Michael Prescott's Blog

Modeling the world

Last night I reread Brian Whitworth's article "The Physical World As a Virtual Reality," which I mentioned in a previous post. Whitworth argues that the physical universe is a virtual reality (VR) environment. Although I lack the specialized knowledge necessary to evaluate his more technical arguments, I do find this viewpoint extremely provocative.

Whitworth's perspective on certain problems in physics is certainly worth considering. For instance, it has often been noted that subatomic particles seem to have some sort of rudimentary intelligence or awareness that affects the way they behave, yet it seems impossible that such entities could think for themselves. But as Whitworth points out, if the particles are the result of calculations carried out by an information processor, "this problem disappears."

The VR model may also be useful in explaining the "fixed maximum" of the speed of light: "That there is an absolute maximum speed could reflect a maximum information processing rate." Bizarre relativity effects may be a consequence of "processing load" -- "a high matter concentration may constitute a high processing demand, so a massive body could slow down the information processing of space-time, causing space to 'curve' and time to slow. Likewise, if faster movement requires more processing, speeds near light speed could affect space/time, causing time to 'dilate' and space to extend."

Many scientists have been intrigued by the uncanny simplicity of the mathematical laws of our universe. But as Whitworth observes, "In VR theory physical laws are simple because they must actually be calculated."

Nonlocal effects have been proven to take place at the quantum level (and, more recently, even at the macro level). Whitworth writes, "The processing that creates a virtual world is not limited by the space of that world, e.g. a CPU drawing a screen is no 'further' from any one part of the screen than any other. All screen points are equidistant with respect to the CPU, so VR processor effects can ignore screen distance, i.e. be nonlocal."

Perhaps the knottiest problem in quantum physics involves the apparent fact that particles exist only as probability waves until they are observed or measured; at the moment of observation, the wave function seemingly collapses to a single point. Whitworth: "Virtual reality 'screens' are typically only calculated when they are viewed, i.e. when an interaction occurs.... [VR theory could] solve the quantum measurement problem, as, if our reality is in effect a processing interface, an observer viewing an object could indeed create it. Similarly in an online virtual world the entire world is not calculated onscreen at once. The computer, for practical reasons, only calculates what the viewer chooses to view after they choose to view it, i.e. screen calculations are as required. If what we call reality is a multi-dimensional space-time interface, it would likewise be expected to be calculated only on demand."

All this is admittedly speculative, but highly intriguing. Naturally, the questions that occurred to me involve the issues usually discussed on this blog: consciousness and life after death. Whitworth apparently believes that his VR beings somehow develop their own consciousness spontaneously, as an emergent property. From my point of view, however, I would assume that consciousness precedes the development of the virtual world -- that, in fact, a world constructed of digital information manipulated by complex calculations logically presupposes an intelligence, and therefore a consciousness, capable of putting it all together in the first place.

For this reason, I think Whitworth is mistaken when he says that VR theory would necessarily humble us by showing that we are "less than we imagine." What would be "less than we imagine" is the physical world, including our own bodies, but not the consciousness that created this world and now interacts with it, which of course includes our own minds. At least in my interpretation, consciousness would be rather more than we typically imagine it to be, since it would be more real than the physical world, and, in fact, would be the source of the physical world.

As I see it, if we accept the VR model, we have to assume that consciousness, rather than emerging from the VR universe, is instead projected into the VR avatars by the same Consciousness (or a fragment thereof) that created this virtual world to begin with. I can't help but think of the upcoming James Cameron science-fiction movie Avatar, in which a wheelchair-bound man projects his psyche into an artificially created living organism that can survive on a hostile planet. (Incidentally, this scenario bears remarkable similarities to the 1957 Poul Anderson novella Call Me Joe, summarized here, but as far as I know, Anderson is uncredited in the movie.)

We might speculate, then, that the subjective consciousness of sentient beings operates through the VR brains of the avatars in order to interact in the physical (VR) world. However, this consciousness, having originated outside the VR environment, is not limited to the avatars' brains, and in some cases can transcend the virtual world and see the whole VR game as an illusion or as a vast interconnected structure with meaning and purpose built into it at a deep level. This would be the nature of transcendent mystical experiences, including some near-death experiences.

Upon death, consciousness no longer operates through the earthly brain at all, but that doesn't mean it becomes a disembodied essence. It continues to operate through a brain, only now it is the brain of the so-called "etheric double," an entity which apparently serves as an interface between consciousness and the VR physical body during life. (Discussion of the etheric double is found here and here.)

The etheric double does not have a counterpart in VR technology. The avatars in VR games aren't conscious, so the issue doesn't come up.

According to this view of the world, the only real things are consciousness and information. As Whitworth emphasizes, in a VR world, objects are independent of the observer but still not objective in the sense of existing on their own. They have no ultimate existence in and of themselves because they are generated by VR information processing. Also, as we have seen, physical objects manifest themselves only when we turn their attention on them; the directed focus of our consciousness is what causes the wave function to collapse, or, in VR terms, what causes the information processor to carry out the necessary calculations.

The whole physical world thus reduces to information with which we interact by focusing our attention selectively on different aspects of it. Transcendence involves becoming aware of the ultimate unreality of the virtual world -- like William Abbott's character A. Square rising out of Flatland. To repeat, the possibility of such transcendence is what we would expect if our consciousness does not originate in the virtual world and therefore is not limited to the virtual world.

The etheric double is usually described (by mediums, mystics, and clairvoyants) as "physical." This suggests that it, too, is a VR simulation like the rest of the physical world. Moreover, it would suggest that at least the lower planes of the spiritual world, including "Paradise" or Summerland, are also VR simulations, no less than our present earthly world. Note that the purported spirit of F.W.H. Myers, channeled by Geraldine Cummins in her books The Road to Immortality and Beyond Human Personality, repeatedly refers to Summerland as the Plane of Illusion or Illusion-land.

Ben Iscatus, who alerted me to Brian Whitworth's article in the first place, wrote an interesting review of Tom Campbell's trilogy My Big TOE in which he discusses the idea of different levels of reality. I haven't read the books, but what follows is Ben's summary of this part of Campbell's theory. For clarity, I have replaced the many acronyms with what I hope are the correct, or nearly correct, equivalents:

[Universal Oneness] discovers that changing its state regularly has value. The reality cells [which comprise Universal Oneness] can oscillate and their binary beat becomes organised Time. ... Time separates a ‘before state’ from an ‘after state’; time is a by-product created by the notion of change in consciousness....

[Oneness then ramifies into more and more "reality cells." They are] separated from each other in frequency (time)-separated mental spaces (dimensions), and each has its own evolving rules....

But how is Time used to separate realities? ... Time is said to be discrete, not continuous, with fundamental Planck-like scale units. The speed of light, c, evolved in our [physical universe] to be 3 x 10⁸ m/s "conceptually defines the virtual size or conceptual spatial extent of a space-time reality cell". The smallest quantum unit of time in our [physical universe] might be the distance that c travels in that unit of time, say 10^-44 seconds. In other words, the constant c is derived from time (frequency) and it takes 10^-44 seconds for one of our ... spacetime reality cells to change its state from non-distorted to distorted.

But in [the nonphysical reality associated with our physical world], the smallest fundamental Time unit might be 10^-62 seconds. In other words, [these reality] cells oscillate much faster. So for every 10¹⁸ ticks of [nonphysical reality] time, 1 unit of our time passes. Information travels much faster in [nonphysical reality]. This gives plenty of time for [the information processor] to do everything required to predict and back up [physical reality] events in its databases (the Akashic records)....

Beyond [the nonphysical reality dimension associated with our physical universe, the universal mind's] fundamental quantum of time might be (say) 10^-80 seconds. So [the universal mind] has plenty of time to review all the various thought-experiments taking place in all its myriad VRs. To [the universal mind] we are stepped-down, and slowed down; very sluggish indeed.

In my opinion, this explanation of Time and Frequency is Tom Campbell’s most original contribution. It updates Spiritualist and Theosophical notions of concentric spheres separated by "vibrational" differences. Far from Time being meaningless in the hereafter, [Campbell's theory] suggests that [it] is actually very meaningful. Time is what separates realities and allows [Universal Oneness] to multi-task by way of [information processing].

Campbell developed his ideas, in part, on the basis of a number of out-of-body experiences which he can apparently bring about at will. For a time, he worked with the well-known OBEr Robert Monroe. I'm a little skeptical of some of Monroe's accounts, as I've discussed elsewhere. Still, the idea that reality has a number of different levels, planes, or dimensions is one that is found in virtually all mystical and spiritualist literature, and as Ben notes, these levels of existence are usually said to be separated by differences in "vibration."

I don't know much about VR or gaming - the only video game I've ever played was "Tomb Raider," years ago - but I do know that such games almost invariably have different levels, and the player has to move from one level to the next in order to attain the ultimate prize. There are shortcuts known to the cognoscenti which allow the player to skip ahead to a higher level at will. But if you don't know any shortcuts, and you fail to transcend a given level, you have to repeat your play on that level before you can advance. Many mystical traditions -- such as those recorded in the Tibetan Book of the Dead -- hold that at the moment of death, you can sometimes transcend the physical world altogether. If you fail in this attempt, you will remain trapped in the world of illusion, either living a new life on Earth (reincarnation) or continuing to live an embodied life on another illusory plane.

Possibly the people who design these games are re-creating, on an unconscious, archetypal level, the multi-level structure of reality itself.

Suppose that one's consciousness has been freed from one level of VR (Earth) and has not yet attained the next level (Summerland). For that intermediate period, it would have the opportunity (in some cases) to transcend and see all levels of the virtual world as an elaborate, but interconnected simulation. But most consciousnesses don't succeed in achieving (or maintaining) this level of insight, and so they go to the next level. The "tunnel" through which many NDErs pass may be a representation of moving from one VR level to the next -- a sort of temporary blackout of one's environment. With no information processing available between levels, consciousness is on its own.

Again, according to this view, all there is is consciousness or information. So either you are pure consciousness, or you are consciousness interacting with information in a virtual environment. (Or you are nothing at all, i.e. you cease to exist; but if consciousness is what's really fundamental, this may not be an option -- though the form of your consciousness could change so radically that you would not recognize yourself anymore.)

I realize I have gone rather far afield from Brian Whitworth's paper, and taken his arguments in a direction he would probably find unappealing, to put it mildly. But we each have to interpret these things in our own way. From my perspective, the VR theory, in combination with the spiritual traditions passed down over the millennia, may be a useful way of modeling our world.

The NDE is in the details

Today I got an email from Amazon.com recommending a new book called The Science of Life after Death, by Stephen Martin. On the Amazon sales page I read the first few pages of the book, which can be accessed by clicking on the cover photo. The book seems well written and the table of contents covers some interesting subjects.

Still, one thing annoyed me. The book starts out by relating the famous Pam Reynolds NDE case. As soon as I saw that the Reynolds case was under discussion, I thought to myself, "I'll bet he gets it wrong." I'm cynical that way. Unfortunately my cynicism was justified. The author did get it wrong.

Here's how he summarizes the case:

Pam's ability to recall and accurately describe what was going on in the operating room while she was dead with the blood drained from her head and most of her body, indicates her mind had separated from her brain. [p. 13]

But this is incorrect. As Keith Augustine has pointed out, and as I discussed here, Pam Reynolds was not clinically dead at the time when the veridical part of her NDE took place. It is true that in one stage of the procedure her blood was drained, bringing on clinical death, but this happened later, after her skull had been opened with an electric saw. By the time she was clinically dead, Pam was not observing things in the operating room. Her NDE had apparently progressed to an experience of things in another dimension of reality (or, as a skeptic would say, to hallucinations).

Undoubtedly, Pam did have accurate knowledge of details of the procedure that would normally be unknown to her - things that took place while she was sedated and unconscious, with her eyes closed and her eyes plugged by devices that clicked loudly. The fact that she apparently saw and heard what was happening to her while in that condition makes her case a very good one.

But she was not clinically dead at that point. She was not "dead with the blood drained from her head and most of her body." That condition came later.

The authors of Irreducible Mind get it right:

The [Pam Reynolds] case is not perfect. The details were not published for several years after the experience occurred. More importantly, the verifiable events that she reported observing in the operating room occurred when she was anesthetized and sensorially isolated but before and after the time in which she was clinically "dead." Further, it is impossible to tell exactly when during the procedure she had the experience of going into a tunnel, seeing a bright light, and conversing with her deceased relatives... We cannot ... say with certainty that any part of her NDE actually occurred during the period when she was clinically "dead." Even so, the extremity of her condition and her heavily anesthetized state throughout the entire procedure casts serious doubt on any view of mind or consciousness as unilaterally and totally dependent on intact physiological functioning.  [pp. 393,394]

The mistake made in The Science of Life after Death is a very common one, which is why I was able to predict it. In the overall context of the book, it may be a minor thing. It still irks me, though. In reporting such controversial cases, it's important to get the details right. Otherwise, skeptical critics will (justifiably) pounce.

Living virtually

Recently, a reader named Ben sent me a link to an essay (PDF) by Brian Whitworth arguing that our cosmos is a kind of virtual reality. 

I read it and responded with some skepticism:

Interesting stuff, but I have problems with it. For one thing, it seems to me that if our reality is a VR simulation, then there must be another, higher level of reality that serves as the computer + program that generates the VR. But then we must postulate a level of reality that would be (presumably) more complex than our own. This makes the whole issue of "what is reality?" that much more complicated, since we now have to explain not only our own reality but a more complex one that we can't perceive.
 
Of course, one could level this objection against dualistic systems that insist on a "spiritual" dimension in addition to the physical one. But dualism at least has the advantage of addressing the existence of consciousness. By contrast, the characters in VR simulations aren't conscious. The players are conscious, but the characters on the screen are just assemblies of pixels with no awareness. So the VR model still doesn't account for consciousness. It posits another level of physical reality while leaving consciousness unexplained.
 
Finally, I very much doubt that the ultimate nature of reality can be understood in terms of current technology. Attempts along these lines are forever being made - the universe is like a clockwork mechanism, or like a computer, or like a hologram, etc. - but the likelihood is that even our most advanced technology is child's play compared to the true nature of reality. I also suspect that consciousness is integral to the nature of reality, so a TOE would have to include this feature. 

Ben gave me a thoughtful reply, which he has allowed me to post:

What interests me about VR ideas is that they allow the paradigm shift away from an 'objective reality' to become scientifically respectable.  I naturally agree with you that the VR idea begs the question of how, and that Consciousness provides the answer. But Brian Whitworth is working within the existing paradigm; he is prepared to point to "something outside" the physical universe, but not quite ready to say what the "'something" is. That's a job for metaphysicians and philosophers. One of the problems that a scientist would have with the idea that Consciousness as primary is that there is no working definition of what Consciousness actually is. If we can suggest that it is nonphysical awareness attempting to become more organised and devolving this responsibility to 'free will units' like us in virtual environments, then teleology can perhaps be made respectable again. Assuming that these virtual environments are digital makes the computer model reasonable. If they are not digital, then we would need to find something in our universe that it is not possible to calculate. As I understand it, physics can calculate everything (i.e. all our laws are lawful!) - so the idea has mileage.

If we accept an afterworld reality (as you and I do), then our physics must be different from the physics in that Afterworld environment, which must be calculated with different equations. Where Consciousness bridges the gap and the two different virtual realities interact, we find what we call ‘paranormal anomalies’.     

That's where we left our dialogue. Anyway, the cosmos as VR is an interesting concept and may be more useful than I think.

Read and discuss ...

Thinking makes it so

Back in 1992, before he became famous as the author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and its innumerable sequels and spinoffs, Dr. Richard Carlson wrote a wonderful little self-help book called You Can Be Happy No Matter What. This brief (141 pages) volume is chock-full of penetrating insights and useful advice, presented in a readable and engaging style. Over the years I've turned to it repeatedly and have always profited from it.

Early in the book, Carlson discusses what he calls "thought systems," and makes some valuable points (all emphases are in the original):

All of our past thoughts can be clustered into our "thought system," a self-contained unit through which we see the world. Every decision, reaction, and interpretation we have is colored by our individualized thought system.

Our thought system is like a filter that information passes through before it gets to our awareness. It is a complex, perfectly woven pattern of thought, linked together into concepts, beliefs, expectations, and opinions. It is our thought system that enables us to compare new facts or situations with what we already know from past experience.

Your thought system includes all the information you have accumulated over your lifetime. It is past information that your thought system uses to interpret the relative significance of everything that happens in your life. In this sense, a thought system is the source of conditioned thought. When you rely on it, you are thinking in a habitual manner, your usual way of seeing things. Here is where your habitual reactions to life are formed.

Thought systems contain our view of "the way life is." They are the psychological mechanisms that convince us when we are right, accurate in our understanding, or justified. Thought systems by nature are stubborn and do not appreciate being tampered with. They are absolutely self-validating. If your thought system includes the idea that our country's schools are horrible and are the cause of most of our problems as a nation, then the following scenario would be possible: You're reading the evening paper and on page thirty-six, you come across an article near the bottom of the page that says, "Twenty-one students fail literacy exam in district." You smile; you are proven right again. You show the article to your spouse, "You see dear, our schools are falling apart. It's just like I've been telling you." You don't know that on the front page of the same paper, the headlines read, "Nation's school test scores up 17% over the past five years!" But such is the nature of thought systems. Due to the way they are wired in our minds, there will always seem to be a logical connection among things we perceive to be true. Our beliefs will always make perfect sense to us within our own thought system.

Our thought systems lead us to believe that we are realists and that the way we see life is the way life really is. The fact that one person can view a situation as an opportunity and another equally intelligent person sees the same thing as a major problem doesn't bother a thought system. Our thought system dismisses the other point of view as off track, well-intended but wrong, or not quite right.

Because our thought systems are filled with our memory of the past, information we have accumulated throughout our lifetimes, they encourage us to continue to see things in the same way. We react negatively (or positively) to the same situations or circumstances over and over again, interpreting our current experiences in life as we have in the past. A person who believes that people are inherently critical will become defensive whenever anyone offers a suggestion, regardless of whether the person meant to be critical. This will become a theme in his life unless and until he understands the nature of thought systems, particularly his own. Understanding this concept will help him see that he is not seeing reality, or truth, but an interpretation of reality through his own thinking.

Because our thought systems are so familiar to us, they seem to be giving us true, accurate information. Because of the self-validating aspect of thought systems, we accept familiar ideas and disregard the rest. This is why people rarely change their political or religious views, and why they hesitate to even discuss them with friends or family. They "know the truth" and can come up with examples and arguments to support their claims. They also "know" that their family and friends "don't understand the truth," and because they are stubborn they probably never will. We know the result of locking heads with other thought systems -- usually frustration is experienced on all sides. This is why people gravitate toward others who share their beliefs, and become impatient with those who don't.

Understanding the nature of thought systems can change this. When we know that other people (and ourselves) innocently interpret our beliefs as if they were reality, we can let go of the need to be right. We can see that our beliefs are merely a function of past conditioning and experiences. Had our past been different, our ideas about life would be different. Other people's beliefs are also a result of their past experiences. Had things been different, a totally different set of beliefs would have surfaced.

"This may be true," you say, "but my view of life is a good one and not only do I still think it's accurate, I wouldn't change it even if I could." The point here is not to change your thought system or your ideas about life, but to see the arbitrary nature of them. We only need to see the fact of thought systems, not tamper with the contents, to reduce the frustration in our lives. Unless we understand thought systems, we can rarely hear other points of view. We interpret what others say and do based on what we already know. Information comes in and we decide whether it makes sense, based on our previous knowledge. Unless the information is something we already agree with, our thought system will have a tendency to discount it. In short, new information is usually unwelcome within our existing thought systems. This is why we can be bothered by the same events or circumstances over and over again throughout our lifetimes. We have developed recurrent cause-and-effect relationships between certain events and reactions.

For example, you might believe that whenever someone gives you a suggestion, it means that they disapprove of you as a person. You won't question this because your thought system will validate it. It always seems to be a true, accurate assumption about human nature. Even if someone assures you that your assumption is off-base, you convince yourself that the other person has hidden motives or that they are not aware of their hostility toward you. However long it takes, you will seek to verify your existing beliefs to prove yourself right, even at the expense of making yourself miserable.

But if you understand the nature of thought systems, you can begin to see beyond them, and sense the value in other points of view. What we used to interpret as criticism we now see merely as an opinion from another person with his or her own thought systems. We can virtually eliminate unprofitable arguments in our lives and can completely eliminate feeling resentful, confused, or angry at others who don't see things our way. In fact, when we understand the stubborn nature of thought systems, we will expect others not to see things our way.   [pages 19-23]

I would add that one feature of what Carlson calls thought systems (and what I call worldviews) is that, in order to justify them, we usually create arguments to prove that the consequences of accepting or rejecting a particular worldview are monumentally important.

For instance, skeptics -- in order to convince themselves that their rejection of any belief in the paranormal is a matter of crucial importance -- sometimes make an argument like this:

"Belief in the paranormal would take us straight back to the Dark Ages. It would destroy modern science and technology and reduce us to a primitive, subsistence level of existence. It would wreck civilization. Moreover, Nazism had elements of mysticism and paranormal belief. Opening the door to such things means throwing down a welcome mat for totalitarianism. Therefore, belief in the paranormal jeopardizes freedom, civilization, science, progress, and all human life."

The stakes could hardly be higher than that! But the argument is, of course, a threadbare rationalization. There is no necessary cause-and-effect linkage between belief in the paranormal and rejecting all of modern science. In fact, one can make a case that certain developments in modern science make it easier to accept the evidence for the paranormal. And many leading scientists throughout history have had strong mystical or paranormal beliefs.

As far as the Nazis are concerned, their ideology was a confused mishmash of disparate elements, including an attempt to revive the pre-Christian Teutonic religion/mythology of their ancestors for propagandistic purposes (they wanted to make the Fuhrer into a god). Other totalitarian movements, such as Maoism (which killed even more people than Nazism), have eschewed any mystical or paranormal ingredients.

Of course, as a certain carpenter once pointed out, it's easy to see the sawdust in your neighbor's eye, but much harder to see the timber in your own. Believers in the paranormal have their own way of convincing themselves that their belief system is critically important. They often say something like this:

"Materialism is the cause of all the ills of the modern world and is leading us to destruction. It's responsible for war, environmental degradation, rampant consumerism, dehumanizing social conditions, and the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Only by adopting a more spiritual view, which includes the acceptance of paranormal phenomena, can we defeat materialism and attain a higher, nobler, more fulfilling state of being. As long as materialism is the dominant philosophy, the world will continue careening out of control. Our only hope of ensuring humanity's survival is for the forces of anti-materialism to win out. Otherwise we're doomed."

I'm afraid that I would characterize this as a mere rationalization also. While there are certain advantages to a more spiritual outlook, there are also definite hazards. People who are open to "spiritual" guidance may find themselves drawn into cults; they may become overly trusting and therefore gullible; they may become the victims of con artists like fake psychics and fake mediums; they may see world-saving leadership qualities in political figures who are quite unworthy of this acclaim. (Not that anything like this has happened lately...) They may become disconnected from the practical requirements of daily life. They may divide the world into the saved and the unsaved, with themselves and those who agree with them elevated to the former category and everyone else relegated to the latter. They may even develop mental illness, begin to hear voices, become addicted to using a Ouija board or calling a psychic hotline.

Countries around the world with high levels of belief in the supernatural and the paranormal are not necessarily known for a higher standard of living, higher quality of life, or higher level of overall happiness than their more materialistic counterparts. Indeed, quite often the opposite is true. And periods of history characterized by high levels of belief in the paranormal have not been golden ages of universal prosperity and harmony. For the most part, these periods have been no better than other periods -- and perhaps, in some respects, worse.

Those on each side try to convince themselves that the fate of the world depends on having as many people as possible agree with their opinion. But the fact is, they want people to agree with them simply in order to justify and vindicate their own worldview; the stuff about the fate of the world is mere window dressing.

That's just how the mind works. We're all better off if we can at least become aware of it. Richard Carlson's fine little book can help us to do just that.

A fine mess

A reader named "eteponge" sent me a link to a Harvard University study that supposedly discredits ESP. I must admit that I read the article rather quickly and didn't have time to look into it further, but for those who may be interested, here's the link. 

My off-the-cuff email reply:

I'm not sure I understand this article. Are they saying that the ESP stimuli were presented simultaneously with the non-ESP stimuli? In other words, the picture was shown to the test subject while simultaneously being shown to a relative or friend in another room?

 

If so, this sounds like a good way not to study ESP. A better approach, if they want to use brain scans, would be to use the ganzfeld method, where the test subject is placed in a mild state of sensory deprivation and then presented with non-ESP stimuli only.

 

If the subjects were presented with non-ESP stimuli and ESP stimuli simultaneously, then instead of sensory deprivation, there would be sensory overload.

 

Besides, it makes no sense. Why would ESP be activated when the information is already being delivered through normal channels? Presumably ESP works to acquire information that is not available to the five normal senses.

 

The whole thing sounds like a mess. But maybe I've misunderstood the protocol.

 

In any event, there is already more than enough evidence to establish the reality of ESP, though it would, of course, be nice to understand the mechanism behind it.

As I said, I spent very little time on this, so if readers who are better informed than I am about the Harvard tests wish to weigh in, please feel free.

And now for something completely different

When I was growing up, my ambition was never to be a writer. In high school and even in college, my hope was to become a special effects maestro, and specifically to practice the arcane art of stop-motion animation, as epitomized by the fantasy films of Ray Harryhausen. 

It is probably fortunate that I did not pursue this career path after leaving college. I never really had the patience, the single-minded focus, or the instinctive sense of movement required of a good animator. Moreover, jobs in that field have always been limited, and once Jurassic Park came out in 1993, stop-motion as an effects technique was effectively extinct.  It survives in puppet films, like the recent, marvelously animated -- and profoundly creepy -- Coraline, and as a campy touch in a few live action films (e.g., the animated denizens of the North Pole in Elf).

I can't really mourn the passing of Ray Harryhausen's style of special effects, since the new CGI technology, at its best, can give us images Ray could only dream of. Even so, I still enjoy the handmade look of stop-motion, the genuine three-dimensionality of the figures (unlike the faux three-dimensionality of CGI critters), and the strangely surreal combination of animated models with live actors, which was Harryhausen's forte.

For a taste of this type of filmmaking, you can see the wonderful allosaurus sequence from One Million Years BC at this link. The scene starts at the 1:55 mark. Transfer quality is mediocre; the animation looks a lot better on DVD. Keep in mind that this movie was released in 1966, when most screen dinosaurs were depicted by iguanas or by men in rubber suits. Harryhausen was decades ahead of his time.

A few months ago, I was going through some junk in my closet and came across an old, half-finished dinosaur "armature" (metal skeleton) which I'd made years ago. I decided to finish it and eventually built up a foam-and-latex dinosaur out of it. I followed this up with a second dinosaur, for which I made the armature from scratch.

As I was making the second dinosaur, a styracosaurus, I decided to document the process in a blog. I made no attempt to publicize the blog because I wasn't sure how well the model would turn out. If it was lousy, I could delete the blog and no one would be the wiser!

But it turned out okay, so for those who may be interested, here it is: Building A Stop-Motion Model. The blog chronicles the construction of this two-foot-long dinosaur from its beginnings as a pile of metal parts to its completion. There are also a few brief animation clips, though animation, as I said, was never my strongest suit.

I admit this is a departure from the usual subject matter posted here, but after all, there's more to life than death!

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.