I'm about halfway through Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, by Robert Lanza and Bob Berman. It's an interesting read, though I could do without the occasional digressions into personal anecdotes and childhood memories. So far the question I raised in my previous post on the subject hasn't been addressed, though I hope it will be.
One thing I particularly liked was this discussion of the disappearing kitchen:
Take the seemingly undeniable logic that your kitchen is always there, its contents assuming all their familiar forms, shapes, and colors, whether or not you are in it. At night, you click off the light, walk through the door, and leave for the bedroom. Of course it's there, unseen, all through the night. Right?
But consider: the refrigerator, stove, and everything else are composed of a shimmering swarm of matter/energy. Quantum theory ... tells us that not a single one of those subatomic particles actually exists in a definite place. Rather, they merely exist as a range of probabilities that are unmanifest. In the presence of an observer -- that is, when you go back in to get a drink of water -- each one's wave function collapses and it assumes an actual position, a physical reality. Until then, it's merely a swarm of possibilities. And wait, if that seems too far out, then forget quantum madness and stay with everyday science, which comes to a similar conclusion because the shapes, colors, and forms known as your kitchen are seen as they are solely because photons of light from the overhead bulb bounce off the various objects and then interact with your brain through a complex set of retinal and neural intermediaries. This is undeniable -- it's basic seventh-great science. The problem is, light doesn't have any color nor any visual characteristics at all, as we shall see in the next chapter. So while you may think that the kitchen as you remember it was "there" in your absence, the reality is that nothing remotely resembling what you can imagine could be present when a consciousness is not interacting. [pp. 16-17]
A few pages later, the authors address a different physical sense, the sense of touch:
What about if you touch something? Isn't it solid? Push on the trunk of [a] tree and you feel pressure. But this too is a sensation strictly inside your brain and only "projected" to your fingers, whose existence also lies within the mind. Moreover, that sensation of pressure is caused not by any contact with a solid, but by the fact that every atom has negatively charged electrons in its outer shell. As we all know, charges of the same type repel each other, so the bark's electrons repel yours, and you feel this electrical repulsive force stopping your fingers from penetrating any further. Nothing solid ever meets any other solids when you push on the tree. The atoms in your fingers are each as empty as a vacant football stadium in which a single fly sits on the fifty-yard line. If we needed solids to stop us (rather than energy fields), our fingers could easily penetrate the tree as if we were swiping at fog. [p.22]
I've encountered these ideas before, but they seemed especially well presented here. The authors' explication of the problems arising from the fanous two-slit experiment in physics, which takes up all of Chapter 8, is also exceptionally clear.
Also in the astral world we appear to have a body of substance even through we can walk though a physical wall or door as a spirit.
It also appears at least in these lower realms we can pick the astral looking body we want to be seen as. Most appear to pick a body as to how they looked at 25 to 35 years of age on earth.
There are exceptions as one person who was known as an enlightened one on earth picked a body of how he looked as an old man on earth to give him a look of a master because he was still teaching others his spiritual knowledge to others in the astral world.
Posted by: william | May 02, 2009 at 07:40 PM
"So far the question I raised in my previous post on the subject hasn't been addressed, though I hope it will be."
I haven't read that particular book yet,though I would need to reincarnate into a physicist to adress that topic any further.The problems arising from the two-slit experiment needs an explanation not yet available.I would be equally happy like u to hear any theories anyone else might have though.
Posted by: Bryan.A | May 02, 2009 at 08:11 PM
A kitchen that is actually atoms and inside the atoms are really a positive/negative and neutralparticles spinning at their correct velocity attributed to their characteristic identity. The higher there force the tighter their form, because they are actively due to the streams attuned to the ether that prevades every thing in the universe. Its really a quantum science when looked at in a subatomic reduction to microscopic elements. They hold there integrity within that shell of attraction/force of spin. What happens when that integrity is broken down due to interference or differentation? It no longer is a force within the atom and thus radiation. I study quantum physics and have 8 years of study through books and have a question of my own what happens if a person dies unatural say, in a fire. Does the mind survive such terminus without the body or when a person chooses creamation? perhaps the mind is above radiation as the end means of death in all forms. Any comments?
Posted by: Ally Eden | May 02, 2009 at 08:31 PM
"Does the mind survive such terminus without the body or when a person chooses creamation? perhaps the mind is above radiation as the end means of death in all forms. Any comments?"
No comments on the first part what u said.However the above quote I could answer as much to my knowledge about spirituality.
The mind(conciousness)does survive in the afterlife,regardless of how one dies.Reincarnation aside for a bit.
Death is not a moment its a process.While the body is dying,the mind goes on building slowly or rapidly depending on certain variables into the afterlife sphere.
Cremation as I understand it gets rid of the physical body far too fast,the temperature is much higher compared to a regular fire.
This causes a reaction to the conciousness which survived.The Silver cord which connects the body and the "spirit"(mind) is not completely only refined spiritual matter.It would cause the physical body to be turned to ashes and the spirit would also suffer depending on level of advancement in afterlife conditions.Thus cremation is certainly not recommended too soon after one is declared clinically dead.
However don't take this as fact,im sure many others disagree and there's no way for me to prove it but it doesn't sound too implausible for me to have a ground for possibility.
Now hmm,let me read what u wrote another few times in the first part to try to understand :)
Posted by: Bryan.A | May 02, 2009 at 11:51 PM
Alley you may want to read the book “The Supreme Adventure” by Robert Crookall. He writes about the differences between what he calls natural death and enforced death. This appears to be a very well documented book.
Posted by: william | May 03, 2009 at 03:14 AM
So the sensorium is the means by which we interpret reality. Just because reality is interpreted does not make it unreal; it's simply more than the sensorium interprets. What we call "probability" is uninterpreted reality, but it's still real.
Repulsive electrical forces are real, though not interpreted as such by our sensoria. It is our limited sensoria that limit reality. But reality is still objectively there.
Posted by: Flame | May 03, 2009 at 04:34 AM
"the shapes, colors, and forms known as your kitchen are seen as they are solely because photons of light from the overhead bulb bounce off the various objects and then interact with your brain through a complex set of retinal and neural intermediaries. This is undeniable -- it's basic seventh-great science."
Which has led to some interesting conversations between myself and my son's biology teacher.
"What about if you touch something? Isn't it solid?...... this too is a sensation strictly inside your brain and only "projected" to your fingers, whose existence also lies within the mind."
When will we get over this idea that we are organic chemical accidents (Dawkins & Co.) and talking brains (Pinker & Co.). The reason that touches 'seem' to be experienced on the surface of the skin and visions 'seem' to be experienced at the end of the optic nerve, just behind the retina, and sounds experienced at the end of the auditory nerve, just behind the cochlia, is that they ARE. That is where YOU go when you want to see or hear or touch something. Your brain doesn't go there, it doesn't move; and your nervous system doesn't go there, it's already there. YOU, the non-physical being that experiences things through your body and initiates things through your body, YOU go there. The neural activity that accompanies YOUR experience (not the brain's experience; the brain is matter and has no experience) is RECORDING your experience. It is not recording the brain's experience. Other areas of the brain are stimulated where YOU have recorded other memories and YOU have made connections with this current experience. The information that YOU translate from the electrons and chemicals in those other places in the brain help you DEFINE what it is that YOU experience. Your focus is YOU experiencing a particular set of things. You see the pattern of light coming through the retina, you hear the pattern of sound waves coming through the cochlia. Without you they are just waves and without you the brain is just making patterns of electricity, a video camera with no one watching.
You are the experiencer. Your human brain and human sensory organs help you define your experience and give it a human consistency. The brain helps you accumulate memories and use those memories to define and deepen your relationship with whatever it is that you are currently experiencing. And the way that my brain and sense organs were set up helps me to define my experience as a human experience and the way that I have used that human brain structure by growing axons and making connections that I wanted to make, help me define my experience as a Matt Chait experience. And Fido has inherited a dog brain and dog sensory equipment and he has used that dog brain structure to define his experience as a Fido experience.
The brain takes all experiences, sounds, sights, tastes, touches, feelings, thoughts, the entire infinitely rich and various experience of living things and converts them to the same flow of electrons at the same voltage. How could we possibly remember this richness if we hadn't experienced it first, not as electrons, but as experiences coming directly through our sense organs?
Posted by: Matt Chait | May 03, 2009 at 11:16 AM
Just because reality is interpreted does not make it unreal; it's simply more than the sensorium interprets. What we call "probability" is uninterpreted reality, but it's still real.... Reality is still objectively there.
Lanza and Berman argue that in the absence of an observer, all that exists are unrealized probabilities. Whether or not we call these probabilities "real" is a question of semantics; they are real probabilities, but they are unrealized or unmanifest, so they are not actualities.
Quoth the authors:
What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness.... The behavior of subatomic particles - indeed all particles and objects - [is] inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of an observer, [the particles] at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.... Without consciousness, "matter" dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.... There is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life. [pp. 159-160]
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 03, 2009 at 04:37 PM
There is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life. [pp. 159-160]
So are the authors saying that Life created matter before it even evolved? Presumably not - they must be arguing that Life is non-corporeal and physical stuff is ideas plucked out of a Great Mind. In other words, they are subjective idealists?
Posted by: Flame | May 03, 2009 at 05:42 PM
Use of the term "probability" is in my view an unfortunate relic of mathematical modes of thinking. There are no such things as probability states either. Things look the way they do to us because we have eyes that are sensitive to the wavelengths of light they are sensitive to. Differently designed eyes would see different wavelengths, and the world would look differently. The same is true of each of our other senses. The world looks the way it does because we have the senses we have.
Now because we cannot say what it looks like without the particular senses we have does not place all existing things into a probability state, which is meaningless jargon.
There are no particularities at all without particular senses which see things in particular ways.
When the authors conclude, wrongly I maintain, that probability states exist, I suggest that they don't even know what they are talking about. What they are really suggesting is that all particularities somehow exist super positioned over one another which is far more complicated and far less elegant than the alternative which is that there is what can only be described accurately as an ineffable something that can't be particularized at all. It can't be particularized as what you see, and it can't be particularized as a series of probabilities of what you will see when you look at it either.
"Probabilty states" is just a fuzzier and less honest way of denying that you can't get your head around what's really there apart from your senses.
And instead of saying that they'd rather be able to know what's "really" there, so they propose nonsense like probability states and then hope that reputation is enough to convince us that "probability states" really exist. So what they end up concluding is that the universe is nonsensical at the smallest level because saying that still affords them the possibility of saying they've understood it, versus the alternative, which is to say that at it's depths the universe cannot be understood by the language and concepts we have developed at the macro level, and that includes the concepts of "probability states."
I think probability states are bunk. The truth is even weirder than these two imagine.
Posted by: dmduncan | May 03, 2009 at 06:04 PM
So are the authors saying that Life created matter before it even evolved
This is the chicken-and-egg problem I mentioned in a previous post. Unfortunately the book does not address this objection, though I was hoping it would. One way around it might be a strange loop.
What they are really suggesting is that all particularities somehow exist super positioned over one another
Yes, I think they are saying that all possible outcomes are superpositioned in a "cloud of potentia." Of course this idea isn't original with the authors. It goes back to the Copenhagen Interpretation.
the alternative ... is that there is ... as an ineffable something that can't be particularized at all.
I'm not sure this is much different from talking about a cloud of potentia. No one is saying that the potentia are actualities. The cloud of potentia, or the probability wave, is simply a mathematical representation of all possible outcomes. I'm pretty sure most quantum physicists would say that the probability wave is not "real," any more than infinity is "real." Like infinity, the probability wave is a mathematical concept that is necessary in order to get certain equations to work.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 03, 2009 at 07:26 PM
"Probabilty states" is just a fuzzier and less honest way of denying that you can't get your head around what's really there apart from your senses.”
I suspect there may be much truth to this statement. It appears to me this book is making biology and physics literature fit their existing paradigm about life. Not sure that made any sense so here is some more perplexity; in my view they are confusing an effect with a cause.
“I think probability states are bunk. The truth is even weirder than these two imagine.”
I have suspected for some time that the “truth” or truths are much simpler than we can imagine. It may very well be the intellect that makes these truths complex and weird sounding. It is pretty simple to state the origin of suffering but how many in 2500 hundred years even know about the origin of suffering? And how many in 2500 hundred years have obtained a knowing beyond knowing as to the origin of suffering.
Posted by: william | May 03, 2009 at 07:38 PM
I see no conflict between superposition states and probability. If everything existed as unmapped potential, it would have to be calculated from scratch by our sensorium every time we open our eyes. More likely that its previous Observed state is stored in memory and calculation of probable changes made from that point.
Posted by: Flame | May 04, 2009 at 05:09 AM
So are the authors saying that Life created matter before it even evolved
I've been playing around with the idea that most of what we know of as the laws of physics, genetics, astronomy, the fossil record, etc. are creations of the human mind - that is, DNA didn't actually exist until Watson and Crick "discovered" it, and then it was "backfilled". The universe provides an "explanation" when we have progressed to a certain point, but there are always more mysteries, just beyond the horizon. The discovery of QM was, I beleive, a hint of this - by going down to the smallest of the small, the Universe ran out of room and we came face to face with the true, mental nature of the cosmos.
Think of it like a long running TV show like "The X-files" or "Lost": the conspiracy keeps getting deeper and deeper, with layers and layers that sometimes confirm, sometimes contradict, and sometimes just plain ignore previous "revelations". I believe that when we cross over, we will find out that science was an elaborate practical joke that God played on us to keep us occupied.
I'm about 90-95% serious about this.
Posted by: Jim Baird | May 04, 2009 at 04:43 PM
“The universe provides an "explanation" when we have progressed to a certain point, but there are always more mysteries, just beyond the horizon”
It certainty appears that way but appearances can be deceiving. I know after 18 years of research I have more questions now then when I started but one can only hope they are more intelligent questions. But then many believe if not most that by my asking what is the origin of our ignorance was not all that intelligent.
“I believe that when we cross over, we will find out that science was an elaborate practical joke that God played on us to keep us occupied.”
Some of the enlightened Hindus that I researched their teachings did believe that God has a sense of humor. Not sure I buy into that line of reasoning but if we are made in God’s image who knows.
“Think of it like a long running TV show like "The X-files" or "Lost": the conspiracy keeps getting deeper and deeper, with layers and layers that sometimes confirm, sometimes contradict, and sometimes just plain ignore previous "revelations".
Excellent analogy. Loved the sometimes just plain ignore the previous revelations. Truths appear to come in degrees. That came as a disappointment to me after all I wanted to find the one absolute truth or truths in one book.
“The discovery of QM was, I beleive, a hint of this - by going down to the smallest of the small, the Universe ran out of room and we came face to face with the true, mental nature of the cosmos.”
Very well stated.
Posted by: william | May 04, 2009 at 05:42 PM
"Yes, I think they are saying that all possible outcomes are superpositioned in a 'cloud of potentia.'"
"No one is saying that the potentia are actualities."
I'm not sure they don't think they are not actualities. Or at least, I'm not sure they themselves are sure what they are talking about. Because what exactly is superpositioned except things which must be in some sense actual if they are superpositioned? If they aren't actualities then exactly what is superpositioned over what?
Probabilities? Probabilities don't exist except in one's head as an idea. So what's there when one is not looking isn't a cloud of potentia or probability states either. And yet what they are trying to figure out is what's there——not the probabilities in one's mind——when one is not looking.
What is actually there is beyond language to describe. Literally so. Cloud of potentia is still an attempt to get at what's there. It's a very visual metaphor. It makes me think of a cloud made up of all different things overlaid upon each other, each one transparent so you can see through it to the next thing, like a special effect. But the imagery you get from that is still an attempt to extend your experience into areas where no experience is possible, so whatever you describe it as will be totally inaccurate. It will still be made up of the elements of your experience, and that's not what it really is.
And that's why I think their language is convoluted. They are even less clear than what the Buddhists have been saying for 2000 years. It's 2000 years old, maybe much older, but it's news to them. They are, in other words, still laboring to comprehensively understand the world using a language developed through our functional relationship to the universe on our macro level of being aware, and it doesn't work. And it isn't a matter of finding the right terms or the right language to describe it. The problem is in trying to describe it at all.
Posted by: dmduncan | May 04, 2009 at 06:18 PM
Isn't this what life is? Don't we agree, when we choose this life, to leave a world of energy fields and waves and potentials and enter a world of matter and things and particles? Aren't our brains structured to make snapshots of our experience and freeze these processes, give them a name and a whole bunch of other associations so that we can live in a comfortable world of stable objects and familiar faces?
When some one hasn't seen my seventeen year old for fifteen years they always say something like, "Oh my God, is that Ross?" with a mixture of shock and joy. Just like when they see me after fifteen years they say the same thing, "Oh my God, is that Matt?" but this time with a mixture of shock and horror. All seeming solidity is really an interplay of energy and in a constant state of change, although the rates of change vary widely.
Quantum theorists are on their way to discovering what mystics have known for thousands of years. There's nothing out there, folks! It's just an interplay of laws, and these laws, not the matter that is affected by these laws, but the laws themselves, have absolutely no physical bases. Electro-magnetism was supposed to emanate from electrons and protons, but there are no electrons and protons; they are just energy fields like everything else. Gravity is supposed to emanate from mass, but there is no mass; and now scientists are so desperately searching for a mass conferring particle to justify their materialist understanding of gravity, that they have given it a name, the Higgs Boson, before anyone has ever seen it. Yin and yang make more sense to me than gravity and electromagnetism, but whatever you call them, they are laws; laws that preceded matter; and laws whose power has no physical bases.
The force of man made laws comes simply from an agreement among intelligent beings that this set of laws will be the best way to organize our society. The force of universal laws comes from a Decision (which is the same thing as an agreement, except it was made by Being before there were separate beings) that this set of laws is the best way to create a material universe.
"So are the authors saying that Life created matter before it even evolved"
I hope so! Before there were life forms, there was life formless; before there were beings there was Being. The precise and precisely synchronized laws that preceded matter through whose operation the material universe was formed were not evolved (what would they be evolved from?); they were conceived.
Posted by: matt chait | May 04, 2009 at 06:43 PM
Bryan A. Silver thread? hmmm..but just by another angle, the soul,spirit is separate from the mind that is coenergized by the matter or force which I am talking about that energy field that resides in the body until death, I guess what I am saying to this forum is does mind die out with the brain or does it rise above death by intense heat by cremation and go with the soul or,,, is the soul and mind as One? the mind is creative as well as changing due to * experience* and can recall or adjust to any threat and build when competition ditates. the most intelligent robot android with an electronic neural network simulated or quantum computer brain, no matter how complex and perfectly designed, can never become creatively aware or self conscious, and experience the feelings of love, truth, beauty, etc. -- as does a human being... Even though the EM energy fields in the system might be potentially or latently conscious at their zero-points of origin such consciousness could never be experienced ( intrasubjectively, or expressed phenomenally or creatively. All it can do to *simulate* human consciousness, is follow the rules of its pre-programmed learning algorithms.
So, It all boils down to coenergetic (resonant) electromagnetic "fields of consciousness" (within each organic-sentient being) that are holographically and harmonically linked to their contiguously ubiquitous (entangled) zero-point centers of origin -- which are, also (besides the spin-momental source of the higher order energy fields themselves) the *absolute* spatial source of pure consciousness (awareness, will)... That is *separate*, yet interconnected (informationally) to the harmonic electrodynamic energy fields surrounding it. Objects that can be touched by our sensory are still (Together in space) held by their wave structures but lack our consciousness that is sole being and coexistent with it Supreme Being Creater, I am under the impression that it makes no difference how we die and cross into the hereafter because as one person on this forum stated, language fails us to fathom into the hereafter, it has to be independent of anything we can try to calculate or even quantum from the spatial abtract part of the brain.
Posted by: Ally Eden | May 04, 2009 at 09:11 PM
“There's nothing out there, folks! It's just an interplay of laws”
From my point of view these laws are an effect and the cause or underlying reality of those laws are divine intelligence. Laws don’t exist in a vacuum as math does not exist in a vacuum or natural selection or chance or random mutation.
We keep looking at the shadow on the wall not the light causing the shadow to exist. This is why the mystics and many enlightened ones keep telling us that all we perceive is an illusion meaning it is temporal.
Only Infinite is permanent and it is everywhere. Space is also an illusion due to our unawareness of the Absolute.
Beyond all of these visible and measurable effects is the Infinite and infinite we cannot define, as it has no limits or boundaries.
“that this set of laws is the best way to create a material universe.”
My take would be a conscious universe as the material may be nothing more than consciousness in motion.
“So, It all boils down to coenergetic (resonant) electromagnetic "fields of consciousness" (within each organic-sentient being) that are holographically and harmonically linked to their contiguously ubiquitous (entangled) zero-point centers of origin -- which are, also (besides the spin-momental source of the higher order energy fields themselves) the *absolute* spatial source of pure consciousness (awareness, will)... That is *separate*, yet interconnected (informationally) to the harmonic electrodynamic energy fields surrounding it.”
Huh? Is this another way of saying God is oneness?
Posted by: william | May 05, 2009 at 12:41 AM
"I've been playing around with the idea that most of what we know of as the laws of physics, genetics, astronomy, the fossil record, etc. are creations of the human mind - that is, DNA didn't actually exist until Watson and Crick "discovered" it, and then it was "backfilled"."
This is the universe as a simulation hypothesis. It is an outflow of digital physics, and, strangely enough, in some versions, it fully explains all quantum mysteries. The theory posits that material reality does not exist until we look at it, and it is presented to us as a string of probability, quantum probability. It is not totally random, however, or reality would not flow in any logical manner. We build on the previous instant, with some things much more probable than others because of what happened before.The chair in my living room has an high probability of being there, because it was there before, but, similar to the action in a sim game, like World of Warcraft, the scene is not loaded until the character interacts with it. In this hypothesis, the Big Bang was the loading of the simulation rules into our reality. Check out "My Big Toe" by Tom Campbell, for a full discussion of this theory
Posted by: GregL | May 05, 2009 at 11:27 AM
The force of man made laws comes simply from an agreement among intelligent beings that this set of laws will be the best way to organize our society. The force of universal laws comes from a Decision (which is the same thing as an agreement, except it was made by Being before there were separate beings) that this set of laws is the best way to create a material universe.
This seems very much what Rupert Sheldrake says, building on Darwin's idea of Law = habit.
The chair in my living room has an high probability of being there, because it was there before, but, similar to the action in a sim game, like World of Warcraft, the scene is not loaded until the character interacts with it.
Ah! The Universe as computer simulation. I won't believe it till we create AI.
Posted by: Flame | May 05, 2009 at 02:49 PM
Except the problem with the simulation idea is that simulation is a relative word. It gets it's meaning in juxtaposition to non-simulation and we are back to wondering what a non simulated reality is. If there was no idea of non-simulation, then simulated, if there was such a word at all with that spelling and pronunciation would probably mean something completely different than what it means to us.
Also, unlike a game character I don't disappear when you are not interacting with me.
Posted by: dmduncan | May 05, 2009 at 05:50 PM
There's a slight problem with Messers Lanza and Berman's ideas; they've ignored chaos theory.
Definition of chaotic systems from Wikipedia (see chaos theory):
it must be sensitive to initial conditions,
it must be topologically mixing, and
its periodic orbits must be dense.
Which describes our normal environment.
The QM interpretation that objects are quantum indeterminate when not being observed doesn't apply (usually) to objects at our scale because they're always "being observed". Your kitchen doesn't stop interacting with it's environment when you aren't there; it's sending and receiving infra-red photons, affecting the movement of air molecules, changing sound patterns, even exerting a gravitational attraction, all very small but all cascading into larger and larger chaotic effects on the environment and eventually affecting you in varying ways. It could only become quantum indeterminate if it was isolated; otherwise the waveform collapses.
Of course, this does bring up a big question. If the universe is everything then what observes it? If nothing observes it then it is indeterminate. If it is indeterminate then the universe or any part of it may change in any way at any time. And so dmduncan you did in fact disappear when we weren't interacting with you. :-)
Posted by: MarkL | May 06, 2009 at 12:00 AM
“There's a slight problem with Messers Lanza and Berman's ideas; they've ignored chaos theory.”
What looks like chaos may have a lot more meaning and purpose then our unaware minds can comprehend or I suspect even imagine. Or not.
Posted by: william | May 06, 2009 at 01:13 AM
"Also, unlike a game character I don't disappear when you are not interacting with me."
No you don't, because you are consciousness, observing and playing the "game."
Posted by: Greg L | May 06, 2009 at 10:23 AM
Greg, I understand what you're saying but if you call it a simulation then some people will bang their heads trying to figure out what a real reality is like, or they will assume that there's a real reality out there.
But it's not that any of what we experience isn't real. It is. To say this isn't real is like wandering around a baseball stadium asking people where the baseball game is.
Posted by: dmduncan | May 06, 2009 at 03:06 PM
No you don't, because you are consciousness, observing and playing the "game."
Actually, no! The body is not consciousness. Cells in the body also have what is presumably an invisible consciousness. So does the body disappear when we're asleep (alone), GregL?
Posted by: Barbara | May 06, 2009 at 03:32 PM
Bet he can't answer that one!
Posted by: Flame | May 06, 2009 at 03:36 PM
“But it's not that any of what we experience isn't real. It is. To say this isn't real is like wandering around a baseball stadium asking people where the baseball game is.”
Good analogy.
To say all this is an illusion misses a very important point. The appearances that we see, touch, feel, and hear are a reality but it is a transient “reality”. It is not permanent. The only permanent reality is that that is or what most call God. Below is a quote from the book “the open door”
“Form is transient, but it is not an illusion: it expresses the inherent attributes of the spirit, as interpreted through the medium of substance with the aid of vitality.”
To say appearances are not real and an illusion could leave someone with the impression, maybe even in a depressive state, that there is no meaning or purpose to our lives. Illusion is a poor choice of a word to explain temporal appearances.
The meaning is in the process of life as we are the dynamic and lively expression of that that is. This statement is a tough one to swallow with all the pain and suffering in the world. But most souls appear to look upon this pain and suffering different than we do.
These appearances are the expression of that that is and they are very real to us; now the challenge is to learn to observe and realize the underlying reality and lessons from these experiences that we live through every day of our lives.
Posted by: william | May 06, 2009 at 04:13 PM
"Actually, no! The body is not consciousness. Cells in the body also have what is presumably an invisible consciousness. So does the body disappear when we're asleep (alone), GregL?"
Barbara and Flame
When we "lose" consciousness, we are losing our connection to the data stream that is the simulation. Does the body disappear when we sleep? Not as long as there is a consciousness in the simulation that "observes" the body. A scene in "World of Warcraft" will not disappear when you shut down your computer, IF, another player enters that same scene. He or she, then keeps that scene "alive." The probability of the scene remaining fairly much the same when observed increases with each observation, so, you awake in the morning(reconnect to the data stream) and find yourself much the same as when you went to sleep. Maybe with the faint memory of your tripping in the non physical universe.
Posted by: Greg L | May 06, 2009 at 04:50 PM
William, agreed. Illusion is another one of those overworked words that is deceptively used.
Posted by: dmduncan | May 06, 2009 at 06:00 PM
There is stuff that we learn here that can only be learned by doing. For instance, if I write a book and in the book I describe what it's like to eat an olive, no matter how carefully I describe what it's like to eat an olive you won't really know what it's like unless you've tasted an olive for yourself. There are certain things we can learn in this Universe that can't be truly understood unless you do them first. Can you learn to drive a car just by reading a manual on how to do it? No, the only way to learn how to drive a car is by doing it. You can't develop the motor skills needed to drive a car unless you get behind the wheel and practice. The same is true for riding a bicycle. You can read a book about it or even watch a DVD video about it, but unless you actually do it, you really can't "know" how to do it.
Let's say you go to the Amazon jungle and ask a little Indian boy to make you an ice cream cone. Well if he's never seen anything frozen before he wouldn't have a clue what you are talking about. You can even take a little picture book with you and show him a picture of an ice cream cone, but there is a lot of information that can't be conveyed unless you have actually eaten an ice cream cone for yourself.
Life is full of things like that. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience. We are exploring and learning about what it's like to be alive and be inside a body and live in a Universe where time and space and separation exist.
And we will use this information when we cross over into Heaven and create whatever kind of reality we might wish to experience.
excerpt from Mark H's NDE:
"Suddenly I thought of a mountain, I had seen as a child. When I looked up from the road there it was; The Mountain! Not just the mountain! But the most breathtaking mountain I had ever seen! Details the likes of which no one could imagine. Colors shades of color, shadows for which there are no words in the human language to describe it."
http://www.nderf.org/mark_h's_nde.htm
Posted by: Art | May 06, 2009 at 09:32 PM
“Not just the mountain! But the most breathtaking mountain I had ever seen! Details the likes of which no one could imagine. Colors shades of color, shadows for which there are no words in the human language to describe it."”
Two of three profound dreams I had almost two decades ago fit this above quote very well. The colors were indescribable. Nothing in nature was dead or dying. Every tree was a beautiful color and the color of the lake was nothing like I had ever seen and I have visited some of the most beautiful lakes around the world.
The best part I would fly or float over this beautiful countryside. I do not remember seeing any other entities in these first two dreams. Being able to fly with no effort was wonderful.
Later I learned the spiritualists call this Summerland. What I find amazing is that almost two decades later I can close my eyes and see the beauty of those dreams again. I now find it hard to have the same feelings that I had as I viewed this majestic scenery but the colors I remember well.
“And we will use this information when we cross over into Heaven and create whatever kind of reality we might wish to experience.”
My research indicates that the quality and complexity of the realities we can create after we cross over depends on what dimension we will reside in as a soul with as astral body which appears to be correlated with our level of vibration. As often as in this physical world like attracts like in these higher or “lower” realms or astral worlds.
Posted by: william | May 07, 2009 at 02:58 AM
My research indicates that the quality and complexity of the realities we can create after we cross over depends on what dimension we will reside in as a soul with as astral body which appears to be correlated with our level of vibration. - william
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My research indicates that everyone, regardless of who you were in life, becomes enlightened upon entering the light. It doesn't matter if you were a poor little Indian boy living in the Amazon jungle or a Shaman living in Siberia or a washerwoman in India, everyone becomes totally connected and one with the Light after they cross over, and since time doesn't exist on the other side, it happens instantly.
"All that I saw and felt was as if something was filling my mind with answers, before I could even ask the question. The presence of god was in all things. It was as though the promise of being filled, and overflowing. What your soul desired to see, was filled at that very moment. Everything that your soul needed was met before it could be asked. There is no distance here. So time does not exist. What your soul desires it is! All you desire to know is done! You are filled with the spirit! And you know it! I had never experienced such a feeling of satisfaction in my life." - excerpt from Mark H's NDE, http://www.nderf.org/mark_h%27s_nde.htm
Posted by: Art | May 07, 2009 at 12:31 PM
so, you awake in the morning (reconnect to the data stream) and find yourself much the same as when you went to sleep. -GregL
This analogy might suit an android trying to figure out its origin, but doesn't seem applicable to our analogue brains.
Posted by: Barbara | May 07, 2009 at 03:39 PM
We are not our physical bodies. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience. The soul uses the body to learn about the physical universe and then casts it off when it finishes with it like a pair of worn out old shoes. The soul's lessons are embedded in our everyday lives and it is holistically imprinted with what it needs to learn and it's irrelevant whether we agree or disagree, believe or disbelieve, accept or not accept. Farrah Fawcett and Patrick Swayze are not "losing their battle" with cancer. Their souls are just close to graduation.
Posted by: Art | May 07, 2009 at 07:44 PM