new aeon
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You can have the subjective impression of anything You can have death and rebirth hallucinations, and no matter how clearly you experienced those hallucinations, no matter how stuck into position the switch it your brain that keeps you from doubting those experiences, it still remains an hallucination.
I have a poster of an image that looks like the colored wheels are rotating, and it looks very clearly like they actually rotate, no matter how hard I stare, still the keep swirling. They only reason I know the image is still is that it is printed on paper. My eyes can not still it, in fact the why my eyes work is what makes it seem to move.
I have done rituals, I have experienced revelations, out of body experiences, astral travels, communication with spirits, Identity dissociations, and many strange psychological phenomena. And I clearly can discern the cause of these phenomena in my mind and how the brain processes certain information, and how the ritual elements are the cause of this unusual processing of information.
Thus I study magick not because I believe the content of the dreams, hallucinations and other effects, but to understand the link between ritual and alterations in brain function. Why does meditation cause the part of the brain that processes identity to stop functioning. How exactly does evocation project an aspect of identity on a pattern or smoke on a black mirror under candle flicker.
And can we model these effects in computer systems, can we trigger them with direct stimulation of the cortex, and other important questions in developing a complete understanding of brain function and the technology to replicate it.
You also assume a computer must be mechanical, we can clone biological parts, even create whole new DNA sequences to produce the wet ware we need and conjoin that biological material with mechanical systems and silicon integrated circuits.
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I delayed answering this one until I had a little more time, because you raise a number of topics worth addressing. It's quite an excellent list of things people misunderstand, and provides an excellent chance to correct wrong views.
I want to start with a sentence near the end of your post. It needs to be addressed at the beginning to avoid repetition:
"The method of Science is objective testing and doubt of the nervous systems conclusions."
I agree with the first half of this sentence, but not the second. You've imposed your own standard. I would agree with that as a desirable condition in some specific experiments in some particular fields of science, but certainly not as a generalization. For example, in most conditions of cognitive sciences (of which magick and mysticism are two examples), it is precisely the data as passing through and interpreted by the human nervous system that we want. You can't generalize that scientific method necessarily excludes "conclusions" of the human nervous system.
A second point I want to make at the beginning is that you are turning out to be a spokesman for materialism - that is, for adopting the unfortunate "matter vs. spirit" exclusive duality of the Medieval Roman Catholic Church which became the foundation of the materialism movement in conventional Western science through most of the 19th and much of the 20th centuries.
This is neither a very scientific view, nor the position of much of modern physics. For example, we have the same basis for postulating that spiritual (i.e., non-material) things exist as we have for postulating that material things exist. In both cases, the evidence is of the human senses and the interpretation of sensory impressions in the brain. This doesn't give any a priori leverage to one over the other.
One could, for example, just as easily argue that there is no such thing as matter in the normal way we understand it, and that only spirit, i.e., consciousness, exists, which merely registers an impression of matter as a convenient way of organizing and managing various experiences. I'm not asserting that this is true any more than I'm asserting that the other is true - they're both useful models for interpreting phenomena in certain situations. I'm saying that the root bases for presuming matter exists and presuming spirit exists are the same.
Besides, physical science deals all the time with entirely unseen things that can't be measured in any direct way but only by the consequences of their presumed existence.
A third point I want to make is that, to be "scientific," there is no reason for limiting that word to the current institutionalized bastions of science. I'm sure you know fully well that institutional science's interpretations constantly evolve (albeit slowly most of the time) as new data and new points of view are incorporated. Today's scientific certainty is tomorrow's "crazy old idea." That's the way science is supposed to work, and the way it actually works.
Spiritual practice - if approached correctly - is every bit as much science as the institutionalized bastions of academic and industrial science. Tibetan Buddhism has been exceedingly scientific for nearly its entire history. And when Crowley spoke of "the method of science" it was actually a misnomer, because what he really meant (as demonstrated in the approaches taught in his system) was the method of empiricism. That is precisely what we employ.
@Froclown said
"As far as people who claim they have direct experience or reincarnation, let them present their evidence."
I'm very pleased that you correctly used the word "evidence." Most people don't know the difference between "evidence" and "proof," but this sentence suggests that you do know the difference.
There are many kinds of evidence. In most situations, the very best is first person witness testimony. This isn't the whole picture, but often is the best place to start regardless of all the problems inherent in it.
It's not just our legal system, but also some of the most respected sources in mysticism, which hold this view. Patanjali in Yoga Sutras I:6 describes the best kind of proof as pratyaksha (direct experience), the second best as anumana (correct inference from what you already know), and the third best as aptavakya (the direct perception of qualified witnesses).
So it is most definitely evidence of reincarnation that there are many who testify from their direct experience. Whether this evidence, combined with other pro and con evidence, constitutes proof is a separate matter. It is, nonetheless, evidence - and evidence of a very high quality. The only higher quality of evidence would be your own direct experience.
People who have witnessed something can, of course, be wrong about what they have seen. But they are far more likely to be right than somebody who wasn't there and hasn't bothered to gather any direct evidence on the matter.
"The human nervous system, and that includes the wet ware of the brain, is not geared to experience things correctly, it is constantly fooled into thinking it perceives what is not so."
You raise valid points that need to be taken into consideration. They are elements of the experiment, matters to regard in design, implementation, and interpretation.
But, in thinking about your remarks today I realized that your conclusions seem to come not only from the idea that the nervous system can distort things, but from some unstated idea that these distortions are random or otherwise unknowable. All sorts of scientific processes employ distorting elements and concurrently compensate for the distortion. For example, you might have also cited the fact that all human vision - everything perceived through the human eye - is seen through a lens, and lenses distort what is seen. However, the science of optics knows how to compensate for particular lens distortions, so that doesn't matter so much.
The M.M.P.I. - the most meticulously researched and documented and used psychiatric inventory - was originally normalized against Middle America mental patients in the 1950s. If you give the test to a Latin American native, two scales - 6 and 8 - will pretty much always be abnormally high, throwing the entire test into a "probably not valid" state by the normal way of reading it. But we know that this is due to specific cultural variants that do not infer psychopathology, and we know that the artificial elevation in both cases is about 10 points, so we can easily adjust how we look at the results. There is distortion, but it is predictable distortion.
So, for one thing, many of your points seem to presume that existing distortion is unknowable or unpredictable. Much of the distortion is quite predictable. Therefore, we can adjust for it.
There is another point to make on this. The only alternative to having people think for themselves and rely on their own experiences is to have some external authority tell them what the truth is. We take a particularly strong stand against this. It is far more useful to have people make the kind of errors that come from thinking for themselves and relying on their own experience, than to make the kind of mistakes that come from, say, the government issuing a Truth Manual. We can deal with the former problem much more easily, case-by-case, than we can with the latter.
"my brain will misfire in the same way"
I found it curious that you said "misfire" rather than just "fire." You are, a priori, assuming there is error. Your statement was quite good in most ways except for that one word choice. Consistent action under controlled conditions can cause the brain to fire in a particular way - agreed! But why presume it is a "misfire"? (If it were, then there is either organic brain disease, or the random misfire isn't consistent.) ... Just an observation.
"These are all neurological effects of engaging in symbolic acts in an artificial context, which are processed by the brain in unusual ways."
Why unusual? When the organ repeatedly responds to the same stimulus with the same response, it seems to be the usual way of doing so, no?
"There is no need to postulate that the events I experience of the beings I may meet are actual, no matter how real it may seem to me at the time."
Agreed! Oh, heavens, definitely agreed! Don't postulate it. Investigate it.
The most common "screening test" for such results is to test them. Do the fruits (information provided, transformations that seem to occur, etc.) actually produce appropriate results in the practical world? Was information brought back that can be confirmed and that was not evidently available to the magician by any other likely conventional means?
"So if you show me under rigorous scientific examination that you can say catch a spirit on film, or measure its presence with some sort of device I will believe it is there."
You are asking that non-material things be registered by devices that were created to measure material things. That's an ill-conceived test.
The basic nature of "spirit" is that it isn't material in the day-to-day sense of the word "matter."
There actually have been a lot of experiments done that claim to have trapped physical traces of nonphysical beings on photo plates and the like. I have never felt competent to judge these studies and have filed them in my brain as encouraging curios. But the main point that has always appeared true to me is that "matter" (in the broadest, non workaday sense of the word) has impact on other matter on the same plane. You need to investigate Yetziratic phenomena with Yetziratic measuring instruments, of which the trained human mind is the best such device known to exist.
PS - Under the conditions you itemize, why would you then believe? Belief isn't necessary in the face of demonstrable fact. In fact, it would be silly to believe what was evident to your senses. Belief should be reserved for things that are not evident to your senses.
"If you can open a portal to the astral plane and download an image from it, not from your brain, but via a machine directly from that plane, then we are on to something."
See, you just don't even understand what the "astral plane" is. I was doing fine with your sentence until you put in your restrictions because the specific machine that serves as a portal to the astral plane and brings an image thence into physical form is the human mind. It does it all the time.
You might as well say that you want a machine which captures human thought on tape without involving a human mind.
"If can kill some one under laboratory controls, and have that soul transmigrate to a prepared body, and can show that this actually happened with some sort of test, then shall I have evidence of reincarnation. "
The Tibetans, for centuries, have done something similar to this. The aging Dalai Lama indicates generally where and when he will be reborn and provides specific tests of recognition. His senior dudes go to the right place to find a child born at the right time, apply the tests, and greet their returned leader.
The method for providing "a prepared body" is called sexual reproduction. That's how the soul reanchors into human experience. It happens all the time. (Most people practice their part in this manufacturing process every chance they get.)
"But that people believe to have seen things, or have deep inner feelings that a thing they experienced possibly while high on drugs of under the influence as mystical trance states, or fatigue from long hours of Kabbalah application and study."
I would agree that there are some states that make it less likely that someone is going to have and correctly interpret an objective experience. However, in lumping "mystical trance states" into this list, you seem to be showing that you don't know much about what "mystical trance states" really are. I would guess that you think they are states that take one further from the perception of physical reality. Many of them, though, take one deeper into the correct perception of physical reality.
One who is trained to identify and filter out the effects of emotions and thought on the brain, and then to filter out the impact of sensory impressions except for those to which attention is specifically being directed, are in a far better place to make objective observations than someone who has reactive emotion and rigid preconception dominating their filtering of physical impressions and drawing conclusions from that hodge-podge.
"The Aim of religion is to become more that human and released from the finality of bodily death."
No - not released from the finality of bodily death. Released from the illusion that the one inhabiting the body ever dies. It is highly desirable to change bodies after several decades in the same way that it is desirable to change one's socks every now and then.
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I think you fail to understand that the brain is a material devise that stores and processes patterns of semantic associations (information).
That what you call spirit is a process that occurs in the function of the brain matter as it is stimulated by material patterns, which the brain processes by way of innate and learned associations of information.
You propose that there is a world of software which has no material medium. That is that to stick with the computer analogy, you believe your hard drive is backed up is anther dimension the astral plane, and can manifest itself in another computer at the destruction of the current one.
It may comfort you to believe in the spirit world and that your Atman can travel through the ether and attach itself to an unborn child, but this does not happen.
However, With advanced technology we can make these dreams of an astral plane, afterlife and mind backed up in machines a Reality.
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@Froclown said
"It may comfort you to believe in the spirit world and that your Atman can travel through the ether and attach itself to an unborn child, but this does not happen. "
You're so absolutist! Whence comes your authority to make this blanket assertion, sir?
Dan
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As for this Neo-Berkly approach to idealism vs materialism.
In truth both ideas (forms spirits etc) and matter exist as semantic place holders in the mind.
However, I can deduce and have direct evidence (and understanding of the processes) by which material structures can create semantic associations and information. Whereas I have no ability to derive a method or any evidence that spiritual notions or semantic associations can percipitate into physical entities.
In fact a non-material something is not a thing at all. The best one can do to explain a non-material entity is a semantic place holder, that allows for the identification of a material being. Or its construction from parts. That place holder is itself a pattern of matter in the brain.
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Where comes your authority to decide that I am absolutist, or that I make blanket statements.
Where comes your authority to even know what a statement is, to have a concept of authority?
Who gives you the authority to hold any position rather than its opposite?
Absurdity!
When my thought match the evidence presented by the pre-existing external, material, physical, world of which I am a mere piece, Then I speak truth.
When my perceptions have a semantic content that does not reflect events in space-time, then I am mistaken.
Souls are not made ot atoms, are not in space-time and thus they are semantic entities (imaginary).
On this ground I stake my claims, not on some proposed authority that grants be the right to hold a notion as TRUE.
Truth is discovered not created, fabricated or granted on behalf of an authority!
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@Froclown said
"That what you call spirit is a process that occurs in the function of the brain matter as it is stimulated by material patterns, which the brain processes by way of innate and learned associations of information. "
I understand that this is what you think. However, you're simply wrong.
Since you are a committed materialist, it does me no good to discuss this further with you. From where I sit, that's about the most absurd and dysfunctional world view a person could have for any purpose other than surviving in an immediate day-to-day environment. Your previous post was enormously valuable because you gave me the chance to dispute common misinformation and wrong thinking.
You are a blind man claiming there is no sight. In time, if you follow the right paths, you will have the chance to gain sight and see things with your own eyes. Until that time, it's probably more honest of you to be at least a nominal materialist, because that's the only aspect of reality you've been able to experience.
But, I assure you that what I call "spirit" above exists as the formative and root principle of reality - physical or sensory material reality is its product and exists in service to it.
"You propose that there is a world of software which has no material medium."
In this case, the hardware is output of the software, yes. The computer analogy simply doesn't apply.
"you believe your hard drive is backed up is anther dimension the astral plane, and can manifest itself in another computer at the destruction of the current one. "
Nope. The computer analogy doesn't apply. You'll confuse yourself more the more you think in those terms. There's no need for backup. What you are is eternal.
"It may comfort you to believe in the spirit world and that your Atman can travel through the ether and attach itself to an unborn child, but this does not happen. "
It's not a matter of belief. It's a matter of direct experience. And what you deny does, in fact, happen routinely. (How in the world can you assert it doesn't happen! I really got a majorly good laugh out of that one!)
You might as well be standing on my sidewalk looking up at the night sky and telling me there has never been a daytime and there is no such thing as the Sun - just because you have always slept through the day.
In any case - on the topic of your narrowly materialistic view of reality, I won't bother answering you anymore. It will no good to discuss with you much of anything that this forum is about, given that particular framing of your world view.
"However, With advanced technology we can make these dreams of an astral plane, afterlife and mind backed up in machines a Reality."
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@Froclown said
"I have no ability to derive a method or any evidence that spiritual notions or semantic associations can percipitate into physical entities. "
I'm certain you don't. We agree that you don't.
"In fact a non-material something is not a thing at all."
In the usual, day-to-day meaning of "material," that's not true.
I do think it's ultimately true, because we define "matter" or "material" according to the substance of the plane on which a thing exists. Thought is composed of Yetziratic substance, for example - and it is as real and substantial as physical matter. The same is true of the fabric of the World of Briah. (That's why I keep distinguishing the different meanings of "matter.")
"The best one can do to explain a non-material entity is a semantic place holder, that allows for the identification of a material being."
I half agree with you. That is, I believe that's the best you can do.
You're so stuck in the mental model that you're running, that you can't even see it.
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@Froclown said
"You propose that there is a world of software which has no material medium. That is that to stick with the computer analogy, you believe your hard drive is backed up is anther dimension the astral plane, and can manifest itself in another computer at the destruction of the current one."
I'll let Jim speak for himself, but most of his long replies seem to be consistent with my own mainly materialist leanings (at least how I've always interpreted the term "materialist"). I'll hazard a guess that nearly all of the experiences undertaken by an aspirant to, say, the A.'.A.'. do not require a Firm Belief in the existence of spirit as "another dimension;" i.e., as a real, physical thing.
At this point in my journey, I don't believe in literal reincarnation or a real link between the positions of the planets at birth and the personality, to name two examples. But just soften the edges around those statements a bit and I'm totally there!
The ideas don't have to be tossed out just because they require a bit of mythopoetic filtering. Going through the motions of Liber Thisarb ("past life regression") or constructing a natal chart can be fruitful tasks for the skeptic - even if they don't lead to taking on new Beliefs!I worry, though, that the majority of occultists and Thelemites set up camp on the opposite side, as it were. They're taught about reincarnation and astrology (to continue those two examples) and they believe in them without seriously worrying about the kind of "placebo effect" the mind can pull. Was it Froclown who earlier said "If it feels right, question the hell out of it" ? Amen on that point.
"However, With advanced technology we can make these dreams of an astral plane, afterlife and mind backed up in machines a Reality."
I still think that it can be short-sighted for Thelemites to dismiss these kinds of quixotic dreams out-of-hand. Maybe these technologies are precisely the Magickal Link needed to get the job done!
Steve
PS: There's something in the forum software that is changing one word of mine in that last paragraph above. I typed "M a g i c k a l," but the "k" got deleted and it got uncapitalized! It's never tried to spell-check me or grammar-check me before...
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@Steven Cranmer said
"PS: There's something in the forum software that is changing one word of mine in that last paragraph above. I typed "M a g i c k a l," but the "k" got deleted and it got uncapitalized! It's never tried to spell-check me or grammar-check me before...
"Yes. That's a non-existent word. The adjective form of "magick" is "magical."
Unfortunataely, the grammatically and historically incorrect word has become common place - usually not with people like Steven who truly know and use the English language, but more commonly with people who aren't sure why it matters if they spell correctly or use proper grammar.
So - I used the same forum software that allows profanities and obscenities to be filtered to correct the very common spelling mistake mentioned above.
The capitalization was a by-product and unintentional. Apparently the Word Censor module doesn't have that case sensitivity. I have it set to convert "M a g i c k a l" to "Magical," and to convert "m a g i c k a l" to "magical" - it seems to be case insensitive to input, and to use the "last rule wins" approach to output. I didn't write the module.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Yes. That's a non-existent word. The adjective form of "magick" is "magical." "
Memory is a funny thing! The term I was using ("Magical Link") is clearly spelled correctly in MiT&P and as the title of the old OTO newsletter, but it got lodged in my memory with that darn "k"!
Going by Google, it's misspelled about 30% of the time on the web...
But come on, no substantive comments on (what I thought was) a less rigid approach to materialism?
Steve
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Organic robot mixes rat brain with silicon
16 June 2003 09:20 AM
Organic robot mixes rat brain with silicon A new experimental device combines biology and electronics to investigate the wetware in our heads.A research team at the Georgia Institute of Technology has created a new kind of robot, the Hybrot, which lead researcher Professor Steve Potter says has great implications for understanding the human brain.
The Hybrot looks like many other experimental and kit robots -- an exposed circuit board above a chassis containing motors and batteries. But one of the chips sits on top of a small metal cylinder, a patented sealed incubator system that contains the control circuits of the device: live rat brain cells. The system will keep the neurons alive for up to two years, while other circuits connect them to the electronics of the robot.
"We call it the 'Hybrot' because it is a hybrid of living and robotic components," said Potter in a statement. "We hope to learn how living neural networks may be applied to the artificial computing systems of tomorrow. We also hope that our findings may help cases in which learning, memory, and information processing go awry in humans."
The incubator contains a few thousand living neurons cultured from rat cortex and placed on a special glass dish equipped with an array of 60 micro-electrodes. The neural activity recorded by the electrodes is transmitted to the robot, which serves as a body for the cultured networks. It moves under the command of neural activity, relaying information back from the robot's sensors to the cultured net as electrical stimulation.
As the neurons form a network and react to the external stimuli, the research team can make observations of the signalling patterns, and changes in the way the cells hook up and configure themselves. High speed cameras and voltage-sensitive dyes, in conjunction with laser-scanning microscopes, return information that the team hope will show evidence for growth and learning patterns in biological systems.
"Learning is often defined as a lasting change in behaviour, resulting from experience," said Potter. "In order for a cultured network to learn, it must be able to behave. By using multi-electrode arrays as a two-way interface to cultured mammalian cortical networks, we have given these networks an artificial body with which to behave."