Mind after mind

Here's an excerpt (PDF) from Chris Carter's forthcoming book on the evidence for life after death. It deals with the question of whether consciousness can exist independent of the brain.

This issue always brings me back to my notion of "dual loci" of consciousness - the idea that consciousness as processed by the brain is not the only consciousness we possess. When the brain ceases to function, consciousness as processed by the brain must cease also, but if there is another locus of consciousness, then that locus may continue.

I'm not sure why this idea strikes some people as so far-fetched, but apparently it does. By my way of looking at it, we already generally agree that we have more than one locus of consciousness. After all, we routinely talk about the conscious mind versus the subconscious (or the unconscious). What is the subconscious, if not another locus of our consciousness that we are temporarily unaware of? Would anyone claim that because we are not aware of it, the subconscious doesn't exist?

Since the term "subconscious" is usually taken to imply a lower domain of consciousness, a sort of musty cellar of the mind, I prefer F.W.H. Myers' term, the "subliminal self." This self, in Myers' conception, is actually a larger and greater thing than our limited conscious mind. It may contain some undesirable elements - repressed ideas and so forth - but it is also the seat of our higher creative and spiritual impressions. It is who we truly are, even though we remain largely unaware of it in our everyday lives.

Rather simplistically, I picture the subliminal self as a cloud that surrounds the brain. The brain draws material from this cloud, filtering out most of it and processing the rest. The resulting thoughts are what we think of as consciousness or the self. But in fact they are only the tip of the iceberg of the true self, which is mostly inaccessible to us in our ordinary state of mind.

I suspect that memory is stored in this mind-cloud and merely accessed (imperfectly) by the brain. I also suspect that the mind-cloud is what accesses distant locations during remote viewing experiments, and that interactions of different mind-clouds result in telepathic thought transference. Apparitions are probably sensed by the mind-cloud and then, in some cases, filtered through to the brain. In other cases (probably most cases) they are filtered out. This might explain why an apparition may be seen by two people in a room, while two other people don't see it.

Furthermore, I suspect that the degree to which we are in touch with our higher self (subliminal self, mind-cloud, call it what you will) determines the degree to which we are functioning smoothly in this world. If we could achieve perfect harmony with our subliminal self - if our ordinary consciousness could merge entirely with our higher consciousness - we would be operating on a mental and spiritual level far above anything we can presently imagine. Perhaps a few great spiritual masters and teachers - Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus might be examples - have maintained this level of expanded consciousness consistently. Others, such as the cases profiled in Bucke's classic Cosmic Consciousness (described here), have achieved this expansion of consciousness only for a few moments, though with lasting effects.

I think the "realer than real" and "universal knowledge" aspects of many near-death experiences are a consequence of removing the filtering mechanism of the brain and experiencing the subliminal self directly. The NDEr suddenly has direct, unfiltered access to the mind-cloud and feels as if he or she has been elevated to "cosmic consciousness." Later, the NDEr is unable to express the experience in words, because the brain-mind, with its filtering and processing mechanisms, makes it impossible for us to speak clearly about unfiltered, unprocessed consciousness.

Speculating even more freely, I wonder if the mind-cloud is responsible for collapsing the wave function in quantum physics. According to some interpretations of the new physics, an observation or measurement causes a probability wave to collapse into a specific particle at a specific location. But what kind of observation? I'm thinking maybe it's the subliminal self (higher self, mind-cloud) that does the observing. It seems unlikely that consciousness operating through the brain - consciousness canalized in a network of neurons - could directly affect subatomic particles, but the mind-cloud, which is not confined to the brain, may be able to interact with the quantum world. Indeed, it may be that by influencing quantum states, the mind-cloud is able to channel thoughts into the brain in the first place.

Anyway, all of this brings us rather far from Chris Carter's essay, which I highly recommend. I hope his book will be out soon.

Comments

[william]

I know this is a long quote but it sums up beautifully what I have been spending 18 years doing research into the mysteries of life. It does not go in to detail into the meaning and purpose of life but this quote does give one a concise overview of cosmic consciousness.

The last sentence of this quote is particularly interesting to me. As I have had one revelation in my life on something I called understanding variation and that one realization did more for me in an instant then I had learned in five years teaching Deming’s teachings. I also discovered that many consultants had spend their entire adult careers teaching from Deming’s books but still lacked that knowing beyond knowing that appears to come with a revelation.

I take no credit or should I be given any as it came in an instant and from where it came I have no idea. Maybe that mind-cloud. Never expected it did not wish for it and it can be more troublesome to the ego than if one just intellectually knows what others know.

Example most consultants taught that variation is our enemy but nothing could be the farthest from the truth as variation is our dearest friend even divine if we know how to listen to it as it speaks to us in data and phenomena. Besides without variation there is no us, just Isness. We owe our very existence to variation. It is misguided or undesirable variation that can be troublesome.

Without that revelation I would be like the rest teaching the ills of variation to an unsuspecting world.

The only change I would make to this quote below is the to words intellectual illumination to intelligent or cosmic illumination but I understand what they are saying with the word intellectual. I think intellectual can quickly become intellectualism. I.e. PhD speak.

My favorite story in Cosmic Consciousness is CMC’s life story and her illumination and how it also healed her and as her sister stated when she saw her a few months later CMC had a constant smile on her face.

“Simultaneously or instantly following the above sense and emotional experiences there comes to the person an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Like a flash there is presented to his consciousness a clear conception (a vision) in outline of the meaning and drift of the universe. He does not come to believe merely; but he sees and knows that the cosmos, which to the self conscious mind seems made up of dead matter, is in fact far otherwise—is in very truth a living presence. He sees that instead of men being, as it were, patches of life scattered through an infinite sea of non-living substance, they are in reality specks of relative death in an infinite ocean of life. He sees that the life which is in man is eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of man is as immortal as God is; that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of every individual is in the long run absolutely certain. The person who passes through this experience will learn in the few minutes, or even moments, of its continuance more than in months or years of study, and he will learn much that no study ever taught or can teach. "

http://newage.suite101.com/article.cfm/cosmic_consciousness

[John]

Someone should pass along to Chris that he needs to update his links in his e-book -- the site is now at www.survivalafterdeath.org.uk.

[dmduncan]

"Speculating even more freely, I wonder if the mind-cloud is responsible for collapsing the wave function in quantum physics. According to some interpretations of the new physics, an observation or measurement causes a probability wave to collapse into a specific particle at a specific location. But what kind of observation? I'm thinking maybe it's the subliminal self (higher self, mind-cloud) that does the observing. It seems unlikely that consciousness operating through the brain - consciousness canalized in a network of neurons - could directly affect subatomic particles, but the mind-cloud, which is not confined to the brain, may be able to interact with the quantum world."

I would tend to agree with this. Not only does it fit with paranormal phenomenon, but it disposes of both the Schrodinger's Cat implications of the Copenhagen Interpretation AND the Many Worlds Interpretation (currently quite popular), which gets rid of the Schrodinger's Cat problem by positing the real existence of alternate universes where any possible outcome is actual. The observer has no role in deciding the outcome in the MWI, because there is no wave function collapse in it: Every possible actuality, in addition to the one you observe, also takes place——each in its own alternate universe where the outcome is observed to be different than what you have observed.

No. There is absolutely no evidence to support it. It's just an exercise in mental gymnastics designed to escape the role of the observer in collapsing the wave function in the Schrodinger's Cat problem implied by Copenhagen. But I understand that the likes of Hawking now favor the MWI.

But if consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, then there is neither a Schrodinger's Cat problem nor any need for many universes to escape the problem.

The universe is what it is because consciousness is a fundamental part of it always giving it precisely the form it has regardless of our measurements. Our measurements do not collapse the wave function, nor are there multiple universes where all possibilities are actualized.

The Schrodingers Cat problem is a problem precisely because consciousness as a fundamental property or feature of the universe is ignored as a possibility——the idea that the universe has an intrinsic subconscious omniscience that determines by its own seeing the shape the universe has is not even on the MAP as far as they are concerned.

If that's the case however, there is no Schrodinger's cat problem. Nor is the MWI necessary. Which would probably leave the principles of Copenhagen intact, and both without Schrodinger's Cat following from them or the MWI a challenge.

[Art]

When the brain ceases to function, consciousness as processed by the brain must cease also, but if there is another locus of consciousness, then that locus may continue. - Michael Prescott
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If the holographic universe theory is correct than the idea that we only exist at one place and one time is an illusion.

"If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

http://blog.nj.com/njv_fausta_wertz/2009/01/weird_science_news_headline_of.html

[Leo MacDonald]

I see the subconscious as information based such as the conscious mind. That information does survive death, the soul is the personality and subjectiveness of the person. I personally don't like the dual loci of consciousness theory because it adds even more entities. To say that one consciousness is produced by the brain, well the other isn't, is giving into the materialists.

[Art]

"I think the "realer than real" and "universal knowledge" aspects of many near-death experiences are a consequence of removing the filtering mechanism of the brain and experiencing the subliminal self directly. - Michael Prescott
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Recent experiments have found a certain degree of "blurriness" in our Universe. Hogan, the director of Fermi-lab says that there is a certain degree of blurriness in a holographic projection (a hologram). The holographic film from which the hologram derives from would lack that blurriness.

"Hogan realized that if this boundary defines the total number of information "bits" that the space can contain, then each individual bit inside the space would have to be bigger than a Planck length ... in essence, the holographic universe is "blurry" compared to the surface."

http://physics.about.com/b/2009/01/16/are-we-all-holograms.htm

[Michael Prescott]

"The universe is what it is because consciousness is a fundamental part of it always giving it precisely the form it has regardless of our measurements."

The problem, though, is that the particles/waves behave one way when they're not being observed and another way when they are being observed. If some sort of universal conscisouness is always observing them, then they should behave the same way all the time. But they don't.

Some kind of human observation seems to be necessary to collapse the wave function.

[dmduncan]

"The problem, though, is that the particles/waves behave one way when they're not being observed and another way when they are being observed. If some sort of universal conscisouness is always observing them, then they should behave the same way all the time. But they don't."

Actually, that's the crux of the disagreement between the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations. The implications of the double slit experiments can lead in several different directions. One direction is the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Schrodinger's Cat implications of that interpretation, but another direction is the MWI. The MWI denies that there is a wave function collapse at all; the notion of "many worlds" where every possible consequence actually occurs in an alternate universe was devised as an alternative theory that does not require wave function collapse, and which avoids its implications. So wherever an electron CAN hit on the detector in the experiment, it DOES hit——each hit occurring in an alternate universe, and each universe disconnected from and unable to communicate with any of the others. That's according to the MWI. The observer has no role in what happens according to the MWI.

There are many other interpretations as well, but the Copenhagen and Many Worlds seem to be the two most popular.

[Zerdini]

In quantum physics, the Heisenberg ‘uncertainty principle’ states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. It is impossible to measure simultaneously both position and velocity of a microscopic particle with any degree of accuracy or certainty.

Heisenberg did not focus on the mathematics of quantum mechanics; he was primarily concerned with establishing that the uncertainty is actually a property of the world — that it is in fact physically impossible to measure the position and momentum of a particle to a precision better than that allowed by quantum mechanics. To do this, he used physical arguments based on the existence of quanta, but not the full quantum mechanical formalism.

This was a surprising prediction of quantum mechanics, and not yet accepted. Many people would have considered it a flaw that there are no states of definite position and momentum. Heisenberg was trying to show this was not a bug, but a feature—a deep, surprising aspect of the universe. To do this, he could not just use the mathematical formalism, because it was the mathematical formalism itself that he was trying to justify.

[dmduncan]

In other words, according to the implications of Copenhagen, Schrodinger's Cat is in some theoretical state of being both alive and dead at the same time, and it only actually becomes one or the other when an observer looks to see which it has become.

No, says the MWI which, I believe, counts Hawking as one of its big name supporters. The cat is not both alive and dead at the same time; instead if it is possible for it to be both alive and dead, then there is an actual universe where you open the door and see that it is alive, and there is another universe where you open the door and see that it is dead. It isn't both at the same time. It's one or the other in any given universe at a time, and both in SEPARATE universes at the same time. So there's no reliance on the observer to solidify one possibility over the other, and there is no bizarre state of being both alive and dead at the same time as Copenhagen implies. That, again is according to the MWI.

Personally, I'm not agreeing with either of them. Instead, I'm pointing out that there are these two large groups of opposing experts who themselves differ on the implications of double slit experiments, so it really isn't a case of what we observe so much as a case of how we interpret what we observe.

[dmduncan]

The MWI, I should add, doesn't have the paradoxical implications of Copenhagen (the both alive and dead at the same time kitty cat), but it does posit the bizarre notions of really existing alternate universes as real as ours.

With deep apologies to the skeptics, perhaps the real moral of the story is that no matter what the final answer turns out to be: Copenhagen, MWI, cosmic consciousness——it is going to be really, really weird.

[dmduncan]

With deep apologies to those who prefer their reality vanilla, perhaps the real moral of the story is that whatever finally turns out to be true: Copenhagen, MWI, cosmic consciousness——it's going to be really, really weird.

Which will be no trouble for us at all.

[william]

“With deep apologies to those who prefer their reality vanilla, perhaps the real moral of the story is that whatever finally turns out to be true: Copenhagen, MWI, cosmic consciousness——it's going to be really, really weird.”

Many souls that come through from the other side claim that life on earth is a lot more “weird” than the life they are experiencing on the “other side”. Many state that life on earth was a mere shadow of life that they are experiencing in these higher realms.

Most people must prefer their reality vanilla, as the largest selling flavor of ice cream is vanilla. Has anyone ever heard if ice cream is available on the other side? That would be a shame if there were no ice cream.

[Larry Boy]

Interesting post, Michael. I have a few things to comment on, though.

"I also suspect that the mind-cloud is what
accesses distant locations during remote viewing experiments, and that interactions of different mind-clouds result in telepathic thought transference."

I'm skeptical of any suggestion that telepathy would work through a process of actual transference of information from a sender to a receiver, as if there is something that travels from one mind to the other. I'd rather hypothesize that the two minds in some sense become one, or that one of the minds sort of "takes a look" at the other one. Otherwise, it seems you would have to assume that telepathy is a different process from clairvoyance, for instance, where a second mind "sending" information doesn't seem to be necessary.

"Perhaps a few great spiritual masters and teachers - Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus might be examples - have maintained this level of expanded consciousness consistently."

Socrates? He (if he even existed, which is controversial) may have been a wise philosopher, but I have never read anything that would suggest that he experienced expanded consciousness, much less consistently so. Have any arguments been made to that effect?

[Paul W]

This may be my ignorance but I am not so sure why Jesus is viewed as a great teacher and spiritual master either. From reading the New Testament certainly there are one or two clever sayings attributed to him but as a propoportion of the Bible his actual direct teachings (overlooking the fact that even these are reported decades after the event by third parties) are a minute proportion of that contents. I really don't see what all the fuss is about Jesus and his supposed teachings.

[Art]

Has anyone ever heard if ice cream is available on the other side? That would be a shame if there were no ice cream.- william
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Funny you should mention that? True story:
A few years ago I dreamed I was standing in the playground of the elementary school I use to attend in Garden Grove, California. I was standing and staring out a chain link fence and I noticed there was a hole in the dirt under the fence. So I climbed under the hole to the other side of the fence.

When I got there I had to go through this old house and I came out to this green grassy pasture at the top of a hill. I was looking down the hill and I noticed that there was an ice cream store on the other side of a road so went to the ice cream store and told them I wanted an ice cream. The problem was I didn't have my wallet. Well, the guy behind the counter said to me "Oh, you don't need your wallet or money here!" But for some reason I felt naked without my wallet so I turned around and went back up the hill, back to where I started?

The dream was very "NDE-like". I'm fairly old and overweight so I thought it might have been sleep-apnea induced? But, anyway, in my dream there was ice cream on the other side and you didn't need money to pay for it.

[Sandy]

Ice cream in the afterlife? Hmmmm… That’s a good question.

The ghosts that I’ve talked to about food really miss it. One lady has a particular fondness for strawberry ice cream and I crave it whenever she is around. But these ghosts are the ones that haven’t really “moved on”, so maybe they don’t have ice cream where they are. That doesn’t preclude the possibility of ice cream after you have “moved on”.

When I had my NDE, I had tea and cookies with Grandma. If you can have tea and cookies, shouldn’t ice cream be possible too?

[dmduncan]

Sorry about the pseudo double post. I suddenly lost power before (I thought) I submitted the comment. When I got back online and didn’t see the post, I was sure I hadn’t submitted it. So I wrote what was still fresh in my mind, which is why there are two different versions of the post.

[Michael Prescott]

"Socrates? He (if he even existed, which is controversial)"

There's no controversy about the existence of Socrates. Not only is he mentioned frequently by Plato, he also appears in Aristophanes' "The Clouds" (as a real contemporary figure)* and in Xenophon's memoirs.

There is, however, some controversy about how closely Plato's depiction matches the real Socrates.

Socrates appears to have been familiar with Egyptian religious teachings, which he incorporated (in modified form) into his philosophy. He also, according to Plato, felt that he was protected by a daimon or spirit guardian, who guided him in all his decisions. Again according to Plato, he recounted a story often taken as the world's earliest recorded NDE (the story of Er, who "died" in battle, went to the afterlife, and then was resuscitated).

Edith Hamilton's "Witness to the Truth" makes a good case for seeing Socrates as a very advanced soul. (The book is primarily about Jesus, so it might also address Paul W's question about what people see in him.)

For a less sanguine appraisal of Socrates, see I.F. Stone's fascinating book "The Trial of Socrates."

---

*Aristophanes put references to many real Athenians into his plays, invariably for the purpose of ridiculing them. He seems to have genuinely despised Socrates, who also comes in for attack in his later plays "The Birds" and "The Frogs." Plato apparently felt that Aristophanes' hostility to Socrates contributed to the public animus that eventually led to Socrates' death sentence.

[Paul W]

Thanks Michael. I have to say I have had enough of Jesus and his purported mates to last a lifetime so I may not follow up your suggestion. Appreciate the tip though.

[steve wood]

"I'm not so sure why Jesus is viewed as a great teacher and spiritual master either"
(Paul)
I think Jesus was a wonderful guy...he may have even been THE son of God. I find it hard to believe that he was, but I can't say that he wasn't.Don't know.
As regards Jesus as a teacher, the Parables are brilliantly executed and easy to understand(on the whole) which is surely very difficult to achieve when your delivering add-lib or off the cuff.

[Jime]

For the last couple of weeks, I've been reading some "realist" objections and critiques against the Copenhagen interpretatiion.

Realists believe that quantum effects exist with independence of human observers.

Some of these objections are:

1-This interpretation of QM is based on a phenomenalistic and positivistic philosophy (it seems the Viena circle influenced some of the philosophical ideas of the founders of QM) and, therefore, it is anthopomorphic and subjetivist.

2-That interpretation doesn't explain quantum effects where, presumibly, no conscious observer exist (e.g. in remote galaxies). The implication is that all the observed quantum effects might exist too when they are not observed.

That "realist" objection is aimed at the idea summarized by Michael "Some kind of human observation seems to be necessary to collapse the wave function"

Realists ask: how do we explain the quantum effects previous to the apparence of human observers?

They suggest that collapsing of the wave function could be spontaneous too.

----My personal, non-technical opinion, is that consciousness is primary and previous to the emerging of "human beings". In my view, it is conscious intention, instead of human observation (this is only a specific case of conscious intention), that makes the work of collapsing the wave function. But I could be wrong.

3-The Schrodinger's Cat problem is a false problem, because QM doesn't apply to objects with emergent properties (like cats, which eat, sleep or have digestive processes), and nobody has defined the concept of "alive" or "dead" in the specific context of the quantum theory.

I don't feel myself qualified to judge these technical questions, but I suspect that all the above objections are not conclusive.

In any case, philosopher of physics Bradley Monton has some interesting ideas about it in this paper: "Spontaneous collapse theories of quantum mechanics (such as the GRW theory of Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber, 1986) have great philosophical interest. They provide a possible way of solving the measurement problem by changing the dynamics of the theory, and they make wave function collapse philosophically respectable by having it occur independent of observers. Arguably, they can be used to solve fundamental problems in thermodynamics, explaining why entropy generally increases"

Paper:

http://spot.colorado.edu/~monton/BradleyMonton/Articles_files/problem%20of%20ontology%20SHPMP.pdf

It is interesting to note that Monton is one of the few atheist philosophers who defends intelligent design, or more precisely, its scientific respectability.

Finally, Chris Carter has suggested that Evan Harris Walker has developed the most detailed model of quantum consciousness.

Walker follows Von Neumman interpretation of QM.

[Paul W]

Yes Steve they are pretty. They weren't written down on the cuff though and who knows whether this Jesus bloke ever said them. Interestingly most of the teachings attributed to Jesus' were very similar to teachings from other earlier religious leaders, and many reported features of his life reflected similar legends from the lives of earlier "gods". I just bridled as the use of his name as a 'spiritual giant'. As an long-time (and now ex) student of the Bible, I don't see it.

[Paul W]

In any event I think this is probably taking the thread off-topic so I will refrain from further similar comments.

[steve wood]

Hi,Paul,
"They weren't written down off the cuff"

....but they were obviously 'delivered' off the cuff. That is the point I was making. That is the genius of the Parables.
His followers would have been unlikely to have been be impressed by seeing Jesus reading from a scroll of papyrus that he'd prepared earlier.

[Larry Boy]

"There's no controversy about the existence of Socrates. (...) There is, however, some controversy about how closely Plato's depiction matches the real Socrates."

Sorry, may have gotten those two things mixed up.

[dmduncan]

"3-The Schrodinger's Cat problem is a false problem, because QM doesn't apply to objects with emergent properties (like cats, which eat, sleep or have digestive processes), and nobody has defined the concept of "alive" or "dead" in the specific context of the quantum theory."

Schrodinger's Cat is a problem because it suggests that things are in contradictory states at the same time, and that objects do not become what we observe until we observe them. The being both alive and dead at the same time part is where the difficulty is, regardless of how loose or precise one's definition of life and death are. Or, to put it another way, how can something be both a sphere and a cube at the SAME time? It's easy to imagine an object that can morph from one to the other and be both at different times, but try to imagine it being both at the same time, and even if you get a picture of a sphere superposed over a cube, what you have is a mental special effect where two things are superposed over each other, so you still do not have something that is both at the same time, but one thing laid over the other like a special effect in a movie or photograph. The sort of thing implied by Copenhagen is the sort of thing you can't imagine at all.

It probably makes more sense to say that what is really there beyond perception is an ineffable something, i.e, it isn't both at the same time, but neither at all, that is to say again, there isn't even a CAT until it is perceived as "Cat," whether the perception is by the cat of itself, of the cat by another person, or of the cat by some cosmic consciousness. Buddhists would probably support that idea.

There's another implication: If things only have the form they do through consciousness of form, and things evolve, and the universe is in an eternal cycle of birth and death, then there must be an eternal consciousness that keeps it going in that way, birth, evolution, and death, giving form to all the things we ourselves know and see, in which case there would again be no wave function collapse because the universe would always be exactly what it is through an eternal consciousness of what is that gives form to everything forever. For a cosmic consciousness that was eternally and exhaustively conscious there would be no opportunity for anything to be in a superposed state, because that would mean that cosmic consciousness was not totally conscious.

Now, the MWI which, as I've said, is quite popular, DENIES that there is any wave function collapse, so the controversy isn't what the wave function collapse we observe means——because we don't observe it——but whether or not there really is a wave function collapse.

And the MWI is interesting. At the very least it makes for some intriguing fiction, because the implications of it are that there could be an infinite number of universes where all possible realities are actual.

Now this may be a slight against human imagination, but still I have sometimes casually wondered if incredible works of fiction like Dune were subconscious glimpses of real worlds in alternate universes that exist. That wouldn't necessarily mean the universes are communicating with each other, at least not if there were some cosmic consciousness, because if there were and it was aware of the other universes, for example, then we might be able to glimpse the other ones in the cosmic mind without any direct contact between the universes at all.

[william]

“I really don't see what all the fuss is about Jesus and his supposed teachings.”

Well I can understand that statement there was a time when I thought Jesus was just a hippy with long hair in a robe living off the masses and his teachings were not very realistic to say the least.

The meek shall inherit the earth when the world was so violent and Rome controlled most the known world. Give unto Rome what is Rome’s when Rome made slaves out of many of its captives and forced its conquered countries pay taxes to Rome. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then for a rich man to get into heaven. Watch the responses yet today on that one.

The heart of materialism is very threatened by that camel going through the eye of the needle teaching. That is one teaching that even most “new age” folks don’t buy into. And why is that? Too threatening to the existing world paradigm?

Now his supposed teachings; if Jesus did not make them then whoever made them was very advanced in their understanding of reality.

“But these ghosts are the ones that haven’t really “moved on”, so maybe they don’t have ice cream where they are. That doesn’t preclude the possibility of ice cream after you have “moved on”.

I think you are on to something there Sandy at least I hope so. As I far as tea and cookies what I have read is that some spirits talk about eating their favorite food as an essence rather than actually physical food.

“For a cosmic consciousness that was eternally and exhaustively conscious there would be no opportunity for anything to be in a superposed state, because that would mean that cosmic consciousness was not totally conscious.”

Maybe consciousness is not the ultimate reality. Maybe consciousness is a created or manifested reality. Maybe what is ultimate reality has yet to be realized or discovered. Maybe not.

Maybe awareness is primary and consciousness is secondary or a manifested reality.

[Sandy]

I think you are on to something there Sandy at least I hope so. As I far as tea and cookies what I have read is that some spirits talk about eating their favorite food as an essence rather than actually physical food.

That kind of makes sense, William. It wasn’t exactly like eating cookies here. It was better. Things were better anyway because everything seemed really awesome. Grandma was telling me funny stories about things that had happened to me when I was little. She told me stories about my entire life as we were sitting there having tea and cookies. Even about the parts that hadn’t happened yet. I didn’t even care about what she was telling me, because I was just so happy to be having tea with Grandma. I totally forgot that she had ever died. Those were the best tasting cookies ever.

[sonic]

"Mindful Universe" by Stapp is the best physics book for the non-physicist. Stapp gives an understanding of why people have trouble with the 'dual loci' concept, what consciousness has to do with the wave-function, and how conscious effort can modify brain function in terms of acceptable physics.
Read this book, it answers the questions about 'spontaneous collapse' and MWI too.
It is also usable in that understanding what is written can make for a better life.
(Sorry for the advert, it just a great book)

[william]

“It (Mindful Universe) is also usable in that understanding what is written can make for a better life”.

“because I was just so happy to be having tea with Grandma. I totally forgot that she had ever died.”

Truly there are many paths for the journey of the soul.

[Paul W]

Steve the point I was trying to make was that you have only the writers' word they were delivered off the cuff.

[steve wood]

I'll leave it there,Paul. Healthy disagreement. :)

[Art]

I think you are on to something there Sandy at least I hope so. As I far as tea and cookies what I have read is that some spirits talk about eating their favorite food as an essence rather than actually physical food. - william
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"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real." - Niels Bohr

The only reason this universe feels real is because our brains tell us it's real. The other side will seem just as real to us as this side does. Some say "more real".

"For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is "there" is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality? Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion."
http://www.crystalinks.com/holographic.html

[Ulysses]

Allan Kardec in the “The Gospel According to Spiritism” also makes a good case for Socrates as an advanced soul and spirit guide for many. According to these sources Socrates was one of the first philosophers who taught the Golden Rule in the Western world.

[Michael Prescott]

"you have only the writers' word they were delivered off the cuff."

Who really cares if the Sermon on the Mount was delivered off the cuff or not? Truth doesn't always come in the form of quick-wittedness. Oscar Wilde was unsurpassed at quips, but his moral philosophy was shallow at best.

I would assume that Jesus thought long and hard about the things he said - though, if the gospel stories are accurate, he was also capable of a quick response when necessary. (Aphorisms like "render unto Caesar ..." and "let him who is without sin ..." came in the heat of the moment, we're told.)

What I would look for in a spiritual master is not the rapid patter of a stand-up comic, but profound insights expressed in a succinct and memorable form. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - it doesn't get much better than that.

[steve wood]

Sandy's revelation about the tea and cookies certainly pokes a stick through my spokes. I'd always assumed one didn't need mundane sustenance in paradise.Mind you, I haven't been.
I don't remember ever reading about anything like that(from the accounts of NDEer's)...or maybe I did and dismissed as an anomaly.
I find it difficult to assimilate into a credible picture of what Heaven might be like. Do we have digestive systems etc,I really do hope not...then we'd have to have drains as well.
....and then they'd get blocked up....oh...shhhh.
Only kidding, Sandy, maybe you could enlighten me.

[Sandy]

Steve, I’m the last person you should look to for enlightenment. This stuff confuses the heck out of me. The NDE place was awesome, but I never really thought of it as heaven. I was never religious, so that word didn’t have a lot of meaning for me at the time of the NDE. To me it felt like home. How could I be home without tea and cookies (and Grandma)?

[Art]

Sandy's revelation about the tea and cookies certainly pokes a stick through my spokes. I'd always assumed one didn't need mundane sustenance in paradise. - Steve
--------------------------------------------
How could I be home without tea and cookies (and Grandma)? - Sandy
____________________________________________

The question is, what do you picture your afterlife looking like? Floating around on a cloud thinking profound thoughts? Existing in a black spaceless and timeless void feeling loved?

If we are not here to learn about what it means and how it feels to be in a physical universe than what the heck are we here for? If we are not here to learn what it means and how it feels to be separate than what the heck is the use of experiencing so much separation?

I think this life is more about just learning what it means to be physical than any profound moral or ideological stuff. No matter where you live or who you are you will experience time and space, duality and separation, and make memories of what it was like to live in a 3 dimensional + 1 time universe. We will use those memories, and the memories of every other soul in the Universe to create whatever reality we might wish to experience. It will seem just as real to us as this life does. That is the purpose of life. It's a school to learn about the physical universe and what it means to be separate.

There is a Reason - Alison Krauss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWXNm9b6pKs

[steve wood]

Sandy,could you describe 'the NDE place' a little more. Or is your experience published somewhere? Love to read it.

Art,thanks, I'll have a look at that,now.

[steve wood]

....a bit too sentimental for me, Art.

[steve wood]

Art, no offence but it's too sentimental for my liking.

[william]

“That is the purpose of life. It's a school to learn about the physical universe and what it means to be separate.”

I don’t remember reading one book that a spirit that came though a medium and talked about the purpose of physical life was to learn about the physical universe and what it means to be separate.

I do believe the physical universe feels much more separate than most of these astral realms of existence. Maybe that is what you are saying about what it means to be separate. The communication process alone in the physical world makes one feel much more separate than a telepathic process.

I view physical manifestation as a stage or realm or school a soul moves through on their way to these higher realms of existence. And memories; most spirits talk about actually losing many of their memories after they are on the other side for some time. Not living out those memories.

But I wonder if we hold strong beliefs when we cross over; maybe we live out those beliefs. It appears that beliefs may have a large impact on our living conditions on the other side. Maybe beliefs are in that realm of memories.

[Art]

I don’t remember reading one book that a spirit that came though a medium and talked about the purpose of physical life was to learn about the physical universe and what it means to be separate. - william
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nor have there really been any near death experiencers say that. But I'm saying that. That is what I believe. Everyone is free to believe whatever they want to believe. I doubt it matters what we believe. I think the Creator of the Universe was so smart that He/She was able to create a world where we learn what we are supposed to learn whether we want to or not. The soul's lessons are embedded in our everyday lives and it is holistically imprinted with what it needs to learn whether we want it to be or not. It doesn't matter if you live in Siberia or Australia or the Amazon jungle or Canada or anyplace else in the World you will experience duality and separation, time and space, and imprint memories of what it was like to live in a 3 dimensional + 1 time Universe, and imprint memories of what it was like to live in a body in the physical universe. And the more emotional the experience the more powerful and long lasting the memories it will create. And disagreeing and arguing on message boards is just another way of experiencing separation.

[Ben]

dmduncan said: And the MWI is interesting. At the very least it makes for some intriguing fiction, because the implications of it are that there could be an infinite number of universes where all possible realities are actual.

Apart from Stapp and Bohm, you might also like to know the views of physicist Tom Campbell. He says,

"A "many worlds" concept that executes or actualizes the logic that everything that can happen does happen, also leads to a denial of free will -- if every possibility is actualized, there is no choice, just process.

No free will implies no possibility of growth or evolution and thus no point or purpose -- i.e., no consciousness."

I am persuaded by this. The MWI is (as you suggested earlier) a desperate attempt to escape from the reality of consciousness. The psychology of why so many apparently conscious people would wish to do that will surely be worth a book (or two) in the future.

[Sandy]

Steve, I gave a fairly brief description of my experience to the e-magazine Paranormal Underground (http://www.paranormalunderground.net/site/?cat=4 ). My NDE starts on page 54 of the January 2009 issue.

I don’t really mention anything about the conversation with Grandma because that part is too personal. I just say that we had tea. There is a lot I didn’t mention because I was really struggling with the experience about a year ago when I first wrote anything down. I had difficulty finding words, so I stuck to the easy parts. I would never have written it down at all except for the fact that I correspond with someone who teaches a university course that includes a section on NDEs. I described it for him. The magazine account is an edited version of that correspondence.

[Art]

"No free will implies no possibility of growth or evolution and thus no point or purpose -- i.e., no consciousness." - Ben
-----------------------------------------

It depends on what one believes we are here for? Maybe the education of the soul is too important to leave it up to chance? It also depends on how stupid one believes the Creator of the Universe to be? Perhaps the Creator of the Universe was so smart that He/She created a Universe where the soul learns what it is supposed to learn whether we want it to or not?

I don't believe that we are here to "learn how to Love" or "become one with God" or "help our fellow man" or "make the world a better place." I think that is a bunch of made up hooey. People come back after their experience and try and make sense out of it and because that is what they experienced on the other side they figure that must be the reason they were sent back. I think they were simply sent back because they hadn't experience enough time and space and separation. Like sticking a cake in the oven and taking it out before it's done. If you stick the toothpick in it and it comes out with batter on it, it needs to go back in the oven. Perhaps those on the other side can just look at the soul that has come back too early and tell it needs more time in the physical universe. More bits of information, more pixels, separation.

My God was so smart that He/She created a Universe where every soul is imprinted with what it needs to holistically learn whether we want it to or not. The soul's lessons are embedded in our everyday lives and it is imprinted with what it needs regardless of who we are, or where we live, or what we believe. Every soul is instantly healed when it enters that Light. Every soul becomes instantly enlightened upon entering that Light.

[Art]

When a fifth grade student is working in a workbook does the author and publisher of that workbook know what is in it? The student doesn't know, but the teacher, author, and publisher all know what that student is supposed to learn as he or she works through that workbook. By the time the student finishes the workbook they are supposed to have attained some competence in the subject of that workbook.

We are spiritual beings having a physical experience. Why? What does everyone experience in life regardless of who they are, where they live, or what they believe? Why? I believe that God is so smart that the soul learns holistically what it's supposed to learn regardless of who they are, or where they live, or what they believe. Perhaps in the same way that little children learn before they ever start school. As they go about living their little lives they learn all kinds of things, and it all happens effotlessly.

[dmduncan]

@ Ben:

Yeah, the MWI was initially proposed (by Everett) to get away from the disturbing implications of an observer role. Personally, I don't find the observer role objectionable. What I find objectionable is the notion that something can be two contradictory things at the same time. I think, however, this is a flaw in the thinking of those who propose it, and that Buddhist thought gives a solution.

As does Berkeley. Way before people ever invented Quantum Mechanics, Bishop Berkeley may have come up with the answer: That to be is to be perceived, and the world exists whether we perceive it or not because God is always aware of it.

That's also an alternative to Schrodinger's cat that leaves both free will AND logic intact.

[dmduncan]

But like I said earlier, whatever the answer is, there will be a large number of people who protest it as crazy or too weird to be true.

It's inevitable that somebody is going to have his Post Toasties pissed in.

[dmduncan]

And when you think about it, the Schrodinger's Cat problem is a logical obscenity. We can't even imagine how something can be two contradictory things at one and the same time. But there is nothing that is inherently nonsensical about a cosmic form of consciousness which shapes and drives the universe.

Some people——quite a lot——may not LIKE the idea, but there is nothing absurd about it.

[steve wood]

Sandy,
Read your experience...fascinating. Maybe if you had found a way to get down from the balcony to be with your pet dog(which sadly died), you wouldn't be here to tell the tale. In other words, the balcony where you were standing represented a barrier between staying here and going on to... whatever.
Thanks, Sandy......that's a good magazine aswell.

[Michael Prescott]

"the world exists whether we perceive it or not because God is always aware of it."

Again, though, the problem in QM is that the particles/waves seem to behave differently depending on whether they're being observed *by human beings.*

If God is doing the observing, then the particles/waves would behave the same way all the time, whether humans are observing or not. But this isn't the case. Human observation (or at least observation by some sentient life form) makes the difference, apparently.

So I don't think the "universal consciousness" explanation really addresses the issues raised by QM. Assuming we rule out the MWI as implausible, we're left with the implication that human observations determine where the particle manifests itself, while in the absence of human observations, the particle does not manifest and remains part of a probability wave. Thus it would appear that the consciousness of a sentient life form (not God, but some localized perceiver) must interact with the particles/waves in order to force a collapse of the wave function.

At least that's my understanding of the problem.

[william]

“So I don't think the "universal consciousness" explanation really addresses the issues raised by QM”

What if what people refer to as universal consciousness was instead infinite awareness and this awareness was beyond consciousness therefore would not impact or interact with elements of consciousness.

If all matter is consciousness and all consciousness is waves then what is created or manifested would interact but pure awareness does not impact consciousness but is just aware of every point of consciousness in the universe. I.e. knows every hair on your head idea.

Cosmic consciousness to me would be better defined as cosmic or infinite awareness. Not sure we have a word to describe this source of all that is that most call God. All words, all thoughts fall short of defining the Infinite.

Not sure any this made any sense but then when it comes to the quantum what does make sense.

“If God is doing the observing, then the particles/waves would behave the same way all the time”

Maybe God or the Infinite does not observe but is only aware. It may be possible to be aware without observation. Maybe our existing paradigm or out conscious ability at this time does not allow us to perceive God other than some level of consciousness.

I suspect there is a state of Being or awareness that is beyond consciousness.

[Art]

I don't believe we lose our identity after we cross over. Your still you...........

Josh Groban - You're Still You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dK_TOg1KRM

[dmduncan]

"Assuming we rule out the MWI as implausible,"

I confess that when I first heard about MWI my reaction to dismiss it was the same. But after thinking about it and how and why it was developed, I also have to confess I've begun to see its attractiveness. So I am not sure what the grounds would be for dismissing it as implausible. The free will question raised by Ben? Maybe. I don't know. Also, I don't want to sound like an adherent, but the MWI is not a fringe theory. It has many respectable adherents, and if it is not as popular as the Copenhagen Interpretation, it isn't far behind either. One estimate claims that it is actually the more popular of the two, now. But if that's true it is probably in part because it avoids the notion of quantum superpositioned states. It asserts instead that there are superposed real universes, each with its own Michael Prescott, but each one is slightly different. E.g., Somewhere in another superposed reality there might be a Michael Prescott at the top of the NY Times bestseller list. And because there are all these superposed realities, each in its own alternate universe there is no need for a superposed state of being both alive and dead at the same time in a single universe——because the cat is both alive and dead at the same time in alternate universes.

"If God is doing the observing, then the particles/waves would behave the same way all the time, whether humans are observing or not. But this isn't the case."

Oh that's the controversy. The Many Worlders have thorough and vigorous responses to attack, including the Occam's Razor one, in which they assert that the Copenhagen interpretation is actually a more complicated theory with more propositions than MWI.

So the question IS whether there is a wave function collapse, and whether it is apparent or real. There is by no means agreement on that, which is why you have so many different interpretations which fall as variations of and on the Copenhagen or Many Worlds sides.

"Thus it would appear that the consciousness of a sentient life form (not God, but some localized perceiver) must interact with the particles/waves in order to force a collapse of the wave function."

And that's the thing they would disagree with. The Many Worlders would probably say the wave function collapse is not real.

In any case, I'm not sure I believe it, but it makes for some mind bending thinking.

[william]

“Maybe our existing paradigm or out conscious ability at this time does not allow us to perceive God other than some level of consciousness.”

Let me state it another way we humans have to make God in our image to even have a dialog about the infinite source or vitality or spirit that exists beyond and before this universe. Where is it written in stone that God has to be any form of consciousness?

Well maybe it is written in stone in a cave somewhere but that’s another story.

I suspect the best we can do is dialog about some characteristics about God and maybe one of those characteristics is not consciousness. But then maybe even trying to dialog about the characteristics of the ultimate reality is like going down that famous rabbit hole.

But that dialog sure challenges the mind which can be enlightening as truths may be accepted or learned in levels or degrees of truths.

[Michael Prescott]

"Somewhere in another superposed reality there might be a Michael Prescott at the top of the NY Times bestseller list."

That's the universe I want to be in!

But I still think it's nutty.

[sonic]

Ben, Michael-
You are correct- MWI is a means of dealing with the 'collapse' of the wave function. (The wave function does not collapse, all possiblities are realized.)
This is claimed to 'solve' the measurement problem-- (why do we get only one answer to our measurements= the collapse of the wave function)
But it leaves the question- why am I conscious of this universe and not some other?
It is only by ignoring this last that some people feel comfortable with the idea that MWI 'solves' the 'consciousness problem'

I have often wondered why consciousness is seen as a problem (afterall, it is the miracle that allows existence...)

[steve wood]

Sandy,just another thought about your experience....
Of course it's possible (as you say) that it all happened inside your head, but where would you have sourced the unusual visual imagery from. I assume it wasn't like a Disney film or a cartoon.And was your Grandma deceased when you encountered her / did she look the same or younger?
Don't worry if you've had enough of talking about it and thanks once again for sharing it.

[Sandy]

Steve,

I don’t know where I got the visual imagery for my NDE from. I’ve certainly seen lots of trees and meadows before. I knew what my dog looked like. When I wrote my account down, I was still trying very hard to explain things away. After a while you figure out that doing so takes more energy than it is worth. Kind of like all the effort I still put into looking for explanations for my continuing anomalous experiences. I’m sure that at some point I’ll just take them at face value, relax and get on with life. But for now, I’m still fighting them.

Grandma passed away a few years before my accident. When I saw her in the NDE place, she looked like I remembered her best. Not so frail and ill as she was just before she passed, but how she was when I was growing up. Still old enough to be Grandma, but also young enough to be fun.

[steve wood]

That's interesting, Sandy. I've noticed like everybody else that the people having these experiences seem to accept the appearance of 'deceased relatives' without questioning what they are seeing,or that it is REAL....but what puzzles me is trying to conceive of a way that a disembodied person(ie a spirit or whatever you want to call it)can have the 'construct' of a human being, without any of the physiological components. I mean did Grandma have teeth(no pun intended)and a tongue. Can you see through them? I'ts all so impossible to fathom...and yet, some information processing entity is getting veridical information in intensive care units,an entity that sees,hears,thinks,has a sense of humour etc.
I almost envy you, Sandy, but I think I'd be far to much of a coward to cope with what you had to cope with.

[william]

“I have often wondered why consciousness is seen as a problem (afterall, it is the miracle that allows existence...)”

It is a very hard problem for the materialists.

[steve wood]

...And just one last comment on this subject, Sandy(I promise)...
I don't know if you like reading the experiences of 'others,' but if you go to you tube and tap in 'The Painter is electrocuted,14,400 volts' you should see a short but very interesting video in which French Canadian Alain J Laurendeau recounts his NDE. The translation is abysmal but you can sort of get the gist of what he's going on about if you run through it a couple of times. Considering he was so severely injured, the guy has got a great sense of humour and his sincerity is not in doubt. The bit at the end made me laugh, where he initially got back in his body the wrong way round. He also also describes or infers the un-solid nature of these 'spirits'
I'd love to read the whole story but it's so far only available in French.

Art, you might enjoy having a look too,(or you could get your own back for my lukewarm comment on Alison Krauss)

[Jime]

See this new online resource on afterlife research by a contemporary philosopher Michael Sudduth

http://philofreligion.homestead.com/PostmortemSurvival.html

This philosopher did a review of David Fontana's lastest book "Life beyond death". I'm beginning the reading of this book, it looks great.

[Michael Prescott]

"The Painter is electrocuted,14,400 volts"

Interesting video, despite the awful translation. His account certainly fits in well with many other NDEs.

Incidentally, just typing "painter electrocuted" into YouTube's search engine will work.

[steve wood]

"His account certainly fits in well with many other other NDEs."
Michael, This account had a particular significance for me as my Father died in 1981 as did Alain's Grandfather... who he 'met.'

I thought the amateurish presentation of the video and the obvious enthusiasm of Alain was very difficult to dismiss as a load of hoo-hah over nothing.

[Art]

Just finished watching the French guy's NDE description. He was pretty funny. It was rather difficult to follow but I watched it twice and paused it the second time so I could take time to read the "English" translation better. Afterwards I watched this woman's NDE description and it was also pretty good.
Near Death Experience of a Scientist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMICW2aaplA&feature=related

One of my favorites is this guy named Chris who is an attorney. He is great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UlsbfU7U_8&feature=related

There is a part 2 also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC3DtpoVrqY&feature=related

[Sandy]

Steve,

You know, Grandma seemed very solid. We both seemed to have substance in the NDE place. But we were also different than the way I am here. I hate to say I don't have the words, but I really don't.

I see Grandma still. I know that sounds nuts. It is easy to deny seeing other ghosts, because that just isn't the same. But I can't ignore Grandma. She often looks very solid and real when I see her here, but I've touched her and she feels different. It is hard to describe, but it is almost like touching electricity.

I watched the video. The translation is pretty funny, but I understand enough French that I didn't really need it anyway. Laurendeau had some problems finding good words to use in his own language to make sense of his experience. No wonder the translator, who I'm guessing is also French Canadian, had a tough time translating it into English.

[Michael Prescott]

"No wonder the translator, who I'm guessing is also French Canadian, had a tough time translating it into English."

My guess is that the translation was computer-generated. It had the totally ungrammatical, sometimes incomprehensible quality of computer translations I've seen.

If the translator was a human being, he or she needs to go back to school.

[Sandy]

Michael,

I'm so used to civil servants in Canada speaking the way that was written. You are required to be bilingual for most government jobs here, but there are double standards. If your native language is English, you need to read and write at a university level in French. And don't get caught using any Montreal slang. But if your first language is French, you don't have to speak either official language all that well, lol.

[steve wood]

"I see Grandma still.I know that sounds nuts.
No,Sandy, It sounds as if your Grandma is looking out for you...and that's good.

On the subject of Alain Laurendeau, I wonder if he could be succesfully 're-educated' (by the IT'S ALL IN THE HEAD brigade) into accepting that it was all... just a mere 'neural event.'
Some of these theories should be sticking by now, I reckon.
Can't see that working too well on Mr Laurendeau, somehow.

[steve wood]

Art, Yeah,scientists have them as well and don't credit it to brain pathology.
She won't get much further with her career then, unless she retracts her opinion, I suspect.

[Matt Chait]

"It seems unlikely that consciousness operating through the brain - consciousness canalized in a network of neurons - could directly affect subatomic particles,"

And here MP is talking about the collapse of the wave function to a particle through observation. I would like to put another spin on this. The boundaries of a particle and even the boundaries of a wave, and whether such boundaries even exist, are, it seems to me, purely a matter of perception. A wave is not an isolated wave. When it expands the adjacent waves contract and the waves adjacent to those expand, ad infinitum. All waves at a certain frequency are contracting and expanding in harmony with each other and this entire giant wave is expanding and contracting in harmony with all the other waves at different frequencies.

It seems that the whole design of our brain/body/nervous system is precisely to collapse waves into particles. It seems that as a separate existence we are particles in a sea, a wave if you will, of humanity, which undulates in harmony with the other waves of life, which, in turn, undulates with the undulating worlds of non-living physical elements.

We are born (or have chosen, as I think) a particular body/brain, as a member of a particular family, with a particular history. This history, as we remember and experience it, is a series of specific moments out of a multitude of moments, a wave, if you will, of the limitless flow of our lives. We capture snapshots of experience in which we make particles of processes; even the concept of 'a moment' is really a creation of perception, a way of freezing time in the same way that the notion of a particle freezes space.

The brain, I think, rather than creating consciousness, is a way of particularizing consciousness, of limiting consciousness, so that we can have a particular life of solid, familiar people and things and a specific (particle) identity within it.

Our whole interest in mysticism and spirituality begins when we start to peer through these "particle" divisions we have created and glimpse at waves, at the ocean in which we are all undulating.

[Ben]

even the concept of 'a moment' is really a creation of perception, a way of freezing time in the same way that the notion of a particle freezes space.

Nicely put, Matt!

I often feel I'd be happy to wave bye-bye to all these frozen particles.

[steve wood]

Art,
I've just looked back at my postings(Art it's too sentimental)and I notice that I've repeated the same comment, albeit different wording.I really didn't mean to do that. I typed the first post and it just disappeared of the screen.
There is obviously a problem with my computer. Apologies.

[Michael Prescott]

"There is obviously a problem with my computer."

The problem is with TypePad's servers, which sometimes take a while to process a comment. Certain comments will appear, then vanish, then reappear. I assume they disappear while being transferred from one server to another, or something like that.

[Sandy]

It sounds like TypePad suffers from computer gremlins and evil glitches! Where are all the server fairies when you need them most?

[steve wood]

I should have waited, though. It doesn't look good.
Mind you, I could say that about most of my comments.

[John C.]

Sandy,
I enjoyed reading your comments about the experience with your Grandmother.

The following three books may provide more information that will help to clear up some of the uncertainty that you feel.

1. "The Next World and the Next" by Robert Crookall

2. "The Way Of Life" by Arthur Findlay

3. "Where Two Worlds Meet" by Arthur Findlay

[John C.]

William,
I have been following your comments on your research and am wondering if the following books would be of help to you.

1. "The Medium's Book" by Allan Kardec

2. "Spirit Teachings" by Statinton Moses

These books are from the middle nineteenth century and bear the strong religious beliefs of that time.

3. "Ecstasy The Release of the Soul from the Body" by Robert Crookall

[Sandy]

Thanks John. I have done some reading up on parapsychology over the last year. I'm familiar with the research now but I was really very surprised at just how much work had been done when first I started looking. Even more amazing is how much work gets done with almost no funding compared to mainstream science.

I'm OK with the idea that people can have anomalous cognition and mediumistic experiences. But I would rather it be other people.

I'm working on that attitude. Really, I am. I'm seeing a counselor who tells me that no one who functions as well as I do is pathological. I hope he's right. It isn’t so much a matter of accepting a universe that is much bigger and much more interesting than what I was originally led to believe. It is more a matter of accepting myself.

[william]

“William,
I have been following your comments on your research and am wondering if the following books would be of help to you.”

I have read Crookall’s book the supreme adventure several times and found it very well written with much documentation. This book is one I consider a keeper for its content. I will look into his book you recommended. Thanks for the book recommendations. It is nice to know people read your comments.

Now I have read the spirits book by Kardec several times and found it most interesting. I love his life story and his introduction is a masterpiece from my point of view. There is one point in his book that I am interested in others opinion on and that is where a spirit uses the analogy that God is like a painter and we are the painting on the canvas. I see a fallacy in this analogy does anyone else agree that we cannot compare God to a human painter.

The point was that the Hindu belief about pantheism is in error. These so called advanced spirits that Kardec used in his book most appeared to be former Christians in their life on earth. I will check into the mediums book and again thanks for the recommendation.

As far as Moses book I seem to remember reading that book on the Internet as a free e-book but I will check that out again. Might be time for a reread or maybe my first read.

[william]

"Ecstasy The Release of the Soul from the Body" by Robert Crookall

this book appears to be unavailable and not in print.

[Art]

"The point was that the Hindu belief about pantheism is in error." - william
---------------------------------------

LOL! - Oh boy! We get to pick and choose. Okay, so I'm going to opt out of reincarnation too.

[william]

“LOL! - Oh boy! We get to pick and choose. Okay, so I'm going to opt out of reincarnation too.”

Not sure Art what the LOL was about but glad you got a laugh out of it. Maybe I did not explain well enough I tend to make bullet statements in my writing style. As far as picking and choosing to come back to earth as a human I think it may depend on the maturity of the soul. New souls just come crashing onto the scene and older souls can pick and choose depending on what lessons or soul growth they are attempting to achieve.

If my memory serves me right the spirit that came through a medium was stating that indeed it was possible for God to create something outside of its own source of vitality.

The question asked by Kardec was about that spirit’s beliefs about pantheism.

My point is: is it a valid analogy to compare a human painter and his or her painting on their canvas with God’s creation of the universe. I.e. God is the painter and the painting on the canvas is all of God’s creation.

[steve wood]

I don't know if the recent death of Harry Patch was reported in America(I suspect it will have been).Harry was literally the 'last surviving Tommy,'at 111 years old.
(ie Tommy v Gerry in the Great War). I purchased his autobiography last year. I've always been interested in that period(My uncle,believe it or not was killed in that war)My uncle died in 1917 and my father who was the 'replacement' was born in 1920 and named after him.
This is a piece from Harry's book....

We came across a lad from A company.He was ripped open from his shoulder to his waist by shrapnel,and lying in a pool of blood.When we got to him he looked at us and said, "Shoot me." He was beyond all human help and before we could draw a revolver he was dead. And the final word he uttered was "Mother." I was with him in the last seconds of his life. It wasn't a cry of despair,it was a cry of surprise and joy. I think, although I wasn't allowed to see her,I am sure his mother was in the next world to welcome him and he knew it.

My uncle 'appeared' to the next door neighbour, a full week before my Grandma got official word of his death.
He stood at the foot of her(the neighbour's) bed and asked her to inform his mother that he wasn't coming back. These visions were so common that no-one thought anything much about them, but I can vouch for the sincerity of this one. All the family (some fifteen in a little two up two down terraced house)knew he wouldn't be coming back.

[Michael Prescott]

Thanks for the excerpt, Steve.

The death of Harry Patch was reported in the US, but I knew nothing about him.

[Johb C]

William,
I purchased the book- Ecstasy The Release of the Soul from the Body" by Robert Crookall about- about 30 years ago from the Psychic News bookstore in London, England. It was published in 1973. I believe that it was also available in America, Perhaps a good reference library would have it.

Regarding the Christain beliefs spoken by the enlightened souls, there are one or two reasons that I think can explain this. The views or beliefs that are established in our lifetime (some 70 yrs)are hard to give up and follow us into the next existence. Secondly, if you look at the time period that these books are written in, and who wrote them - Kardec and Statinton - both men were established figures of the community and one was also a member of the Anglican Church so if spirits are to get across their message, they would have to try and use the belief systems of the time. If you read The Way of Life by Arthur Findlay - Chapter X11 pg. 207 to 220, you will see a great difference in religious belief.

Crookall's book - The Next World and Next - I think you will enjoy this one as well.

Regarding your views on reincarnation, I tend to agree with you but I think that there are many dimensions on the other side where one can gain experience and also other worlds and returning to Earth may not be all that important. Our spiritual pathway will influence where we go and what we are seeking to learn about. There are many different levels to our consciousness.

Regarding your views on the "God is a painter" theory, I was told that "God is pure thought". We as conscious beings are part of life and God at the same time. As you have stated, we are striving to reach a higher consciousness which is an evolving process and it help's some people to realize how they are interconnected with pure thought when studying this analogy.

The website- cfpf.org.uk - has an interesting article by Ronald Pearson regarding consciousness as a subquantum phenomenon. I think pure Hindu philosophy is extremely enlightening and expresses the need to look beyond the limitations that humans place on gods to study the pure philosophy.

When I lived in Scotland, I attened a Spiritualist Church for many years and sat in a developing class which was very enlightening. I noticed in a past posting by Zerdini that he feels we should spend more effort on experiencing psychic phenomenon first hand, rather than just abstractly debating the written word. We attempted to develop our mediumistic abilities in these classes and I felt that it gave me another level of understanding and awareness from first hand experience.

[william]

John c:
You make some excellent points about spirits even those that claim to be advanced spirits that hold their views that they had on earth for a very long “time” on what we term the other side. Also a good point about if they are communicating with a person that holds strong religious views they may use terms that are familiar to the medium or sitter. Also I have read that a spirit may not hold such views now but when they lower their vibration level they resort back to how they communicated when they lived on earth.

The words reward and punishment used in this paragraph below made me wonder just how advanced these “spirits” were as some that I have read that I consider to be advanced spirits do not use such words as reward and punishment to explain karma or the law of progress. But I do agree with the teachings presented in this paragraph as being valid.

“Is it nothing that we tell you that reward and punishment are not delayed till a far-off day faintly imagined, after a period of torpor, almost of death, but are instant, immediate, supervening upon sin by the action of an invariable law, and acting ceaselessly until the cause which produced it is removed?”

“Regarding your views on the "God is a painter" theory, I was told that "God is pure thought".

The communication process using symbols rather that telepathic communications is very interesting as the God as a painter is not my theory but came from the spirits in Kardec’s book the spirits book.

My question was does anyone see the fallacy of comparing God to a human painter and the universe is God’s painting on a canvas just like the painting on the canvas is the creation from the mind of a human painter. These spirits being former Christians were debunking the idea that pantheism exists like the Hindus believe.

My point is that comparing God to a human painter is making God in the image of a human. I am surprised that Kardec did not see this difference and comment on this in his book. I.e. God is all and all or Oneness whereas a human is an “aspect” of that all and all or Oneness. Now if they would have used god with a small g then that is another story all together.

“I think pure Hindu philosophy is extremely enlightening and expresses the need to look beyond the limitations that humans place on gods to study the pure philosophy.”

I will check out that link you give me. Thanks for the feedback much appreciated.

“I noticed in a past posting by Zerdini that he feels we should spend more effort on experiencing psychic phenomenon first hand, rather than just abstractly debating the written word.”

I agree with this statement and I have spent time doing this with minimal results and finding others with similar interests is very difficult at least it has been difficult for me to find. Debating the written word can indeed become very abstract and can lead to intellectualism from my point of view. But maybe you work with what you have or whatever.

“I think that there are many dimensions on the other side where one can gain experience and also other worlds and returning to Earth may not be all that important”

I totally agree with this statement. It appears that some souls just say no thanks not for me been there done that and don’t want to do that again. But I also think a soul on the other side looks at another life on earth different than how they felt while living this life on earth. An example is Art who appears to have no desire to live another life on earth but as a soul maybe he would view another life on earth differently from the “other side”. Or not. I don’t want to speak for Art as I suspect it will be entirely his choice.

As for me the idea of going through another life on this planet again was very depressing several years ago but after much thought and meditation I think there are still many things I have not yet experienced and I suspect I will be coming back to learn many new lessons that my soul needs to learn to advance in love, compassion, and divine intelligence.

[Art]

An example is Art who appears to have no desire to live another life on earth but as a soul maybe he would view another life on earth differently from the “other side”. Or not. I don’t want to speak for Art as I suspect it will be entirely his choice. - william
---------------------------------------

Here is an interesting story I remember reading. One guy that had an NDE in a hospital says he remembers seeing a woman giving birth in the same hospital. He said that while he was out of his body he felt an irresistible urge to press his face into the baby's face as it was being born but he realized that if he did that he would be reincarnating as that baby! He said he knew he almost became reincarnated as that baby. What a scary thought! I hope I remember that story after I leave my body so if I see any women giving birth I will be able to resist the urge to stick my face into some baby's face as it is being born.

Of course Betty Eadie also came back and said that she was positive that the "being of Light" she interacted with was Jesus Christ.

[steve wood]

Art,
There was a case like that in amongst COOK GREYSON and STEVENSON'S- 'Do any near death experiences provide evidence for the survival of the human personality after death'
It was a chap called W.Martin who was badly injured when a coping stone(I think)fell on his head.
You've probably read it ,anyway but if not,some of the cases they analyse are extraordinary and well worth a look.
The experience of Stefan Von Jankovitch is
particularly interesting.

[Art]

People come back after their NDE's and interpret what happened to them in light of their prior beliefs and thus the "being of light" becomes Jesus.

People don't remember their NDE till it's over. They don't interpret what happened to them till they are back in their bodies sitting there in their hospital bed; and they try and figure out what just happened to them. So their NDE description gets colored by the culture they live in and their level of knowledge and how they see the world.

So when we see some little kid revealing memories he thinks he remembers those who believe in reincarnation automatically assume they must be "past life memories" while those of us who believe the brain to be a reciever and transmitter of information might think that somehow the child is tuning into someone else's former life. It's called "comparison bias." We interpret what we experience in light of the way we see the world.

[william]

“So when we see some little kid revealing memories he thinks he remembers those who believe in reincarnation automatically assume they must be "past life memories"”

I think the four keys words there are “he thinks he remembers”. Some children have memories that can translate into verifiable evidence. My research indicates that reincarnation is probably a reality for most souls.

Most souls if not all souls just don’t learn enough in one go around to be able to move on to these higher dimensions. Now as a soul matures I think a soul may decide to progress within the astral world or realm they now reside in and make a choice not to come back to this world that can be full of hard knocks to say the least.

Also it appears that a more harsh reality like earth compared to a Summerland may have more opportunities to advance in soul development. Also it appears that desires play a role in a soul’s choice to reincarnate. I can fully understand the resistance to the idea of reincarnation. One only has to be raised on a dairy farm and milk cows twice a day 365 days a year to not want that experience again. But the pay was good 50 cents a week.

I am sure every person that comments on here has his or her own school of hard knocks story to tell. The Buddha devoted much of his life to help people eliminate their sufferings. He or his followers may have missed the causal correlation between suffering and soul development.

Also a soul may decide to reincarnate with their band, group, or soul mate to be with them in their life here on earth. One lifetime may seem like a blink of an eye when viewed from the other side where timelessness is more of a reality.

There may be other reasons that a child has memories of a past life but the “he thinks he remembers” is not on my list of reasons reincarnation does not exist.

[john c]

William,

The words reward and punishment used in this paragraph below made me wonder just how advanced these “spirits” were and some that I have read that I consider to be advanced spirits do not use such words as reward and punishment to explain karma or the law of progress.

As I stated earlier, the spirits who communicated with Kardec still hold their religious viewpoints and have not progressed so perhaps by coming through and speaking with Kardec, they are learning the true meaning of God. I doubt very much that they understand the rules of karma which are alien to the Christian faith.

"My point is that comparing God to a human painter is making God in the image of a human. I am surprised that Kardec did not see this difference and comment on this in his book."

I see nothing wrong with the above statement. If the advanced spirits are trying to get their message across, they have to use whatever expressions or analogies that will allow people to understand the teaching.

I really don't think that it matters that they didn't use a small "g". I guess that as long as people can read and understand it, the capitalization of one word should not make any difference, considering the time period (19th Century).

If you are reading Kardec's medium book, he goes on to explain about the different levels of communication and that not all spirits who communicate are advanced and one should be cautious about what information is communicated and how it is interpreted. If you read in the Statinton Moses book, you will find that it was hard for him to accept the teachings that he was given as they were against his religious training. When some of the ancient Greek philosophers spoke, he found it hard to accept their message. I am sure the advanced teachers must havebeen frustrated trying to get their ideas across.

Regarding your comment about he need for hands on experience. I believe that you and your wife could try to develop your psychic abilities as long as both of you share the seriousness and committment needed to achieve this goal with the right attitude and thoughts and you will receive help from advanced teachers.

Regarding reincarnation, I really don't think that you can prove it one way or the other, each person has to make up their own mind.

[Zerdini]

Johm C wrote:

"The words reward and punishment used in this paragraph below made me wonder just how advanced these “spirits” were and some that I have read that I consider to be advanced spirits do not use such words as reward and punishment to explain karma or the law of progress."

True enough. From what I understand from the spirit realms advanced spirits do not refer to reward and punishment (this is a religious concept) but rather 'actions and consequences' which can be understood by all people of any religion or none.

[Tommy]

None of us know what the truth is but I would like to have reincarnation as an option. Not something I have to do or something I cant do. I would like to come back and enjoy the challenge of a life on Earth again.

[william]

Correction: My memory was not correct it was Kardec not the spirits that made the statement about comparing God to a human painter.

"My point is that comparing God to a human painter is making God in the image of a human. I am surprised that Kardec did not see this difference and comment on this in his book."

“I see nothing wrong with the above statement”

Comparing the painting to a painting made by a human painter fails to understand the difference between oneness and an aspect of oneness. If God is all and all then when God paints on a canvas or creates a universe where does the “substance” come from to create the universe?

We accept that the vitality and intelligence to create the universe comes from God but that leaves us with the question of where about the substance and we call matter. My belief is that all must come from this infinite source, which included matter, intelligence, consciousness, vitality, etc.

So from my point of view comparing God to a human painter is making God in man’s image, which is easy and comfortable to do. What can be outside of infinite oneness?
Do we really know the true nature of that substance? Is it a particle or a wave? Is it energy or vitality in motion? Could matter be a form of consciousness?

They were discussing the concept of pantheism and how God could create something outside of itself if God is infinite oneness.

Anything God manifests must come from this infinite oneness. A human painter does not manifest the canvas or the paint just the creativity to make the painting.
Some would even state that this creativity does not originate from the personal mind but from the mind of God.

“From what I understand from the spirit realms advanced spirits do not refer to reward and punishment (this is a religious concept) but rather 'actions and consequences'”

I agree the concept of reward and punishment is a religious concept and both can lead to much fear. Stated another way they are not based in compassion and love but wanting and not wanting. I suspect that karma if we understood it is not fear based but based in love and divine intelligence.

[Ben]

Off topic:
If anyone asks you who Michael Prescott is, send them this link:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Michael+prescott&l=1

(Maybe you already know about "let me google that for you", but I didn't till my son showed it to me today. Neat!)

[william]

“The materialists simply deny that these other phenomena even exist, as they rightly realize that the existence of these phenomena threatens their ideology with extinction.”

This is an interesting quote from Carter’s book from the link provided above. It appears that the human ego lives in fear of not only the extinction of its identity but also the extinction of its ideologies. Maybe because we identify so much with our ideologies especially religious, political, and national ideologies.