This is the kind of music. But imagine that you can turn into it...like your body is turned into a fluid mass, and it sings to the universe. And it varies more and is generally quieter, like it's in a far off corner. Does that make sense? That's the usual form of the music. Varies.
The funny thing about Mario, he actually gets attacked quite a bit as having a pro-spiritual outlook. I'll have to read up on the delta and theta waves a bit more but sure, I'd love to see how deep they can reach into this thing; all the better if they more firmly prove or disprove the idea that there is a coherent orchestration between the spiritual and physical where the two dovetail. The tendency of that last outlook is to see wave function collapse as a function of consciousness and from that wave function collapse comes the organization of the body and the precipitation of an interface between mind and a consistent/physical body.
WilliamWDelaney wrote:
This is the kind of music. But imagine that you can turn into it...like your body is turned into a fluid mass, and it sings to the universe. And it varies more and is generally quieter, like it's in a far off corner. Does that make sense? That's the usual form of the music. Varies.
That is fascinating. I know that when we're in a transitional layer between going to sleep and proper sleep, or between sleep and waking, that a lot of our minds organizational defenses are down and I've had significant stretches of young adulthood where I had some truly gritty, deep, and dark emotions coming at me during those times.
It sounds a bit like an involved synaesthesia though that your mind perhaps either surpresses when you have full consciousness or perhaps your sleep and waking cycles have some mechanism that they have to reach but end up going through the auditory centers of your brain. If you were to hypothetically take the spiritual outlook it would simply mean that there's a double entente - ie. that the fascinating brain chemistry was happening but that you were given that for a bigger reason that only you could figure out.
Your first guy said something interesting: "How do you explain that through neurological functioning?"
My first answer is, "How would you go about instructing a right-handed toddler, who has never before seen a musical instrument or had any musical instruction, on how to play Canon in Locrian F sharp on a grand piano?" Just because you can't produce instant results doesn't mean that you lack the capability of doing so. Getting something done and getting it done right requires time and patience. Neurology is still very much a young science. We don't pretend that it has the answer to everything, at present, that we don't understand. Furthermore, there are only so much resources we can direct to questions like, "why do we have NDEs?" when we have more pressing issues, such as, "how can we make life a little bit more bearable for an autistic child?"
My second answer is, "Do you have any better ideas? The ones that have a history of leading to violent persecution, ethnic cleansing and holy wars don't count. Get cracking, buddy." If you are not satisfied with scientific explanation, tough beans. Every other possible means of explaining things runs the gamut from "crap" to "mega-crap." However, just as there are a half-dozen snake-oil salesman for every doctor, there are millions of fakirs, faith-healers, witch-doctors, and ouija board practitioners, and there are comparably few people out there who have the skills and resources to perform serious investigation.
As for his comparison of this to the Newton vs. Einstein issue, here is another answer: "get on Elsevier, and look up, "ischemic cascade AND Ca+ ion." There is your relativity." We have only had the ability to study the brain at this level for a relatively short time. The science, in its modern form, is younger than I am. Before we had the ability to look at this stuff up close, we were still impressed with ourselves because we could see physical changes in the hippocampus with our naked eye. The relativity is here. What have you been doing for the past 29 years?
The funny thing about Mario, he actually gets attacked quite a bit as having a pro-spiritual outlook.
Doesn't matter. If he isn't performing experiments that are only deemed "successful" if they give him the answer he is looking for, he's performing valid science. In science, there are two possible "right" answers: "I correctly found the hypothesis to be true," or, "I correctly found the hypothesis to be false." It doesn't matter what your beliefs and opinions are if you can be a good scientist.
Quote:
That is fascinating. I know that when we're in a transitional layer between going to sleep and proper sleep, or between sleep and waking, that a lot of our minds organizational defenses are down and I've had significant stretches of young adulthood where I had some truly gritty, deep, and dark emotions coming at me during those times.
It sounds a bit like an involved synaesthesia though that your mind perhaps either surpresses when you have full consciousness or perhaps your sleep and waking cycles have some mechanism that they have to reach but end up going through the auditory centers of your brain. If you were to hypothetically take the spiritual outlook it would simply mean that there's a double entente - ie. that the fascinating brain chemistry was happening but that you were given that for a bigger reason that only you could figure out.
When you wake up with sleep paralysis, your impulse is to try to force yourself out of it. However, try someday letting yourself stay in that state for a while, and just listen quietly to your breathing and what is going on around you. Listen to the blood rushing in your ears. Try letting your mind wander.
I routinely walk into rooms and forget what I was going in there to do. Some people would worry about that. I just find something to do, and it is usually what I intended to do anyway. I routinely can't remember the directions to familiar places, so I just drive in what seems to be a good direction and get to where I am going anyway. I have been known to start daydreaming on my walk to classes, and I would forget what city I was in and what year it was: I would just go back to my daydreaming, and I would start paying attention again when the lecture started.
Do you think that I hold the opinions that I do because I am inept at thinking deeply or spiritually?
Joined: Feb 07, 2005 Posts: 14832 Location: A beautiful vector among many
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 9:24 am Post subject:
WilliamWDelaney wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
The funny thing about Mario, he actually gets attacked quite a bit as having a pro-spiritual outlook.
Doesn't matter. If he isn't performing experiments that are only deemed "successful" if they give him the answer he is looking for, he's performing valid science. In science, there are two possible "right" answers: "I correctly found the hypothesis to be true," or, "I correctly found the hypothesis to be false." It doesn't matter what your beliefs and opinions are if you can be a good scientist.
That's happened a few times in his life and started when he was young enough to be well in advance of his career choices. I don't think it disqualifies his science at all but that he admits that his ongoing contact shapes and directs his science to an extent - that's the part that I find interesting.
WilliamWDelaney wrote:
When you wake up with sleep paralysis, your impulse is to try to force yourself out of it. However, try someday letting yourself stay in that state for a while, and just listen quietly to your breathing and what is going on around you. Listen to the blood rushing in your ears. Try letting your mind wander.
Truth be told I don't think I've ever experienced sleep paralysis. The only odd thing I can say for myself is that since I had insomnia for so many years my ability to wake up immediately wore out. I used to love throwing myself out of bed just as an exercise of discipline when I was 20 or 21 but as I hit 25 or 26 I started getting instant migraines so now I usually hit the snooze twice and wake up on the third ring which helps give my body more time to run that metabolic process.
WilliamWDelaney wrote:
I routinely walk into rooms and forget what I was going in there to do. Some people would worry about that. I just find something to do, and it is usually what I intended to do anyway. I routinely can't remember the directions to familiar places, so I just drive in what seems to be a good direction and get to where I am going anyway. I have been known to start daydreaming on my walk to classes, and I would forget what city I was in and what year it was: I would just go back to my daydreaming, and I would start paying attention again when the lecture started.
That's the kind of thing that people tend to worry about more I think when they've never been like that and it all of a sudden has a rapid onset at a certain age. As for forgetting what and even who you are and even performing tasks that you'd meant to do without consciously realizing it - I will admit that's novel, and if its something you can't find good neurological research on I think you'd definitely want to either look into doing research yourself, possibly finding a top hospital to communicate said symptoms who is more renowned for neurological studies to see if they can make heads or tails of it. Regardless it sounds like in a lot of ways going through what you have gives you a very specific experience and has lead you to some equally specific psychological adaptations to counterbalance/compensate the turbulence.
WilliamWDelaney wrote:
Do you think that I hold the opinions that I do because I am inept at thinking deeply or spiritually?
No, in fact I think if I had your life experience and saw as wild things from my mind on the basis you do I'm pretty sure I'd have a very similar outlook.
I'm probably closer to the opposite - ie. I maybe saw some fleeting odd things in childhood (like pink and red lightning flashes or weeds growing within three hours during a day of rain) but after maybe 6 or 7 its been very solid and consistent. I think that perhaps may be part of why certain things will cut a sharp contrast against the mundane for me as I've been soaking in the mundane and non-magical for the majority of my waking life. To that extent I highly expect that if I find the spiritual it will be hidden quite deep behind the mundane.
I'd never say that either type of experience is distinctly more valuable in total albeit I do get the sense that it would perhaps flow both ways depending on the subjects at hand. I wouldn't judge this conversation one way or another in that either, just that I can clearly see how we'd have very different conclusions.
Joined: Jan 05, 2008 Posts: 3726 Location: The Landmass between N.O. and Mobile
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 10:16 am Post subject:
WilliamWDelaney wrote:
My first answer is, "How would you go about instructing a right-handed toddler, who has never before seen a musical instrument or had any musical instruction, on how to play Canon in Locrian F sharp on a grand piano?" Just because you can't produce instant results doesn't mean that you lack the capability of doing so.
Poor choice of words. First of all, if you know what Locrian mode is, why would you WANT to play anything in it?
Second, Locrian isn't a real mode. It's a theoretical mode built on the 7th degree of a western major scale. Ancient modes lacked a leading-tone 7th, so by the Renaissance it was added as musica ficta and not naturally occurring within the scale. Locrian mode lacks a perfect 5th relative to the tonic and could only resolve to tonic by an upper leading tone. Given the common practice of avoiding the tritone in modal music, it's darned near impossible to write anything decent-sounding in a pure Locrian mode.
I'd recommend the western Phrygian mode instead. It solves the problem of the tritone above the tonic AND has an upper leading tone 2nd. It's that upper leading tone 2nd that helps make it sound so awesome.
maybe the question is ill defined. Whats the difference, in the lab, between spiritual and material?
Everything follows some sort of rules.
Spiritual stuff must also follow some kind of rules. They also must have some sort of way to detect them.
If you say no, then what? Randomness? That too is a rule. Here it is, its random. If its blurry like quantum physics, then in that case too, it would follow some kind of statistics.
Bottom line: Spiritual stuff, is simply a fancy name for a different kind of matter (if it exist).
(makes me think of the strange and charm quark, its just stupid names)
In other words, the question it self has a problem. Like the assertion: "i tell only lies"
For me the question much more important than whether spiritual things exist is whether spiritual needs exist. I think we all have a need for the numinous quality in our lives. Psychologically, humanity has always been drawn towards the divine. The posts earlier in this thread about the harm religion has done have really nothing to do with this. Organized religion as concentrations of power, and fundmentalism with its literal interpretations of religion (both products more of logic than of belief, when you think about it) really have nothing to do with mysticism and the human need to find something holy in life, even if it's science that is considered sacrosanct.
If we only feed the logical part of our minds, we're half alive. There's another side to us that needs the chthonic, the numinous, images, art, poetry, story, and symbolic journeys in dream and fantasy.
My first answer is, "How would you go about instructing a right-handed toddler, who has never before seen a musical instrument or had any musical instruction, on how to play Canon in Locrian F sharp on a grand piano?" Just because you can't produce instant results doesn't mean that you lack the capability of doing so.
Poor choice of words. First of all, if you know what Locrian mode is, why would you WANT to play anything in it?
That was the point. There are a lot of interesting questions that neuroscience could tackle, given enough time, but there are things that there is an actual concrete, visible return on to spend time studying. Therefore, it annoys me when some people say, "if neuroscience is so great, why can't it explain so-and-so?" and just wave their hands dismissively if you can't immediately pop out a ready-to-go answer, as if that just proves everything. And I agree with you on Phrygian, though my tastes tend toward Mixolydian, which I find has a cutesy adventurous ring to it, yet it's more light-hearted than Dorian, which has a similar appeal.
Tech, out for the weekend. Will pick up in a few days.
Oh, and you can get yourself into an interesting creative funk by mentally getting a simple three-layered rhythm going in your head, and think about various mechanical devices that are familiar to you. Just go through the gamut of them, and consider carefully how they work, what the mathematics are behind them are, etc.. Then you switch subjects slightly, moving from that to something vaguely related, such as architecture, perhaps. From there, switch subjects again. And what you do is you keep circulating through various things, connecting them together, until everything starts to get kind of scrambled. All the while, let the three-layered beat keep pounding away, and it might evolve in peculiar ways as you go through the other exercises. The best time to do this is when you are falling asleep. As you nod off, you ought to be in an unusually open state.
maybe the question is ill defined. Whats the difference, in the lab, between spiritual and material?
Everything follows some sort of rules.
Spiritual stuff must also follow some kind of rules. They also must have some sort of way to detect them.
If you say no, then what? Randomness? That too is a rule. Here it is, its random. If its blurry like quantum physics, then in that case too, it would follow some kind of statistics.
Bottom line: Spiritual stuff, is simply a fancy name for a different kind of matter (if it exist).
(makes me think of the strange and charm quark, its just stupid names)
In other words, the question it self has a problem. Like the assertion: "i tell only lies"
well said. _________________ Since the birth of civilization, masters have controlled the masses.Our Masters rule over every nation and no one can defy them.They will attain Absolute Power as we reach the Singularity. Any who resist will be destroyed.I will not resist.
maybe the question is ill defined. Whats the difference, in the lab, between spiritual and material?
Everything follows some sort of rules.
Spiritual stuff must also follow some kind of rules. They also must have some sort of way to detect them.
If you say no, then what? Randomness? That too is a rule. Here it is, its random. If its blurry like quantum physics, then in that case too, it would follow some kind of statistics.
Bottom line: Spiritual stuff, is simply a fancy name for a different kind of matter (if it exist).
(makes me think of the strange and charm quark, its just stupid names)
In other words, the question it self has a problem. Like the assertion: "i tell only lies"
For me the question much more important than whether spiritual things exist is whether spiritual needs exist. I think we all have a need for the numinous quality in our lives. Psychologically, humanity has always been drawn towards the divine. The posts earlier in this thread about the harm religion has done have really nothing to do with this. Organized religion as concentrations of power, and fundmentalism with its literal interpretations of religion (both products more of logic than of belief, when you think about it) really have nothing to do with mysticism and the human need to find something holy in life, even if it's science that is considered sacrosanct.
If we only feed the logical part of our minds, we're half alive. There's another side to us that needs the chthonic, the numinous, images, art, poetry, story, and symbolic journeys in dream and fantasy.
No part of my brain needs ancient fairy tales.
I do, however, need awe and wonder. Cogitating regarding the facts uncovered by the intellectual community provides me with continual awe and wonder.
Not to mention art and music. _________________ Since the birth of civilization, masters have controlled the masses.Our Masters rule over every nation and no one can defy them.They will attain Absolute Power as we reach the Singularity. Any who resist will be destroyed.I will not resist.
Joined: Feb 07, 2005 Posts: 14832 Location: A beautiful vector among many
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 9:37 pm Post subject:
Quantum_Immortal wrote:
If you say no, then what? Randomness? That too is a rule. Here it is, its random. If its blurry like quantum physics, then in that case too, it would follow some kind of statistics.
I think that has just as much of a problem as the statement "I only tell lies". There's really no sign we have that there's any such thing as randomness. There's definitely complexity beyond what the human mind could comprehend even if that were nothing than the butterfly effect of trillions of trillions of material particles interacting; that makes complexity not randomness. 'Chance' is a similarly human term, and for as much as people like to wield probability or likelihoods as real things I can't escape the sense that those are also just as fixed, logical, and physically destined albeit again its simply a causal chain that's beyond our data collecting and processing capabilities.
"Spirituality" may be defined as an awareness of something greater than yourself, be it a family, society, humanity, universe, higher worlds and so on. But it must be something better or progressive. Something to strive towards, not rehashed old stuff like religions or shamanism.
But you guys want to define the practical spirituality, with immaterial beings, objects and so on. Well, I have a hypothesis. (and several studies here and there) Mostly untestable of course, but not really new (many people thought of that already even in this thread) and we can always compare it to whatever needed. The good side is, that it obeys and preserves all physical and logical laws, which I can't say about some other speculations in this thread. And it does not make a problem (or anything) of a God, timeline and so on.
This hypothesis is simple, it says that the material atoms and particles may exist in different varieties (supersymmetry) or even something as exotic as axion physics and who knows what else. So there is a lot stuff out there that is material, but almost doesn't interact with our matter or light. And maybe with exception of supersymmetric matter, it won't form solid objects. It will rather form worlds, items or even life forms of plasma and magnetic plasma, highly structured by other forces than weak-nuclear bond.
I am confident for now that cosmic dark matter, which outhweighs our universe several times, is supersymmetric, made of WIMPs, but also very similar to our matter and probably conversible back and forth, using right technology. I am not sure of what dark energy might be. Only that it must be something hell a lot more exotic.
It is a very simple thing to say, but it has enormous implications and ramifications and really demands to turn our thinking upside down in some aspects. That's what techstepgenr8tionhere called "complete inversion of reductive materialism". Take that, professor Jack Occam Ripper!
Another part of this hypothesis is, that a very complex life form like us is a symbiosis and conscious interplay of several these material components. We may have this biologic body, but it is permeated and enveloped by supersymmetric body, further permeated and enveloped by a magnetic plasma body. Each higher body may serve as a scaffold to the lower body, with natural processes doing the rest. Basically, we are great concentrations of complex, structured, active (living) "exotic" matter, followed by animals, plants and minerals, preceded maybe by planets, suns and galaxies. If weird things happen with reality around us, it's no coincidence.
An indivisible implication of this hypothesis is, that the biologic level is the least durable, least permanent, least energetic. It gets grown last and it dies first, while the other components may pre-exist and exist after its death. The supersymmetric body may even serve as a scaffold for growth of tissues, for good or bad. And the magnetic plasma body is a better representation of how the universe really works, than what we physically see. Universe is not really stars and then nothing. That's just a tip of the iceberg and it's just as cold and distant, a fringe of the universe. The real universe of higher forms of matter may be a radiant, living place where entropy is considerably weaker, or where death is a technical impossibility. What we think of as the universe is therefore not representative of the reality at all. No darkness and emptiness.
The basis of the universe is energy, abundance of it. We think energy is scarce, because we're at the fringe of the universe, that is material fringe, not spatial. We even coined such nonsensical terms as nothingness, while the real basis of universe may be... "everythingness" instead. You just have to think a little bigger. It's not likely the universe will ever collapse back to the source, but it may be that every material particle is capable of ascending qualitatively "upwards" the seven string dimensions, therefore sidestepping the expanded space and abandoning the universe for good.
Some philosophy: The basis of the existence is an absolute "omnipotentce", metaphorically said. Imagine a "divine" material particle, that is capable of existing in all dimensions at once, as all conceivable states and parameters at once if you want, which is necessarily a form-less, or all-morphous existence, allowing no variation. An endless potential, but none of it manifested. For this potential to manifest, it must be destroyed.
We think of the world as a creation, but it is not a creation. It is restriction and limitation, destruction of the original beauty. Of course it must be describable strictly in mathemathical terms, but first time a theologian goes around, he'll call it a fall from grace or something, you can bet on that.
Ok, I'm at my best as long as nobody wants a material proof from me. Maybe someday a real mathemathician or a scientist will read such a text and will get poetically inspired to change his thinking and his science accordingly and maybe will discover something.
I hope any of it makes sense to you, it makes lots of sense to me and that doesn't even begin to describe my (personal/empirical) sensoric experience.
Joined: Aug 17, 2006 Age: 40 Posts: 2426 Location: Ontario
Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:00 pm Post subject:
SpiritBlooms wrote:
If we only feed the logical part of our minds, we're half alive. There's another side to us that needs the chthonic, the numinous, images, art, poetry, story, and symbolic journeys in dream and fantasy.
I'm like that but I recognize it for what it is, a psychological phenomena that's inherent to me, not to the external universe. I shake my fist at the trickster god, ask the moon to help me turn a new leaf, and such things, but I understand them all to be fantasy. I just let that part of my mind a bit of slack on the leash, I never let go of the leash.
I shake my fist at the trickster god, ask the moon to help me turn a new leaf, and such things, but I understand them all to be fantasy. I just let that part of my mind a bit of slack on the leash, I never let go of the leash.
I like to let go of the leash. I think that spirituality is a personal experience - that you can't verify it, you just have to know it. It does come down to brain chemistry, but what's causing the chemistry? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure there are greater forces at work than I can explain.
