception, aren't reason, and ditto, they are more ancient. So
>saying that 'reason' will not admit to anything beyond itself is
>simply incorrect.
>
>### - not that it wont or can't... just that it doesn't like to? -
>i.e. it just feels safe (in-control + secure) holding/waving the baton
>kinda thing...
I have already pointed out that the way our brains are wired, the
tendency is for strong emotion to override reason, and not vice-versa.
That is not my opinion. It's a fact. Reason is the new-comer, and is
in a somewhat precarious position.
>Reason is obviously the newcomer on the block, and is obviously not
>everything, but it IS largely responsible for the quantum leap we have
>taken on this planet.
>
>### - agreed, the only question being was it a leap forward or
>backwards:)
That is mainly a question to you. :-) Before the dominance of
reason, we had not a clue who we were, where we were, or what we were
capable of. We weren't really all that different from all the other
animals living and dying here for millions of years.
>My problem with where you come from is how you
>keep insinuating there must be something "spiritual" out there which
>is "beyond reason".
>
>### - well okay let's drop the terms spiritual & reason (i.e. i don't
>particularly like them either, plus we can acknowledge they're just
>terms we've 'borrowed' from the world that 'allude' to certain
>commonly-known aspects of awareness etc) and just deal in things in
>terms of 'altered' states of awareness and perception which i
>personally believe to be more accurate (expanded/contracted, different
>levels etc etc, are all then just relative terms and thus meaningless
>in themselves)
Okay, so what are you talking about? :-) LOL!
>But why single out reason?
>
>### - because from observation reason (an aspect of awareness) seems
>to be a whole little world in and of itself - a mutually 'exclusive'
>world which is thus tightly sealed from the inside (e.g. you must have
>had conversations in the past with people who were boringly logical in
>a very circular manner - maybe because they were just learning about
>logic etc) - the point being that reason per-se, although wider, also
>has it's strict limitations and/or clear boundary... a boundary that's
>surpassed just as soon as one's awareness alters/expands, revealing
>the workings (+ domination) of reason to have just been part of a
>particular state of awareness or mind-set...
You do not have to keep repeating this dogma over and over.
It was part of CC's schtick, thus I assure you I am thoroughly
familiar with these claims. The point is, they are JUST claims. You
have to accomplish something to indicate you are doing more than
yammering. What have you learned with all this "greater awareness"?
Why can you not awe the world with your expanded knowledge? Or your
expanded abilities? Why is it all always only talk? And I do not
mean to put all this on your back personally, Slider. Why can't
ANYONE do more than talk?
>Is this
>"spirituality" beyond physical perception? Is it beyond emotion?
>What makes you so sure it's there at all?
>
>### - do we perceive in a lucid dream 'physically' with our 'physical'
>eyes?
Yes and no. We do not see only with our eyes even in external
reality. In dreaming, sensory input from the eyes is mostly shut
down, but many of the same visual centers of the brain which are
utilized in processing waking perception from the eyes ARE engaged in
creating the imagery of dreaming.
>- when we touch something in a dream are we feeling it through
>our physical nerves?
Ditto. You are utilizing some of the same centers of the brain which
process touch in waking, while external sensory input is largely shut
down.
> - IS all perception purely physical? (+ no doubt
>it affects the physical and vice-versa) - or is not perception itself
>maybe even a totally psychic phenomena? - these are hard questions
>indeed my-man - but let's keep askin' them anyway:)
What reason do you have for believing perception is a "psychic
phenomenon"? There exists volumes of evidence on how disabling
certain areas of the brain disables certain specific aspects of
perception (in both dreaming and waking, btw). Do you have ANY
evidence that there is ANY type of perception which cannot be
associated with a physical structure in the brain? Let me answer that
for you. No, you don't.
>You clearly see how people
>use "God" as a crutch, but do you fail to suspect your own crutch may
>be similar (in terms of possibly being imaginary) if a bit more
>sophisticated?
>
>### - i hear you... but if (for example) lucid dreaming IS then say
>just totally imaginary, then it's also a kind of projection OF the
>imagination no? - and thus actually more in the realm of a so-called
>psychic phenomena
Okay. If by "psychic phenomena" you merely mean that which exists
only in the mind, then of course dreaming is "psychic phenomena". But
if you mean that which is not associated with the physical body, then
you are baying at the moon.
>What you call 'psychic' is itself well-grounded, probably totally so,
>in physical processes, as Hobson could easily show you. Obviously
>'reason' is ALSO struggling to explain dreaming in terms of some
>"projection of the mind" or 'psychic phenomenon', now isn't it? :-)
>
>### - heh heh, i take your point, but then we have to allude to these
>things 'somehow' while we talk about it don't we;) - plus you can't
>just press a button and lucid dream, it requires some particular sort
>of internal 'manipulation' of awareness acquired through long
>discipline/practice & familiarity with that gives rise to that state
>of being & experience...
This isn't correct. Lucid dreaming just *happens* to a most people
who experience it, without any sort of training or discipline. My
father went lucid in dreaming occasionally, and he had no practice or
discipline whatsoever (at least, not of any spiritual or esoteric
kind).
>### - didn't perhaps know they could as-yet scientifically discern
>between that of ordinary dreams and 'lucid' dreaming - plus they can't
>exactly get IN there and tell you what you were dreaming about and
>stuff, only that a bunch of needles were bouncing around recording
>brain-wave activity and unconscious eye-movements 'conducive' perhaps
>to lucid dreaming, but never what you subjectively experienced...
Dang man. I can't believe you have never even bothered to study up on
this. I have excerpted Laberge's account of his early proofs of
lucid dreaming for you:
"From the very beginning, I had been interested in the possibility,
first raised by Charles Tart, of communication from the lucid dream to
the outside world, while the dream was happening. The problem was,
since most of the dreamer's body is paralyzed during REM sleep, how
could the dreamer send such a message? What might the lucid dreamer be
able to do within the dream that could be observed or measured by
scientists? A plan suggested itself to me. There is one obvious
exception to this muscular paralysis, since eye movements are in no
way inhibited during REM sleep. After all, it is the occurrence of
rapid eye movements that gives this stage of sleep its name.
Earlier dream studies had shown that there is sometimes a precise
correspondence between the direction of dreamers' observable eye
movements and the direction they are looking in their dreams. In one
remarkable example, a subject was awakened from REM sleep after making
a series of about two dozen regular horizontal eye movements. He
reported that in his dream he had been watching a Ping-Pong game, and
just before being awakened he had been following a long volley with
his dream gaze.
I knew that lucid dreamers could freely look in any direction they
wished while in a lucid dream, because I had done this myself. It
occurred to me that by moving my (dream) eyes in a recognizable
pattern, I might be able to send a signal to the outside world when I
was having a lucid dream. I tried this out in the first lucid dream
that I recorded: I moved my dream gaze up, down, up, down, up, to the
count of five. As far as I knew at the time, this was the first signal
deliberately transmitted from the dream world. The only trouble, of
course, is that there was no one in the outside world to record it!
What I needed was a dream lab. I knew Stanford University had an
excellent one under the direction of the sleep and dream research
pioneer, Dr. William C. Dement. I made inquiries in the summer of 1977
and found a researcher, Dr. Lynn Nagel, at the Stanford University
Sleep Research Center who was very interested in the prospects of
studying lucid dreams in the laboratory.
In September of the same year, I applied to Stanford University,
proposing to study lucid dreams as part of a Ph.D. program in
psychophysiology. My proposal was approved, and in the fall of 1977 I
started my work on lucid dreams. ...
[...snip...]
Finally the night arrived, and Lynn hooked me up and watched the
polygraph recording while I slept. I had been hoping that Friday the
13th would prove to be my lucky night, and that turned out to be the
case.
I slept very well indeed, and after seven and a half hours in bed had
my first lucid dream in the lab. A moment before, I had been
dreamingå‚ut then I suddenly realized that I must be asleep because I
couldn't see, feel, or hear anything. I recalled with delight that I
was sleeping in the laboratory. The image of what seemed to be the
instruction booklet for a vacuum cleaner or some such appliance
floated by. It struck me as mere flotsam on the stream of
consciousness, but as I focused on it and tried to read the writing,
the image gradually stabilized and I had the sensation of opening my
(dream) eyes. Then my hands appeared, with the rest of my dream body,
and I was looking at the booklet in bed. My dream room was a
reasonably good copy of the room in which I was actually asleep. Since
I now had a dream body I decided to do the eye movements that we had
agreed upon as a signal. I moved my finger in a vertical line in front
of me, following it with my eyes. But I had become very excited over
being able to do this at last, and the thought disrupted my dream so
that it faded a few seconds later.
Afterward, we observed two large eye movements on the polygraph record
just before I awakened from a thirteen-minute REM period. Here,
finally, was objective evidence that at least one lucid dream had
taken place during what was clearly REM sleep! I sent a note to the
1979 meeting of the APSS in Tokyo [ Association for the
Psychophysiological Study of Sleep -Jer ] mentioning this and other
evidence suggesting that lucid dreams are associated with REM sleep.
Of course, I did not expect anyone to be convinced of the reality of
lucid dreaming by this brief summary. But I wanted to share our
results with other dream researchers as quickly as possible.
Our early success was not easy to repeat. The next six nights I spent
in the sleep lab yielded no lucid dreams. I had not yet developed MILD
(Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams), the method that allowed me to
induce lucid dreams on command... After I had become proficient at
MILD we tried again, and in September of 1979 I had two more lucid
dreams at the Stanford sleep lab. I was still having many more lucid
dreams at home than at the lab, which was probably due to the fact
that I was more relaxed about it at home. So we arranged to install a
polygraph at my home for six weeks. During this Christmas vacation, I
successfully captured another dozen lucid dreams, and again, my eye
movement signals showed them all to have taken place during REM sleep.
By 1980, word was getting around about our interest in lucid dreaming,
and several other lucid dreamers volunteered to try signaling lucid
dreams in the lab. Roy Smith, a resident in psychiatry, was the first
to succeed; his lucid dreams also took place in REM sleep. Two women,
Beverly Kedzierski, a computer scientist, and Laurie Cook, a dancer,
completed our initial group of lucid-dream subjects. We referred to
ourselves as oneironauts, (pronounced "oh-nigh-ro-knots"), a word I
coined from the Greek roots, meaning explorers of the inner world of
dreams. The results of these first experiments formed the major part
of my Ph.D. dissertation, Lucid Dreaming: An Exploratory Study of
Consciousness during Sleep.
Let us return now to the APSS and the story of my efforts to publish
this new method of communication from the dream state and proof that
lucid dreaming can occur during unequivocal sleep.
It was too late for Lynn Nagel and me to present our results to the
1980 APSS meeting. Instead, we submitted a brief report of our
preliminary findings for publication in the journal Science in March
1980, entitled "Lucid dreaming verified by volitional communication
during REM sleep." We were excited about our discoveries and eagerly
awaited the response.
Two months later we received a reply from Science. The editors of
scientific journals base their decisions largely upon the opinions of
anonymous reviewers, specialists in the relevant area. One of our two
reviewers had written, "This is an excellent report, giving a new
discovery validating lucid dreaming under laboratory conditions. The
implications of lucid dreaming are interesting and important, and a
major new field of research could flow from this discovery. The report
is very clearly and concisely written, and I give it my highest
recommendation for publication."
The second reviewer's response was, however, a polar opposite. Viewing
our paper in the light of Rechtschaffen's work, this reviewer found it
impossibly "...difficult to imagine subjects simultaneously both
dreaming their dreams and signaling them to others," as was said of
another study. It seemed he was basically unable to accept, on what
were essentially philosophical grounds, that our results were
possible. Consequently he managed to come up with a number of
"interpretive problems" all possible explanations of how we might have
arrived at our obviously mistaken conclusions. Naturally, he did not
recommend publication, and the editor deferred to his judgement.
In September, we submitted a revision of our paper to Science, having
extended our original study with twice as many lucid dreamers and
observations and having clarified the points the second reviewer had
found problematic. But the paper was rejected again, on the basis of
what were once more inherently philosophical objections. The problem
seemed to be that our reviewers用resumably members of the APSS simply
did not believe lucid dreaming was really possible.
Hoping for a fresh consideration, we sent the paper to Nature, the
British equivalent of Science. However, it was returned unreviewed.
According to the editors of Nature, the topic of lucid dreaming was
"not of sufficient general interest" to merit consideration! To make
a long story short, after six months we finally did get our paper
published in a psychological journal, Perceptual and Motor Skills.
I have emphasized at some length the initial difficulties we
encountered, in order to bring a certain fact into clear relief: as
late as 1980, dream researchers in general, and members of the APSS in
particular, were nearly unanimous in rejecting lucid dreaming as a
bona fide phenomenon of sleep, REM or otherwise. Lucid dreams were
evidently still viewed as aberrant chimeras, brief daydreamlike
intrusions of wakefulness into disturbed sleep; but not in any case as
something sleep researchers need concern themselves with.
In June 1981, the same month our article appeared, I presented four
papers on lucid dreaming to the twenty-first annual APSS meeting in
Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Happily, by now, our data were strong
enough to convince even the most skeptical that lucid dreaming was a
bona fide phenomenon of unambiguous REM sleep. For lucid dreaming, the
weight of the evidence was finally in proportion to the strangeness of
the fact.
After all the resistance we had encountered, I was at first surprised
and then gratified to observe the positive response my presentations
received. Several scientists told me in private that before seeing
our data they had believed lucid dreaming impossible, but were now
compelled to change their minds. Among these were some who had
previously expressed their disbelief in print; I was greatly
encouraged to see these signs of sincerity and openness to new ideas,
and gained a lasting respect for these scientists. Such openness is
regrettably not always the rule in science, no more, for that matter,
than it is in any other area of human endeavor.
But this does illustrate something about how science works, when it
works properly...
Lucid dreaming, once associated in the minds of many scientists with
the occult and parapsychology, had become an accepted part of
mainstream science and as such, a legitimate topic for research. This
was an important step toward broader exploration and the development
of a science of lucid dreaming.
***
That was 20 years ago.
>> - and because basically
>>it's an experience beyond the realm of logic & reason per-se
>
>Why do you say this?
>
>
>### - basically because lucid dreaming (as an altered state of
>awareness) occurs even in 'spite' of the attempts of reason & logic to
>nail it all down to just some bunch of chemicals in our head running
>around doing their thing, and because it apparently existed before
>reason even appeared on the scene? - i.e. lucid dreaming is an aspect
>of 'awareness' - not an aspect of logic & reason
In my opinion, what you just said makes little sense. It is some
kind of strange rationalization.
Because lucid dreaming *requires* one to first conclude that one is
dreaming, as opposed to being awake, reason *must* be active in order
for one to become "lucid" in dreaming at all. And in my considerable
experience, this is exactly the case. Self-awareness and the ability
to reason are intimately related.
>I have no problem reasoning or using logic in
>lucid dreaming. Do you? Indeed, that is the biggest part of being
>"lucid" in dreaming, all of a sudden having my ordinary self-awareness
>and reason once again *available* to me within the dream state.
>
>### - seems like that doesn't it... and yet reason isn't exactly
>perfect in that state, rather it's like certain aspects OF reason
>allow for more control over the dream situation, whereas really it's
>only riding shotgun?
Because many other brain systems are still in their REM state
conditions (or you would become fully awake again).
> (e.g. keeping the lucid dream going is usually a
>matter of not becoming 'too' rational in the dream lest it wakes you
>right up - reason is there alright, but it's kinda held back slightly
>in order to allow the dream to continue - which is something that
>takes a while to find the balance of + put into practice)
It would take more research to draw firm conclusions here, but I think
what snaps you out of dreaming more than becoming "too rational" is
that in lucidity, which is a condition hovering somewhere between
waking and REM, there can easily arise a tendency for the brain to
start returning more of the brain systems that control the physical
body to full waking condition as well. When that happens, external
sensory input returns, and you lose the perception of the dream,
because the returning normal external sensory input "overrides it" and
"pushes it away". And that is also exactly how it *feels* to me when
it happens.
>What makes you think there is some "part of us" able to do things we
>do not yet know about? There may well be, historically, there usually
>has been, but ... if there are still such "unknown parts" to us, what
>makes you think they would necessarily be anything like what you
>imagine them to be? :-)
>
>### - because experiencing altered states of awareness is obviously
>within our capacity but not within our current vocabulary to explain?
>(excepting perhaps as something to be totally avoided;)
I really don't get what aspect of altered states you think we cannot
"explain" that is worth singling it out. I do not see that altered
states result in anything any more difficult to explain than ordinary
waking consciousness which of course is quite complex and is of yet
imperfectly understood. If one discounts fervent wishes, wild
stories, hoaxes, and claims without basis, there is little if anything
to "explain" that goes beyond trying to figure out how the brain does
what it does in general.
[...snip...]
>i.e. if there's even 'one' explorable psychic phenomena... then who's
>to say there isn't a whole 'collection' of them waiting to be
>>discovered... maybe even a whole world of things like that :)
>
>There may be. But if there are explorable "psychic phenomena", why
>would we not be able to study them and validate their existence, just
>as we have validated anti-matter and lucid dreaming?
>
>### - my point was that we can ONLY validate them in the 'same' way
>we've validated/acknowledged anti-matter & lucid dreaming because
>reason has reached its limits - and yet anti-matter is part of our
>world whether we see it or not (i.e. we know now it's there existing
>in its own kinda 'sphere' as the counter-part to the physical even
>though we can't see it)
There is no other way to "validate" anything than to discover some
bona fide effect which can really act on the world in some way, and
isn't simply a part of your fevered imagination. Otherwise you might
as well be claiming vast "powers" for sexual fantasy or artistic
imagination (which are also internal states of "awareness" but ...
hey, what do you know, can have external effects as well...). Charged
clouds, magnetic fields, radio stars, and all kinds of other phenomena
we now know a LOT about can only be detected by their effects, not
directly perceived. And we know about these things and can DO stuff
with these things ... because of reason.
If you want to keep making assertions about other kinds of
"awareness", then you need to SHOW some EFFECTS we haven't seen
before. Otherwise what you are doing is really virtually equivalent
to sexual fantasy. :-) Whoo, and it's really, really good man!!
Heh. If there are no effects, then there is nothing to talk about.
If all of the people who "expand awareness" are just weirdos that sit
in their rooms a lot meditating and dreaming, and never do anything
but die in the end like everyone else, then WHAT is there to talk
about other than your cherished illusions which I have personally
visited at length and then left behind?
Until there are ***effects*** to discuss, you and I shouldn't even
bother talking. :-) You know where I stand, and I know where you
stand.
>our state of awareness must have been radically
>different before reason came along and stole the whole show, no?
In case you haven't noticed, there are millions of other animals still
running around which are much more ancient than man, and none of those
animals reasons as we do. I think you want to return to a "paradise
of awareness" that never existed. I believe it is very likely only an
escapist fantasy. I could even assert that if we do not talk until
you can demonstrate some unusual facet of awareness that has ANY
effect outside of your own head, that ... we will never talk. Since
you seem so convinced, and seem willing to spend your entire life on
the dubious endeavor, it'd be up to you to prove me wrong.
-Jeremy
Rbb
"Jeremy Donovan" <jerem...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:86357935.03052...@posting.google.com...
The sin of naivity?
Like a galaxy is a flower that grows on that .
It can be.
slider
Jeremy wrote
> consequently this higher level
OF self-awareness opens doors to us humans that the animals are
> barred from BECAUSE of their level (or lack) of self-awareness?
Right. But it isn't perception that is the extra factor. Most of our
systems of perception are ancient. Many animals have superior senses
to humans in one way or another.
### - aye, and if we're only talking about the 'hard-wired' systems of
perception such as hearing, feeling and seeing etc i'd agree... but my
point was that perception in 'humans' goes much further than the
strictly functional level to that of acquiring several more
meanings?
e.g. it can also mean something more abstract like how say a
'situation' is/was perceived for example no? (i.e. perception in
humans goes further than what the animals do with it on their level)
Self-awareness and reason are the
main factors that separate humanity.
### - self-awareness primarily seeing as reason came along a bit
later? - otherwise we agree - that is, unless you're indirectly
stating that self-awareness and reason are synonymous terms
>i.e. that what makes us so different is that self-awareness & its
>resulting perception in humans
I don't see that perception "results" from self-awareness at all. If
either is fundamental it is undoubtedly perception.
### - aye, but my point was that in humans developing this more
mental-approach they've taken things like perception far beyond the
animal average/fundamentals - e.g. perception in humans has become
something that can be groomed, shaped + trained etc BECAUSE of this
higher degree of self-awareness
> is something that goes far beyond that of the animals
Very often the perception of animals goes far beyond that of humans.
### - in their 'physical' senses yes... but when it comes to a
'mental' appreciation + perception of the world humans are very
different in what they do, we've taken raw animal awareness to another
level:)
>... and yes we 'come' from (originate from) the animals,
>and so 'yes' we can easily be purely animalistic and totally
automatic in everything we do just by reverting to type sort of thing
We don't have to revert at all. We still ARE purely animalistic and
totally automatic in a great many of our basic functions and reactions
to the world around us, but now have the *additional* factor of
self-awareness which itself now applies to everything we are:
perception, emotions, capacity to reason.
### - okay then... plus yes, in the sense that an increased
self-awareness in humans has broken the bounds of our strictly
fundamental + animal perception of the world... the point being that
'reverting to type' meant not exploring (or refusing to explore) that
extra capacity in its entirety - e.g. just like you said: how far does
(or can) self-awareness go + now we can add to that: what are the
implications of increased self-awareness ON our perception of the
world + how far does 'that' go too...
>, but then
that 'increased' level of self-awareness in humans also takes us away
from the purely animal + automatic state, even if the rest of our
body/selves (the other 99% of our animal-selves:) is still running on
auto... it's that 1% (or whatever it actually is) that's making all
>the difference
Yes, I agree with this.
### - then i think we agree on many things really... e.g. that an
increase in self-awareness in humans is what distinguishes them from
the animals - and that this increased self-awareness directly (+
consequently) affects one's basic + purely animal perception of the
world by raising it to another level altogether - the level of the
mind - a self-conscious awareness
> - the point being once we departed from the totally
autonomic/unconscious ways of the animal in terms of our degree of
>self-awareness
Okay, but I don't quite like the word 'depart'. I think we still have
all the unconscious factors in play, yet on top of that we have ADDED
new functionality. In many ways the old and the new are in conflict,
and in many ways they harmonize. This makes for enormous complexity.
### - or perhaps it could be said that as humans we somehow
broke-though into something else again that can be done with awareness
& perception (i.e. in that sense we departed from the ways of the
animals at some point in our history) - i.e. a small light bulb
came-on in humanity that's changed everything and now everything we
do is more complex, including what we can do with our perception/mind
>
we kinda broke the rule-book in terms of what we can
and can't do with ourselves - plus once the rebel (i.e. humanity)
started breaking the rules, he kinda finds himself in completely new+
unexplored territory where nothing is really nailed down and/or canbe
>taken for granted kinda thing...
Yes. We agree on this basic view.
### - well that's cool then, and because that basically leaves
everything wide open from the pov of people like us (personally i
mean) just arriving on the scene... plus from that pov we can then
afford to look at everything (including of course reason and the way
it works/tends to work etc) without bias or preference, and the way it
all (separately & together) moulds and affects perception
>
In the sense I was talking about wrt dreaming, it is not possible to
be god even of ourselves in the real world. There are too many
unknown variables and too many potential forces impinging upon
individual human action. Thus, the idea that we can be god even of
ourselves is, to me, just another illusion, probably not something to
>shoot for.
>
> that one can, with practice, learn to perceive that
'altered' awareness in as steady a manner as we normally do the fixed
one (e.g. such as in lucid dreaming for example) - and while this
might not exactly constitute being 'god' over our awareness,
>nevertheless it's a good start;)
I might agree were it not for how you seem to equate perception of the
external world via the senses with perception of the internal world
created within your mind.
### - well they definitely seem to be linked don't they (i.e. is the
brain the core processor maybe?) - plus it's also a bit of a
push-me-pull-you situation in that the one can seemingly affect the
other on more subtle levels; such as when one's say in a great mood
and the world starts lookin' all lovely and rosey etc - and/or the
reverse of that - so 'feelings' ALSO affect one's perception of the
world and oneself making the whole thing so utterly 'complex'
especially when combined with the effects upon perception of any
mental realisations
While those two 'modes' of perceiving
utilize many of the same brain systems, they are *very* different in
character. That 'modality' of perception makes all the difference in
the world. One may well come close to being god over the internal
world within the mind, but one does not have any significant ability
to alter external sense perception, other than to turn it off by going
within or by surfacing from such an induced altered state. Once back
in the world we all share, your perception is just like mine,
automatic and involuntary.
### - and yet this automatic (i would say routine) perception of the
world and oneself also changes not only over time but also depending
on the 'experiences' one has in life, no? - thus making perception
something that can even be very personal and unique
We grind different axes. I don't think reason is a language. Reason
includes the capacity for making and using languages. But I do not
think that is all it is. Reason intimately relates to self-awareness.
It might even be described as "the analytical side" of self-awareness
(whereas other "sides" of self-awareness might described as "sensual",
"aesthetic", or "emotive" to give a few examples...). Reason is that
aspect of consciousness in which we reflectively differentiate among
various aspects of experience to draw conclusions about experience.
Therefore, in ANY experience wherein one is analyzing and/or drawing
ANY conclusions about what one is experiencing, one is utilizing
reason. In my experience, this includes ANY self-aware state, be it
an altered-state or a common one.
### - but that suggests that reason has 'always' existed in man to
some degree and that thus it isn't the newcomer on the block etc -
i.e. i'm sure people learned things through experience long before
reason ever came into the picture:)
If you look up the word in a dictionary you find it has several
meanings which are all related. To have "a reason" for doing
something is to have a basis or motive for what you have chosen to do.
One utilizes reason in analyzing experience in order to pinpoint goals
and arrive at procedures for reaching them. But reasoning involves
more than simply becoming aware of physical impulses and taking the
path of least resistance to satisfaction. When one reasons it
involves apprehending meaningful sequences, causes and effects. One
utilizes one's power to reason to go beyond experiencing life to
arrive at knowledge of the processes and relationships underlying the
experiences of life.
Reason goes beyond words. It is not based entirely in words, or
syntax, or semantics.
(snip the outsider alien example:)
One possible general definition of reason, then is: the capacity to
distinguish and utilize meaningful patterns. One immediately moves
from distinguishing and utilizing meaningful patterns to creating
them.
### - a rather amusing illustration heh heh, plus i must say, the
rather hasty assumption of a rational + reasonable alien imho:) - i.e.
how about a much less 'reasonable' + rational alien, who after
imitating some of your actions in an effort to understand what the
hell you're doing, burns-off one of his tentacles on the lit stove,
and now only wants to get away (or attack:) this weird animal trying
to injure it hehehe:)
Reason transcends language. It transcends naming things. It
transcends "inventories". It is a more general capacity.
### - reason isn't a 'physical' thing... it's a purely 'mental' thing
(of the mind, the human psyche - the proof is that animals don't have
it)
>
I suppose it is an interesting question: to just what degree can
>human beings become self-aware?
>
> - indeed, THE question! - i.e. rumour has it that we can go all
>the way, and/or at least to some seemingly emancipating degree ;)
Hmmm. And how often do put your trust in "rumour" and make the
objective of a "rumour" into THE question? Smacks of just the kind
of imbalance and fanaticism I now avoid. And I wonder if it does not
lead to obsessive striving to "alter" that which may well need little
altering.
### - a figure of speech only + imho it's not about putting 'trust'
into anything (except only + maybe into 'oneself' later on)
The degree of human self-awareness may well be naturally and slowly
gravitating toward a point where it is best suited for constructive
action, quite apart from any such obsessive focus. Do you suppose we
all worked our asses off for centuries striving to improve our vision?
Or did the vision of humans gradually become refined over millennia,
in response to the changing needs of our species?
### - depends on one's pov no? - e.g. you somehow manage to equate
'physical' vision with something like our growing awareness when one
may have nothing to do with the other? - i.e. i very much doubt that
our 'physical' vision has actually changed very much over the last few
hundreds of millennia, whereas awareness + our perception of the world
has obviously changed much if not completely in that time
What if a better endeavor for humans is simply to more wisely utilize
the degree of self-awareness the majority have already obtained? This
is just an example of the kind of question I believe you may be
totally disregarding by assuming that how one might increase
self-awareness is THE question.
### - possibly in the sense that since the advent of reason in humans
much rational attempts to 'box' awareness has succeeded in placing
arbitrary limits on that growing awareness in order to keep it in-line
with some more rational criteria... in other words we 'stunt'
awareness, and/or force it grow only along certain rational lines
>And when and how would a particular
aspect of becoming more self-aware even be useful? (I would not
>assume it always is...)
>
> - well let's not assume that's it's useful at ALL in the
reasonable/logical sense, mainly because an increased awareness
implies also an increase in one's perceived options to choose from,
the greater usually being inclusive of the lesser in the sense that
>the lesser is then perceived in a new light
Indeed, I would not assume it is useful, or even beneficial at ALL,
not in any sense, and certainly would not assume either that any new
options it MAY (or may not) bring would be in any way "greater" than
options we already have -- especially not when we are speaking so
hypothetically. If such new options even exist, they may well be akin
to adding a 51st flavor called 'purple-haze' to the 50 time-tested
delightful flavors we already have at the ice cream shop. Once
again, demonstrate some new capacity or some new option of
*significance*, then perhaps people (other than the gullible) will
want to pursue it...
### - or if not about 'adding' another flavour exactly, then maybe
only about extending that 1% a bit further than we 'rationally' tend
to do? (e.g. there is apparently an automatic 'restraining' of
awareness to keep it in-line with some sort of 'rational' criteria as
opposed to maybe letting it range-out further to its own more natural
conclusion) - in other words: we tend to let reason hold the reins on
our awareness/perception thus trying to make awareness & perception a
part of reason
> (e.g. just like suddenly
becoming lucid in a dream whereon one finds a totally new agenda that
has nothing whatsoever to do with the former non-lucid aspect of the
>dream because it's been superseded/transcended)
Well, I have come full circle on this one. I now quite often find
non-lucid dreams both more meaningful and more entertaining than lucid
ones. Thus, I consider neither to "transcend" the other. They are
simply different modes of dreaming, one conscious and one unconscious.
I do not simply assume that "conscious" is "better". And I've already
explained how I find the "new agenda" of conscious dreaming to feel
somewhat unexciting as compared to the real world. Now let me add my
opinion that often ordinary dreams are also more exciting than lucid
ones, perhaps for the reason that one is fully "taken in" by them,
thus making the experience in many ways more intense. Because one is
fully "taken in" by a non-lucid dream, very often the *emotional*
impact is MORE profound than that to be obtained in a lucid dream.
Hence, often regular dreams are more meaningful psychologically than
lucid dreams.
### - oh i agree alright... non-lucid dreams are the more 'compelling'
simply & solely because one doesn't actually 'realise' the situation
one's in! - that being 'awake' in a dream perforce changes everything!
(including the dream;)
>In fact, being self-aware of the wrong things
would be as likely to drive one mad as anything else. One problem is
that in any discussion of self-awareness people always get lost in
stuff like "dreaming and meditation". Every time they even ponder
>the question. Drat.
> plus there's also a connection in
that practitioners have apparently reported/claimed reaching levelsof
>lucid dreaming (WILD's probably) from within their meditations
>(curious no?)
Not really. I think the states are obviously related, or at least
potentially related. It's like if you push meditation beyond a
certain threshold you click over into some of the brain states more
commonly associated with sleep stages.
### - agreed + that would account then for meditation being a
centuries old + tried & tested method for reaching some sort of
'different' + (as rumour has it)possibly more empowering understanding
of oneself & the world around us - in other words: there appears to be
a road that 'awareness' can take to develop itself that's apparently
been known to human beings for 1000's of years - the fact that these
seemingly altered states can coincide with similar states arrived at
through natural sleep doesn't seem strange to me at all:)
But perhaps we can cut this
meandering discussion a bit shorter just by asking the question of ...
what is it exactly that you would like to become more aware OF, Mr.
Slider? :-)
### - hmmm, not easy to pin down something that only really functions
when the 'pin' has been removed? - i.e. you want a rational +
reasonable explanation for something that only really comes into its
own when reason per-se is somewhat suspended and/or withdrawn... but
the fact is that reason ITSELF changes when awareness changes/expands
and that consequently one may perceive reason in a new light after
that - e.g. reason is still there but it's different, and which kinda
implies that awareness & its resulting perception is actually
independent of reason (although they can be + are, often connected,
sometimes disastrously;) - in other words: awareness & perception may
very well have their OWN distinct areas + criteria for doing whatever
things that's completely divorced for the usual + more 'rational'
criteria of reason and thus the general confusion when it comes to
these matters of the mind etc...
'personally' i like to put it another way altogether just for my own
way of thinking etc... e.g. what i'm currently + personally attempting
to do is to achieve a corresponding lucidity & wakefulness in my
'waking' hours to that discovered in dreaming (and not without some
success i might add;) - in other, plainer words: experiencing plus
exploring altered states of awareness, not only during the hours of
sleep, but also during the day (plus strangely enough, this has
occurred in the reverse order for me for some reason - i.e. there were
daytime experiences long before there ever was lucid dreaming - the
big difference to me being that the altered states arrived at through
'dreaming' are much deeper and/or further out/in than of those in the
day:)
When (and if) I see anything beyond a bunch of semi-anti-social people
sitting in their little rooms dreaming grandiose dreams come out of
any practice of meditation/dreaming, THEN I might become intrigued.
But I suspect it will remain just that, and nothing more.
### - well i reckon if people want to know things then they perforce
have to check things out for themselves no? - fact is that our
awareness can change + that explorable altered-states of perception
exist - plus from that pov it appears that 'reason' is responsible for
keeping us pinned down to one area/spot alone (e.g. the perception of
reason itself being the be-all + end-all of everything:)
>
It strikes me that it may be very nearly an unexplored angle, in
general. Almost every person who tries to "expand awareness" goesoff
>the deep-end and winds up with a bunch of insane crap.
>
>(which imho basically means that reason can't
get its hands on 'things' without becoming corrupt, or corrupting it,
> in the process)
Hmmmm. Honestly that sounds like self-serving rubbish to me. :-)
You have merely asserted the existence of some "greater" awareness.
### - smile, well i'm perhaps not so 'particular' about using (or not
using) certain terms? (slider has no phobias for example:) - e.g. in
this instance greater just means expanded and/or altered, or we could
call it 'changing-levels' etc, whatever - my point being that really
it's none of these things 'literally' which are ultimately just
relative terms alluding to changes in awareness and perception - the
bit about one (the greater) being inclusive of the other etc being
just an example to try and render an altered perception OF reason into
coherent, reasonable-type words (a near impossibility) - the point
being to demonstrate (via the allusion) how it is that reason
'appears' from that altered perspective to be not quite the generic
monster it thinks itself to be;)
That's what every guru on the block does. It's very possible that
most of the "insights" one arrives at in altered brain states are not
adequately expressible in a meaningful way for the simple reason that
they are nonsensical, therefore in reality insignificant (and again, I
have a lot of experience with this, it isn't merely theoretical).
When I SEE someone in "greater states of awareness" do ANYTHING of
major significance in this world I might change my mind. But I sure
haven't seen it yet...
### - grin... well ya' might have to be in an altered state 'yourself'
if you are to perceive it though, no? - i.e. otherwise all you'd
probably see is someone maybe sitting there not 'doing' very much
hehe:)
See the gist of it always comes down to this, Slider. You're all
talk. You're some lonely weirdo sitting in his little room all the
time (not a crime of itself -- I'm a lot like that too), and you've
fallen in love with a few unusual aspects of your own "awareness" and
now practically worship them. But ... what can you DO with this
allegedly "greater awareness" besides repeatedly claim it is
"greater"? :-) Try to look at it objectively for moment, and can
you not see how ridiculous that appears?
### - imho & experience it's not about me 'worshipping' anything, but
about the 'acknowledging' of the fact that i've been experiencing
altered states of awareness for some years (lucid dreaming being only
a very recent development + addition to that) and the
exploring/probing of them... plus where i feel you're coming unstuck
with all this is in your use of 'relative' meanings like 'greater'
etc? - whereas i've already agreed with you that it's actually none of
these things 'literally', mainly because once out of the strict bounds
of reason none of these rational terms have the exact same meanings as
before...
as to your question of what does one DO with this 'altered' awareness
(i.e. you thought i called it 'greater' whereas really i just think
it's only 'different', not better of greater, higher or lower etc -
just different) - i think the problem lies in the fact that you're
asking that question from a completely rational pov? - i.e. only
'reason' finds (or looks for) things to DO with other things and
because that's the way reason operates - but step 'outside' of reason
to some degree (e.g. into what's been called an altered state for
example) and reason just doesn't have the same inclusive 'power' over
our total being that it apparently just had a moment before... in fact
reason itself can be perceived at that point to be just one of 'many'
(altered) states of awareness & perception (let's call it our
home-base;)
> in the light of the greater being inclusive of the lesser
etc (e.g. the waking-up and becoming lucid in a dream effect kinda
thing) - how about first expanding one's awareness, and only 'then'
>getting the gen from that 'new' pov instead of the other way around?
Because the real world has real problems we always have to deal with
NOW, and because you are saying first attain to some hypothetical,
unmeasurable (and possibly delusional) state before concerning
ourselves fully with what we know to be real and must deal with now.
### - how can i put this... it's a bit like that scene in the "Matrix"
where they've just picked up neo in the car and he says to them: but
why should i go with you, and trinity replies pointing to some
non-descript side street: because you've already BEEN down that road
and you know exactly where it leads to!
the point being that what 'reason' would do (try to do) with increased
awareness, might be very different to what increased 'awareness' does
with increased awareness (if you see what i mean) - that the cases of
where reason DID somehow get hold of things pertaining more to
awareness per-se, is where all the monsters come into play...
Maybe that IS a big part of what is wrong with this world, though --
that most of the people sit around in some philosophical / religious /
meditative "trance" and ignore the real problems of the world until
they become insanely severe. Dang. :-)
### - heh, i would have rather said it was because people WEREN'T just
sitting around contemplating their navels (or whatever:) is why the
world's in such a mess from all the people running around DOING crazy
rational stuff TO it! hehe:))
>(it's also possible information gathered that way may 'only' make
>sense 'from' that expanded pov)
We covered already that "anything is possible but so what".
I'm so totally done with that angle...
### - yeah, but the point IS not to 'abandon' oneself to reason...
mainly because that effectively locks the friggin' door to anything
else (i.e. welcome lifer's to wally-world etc;)
>
Actually, come to think of it, I do know of one new way of possibly
becoming more "self-aware" which has not been very well-explored yet,
namely... as we become more knowledgeable of the way our brain
functions it IS possible to scientifically develop actual exercises
for different brain functions. I see this as a future area of
>development.
>
> - personally i hope not, at least in the sense that it seems tome
that that's maybe just a sure-fired way of creating even 'more'
monsters and unleashing them on the world... i.e. considering the
dangers, i personally hope that this so-called 'age of reason' isjust
another passing phase on the way to... well, something a bit wiser
>anyway:)
So you're interested in hypotheticals that cannot be demonstrated to
be of real use or benefit to anyone, and are not interested in
improving the functionality of what you really have sitting between
your ears. Odd. And you live in hopes that reason is going to pass
out of existence (or at least prominence) somehow. Well, you are
indeed living in a dream world, Neo. :-) That ain't gonna happen.
### - imho there's only one way to deal with it... let reason look
after the single world of reason, and expanded awareness look after
the many worlds of expanded awareness - the point being that reason
has it's own criteria for what it does within its own sphere as does
expanded awareness - the fact being that from the 'pov' of reason,
reason is all that exists - but from the pov of expanded awareness,
reason is (or becomes) only one possible perception among many
>
Bottom line Slider: I'm not sure that trying to become more 'god of
oneself' is even a worthwhile goal, relative to other possible goals.
>
> well there's 'something' to be said for self-control isn't there
>(i.e. people with little or no self-control for example tend to have
>limited options in life and stuff etc no?)
True. I took 'god of oneself' to mean "total control of one's life".
### - aye, and i came in on another angle saying: total (or more)
control over one's 'perception' (2 vastly different areas in reality)
And I say that is an unattainable ideal of doubtful value. It may be
much better to simply become adept at dealing with controlling
whatever one can while also becoming adept at dealing with BEING
controlled by whatever impinges upon one's life (in addition becoming
adept at controlling aspects of OTHERS' lives).
### - sounds a bit like cause & effect to me... in other words:
pertains ONLY to the world of reason no? a rather linear line of
learning on a flat + 2-dimensional plane, in which case the emergence
of 'altered' awareness (+ the expansion of it) becomes in that sense
like a pop-up page to the flat plane of reason (tri-dimensional)
Self schmelf. Let's
all get out of the friggin' bubble and acknowledge the innumerable
effects in every life external to the self.
### - exploring 'outer' space kinda thing you mean? - yeah well i
dunno, i mean i think we all know damn well where that road leads to
(fuckin' no-where ain't it;)) - whereas i do think there may actually
be more to 'inner-space' than we've rationally allowed for - lucid
dreaming imho being only the tip of the iceberg:)
> - definitions are always a problem... plus where one goes with an
>expanded/expanding awareness is still a very open area
Yeah. But let's face it dude, people have been meditating for
thousands of years. Did it ever do much for this planet? Perhaps
you think so. I don't. Science has completely transformed this world
and our conceptions of who and what we are, in just a few hundred
years.
### - well people meditating for 1000's of years didn't 'destroy' the
planet anyway... thus, and if there IS anything to this expansion of
awareness thang, making the planet our jumping-off platform, whereas a
few short centuries of reason and... well just look around bud...
there's hardly anything friggin' left TO destroy!
Let's give science and applied reason another thousand years,
and then, my friend, you will have to stand back and say WHOA!
### - only if anyone's still left ALIVE don't ya' mean... plus
personally i have no faith in a scientific utopia any more than i do a
religious one, mainly because i tend to view them as being both the
same thing anyway: i.e. a total mockery + caricature of life and the
way things really are:)
Because the accomplishments have been, and will be ... so abundant.
A thousand years from now we may well be halfway across the galaxy.
### - well this simple 'faith' is laudable enough i suppose, but i'm
just not a 'believer' ya' see jeremy... plus as far as i'm concerned,
the 'evidence' all around us (i.e. of our dying world) doesn't exactly
put reason & its 'sciences' in a very good light now does it... i mean
if anything it's proving to be a poison!
>
Just to give an example of what might be a better approach, one might
instead try to become a "god" of interacting effectively with other
beings to accomplish major goals in the world. LOL! Certainly
>wouldn't be my specialty...
>
>(smile:) well at least you're able to joke about it, which in
my book basically means that you certainly have some 'choice' in the
matter, no? (in other words i think you can be nice if you want to -
>you know the difference anyway:)
Nice, huh? I wasn't talking about being nice. :-) Most of the
people I really deal with in the real world think I'm 'nice' most of
the time. I was talking about *accomplishing* something worthwhile in
the world.
### - uhuh, and what if the only thing one can actually +
realistically achieve in life is to improve 'oneself' - and not go
leaving dirty great footprints all over the planet as some kind of
pseudo sign of development by proxy:)
>- not that it wont or can't... just that it doesn't like to? -
i.e. it just feels safe (in-control + secure) holding/waving the
> baton kinda thing...
I have already pointed out that the way our brains are wired, the
tendency is for strong emotion to override reason, and not vice-versa.
That is not my opinion. It's a fact. Reason is the new-comer, and is
in a somewhat precarious position.
### - which perhaps might also explain its almost hysterical grip it
perforce has to feel it has on everything considering just how tenuous
that grip actually is no?:)
>
Reason is obviously the newcomer on the block, and is obviously not
everything, but it IS largely responsible for the quantum leap wehave
>taken on this planet.
>
> - agreed, the only question being was it a leap forward or
>backwards:)
That is mainly a question to you. :-) Before the dominance of
reason, we had not a clue who we were, where we were, or what we were
capable of. We weren't really all that different from all the other
animals living and dying here for millions of years.
### - don't be daft hehehe... so you're saying that all those people
who left painting on the walls of caves and stuff (shamans) were just
like the rest of the animals??? (i don't think sooo:)
>My problem with where you come from is how you
keep insinuating there must be something "spiritual" out there which
>is "beyond reason".
>
> - well okay let's drop the terms spiritual & reason (i.e. i don't
particularly like them either, plus we can acknowledge they're just
terms we've 'borrowed' from the world that 'allude' to certain
commonly-known aspects of awareness etc) and just deal in things in
terms of 'altered' states of awareness and perception which i
personally believe to be more accurate (expanded/contracted,different
levels etc etc, are all then just relative terms and thus meaningless
>in themselves)
Okay, so what are you talking about? :-) LOL!
### - heh heh - 'altered states of awareness' - and the fact that we
can experience them! - that an altered state is just that: an altered
state - not bigger or greater or higher or lower (i.e. those are all
just rational + relative terms we can drop in their literal sense) and
that perforce some allowance has to made (for the purposes of
communication) when it comes to 'borrowing' words & terms from the
world of reason to describe (allude to) things that are maybe nothing
even to DO with that world once awareness changes:)
>But why single out reason?
>
the point being that reason per-se, although wider, also
has it's strict limitations and/or clear boundary... a boundarythat's
surpassed just as soon as one's awareness alters/expands, revealing
the workings (+ domination) of reason to have just been part of a
>particular state of awareness or mind-set...
You do not have to keep repeating this dogma over and over.
It was part of CC's schtick, thus I assure you I am thoroughly
familiar with these claims. The point is, they are JUST claims. You
have to accomplish something to indicate you are doing more than
yammering. What have you learned with all this "greater awareness"?
Why can you not awe the world with your expanded knowledge? Or your
expanded abilities? Why is it all always only talk? And I do not
mean to put all this on your back personally, Slider. Why can't
ANYONE do more than talk?
### - perhaps because the world of reason is all only more and 'more'
reason maybe... i.e. that an expansion of awareness actually involves
moving out and 'away' from the world of reason at rt-angles to it, a
'tri-dimensional movement as opposed to the continuation along the
same flat linear-line of reason kinda thing (e.g. reason only exists
in a modified form once awareness expands and thus the nigh
impossibility to render an experience like that into cogent + clear &
precise rational terms)
>Is this
"spirituality" beyond physical perception? Is it beyond emotion?
>What makes you so sure it's there at all?
>
> - do we perceive in a lucid dream 'physically' with our 'physical'
>eyes?
Yes and no. We do not see only with our eyes even in external
reality. In dreaming, sensory input from the eyes is mostly shut
down, but many of the same visual centers of the brain which are
utilized in processing waking perception from the eyes ARE engaged in
creating the imagery of dreaming.
### - aye but there's also nothing to say that this is not occurring
simply because of some kind of reverse reflex action upon the brain
either (e.g. psychosomatic responses can + do actually cut both ways
no?)
and so yeah parts of the brain light up in responce to visual stimulus
but that still doesn't explain how electrical signals get converted
into some sort of visual representation (or image) hovering in our
'minds' (our psyche) though does it? - plus which came first, the
chicken or the egg - the centres of the brain that light up, or the
perception:)
> - IS all perception purely physical? (+ no doubt
it affects the physical and vice-versa) - or is not perception itself
maybe even a totally psychic phenomena? - these are hard questions
>indeed my-man - but let's keep askin' them anyway:)
What reason do you have for believing perception is a "psychic
phenomenon"? There exists volumes of evidence on how disabling
certain areas of the brain disables certain specific aspects of
perception (in both dreaming and waking, btw). Do you have ANY
evidence that there is ANY type of perception which cannot be
associated with a physical structure in the brain? Let me answer that
for you. No, you don't.
### - telepathy? - i mean everyone's probably experienced some form of
low grade (or better) telepathy, which no-doubt you'd probably want to
explain-away by suggesting that the brain, at best, has maybe some
sort of, as yet undiscovered hidden WAP organ that explains it all
hehe... but which i'd suggest is more likely a product of the mind
'itself' (i.e. the psyche)
>You clearly see how people
use "God" as a crutch, but do you fail to suspect your own crutch may
be similar (in terms of possibly being imaginary) if a bit more
>sophisticated?
>
> - i hear you... but if (for example) lucid dreaming IS then say
just totally imaginary, then it's also a kind of projection OF the
imagination no? - and thus actually more in the realm of a so-called
>psychic phenomena
Okay. If by "psychic phenomena" you merely mean that which exists
only in the mind, then of course dreaming is "psychic phenomena". But
if you mean that which is not associated with the physical body, then
you are baying at the moon.
### - heh heh the former is correct imho... plus added to that the
fact that these so-called psychic phenomena are not really
scientifically 'measurable' as such etc, then it rather puts any
experiences garnered there somewhat beyond reason and its tools of
dissection, no? (another realm in other words:)
>
What you call 'psychic' is itself well-grounded, probably totally so,
in physical processes, as Hobson could easily show you. Obviously
'reason' is ALSO struggling to explain dreaming in terms of some
>"projection of the mind" or 'psychic phenomenon', now isn't it? :-)
>
> - heh heh, i take your point, but then we have to allude to these
things 'somehow' while we talk about it don't we;) - plus you can't
just press a button and lucid dream, it requires some particular sort
of internal 'manipulation' of awareness acquired through long
discipline/practice & familiarity with that gives rise to that state
>of being & experience...
This isn't correct. Lucid dreaming just *happens* to a most people
who experience it, without any sort of training or discipline. My
father went lucid in dreaming occasionally, and he had no practice or
discipline whatsoever (at least, not of any spiritual or esoteric
kind).
### - it probably happens inadvertently/accidentally to everyone at
some time in their lives i reckon... the point being that once
recognised it can then be groomed/cultivated to become something
'more' than just the occasional accident - and then Walla! we've
entered into (stumbled across) what is ostensibly a 'psychic' realm of
altered awareness existing somewhat beyond the strict controls of
reason per-se on its 'own' level (kinda thing)
> didn't perhaps know they could as-yet scientifically discern
between that of ordinary dreams and 'lucid' dreaming - plus theycan't
exactly get IN there and tell you what you were dreaming about and
stuff, only that a bunch of needles were bouncing around recording
brain-wave activity and unconscious eye-movements 'conducive' perhaps
>to lucid dreaming, but never what you subjectively experienced...
Dang man. I can't believe you have never even bothered to study up on
this. I have excerpted Laberge's account of his early proofs of
lucid dreaming for you:
(snip long excerpt)
That was 20 years ago.
### - aye... and so this guy was able to move his eyes and let them
know when he was lucid dreaming - but that's my point really, i.e.
that he had to do it 'that' way as opposed to the scientific
'instruments' letting them know? - that yes maybe he could do that (i
don't see why not) but what he 'couldn't' show them was what he was
actually 'experiencing' - and because psychic things like that just
aren't measurable (same as telepathy i reckon, they'll never be able
to actually measure it;)
>> - and because basically
it's an experience beyond the realm of logic & reason per-se
>
>Why do you say this?
>
>
>- basically because lucid dreaming (as an altered state of
awareness) occurs even in 'spite' of the attempts of reason & logicto
nail it all down to just some bunch of chemicals in our head running
around doing their thing, and because it apparently existed before
reason even appeared on the scene? - i.e. lucid dreaming is an aspect
>of 'awareness' - not an aspect of logic & reason
In my opinion, what you just said makes little sense. It is some
kind of strange rationalization.
Because lucid dreaming *requires* one to first conclude that one is
dreaming, as opposed to being awake, reason *must* be active in order
for one to become "lucid" in dreaming at all. And in my considerable
experience, this is exactly the case. Self-awareness and the ability
to reason are intimately related.
### - there's a connection i agree... but it's the 'order' in which
that connection takes place that makes all the difference i reckon -
e.g. usually reason dominates entirely and completely + without
question, but sometimes that order can be reversed slightly whereon
reason steps back just a little and/or just enough to allow certain
'other' aspects of our awareness to come into play (i.e. at that
moment one would typically experience an 'altered' awareness for
example)
>I have no problem reasoning or using logic in
lucid dreaming. Do you? Indeed, that is the biggest part of being
"lucid" in dreaming, all of a sudden having my ordinaryself-awareness
>and reason once again *available* to me within the dream state.
>
>- seems like that doesn't it... and yet reason isn't exactly
perfect in that state, rather it's like certain aspects OF reason
allow for more control over the dream situation, whereas really it's
>only riding shotgun?
Because many other brain systems are still in their REM state
conditions (or you would become fully awake again).
### - perhaps, but that doesn't explain similar altered-state
experiences during the day, unless that is to say that various things
(e.g. drugs included) can somehow suppress some part of us (sends them
off into some sort of REM state maybe?) - plus i dunno if your
explanation quite explains the WILD experience of being completely
rational one moment and then slipping-off (seemingly down?) into some
sort of altered dreaming state to then be looking around quite
conscious of the fact that one feels and works 'very' differently now!
hehe (i do so love that feeling;) - and that while reason per-se is
still actually there, that there's also something very different
indeed about it (ha ha ha it's actually like letting oneself go ever
so slightly insane for a moment heh heh heh;))
and that really the 'only' way to communicate to you 'exactly' what i
mean (+ have experienced in that state as regards reason changing etc)
is to ask you to have a go at the WILD's yourself for a little while
until a few jumps back & forth on the same night reveal to you exactly
what i'm going on about... plus after that it wont 'matter' how i may
try to describe it, you'll still know exactly what i saying (in fact
we can 'both' have a go at trying to describe what's probably
impossible to describe;)
> (e.g. keeping the lucid dream going is usually a
matter of not becoming 'too' rational in the dream lest it wakes you
right up - reason is there alright, but it's kinda held back slightly
in order to allow the dream to continue - which is something that
>takes a while to find the balance of + put into practice)
It would take more research to draw firm conclusions here, but I think
what snaps you out of dreaming more than becoming "too rational" is
that in lucidity, which is a condition hovering somewhere between
waking and REM, there can easily arise a tendency for the brain to
start returning more of the brain systems that control the physical
body to full waking condition as well. When that happens, external
sensory input returns, and you lose the perception of the dream,
because the returning normal external sensory input "overrides it" and
"pushes it away". And that is also exactly how it *feels* to me when
it happens.
### - that's not actually such a bad description from the pov of
WILD's - although believe me, that doesn't at all explain in any sense
the 'volitional' aspect of WILD's in that you can, at one crucial
point of the balance, deliberately turn it all on and off at will -
e.g. at one point, usually after jumping back & forth a few times, it
then becomes entirely possible to step from a dream into being awake
in bed and vice-versa in the blink of an eye by kinda hanging at the
midway point (the midway point in this instance actually being while
you're lying half-awake in the bed, at which point it becomes utterly
easy to either jump straight back into a dream or to get-up and go
have some breakfast, as i did once and then spent the rest of the day
kicking myself for doing it and spoiling the session (ha ha ha -
fuckin' idiot:)
>What makes you think there is some "part of us" able to do things we
do not yet know about? There may well be, historically, thereusually
has been, but ... if there are still such "unknown parts" to us, what
makes you think they would necessarily be anything like what you
>imagine them to be? :-)
>
> because experiencing altered states of awareness is obviously
within our capacity but not within our current vocabulary to explain?
>(excepting perhaps as something to be totally avoided;)
I really don't get what aspect of altered states you think we cannot
"explain" that is worth singling it out. I do not see that altered
states result in anything any more difficult to explain than ordinary
waking consciousness which of course is quite complex and is of yet
imperfectly understood. If one discounts fervent wishes, wild
stories, hoaxes, and claims without basis, there is little if anything
to "explain" that goes beyond trying to figure out how the brain does
what it does in general.
### - agreed on everything except the last bit? - i.e. at this early
stage i'm personally more interested in 'exploring' them rather than
trying to explain them (e.g. i let the minefield of explanations come
later + then review them with the benefit of hindsight & that of
accumulated experience & data kinda thing - plus added to that there's
always the hope imho + experience of also discovering explanations
along the way:)
>
i.e. if there's even 'one' explorable psychic phenomena... then who's
to say there isn't a whole 'collection' of them waiting to be
>>discovered... maybe even a whole world of things like that :)
>
There may be. But if there are explorable "psychic phenomena", why
would we not be able to study them and validate their existence, just
>as we have validated anti-matter and lucid dreaming?
>
> my point was that we can ONLY validate them in the 'same' way
we've validated/acknowledged anti-matter & lucid dreaming because
reason has reached its limits - and yet anti-matter is part of our
world whether we see it or not (i.e. we know now it's there existing
in its own kinda 'sphere' as the counter-part to the physical even
>though we can't see it)
There is no other way to "validate" anything than to discover some
bona fide effect which can really act on the world in some way, and
isn't simply a part of your fevered imagination.
### - aye they can't actually 'see' anti-matter, all they can do is to
record its path along and through something else - but how are they
ever going to record the path of something like lucid dreaming or
telepathy - his eyes blinked or his body twitched, and well, that's
about it - like anti-matter, the psychic realm isn't really + directly
recordable:)
Otherwise you might
as well be claiming vast "powers" for sexual fantasy or artistic
imagination (which are also internal states of "awareness" but ...
hey, what do you know, can have external effects as well...). Charged
clouds, magnetic fields, radio stars, and all kinds of other phenomena
we now know a LOT about can only be detected by their effects, not
directly perceived. And we know about these things and can DO stuff
with these things ... because of reason.
### - and yet the 'mind' (the realm of the psyche) isn't really made
or composed from reason, reason only being added to it later? - reason
'modifies' perception that's for sure... but i'm pretty sure
perception existed before reason ever came along too:)
If you want to keep making assertions about other kinds of
"awareness", then you need to SHOW some EFFECTS we haven't seen
before. Otherwise what you are doing is really virtually equivalent
to sexual fantasy. :-) Whoo, and it's really, really good man!!
### - smile, well here's where the theory leaves off and the practice
begins i suppose heh heh heh - i.e. i can potentially describe to you
till the cows go home what i 'mean' by a midway point to the WILD form
of dreaming, and it's just never gonna mean nuthin' to no-one unless
they put themselves in that same position and experience it for
themselves - otherwise it's like trying to scientifically measure
something like a realisation! grin:)
Heh. If there are no effects, then there is nothing to talk about.
### - but heh that's exactly what i've been basically saying all
along! - that all one could ever possibly see and measure is perhaps
some twitching bod' lying there fast-asleep snoring, when in truth
he's actually having all these incredible psychic experiences :)
If all of the people who "expand awareness" are just weirdos that sit
in their rooms a lot meditating and dreaming, and never do anything
but die in the end like everyone else, then WHAT is there to talk
about other than your cherished illusions which I have personally
visited at length and then left behind?
### - well that sounds just a tinge cynical and forlorn to me, but
what i'd say is that a good scientist (like Darwin for example) first
collects vast amounts of data in his (whatever) chosen field until
certain undeniable 'facts' become perhaps blatantly obvious, and then
he works his 'theory' from there based upon them? - only problem with
old darwin was he was into exploring 'outer-space' as opposed to
inner-space:)
Until there are ***effects*** to discuss, you and I shouldn't even
bother talking. :-) You know where I stand, and I know where you
stand.
### - well i can't (for example) possibly demonstrate my lucid
dreaming to you now can i heh heh, but what YOU can do (for example)
is to repeat some of my (WILD) experiments and then we can contrast &
compare notes - otherwise everything is just conjecture, and i can
easily see how one could get completely bored with something like
that;)
>our state of awareness must have been radically
>different before reason came along and stole the whole show, no?
In case you haven't noticed, there are millions of other animals still
running around which are much more ancient than man, and none of those
animals reasons as we do. I think you want to return to a "paradise
of awareness" that never existed. I believe it is very likely only an
escapist fantasy. I could even assert that if we do not talk until
you can demonstrate some unusual facet of awareness that has ANY
effect outside of your own head, that ... we will never talk. Since
you seem so convinced, and seem willing to spend your entire life on
the dubious endeavor, it'd be up to you to prove me wrong.
### - i have nothing to prove... or indeed any need to do so, to you
or to anyone else... my experience is that of achieving altered states
of awareness (mainly during the day) and the probing + exploration of
them, to the point that i've notice an overall change to my general
outlook and/or perception of the world... in other words: experiences
of that nature would apparently tend to 'mature' some aspect of one's
standard awareness that allows then for even more + sharper
experiences of that same nature to occur... the (subjective) effect
being like one of starting off having some fairly mild experiences
which gradually become more & more intense as time and experience
begins to tell...
plus interestingly enough, the WILD experience is just like a
speeded-up version of the daytime experience in that it only takes a
few jumps back & forth with dreaming before you hit the midway point
where some sort of 'volition' then kicks-in (and which happens all in
one night usually!) - whereas during the day it takes 'years' of going
back and forth at a much-much slower rate (e.g. sometimes with gaps of
months in between experiences etc) before ya' even 'begin' to hit that
friggin' midway point :)
Jeremy
Ann <ao...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Remember how in "homo-scientificus" I pasted a full
>quote from the forefront of genetic engineering where we didn't have a
>single word that wasn't foreign to us in Nature.
I doubt very seriously if he does. He probably didn't read it.
I damn sure didn't. If you want to answer a question about genetics,
start with: why is there such a massive overlap between the genetic
makeups of chimps and humans? Please explain how this simple fact
came to be. Oh, and while you're at it, answer this question too:
why are identical twins so similar in behavior, emotional makeup, and
intelligence? Please explain.
>interpreted Genesis. The original sin with the 'food-apple' gave birth to
>'reason' and his 'good' and 'bad' words for the 'body'. The major theme of
>the duality was the fight between two extremes: Spirit and Reason, that
>later we generalised to the dispute between the spiritual and mad
>philosopher about the whereabouts of 'reality'. Here I will follow your
>recent suggestion to stress more the problem with our insatiable ego and
>we will follow the evolution of the battle between our soul and the ego.
You use the word soul (and spirit), but you haven't defined it first.
What is a soul? What aspects of you, if any, are related to the soul?
For example, is your ability to reason an aspect of the soul? Are
your emotions related to your soul? If so, is it all emotions? Or
just certain ones? Is your personality related to soul? Etc. Just
exactly what does your "soul" do. Tell us, or do not use the word...
:-)
>We know exactly who has been the winner so far, we witness it even in this
>group. And that is the beautiful part of the word 'ego' - it seems pretty
>much the only tangential invisible word that both scientists and
>spiritualists see as real, the ego exists universally in our consensus
>reality. Here 'I' focus 'only' on the word and not on the myriad of
>philosophical definitions. The universal word 'ego' might provide us with
>the key to the invisible pride of homo-scientificus. We want to use that
>word, because of its popularity among scientists, one of the few
>'spiritual' words ('sub-consciousness' is the other one) they admit to
>exist for real. They do it, because they like that word very much.
Bzzzt. Wrong. The "ego" is only a model of a certain aspect of
consciousness, and in many ways it is an outdated model. "Scientists"
may use it when speaking to you, because it is one of the words you
are obsessed with, like reason. So ... you just based a 7000 line
argument (of some kind) on one word that is undefined and another that
is largely an outdated model.
Which is why I quit reading your post ... right here. :-)
Try again. Better luck next time.
-Jeremy
Jeremy
This is a copy of two of my old posts to another forum (which I posted
to adc more than a year ago, and now repost):
***
Was Mark a Castaneda of his time?
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/homerandmark.html
Comments on a few quotes:
<Homer cleverly employed the ineptitudes of the crew to highlight the
virtues of Odysseus, making him appear even more the hero, enhancing
his "wisdom, courage, and self-control" >
As CC cleverly made himself a bumbling fool, to highlight the mastery
of don Juan.
<Mark not only updated Homer's values and theology, but inverted its
entire character as an elite masterpiece, by making his own epic
simple, thoroughly understandable by the common, the poor, the masses,
and lacking in the overt pretension and cleverness of poetic verse,
written in plain, ordinary language. The scope of genius evident in
Mark's reconstruction of Homeric motifs is undeniable and has
convinced me that Mark was no simpleton: he was a literary master,
whose achievement is all the greater in his choice of idiom; his
"poor Greek" was deliberate and artful, as was his story.>
Castaneda artfully used real material from Native American and
Mesoamerican traditions in inventing a new mythology updated to cater
to those versed in modern anthopology and philosophy. That's one
reason he succeeded in fooling his profs at UCLA. It became
increasingly supernatural as he realized he was getting away with
everything.
<the real origins and message of the earliest Christians was all but
lost even to the second or third generation.>
Similarly, the real origins and messages of Native American and
Mesoamerican traditions were largely destroyed, and all of our 20th
century sham-shamanism will never restore it. It will be interesting
to see what has become of all this new-age Toltec soup after another
50 years of Cleargreens, Tunneshendes, Ruizs, and Theun Mares'.
<I am now certain that the historicity of the Gospels and Acts is
almost impossible to establish. The didactic objectives and methods of
the authors have so clouded the truth with literary motifs and
allusions and parabolic tales that we cannot know what is fact and
what fiction. I do not believe that this entails that Jesus was a
myth, however;and MacDonald himself is not a mythicist, but
assumes that something of a historical Jesus lies behind the fictions
of Mark.>
Remind you of anyone? There probably were real shamans used as models
for some aspects of Castaneda's characters, but after all the lies and
exaggerations we will never know what these people were really like or
what they really did, just as people will never know what the real
Jesus did.
***
To me it seems quite remarkable, and of enormous importance to
mankind...
There is *excellent* reason to believe that the stories of Jesus
carried down to modern times and still widely believed by hundreds of
millions of people to be factual are primarily the fictional
inventions of Mark (based on a few earlier ravings of Paul combined
with a creative rewrite of Homer). For the other gospels come later,
and borrow from Mark heavily (stretching the tale even further).
Now think about that. Think of the wars, the conquests, the
inquisitions, the hundreds of spin-off sects, the endless mind games,
and all of it based to a large degree on ... fiction. It boggles the
mind.
Castaneda called it insanity. And I agree. But Castaneda is EXACTLY
the same thing. Moreover, we are now seeing the same sort of
after-effect. Mark wrote his tale, then others embellished it, just as
CC wrote his, then Ruiz, Tunneshende and Theun Mares embellish. Again,
100 years, 200 years from now, what will have become of this fictional
'Toltec' fad? Before you say it's harmless take a good look at
everything Christianity did. If you think it doesn't matter, if you
think it makes no difference what a man lies about or fictionalizes,
as long as he writes an inspiring tale, then LOOK what Mark did to the
world.
It matters, dammit! It matters, matters, matters! No more bullshit!
Mankind must crawl up out of the bullshit, and learn to carefully
differentiate between fiction and reality. We must stand on our own
two feet and face reality without our crutches, without our grand
illusions.
-Jeremy
Ann
indeed, there are many interesting topics in genetics and I was
exhaustive in previous threads. I explained in detail my view on all
those questions you ask. I conclude that those letters came during your
'Ann no read' period. I cannot retype all of it here, because my fingers
need a little rest.
In short, the argument was that when we are babies and little children
we accept some base words by imitation, we explore the words around us.
Later we do it with reason, when we are introduced to the 'blood' dogma
- an intrinsic part of the social consensus today. We believe the
theory of the blood and genes and choose to make it real. We do it for
one reason: we do not know of any alternative. Now we found that we
have a choice. The conception dogma is still valid, as long as we
firmly believe in it, but it can be (and has been) broken. What is bad
about that, to be able to choose?
On Mon, 26 May 2003, Jeremy wrote:
> You use the word soul (and spirit), but you haven't defined it first.
> What is a soul? What aspects of you, if any, are related to the soul?
> For example, is your ability to reason an aspect of the soul? Are
> your emotions related to your soul? If so, is it all emotions? Or
> just certain ones? Is your personality related to soul? Etc. Just
> exactly what does your "soul" do. Tell us, or do not use the word...
> :-)
This is a classical bullet, Jeremy, there was no need. I thought you like
scientists. Their scientific method forces them at least to read the
statement of the opponent before making the counter-argument. What if the
definition of the word 'soul' comes in the rest of the letter that you
said you skipped?
In this case the definition came certainly in the "Mirror" and in other
places. Your confident 'question' again tells me that you act impatiently,
you launch an attack without having made the necessary preparations. Since
I decided to be tolerant I will repeat that description of the word 'soul'
for you. You'll learn my definition by experience. Here is how your letter
ends:
> Which is why I quit reading your post ... right here. :-)
> Try again. Better luck next time.
What is the first line above?
What do the words "I quit reading" express?
You have made a CHOICE and then you CHOSE to inform us about that choice
by posting in the group. Therefore, among other things, you are a
chooser. That decision-making property of our being I attributed to the
soul. The soul was this curious, almost:) invisible chooser, was my
definition in the "mirror". I didn't invent a new word, because the word
'soul' is good enough. It is similar to the word 'self' and 'sole', which
in tern are closer to the introvert type of the realist :)
By that I also crushed any older and mysterious meanings of the word 'soul'
in my mind. You may argue that this 'chooser' is the brain but to me it is
not. Reason and the brain are good analysts, they can try and order the
alternatives according to some criteria. They process the alternatives and
present them to the final 'chooser' - that one point of view that
ultimately and irreversibly decides what is going to 'Be!'. The soul
chooses which words to accept and make real. If you have another theory
for the choices we make in our life I'll be delighted to hear it.
In the "mirror" I also made an additional case for the soul by
conjecturing that it might be our link with the 'outside' world, this is
our part in the Spirit. The signs of the soul were the intuition. This is
the spiritual point of view (as opposed to the reasonable one) when
starting from the assumption of 'reality outside'. In many depressed
situations it was useful to think also in Freudian terms: we described the
soul as the guardian or our sub-consciousness, if we still have one
(reason was one of the inhabitants and the task was to become conscious of
his manoeuvres, to make him an ally:). The guardian was again the chooser,
the keeper of the key to our sub-conscious mind.
With 'reality within', which came later (in fact, prompted by your post,
where you explained the basic axioms of the philosophy of science) spirit
and the soul merge but the logic about the soul as the link to the world
remains. The soul chooses the words of the matrix (consciously, as in your
case above, or barely discernibly), the soul assembles our separate
reality. Nothing happens to us without the choice with the soul.
Some scientists may claim that our choices are predetermined by some
supreme intelligent being or by the dices of complex random Nature or even
by the almighty biochemistry of our brain. While those factors may play
some role the final choice is made by someone else - us. It was me who
decided to answer to your questions and not some neural
networks. Conscious people accept responsibility for their choices and
that is why I like the concept of the 'choosing soul'.
> >We know exactly who has been the winner so far, we witness it even in this
> >group. And that is the beautiful part of the word 'ego' - it seems pretty
> >much the only tangential invisible word that both scientists and
> >spiritualists see as real, the ego exists universally in our consensus
> >reality. Here 'I' focus 'only' on the word and not on the myriad of
> >philosophical definitions. The universal word 'ego' might provide us with
> >the key to the invisible pride of homo-scientificus. We want to use that
> >word, because of its popularity among scientists, one of the few
> >'spiritual' words ('sub-consciousness' is the other one) they admit to
> >exist for real. They do it, because they like that word very much.
>
> Bzzzt. Wrong. The "ego" is only a model of a certain aspect of
> consciousness, and in many ways it is an outdated model. "Scientists"
> may use it when speaking to you, because it is one of the words you
> are obsessed with, like reason. So ... you just based a 7000 line
> argument (of some kind) on one word that is undefined and another that
> is largely an outdated model.
>
> Which is why I quit reading your post ... right here. :-)
> Try again. Better luck next time.
I like when you use the word "aspect of consciousness", maybe one day you
will write 'states of consciousness', the good old ten thousand
spiritually neural networks. You feel how they are playing with words and
each camp has its favourites.
As to the "outdated" word 'ego' I am not aware of the latest updated
models of scientists. Please, share with us the breaking news. I used the
word 'ego', because it is simple, widely understood and all too real in
our civilised minds. If you don't like that word you may think of the
words 'pride', 'reason', 'power'. Therefore, 'soul versus ego' is another
way of saying 'us versus our pride'.
> Tell us, or do not use the word...
Now that "I told you" may I continue "using the word"? Then you might want
to tell us something about your favourite words like 'Nature', "tell us,
or...". I analysed that word especially for you towards the end of the
last book (remember, you predicted that I will write three books) and was
able to establish the clear distinction from the word 'God'. If you only
knew the joy you are missing, you will surely laugh at those witty
scientists who stalked religion with the simplest trick of words possible.
Best,
Ann
cr...@att.net
What is it about 'you' that reminds
me of Ann Marie Carter? :)
cr...@att.net
" Dances w/tacuche in the sky"
3-piece suit, geez. :)
Rbb
Dear Ann,
The only problem is how to avoid "the unavoidable appointment", as
Carlos used to joke (we preferred to take him seriously sometimes:).
> Just on the side:
> Who is the "we" that preferred to take him seriously at times?
Curiously detached lesbian 'an'
You chose the wittiest words for the subject of the thread. Of course I
know "you don't ask for much", only to see my pussy and flirting lesbian
pictures. Now I am trying to remember saying I was a woman with a pussy :)
Once or twice I allowed myself to tell you I was a hermaphrodite, a kind
of open-minded state of detachment. I bet you took it as a joke, it was
your reasonably wise choice. My idea, of course, was to detach from the
strongest attractors of our time, from the fixing question 'Dick or
Pussy?'.
>You have done so by choosing a sexual image as a women and then choosing a
sexual image that has as well a pussy and a dick.
>You have done so by assuming that a hermaphrodite doesn't have any sexual
feelings and hormones..
> How silly can one get?
>In my book that has nothing to do with an open-minded state of detachment.
>It has however all to do with lack of empathy for the sexuality of others
and avoidance of it.
> So , ok you felt the need for a shield because you have been sure that all
focus of us, your readers would go towards your sexuality and not to the
content of your writings.
> You didn't get the idea that may be you wouldn't have to do that here with
us.
> So you have either feared us or you have put yourself above us or you
think that your dick or whatever is irresistible.
> It is just my opinion that if you would have been detached you would have
come without or less shields.
> It still would have provided you with the opportunity not to engage in
interactions arising from sexuality, simple by not engaging.
Chris, Rainbowbird, Slider, Jeremy, Vini, Ether, Thom, Powhite, Dakkon,
Steve Ralph, Terry, Vic, Chuckman, Steve Mishjko, Aran Mous, RoboDwarfe,
Uncle Tantra, Small Tortoiseshell, Wings, Karmabum:), Sock Monkey, and the
other fancy names I god in touch with were only words for me. I preferred
to stay concentrated on my quest, as if there was nobody but words
around. No attempts to imagine who you were or looked like, I was
indifferent to those personal identities (as opposed to the soul details
strangely conveyed in our "cheap talking").
>Your descriptions about people are your imaginations.
>Don't assume that they are the truth.
>They only become the truth if your imaginations are agreed by the one you
have the
>imagination about.
>It doesn't matter if you draw your imagination from the words or the
perceived personality
>of people.
After the "mirror" I did not
make the slightest attempt to flirt by exploiting the knowledge of
anyone's sex (but I'll be happy if you can prove me wrong here, remember
that I decided to be open to the new), that would have distracted me from
the quest for the point of life.
> You decided to be open for the new? Like what? New imaginations?
> I haven't seen you really daring yet at all. You choose the safety of
knowing better too much
> But hey, it might not be the right angle from where I am looking.
Anyway, those three months without the slightest thought of sex were
probably the happiest in my life, but who knows what is coming ahead.
> I hope hell and I have the best intentions in mind saying so :)
And
with your recent inquiry we are finally back to where we have started from
- the words 'man' and 'woman'. Which 'betrays' a bit of your lustful ego,
or simply shows that you are anything but detached from those two words,
primarily because you have never wished so.
> I have the idea that he feels that people that can't be open about their
sexuality , still feel
>pretty important about themselves.
>In my view he likes to pull some legs at times, when he senses that people
are >uncomfortable being naked. He is blunt at times, yes.
>No attempts to ruin Chris image as an sexanimal here.
> It was fun watching that he nearly pulled your leg out and you didn't
notice, because you
> have been to busy preaching.
Now we reversed that choice and suddenly remembered. All the words in our
mind are part of this jolly game, and once we crush them (remember the
game with each and every one of them) the game becomes much more
interesting, we are exploring any combinations of them without any
fear. Like, for example, the combination 'Ann's dick between his legs' (I
wonder how would you call me in your controlled folly reply, then you
might feel the 'nasty' sexual chains of reason). And the same with the
word 'sex', it is much more interesting once we've shaken its reality in
I will introduce you
to the trick of the hermaphrodite.
> A sad trick.... I wouldn't recommend it.
It is hard to describe the mirth of sobriety in the middle between those
gorgeous extremes, imagine you are seeing (perceiving) two parallel worlds
at the same time. A fascinating view on two consensusly real universes:
men's dream reality of the PREDATORY MATRIX and women's dream of the
MATRIX of LOVE. These are just two different worlds that seem to
'peacefully coexist' in the consensus reality of today: one was build on
the word 'energetically powerful predator' and the other on the word
'universal love'. The place where those two worlds merge is the word
'family' and the theory of 'sexual conception', and that was the subject
matter of previous chronicles.
> Stereotypes are there to have fun with.
Actually, it would be nice to hear how does the image of Ann look like in
your naughty mind? Am I the tall, sexiest blond model in your matrix or
your dreams? It would be even nicer to compare it with the others' images
of Ann, I am "just really curious" to learn about the many parallel
universes Ann is haunting now. How real is her sexy image, like don Juan's
for example?
> You want him to be mentally naked by offering you the private sexual
content of his mind
> and you being safe watching behind your veil of ... (fill in the words of
your choice)?
Note how reason tries to convey the impression of equitable equality,
indifference, sex tolerance, emancipation and no battle of sexes
whatsoever. That is what reason makes us believe but in fact tries with
all means possible to establish the sex of each discussant. Thus,
reason fears hermaphrodites
was the first law of human nature that I was able to detect back in
February. Why is it so?, is the next logical question. May be he is
protecting something dearly, his true nature, maybe or our ego?
> Excuse me when I get very blunt here.
> Your puzzle has one big flaw:
> It fits too well.
> Now here is a real challenge for you:
> Point me out one flaw in your whole theory.
Probably (no doubt:) you remember how in those early days of our virtual
acquaintance Rainbowbird has carefully stalked me. Her reason pretended to
be a an impartial observer, tolerant towards the sex of the opponent.
She was defended the idea that there was no battle of the sexes, it was a
remnant from the past in some disturbed (usually distraught male:)
minds. And yet she was the one who almost killed my male ego :), she wrote
the sexiest letter that I have ever experienced. In a single (or double)
post she mercilessly exploited the assumed knowledge about my sex to mount
the most vigorous attack on the male ego of Ann.
> I said that the battle of sexes where for those that believed in it.
> I still don't believe in it.
> I think there are enough us-them versions around already and they are all
ineffective.
At first she wasn't that interested in the arguments from my quest (later
we became friends and exactly her comments guided me to the culminating
"mirror", a thread that she initiated) but in my character. When the
'flaw' was found she just started an assassinating battle of sexes,
completely out of the blue.
> You have a flaw? I must have missed that. What was it? :):):):)
Reason, of course, was still telling her (and
she to me:) that the sexist theories of hypothetical battles were a
product of disturbed hallucinating men who knew little about the evolution
of love. At least that was the impression from her arguments and precise
shots. I remembered that when it comes to words and bullets there is
always a reason for them. And I asked myself what could have provoked such
a heavy gunfire from an otherwise romantic and witty person (later she
told me she was a woman)? One answer was emotional chance, exposing a
liar (i.e. the criminally improper usage of personal names), the weather,
mood or just didn't sleep well the previous night. Certainly they were
partly true, but the whole episode made me think deeper (in my joyous way,
of course).
> I just did it, because I felt like it by impulse and if you believe it or
not, I have given up a long time ago
> to understand all my actions and I am not waisting my time to find reasons
for them in behind.
> But you are free to imagine as many reasons as you want.
Have a nice day....
RBB
Just another supreme being
Ann
Hi Rainbowbird,
thanks for your reply, and the time and efforts to read my very long yet
simple theories. What you said is in fact factually and otherwise correct,
what I will do now is to slightly change the point of view or the attitude
towards the 'trick of the hermaphrodite'. The clue was there, in the
longest chronicle but maybe it got lost amidst the undisciplined chaos of
other arguments and quotes (maybe the ego was trying to distract me:).
>> On Tue, 27 May 2003, Rbb wrote:
>> Dear Ann,
> The only problem is how to avoid "the unavoidable appointment", as
> Carlos used to joke (we preferred to take him seriously sometimes:).
>> Just on the side:
>> Who is the "we" that preferred to take him seriously at times?
It was me, I admit:) Up to a point (the first books, five less or more:) I
chose to believe don Juan and took Carlos seriously. It was my choice,
which (as a by-produced bonus:) made my reading smooth, a real
pleasure. There were disappointments, of course. For example, when I
became curious and chose not to exclude the possibility (not to zero the
likelihood probability) that the stories were a beautiful dream.
Updating the probability from zero to non-zero
Such teeny-weeny changes in the point of view make all the difference to
our dogmatic mind. At a first glance it is only a machine-like argument,
as if a trivial update of the probability we attach on an event.
In this case the events were: Carlos - an impeccable anthropologist or a
spiritual novelist? I started with setting the entire probability mass on
the first preferred option, i.e. I gave it the likelihood of the perfectly
round off number One. That is, my beliefs were 'naturally' formed by the
cover of the books. Therefore, the zero probability of 0.000(000)
(infinitely total zero = 0.000 000 ... and lines of zeros till the
"unavoidable appointment") for the 'not an anthropologist' event suggested
itself :)
And one sunny day I chose to update that probability from the absolutely
nullified zero 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 ... (i.e. infinitely
many zeros till eternity) to a more tractable and imaginable number like
0.000 000 000 000 001. If you remember my comment on computers, they do
not understand 'infinity' (i.e. it is hard to tell them 'imagine', like
Newton told his peers when he introduced the continuum). We cannot stalk
the computer by saying: zero is the number 0.000 ... with zeros till
'infinity'. Consequently, to them the total expressions 'absolute zero'
and 'nullified nil' have no meaning.
To perturb the assemblage point
In that day I chose exactly that: to forget about the infinite zero and
instead become discretely and finitely realistic. That day I included this
'impossible' event in the sample space of the Universal Set, I allowed for
the incomprehensible event 'Carlos - a dreamer', a microscopic chance but
I allowed for it. And it made all the difference, a slight shift or just a
tiny perturbation of the assemblage point made all the difference. The
world looked differently since that day, I may call it 'the shock of
reality'.
Later in my life (in this very group, actually:) I chose to adopt the same
sober approach to many other theories that I couldn't observe in Nature
armed only with the naked eyes of the evolution. Among those poor theories
that I decided to question, following the advice of Einstein, were the
'conceptual creation of a child', the related genes, blood and Do Not
Asks, the mighty viruses and unnatural numbers of the beast and many
(really many) others. I did not reject them but 'only' provided a curious
different point of view, different from the 100% dogma. Which made reason
anything but happy, why actually.
Who keeps the universe
The dogmatic (predatory, linear, binary) mind loves the absolute certainty
of the infinite zero and the perfect 100%, they keep the dogma. When we
adopt the realistic view that some :) events or people cannot be trusted
with infinite certainty (i.e. believed like Gods) we cannot be hundred
percent sure
(i.e. the number 100.000 000 000 till infinity may not exist in
reality. It may even exceed 100%, therefore often scientists stalk by
setting 1 to 0.999 999 999 999 till infinity. You get the feel of this
escape in infinity, it is just the safest emergency exit. We may
conjecture that it holds the modern edifice of science. And the whole cult
started with a simple gullible acceptance of the words of two depressed
people - Newton and Cantor)
what the others or their documented evidence say. We cannot rely on them
with 100% confidence. And we cannot use the infinite zero on thir
alternatives. Sometimes it is sober to question (following Einstein) even
the "illusory reality" of our experiences, let alone those of the other
scientists, anthropologists or gurus.
And it was exactly what I (we:) did in our discussions, I chose not to
worship the word 'infinity', I found it hard to imagine. Yes, it is true
that Carlos, Newton, Cantor and some of their followers could and still
imagine 'infinity'. But just like me, Einstein (he "wasn't sure about the
infinity of the Universe", and yet he continued to use his bread-and-fame
earning symbol of the continuum. I guess, there was this fight with the
ego), Kant, finite mathematicians and their discrete colleagues, computers
and their engineers couldn't imagine it either.
This brave choice to update the sample space of viable possibilities
perturbed my assemblage point, caused a negligible shift, I chose not to
exclude anything, not to assign a total zero 0.000 000 000 ... (till
infinity) probability on any event. Or at least not to be gullible to
truly believe what others say or write, be it even in the holiest of
scientific textbooks. Credulity means to reject the alternative
hypothesis that the author might be lying or just dreaming.
Scientists are especially good at rejecting alternatives (all but
theirs:). I instead, chose to believe Dancing Zuka (in the longest
chronicle) who told me that "rejection without proof is the fundamental
characteristic of Western science".
Note that stalking scientists concentrated on the first part of his wisdom
when they slaughtered religion, mysticism and 'mythology'. They tell us to
verify the miracles for them, they want our proofs from the spiritual
world of magic, they urge us to present 'overwhelming evidence' FIRST, and
only then we are allowed to believe (whatever we want:). In other words,
they stress that "acceptance without proof is the fundamental
characteristic of Western religion".
They are right, of course. And yet, the interesting question is how did
scientists manage to accept 'infinity'?
I see, feel, touch, grab, make, count, add, divide, even breathe finite
entities and objects (apart from the neural viruses, of course, which I
have no way to verifiably count. I mean, we have problems even with the
couple of billion neurons. And how do we count to infinity?)
Zuka revisited
"Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western
religion, Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of
Western science." - Zuka, Gary in 'The Dancing Wu Li Masters'
We intuitively feel that Lord Zuka wanted to tell us one simple thing:
both modern scientists and theologists are religious believers. He talked
to both groups, addressing each with their favourite words. Scientists
like to reject hypothesis (and religions, myths, fantasies, illusions) and
religion likes faith and 'having to believe and accept'. Zuka told both of
them that it is time to get real. Maybe he wanted to wake them up for the
alternative assumption of reality and God Nature within, but only a
conjecture.
Anyway, below we will prove that those two statements above tell us one and
the same thing, to reject hypothesis (usually all but one:) is the same as
accepting the fittest survivor. Rejecting and accepting are not that
different, after all, after we notice that they are a word-pair, a mirror
image of each other, they cannot exist without each other independently in
Nature. And because both words support the one accepted dogma it follows
that
Nature does not like the dogma
To me it is more than obvious that both parts of Zuka's statement are
right. Scientists stress the second because it allowed them to crush the
words 'God', 'belief', 'faith' and 'religion'. Now we will show that this
emphasis on "acceptance without proof" was a genius manoeuvre (of words)
by scientists to silence 'religion'. And then they continued doing exactly
that but under a different name:)
We will discover the 'huge difference' between "acceptance without proof"
and "rejection without proof". We alluded to it already but let us again
reveal the hoax of the modern scientific (statistical:) method of null
hypothesis testing and rejecting of alternatives. Since scientists are no
believers, have no faith and no God they cannot just 'accept'. Accepting
something would raise suspicions, the patent similarity between the words
'acceptance' and 'religion' may strike us. Therefore, (logic of steel:)
they can 'only' reject or NOT REJECT hypotheses.
Catch them if you can. Because now it seems they do not accept (defend)
anything, they 'only' "do not reject". Whenever we attack a dubious theory
of theirs they'll benevolently enlighten us by saying that they didn't
mean that, they have 'only' rejected some of the alternatives.
Well, here is the disappointment we have prepared for them: they usually
reject all but their favourite alternative. Random Nature has this
mechanical tendency to select the theory of the most favoured master and
reject all his gullible opponents.
Imagine someone decides (CHOOSES) that according to some criteria (firm
belief or just theory) all possible (imaginable, that is:) states of the
world are just ten (for simplicity and without loss of generality, the
number could be anything else even the symbol 'infinity'). Then what
happens if his independent statistical tests REJECT with 95% certainty
("confidence" is their magic word) nine of them. What would paradoxically
happen with our updated beliefs in the highly unlikely event that the lone
remaining (non-rejected) state 'happens to be' supportive of the
scientific dogma?
If we believe scientists we have no choice but to ACCEPT the 'only
possible' view on the world that was spared by the independent test. What
a luck!, I mean, that must be the happy dream of every 'hypothesis' - not
to be rejected by a test. That is how scientists fix their reality in our
minds. If we REJECT all unfavoured theories we naturally select and
ACCEPT the fittest survivor - the most favoured theory.
Therefore, we 'see' the enormous difference between "acceptance without
proof" and "rejection without proof". Both are religion, in the end we
accept one preferred dogma. Tyrannic scientists take the stalking route of
'rejection', i.e. rejecting anything else. But the word
'Nature'. Religious thinkers take the honest route of open 'acceptance',
i.e. accepting anything they choose. The word 'God', for example.
Scientists imposed (even in schools) their crushing view on the 'bad'
words 'acceptance', 'belief', 'faith'. They were 'bad' for them because
they were fighting religion and its words. The fight always starts from
the favourite words. And usually ends there:). Scientists made us instead
like their substitutes 'rejection', 'not worthwhile', 'independent
tests'. Selected predators stalked the honest but gullible religion and
spiritualism. A little game of words by the best masters for mankind made
all the difference to the world.
We (me again:) decided not to be gullible any more, we just couldn't SEE
the difference between the act of accepting to believe whatever we like (a
choice according to religious preferences) and the act of rejecting to
believe anything else. Actually we saw through that 'difference' :)
In both cases it was a conscious choice of favourite words. Some of them
were open about their personal preferences while the others kept their
religious beliefs a secret. Einstein's question again is, why?
Scientific challenger
We have just found a witty sentence that could un-stalk us from any
scientific challenge. Whenever we meet a scientist who demands:
- Show me first the evidence for your world of magic. Give me convincing
proofs to believe in this fantasy! I cannot "accept without proof".
,we laugh and calmly reply:
- Show me first the evidence not to do it! Give me "confident" proofs (not
"intervals") to disbelieve my dreams! I cannot "reject without proof".
Let us imagine that upon entering the group I noticed that many people
want to set themselves free from the 'impartial' chains of that 'personal
identity', that 'objective' mask that we 'have to' wear in our daily
life. What else do the quixotic "shields" 'RBB', 'crsds', 'slider', 'Uncle
Tantra', 'Sock Monkey', 'RoboDwarfe', 'Small Tortoiseshell' mean? To me it
is an act of momentary liberation from the confines of reason. Jolly,
jolly Usenet. In my last letter I provided (tried to:) convincing
arguments that there was no need to preserve at all cost our sexual
identity in these shields.
The only 'reason' to do it is our proud ego :)
It is true, many "destined" philosophers (like Socrates) have done it, but
this is not a convincing evidence for us to want to follow suit, we do not
have to go with the rational herd. Einstein was a word-crushing genius,
wasn't he: "In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one
must, above all, be a sheep". He probably meant his identically
distributed statistical colleagues and the other countable elements of the
quantum set, but we may extend it to anything we choose from our consensus
reality.
> Chris, Rainbowbird, Slider, Jeremy, Vini, Ether, Thom, Powhite, Dakkon,
> Steve Ralph, Terry, Vic, Chuckman, Steve Mishjko, Aran Mous, RoboDwarfe,
> Uncle Tantra, Small Tortoiseshell, Wings, Karmabum:), Sock Monkey, and the
> other fancy names I god in touch with were only words for me. I preferred
> to stay concentrated on my quest, as if there was nobody but words
> around. No attempts to imagine who you were or looked like, I was
> indifferent to those personal identities (as opposed to the soul details
> strangely conveyed in our "cheap talking").
I liked your assembled viewpoint in the next two lines:
>> Your descriptions about people are your imaginations.
>> Don't assume that they are the truth.
>> They only become the truth if your imaginations are agreed by the one
>> you have the imagination about. It doesn't matter if you draw your
>> imagination from the words or the perceived personality of people.
"True". Though what are we "truly" in the eyes of society? The union of
all those "descriptions and imaginations" or images of us in the heads of
our friends. Our opinions about others are again "imaginations" based on
our experience. They can hardly be "true", since we change all the
time. For instance I wasn't such a good master of words when I first came
here, I am constantly learning.
To avoid such 'impartial' value judgements (but in fact, one-and-only
fixations) I decided not to imagine "the truth" about anyone, but to
"describe" what 'I saw' happening in the discussion. 'I saw' the
thermodynamic Nature of our souls (and choices:). It was only my
EXPERIENCE and I shared it with you as soon as my ego fell asleep (and
whenever I felt it was essential for the theory of words. I appreciate
your help, the theory was born here based to a greatest extent on this
experience). Now I see that 'you saw' otherwise, which is again consistent
with the general theory - we see what we would like to see.
> reason fears hermaphrodites
>
> was the first law of human nature that I was able to detect back in
> February. Why is it so?, is the next logical question. May be he is
> protecting something dearly, his true nature, maybe or our ego?
> > Excuse me when I get very blunt here.
> > Your puzzle has one big flaw:
> > It fits too well.
> > Now here is a real challenge for you:
> > Point me out one flaw in your whole theory.
A nice shot, congratulations! Your "blunt" question is rhetoric, of
course, for you have just found the "big flaw" of the 'theory of words' -
has no flaws (almost:), it just "fits too well".
Do you believe scientists when they tell us about the unfathomable
complexity of mother Nature?
They just say that it is not possible to discover the secrets of the
universe (i.e. laymen shouldn't even think about that). We are
disappointed to hear that and give up the quest (stop asking
why-questions). And after that they evolutionary proceed with their search
for the Big Bang-ous answer. They remain the only entitled to inquire.
The following questions are very simple and have to do with the absolute
null and the circular tautology ('reject'='not accept' and vice versa)
discussed above:
Do you believe that there is absolutely no chance to find the answers of
interest to you?
Or if you are interested in entirely different questions then: Are you 100
percent confident that I have no chance to find the answers of interest to
me?
Can anyone know better what we are capable of than we, our intuition and
our souls?
Do you believe we cannot be Gods of our own life, naguals of our own
assemblage point, not even a glimmer of chance?
Are you 100% and more convinced that for a 'layman' to find an answer to a
question is absolutely impossible, even if it is a spiritual question?
Are you 100% ready to reject with "scientific confidence" the "null
hypothesis" that an answer could ever be found?
If so, then it is your personal choice. In "homo-scientificus" and
elsewhere I recognised this scientific desperation as a regular stalking
manoeuvre of 'anti-spiritualists'. They made us believe so without proof,
they rejected the lucky possibility without proof, only based on their
wiseacre experience.
They have simply calculated the chances of success and set them to
absolute zero. For example, they might have done the following silencing
exercise: first they count how many other distinguished (known and
documented) scientists have tried and failed (maybe all but have to
check). If no famous wiseacre has found the answer to a particular
question the next step to proclaiming the insolvable problem a paradox of
Nature is to form a simple ratio. They divide the number of successes
(zero favourable events in this case) by the total number of wiseacres in
the Universe (or the members of the universal set, all events in the state
space). So if we divide absolute zero (have you met an empty set or
absolute zero walking about in independent Nature) by million scientists
in the world we get the totality of zero.
Therefore, they conclude "The likelihood of you discovering what is wrong
with your life is zero, chances are non-existence. The best you can do in
this complex universe is to trust us, we can give you at least some
partial answers. Stop your quest and believe the hundreds of years of
professional experience!"
They have 'just' said it and it became real in our minds. We won't dare to
inquire any more, or even if we try it won't be a whole-hearted effort. We
were even made to feel ashamed of our quest, like in the dark ages of the
inquisition. Their chanting about the 'incomprehensibility of complex
Nature' cut the wings of our laughing imagination.
I mean, why should we even dare to contemplate such a quest if we know
already the fatal answer.
Aren't they masters? My trick was to assume that they were right: it is
indeed impossible to find any answer in their complex matrix. But what if
we stop the greedy expansion of the Universe and obey their second law of
thermodynamics - the natural tendency for entropy? What if we simplify
their Nature, at least in our minds? Many of their 'paradoxes' started to
disappear, which is quite a logical consequence of simplicity. Should we
be afraid of our progress? Or should we laugh?
I choose not to be ashamed that "it fits too well". Let us wipe our
complex eyes now. To be entirely honest with you I am happy and strangely
free, and recognise that I indeed managed to mechanically reorganise the
matrix in my mind. It was my choice, to want to live in a simple world and
be in control of my life.
First, I soberly observed that the reasonable train was gaining speed, I
felt the acceleration of scientific bombardment (the spam in my mailbox is
one sign). Now I have at least one shield. Therefore, I do not need a
doctor or any 'outside' help. Even if the inspiring words of the dogma
(religious, scientific, reasonable:) seem attractive I prefer my separate
reality. Like a regular introvert - the reality of the axiom of
choice. And at this moment I heard God Einstein laughing from the heretic
grave:
"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details"
"Imagination is more important than knowledge"
"The only real valuable thing is intuition"
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own
reason for existing."
*Best,
Ann
PR:
Ann's dictionary:
*Best = Worst = Whatever you like
small tortoiseshell
> Hi Rainbowbird,
>
> thanks for your reply, and the time and efforts to read my very long yet
> simple theories. What you said is in fact factually and otherwise correct,
> what I will do now is to slightly change the point of view or the attitude
> towards the 'trick of the hermaphrodite'.
hermaphrodites, the word tastes like a pink fruit with green stripes
from Sirius
,
The clue was there, in the
> longest chronicle but maybe it got lost amidst the undisciplined chaos of
> other arguments and quotes
everything gets 'lost', including all 'clues', better get used to it,
no glue, no clue...
(maybe the ego was trying to distract me:).
. egos come cheap these days, fire it and hire a multiple one,
Jeremy Donovan
> In short, the argument was that when we are babies and little children
> we accept some base words by imitation, we explore the words around us.
> Later we do it with reason, when we are introduced to the 'blood' dogma
> - an intrinsic part of the social consensus today. We believe the
> theory of the blood and genes and choose to make it real. We do it for
> one reason: we do not know of any alternative. Now we found that we
> have a choice. The conception dogma is still valid, as long as we
> firmly believe in it, but it can be (and has been) broken. What is bad
> about that, to be able to choose?
Only that it's delusional. :-) And contradicted by a massive amount
of evidence. Some things we get to choose; some we don't. But thanks
for answering without 500 lines of raving illogic. Your succinct
summary allows me to quickly conclude that you resolve major issues
regarding reality simply by going into denial about them (quite common
for creationists, just usually not so all-inclusive).
While it's true humans come to advanced knowledge about reality via
agreement, this in no way means reality is ONLY agreement. It is even
demonstrably UNTRUE of our most basic perceptions (the latest research
shows). We do NOT have to learn to agree upon many of our basic
perceptions of this world. We are BORN with them. Hardwired. Would
you like to see evidence that this true, or is your answer to
everything only that we have been "fooled" into believing in evidence?
:-) Early on, this view that 'agreement is reality' was one of
Castaneda's major errors, which he realized and even corrected in his
later works...
Jeremy, and mainstream science, says: Through sufficiently rigorous
inquiry we can arrive at greater and greater agreement about the
nature of the world because the world has a real nature which we come
closer and closer to understanding.
Ann says something like: We arrive at greater and greater agreement
about the nature of the world because we create the world that way,
and we are doing this largely because others before us wanted it that
way. In this view, there is no real nature to the world, other than
that we are its creators.
The mainstream view is backed up by more evidence than can fit in
three sets of encyclopedias and has transformed the face of the earth,
and the other view is backed up by ... no evidence at all, and has no
visible effect on anything other than to make for lots of flaky people
running around flaking off all over everyone.
Your view is actually circular, saying: we agree upon reality because
we agree. It makes us into God too. The ultimate delusion of
grandeur.
Just reflect Ann, you and I TOTALLY disagree on just about EVERYTHING,
and yet ... we live in the same world. :-) Oh yes we do! :-)
However, if you want to know where you can find a lot of others who
are insane
in the exact same way you are, just go to your local Church of
Scientology.
That is what they believe too.
-Jeremy
(Flake off! Flake on! Should I post the Frank Zappa song: Flakes?)
karmabum
Jeremy wrote
Should I post the Frank Zappa song: Flakes?)
### - not familiar with that one... but i do have a request (if poss)
for his "Wino man" (wonderful wino man?) on his "Zoot Alores" album
(no live versions please:) - also if poss. (i.e. from the same album)
his: "wind up working in a gas station" (heh heh heh zappa was nothing
short of cruel sometimes hehe:)
+ i have his "Disco-boy" track from that same album if anyone would
like it (so cruel ha ha ha ;))
Jeremy Donovan
Uh, request denied. I'm familiar with those cuts, which imo are from
FZ's 'prostate cancer collection'. The best song on Zoot Alures is
Black Napkins (even play my own version of it sometimes...). :-) But
I only do love songs right now, which is why I didn't post Flakes.
The real treat of the song, although quite negative, is a hysterical
Bob Dylan imitation -- is NOTHING sacred to these people!?? But a
small snippet of the lyrics I will reproduce:
"They don't do no good
They never be workin'
When they oughta should
They waste your time
They're wastin' mine
California's got the most of them
Boy, they got a host of them
Swear t'God they got the most
At every business on the coast
Swear t'God they got the most
At every business on the coast
They got the
Flakes!!"
-Jer
("they waste your time; they're wastin' mine...)
karmabum
Jeremy wrote
Uh, request denied. I'm familiar with those cuts, which imo are from
FZ's 'prostate cancer collection'. The best song on Zoot Alures is
Black Napkins (even play my own version of it sometimes...). :-) But
I only do love songs right now, which is why I didn't post Flakes.
The real treat of the song, although quite negative, is a hysterical
Bob Dylan imitation -- is NOTHING sacred to these people!??
### - hmmm, never personally saw zap as being 'negative' really...
imho if anything he was just tellin' people the brutal (+ graphically
portrayed) truth about what a bunch of deluded assholes we humans
really are;)
plus of course a lot of people totally resented him telling
them/informing them that their life (in society) was basically just a
load of paid-for plastic crap, and were glad to see the back of him:)
but then of course: "The torture never stops" heh heh heh :)
"Flies' all green and buzzin' in his dungeon of despair
prisoners grumble and piss their clothes and scratch their matted hair
a tiny light from a window hole a hundred yards away
is all they ever get to know about the regular life in the day
and it stinks so bad the stones been choking in great big greenish
drops
in the room where the giant fire-puff a-works and the torture never
stops." (Zapp-er :)
Jeremy
"karmabum" <sli...@anashram.com> wrote:
>### - hmmm, never personally saw zap as being 'negative' really...
>imho if anything he was just tellin' people the brutal (+ graphically
>portrayed) truth about what a bunch of deluded assholes we humans
>really are;)
>
>plus of course a lot of people totally resented him telling
>them/informing them that their life (in society) was basically just a
>load of paid-for plastic crap, and were glad to see the back of him:)
>
>but then of course: "The torture never stops" heh heh heh :)
>
>"Flies' all green and buzzin' in his dungeon of despair
>prisoners grumble and piss their clothes and scratch their matted hair
>a tiny light from a window hole a hundred yards away
>is all they ever get to know about the regular life in the day
>and it stinks so bad the stones been choking in great big greenish
>drops
>in the room where the giant fire-puff a-works and the torture never
>stops." (Zapp-er :)
Yeah, a good example of his endless catering to perpetual adolescents,
exactly the kind of thing FZ spent decades trying to:
"ram it, ram it, ram it, ram it up your poop shoot.
cornhole.
ram it, ram it, ram it, ram it up your poop shoot.
fistfuck."
(from Broken Hearts are for Assholes)
But Frank died young from something "rammed up his poop shoot,"
and I'm sure it broke the hearts of at least a few friends and family.
Go figure...
Then again, who knows for sure if there's any real connection? :-)
It could just be coincidence that the two people I got involved with
who slammed pretty much everything in society (FZ and CC) BOTH acted
like they thought they were totally above everyone else alive, and
BOTH died of cancer. Could just be coincidence... but somehow it
seems so fitting.
I'll just counter with a word from another musician who died young,
quoting a better song than 3/4 of the stuff Frank ever did:
"You tell me this town ain't got no heart.
Well, well, well, you can never tell.
The sunny side of the street is dark.
Well, well, well, you can never tell.
Maybe that's 'cause it's midnight,
in the dark of the moon besides.
Maybe the dark is from your eyes,
Maybe the dark is from your eyes,
Maybe the dark is from your eyes,
You know you got such dark eyes! "
(Jerry Garcia, Shakedown Street)
The greatest flaw of your typical adolescent is to go over the top
critical on *everything in society*, throwing the baby out with the
bathwater, while having no genuinely wise or constructive replacement
for anything they continually bitch about and put down. Most people
grow out of that phase eventually. Some don't. Frank didn't.
-Jeremy
cr...@att.net
> The greatest flaw of your typical adolescent is to go over the top
> critical on *everything in society*, throwing the baby out with the
> bathwater, while having no genuinely wise or constructive replacement
> for anything they continually bitch about and put down. Most people
> grow out of that phase eventually. Some don't. Frank didn't.
I can hardly wait till you find your next cult.
Just kidding. :)
karmabum
Jeremy wrote
> hmmm, never personally saw zap as being 'negative' really...
imho if anything he was just tellin' people the brutal (+ graphically
portrayed) truth about what a bunch of deluded assholes we humans
>really are;)
Yeah, a good example of his endless catering to perpetual adolescents,
exactly the kind of thing FZ spent decades trying to:
"ram it, ram it, ram it, ram it up your poop shoot.
cornhole.
ram it, ram it, ram it, ram it up your poop shoot.
fistfuck." (from Broken Hearts are for Assholes)
### - heh heh don't really agree about the adolescents bit (well, not
unless you're referring to 'mankind' as being kinda young in certain
ways hehe;) - personally i think he was just tellin' it the way it
really is above & beyond the mass-indoctrination that passes for
so-called civilisation on this planet:)
But Frank died young from something "rammed up his poop shoot,"
and I'm sure it broke the hearts of at least a few friends and family.
Go figure...
Then again, who knows for sure if there's any real connection? :-)
It could just be coincidence that the two people I got involved with
who slammed pretty much everything in society (FZ and CC) BOTH acted
like they thought they were totally above everyone else alive, and
BOTH died of cancer. Could just be coincidence... but somehow it
seems so fitting.
### - a strange remark that one - i.e. everyone's gotta die of
'something' no? + i reckon just about everyone 'would' die of cancer
if they lived long enough... so what's your beef with the
iconoclasts?:)
I'll just counter with a word from another musician who died young,
quoting a better song than 3/4 of the stuff Frank ever did:
"You tell me this town ain't got no heart.
Well, well, well, you can never tell.
The sunny side of the street is dark.
Well, well, well, you can never tell.
Maybe that's 'cause it's midnight,
in the dark of the moon besides.
Maybe the dark is from your eyes,
Maybe the dark is from your eyes,
Maybe the dark is from your eyes,
You know you got such dark eyes! "
(Jerry Garcia, Shakedown Street)
The greatest flaw of your typical adolescent is to go over the top
critical on *everything in society*, throwing the baby out with the
bathwater, while having no genuinely wise or constructive replacement
for anything they continually bitch about and put down. Most people
grow out of that phase eventually. Some don't. Frank didn't.
### - heh, i rather think he was hoping it would be something we might
all grow 'into'?:)) - e.g. re: your remark on there being no
'replacement' for all that crap in our lives, imho the only
'replacement' as such is not having to 'put-up' with it!:)
in other words: there's reality... and then there's all that plastic
shit we've plonked right over the top of it and which we've all
learned to worship like we'd all 'die' without it:) - and well, if
some more-awake people come along and take the piss out of us
all for 'hiding' from reality by doing that, then imho we probably
+ even rightfully deserve their scorn & criticism :)
d.berghof
Dear Ann,
>
> thanks for your reply, and the time and efforts to read my very long yet
> simple theories. What you said is in fact factually and otherwise
correct,
> what I will do now is to slightly change the point of view or the
attitude
> towards the 'trick of the hermaphrodite'. The clue was there, in the
> longest chronicle but maybe it got lost amidst the undisciplined chaos of
> other arguments and quotes (maybe the ego was trying to distract me:).
You are very consistent in your friendly ways.
If I have given you the impression that I didn't understand your point
with the hermaphrodite I wasn't communicating properly.
Your point was clear and
I do agree with you that our sexual identity does influence
image of ourselves and others.
I just don't think it matters that much, because we all have some sexual
identity one way or another. It is part of live.
>
>
>>>On Tue, 27 May 2003, Rbb wrote:
>>>
>
>>>Dear Ann,
>>>
>
>>The only problem is how to avoid "the unavoidable appointment", as
>>Carlos used to joke (we preferred to take him seriously sometimes:).
>>
>
>>>Just on the side:
>>>Who is the "we" that preferred to take him seriously at times?
>>>
>
> It was me, I admit:) Up to a point (the first books, five less or
more:) I
> chose to believe don Juan and took Carlos seriously. It was my choice,
> which (as a by-produced bonus:) made my reading smooth, a real
> pleasure. There were disappointments, of course. For example, when I
> became curious and chose not to exclude the possibility (not to zero the
> likelihood probability) that the stories were a beautiful dream.
The stories where just a frame for content.The content itself was framed
again in metaphors and new creation of words.
How important is a frame to you? It is just functional as in calling
attraction? Do you value it more then content?
The truth in the books is that reality can only be experienced and
observed subjective, what we call reality is an agreement about a sum
of subjective reality and since one has a huge influence on one owns
experience, one also has an influence on one's reality, and in longer
line on consensus reality.
It is not the whole truth, but it is partial true enough.
About that truth is written by so many authors. So many different
frames, let's not get hung up on one.
On the other hand CC is a good lesson in what ways a frame
influences people, even to the degree that all attention
is drawn from content and creates resistance towards content.
Those who have imitated his frame for their content pay now the prize.
They are called plastic shamans.
The lesson, be aware of the frame, it can frame you.
But as it is, content needs a frame to be communicated.
>
> Updating the probability from zero to non-zero
>
> Such teeny-weeny changes in the point of view make all the difference to
> our dogmatic mind. At a first glance it is only a machine-like argument,
> as if a trivial update of the probability we attach on an event.
Any true change in point of view creates a tiny new neural path.
Sustain the tiny change, it adds up to make a path permanent in the
long run.
We can program us and be programmed in our thinking.
>
> In this case the events were: Carlos - an impeccable anthropologist or a
> spiritual novelist? I started with setting the entire probability
mass on
> the first preferred option, i.e. I gave it the likelihood of the
perfectly
> round off number One. That is, my beliefs were 'naturally' formed by the
> cover of the books. Therefore, the zero probability of 0.000(000)
> (infinitely total zero = 0.000 000 ... and lines of zeros till the
> "unavoidable appointment") for the 'not an anthropologist' event
suggested
> itself :)
>
> And one sunny day I chose to update that probability from the absolutely
> nullified zero 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 ... (i.e. infinitely
> many zeros till eternity) to a more tractable and imaginable number like
> 0.000 000 000 000 001. If you remember my comment on computers, they do
> not understand 'infinity' (i.e. it is hard to tell them 'imagine', like
> Newton told his peers when he introduced the continuum). We cannot stalk
> the computer by saying: zero is the number 0.000 ... with zeros till
> 'infinity'. Consequently, to them the total expressions 'absolute zero'
> and 'nullified nil' have no meaning.
No I do not remember your point with the computer. I regularly erase
frames of others from my system. :)I like a free neural highway.
Your point now seems to be: While computers can work with numbers that
are incomprehensible to most minds, they still cannot imagine infinity.
So you cleverly discovered what is the real power of mind.
It is not the processing of facts.It is not reason.
It is imagination.
The famous two-sided sword with no limitation and impossible to avoid.
>
> To perturb the assemblage point
>
> In that day I chose exactly that: to forget about the infinite zero and
> instead become discretely and finitely realistic. That day I included
this
> 'impossible' event in the sample space of the Universal Set, I
allowed for
> the incomprehensible event 'Carlos - a dreamer', a microscopic chance but
> I allowed for it. And it made all the difference, a slight shift or
just a
> tiny perturbation of the assemblage point made all the difference. The
> world looked differently since that day, I may call it 'the shock of
> reality'.
I would rather call it a shock of discovering in what way allowing
believes influences one's reality.
Unfortunately allowing believe only really works if there not many
conflicting beliefs already present.
> Later in my life (in this very group, actually:) I chose to adopt the
same
> sober approach to many other theories that I couldn't observe in Nature
> armed only with the naked eyes of the evolution.
I have noticed. I like to dive into those matters at times, but
in the end it hasn't my passion.
Facts hinder pure communication.
For me to see a cloud and dive into it's colors and shape fills me to
my content.
I don't need to know from what it is made or how it comes to be.
Others are different. They can only enjoy a cloud if they also know
about it and how it relates in the whole.
For them knowledge is essential in their sense of reality and in their
approach to have a sense of control in life.
What way is right or wrong in life?
I have no idea. I think they both are valid and fail at times.
> Among those poor theories
> that I decided to question, following the advice of Einstein, were the
> 'conceptual creation of a child', the related genes, blood and Do Not
> Asks, the mighty viruses and unnatural numbers of the beast and many
> (really many) others. I did not reject them but 'only' provided a curious
> different point of view, different from the 100% dogma. Which made reason
> anything but happy, why actually.
Laughing.
At times I am wondering if the speed of growing facts will require
brain extensions in a thousand years and how that will change the hairdo.
>
> Who keeps the universe
>
> The dogmatic (predatory, linear, binary) mind loves the absolute
certainty
> of the infinite zero and the perfect 100%, they keep the dogma. When we
> adopt the realistic view that some :) events or people cannot be trusted
> with infinite certainty (i.e. believed like Gods) we cannot be hundred
> percent sure.
The mind of certainty:
It is highly entertaining to watch, because I know with a 100 %
certainty that life cannot be catched in a box.
That is the only certainty I have.
So to see all those minds being doomed to the fate of lemmings in
the end is highly funny.
And to my shame I must say that I even fake compassion by saying
that all those minds don't die in vain.
How can you know a lemming is already dead. The already dead lemmings
imagines to be in intensive care and being kept alive with the idea that
it is just a matter of time before they can be certain or even better
know it all.
There are also those confused lemmings that get the idea that they don't
have to be lemmings . They turn around just before the cliff and run
into the opposite direction, having lost their identity, seeking a new
one.
If it is male my alienated female point of view says: there goes a good
genepool.Lets get one of those smart ones, in fact lets get several of
them, because as any alienated female I wouldn't submit my genepool to
one option only.
There is no way an alienated female want to wake up one day and find out
she has given birth to just another lemming. Anything but not a lemming.
Faith is not knowing.
So why bother having faith in knowing.
>
> (i.e. the number 100.000 000 000 till infinity may not exist in
> reality. It may even exceed 100%, therefore often scientists stalk by
> setting 1 to 0.999 999 999 999 till infinity. You get the feel of this
> escape in infinity, it is just the safest emergency exit. We may
> conjecture that it holds the modern edifice of science. And the whole
cult
> started with a simple gullible acceptance of the words of two depressed
> people - Newton and Cantor)
Since I can't do anything with numbers, I kind of admire
brains that can go through that door.I don't mind people getting exited
by playing with numbers.It is good to play.
I figure that it is the way their imagination works.
Mine doesn't that is all.
I also like numberpeople because they made my computer.
> what the others or their documented evidence say. We cannot rely on them
> with 100% confidence. And we cannot use the infinite zero on thir
> alternatives. Sometimes it is sober to question (following Einstein)
even
> the "illusory reality" of our experiences, let alone those of the other
> scientists, anthropologists or gurus.
How do we know that we are asking the right questions?
It is so easy to assume that by getting an answer
one has asked the right question.However one can get a right answer with
a wrong question. Or an wrong answer with a right question.
And what question has priority in life?
Facing that many possible question one can ask, one has to realize that
there just so many question one can ask in a lifetime.
Is it ok to ask no question?
What if we never would have asked a question?
Would we really be without knowledge?
Is knowledge really a result of questions?
>
> And it was exactly what I (we:) did in our discussions, I chose not to
> worship the word 'infinity', I found it hard to imagine. Yes, it is true
> that Carlos, Newton, Cantor and some of their followers could and still
> imagine 'infinity'. But just like me, Einstein (he "wasn't sure about the
> infinity of the Universe", and yet he continued to use his bread-and-fame
> earning symbol of the continuum. I guess, there was this fight with the
> ego), Kant, finite mathematicians and their discrete colleagues,
computers
> and their engineers couldn't imagine it either.
I am always surprised if someone claims that he cannot imagine infinity.
But if they say so.
After all I can't imagine finity.
>
> This brave choice to update the sample space of viable possibilities
> perturbed my assemblage point, caused a negligible shift, I chose not to
> exclude anything, not to assign a total zero 0.000 000 000 ... (till
> infinity) probability on any event. Or at least not to be gullible to
> truly believe what others say or write, be it even in the holiest of
> scientific textbooks. Credulity means to reject the alternative
> hypothesis that the author might be lying or just dreaming.
> Scientists are especially good at rejecting alternatives (all but
> theirs:). I instead, chose to believe Dancing Zuka (in the longest
> chronicle) who told me that "rejection without proof is the fundamental
> characteristic of Western science".
But I see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to focus on aspects of
life.
>
> Note that stalking scientists concentrated on the first part of his
wisdom
> when they slaughtered religion, mysticism and 'mythology'. They tell
us to
> verify the miracles for them, they want our proofs from the spiritual
> world of magic, they urge us to present 'overwhelming evidence'
FIRST, and
> only then we are allowed to believe (whatever we want:). In other words,
> they stress that "acceptance without proof is the fundamental
> characteristic of Western religion".
I know it is hard for most spiritual people to defend themselves against
the obvious claim of science that they know best about reality.
But the reality science possesses is nothing but the consensusreality
that is based on facts and proof. A very limited area.
Against that is a huge area of consensusreality that is based on
subjective experience only, but agreed on through communication alone.
(There two version of agreement. One happens by agreement on proof.
The other on recognizing ones subjective reality in the communicated
subjective reality of the other. No further proof needed.)
Naturally that creates an overlapping field of the two
consensus realities in which they mutually influence each other
and in which they fight.
That creates tension, which is good, since tension is also the mother of
change and movement. We wouldn't want stagnation do we.
Science wants to find their own equivalent to god leading to all kind of
discoveries, religion gets polished and undone of unnecessary burden.
> They are right, of course. And yet, the interesting question is how did
> scientists manage to accept 'infinity'?
The answer to that question is pretty simple.
Because they could imagine it. :)
When science discovered imagination it was a huge breakthrough.
They don't know it yet, but it will soon come to them.
>
> I see, feel, touch, grab, make, count, add, divide, even breathe finite
> entities and objects (apart from the neural viruses, of course, which I
> have no way to verifiably count. I mean, we have problems even with the
> couple of billion neurons. And how do we count to infinity?)
I didn't know the way to infinity was counting to it.
It is an amusing thought.
Hey I can do something with numbers.
I know how to count infinities. 1
>
> Zuka revisited
>
> "Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western
> religion, Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of
> Western science." - Zuka, Gary in 'The Dancing Wu Li Masters'
>
> We intuitively feel that Lord Zuka wanted to tell us one simple thing:
> both modern scientists and theologists are religious believers. He talked
> to both groups, addressing each with their favourite words. Scientists
> like to reject hypothesis (and religions, myths, fantasies,
illusions) and
> religion likes faith and 'having to believe and accept'. Maybe he
wanted to wake them up for the
> alternative assumption of reality and God Nature within, but only a
> conjecture.
> Anyway, below we will prove that those two statements above tell us
one and
> the same thing, to reject hypothesis (usually all but one:) is the
same as
> accepting the fittest survivor. Rejecting and accepting are not that
> different, after all, after we notice that they are a word-pair, a mirror
> image of each other, they cannot exist without each other
independently in
> Nature.
And because both words support the one accepted dogma it follows
> that
>
> Nature does not like the dogma
Nature is just nature. It doesn't know what dogma is.
For the rest, nature means to me the sum of all that is not man-made.
Nature is not an identity to me, it is the face of god.
>
> To me it is more than obvious that both parts of Zuka's statement are
> right.
I agree.There are also highly funny.
I have wonderful strawberries right here, do you want one?
Or do you prefer something else?
Choice is the tension between accepting and rejecting.
I also tend to think that choice is the mother of the Ego and reason.
>
> Therefore, we 'see' the enormous difference between "acceptance without
> proof" and "rejection without proof". Both are religion, in the end we
> accept one preferred dogma. Tyrannic scientists take the stalking
route of
> 'rejection', i.e. rejecting anything else. But the word
> 'Nature'. Religious thinkers take the honest route of open 'acceptance',
> i.e. accepting anything they choose. The word 'God', for example.
>
> Scientists imposed (even in schools) their crushing view on the 'bad'
> words 'acceptance', 'belief', 'faith'. They were 'bad' for them because
> they were fighting religion and its words. The fight always starts from
> the favourite words. And usually ends there:). Scientists made us instead
> like their substitutes 'rejection', 'not worthwhile', 'independent
> tests'. Selected predators stalked the honest but gullible religion and
> spiritualism. A little game of words by the best masters for mankind made
> all the difference to the world.
>
> We (me again:) decided not to be gullible any more, we just couldn't SEE
> the difference between the act of accepting to believe whatever we
like (a
> choice according to religious preferences) and the act of rejecting to
> believe anything else. Actually we saw through that 'difference' :)
"Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western
religion, Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of
Western science." - Zuka, Gary in 'The Dancing Wu Li Masters'
When lord Zuka wants them to be real he invites both parties to see the
pattern of polarity.
Polarity is a two layer pattern.
In the first layer there are poles that do have tension.
Only if there is tension we can be sure that we do have a polarity.
To see where the polarity is really the same, one looks for the second
layer, where one can see why it is the same.
Then choice eliminates. If two things are really the same there is no
longer the tension of choice.
If you make science into a religion you attempt to solve the problem in
the first layer.
You cannot solve the pattern of polarity by touching the tension of the
two poles.
You do that by renaming science into religion. From that moment on you
have no longer a polarity pattern, because you start out with the same.
> In both cases it was a conscious choice of favourite words. Some of them
> were open about their personal preferences while the others kept their
> religious beliefs a secret. Einstein's question again is, why?
>
> Scientific challenger
>
> We have just found a witty sentence that could un-stalk us from any
> scientific challenge. Whenever we meet a scientist who demands:
>
> - Show me first the evidence for your world of magic. Give me convincing
> proofs to believe in this fantasy! I cannot "accept without proof".
>
> ,we laugh and calmly reply:
>
> - Show me first the evidence not to do it! Give me "confident" proofs
(not
> "intervals") to disbelieve my dreams! I cannot "reject without proof".
Now that was really funny.
I would like to talk about imagination a bit.
There would be no science without imagination.
There would be no religion without imagination.
There would be no art without imagination.
There would be no magic without imagination.
Science is framed imagination in the attempt to farm matter.
It confirms imagination with proof.
Religion celebrates imagination, it cannot do that without
it. It confirms imagination to be a bridge to the spiritual with belief
or even better with faith.
Art is the expression of imagination. It confirms imagination
by stating her uniqueness.
Magic has the closest relation with imagination as it is only focussed
on imagination itself.
To become real is to see that all images and ideas of and about reality
are imagination.
All seems to end with that statement, but the contrary is true.
Once you see that all is imagination it is no longer necessary to make a
choice, fight for anything or defend it for real.
One can allow any imagination, specially ones own.
Fair enough.
>
> The only 'reason' to do it is our proud ego :)
>
> It is true, many "destined" philosophers (like Socrates) have done
it, but
> this is not a convincing evidence for us to want to follow suit, we
do not
> have to go with the rational herd. Einstein was a word-crushing genius,
> wasn't he: "In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one
> must, above all, be a sheep". He probably meant his identically
> distributed statistical colleagues and the other countable elements
of the
> quantum set, but we may extend it to anything we choose from our
consensus
> reality.
The imagination to be a sheep is of high value.
>
>
>>Chris, Rainbowbird, Slider, Jeremy, Vini, Ether, Thom, Powhite, Dakkon,
>>Steve Ralph, Terry, Vic, Chuckman, Steve Mishjko, Aran Mous, RoboDwarfe,
>>Uncle Tantra, Small Tortoiseshell, Wings, Karmabum:), Sock Monkey,
and the
>>other fancy names I god in touch with were only words for me. I preferred
>>to stay concentrated on my quest, as if there was nobody but words
>>around. No attempts to imagine who you were or looked like, I was
>>indifferent to those personal identities (as opposed to the soul details
>>strangely conveyed in our "cheap talking").
>>
>
> I liked your assembled viewpoint in the next two lines:
>
>
>>>Your descriptions about people are your imaginations.
>>>Don't assume that they are the truth.
>>>
>
>>>They only become the truth if your imaginations are agreed by the one
>>>you have the imagination about. It doesn't matter if you draw your
>>>imagination from the words or the perceived personality of people.
>>>
>
> "True". Though what are we "truly" in the eyes of society? The union of
> all those "descriptions and imaginations" or images of us in the heads of
> our friends. Our opinions about others are again "imaginations" based on
> our experience. They can hardly be "true", since we change all the
> time. For instance I wasn't such a good master of words when I first came
> here, I am constantly learning.
You are doing well. You formulate well, you have brilliant points
in-between your mental spagetthi, but that contrast makes it very funny.
I enjoy your independent thinking.
Reading what you write is walking on a meadow with a lot of flowers
ready to bloom. I enjoy reading what you write mainly because I enjoy
your energy tremendously.
>
> To avoid such 'impartial' value judgements (but in fact, one-and-only
> fixations) I decided not to imagine "the truth" about anyone, but to
> "describe" what 'I saw' happening in the discussion. 'I saw' the
> thermodynamic Nature of our souls (and choices:). It was only my
> EXPERIENCE and I shared it with you as soon as my ego fell asleep (and
> whenever I felt it was essential for the theory of words. I appreciate
> your help, the theory was born here based to a greatest extent on this
> experience). Now I see that 'you saw' otherwise, which is again
consistent
> with the general theory - we see what we would like to see.
I am sorry that I have given you the impression that I saw it so different.
I can see it your way. I just don't think that there is a right or wrong
way.
>
>
>> reason fears hermaphrodites
>>
>>was the first law of human nature that I was able to detect back in
>>February. Why is it so?, is the next logical question. May be he is
>>protecting something dearly, his true nature, maybe or our ego?
Reason fears what he cannot chose.
>>
>
>>>Excuse me when I get very blunt here.
>>>Your puzzle has one big flaw:
>>>It fits too well.
>>>Now here is a real challenge for you:
>>>Point me out one flaw in your whole theory.
>>>
>
> A nice shot, congratulations! Your "blunt" question is rhetoric, of
> course, for you have just found the "big flaw" of the 'theory of words' -
> has no flaws (almost:), it just "fits too well".
Oh well then it must be science. :):):):)
>
> Do you believe scientists when they tell us about the unfathomable
> complexity of mother Nature?
I hope you are ok with me saying that I believe scientists every word
they are saying.
I have to do so out of respect of imagination.
>
> They just say that it is not possible to discover the secrets of the
> universe (i.e. laymen shouldn't even think about that). We are
> disappointed to hear that and give up the quest (stop asking
> why-questions). And after that they evolutionary proceed with their
search
> for the Big Bang-ous answer. They remain the only entitled to inquire.
Why would an old hunter like me be impressed by a couple of farmers?
Ages ago they have squeezed matter because of survival, they still do
not do anything else they just do it complexer :)
You see you believe in a battle between religion and science. I would
call that just an internal quarrel.
>
> The following questions are very simple and have to do with the absolute
> null and the circular tautology ('reject'='not accept' and vice versa)
> discussed above:
You mean you are offering me a lot of strawberries.
Oh the torture of choice. :)
>
> Do you believe that there is absolutely no chance to find the answers of
> interest to you?
If I have a question I usually can imagine an answer
or I find it otherwise on accident.
My main questions are answered, they only get an upgrade here and there.
Most questions I have are of an entertaining nature.
>
> Or if you are interested in entirely different questions then: Are
you 100
> percent confident that I have no chance to find the answers of
interest to
> me?
Actually I am a 100 % sure that you will find answers to your interest.
>
> Can anyone know better what we are capable of than we, our intuition and
> our souls?
Yes. Other souls that are a bit wiser and older then we are.
>
> Do you believe we cannot be Gods of our own life, naguals of our own
> assemblage point, not even a glimmer of chance?
I don't believe that we are gods of our own life. Too much choice.
I do believe that we can be naguals of our assemblage-point, but I would
have never chosen those words or express myself in that way.
I am trying to avoid the frames of others,but with language around it is
not easy.
>
> Are you 100% and more convinced that for a 'layman' to find an answer
to a
> question is absolutely impossible, even if it is a spiritual question?
I would say that any question finds an answer.
> Are you 100% ready to reject with "scientific confidence" the "null
> hypothesis" that an answer could ever be found?
I believe that an answer has been found already many times, but it
was each time such an unique
event that it cannot be regarded as answer by science.
For every unique event there cannot be a proof, because if it repeats it
is no longer unique.
>
> If so, then it is your personal choice.
Really?
> In "homo-scientificus" and
> elsewhere I recognised this scientific desperation as a regular stalking
> manoeuvre of 'anti-spiritualists'. They made us believe so without proof,
> they rejected the lucky possibility without proof, only based on their
> wiseacre experience.
>
> They have simply calculated the chances of success and set them to
> absolute zero.
Who can blame them.
Farming has a lot more success by focussing on repetitive patterns.
> For example, they might have done the following silencing
> exercise: first they count how many other distinguished (known and
> documented) scientists have tried and failed (maybe all but have to
> check). If no famous wiseacre has found the answer to a particular
> question the next step to proclaiming the insolvable problem a paradox of
> Nature is to form a simple ratio. They divide the number of successes
> (zero favourable events in this case) by the total number of wiseacres in
> the Universe (or the members of the universal set, all events in the
state
> space). So if we divide absolute zero (have you met an empty set or
> absolute zero walking about in independent Nature) by million scientists
> in the world we get the totality of zero.
>
> Therefore, they conclude "The likelihood of you discovering what is wrong
> with your life is zero, chances are non-existence. The best you can do in
> this complex universe is to trust us, we can give you at least some
> partial answers. Stop your quest and believe the hundreds of years of
> professional experience!"
Now that was really funny. It even gets funnier.
You think they are wrong, I think they are right and yet we totally
agree with each other
that this is the way they do it.
>
> They have 'just' said it and it became real in our minds.
Not in mine.
> We won't dare to
> inquire any more, or even if we try it won't be a whole-hearted
effort. We
> were even made to feel ashamed of our quest, like in the dark ages of the
> inquisition. Their chanting about the 'incomprehensibility of complex
> Nature' cut the wings of our laughing imagination.
I don't fear for you. Don't fear for me :)
>
> I mean, why should we even dare to contemplate such a quest if we know
> already the fatal answer.
>
> Aren't they masters? My trick was to assume that they were right: it is
> indeed impossible to find any answer in their complex matrix.
I agree with you on that last sentence for a hundred percent.
> But what if
> we stop the greedy expansion of the Universe and obey their second law of
> thermodynamics - the natural tendency for entropy? What if we simplify
> their Nature, at least in our minds? Many of their 'paradoxes' started to
> disappear, which is quite a logical consequence of simplicity. Should we
> be afraid of our progress? Or should we laugh?
We should laugh.
There is no better way. There are just different ways.
>
> I choose not to be ashamed that "it fits too well". Let us wipe our
> complex eyes now. To be entirely honest with you I am happy and strangely
> free, and recognise that I indeed managed to mechanically reorganise the
> matrix in my mind. It was my choice, to want to live in a simple
world and
> be in control of my life.
And what is important you are in peace with that you think you are.
The rest of your journey can begin now.
You have a fighting spirit and a friendly nature.
Here is a story you have told me in my imagination while I read your
writings.
A long time ago there have been two main tribes.
One lived by hunting, the other from gathering food.
One lived from the animals, the others from the plants.
Both did grow as time went by, the gathering tribe a bit more then the
hunting tribe, which clusters had to be able to move quicker and more.
They both had a different development.
The gatherer-farmer tribe:
The first pattern they discovered was mother-food and because they got
their food from their surroundings they thought all what they saw was
their mother, especially the plants. They worshipped the plants, the
earth and all mothers.
One day a member of the gathering tribe observed a new pattern.
He discovered that when he put a seed into the ground a new plant would
come. Very soon that tribe changed from gatherers to farmers and because
of that they started to settle. After they had discovered the pattern
"plant seed plant" they discovered more and more patterns that where
connected with the plants.
They discovered the sun-plant relation, time through the moon.
The sun became the father to the earth and her plants the mother.
Harvest was their proof that their observation of patterns was good enough.
Those who where clever enough to understand the first cyclic pattern
where our first scientists. And if one understands how important harvest
was in those days one can understand why science still wants proof.
No harvest , no proof, no survival.Their eyes where fixed on patterns
and growth.So don't wonder why our economy has to grow and grow.
Naturally that tribe had their shamans they had to take care that mother
and father where kept happy and wouldn't go away.
Very soon they found that they could heal with plants.
And when someone died they put him into the earth and believed that the
mother would give him birth again.
They had an easy way and they did grow and grow and everywhere in the
world you can see their traces of religion. Fertility, mother father
images, the sun the moon, plants, rebirth. Observatories, plantpatterns.
The trinity. Seed, plant, fruit. In their world religion and science
have been going hand in hand for a long time. Now they quarrel,
because they have forgotten.
The hunting-tribe
In the mean-time the hunting tribe had their own development.
Their eyes have been more fixed on the animals they hunted and their traces.
Their life was more dangerous, they couldn't afford to grow in large
numbers.To them what moved was important. And what moved had spirit.
And when they did eat something they believed they consumed also the
spirit. They looked up to the sky and saw movement, so that had also
spirit. Spirit was everywhere they looked.
And what more they saw that the movement never stopped it was infinite.
That was how they knew that spirit cannot die.
There was an afterlife and they explored it with their dreams and
visions. They believed in a soul.
They also had their shamans because they had spirit to keep happy
for good hunting. And the shamans took on the spirit of the animals
and moved. Dance was born.The imitation of the sound of animals became
singing. They felt the heart moving and beating. So that was where the
seat of spirit was in them, and their drums was heartbeat, spirit.
They painted the animals capturing their spirit for protection.
From them came art.
The spiral became their sign of spirit, later the wheel.
They needed signs on trail, so from them came writing.
But besides all that they also developed intuition and telepathy
and communication with spirit.
Because of the fixation on infinite movement their spirituality was more
abstract from the beginning.
Naturally the two tribes and their believe and ways mixed and went
through changes.
With the hunters war came to the farmertribe, they took them in but they
have never been really comfortable around each other.
Until today you can tell if someone carries more the genes of a hunter
or a farmer. Here a little hint:
If someone believes religiously in luck he is a hunter.
If he believes religiously in proof he is a farmer.
Good luck to you :)
RBB
cr...@att.net
> I would like to talk about imagination a bit.
> There would be no science without imagination.
> There would be no religion without imagination.
> There would be no art without imagination.
> There would be no magic without imagination.
Just think there would be no worry without imagination also.
Careful what you imagine. :)
karmabum
RBB wrote
A long time ago there have been two main tribes.
One lived by hunting, the other from gathering food.
One lived from the animals, the others from the plants.
Both did grow as time went by, the gathering tribe a bit more then the
hunting tribe, which clusters had to be able to move quicker and more.
They both had a different development.
### - don't mean to interfere in your (quite interesting + enjoyable)
conversation girls... but being someone who's into 'history' i have to
somewhat question the above... e.g. surely the evidence of our 'teeth'
suggests that we were primarily designed to chew plant material, and
that accordingly we probably knew everything there is to know about
plants before anything else no? - the 'meat-eating' coming much later
as only a very recent addition to our general diet
i.e. and as such, i don't personally believe we then 'developed'
farming and agriculture via some sort of agricultural-revolution only
10,000-15,000 years ago for example... mainly because plants are
something we've 'always' eaten & known about right from the
beginning! - eating 'meat' being the gradual development + later
revolution and not the other way around:)
Rbb
Rbb
It is still not decided who was first.
The meateater or the planteaters.
And for all we know there might not be a first.
The same that it is argued wether Africa was the cradle
of humanity and people migrated from there. Or actually tribes that
came from various locations
migrating in various directions.
Apart from that, it is just imagination,
you don't need proof for that. :)
But apart from this here is someone that thinks that cooking made the
difference for all:
COOKING AND HUMAN EVOLUTION
Gabe Mirkin, M.D.
For years, anthropologists have told us that humans dominate the earth
because they learned to make tools that could kill big animals that
would give them more food so that they could survive. Dr Richard
Wrangham of Harvard thinks they are all wrong. He thinks that man
dominates earth because he learned how to cook.
Some anthropologists tell us that prehistoric humans were meat eaters,
while others tell us that they were primarily gatherers of plants. If
humans were meat eaters, why don't you have large pointy teeth like
other meat eaters such as a tiger? Or a lower jaw that juts out to catch
prey like an alligator or dog? Humans have a flat lower jaw that
couldn't possibly grab a prey for the first bite.
If prehistoric man ate primarily plants, then why don't we have a
multi-chambered stomach with stones so we can eat grass like a cow? Why
don't we have 40 feet of intestines like a rabbit does to have more
space to break down the fiber in plants? And why do we have small teeth
that aren't able to grind grass like a horse's teeth?
Dr. Richard Wrangham, a Harvard professor of anthropology, attempts to
explain why we are alive today and have not become extinct because we
are so poorly designed. He thinks that humans survived because they
learned to cook. Other anthropologists think that humans have been
cooking for only 300,000 years, which is not long enough for major
evolutionary changes to occur. Dr. Wrangham proposes that humans have
survived because they were able to cook almost 2 million years ago, or
1.5 million years longer than previous evidence suggested. This could
explain why we don't have the teeth and digestive tracts like either
plant-eating or meat-eating animals. Dr. Wrangham thinks it explains
many other human features, too.
Many of the most abundant plants on earth cannot be digested by humans
in their raw state. But cooking softens hard seeds, breaks down toxic
and irritating substances in roots and leaves, and releases nutrients
bound up in plant cells. Starchy foods such as potatoes, whole grains,
beans and cassavas have 75-100 percent more digestible calories when
they are cooked than when eaten raw.
Cooking also allows humans to eat meat. A dog can eat food right out of
the garbage can because dogs and wolves have the most acidic stomachs of
all mammals and their stomach acids kill most germs. If you ate spoiled
meat, you would probably get an infection and die. Cooking kills most of
the parasites and bacteria that flourish in meat and can be deadly to
humans.
Since cooking allowed humans to eat both plants and meat and to get more
calories from many plants than are available when they are eaten raw,
humans had access to more food than all other animals and they survived
when other species starved. Access to extra calories that are not
available to animals who can't cook may also explain why humans evolved
with larger brains, which allowed them to dominate their environment
wherever they went.
Several popular "paleo-diet" authors tell us that humans evolved without
grains, beans or roots and so those foods should have no place in our
diet today. Dr. Wrangham's theory suggests just the opposite -- that
these are the very foods that allowed humans to develop into the
small-jawed, small-gut, tall, large-brained, social animals we are today.
New York Times, May 28, 2002
www.DrMirkin.com
karmabum
Rbb wrote
It is still not decided who was first.
The meateater or the planteaters.
And for all we know there might not be a first.
### - hmmm, well don't they say that the 'appendix' in humans is a
left-over from us having a much longer intestine that's needed in
animals to process vegetation? (rabbits for example don't have an
extra stomach, they just have longer intestines) - we also have
'bacteria' living in the gut that helps to break-down plant material
that's not really needed to deal with the digesting of meat (i.e. meat
is a much faster/easier supply of protein)
so my thinking is that we must have started entirely with plants (e.g.
long enough anyway to develop a symbiotic relationship with some
bacteria) + the ingestion of small insects that probably lived on
those plants (our first meat?:) - and then maybe just like the
chimpanzees, we eventually started catching & eating other small
animals when we realised the extra 'strength' that was to be gained
from doing so (i.e. if chimps can realise this and they are only
monkeys, then humans probably realised it a bit faster)
The same that it is argued wether Africa was the cradle
of humanity and people migrated from there. Or actually tribes that
came from various locations
migrating in various directions.
### - our genetic history tends to suggest that the present form of
humanity (i.e. there have been several other forms/tribes, including
the Neanderthals) originated about 150,000 years ago from a female in
west africa... and that this same line then spread-out (or travelled)
across the world, reaching austrailia around 75,000 years ago (plus i
do not think we 'walked' all that way, i.e. knowing how human beings
are, our DNA probably just 'shagged' its way right across the world
hehehe - and which probably means there were (some kind of)
people/humans already there wherever we travelled;)
Apart from that, it is just imagination,
you don't need proof for that. :)
### - heh heh heh, but well we 'do' have teeth designed for eating
vegetables, plus we obviously came from stock with a longer intestine
(i.e. at one time we must have had bigger bellies + farted all the
time like the gorillas?:)
But apart from this here is someone that thinks that cooking made the
difference for all:
COOKING AND HUMAN EVOLUTION
Gabe Mirkin, M.D.
For years, anthropologists have told us that humans dominate the earth
because they learned to make tools that could kill big animals that
would give them more food so that they could survive. Dr Richard
Wrangham of Harvard thinks they are all wrong. He thinks that man
dominates earth because he learned how to cook.
Since cooking allowed humans to eat both plants and meat and to
get more calories from many plants than are available when they
are eaten raw, humans had access to more food than all other
animals and they survived when other species starved. Access
to extra calories that are not available to animals who can't cook
may also explain why humans evolved with larger brains, which
allowed them to dominate their environment wherever they went.
### - aye, but eating 'raw' meat was probably the first step to that -
plus as we got smarter over millions of years (less gut, more brain
area etc) at some point the harnessing of fire became activated which
then catalysed the whole business - e.g. the Greeks also draw a line
here with the discovery + use of fire (the Greek version of leaving
Eden?:)
Several popular "paleo-diet" authors tell us that humans evolved
without grains, beans or roots and so those foods should have
no place in our diet today. Dr. Wrangham's theory suggests
just the opposite -- that these are the very foods that allowed
humans to develop into the small-jawed, small-gut, tall,
large-brained, social animals we are today.
### - (slider scratching his head:) - yes but didn't the Neanderthals
also have fire? - plus modern humans co-existed with them for some
time before they became extinct (mind you, humans being the smarter
species, we probably just cooked them too:))
(slider in a loin-cloth 75,000 years ago) - Th'all-burgers anyone? :)
Jeremy
Rbb <R...@shamanism.com_no.spam> wrote:
>It is still not decided who was first.
>The meateater or the planteaters.
>And for all we know there might not be a first.
>The same that it is argued wether Africa was the cradle
>of humanity and people migrated from there. Or actually tribes that
>came from various locations
>migrating in various directions.
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/may28/humans-528.html
-J.
karmabum
Rbb
"karmabum" <sli...@anashram.com> wrote in message
news:bbefht$gqv$2...@sparta.btinternet.com...
>
> Jeremy wrote
>
> http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/may28/humans-528.html
>
>
> ### - http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/ingman.html (update)
>
>
Thanks, I was looking for the link above.
Jeremy
"karmabum" <sli...@anashram.com> wrote:
The article in my link is a study from Stanford that just came out.
The one in your link is two years old.
So actually, mine is the "update". :-)
-J.
Rbb
>
> Rbb wrote
>
> It is still not decided who was first.
> The meateater or the planteaters.
> And for all we know there might not be a first.
>
> ### - hmmm, well don't they say that the 'appendix' in humans is a
> left-over from us having a much longer intestine that's needed in
> animals to process vegetation? (rabbits for example don't have an
> extra stomach, they just have longer intestines) - we also have
> 'bacteria' living in the gut that helps to break-down plant material
> that's not really needed to deal with the digesting of meat (i.e. meat
> is a much faster/easier supply of protein)
>
> so my thinking is that we must have started entirely with plants (e.g.
> long enough anyway to develop a symbiotic relationship with some
> bacteria) + the ingestion of small insects that probably lived on
> those plants (our first meat?:) - and then maybe just like the
> chimpanzees, we eventually started catching & eating other small
> animals when we realised the extra 'strength' that was to be gained
> from doing so (i.e. if chimps can realise this and they are only
> monkeys, then humans probably realised it a bit faster)
You are not the only one that argues like that and I wouldn't go against it.
It is a possiblity.
There is just one glitch. People have lived in regions with long winters.
What plants could you eat then? And what about plants in the iceages?
Talking about our regions. All caves have hunting images, images of animal.
If they had lived predominatly from plants. We would have seen patterns of
plants
or images of plants in those caves. We don't. At all really.
>
>
> The same that it is argued wether Africa was the cradle
> of humanity and people migrated from there. Or actually tribes that
> came from various locations
> migrating in various directions.
>
> ### - our genetic history tends to suggest that the present form of
> humanity (i.e. there have been several other forms/tribes, including
> the Neanderthals) originated about 150,000 years ago from a female in
> west africa... and that this same line then spread-out (or travelled)
> across the world, reaching austrailia around 75,000 years ago (plus i
> do not think we 'walked' all that way, i.e. knowing how human beings
> are, our DNA probably just 'shagged' its way right across the world
> hehehe - and which probably means there were (some kind of)
> people/humans already there wherever we travelled;)
Yeap, but I believe in various tribes and climates with difference in
animal-life and plant-life.
I think it is highly unlikely that humans started out on one point only.
>
>
>
> Apart from that, it is just imagination,
> you don't need proof for that. :)
>
> ### - heh heh heh, but well we 'do' have teeth designed for eating
> vegetables, plus we obviously came from stock with a longer intestine
> (i.e. at one time we must have had bigger bellies + farted all the
> time like the gorillas?:)
What do you mean at one time ? If I walk in town I don't see much change.
It makes me want to incarnate in a machine next time.
>
> Since cooking allowed humans to eat both plants and meat and to
> get more calories from many plants than are available when they
> are eaten raw, humans had access to more food than all other
> animals and they survived when other species starved. Access
> to extra calories that are not available to animals who can't cook
> may also explain why humans evolved with larger brains, which
> allowed them to dominate their environment wherever they went.
>
> ### - aye, but eating 'raw' meat was probably the first step to that -
> plus as we got smarter over millions of years (less gut, more brain
> area etc) at some point the harnessing of fire became activated which
> then catalysed the whole business - e.g. the Greeks also draw a line
> here with the discovery + use of fire (the Greek version of leaving
> Eden?:)
Nice thought. The greek version of Eden, I mean.
Fire was a huge markerpoint in evolution indeed.
It is in all myths, one way or another.
What does science say how it was discovered?
Lightening and a burning tree sounds fine.
To take it with you because it warm, also sounds fine.
But that makes no instant barbecue.
So how got they their idea to cook?
>
> Several popular "paleo-diet" authors tell us that humans evolved
> without grains, beans or roots and so those foods should have
> no place in our diet today. Dr. Wrangham's theory suggests
> just the opposite -- that these are the very foods that allowed
> humans to develop into the small-jawed, small-gut, tall,
> large-brained, social animals we are today.
>
> ### - (slider scratching his head:) - yes but didn't the Neanderthals
> also have fire? - plus modern humans co-existed with them for some
> time before they became extinct (mind you, humans being the smarter
> species, we probably just cooked them too:))
May be that is how we learned cooking. Using fire as weapons.
I hate to think it was like that.
> (slider in a loin-cloth 75,000 years ago) - Th'all-burgers anyone? :)
Know what you mean, to travel into the Neanderthal- experience in my
imagination
is a lot of fun. But loincloth... I don't know. Loin fur.....
By the way. Today I have told a guy about the farmer and hunter model of my
imagination.
Which is basically saying that there are two models of orientations in
humans.
He works with HP as Manager. Turns out that this model is already used in
company trainings
to explain tasks and needed qualities on the workfloor, but of course
doesn't implement the two basic version of religions, abstract and
dualistic.
Ain't imagination fun?
RBB
Rbb
when did modern behavior kick in.
Hunting and farming has a lot to do with the cognitive abilities, and that
is what I am talking about.
Nice article from national geographic:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0220_030220_humanorigins2.ht
ml
Rbb
"Jeremy" <jeremydon@socal_spam.rr_spammer.com_spam> wrote in message
news:mfjkdv8ufvk493uvu...@4ax.com...
Still questions:
I still don't know what happened to Mungo man.
http://exn.ca/Stories/2001/04/26/53.asp
No answer in your article to that.
Interesting up to date comment to above link. Read too.
Rbb
Ann
that name sounds at least as nice as Slider, but the main idea is to
change our Usenet personal frame every now and then. What a luck that
it is still allowed here. It brings about a mighty change in our minds
(that strangely resembles a reason-fit), its invigorating role shouldn't
be underestimated.
The reasonable 'trick of the name' is that it fixes us, it reduces all our
memories, experiences, appearances and biographies to a word, in the same
way a passport photograph tries (and in most cases succeeds) to fix us. We
look anxiously at our photograph (or that of our relatives, especially
when we belive in the dogma of the blood) and decide to conform to its
reality.
What we 'see' of course, is relative to what others see, we compare the
picture with the social norm or ideal of normality. The reality we see in
the photograph depends again on the present consensus. The relative image
we will see depends on the time and place (the country or tribe, for
example), i.e. the actual image in our mind (our mirror) hinges on the
point of view adopted by the 'independent' observer.
For example, the other day (two months ago:) I saw a very recent
documentary about a living tribe somewhere in Africa or South
America. There the most beautiful women (they had no problems to pose
naked in front of the camera) are considered to be the ones with the
largest (longest) lower lips. To be beautiful the girls have to 'wear'
from an early age (10 or so) big rings (about 4 to 5 inches or 12
centimetres in diameter) to naturally extend their otherwise beautiful
lips. They have those rings all day long, their lip is 'ugly' (for the
independent western observer) separated from the mouth - a good example of
the Nature of the evolving 'genes'.
We have just found another form of divine plastic surgery, and is the
difference from its civilised version that big. Only that in western
countries playful doctors have replaced the witches and shamans. To
continue with the photograph theme:
It is so that modern psychologists tell us to conform to our photograph,
"to accept us as we are". On one hand it is calm message to crush that
'anxiety', to stop that constant concern about our body. On the other
hand, it has the mark of scientific desperation. We cannot change anything
in our physical (what about mental) appearance. The 'bloody' genes cannot
be overridden, goes the argument, so the most we can do is be angry at our
parents if we do not like what we see. It is their responsibility and not
our imitating choice.
Our consensus conformity has its limits, though. And in the ugliest of
cases we may choose not to accept this blood 'reality', we may decide to
deviate from the social DNA norm. In that case we may be termed a lucky
coincidence or a happy mutant. By deviation I do not mean plastic surgery,
but an choice with the soul not to accept some words we do not like.
(Note again the trick of the random scientist: his descriptive statistics
did not exclude that possibility, he didn't reject the hypothesis of
naughty mutants and disobeying children. He just waits: if the child goes
for the almighty genes the doctor chants the divine words of the blood
cult. It happens in most, but NOT ALL, of the cases, because we enter the
blood cult without any hesitation. Nevertheless we observe failures of the
DNA theory. If the theory of the blood blatantly fails genetic scientists
will chant the theory of feeble genes overridden by the powerful
circumstances and personal experiences. In the curious special case of
similar genes and circumstances and yet totally different outcome the
scientist will become randomly insane and 'explain' that the result was a
random draw by complex Nature, she plays dice and the chances were fifty
fifty or forty sixty. Those 'mutating genes + life experience + random
circumstances' modern theories are no explanation, they cannot predict but
only describe in hindsight. If genes are not universally in charge of our
being, do we need that theory, how real are they? Maybe the underlying
pattern that drives all those predicted and random events is the axiom of
choice. Now back to the lucky choice not to accept the theory of genes:)
And the same with the name given by our benevolent parents. They blessed
us with the 'best' name from their point of view. We were unconscious at
that age and nobody cared (dared) to ask about our opinion.
When we choose to abandon the fixation of the word (the name, the gene,
the photograph, the image, the thought about us in the heads of our
friends) we initiate a major change in the matrix.
First of all, many old theories faint in our mind. We free our choosing
soul from the strongest chains of reason.
Moreover, after the virtual identity-change we suddenly do not feel
obliged to defend old convictions of ours (our old words) at all costs, we
are learning not to die for the words even if they are ours. If we have
little pride we can do it. And all of an astonished sudden we have no
problems admitting our previous failures or lack of sobriety. We become
incredibly flexible, we fly faster than the speed of light on the wings of
unabridged imagination.
### On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, karmabum wrote:
> Rbb wrote
> It is still not decided who was first.
> The meateater or the planteaters.
> And for all we know there might not be a first.
> ### - heh heh heh, but well we 'do' have teeth designed for eating
> vegetables, plus we obviously came from stock with a longer intestine
> (i.e. at one time we must have had bigger bellies + farted all the
> time like the gorillas?:)
"Farting gorillas" made me laugh. Basically, last week I had my field
work, i.e. I travelled to 'Sonora' (in this case it was a big European
city). And one thing I did there was to go back to where I belong,
i.e. to the zoo. I haven't done it for ages, so I 'had to', especially
after the discovery of this new tolerant (non-predatory) point of view on
the universe. I was in paradise that day, no human words but the sun and
the sound of the truly natural creatures. The magic of it was, that in
many happy instances the visitor could (was allowed to) feel and touch the
animals. There I saw also four beautiful gorillas (two 'pensioners' with
very, very wise looks) and they weren't farting.
That journey to Sonora was amazing in many respects. It started as a joke,
friends of mine made me "an offer I couldn't refuse" (if you remember "the
godfather":). And once I arrived there 'miracles' started to happen. I
call them miraculous coincidences, because I came across (I wasn't
searching for them, they just came to me) some of the best documented
proofs (there could hardly be a better documented evidence) for the theory
of words. The fact that we (science and religion) have been blind to the
alternative assumption for such a long time continuously approaches the
point of inexplicability. Of course, our supreme ego is always a good
candidate to start with when inquiring into paradoxes of such magnitude.
I'll present the overwhelming evidence in a next Lord Dalais Plutos Lamas
letter, but first I would like to catch up with the 'adc documented
evidence':)
> ### - aye, but eating 'raw' meat was probably the first step to that -
> plus as we got smarter over millions of years (less gut, more brain
> area etc) at some point the harnessing of fire became activated which
> then catalysed the whole business - e.g. the Greeks also draw a line
> here with the discovery + use of fire (the Greek version of leaving
> Eden?:)
They were clever indeed, those ancient Greeks, and above all honest like
Homer:). I mean, what is Heaven (Eden, paradise) without Hell. And without
the word 'fire' the 'hell-stick' will be boring to shaking. "We have to be
occupied with something", goes reason, and what else can we DO in 'hell'
but burn. There is nothing else to do there. And to burn in Hell we need
the word 'fire'. That is how the word 'fire' (a joint work with the words
'body' and 'flesh') made the Greeks (and some of us, maybe:) accept the
word-pair 'Heaven-Hell'. The 'fire' word was the needed stick, we needed
to have that word in the matrix of Eden.
We imagined a nice legend, which if not for the Greeks applies at least
for some medieval (completely evil, in fact:) dreamers.
> Several popular "paleo-diet" authors tell us that humans evolved
> without grains, beans or roots and so those foods should have
> no place in our diet today. Dr. Wrangham's theory suggests
> just the opposite -- that these are the very foods that allowed
> humans to develop into the small-jawed, small-gut, tall,
> large-brained, social animals we are today.
>
> ### - (slider scratching his head:) - yes but didn't the Neanderthals
> also have fire? - plus modern humans co-existed with them for some
> time before they became extinct (mind you, humans being the smarter
> species, we probably just cooked them too:))
>
> (slider in a loin-cloth 75,000 years ago) - Th'all-burgers anyone? :)
Rainbowbird's counter-argument about the lack of any (or few) old
paintings and drawings of fruit and vegetables is interesting. I may
further conjecture that before the original sin and the flirt with the
words 'energy' and 'food' there were no food paintings whatsoever. I mean,
if we tame our ego (get rid off it) we won't even feel the need to paint
our heroic deeds, let alone to draw our conquests of 'food' or
'energy'. (Reason and some musicians call it the "Conquest of Paradise"
but you know my unwavering opinion on that.)
Thus, we conjecture that many generations of ancient people did not leave
any documented evidence of their existence, they didn't want to fix the
world with drawings.
Those early people 'saw' the matrix differently, perhaps there were not so
many external objects. At least I as a little child had a GENETICALLY
different eyesight from that of my parents. I was an angel and only later
decided to 'fall', I was genetically guided to, I mechanically learned how
to 'fall' (laughter permeates me, the "fallen angel" idea comes from a
movie I 'had to' watch in 'Sonora'. The importance of this piece of art
for the matrix theory is comparable to "the matrix" itself.).
In another post you address the theoretical and practical approach
(experience) to reaching self-awareness or just becoming fully
conscious.
According to the most general theory of words to become conscious of what
we are we need to crush all the words that cut our wings. We can do it if
we choose so, the best proof of the axiom of choice. In Freudian terms we
described that process as getting entirely rid off his
sub-consciousness. We crushed his sub-conscious mind in any sense
possible, even in the biological sense - the word 'yoga' is our ally here
for it opened our eyes for this conscious alternative. Yoga crushes the
bodily confines of reason.
Advanced yogi are the clearest DOCUMENTED evidence that it is possible to
control all those hard-wired neural networks, and this is done consciously
as opposed to the machine-like unconscious tendencies. Those explorative
Indians chose this responsibility and it became their consensus reality,
they had no prejudice or fear. Furthermore, they were generous masters and
even wrote books to describe their journey to Ixtlan - they taught us how
to unfix and unstalk the body to reach full control over ALL "biological
functions". Back to theory.
Webster's Unabridged (1913)
Theory \The"o*ry\, n.; pl. Theories. [F. th['e]orie, L.
theoria, Gr. ? a beholding, spectacle, contemplation,
speculation, fr. ? a spectator, ? to see, view. See
Theater.]
1. A doctrine, or scheme of things, which terminates in
speculation or contemplation, without a view to practice;
hypothesis; speculation.
Note: ``This word is employed by English writers in a very
loose and improper sense. It is with them usually
convertible into hypothesis, and hypothesis is commonly
used as another term for conjecture. The terms theory
and theoretical are properly used in opposition to the
terms practice and practical. In this sense, they were
exclusively employed by the ancients; and in this
sense, they are almost exclusively employed by the
Continental philosophers.'' --Sir W. Hamilton.
2. An exposition of the general or abstract principles of any
science; as, the theory of music.
3. The science, as distinguished from the art; as, the theory
and practice of medicine.
4. The philosophical explanation of phenomena, either
physical or moral; as, Lavoisier's theory of combustion;
Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments.
Atomic theory, Binary theory, etc. See under Atomic,
Binary, etc.
Syn: Hypothesis, speculation.
Usage: Theory, Hypothesis. A theory is a scheme of the
relations subsisting between the parts of a systematic
whole; an hypothesis is a tentative conjecture
respecting a cause of phenomena.
WordNet
theory
n 1: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the
natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge
that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a
specific set of phenomena; "theories can incorporate
facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and
theory"
2: a tentative theory about the natural world; a concept that
is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain
facts or phenomena; "a scientific hypothesis that survives
experimental testing becomes a scientific theory"; "he
proposed a fresh theory of alkalis that later was accepted
in chemical practices" [syn: hypothesis, possibility]
3: a belief that can guide behavior; "the architect has a
theory that more is less"; "they killed him on the theory
that dead men tell no tales"
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
theory
The consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that is
currently being used to inform a behaviour. This usage is a
generalisation and (deliberate) abuse of the technical
meaning. "What's the theory on fixing this TECO loss?"
"What's the theory on dinner tonight?" ("Chinatown, I
guess.") "What's the current theory on letting lusers on
during the day?" "The theory behind this change is to fix the
following well-known screw...."
You are actually quite right about the magic mix between 'theory' and
'experience'. In a way I agree with you about the combination between
the "intellectual and experimental approaches" and I am using it as
well. Mainly, because to me the difference is not clear at all, it is
similar to the difference between 'day dreaming' (usually the consensus
reality of the words 'senses' and 'light') and 'night dreaming' (the
vivid lucid reality:). You know why scientists stress that 'huge'
difference between 'theory' and 'real experience'. Here is one
plausible explanation.
The word 'theory' is their safest emergency exit when their 'explanation'
about the one-and-only 'reality' fails. And it invariably does, what a
coincidence. It is so that ALL of their theories are flawful. Usually
resting on implausible (simplifying) assumptions that are easily
contradicted in 'independent' reality outside. We just need to follow
Einstein and adopt an unfavourable point of view and real clocks start to
disagree with each other. A new position of the assemblage point and the
spoon and parallel sunrays bend and eventually cross, they meet in near
infinity (We just imagined another interpretation of Carlos' unavoidable
appointment with the infinitely relative tonal of time).
Scientists' (and mine) theories are relative to their point of view,
they are partial (not general) and they insist that this is the best we
can do in the complex circumstances of random Nature.
They say it and we agree (give up and stop thinking and asking
why-questions). And stop the quest for finding a more general theory
that will unify their partial observations, a theory that is least
dependent on the different points of view, a theory that actually
allows and encourages this variety.
I remember that even Rainbowbird a week ago firmly believed in their
scientific religion. Perhaps (have to ask:) earlier in her life she
accepted the idea that every theory had to have a flaw, it just
couldn't be otherwise. Let me jolly repeat this: witty scientists claim
that a theory is bound to have a flaw if it is to be realistically
valid. A flawless scientific theory couldn't exist. They said it (based
on their previous wiseacre experience) and we believed them.
In fact, it is even true, they are sort of honest here. If we tune to the
their special position we may 'see' that indeed, a flawless scientific
theory cannot exist. For any strictly SCIENTIFIC theory (i.e. one that
uses only the serious words of science and follows the earnest wiseacre
method to the letter) has at least one flaw - identified by us (me and
many spiritual philosophers) as the mad philosopher's fundamental axiom in
the philosophy of science.
However, we learned that when dealing with words the impression they
leave in us decides whether we will gullibly accept them or not. For
example, we may 'unconsciously' relate this at-least-one-flaw
scientific wisdom also to all SPIRITUAL theories. If and when such an
unconscious association occurs it is the first indicator that maybe we
were stalked by the great masters of serious words. We accepted their
'incomprehensibility of Nature' assumption as an universal axiom (of
our choice:), we believed them and their complex words. What a pity!
To make us accept such a paradox (that every theory should have a flaw)
they must indeed be great masters of the key to the universe. They had
good reasons to be afraid of the flawless alternative. Because then we
may face difficulties in distinguishing 'theory' from the gorgeous
reality outside, the toy-word 'theory' will be crushed and it is the
worst case scenario for playful scientists - they will be unemployed,
they'll have nothing to do. I mean, genius aren't they, to make us
accept that:
The major flaw of any flawless
theory is that it has no flaw.
That is, we better not search for a flawless theory but accept their
partial bliss. If a theory has no flaws it cannot be right, simply like
that, for no particular reason. The funny part is that we
unquestionably accept their desperate chanting of helplessness.
It was a game
Try to remember!
Children are natural born word-crushers. Why?
Why do we laugh in the presence of children?
And we fail to recognise that we have the choice - to play or not to
play with any word. We fail to see the obvious: that any theory is made
of words - a fundamental axiom that is hard to beat. Instead of their
endless pondering on the word 'consciousness' we may start with the
'implausible' assumption that it is a word. It may be more, but at
least we made a first flawless step, the beginning with the word
'consciousness' was business as usual. The words 'number one', 'I' and
'ego' are also words, that is how the game has started, the angels
decided to play with the Word.
The advantage of adopting Carlos' approach of the active participant
was that I could remember some early moments from my game with the
Word. I remembered how I chose to play with many of the basic words of
the matrix, a curious attraction was in the beginning. Then all of a
reasonable sudden I chose to make those words real, I was educated and
decided that this 'life' was not an amusing game with words but a
bloody serious enterprise in the predatory world of 'life' and 'death'.
After accepting 'reason' I was gradually informed that I had to become
dead earnest in order to survive in this 'real' world. Consequently, I
made the most rational choice to completely fix myself. And the
word-crushing laughter of the child was replaced by the serious pride
of the adult. A sad choice to embrace the dogma and forget laughter. A
suicidal choice the essence of which most of us PROBABLY learn at the
moment of our virtual death (or near death experience). The more I
inquire into the secrets of Creation the more convinced I become of the
irrationality of our choice to forget laughter. And here is one
theorem:
Conventional religion and science are unreasonable
The proof is simple: We observe that the bible is entirely void of comedy
and laughter, and the same goes for modern textbooks.
In the ego-field of pride jolly laughter is a weed.
Guess who
Best,
Ann
cr...@att.net
Conventional religion and science are unreasonable
> The proof is simple: We observe that the bible is entirely void of comedy
> and laughter, and the same goes for modern textbooks.
>
> In the ego-field of pride jolly laughter is a weed.
> Guess who
>
> Best,
> Ann
Five minutes of laughing cures just about anything
your mind imagines. Try it, you'll like it. :)
karmabum
Rbb wrote...
> and then maybe just like the
chimpanzees, we eventually started catching & eating other small
animals when we realised the extra 'strength' that was to be gained
from doing so (i.e. if chimps can realise this and they are only
> monkeys, then humans probably realised it a bit faster)
There is just one glitch. People have lived in regions with long
winters.
What plants could you eat then? And what about plants in the iceages?
### - contextually speaking: depends on the time-scale? - e.g. by only
75,000 years ago we were already eating meat for 1000's of years,
which (theoretically anyway) allowed humans (plus also the
Neanderthals) to eventually populate much colder climates in the north
& south
Talking about our regions. All caves have hunting images, images of
animal.
If they had lived predominatly from plants. We would have seen
patterns of
plants or images of plants in those caves. We don't. At all really.
### - imho this depends on one's view of those ancient cave-painting
people and how they lived - e.g. some people think they were just very
dumb, unevolved people, who painted images of their 'food' on the
walls because of the 'importance' of food in their lives and it's
recognised link to their survival etc... but another idea suggests
that it wasn't 'food' they were painting; but perceived images of the
animal 'spirits' (i.e. perceived by shamans)
the difficult point to grasp, let-alone understand as modern people
living in a plastic + 'manufactured' world being that when we first
started to 'eat' the meat of animals we eventually noticed the boost
in 'strength' we got from eating them - and then also that eating
'certain' animals made us feel very different from eating certain
'other' animals... that in that sense, eating an animal made us 'feel
like' that particular animal in that we gained some of that animal's
strength, or its speed, or prowess etc... this over 1000's of years
eventually turning into some kind of animal/spirit
worship/relationship (humanity's first religion?:)
then much later, when spirit/ancestor worship/relationships had
further developed/evolved, lines of shamans began to occur as certain
individuals (the specialist medicine-man or local shaman etc) quite
naturally passed-on their knowledge to the next generation etc etc...
imho the paintings in the caves were done by shamans while they were
'vision-questing' for example:)
>
The same that it is argued wether Africa was the cradle
of humanity and people migrated from there. Or actually tribes that
> came from various locations migrating in various directions.
>
> and which probably means there were (some kind of)
> people/humans already there wherever we travelled;)
Yeap, but I believe in various tribes and climates with difference
in animal-life and plant-life.
I think it is highly unlikely that humans started out on one point
only.
### - Mutation!!! (i.e. a cry from the film: "Waterworld" hehe:))
> at one time we must have had bigger bellies + farted all the
> time like the gorillas?:)
What do you mean at one time ? If I walk in town I don't see much
change.
It makes me want to incarnate in a machine next time.
### - ha ha ha, it's my humble opinion also that we've changed very
little over the millennia lol;)) - plus i totally agree that it's hard
to imagine it could ever have been worse (lol:) - but apparently it
was! (for farting anyway:))
> e.g. the Greeks also draw a line
here with the discovery + use of fire (the Greek version of leaving
> Eden?:)
Nice thought. The greek version of Eden, I mean.
Fire was a huge markerpoint in evolution indeed.
It is in all myths, one way or another.
What does science say how it was discovered?
Lightening and a burning tree sounds fine.
To take it with you because it warm, also sounds fine.
But that makes no instant barbecue.
So how got they their idea to cook?
### - i wonder that too... and then one-time i saw images of
Australian aborigines picking up & eating dead animals cooked from a
naturally occurring bush-fire? (bing!:) - for example: left to their
own devices the aborigines eventually even learned to 'deliberately'
set-fire to the bush as a way to force new plant growth etc...
>
Several popular "paleo-diet" authors tell us that humans evolved
without grains, beans or roots and so those foods should have
no place in our diet today. Dr. Wrangham's theory suggests
just the opposite -- that these are the very foods that allowed
humans to develop into the small-jawed, small-gut, tall,
> large-brained, social animals we are today.
>
> (slider scratching his head:) - yes but didn't the Neanderthals
also have fire? - plus modern humans co-existed with them for some
time before they became extinct (mind you, humans being the smarter
> species, we probably just cooked them too:))
May be that is how we learned cooking. Using fire as weapons.
I hate to think it was like that.
### - i think we probably (plus eventually) just did everything we
could with fire once is was harnessed (i.e. we still use fire as a
weapon even today!)
> (slider in a loin-cloth 75,000 years ago) - Th'all-burgers anyone?
:)
Know what you mean, to travel into the Neanderthal- experience in
my imagination is a lot of fun. But loincloth... I don't know. Loin
fur.....
### - ha ha ha shantytown 75,000 years ago? (has anything really
changed apart from shamans in suits lol :))
By the way. Today I have told a guy about the farmer and hunter
model of my imagination.
Which is basically saying that there are two models of orientations
in humans.
He works with HP as Manager. Turns out that this model is already
used in company trainings
to explain tasks and needed qualities on the workfloor, but of course
doesn't implement the two basic version of religions, abstract and
dualistic. Ain't imagination fun?
### - a very strange aspect of the psyche is the imagination... plus
in some strange way it is also our self (or rather: our 'sense' of
self) - which, when placed in a straight-jacket... we then call it our
'reasonable' self ha ha ha (just kidding?;)
Ann
On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, karmabum wrote:
> ### - imho this depends on one's view of those ancient cave-painting
> people and how they lived - e.g. some people think they were just very
> dumb, unevolved people, who painted images of their 'food' on the
> walls because of the 'importance' of food in their lives and it's
> recognised link to their survival etc... but another idea suggests
> that it wasn't 'food' they were painting; but perceived images of the
> animal 'spirits' (i.e. perceived by shamans)
I like this assembled view, which to me is as reasonable (sober,
plausible) as the modern dogma. However, I will use this vision of
yours to shake the "eventually noticed" words below.
> the difficult point to grasp, let-alone understand as modern people
> living in a plastic + 'manufactured' world being that when we first
> started to 'eat' the meat of animals we eventually noticed the boost
> in 'strength' we got from eating them - and then also that eating
> 'certain' animals made us feel very different from eating certain
> 'other' animals... that in that sense, eating an animal made us 'feel
> like' that particular animal in that we gained some of that animal's
> strength, or its speed, or prowess etc... this over 1000's of years
> eventually turning into some kind of animal/spirit
> worship/relationship (humanity's first religion?:)
> then much later, when spirit/ancestor worship/relationships had
> further developed/evolved, lines of shamans began to occur as certain
> individuals (the specialist medicine-man or local shaman etc) quite
> naturally passed-on their knowledge to the next generation etc etc...
> imho the paintings in the caves were done by shamans while they were
> 'vision-questing' for example:)
The evolutionary story above means "we first started to eat the
animals" and only then "eventually noticed the boost in strength",
power, energy for life or whatever. This is a beautiful theory that
fits naturally well with the energetic evolution, but to defend the
energy-less theory of words I will dream an alternative legend, which
to me is as plausible as the conventional one. Basically, I will
reverse your "Implicate Order" above (great post by RoboDwarfe, I had
no idea about Lord Bohm's theory who may be "eventually noticed" as our
next ally).
Legend of the delicious animal
The new viewpoint requires to start instead with the spiritual assumption
of reality within, i.e. I'll give some credit to those Theravada Buddhists
who saw that "All that is comes from the mind; it is based on the mind, it
is fashioned by the mind". In other words:), everything comes from the
words (thoughts, images and imaginations, ideas and dreams) in our mind.
One night "those ancient cave-painting people" dreamt the word 'animal'
and on the next morning one of them decided to paint his lucid dream. To
make his child (scout:) real he defended that image to death, i.e. he
chose with his soul to become the word. (A kind of "alternative death" if
you like, with the true believers in their own words the Eagle is just
generous. In other words, confident naguals of their own point have this
advantage to choose their death with the soul.) For the next generations
that miracle was the most convincing argument that 'animals' were for
real, they were accepted and instantly made our consensus reality. And
here is how we started to eat ourself:
Those poor "animal spirits" were caught forever in their dream and could
not speak, were no masters of words any more. They couldn't, because that
is how the masters had described their dream-word, the word 'animal' was
their escape from fight with the Word, they have crushed all the other
words. And just like the transcendental meditators or light worshippers
they were eventually caught in the last word, their child.
The following gullible generations never questioned the word
'animal'. Moreover, they decided to explore it - the usual reality
check. They were attracted by the word, by its "strength, or its speed, or
prowess". They chose to inquire into the words 'power' and 'animal' and
the best (or only) way to do it was to become the word itself. Note that
first they had the description of the 'animal' from the pioneering masters
(who "quite naturally passed-on their knowledge"), its 'power' and
'prowess' were in their mind. That is how they first 'saw' or imagined the
energy of the animal. It is an assumption that I make based on my personal
experience with the Word and its real beginning.
The easiest way those later shamans (the predators as opposed to the
dreaming creators) saw for becoming the powerful word was to eat the
word. Note again that they imagined first how they will kill, burn and eat
the animal and its energetic vigour. And only then they did it. They did
not do it unconsciously, it wasn't God who moved their divine killing
hand. It was the personal choice of the greedy shamans. They imagined they
would become as powerful as the animals and then they imagined the rest of
the soul-stealing procedure.
{--- Digression on Movement:
If you remember the beginning with the 'movement' ('walking' was my
memorable example) it started with "vision-questing" - imagining the
action and including the words in the inner dialogue. Later on in our life
if and when we accept 'reason', we start to plan our active movements in
the independent reality outside. But the 'image' and the words are still
there, in our internal dialogue, the though of the movement comes
first. Modern biologists choose to remain unconscious about this sequence,
primarily because it happens very fast so why bother. The field work is
just nasty for them, it is painful to remember, therefore, they unload the
heavy burden of responsibility upon an evolutionary star or mechanical
Nature.
Whereas delusional yogis spend their entire life to prove to us that the
mind comes first. They demonstrate the power of our thoughts by
systematically crushing all the words for the biological functions. They
reveal to us their 'divine' Nature. All that we were made to perceive as
machine-like tendencies turns out to be a conscious or sub-conscious
choice of ours. Yogis can control their pulsing heartbeat and all those
gorgeous internal organs. Including their breathing, whatever 'God'
chooses. They could actually 'hold their breath' or just stop breathing
for a couple of experimental days (or may be more outside of the
laboratory:). Curious scientists bury them underground and the next day,
against all wiseacre odds, they find them alive. Also from the gymnastic
positions they take I assume that they have no hard bones in their
revolutionary matrix. Perhaps they have erected some flexible or fluid
structures, which allow them to bend in any way they wish.
Bottom-line is that 'yoga' is a professional word-crusher of all the bodily
words. Do scientists pay attention to their achievements, do wiseacre
include the yogi-experience in their textbooks?
Do biologists and doctors like the word 'yoga'?
There lies the root of their hatred towards the yogis, to accept the
yogi-reality would mean to abandon their 'responsible' dogma, to become
unemployed. Let us now soberly observe who gives more power to the people:
the yogi or the biologist. The latter tries to fix us, which the first
shows us the way to freedom from the medical words. Now I will revert to
the later imitating shamans-predators and their independent investigation
of the word 'animal'.
--- End of digression into biology of movement}
Those late shamans had slightly different dreams, according to their
preferences. Some of them for example 'saw' the power and the energy in the
'blood' of the 'enemy'. Consequently they 'had to' drink the fresh
blood. Others (the conventional hard-core cult) went straight for the
flesh. Some of them chose to cook the 'meat', because it 'tasted'
better. They saw the energy in the cooked animal, we see what we would
like to see.
Never mind this variety all those greedy shamans chose to explore the word
'animal' and 'power' and started to cook meat. In other words, the words
'bacon', 'animal' and 'energy' became synonymously real in the matrix in
their minds. When they died with their key secret there was nobody to tell
how it all started. The word 'energy in the food' became real, actually
'energy' and 'food' became an unbreakable word-pair. And until very
recently it was untouchable. It was pure luck that I decided to experiment
with the new tolerant matrix in my mind. I slight perturbation in attitude
made a huge difference. I adopted the attitude of 'life as a game with the
Word' and the Word started to tell.
The old shamans saw the 'power' in the 'food', 'animals', even in
'sex'. Modern scientific shamans refined their vision and started to see
'energy' in the 'proteins of the meat', in the 'calories of the chocolate
bar', in the aura of the luminous body, in 'infinity' and basically
everywhere including in the computer words on the screen. I mean, in a
recent (and very balanced) reply to me Rainbowbird saw 'energy' in my
machine-like words. She probably likes that divine word and it is hard not
to do it, having in mind the years of classic or shamanic (even spiritual
like Carlos') education.
And when we like a word it is easy to imagine it - we need only remember
the transcendental and irrational numbers, the infinity and the continuous
zero with infinite number of zeros after the decimal point. Until quite
recently they were absolutely real in Nature in our minds (mine at
least). RBB saw 'energy' whereas all I could soberly see in my chronicles
is words, mine or someone else's (quoted) but words and no flow of
'energy'. To me it is a game of words that I and most of you are playing
on our journey to Ixtlan.
Note the clever trick of generality. From my position of the assemblage
viewpoint I didn't invalidate your theory. Actually, apart from the
initial ordering of the sequence of the Creation events, the rest remains
intact in my matrix. All the other deep points you made are still valid to
me, I chose to accept them as something like 'facts'. I have just made
your dream a possible but special case of the general theory of choosing
words.
Simplicity versus Creativity revisited
To tell you another secret of my personal preferences, I like theories
that do not complicate the matrix any further. That is, I try to avoid (or
take what I like from:) theories that introduce new words into the
reasonable world. Words like
'bessense', 'tensegrity', even the Intricate 'Implicate Order'
or the recent "self" revelations about the
{which I would like to encourage, because my experience with the quest has
taught me the simple lesson that "All roads eventually lead to Rome" if we
are honest}
'long-term memory or the hard-disk in our head',
'short-term memory or the RAM Random Access Memory',
the 'multiple implicit aspects of the self' (who is the "self"
actually? The 'body' and 'soul', maybe. Or just the 'body' plus the
'brain systems' and again the mysterious 'consciousness', from where we
have started:),
'the self a "dramatic ensemble"', 'implicit self', 'explicit self',
'reflect information stored *outside* of conscious awareness',
'protoself - a kind of "core self" that exists outside of
consciousness',
{now it becomes more clear, the independent reality outside sneaked even
into the self-picture. Do we feel better, though, with the newly
discovered external God Nature? It is more likely that we fix ourselves
just like with the words}
'genetic maturation' and 'genetic background'.
Simplicity attracts our souls, we obey the second law of
thermodynamics. The drive for simplicity in language and thought is one of
the few persistent regularities of human Nature that I could establish. Is
it a coincidence that it was precisely that mechanical tendency that has
led me to the word-crushing and universe-contracting strategy in the
controlled folly experiment. This simplicity (or humility) is what makes
your letters (and probably some of mine:) interesting.
But it is not an easy exercise to swim against the current, the temptation
to play the Creator is almost irresistible. I mean, it is not our fault,
we were educated that way, in church and in school we are made to worship
the Creator and Creation (and growth, fittest survival, expansion,
conquest). Even Einstein the Physicist introduced the magic 'cosmological
constant' (the "greatest blunder" in his own words), although Einstein the
Philosopher recognised that
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move
in the opposite direction."
Best,
Ann
cr...@att.net
> "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
> violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move
> in the opposite direction."
In my best Alan Watts voice:
"you can use energy but you
cannot control energy". :)
The downfall of the modern
sorcerer--you don't control anything.
cr...@att.net
> The old shamans saw the 'power' in the 'food', 'animals', even in
> 'sex'. Modern scientific shamans refined their vision and started to see
> 'energy' in the 'proteins of the meat', in the 'calories of the chocolate
> bar', in the aura of the luminous body, in 'infinity' and basically
> everywhere including in the computer words on the screen. I mean, in a
> recent (and very balanced) reply to me Rainbowbird saw 'energy' in my
> machine-like words. She probably likes that divine word and it is hard not
> to do it, having in mind the years of classic or shamanic (even spiritual
> like Carlos') education.
I don't believe Carlos was "spiritual".
Where do you get that? He tried to
distance himself from the "spiritual" lot.
karmabum
Ann wrote...
that name sounds at least as nice as Slider, but the main idea is to
change our Usenet personal frame every now and then. What a luck that
it is still allowed here. It brings about a mighty change in our minds
(that strangely resembles a reason-fit), its invigorating role
shouldn't be underestimated.
### - hello Ann:) - there would seem to be at least 2 ways of using
it: with people most often hiding 'behind' a created persona, and/or
using it in-fact as a means to express/explore oneself in another
mode... e.g. mostly people get stuck in their original + self-assigned
'role' (+ also that of the community-assigned roles of: mother/father,
worker/slave etc etc) - but once out of that box (plus assuming it's
not just being used as just yet another hiding-place for a retreating
ego as in the above cases of people using it merely for protection by
assuming an alias etc) - then 'personas' (i.e. vehicles of
expression/exploration) become fluid instead of binding - or, as i
personally prefer to think of it: 'made-to-measure' as and when the
situation demands;)
We have just found another form of divine plastic surgery, and is the
difference from its civilised version that big. Only that in western
countries playful doctors have replaced the witches and shamans.
### - heh heh, doctors are the 'rational' shamans, but imho are still
the shamans nonetheless for that;)
Those 'mutating genes + life experience + random
circumstances' modern theories are no explanation, they cannot
predict but only describe in hindsight. If genes are not universally
incharge of our being, do we need that theory, how real are they?
Maybe the underlying pattern that drives all those predicted and
random events is the axiom of choice. Now back to the lucky choice
not to accept the theory of genes:)
### - heh heh Ann, i can feel where you are going with this (meaning:
i can feel my 'vocabulary' shrinking by the moment hehehe ;))
Moreover, after the virtual identity-change we suddenly do not feel
obliged to defend old convictions of ours (our old words) at all
costs, we are learning not to die for the words even if they are
ours. If we have little pride we can do it. And all of an astonished
sudden we have no problems admitting our previous failures or
lack of sobriety. We become incredibly flexible, we fly faster than
the speed of light on the wings of unabridged imagination.
### - in principle i agree with you... words are only language, +
language is only a mutably reasonable + agreed fixation... and then:
poof! - the familiar world is gone in an instant... but now what?;)
"Farting gorillas" made me laugh. Basically, last week I had my field
work, i.e. I travelled to 'Sonora' (in this case it was a big European
city). And one thing I did there was to go back to where I belong,
i.e. to the zoo. I haven't done it for ages, so I 'had to', especially
after the discovery of this new tolerant (non-predatory) point of
view on the universe. I was in paradise that day, no human words
but the sun and the sound of the truly natural creatures. The magic
of it was, that in many happy instances the visitor could (was
allowed to) feel and touch the animals. There I saw also four
beautiful gorillas (two 'pensioners' with very, very wise looks)
and they weren't farting.
### - this is a 'beautiful' description of the world Ann, plus yes, i
was wrong to insult the gorillas like that (although no insult was
actually intended:) - imho, the gorillas (especially the orangutangs)
are actually much better 'people' than we humans are! (grin:) although
not better than what we humans are 'capable' of if we weren't all so
completely... insane:)
They were clever indeed, those ancient Greeks, and above
all honest like Homer:). I mean, what is Heaven (Eden, paradise)
without Hell. And without the word 'fire' the 'hell-stick' will be
boringto shaking. "We have to be occupied with something",
goes reason, and what else can we DO in 'hell' but burn.
There is nothing else to do there. And to burn in Hell we need
the word 'fire'. That is how the word 'fire' (a joint work with
the words 'body' and 'flesh') made the Greeks (and some of us,
maybe:) accept the word-pair 'Heaven-Hell'. The 'fire' word
was the needed stick, we needed to have that word in the matrix of
Eden.
We imagined a nice legend, which if not for the Greeks applies at
least for some medieval (completely evil, in fact:) dreamers.
### - okay... let's talk about language in general (smile:)
i.e. one can objectively observe that in communicating via language we
are bending known words, symbols and familiar contexts so as to
deliberately convey intricate (+ often novel) 'meanings' to each
other... that in that sense, Reason 'itself' is just another language
in that one can communicate exclusively via the manipulation of it (or
in many cases of people: the 'partial' manipulation of it hehe +
joking;)
my point being, that from that pov, we can actually choose to 'stand
above' language in its entirety! - and as such, be viewing the world
from another totally different (+ often beautiful:) pov... (actually
very much like how you described visiting the zoo, and which made me
laugh because that's how i always tend to view the world of man
anyway - as being a kind of zoo hehehe:)
and that's just fine to stand there Ann... the only problem comes (if
you can call it a problem;) is when you might wish to then try and
communicate with someone else for some whatever-purpose, but can't
because you are totally language/word-less?
so what to do? - i.e. one can choose either to talk to them in terms
they will 'already' understand (by-far the easiest option - e.g. one
dons a temporary ego/persona for that very purpose;) - or possibly
instead 'educate' them in some way so as to get them to bring
'themselves' to where you're already standing, and then all you'd have
to do is point certain things out and let them see/understand things
for themselves, no?
> (slider in a loin-cloth 75,000 years ago) - Th'all-burgers anyone?
:)
Those early people 'saw' the matrix differently, perhaps there were
not so many external objects. At least I as a little child had a
GENETICALLY different eyesight from that of my parents. I was
an angel and only later decided to 'fall', I was genetically guided
to,I mechanically learned how to 'fall' (laughter permeates me,
the "fallen angel" idea comes from a movie I 'had to' watch in
'Sonora'. The importance of this piece of art
for the matrix theory is comparable to "the matrix" itself.).
### - i think we originally saw/perceived the world 'without'
language? an experiential view of life, the universe & everything that
later became changed (you would say fixed, i would say distorted) by
descriptive languages
In another post you address the theoretical and practical approach
(experience) to reaching self-awareness or just becoming fully
conscious.
According to the most general theory of words to become conscious
of what we are we need to crush all the words that cut our wings. We
can do it if we choose so, the best proof of the axiom of choice.
In Freudian terms we described that process as getting entirely rid
off his sub-consciousness. We crushed his sub-conscious mind in
any sense possible, even in the biological sense - the word 'yoga'
is our ally here for it opened our eyes for this conscious
alternative. Yoga crushes the bodily confines of reason.
### - 'however' one achieves it, just turn-off all the language(s) and
the obsessive manipulation of symbols as being our one-and-only fixed
pov etc, and we immediately find ourselves transported back in-time to
another world... a world that's sadly been almost totally destroyed by
humanity going down some branch of rational insanity... i mean, those
guys weren't painting pictures on the walls because they thought they
were 'beautiful' - but because they were actually + totally 'one' with
the spirit OF them! - and yes they 'ate' them, but not just for the
'physical' food involved (we apparently also ate each other for the
same purpose, yuk + quite shocking really heh heh heh;)
Advanced yogi are the clearest DOCUMENTED evidence that
it is possible tocontrol all those hard-wired neural networks, and
this is done consciously as opposed to the machine-like
unconscious tendencies. Those explorative Indians chose this
responsibility and it became their consensus reality,
they had no prejudice or fear. Furthermore, they were
generous masters and even wrote books to describe their
journey to Ixtlan - they taught us how to unfix and unstalk the
body to reach full control over ALL "biological functions".
### - i have no problem with that... we are all 'creating' the world
with our mind (i.e. the 'human' every-day 'super-market-world' - the
socio/politico world of everyday-life today that everyone
automatically belongs to + takes for granted - the world of seemingly
art-ful reproduction-pictures hung on the walls of sterile + boring
offices (artificial caves:) for decoration purposes only:) - the world
of illusion and gloss we have accidentally (or even deliberately!)
pulled down over our OWN eyes to blind us to the truth (hehe;)
now Ann... do you want the red pill, or the blue pill? (smile ;-)
Back to theory.
You are actually quite right about the magic mix between 'theory' and
'experience'. In a way I agree with you about the combination between
the "intellectual and experimental approaches" and I am using it as
well. Mainly, because to me the difference is not clear at all, it is
similar to the difference between 'day dreaming' (usually the
consensus reality of the words 'senses' and 'light') and 'night
dreaming' (the vivid lucid reality:).
### - heh heh we perforce use both all the time anyway no? (i.e. one
can easily witness some other kid putting his finger in the fire and
then crying because he got burned, but the only way to know what it
actually FEELS like is to touch the hot bit for oneself - ouch!
hehehe;) - that in that sense theory can certainly be a 'preparation'
for the experience but never a substitute for the experience
itself... and yet, here we all are living ostensibly in a world of
increasing theory, adopting an 'arms-length' approach to life the
universe & everything:)
To make us accept such a paradox (that every theory should have
a flaw) they must indeed be great masters of the key to the universe.
They had good reasons to be afraid of the flawless alternative.
Because then we may face difficulties in distinguishing 'theory' from
the gorgeous reality outside, the toy-word 'theory' will be crushed
and it is the worst case scenario for playful scientists - they will
be
unemployed, they'll have nothing to do. I mean, genius aren't they,
to make us accept that:
### - smile, don't blame them too much... for they are often also
just people like us (+ often very intelligent people) caught-up in the
web (the matrix:) of the greedy human construct-world (something i
once had some rotten tomatoes thrown at me here for calling:
'misplaced' intelligence heh heh heh;)
The major flaw of any flawless
theory is that it has no flaw.
That is, we better not search for a flawless theory but accept their
partial bliss. If a theory has no flaws it cannot be right, simply
like that, for no particular reason. The funny part is that we
unquestionably accept their desperate chanting of helplessness.
### - well i dunno... i mean, they call a flawless theory: a 'fact' in
this world hehe (which of course in no way approximates any experience
itself:)
Conventional religion and science are unreasonable
The proof is simple: We observe that the bible is entirely void of
comedy and laughter, and the same goes for modern textbooks.
In the ego-field of pride jolly laughter is a weed.
Guess who
### - i understand Ann... i really do... words hold our whole (+
modern) perception of the world together... but now it's time
to turn-around and face the on-coming tide? - i.e. as we retreat from
the 'shared' (+ some might say: false) perception of the world, comes
the realisation that we're actually walking backwards away from it? -
in which case the thing to do is to turn-around and walk 'towards' the
unseen as opposed to backing into it still filled with the things (the
observations + criticisms etc) of the (shared) world that's being
left-behind, no?;)
e.g. "I was in paradise that day, no human words but the sun and
the sound of the truly natural creatures. The magic of it was, that in
many happy instances the visitor could (was allowed to) feel and touch
the animals. There I saw also four beautiful gorillas (two
'pensioners' with very, very wise looks)"
well, that's it Ann (or at least that's the 'start' of it anyway;)
plus the only thing that can hold one back now is an obsessive +
perhaps needless involvement with words & descriptions (i.e. quite
simply put: one faces in the direction one wishes to travel - it's
a 2-way street;)
(slider makes clicking sounds + shakes the reins of his horse)
....home boy! :)
happy landings Ann... ;-)