Neurocluster Brain Model – Can the soul be divided into the composing parts or not?

Neurocluster Brain Model is the brain model based on neuroscience which demystifies, reveals and explains all religious and occult phenomena.
Millions of people have experienced various religious and occult phenomena however skeptical scientists deny even the existence of such phenomena. The denial of the phenomena is not the solution because the denial provides no explanation why so many people claim to have experienced various religious and occult phenomena. Instead of denial the scientific explanation of underlying mechanisms is needed.
Neurocluster Brain Model provides the scientific explanation of underlying mechanisms of religious and occult phenomena. Neurocluster Brain Model succeeds where other scientific models fail.
For the first time ever all religious experiences (communication with Gods, angels, demons, etc) and psychic powers (mediumship, psychography, telepathy, etc) are revealed and explained in the scientific way.

Brief summary of Neurocluster Brain Model

When a man sees new unknown object for the first time then finite number of neurons in the brain (cluster of neurons) stores information about object's model (how the object looks, how the object moves, how the object behaves, etc).
Information about that object is saved not in the whole brain, but only in the finite “piece of the brain” – the evidence for that are experimental data about brain damage – if the brain is damaged in some local area then brain loses information only about some classes of objects, but not about all objects.
The model of the object is stored inside the “piece of the brain” (cluster of neurons) and this neurocluster acts not only as passive “data file” but also under special conditions this neurocluster can act as “executable file” which can simulate the behavior of stored object for the main personality – this is the underlying mechanism of how religious adepts communicate with spirits/angels/Gods/etc and also the underlying mechanism of other religious and occult phenomena.

Introduction

The human brain contains billions of neural cells however the man perceives himself as having only one(1) personality, one(1) consciousness, and people who believe in the existence of the soul perceive themselves as having only one(1) soul. Human brain contains billions of neurons however vast majority of people strongly believe that all these billions of neurons contain only one(1) personality, one(1) consciousness, one(1) soul. This “one human body contains one consciousness” model is sufficient to explain the majority of events in casual normal routine life and this is the reason why this model has become de facto accepted model in all human cultures and societies without ever doubting its validity. Medieval scholars were debating the question “how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?” (a.k.a. “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”), however nobody has ever raised the question “how many souls can be contained in one human body?” assuming by default that one(1) human body contains only one(1) soul.
However let’s raise a simple question: does this “one human body contains one consciousness” model really can explain all phenomena which happen with human consciousness?
The answer is: “one human body contains one consciousness” model actually fails to explain the vast range of phenomena which happen with human consciousness as it will be shown in this website. Let’s begin with the simple example.
All religions claim that the soul is immortal and indestructible, the soul is unbreakable, and the soul can not be divided into small pieces.
Some religions (like for example Hinduism) claim that besides humans all living creatures have a soul – all animals, plants, trees do have a soul.
What is the source of these claims about soul properties? All religions claim that their sacred texts are divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired.
Let’s analyze these claims a little bit.
Hinduism claims that every plant has a soul and that the soul is unbreakable and can not be divided into small pieces (Bhagavad-gītā. 2.23-24).

http://vedabase.com/en/bg/2
2.23: The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.
2.24: This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, present everywhere, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.
(Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. 2.23-24)

Click to expand...

However let’s analyze a simple phenomenon like plant propagation from cuttings. Plant cutting (a.k.a. as striking or cloning) is a technique for vegetatively (asexually) propagating plants in which a piece of the stem or root of the source plant is placed in a suitable medium such as moist soil, potting mix, coir or rock wool. The cutting produces new roots, stems, or both, and thus becomes a new plant independent of the parent.
Using plant cutting technique we can divide one plant into many pieces and every such new piece now has become a separate plant. Since every plant has a soul, this means that one soul of the original plant was divided into many souls using such primitive technique as plant cutting.
As we can see from this very simple example, religious knowledge (which is claimed to have been originated from divine and supernatural sources) about soul properties contradicts very simple well known experimental facts like plant propagation from cuttings.

Now let’s go to the animal kingdom. The male paper nautilus (a.k.a. argonaut octopus) possesses a specialized, extended tentacle, called a hectocotylus, where packets of sperm are stored. When a male paper nautilus detects a female, the hectocotylus detaches from the octopus body and swims towards the female under its own power. The hectocotylus inserts its load into the female’s mantle and can remain active, depositing sperm in her even as its owner goes on his way. The male, essentially, has sex in absentia. The first scientists to observe the hectocotylus in action actually misidentified it as a parasitic worm attached to the female paper nautilus.
Let’s raise a simple question: has hectocotylus a separate soul or not? Religious sacred texts fail to answer such question.

Those were examples about plants and animals, but what about humans? Anyway, there are many people who believe that only humans have souls and these people believe that plants and animals do not have any soul whatsoever.
Let’s raise a simple question: how many souls are contained in conjoined twins (a.k.a. Siamese twins): one or two souls? Religious leaders get very confused when being asked such a simple question because the fact of multiple human souls residing in one physical body contradicts their religious doctrines.
However let’s raise a simple question: how many souls can be contained in one human body? Humanity did not possess tools and technologies which would allow to investigate this question up until the twentieth century. However in the late 1950s things has dramatically changed when neurosurgeons began experiments with the human brain. Some people have epilepsy. Epilepsy is a phenomenon when a small number of neurons in the brain excite themselves via positive feedback neural circuits which leads to the excitation of nearby neurons and this excessive hypersynchronous neuronal activity spreads through large areas of the brain. There are many ways to treat epilepsy however all these treatments share the same common working principle – in order to eliminate the epileptic seizures you need to suppress the excitement of neurons and you need to suppress the spread of the neural excitement through the large areas of the brain. However in some patients all known treatment methods fail and the patient continues to have frequent and strong epileptic seizures. In the late 1950s neurosurgeons decided to try out new drastic method for dealing with such extra hard epilepsy cases. The hypothesis of new treatment method was the following. Human brain consists of two hemispheres which are connected via link which is called corpus callosum. During the epileptic seizure the synchronous neuronal activity originates in one hemisphere and then via corpus callosum it reaches the another hemisphere thus spreading through the whole brain. If we would cut corpus callosum then synchronous neuronal activity which originated in one hemisphere would be stopped from spreading into another hemisphere and this would eliminate epileptic seizure. Several patients with hardest epilepsy cases were chosen to test out the hypothesis and corpus callosum was cut in these patients. Such patients who have their corpus callosum cut are called “split-brain patients”. The hypothesis of neurosurgeons was confirmed to be correct – the cutting of corpus callosum eliminated or greatly reduced epileptic seizures in split-brain patients. However experiments with split-brain patients revealed very interesting side effect of corpus callosum cutting. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body. When interconnection between hemispheres (corpus callosum) is cut then both hemispheres begin to act autonomously from each other. For example, when split-brain sits near his wife, the left hand of the patient hugs and fondles the wife, however at the same time the right hand of the patient angrily beats the wife – different hemispheres of the split-brain patient have made different judgments towards the wife and both hemispheres act independently from each other. In other words, the cutting of corpus callosum created two(2) autonomous personalities, which think differently and make different decisions on the same subject and these decisions might be even diametrically opposite.

More detailed description of Neurocluster Brain Model is at the address:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com

 

It is pretty weak mythological Proselytizing.

 

Well the omnipresent source of the soul is an indivisible one...the living soul itself is a union of spirit and matter in the human form...of which the brain is the interface.. But even if the human mind perceives them as parts...it is only due to the limited dualistic perspective of reality...for in fact the apparent multiplicity existing is all made of the same essence...energy...

 

ben d said: ↑

Well the omnipresent source of the soul is an indivisible one...

Click to expand...

No such thing exist at this time outside mythology

ben d said: ↑

the living soul

Click to expand...

Mythology by all credible academic accounts.

 

outhouse said: ↑

No such thing exist at this time outside mythology

Mythology by all credible academic accounts.

Click to expand...

There is 97.5% of existence undetectable by physical science....you don't know what you don't know and never will until you understand a lot more than just the 2.5% physical.... Atheists ....just ignorant arrogant young souls...haha....

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

For the first time ever all religious experiences (communication with Gods, angels, demons, etc) and psychic powers (mediumship, psychography, telepathy, etc) are revealed and explained in the scientific way.

Click to expand...

Just one example of these explanations. How does 'mediumship' allow mediums to know things that couldn't have been learned through normal channels.

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Hinduism claims that every plant has a soul and that the soul is unbreakable and can not be divided into small pieces (Bhagavad-gītā. 2.23-24).

Click to expand...

I don't think the creator of this theory understands Hinduism. It seems to be confusing what is one, unbreakable and eternal, Brahman, with souls of which there are immense numbers and are not eternal as separate entities.

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

However let’s analyze a simple phenomenon like plant propagation from cuttings. Plant cutting (a.k.a. as striking or cloning) is a technique for vegetatively (asexually) propagating plants in which a piece of the stem or root of the source plant is placed in a suitable medium such as moist soil, potting mix, coir or rock wool. The cutting produces new roots, stems, or both, and thus becomes a new plant independent of the parent.
Using plant cutting technique we can divide one plant into many pieces and every such new piece now has become a separate plant. Since every plant has a soul, this means that one soul of the original plant was divided into many souls using such primitive technique as plant cutting.
As we can see from this very simple example, religious knowledge (which is claimed to have been originated from divine and supernatural sources) about soul properties contradicts very simple well known experimental facts like plant propagation from cuttings.

Now let’s go to the animal kingdom. The male paper nautilus (a.k.a. argonaut octopus) possesses a specialized, extended tentacle, called a hectocotylus, where packets of sperm are stored. When a male paper nautilus detects a female, the hectocotylus detaches from the octopus body and swims towards the female under its own power. The hectocotylus inserts its load into the female’s mantle and can remain active, depositing sperm in her even as its owner goes on his way. The male, essentially, has sex in absentia. The first scientists to observe the hectocotylus in action actually misidentified it as a parasitic worm attached to the female paper nautilus.
Let’s raise a simple question: has hectocotylus a separate soul or not? Religious sacred texts fail to answer such question.

Click to expand...

From the occult teachings and eastern teachings that I am aware of, plants and animals are part of group (not individual) souls. Only at the sophistication level of a human is there an individual soul. And all souls (whether group or individual are animated by the same Brahman/One). I think the plant and animal examples above offer no challenges to the eastern view of souls

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Neurocluster Brain Model is the brain model based on neuroscience which demystifies

Click to expand...

It factually demystified nothing.

There is no mystery about mythology.

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Neurocluster Brain Model succeeds where other scientific models fail

Click to expand...

No it is factually a fail, where no credible science has ever failed.

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

For the first time ever all religious experiences (communication with Gods, angels, demons, etc) and psychic powers (mediumship, psychography, telepathy, etc) are revealed and explained in the scientific way.

Click to expand...

Factual pseudoscience.

You might want to look up the word science and learn that definition, next credibility.

 

George-ananda said: ↑

I don't think the creator of this theory understands Hinduism. It seems to be confusing what is one, unbreakable and eternal, Brahman, with souls of which there are immense numbers and are not eternal as separate entities.

Click to expand...

Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies which differ from each other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism
Hinduism is the dominant religion, or way of life, in South Asia, most notably in India and Nepal. Although Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies, it is a family of linked religious cultures bound by shared concepts, recognisable rituals, cosmology, shared textual resources, pilgrimage to sacred sites and the questioning of authority. It includes Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism among others, each with an interwoven diversity of beliefs and practices.

Click to expand...

George-ananda said: ↑

From the occult teachings and eastern teachings that I am aware of, plants and animals are part of group (not individual) souls. Only at the sophistication level of a human is there an individual soul. And all souls (whether group or individual are animated by the same Brahman/One). I think the plant and animal examples above offer no challenges to the eastern view of souls

Click to expand...

The founder of The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda claims that “even the plants, trees, everyone has got soul”.

http://vanisource.org/wiki/Lecture_on_BG_7.1-3_--_Stockholm,_September_10,_1973
<...> Don't think that the plants and trees, they have no life. They are also living entities. We do not accept this theory that the animals have no soul. No. Everyone has got soul. Even the plants, trees, everyone has got soul. They have got different bodies only. It is not that only human being has got the soul, not others. No. Actually if we make analysis what is the symptoms of possessing soul, you will find everywhere. Even in plants' life you will find. Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, one of the greatest scientist of the world, he has proved by machine that when you cut the trees or the leaves, they feel sensation, pain, and that is recorded by machine. So everyone has got soul. <...>
(A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. Lecture on BG 7.1-3. Stockholm, September 10, 1973)

Click to expand...

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

The founder of The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda claims that “even the plants, trees, everyone has got soul”.

Click to expand...

And not one bit of it is credible

 

It is interesting to note that with all the claims and trappings of science the OP and the link provided in the OP ( http://neuroclusterbrain.com )do not reference any peer reviewed publications.

 

That was a convoluted but entirely unnecessary argument.
There is absolutely no reason to think that the soul resides in, or is contained in a brain.
The diversion about animals souls was also erroneous. We are animals, it is likely that all living beings have souls.

 

Terrywoodenpic said: ↑

We are animals, it is likely that all living beings have souls.

Click to expand...

No.

Factually it is likely that all animals have a conscious mind, and not a mythological concept..


Ancient men had no real concept of such and uses a mythological soul to describe the conscious mind in their little mythological world.

 

Why would the soul be found housed in the body? If we have one, does it not seem more likely that we are a part of it, that it's not inside us but we are inside it?

 

Shadow Wolf said: ↑

Why would the soul be found housed in the body? If we have one, does it not seem more likely that we are a part of it, that it's not inside us but we are inside it?

Click to expand...

And to me, that's as good an explanation as any that exist. If the concept existed.

 

George-ananda said: ↑

Just one example of these explanations. How does 'mediumship' allow mediums to know things that couldn't have been learned through normal channels.

Click to expand...

Almost everybody has encountered in their lives a phenomenon of “perceptual blindness” (a.k.a. inattentional blindness) when a man is looking for some object and that object lies just in the front of man’s eyes however man does not see it. It is important to note here that the object lying in the front of the eyes is not seen only by the main personality however the autonomous neuroclusters (a.k.a. “subconscious”) may see this object and can remember its location. When a man goes to sleep, then during the dream the autonomous neuroclusters can forward information about the object to the main personality. When a man awakes and checks the information which he has received in the dream and when he finds out that information received in the dream is correct – then the man has no idea how he has received this information so the man decides that the source of this information is “spiritual worlds” or the God himself. However the reality is much simpler. The valuable information which he has received during the dream in reality has nothing to do with the God. Some time ago this information was simply lying in front of the man’s eyes however the main personality was blind to it and did not see it and after some time autonomous neuroclusters forwarded that information to the main personality during the dreaming process. The transfer of information from autonomous neuroclusters into the main personality usually happens in situations of “extreme importance”, for example when a man was very intensively praying and asking the God to reveal some very needed information. During the dream the main personality receives the requested information from autonomous neuroclusters and when a man awakes from a dream he becomes strongly convinced that the God himself has provided the requested information. Due to the ignorance and lack of knowledge about the physiological mechanisms of the brain the man is unable to explain the source of information which he has received – and the God (or other spiritual beings) is the only explanation which he can think of.

Here is the documentary movie which shows the perceptual blindness experiment.

selective attention test
Length: 2 minutes

For more movies about perceptual blindness experiments please click here.
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/perceptual_blindness_videos.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness
Inattentional blindness, also known as perceptual blindness, is a psychological lack of attention and is not associated with any vision defects or deficits. It may be further defined as the event in which an individual fails to recognize an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight. The term was coined by Arien Mack and Irvin Rock in 1992 and was used as the title of their book of the same name, published by MIT press in 1998. Here, they describe the discovery of inattentional blindness and include a collection of procedures used describing the phenomenon. Research on inattentional blindness suggests that the phenomenon can occur in any individual, independent of cognitive deficits. When it simply becomes impossible for one to attend to all the stimuli in a given situation, a temporary blindness effect can take place as a result; that is, individuals fail to see objects or stimuli that are unexpected and quite often salient.
Inattentional blindness also has an effect on people’s perception. There have been numerous experiments performed that demonstrate this phenomenon.

Click to expand...

 

George-ananda said: ↑

Just one example of these explanations. How does 'mediumship' allow mediums to know things that couldn't have been learned through normal channels.

Click to expand...

It is very important to note the law which governs all “revelations from the God” – the information received from so called “divine sources” never exceeds or surpasses mankind’s scientific/technical knowledge of that period of time when “revelation from God” was received. Let’s analyze all ancient sacred scriptures (Bible, Quran, Vedas, etc) – all these scriptures contain texts about the creation of living organisms where all types of creatures are listed – birds, mammals, fishes, etc – however there is not a single word mentioned about microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, etc). It is important to note that microorganisms play a vital role in the Earth’s ecosystem – the extermination of microorganisms would lead to the collapse of the Earth’s ecosystem. It is obvious that when the creator of the universe and the creator of all living organisms is telling humans about the creation of all living things he should surely mention creatures which are so small that the human eye cannot see. However not a single word about microorganisms is mentioned in all ancient sacred scriptures. This raises a question: why microorganisms are not mentioned? The answer is simple: ancient people did not know that microorganisms exist. However even if we ignore the absence of description about the microorganisms which are so small that the human eye cannot see, the sacred scriptures are teeming with errors about biological life, as for example Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (Bhāgavata Purāṇa) claims that human fetus grows and remains in abominable residence of stools and urine, which is the breeding place of all kinds of worms (Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 3.31.5 and SB: 3.31.17), The Talmud claims that lice do not reproduce and that lice emerge from human’s sweat (Masechet Shabbat 107b), and so on.

http://vedabase.com/en/sb/3/31/5/
http://vedabase.com/en/sb/3/31/17/
http://vedabase.com/sb/3/31/5/
http://vedabase.com/sb/3/31/17/
SB: 3.31.5: Deriving its nutrition from the food and drink taken by the mother, the fetus grows and remains in that abominable residence of stools and urine, which is the breeding place of all kinds of worms.
SB: 3.31.17: Fallen into a pool of blood, stool and urine within the abdomen of his mother, his own body scorched by the mother's gastric fire, the embodied soul, anxious to get out, counts his months and prays, "O my Lord, when shall I, a wretched soul, be released from this confinement?"
(A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (Bhāgavata Purāṇa). Chapter 31: Lord Kapila's Instructions on the Movements of the Living Entities. SB: 3.31.5 and SB: 3.31.17)

Click to expand...

http://www.daatemet.org/articles/article.cfm?article_id=1&LANG=en
In Masechet Shabbat 107b it is said “A louse does not reproduce”, and therefore, according to the Sages, one is permitted to kill it on Shabbat. And on page 12b it states: “Rabbah killed them” (Rashi’s commentary: “killed them even on Sabbath,” the reason being that lice do not reproduce, but “from the flesh of man they swarm,” end of quote.)
And the Tosfot there says: Lest he kill — it is written that there are two types of lice, the black jumping louse which is created from the dust, as is written “Hit the dust of the ground and it will become lice,” and there is another type, swarming head lice which do not reproduce, but come from the sweat of man. And the Rosh, in chapter one, section 29, says: One may kill white head lice which come from old clothes.
The Ran also writes: “Rav Huna said: ‘and all the fleas’ is the jumping louse, and should you ask why is the jumper forbidden, as it is from the dust and does not reproduce, it should be said that this principle serves us only to exclude vermin created from mold, such as lice -- but all that is created from dust has vitality in it, as though it had reproduced from male and female, and one who kills it on Shabbat is liable,” end of quote.
It follows from what is written that, according to Chazal, the louse does not reproduce but they were divided as to how it was created. According to Rashi it is created from man’s flesh, according to the Tosfos from the sweat of man, according to the Rosh from old clothes, and according to the Ran from mold. (A flea, according to some of the Rishonim, is created from dust.)
We will add and emphasize that the Gemara in Shabbat, on page 107b, asks: “And does the louse not reproduce? Yet it is said: G-d sits and nourishes all, from the karnei re’emim to the eggs of lice” (meaning that there are eggs from which come lice, and therefore lice do reproduce). And they explained it: “There is a creature which is called “eggs of lice” (that is, there is a different type of insect whose name is “eggs of lice”) and this answer proves how resolved Chazal were in their opinion that lice do not reproduce through procreation, but are created from inanimate matter.
After we brought these things to the attention of those who seek truth, some dialecticians tried to find in them a flaw. When they found no aid in the halachic writings, they went to external literature. They did well to go to science texts, for there you will find research and examination with no favoritism, only research for its own sake. They brought, from the Encyclopedia HaChai V’HaTzomeach Shel Eretz Yisrael (Ministry of Defense Publishing — the book is found in every public library and is well worth reading), that “there are lice which reproduce by parthenogenesis.” And you, the wise student who shows no favoritism, come and see how your rabbis answer — we claim apples and they answer oranges. Or, perhaps, they didn’t understand what they read at all, or even worse. Parthenogenesis is sexual reproduction, but the female provides the impregnating material to the egg she produces. Is this “creation from mold”? Is this reproduction in which there is no resemblance between the inanimate material which births and the living thing which is born? Something born through parthenogenesis is exactly like the being which birthed it. On the other hand, what similarity is there between mold (or flesh, sweat, or rags) and a living, crawling louse?
Their explanations are worth nothing — quite the opposite. They’ve strengthened our words, that spontaneous creation of life from the inanimate, to which sages had attributed the louse, never has happened.
And we will add that the other lice mentioned by the dialecticians are said, in the encyclopedia, to mainly exist on birds, and few exist on mammals; and there is no way they can survive on humans. Therefore, of course, they have no relation to this topic which deals with lice on people’s heads and clothing.
Daat Emet's Pamphlet 1

Click to expand...

The sacred scriptures do not contain any information which exceeds or surpasses mankind’s scientific/technical knowledge of that period of time when “revelation from god” was received – and the reason of that is very simple – the source of the information provided in the sacred scripture is not the God which created the universe but instead the autonomous neuroclusters which reside inside the brain of the “divinely inspired” author who wrote the sacred scripture. However religious adepts devote their entire lifetimes, sacrifice their time, resources, health and even their lives studying writings of such “divinely inspired” authors naively believing that they will gain the knowledge of “absolute truth” which will lead them directly to God/heaven/etc.

It is very easy to prove that intelligence level of the spirits/angels/voice-of-God/etc is very low. All you need to do is to go to the people who claim that they can communicate with the “voice from heaven”, “voice of cosmos”, “angel Gabriel”, angels, gods, etc, and then you need to check the IQ level of that “voice from heaven” using tasks from school textbooks and you will see that “voice from heaven” is incapable to solve even simplest tasks from school textbooks, the “voice from heaven” is able only to babble inconsistent nonsense using phrases like “be obedient, be humble, increase your spirituality, love is everywhere, use spiritual energy from cosmos, Atlantis, Shambala, Pleiadians, quantum reality, etc” – the repertory of “divine sources” is limited to such kind of worthless babble.
The “voice of God” claims that he is God who created universe and all living beings, however if you will ask him simple questions like “how many teeth does the rabbit have?”, the “voice of God” will fail to provide the correct answer. This leads to simple conclusion: if he is the God who created universe and created all living beings then he must surely know how many teeth the rabbit has, otherwise he is not the omniscient creator of all living beings. When the “voice of God” is asked simple testing questions, like what is the number of teeth in various animals, the “voice of God” begins to ramble. Try that and you will see it yourself.

Several dental formulae examples are provided here.
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/dental_formulae_examples.html

 

outhouse said: ↑

And to me, that's as good an explanation as any that exist. If the concept existed.

Click to expand...

To me, if we have a soul, it seems silly to think it grows inside us or due to some organ we have. If we have one, we probably aren't the only living thing that does. I think some sort of Gaia, pantheist, or Buddhist approach probably would at least be off to a better starting point than claiming something non-material that is, in some form or another (keeping in mind the myriad concepts of a soul), going to move beyond the life of this physical flesh. Perhaps we are nothing more than a hub or avatar of sorts for the "soul" to experience life here?

 

Do you just run around proselytizing pseudoscience all over the net???

How did we get so lucky

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

The founder of The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda claims that “even the plants, trees, everyone has got soul”.

Click to expand...

outhouse said: ↑

And not one bit of it is credible

Click to expand...

Yes, that is correct.
“Appeal to authority” is a form of logical fallacy

Religious adepts can be very easily identified by using the following diagnostic criteria:
1) they use the “appeal to authority” as an argument;
2) they are unable to provide scientific definitions for the terms that they use in their texts, and instead of scientific definitions they provide crackpot blabber;
3) they are totally incapable to provide the scientific arguments and instead of scientific arguments they actively use all sorts of bureaucratic muck (write complaints/denunciations, vote “against” at the polls/ratings, etc.).
4) and so on.

“Appeal to authority” is not a the scientific argument; “appeal to authority” is a form of logical fallacy.
“Appeal to authority” is the diagnostic criteria which identifies the religious adept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Argument from authority, also ad verecundiam and appeal to authority, is a common form of argument which leads to a logical fallacy.

In informal reasoning, the appeal to authority is a form of argument attempting to establish a statistical syllogism. The appeal to authority relies on an argument of the form:
A is an authority on a particular topic
A says something about that topic
A is probably correct

Fallacious examples of using the appeal include any appeal to authority used in the context of logical reasoning, and appealing to the position of an authority or authorities to dismiss evidence, as authorities can come to the wrong judgments through error, bias, dishonesty, or falling prey to groupthink. Thus, the appeal to authority is not a generally reliable argument for establishing facts.

Click to expand...

Let’s examine the “appeal to authority” in more detail using practical examples.

When discussing the functioning of the brain, the pseudoscientists very often appeal to the authority of Plato and Aristotle.
Let’s look more closely: what good advice in the field of brain functioning we can get from Plato and Aristotle?

Let’s raise a simple question: did Plato and Aristotle know that the brain is made up of cells (neurons)? Did Plato and Aristotle know anything about the neural signals?
They did not know and they could not know, because no one knew this until the 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron#History
The neuron doctrine is the now fundamental idea that neurons are the basic structural and functional units of the nervous system. The theory was put forward by Santiago Ramón y Cajal in the late 19th century. It held that neurons are discrete cells (not connected in a meshwork), acting as metabolically distinct units.

Click to expand...

So what good advice in the field of brain functioning we can get from Plato and Aristotle?

We will remind that the eye is actually part of the brain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_perception
The retina is actually part of the brain that is isolated to serve as a transducer for the conversion of patterns of light into neuronal signals. The lens of the eye focuses light on the photoreceptive cells of the retina, which detect the photons of light and respond by producing neural impulses. These signals are processed in a hierarchical fashion by different parts of the brain, from the retina upstream to central ganglia in the brain.

Click to expand...

Now let's look more closely at the Plato’s and Aristotle’s advice about the functioning of the eye (i.e. the brain):

http://people.brandeis.edu/~sekuler/SensoryProcessesMaterial/Alhazen.html
theory of visual perception suggested that sight occurs because rays emanate from the perceiver's eyes. After leaving the eyes, these rays explored the world, and upon encountering objects, the rays returned, carrying information about those objects. One of the foremost proponents of this theory was Euclid, whose contributions to geometry you probably know about; Aristotle and Plato also subscribed to this theory.
Theories of light; theories of vision
Robert Sekuler, for Npsy 12a, rev. 2004

http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/FeelingSupplements/AncientVisions.htm
What is unfortunate for the history of visual science is the fact that the idea of extramission was associated with the illustrious name of Plato (428-348 BC). Indeed Plato and before him Pythagoras (c. 532 BC), were the first to seriously propound the extramission theory. For Plato, the substance that was emitted by the eye was a kind of gentle "visual fire" or light, flowing forth out of the pupil, that combined with ambient light to generate a homogeneous "body of vision" (like a kind of disembodied tentacle controlled by the eyes) which encompassed or touched objects and thereby generated a medium between the object and the viewer which allowed aspects of the object to contact the soul.
Given Plato's great authority, the extramission viewpoint was adopted, with variations, by many thinkers after him. Of particular importance was its acceptance in the 2nd century AD by the great physician Galen, whose doctrines were to dominate medical thought throughout the middle ages. As we shall see below, up until the 17th century, the influencial medical community was wedded to the extramission hypothesis.
But in addition to weighing with his authority toward the extramission viewpoint, Plato probably contributed in other ways to hindering progress in the study of vision. One form of general hindrance created by Plato was not specific to his theory of vision, but derived from his general approach to science: in his opinion, observation of nature was a worthless pursuit -- progress could only come from logical reasoning and mathematical deduction. A more specific hindrance is suggested by one contemporary historian of science, who claims that for Plato, vision was not a very reliable sense. The "touch-at-a-distance" provided by vision was a poor relative of true manual touch. After all, contrary to the normal tactile sense, vision does not allow a whole object to be apprehended, since parts of it are always hidden from view. Judgements based on vision are subject to many types of errors, like those caused by changes in lighting and perspective viewpoint, by extraneous phenomena associated with shadows, transparency, reflection and refraction for example, not to mention the many well-known 'optical illusions' that give rise to errors in size and position judgement. In sum, for Plato, vision was unfit for doing science: tactile confirmation of visual impressions was essential.
Perhaps an example of Plato's negative influence on the pursuit of optical science is the history of lenses. It has been argued that, like hypnotism and paranormal phenomena today, the study of lenses was considered a disreputable pursuit in the Middle Ages. Even though magnifying lenses were probably used by craftsmen at least as early as the beginning of the christian era to make miniatures or to carve fine inscriptions on the moulds used to cast coins, and even though, starting in the 13th Century, a whole industry of artisans was manufacturing spectacles for correcting presbyopia (and later, myopia), it took another three hundred years until scientists deigned to study them. Even Kepler, in his revolutionary book Paralipomena published in 1604, merely devotes three pages to lenses, and then apologetically, with the justification that a mycene had been prodding him for three years to consider them. Only when Galileo's discoveries with the telescope caused a sensation and rendered more politic the serious consideration of lenses, did Kepler finally deign to give them proper treatment in his Dioptrica, published in 1609.

Click to expand...

And now let's look further at the Aristotle’s advice about the functioning of the brain.
According to Aristotle, the brain is just the heat sink which cools down the heat of the blood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_neuroscience
Aristotle thought that, while the heart was the seat of intelligence, the brain was a cooling mechanism for the blood. He reasoned that humans are more rational than the beasts because, among other reasons, they have a larger brain to cool their hot-bloodedness.

Click to expand...

It is obvious that Plato and Aristotle are totally incompetent in neuroscience.
Despite this fact, the pseudoscientists insist on studying Plato’s and Aristotle’s writings about the functioning of the brain.
Pseudoscientists insist on studying “Stone Age” writings about the functioning of the brain.
That is the qualification level of pseudoscientists in the field of neuroscience.

 

Shadow Wolf said: ↑

To me, if we have a soul, it seems silly to think it grows inside us or due to some organ we have. If we have one, we probably aren't the only living thing that does. I think some sort of Gaia, pantheist, or Buddhist approach probably would at least be off to a better starting point than claiming something non-material that is, in some form or another (keeping in mind the myriad concepts of a soul), going to move beyond the life of this physical flesh. Perhaps we are nothing more than a hub or avatar of sorts for the "soul" to experience life here?

Click to expand...

Of course I don't follow anything but a physical conscious mind that evolved.

Your statements to me make just as much sense as any others offered.


One thing we do know that is factual, only mythology recorded such concepts, and passed them down through generations based of faith alone.

So here it is safe to throw the baby out with the bathwater. As the baby exist solely in the imagination of the conscious mind.


Remember the same people that created these concepts blamed rain and volcanos on gods. Death at birth was a mad god, and you did not have the proper religious symbol to protect you.

What is terribly sad is that with all our knowledge, these symbols are still sold in volume today.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Yes, that is correct.
“Appeal to authority” is a form of logical fallacy

Click to expand...

Sorry I appeal to reality.

And your pseudoscience goes nowhere here.

Your lack of ability to use credible scientific methods, means we can and will throw away imaginative explanations.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

It is obvious that Plato and Aristotle are totally incompetent in neuroscience.

Click to expand...

That is wonderful! and quite obvious

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

We will remind that intelligent agents (like for example: chatterbots, computer game characters, etc) can read and understand the text too.

Click to expand...

No, you stated that I did not. You move goal post out of desperation.

Nothing can read and reply to your weak and pathetic pseudoscience and provide the context of knowledge I have against your rhetoric.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

In order to fully 100% comprehend the material about “Neurocluster Brain Model”

Click to expand...

One must use imagination and pseudoscience, or possess a severe lack of knowledge.

YOU have not made a credible case.

And your lack of ability to present a credible case is not negated by YOU trying to steer the argument away from your pseudoscientific ERRORS

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Appeal to authorities” is not a the scientific argument

Click to expand...

What is appeal to ignorance and imagination?????????????

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

The founder of The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada claims that “even the plants, trees, everyone has got soul”.

Click to expand...

And I agree with that but you where assuming that meant one plant equals one soul. The understanding I have always heard from esoteric teachers is that each species is part of their own 'group' soul. This understanding eliminates what you thought was a conundrum regarding splitting.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Almost everybody has encountered in their lives a phenomenon of “perceptual blindness” (a.k.a. inattentional blindness) when a man is looking for some object and that object lies just in the front of man’s eyes however man does not see it. It is important to note here that the object lying in the front of the eyes is not seen only by the main personality however the autonomous neuroclusters (a.k.a. “subconscious”) may see this object and can remember its location. When a man goes to sleep, then during the dream the autonomous neuroclusters can forward information about the object to the main personality. When a man awakes and checks the information which he has received in the dream and when he finds out that information received in the dream is correct – then the man has no idea how he has received this information so the man decides that the source of this information is “spiritual worlds” or the God himself. However the reality is much simpler. The valuable information which he has received during the dream in reality has nothing to do with the God. Some time ago this information was simply lying in front of the man’s eyes however the main personality was blind to it and did not see it and after some time autonomous neuroclusters forwarded that information to the main personality during the dreaming process. The transfer of information from autonomous neuroclusters into the main personality usually happens in situations of “extreme importance”, for example when a man was very intensively praying and asking the God to reveal some very needed information. During the dream the main personality receives the requested information from autonomous neuroclusters and when a man awakes from a dream he becomes strongly convinced that the God himself has provided the requested information. Due to the ignorance and lack of knowledge about the physiological mechanisms of the brain the man is unable to explain the source of information which he has received – and the God (or other spiritual beings) is the only explanation which he can think of.

Click to expand...

This is interesting but doesn't answer my question which was about mediums. How can a medium know a detail about my grandfather whom she could not reasonably have known anything about. My leading theory is that truly gifted mediums can communicate telepathically with the astral bodies of the deceased.

 

outhouse said: ↑

No, you stated that I did not. You move goal post out of desperation.

Nothing can read and reply to your weak and pathetic pseudoscience and provide the context of knowledge I have against your rhetoric.

Click to expand...

He asked you to prove that you have a consciousness. He has shown what you consider proof of consciousness is in fact quite insufficient.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Neurocluster Brain Model is the brain model based on neuroscience which demystifies, reveals and explains all religious and occult phenomena.
Millions of people have experienced various religious and occult phenomena however skeptical scientists deny even the existence of such phenomena. The denial of the phenomena is not the solution because the denial provides no explanation why so many people claim to have experienced various religious and occult phenomena. Instead of denial the scientific explanation of underlying mechanisms is needed.
Neurocluster Brain Model provides the scientific explanation of underlying mechanisms of religious and occult phenomena. Neurocluster Brain Model succeeds where other scientific models fail.
For the first time ever all religious experiences (communication with Gods, angels, demons, etc) and psychic powers (mediumship, psychography, telepathy, etc) are revealed and explained in the scientific way.

Brief summary of Neurocluster Brain Model

When a man sees new unknown object for the first time then finite number of neurons in the brain (cluster of neurons) stores information about object's model (how the object looks, how the object moves, how the object behaves, etc).
Information about that object is saved not in the whole brain, but only in the finite “piece of the brain” – the evidence for that are experimental data about brain damage – if the brain is damaged in some local area then brain loses information only about some classes of objects, but not about all objects.
The model of the object is stored inside the “piece of the brain” (cluster of neurons) and this neurocluster acts not only as passive “data file” but also under special conditions this neurocluster can act as “executable file” which can simulate the behavior of stored object for the main personality – this is the underlying mechanism of how religious adepts communicate with spirits/angels/Gods/etc and also the underlying mechanism of other religious and occult phenomena.

Introduction

The human brain contains billions of neural cells however the man perceives himself as having only one(1) personality, one(1) consciousness, and people who believe in the existence of the soul perceive themselves as having only one(1) soul. Human brain contains billions of neurons however vast majority of people strongly believe that all these billions of neurons contain only one(1) personality, one(1) consciousness, one(1) soul. This “one human body contains one consciousness” model is sufficient to explain the majority of events in casual normal routine life and this is the reason why this model has become de facto accepted model in all human cultures and societies without ever doubting its validity. Medieval scholars were debating the question “how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?” (a.k.a. “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”), however nobody has ever raised the question “how many souls can be contained in one human body?” assuming by default that one(1) human body contains only one(1) soul.
However let’s raise a simple question: does this “one human body contains one consciousness” model really can explain all phenomena which happen with human consciousness?
The answer is: “one human body contains one consciousness” model actually fails to explain the vast range of phenomena which happen with human consciousness as it will be shown in this website. Let’s begin with the simple example.
All religions claim that the soul is immortal and indestructible, the soul is unbreakable, and the soul can not be divided into small pieces.
Some religions (like for example Hinduism) claim that besides humans all living creatures have a soul – all animals, plants, trees do have a soul.
What is the source of these claims about soul properties? All religions claim that their sacred texts are divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired.
Let’s analyze these claims a little bit.
Hinduism claims that every plant has a soul and that the soul is unbreakable and can not be divided into small pieces (Bhagavad-gita. 2.23-24).



However let’s analyze a simple phenomenon like plant propagation from cuttings. Plant cutting (a.k.a. as striking or cloning) is a technique for vegetatively (asexually) propagating plants in which a piece of the stem or root of the source plant is placed in a suitable medium such as moist soil, potting mix, coir or rock wool. The cutting produces new roots, stems, or both, and thus becomes a new plant independent of the parent.
Using plant cutting technique we can divide one plant into many pieces and every such new piece now has become a separate plant. Since every plant has a soul, this means that one soul of the original plant was divided into many souls using such primitive technique as plant cutting.
As we can see from this very simple example, religious knowledge (which is claimed to have been originated from divine and supernatural sources) about soul properties contradicts very simple well known experimental facts like plant propagation from cuttings.

Now let’s go to the animal kingdom. The male paper nautilus (a.k.a. argonaut octopus) possesses a specialized, extended tentacle, called a hectocotylus, where packets of sperm are stored. When a male paper nautilus detects a female, the hectocotylus detaches from the octopus body and swims towards the female under its own power. The hectocotylus inserts its load into the female’s mantle and can remain active, depositing sperm in her even as its owner goes on his way. The male, essentially, has sex in absentia. The first scientists to observe the hectocotylus in action actually misidentified it as a parasitic worm attached to the female paper nautilus.
Let’s raise a simple question: has hectocotylus a separate soul or not? Religious sacred texts fail to answer such question.

Those were examples about plants and animals, but what about humans? Anyway, there are many people who believe that only humans have souls and these people believe that plants and animals do not have any soul whatsoever.
Let’s raise a simple question: how many souls are contained in conjoined twins (a.k.a. Siamese twins): one or two souls? Religious leaders get very confused when being asked such a simple question because the fact of multiple human souls residing in one physical body contradicts their religious doctrines.
However let’s raise a simple question: how many souls can be contained in one human body? Humanity did not possess tools and technologies which would allow to investigate this question up until the twentieth century. However in the late 1950s things has dramatically changed when neurosurgeons began experiments with the human brain. Some people have epilepsy. Epilepsy is a phenomenon when a small number of neurons in the brain excite themselves via positive feedback neural circuits which leads to the excitation of nearby neurons and this excessive hypersynchronous neuronal activity spreads through large areas of the brain. There are many ways to treat epilepsy however all these treatments share the same common working principle – in order to eliminate the epileptic seizures you need to suppress the excitement of neurons and you need to suppress the spread of the neural excitement through the large areas of the brain. However in some patients all known treatment methods fail and the patient continues to have frequent and strong epileptic seizures. In the late 1950s neurosurgeons decided to try out new drastic method for dealing with such extra hard epilepsy cases. The hypothesis of new treatment method was the following. Human brain consists of two hemispheres which are connected via link which is called corpus callosum. During the epileptic seizure the synchronous neuronal activity originates in one hemisphere and then via corpus callosum it reaches the another hemisphere thus spreading through the whole brain. If we would cut corpus callosum then synchronous neuronal activity which originated in one hemisphere would be stopped from spreading into another hemisphere and this would eliminate epileptic seizure. Several patients with hardest epilepsy cases were chosen to test out the hypothesis and corpus callosum was cut in these patients. Such patients who have their corpus callosum cut are called “split-brain patients”. The hypothesis of neurosurgeons was confirmed to be correct – the cutting of corpus callosum eliminated or greatly reduced epileptic seizures in split-brain patients. However experiments with split-brain patients revealed very interesting side effect of corpus callosum cutting. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body. When interconnection between hemispheres (corpus callosum) is cut then both hemispheres begin to act autonomously from each other. For example, when split-brain sits near his wife, the left hand of the patient hugs and fondles the wife, however at the same time the right hand of the patient angrily beats the wife – different hemispheres of the split-brain patient have made different judgments towards the wife and both hemispheres act independently from each other. In other words, the cutting of corpus callosum created two(2) autonomous personalities, which think differently and make different decisions on the same subject and these decisions might be even diametrically opposite.

More detailed description of Neurocluster Brain Model is at the address:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com

Click to expand...

Are you of the opinion that energies and powers exist / can exist that can interact beyond expected physical boundaries. E.g. Do you believe it is possible to for human to know things they couldn't know through the known (or verified) natural senses?

 

lostwanderingsoul said: ↑

The original post was incorrect in stating that all religions teach that the soul is immortal.

Click to expand...

Sometimes a little inaccuracy saves a ton of explanation.
Ok, here is a more detailed explanation.

Different religions have different dogmas about the immortality/mortality of the soul and spirit.
Some religions claim that both soul and spirit are immortal, other religions claim that the soul is mortal and the spirit is immortal, some other religions claim that the soul is immortal and the spirit is mortal, and so on.

The immortality/mortality of the soul/spirit is not important issue here.
What is important here is that all religions claim that soul/spirit is INDIVISIBLE object, all religions claim soul/spirit CANNOT BE DIVIDED into the composing parts.
Atheists also believe in the religious dogma of “indivisible-single-consciousness”.

The important issue here is the divisibility/indivisibility of the soul/spirit/consciousness, not the immortality/mortality of the soul/spirit/consciousness.

Brief summary of Neurocluster Brain Model:
When a man sees new unknown object for the first time then finite number of neurons in the brain (cluster of neurons) stores information about object's model (how the object looks, how the object moves, how the object behaves, etc).
Information about that object is saved not in the whole brain, but only in the finite “piece of the brain” – the evidence for that are experimental data about brain damage – if the brain is damaged in some local area then brain loses information only about some classes of objects, but not about all objects.
The model of the object is stored inside the “piece of the brain” (cluster of neurons) and this neurocluster acts not only as passive “data file” but also under special conditions this neurocluster can act as “executable file” which can simulate the behavior of stored object for the main personality – this is the underlying mechanism of how religious adepts communicate with spirits/angels/Gods/etc and also the underlying mechanism of other religious and occult phenomena.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

The sacred scriptures do not contain any information which exceeds or surpasses mankind’s scientific/technical knowledge of that period of time when “revelation from god” was received – and the reason of that is very simple – the source of the information provided in the sacred scripture is not the God which created the universe but instead the autonomous neuroclusters which reside inside the brain of the “divinely inspired” author who wrote the sacred scripture. However religious adepts devote their entire lifetimes, sacrifice their time, resources, health and even their lives studying writings of such “divinely inspired” authors naively believing that they will gain the knowledge of “absolute truth” which will lead them directly to God/heaven/etc.

It is very easy to prove that intelligence level of the spirits/angels/voice-of-God/etc is very low. All you need to do is to go to the people who claim that they can communicate with the “voice from heaven”, “voice of cosmos”, “angel Gabriel”, angels, gods, etc, and then you need to check the IQ level of that “voice from heaven” using tasks from school textbooks and you will see that “voice from heaven” is incapable to solve even simplest tasks from school textbooks, the “voice from heaven” is able only to babble inconsistent nonsense using phrases like “be obedient, be humble, increase your spirituality, love is everywhere, use spiritual energy from cosmos, Atlantis, Shambala, Pleiadians, quantum reality, etc” – the repertory of “divine sources” is limited to such kind of worthless babble.
The “voice of God” claims that he is God who created universe and all living beings, however if you will ask him simple questions like “how many teeth does the rabbit have?”, the “voice of God” will fail to provide the correct answer. This leads to simple conclusion: if he is the God who created universe and created all living beings then he must surely know how many teeth the rabbit has, otherwise he is not the omniscient creator of all living beings. When the “voice of God” is asked simple testing questions, like what is the number of teeth in various animals, the “voice of God” begins to ramble. Try that and you will see it yourself.

Click to expand...

I do not hear this claim of omniscience by the more serious mediums. If you are talking about typical channeling then the knowledge will be limited to the knowledge that the less than omniscient source entity can communicate through a finite channel. I am convinced that information not known to the medium does often come through though. And that raises a conceptual challenge.

 

Thanda said: ↑

He has shown what you consider proof of consciousness is in fact quite insufficient.

Click to expand...

To bad, he does not have a history or track record of credible scientific methodology. He has to move goal post to support his guessing.


I have factually proven I am self aware by my discussions here. Machines cannot factually replace forum members at this time.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

this is the underlying mechanism of how religious adepts communicate with spirits/angels/Gods/etc and also the underlying mechanism of other religious and occult phenomena.

Click to expand...

Rhetoric, factually unsubstantiated rhetoric.

 

outhouse said: ↑

To bad, he does not have a history or track record of credible scientific methodology. He has to move goal post to support his guessing.


I have factually proven I am self aware by my discussions here. Machines cannot factually replace forum members at this time.

Click to expand...

Downsyndrome people also cannot replace forum members at this time also. Are they therefore without consciousness?

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

When a man sees new unknown object for the first time then finite number of neurons in the brain (cluster of neurons) stores information about object's model (how the object looks, how the object moves, how the object behaves, etc).
Information about that object is saved not in the whole brain, but only in the finite “piece of the brain” – the evidence for that are experimental data about brain damage – if the brain is damaged in some local area then brain loses information only about some classes of objects, but not about all objects.
The model of the object is stored inside the “piece of the brain” (cluster of neurons) and this neurocluster acts not only as passive “data file” but also under special conditions this neurocluster can act as “executable file” which can simulate the behavior of stored object for the main personality –

Click to expand...

Every aspect can be labeled under typical consciousness.

 

Thanda said: ↑

Downsyndrome people also cannot replace forum members at this time also. Are they therefore without consciousness?

Click to expand...

Your factually wrong. We had one for a few weeks in here last month.

 

Thanda said: ↑

He asked you to prove that you have a consciousness. He has shown what you consider proof of consciousness is in fact quite insufficient.

Click to expand...

That is correct.
neuroclusterbrain has asked outhouse to provide at least one evidence that outhouse has consciousness.
neuroclusterbrain has asked outhouse to provide at least one evidence that outhouse
is not the agent without consciousness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent
In artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent (IA) is an autonomous entity which observes through sensors and acts upon an environment using actuators (i.e. it is an agent) and directs its activity towards achieving goals (i.e. it is rational). Intelligent agents may also learn or use knowledge to achieve their goals. They may be very simple or very complex: a reflex machine such as a thermostat is an intelligent agent, as is a human being, as is a community of human beings working together towards a goal.

Click to expand...

Definition of “religious dogma”: a claim which does not match the scientific criteria, a claim which has no experimental evidence.
Definition of “religious adept”: a man who believes in religious dogma.

outhouse has failed to provide the evidence that outhouse has consciousness.
And this means that outhouse is the religious adept by definition.

The most popular religious dogma claims that man has “indivisible-single-consciousness”, the adepts of this religious dogma are scared to death by the idea that other agents/entities might be present in their own brain. That fierce fear of the possibility of other agents/entities being present in their own brain drives these people to fight until “the last drop of blood” defending the religious dogma of “indivisible-single-consciousness”.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

neuroclusterbrain has asked outhouse to provide at least one evidence that outhouse has consciousness

Click to expand...

I have factually proven I am self aware by my discussions here. Machines cannot factually replace forum members at this time.


YOU do not get to steer anything here. By your failing or succeeding to direct the argument means nothing

 

Please move more goal post with your pseudoscience and misdirection

 

outhouse said: ↑

Your factually wrong. We had one for a few weeks in here last month.

Click to expand...

Please point me to the thread. Having one ( a down-syndrome person) here and them replacing (effectively) forum members are two different things. If you say that the simple fact that he said something here is proof that he has consciousness then any old program that I create that hacks into this site and says things and responds (even if not very intelligently) must be considered to be conscious.

What is the level of quality you are willing to accept before you consider it consciousness?

 

outhouse said: ↑

Your factually wrong. We had one for a few weeks in here last month.

Click to expand...

Thanda said: ↑

Please point me to the thread. Having one ( a down-syndrome person) here and them replacing (effectively) forum members are two different things. If you say that the simple fact that he said something here is proof that he has consciousness then any old program that I create that hacks into this site and says things and responds (even if not very intelligently) must be considered to be conscious.
What is the level of quality you are willing to accept before you consider it consciousness?

Click to expand...

It is interesting to note that pseudoscientists claim that consciousness and high level of intelligence is needed in order to possess abstraction capabilities, however it is very easy to disprove this claim.

We will remind that all organisms are able to distinguish “food” from “non-food”.
However “food” and “non-food” are abstract objects.
And that means that all organisms have abstraction capabilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process by which general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" is the product of this process—a concept that acts as a super-categorical noun for all subordinate concepts, and connects any related concepts as a group, field, or category.
Conceptual abstractions may be formed by filtering the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, selecting only the aspects which are relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball selects only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, eliminating the other characteristics of that particular ball. In a type–token distinction, a type (e.g., a 'ball') is more abstract than its tokens (e.g., 'that leather soccer ball').

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_and_concrete
Abstract and concrete are classifications that denote whether a term describes an object with a physical referent or one with no physical referents.
<…>
Examples of abstract and concrete objects
Abstract||||Concrete
Tennis||||A tennis match
Redness||||The red coloring of an apple
Five||||Five cars

Click to expand...

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

“Appeal to authorities” is a form of logical fallacy

Religious adepts can be very easily identified by using the following diagnostic criteria:
1) they use the “appeal to authority” as an argument;
2) they are unable to provide scientific definitions for the terms that they use in their texts, and instead of scientific definitions they provide crackpot blabber;
3) they are totally incapable to provide the scientific arguments and instead of scientific arguments they actively use all sorts of bureaucratic muck (write complaints/denunciations, vote “against” at the polls/ratings, etc.).
4) and so on.

“Appeal to authorities” is not a the scientific argument; “appeal to authorities” is a form of logical fallacy.
“Appeal to authorities” is the diagnostic criteria which identifies the religious adept.
And this means that Sapiens is the religious adept.


Definition of “religious adept”: a man who believes in religious dogma.
Definition of “religious dogma”: a claim which does not match the scientific criteria, a claim which has no experimental evidence.

There is a common misunderstanding among population about the term “religious adept” – many people erroneously think that “all religious adepts believe in God”. However, such thinking is incorrect – there are religions without God, as for example Buddhism.
And that means that “religious adept” may not believe in God, however he is still classified as “religious adept”.

It is very easy to recognize the “religious adept” using the following diagnostic criteria: if a man says “I have not done the experiment, I will not do the experiment, I believe my religious dogma no matter what is the evidence, I will not look into the evidence, I am not interested in the evidence, I believe my religious dogma no matter what is the evidence” then such a man is classified as “religious adept”.

The most popular religious dogma claims that man has “indivisible-single-consciousness”, the adepts of this religious dogma are scared to death by the idea that other agents/entities might be present in their own brain. That fierce fear of the possibility of other agents/entities being present in their own brain drives these people to fight until “the last drop of blood” defending the religious dogma of “indivisible-single-consciousness”.

Click to expand...

You don't even know what an appeal to authority is and when it applies.

An argument from authority refers to two kinds of logical arguments:

A logically valid argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of one or more authoritative source(s), whose opinions are likely to be true on the relevant issue.

A logically fallacious argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of a source that is not authoritative. Sources could be non-authoritative because of their personal bias, their disagreement with consensus on the issue, their non-expertise in the relevant issue, or a number of other issues. (Often, this is called an appeal to authority, rather than argument from authority.)

An expert opinion on a subject, and a journal article represents multiple expert opinions, is a logically valid argument from authority; but you're pretending, hoping we're all stupid.

Religious adepts tend to specialize in arguments from ignorance.
.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Neurocluster Brain Model is the brain model based on neuroscience which demystifies, reveals and explains all religious and occult phenomena.
Millions of people have experienced various religious and occult phenomena however skeptical scientists deny even the existence of such phenomena. The denial of the phenomena is not the solution because the denial provides no explanation why so many people claim to have experienced various religious and occult phenomena. Instead of denial the scientific explanation of underlying mechanisms is needed.
Neurocluster Brain Model provides the scientific explanation of underlying mechanisms of religious and occult phenomena. Neurocluster Brain Model succeeds where other scientific models fail.
For the first time ever all religious experiences (communication with Gods, angels, demons, etc) and psychic powers (mediumship, psychography, telepathy, etc) are revealed and explained in the scientific way.

Brief summary of Neurocluster Brain Model

When a man sees new unknown object for the first time then finite number of neurons in the brain (cluster of neurons) stores information about object's model (how the object looks, how the object moves, how the object behaves, etc).
Information about that object is saved not in the whole brain, but only in the finite “piece of the brain” – the evidence for that are experimental data about brain damage – if the brain is damaged in some local area then brain loses information only about some classes of objects, but not about all objects.
The model of the object is stored inside the “piece of the brain” (cluster of neurons) and this neurocluster acts not only as passive “data file” but also under special conditions this neurocluster can act as “executable file” which can simulate the behavior of stored object for the main personality – this is the underlying mechanism of how religious adepts communicate with spirits/angels/Gods/etc and also the underlying mechanism of other religious and occult phenomena.

Introduction

The human brain contains billions of neural cells however the man perceives himself as having only one(1) personality, one(1) consciousness, and people who believe in the existence of the soul perceive themselves as having only one(1) soul. Human brain contains billions of neurons however vast majority of people strongly believe that all these billions of neurons contain only one(1) personality, one(1) consciousness, one(1) soul. This “one human body contains one consciousness” model is sufficient to explain the majority of events in casual normal routine life and this is the reason why this model has become de facto accepted model in all human cultures and societies without ever doubting its validity. Medieval scholars were debating the question “how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?” (a.k.a. “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”), however nobody has ever raised the question “how many souls can be contained in one human body?” assuming by default that one(1) human body contains only one(1) soul.
However let’s raise a simple question: does this “one human body contains one consciousness” model really can explain all phenomena which happen with human consciousness?
The answer is: “one human body contains one consciousness” model actually fails to explain the vast range of phenomena which happen with human consciousness as it will be shown in this website. Let’s begin with the simple example.
All religions claim that the soul is immortal and indestructible, the soul is unbreakable, and the soul can not be divided into small pieces.
Some religions (like for example Hinduism) claim that besides humans all living creatures have a soul – all animals, plants, trees do have a soul.
What is the source of these claims about soul properties? All religions claim that their sacred texts are divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired.
Let’s analyze these claims a little bit.
Hinduism claims that every plant has a soul and that the soul is unbreakable and can not be divided into small pieces (Bhagavad-gītā. 2.23-24).


However let’s analyze a simple phenomenon like plant propagation from cuttings. Plant cutting (a.k.a. as striking or cloning) is a technique for vegetatively (asexually) propagating plants in which a piece of the stem or root of the source plant is placed in a suitable medium such as moist soil, potting mix, coir or rock wool. The cutting produces new roots, stems, or both, and thus becomes a new plant independent of the parent.
Using plant cutting technique we can divide one plant into many pieces and every such new piece now has become a separate plant. Since every plant has a soul, this means that one soul of the original plant was divided into many souls using such primitive technique as plant cutting.
As we can see from this very simple example, religious knowledge (which is claimed to have been originated from divine and supernatural sources) about soul properties contradicts very simple well known experimental facts like plant propagation from cuttings.

Now let’s go to the animal kingdom. The male paper nautilus (a.k.a. argonaut octopus) possesses a specialized, extended tentacle, called a hectocotylus, where packets of sperm are stored. When a male paper nautilus detects a female, the hectocotylus detaches from the octopus body and swims towards the female under its own power. The hectocotylus inserts its load into the female’s mantle and can remain active, depositing sperm in her even as its owner goes on his way. The male, essentially, has sex in absentia. The first scientists to observe the hectocotylus in action actually misidentified it as a parasitic worm attached to the female paper nautilus.
Let’s raise a simple question: has hectocotylus a separate soul or not? Religious sacred texts fail to answer such question.

Those were examples about plants and animals, but what about humans? Anyway, there are many people who believe that only humans have souls and these people believe that plants and animals do not have any soul whatsoever.
Let’s raise a simple question: how many souls are contained in conjoined twins (a.k.a. Siamese twins): one or two souls? Religious leaders get very confused when being asked such a simple question because the fact of multiple human souls residing in one physical body contradicts their religious doctrines.
However let’s raise a simple question: how many souls can be contained in one human body? Humanity did not possess tools and technologies which would allow to investigate this question up until the twentieth century. However in the late 1950s things has dramatically changed when neurosurgeons began experiments with the human brain. Some people have epilepsy. Epilepsy is a phenomenon when a small number of neurons in the brain excite themselves via positive feedback neural circuits which leads to the excitation of nearby neurons and this excessive hypersynchronous neuronal activity spreads through large areas of the brain. There are many ways to treat epilepsy however all these treatments share the same common working principle – in order to eliminate the epileptic seizures you need to suppress the excitement of neurons and you need to suppress the spread of the neural excitement through the large areas of the brain. However in some patients all known treatment methods fail and the patient continues to have frequent and strong epileptic seizures. In the late 1950s neurosurgeons decided to try out new drastic method for dealing with such extra hard epilepsy cases. The hypothesis of new treatment method was the following. Human brain consists of two hemispheres which are connected via link which is called corpus callosum. During the epileptic seizure the synchronous neuronal activity originates in one hemisphere and then via corpus callosum it reaches the another hemisphere thus spreading through the whole brain. If we would cut corpus callosum then synchronous neuronal activity which originated in one hemisphere would be stopped from spreading into another hemisphere and this would eliminate epileptic seizure. Several patients with hardest epilepsy cases were chosen to test out the hypothesis and corpus callosum was cut in these patients. Such patients who have their corpus callosum cut are called “split-brain patients”. The hypothesis of neurosurgeons was confirmed to be correct – the cutting of corpus callosum eliminated or greatly reduced epileptic seizures in split-brain patients. However experiments with split-brain patients revealed very interesting side effect of corpus callosum cutting. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body. When interconnection between hemispheres (corpus callosum) is cut then both hemispheres begin to act autonomously from each other. For example, when split-brain sits near his wife, the left hand of the patient hugs and fondles the wife, however at the same time the right hand of the patient angrily beats the wife – different hemispheres of the split-brain patient have made different judgments towards the wife and both hemispheres act independently from each other. In other words, the cutting of corpus callosum created two(2) autonomous personalities, which think differently and make different decisions on the same subject and these decisions might be even diametrically opposite.

More detailed description of Neurocluster Brain Model is at the address:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com

Click to expand...

This is totally perfect for the George Noory show.

 

George-ananda said: ↑

This is interesting but doesn't answer my question which was about mediums. How can a medium know a detail about my grandfather whom she could not reasonably have known anything about. My leading theory is that truly gifted mediums can communicate telepathically with the astral bodies of the deceased.

Click to expand...

George-ananda said: ↑

I do not hear this claim of omniscience by the more serious mediums. If you are talking about typical channeling then the knowledge will be limited to the knowledge that the less than omniscient source entity can communicate through a finite channel. I am convinced that information not known to the medium does often come through though. And that raises a conceptual challenge.

Click to expand...

The belief that “truly gifted mediums can communicate telepathically with the astral bodies of the deceased” does not meet the scientific criteria – during the repeatable experiments under strict scientific conditions, the mediums fail to get reliable/factual information from the “spirits”.

”Spirits” can provide reliable/factual information only in the case when such information was gained by the mechanism of “perceptual blindness”.
Almost everybody has encountered in their lives a phenomenon of “perceptual blindness” (a.k.a. inattentional blindness) when a man is looking for some object and that object lies just in the front of man’s eyes however man does not see it. It is important to note here that the object lying in the front of the eyes is not seen only by the main personality however the autonomous neuroclusters (a.k.a. “subconscious”) may see this object and can remember its location. When a man goes to sleep, then during the dream the autonomous neuroclusters can forward information about the object to the main personality. When a man awakes and checks the information which he has received in the dream and when he finds out that information received in the dream is correct – then the man has no idea how he has received this information so the man decides that the source of this information is “spiritual worlds” or the God himself. However the reality is much simpler. The valuable information which he has received during the dream in reality has nothing to do with the God. Some time ago this information was simply lying in front of the man’s eyes however the main personality was blind to it and did not see it and after some time autonomous neuroclusters forwarded that information to the main personality during the dreaming process. The transfer of information from autonomous neuroclusters into the main personality usually happens in situations of “extreme importance”, for example when a man was very intensively praying and asking the God to reveal some very needed information. During the dream the main personality receives the requested information from autonomous neuroclusters and when a man awakes from a dream he becomes strongly convinced that the God himself has provided the requested information. Due to the ignorance and lack of knowledge about the physiological mechanisms of the brain the man is unable to explain the source of information which he has received – and the God (or other spiritual beings) is the only explanation which he can think of.

Here is the documentary movie which shows the perceptual blindness experiment.

selective attention test
Length: 2 minutes

Neurocluster Brain Model defines “I” as the software which runs on neural-network-hardware (i.e. on neurons of the brain).
When “I” is defined as software that means that “I-object” is a divisible object, it can be divided into many composing parts, just exactly in the same way as the large software program can be decomposed into smaller submodules/subroutines/functions/etc.
That means that large neuroclusters can be decomposed into smaller sub-clusters just exactly in the same way as the large software routines can be decomposed into smaller submodules/subroutines/functions/etc.

Even more, several neuroclusters might have overlapping areas and share the same sub-clusters just exactly in the same way as the large software routines can share the same calls into smaller submodules/subroutines/functions/etc.
As for example, several neuroclusters might share the access to the sensory input information coming from sensory organs (vision, hearing, etc) – this is the typical classic scenario. We will provide typical classic example of such case which is quite common among population. Man X has lost his keys and no matter ho hard he tries he is unable to find his keys. Then this man X goes to bed and in the dream he encounters some dream character (for example his grandfather who is already dead long time ago, or Jesus, or whatever else character) and this dream character tells him in the dream that “your keys are located in the place Y”. When man X wakes up and goes to the place Y he finds his keys in that place Y. He did not know where the lost keys were and grandfather/Jesus/etc told him the correct information. Man X is astonished that information from the dream was confirmed as true and he becomes strongly convinced that his grandfather/Jesus/etc has visited him from spiritual world – that is the only explanation that he is capable to conclude. However the real underlying mechanism of this event is different. When man X was physically nearby his lost keys the main personality missed and did not notice the keys in the visual field. However another autonomous neurocluster (which has access to the same visual field) did notice the keys and has remembered its location. During the dreaming process this autonomous neurocluster can transfer information about the keys to the main personality in the form of dream character telling where keys are located. Hundreds and thousands of such cases happen around the globe everyday.

 

Thanda said: ↑

Are you of the opinion that energies and powers exist / can exist that can interact beyond expected physical boundaries. E.g. Do you believe it is possible to for human to know things they couldn't know through the known (or verified) natural senses?

Click to expand...

Religious adepts claim that Gods/angels/demons are some kind of souls that exist beyond the material world and sometimes manifest themselves to some “chosen” people and these “chosen” people can communicate with Gods/angels/demons. It is very easy to show that such claim contradicts real world facts. Let’s analyze for example Christian “spiritual beings” like Jesus and Virgin Mary. Jesus and Virgin Mary manifest themselves in “spiritual visions” only to the people who know in advance about the existence of Jesus/Mary and who believe in the existence of Jesus/Mary. However, if a man has never heard about Jesus/Mary before, then Jesus/Mary will never show up in “spiritual visions” for such a man. As for example, Jesus/Mary will be unable to manifest himself to a shaman in the Amazon rainforest who has never seen white people in his lifetime, however such shaman in “spiritual visions” can see Indian gods/spirits of Amazon rainforest without any problems. The Aborigines of Australia and Indians of America began seeing Jesus/Mary in “spiritual visions” only after European Christian missionaries arrived into Australia and America and introduced Aborigines and Indians with Jesus/Mary. Until arrival of European Christian missionaries into Australia/America local people had never seen Jesus or Mary in their “spiritual visions”, they saw only the gods/spirits/etc of their own religion. The point is that if Jesus/Mary would be some kind of “soul-flying-around” then he could fly on his own around the world and he would be able to manifest himself to aboriginal people all around the globe, and the aboriginal people would see Jesus/Mary in their “spiritual visions” and would convert themselves into Christians even without any involvement of European Christian missionaries. When European Christians arrived into new unexplored geographical locations they should find local aboriginal people already worshiping Jesus/Mary because Jesus/Mary should had been manifesting themselves to local aboriginal people long time ago before arrival of European Christians. However such scenario had never happened. There is not a single case of such scenario recorded in the history.
Exactly the same principle is valid for European Christians as well – if a Christian knows nothing about Indian Gods/spirits then Indian God/spirit will be unable to manifest himself to European Christian in “spiritual vision”.
In other words, in “spiritual vision” a man can see only such “God” about which he knows in advance, however if a man has never heard before about that particular “God” then he will be unable to see this “God” in “spiritual visions”.
Why does this happen? The underlying mechanism is following. When a man goes to sleep he sees various objects/characters in the dream, like for example he sees in the dream his mother/father/brother, his friend, a cat, a bird, etc. Suppose the man sees a cat in his dream. The cat in the dream has all the features of the real cat: walks like real cat, meows like real cat, eats like real cat, etc.
Why does the dream cat have all the features of the real cat? The answer is simple. The man earlier had seen the real cat and the model of the cat was stored in the neural circuits of man’s brain. During the dreaming process when dream simulator needs to present the image of the cat to the main personality, the dream simulator sends query to the brain’s knowledge database “what do we know about the cats? Please provide the model of the cat and we will draw the image of the cat in the dream”. If the man’s brain contains the model of the cat then the dream simulator uses that cluster of neurons which contains the cat model and draws the image of the cat in the dream. However if the cat model is absent in the brain then dream simulator is unable to draw the cat in the dream because the dream simulator has no data how the cat should look like.
It is important to note that the cluster of neurons which contains the model of cat, dog or some other animal, under some conditions can take over the control of man’s body and in this case we have shamanic-magic conversion of “werewolf” type. Ancient Norse chronicles report about berserkers (or berserks) – fierce Norse warriors who were able to transform into a wolf or a bear thus becoming unbeatable in the battle. Berserkers felt no pain and believed that he had transformed into wolf or bear.
Phenomenon of Norse “berserkers” resembles the “cafard” or “cathard” (Polynesia), “mal de pelea” (Puerto Rico), “iich'aa” (Navaho), Zulu battle trance, also similar phenomena are found in Laos, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere.
In modern psychiatry the ancient phenomenon of “berserkers” is known under names “clinical lycanthropy” and “amok”. A neuroimaging study of patients diagnosed with clinical lycanthropy revealed that parts of the brain known to be involved in representing body shape display unusual activation, which means that when people report their bodies are changing shape, they are really perceiving those feelings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_lycanthropy
Clinical lycanthropy is defined as a rare psychiatric syndrome that involves a delusion that the affected person can transform into, has transformed into, or is a non-human animal. Its name is connected to the mythical condition of lycanthropy, a supernatural affliction in which humans are said to physically shapeshift into wolves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_amok
Running amok, sometimes referred to as simply amok, also spelled amuk, from the Malay, is "an episode of sudden mass assault against people or objects usually by a single individual following a period of brooding that has traditionally been regarded as occurring especially in Indonesian culture but is now increasingly viewed as psychopathological behavior occurring worldwide in numerous countries and cultures". The syndrome of "Amok" is found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV TR). The phrase is often used in a less serious manner when describing something that is wildly out of control or causing a frenzy (e.g., a dog tearing up the living room furniture might be termed as "running amok.")

Click to expand...

Here is a documentary movie which shows how this looks in practice. It is important to note people in the movie are not acting, the movie shows the real condition of the people during religious practices of Pentecostalism (movement within Christianity).

Животные звуки в "Торонтстком благословении".
Length: 2 minutes

 

Thanda said: ↑

Are you of the opinion that energies and powers exist / can exist that can interact beyond expected physical boundaries. E.g. Do you believe it is possible to for human to know things they couldn't know through the known (or verified) natural senses?

Click to expand...

People who have returned from astral journeys claim that they have seen sightings and they have heard sounds during astral journeys. It is important to note one important feature in all these reports – the sightings and sounds have exactly the same characteristics as if they were seen with physical eyes and were heard with physical ears. However, physical eyes can see electromagnetic spectrum wavelengths from about 390 to 700 nm (visible spectrum range), and physical ears can hear frequencies from 20 to 20,000 Hz (hearing range). If the range of visible spectrum is changed even slightly then the appearance of the world becomes almost unrecognizable. Below are some example images which show how the world looks in the infrared range.





Infrared thermal images

However there are no reports whatsoever from astral travelers about seeing the world in other spectrum range or hearing sounds in other frequency range. It is pretty obvious that it is impossible to fail to notice such thing as the change of visible spectrum range because the view of the world would change drastically. All astral travelers always see the world in the same spectrum range as if they would see it using physical eyes.
This raises very simple question: how it can be that the soul sees and hears exactly in the same spectrum range if the soul is made up from different substance than the physical body? The only scenario when “astral eyes” could see the images exactly in the same spectrum range is when “astral eyes” would have exactly the same construction as physical eyes. It is enough even to slightly change the parameters of eye’s composing parts and the seen images would immediately slide to other spectrum range. In order “astral eye” could see the identical image which is seen by the physical eye, the “astral eye” should have exactly the same identical pupil, it must react exactly to the same identical electromagnetic spectrum of light, etc.
However, if “astral eye” would begin to register visible spectrum range frequencies then such “astral eye” would interact with photons of visible spectrum range and automatically such “astral eye” would become visible by physical eyes. Invisible “astral eye” cannot see visible spectrum range which we see. If the soul and “astral eye” are invisible to our physical eyes then the soul cannot see the world in the same spectrum range as our physical eyes see. In best case scenario, invisible “astral eye” can see the world only in the spectrum range which is invisible to our physical eyes (like x-rays spectrum or something like that). The spectrum range seen by physical and astral eyes must be completely different and cannot be the same. Which means that world seen by physical and astral eyes must be two completely different things. This is elementary physics.
However astral travelers report that they are seeing the world in exactly the same spectrum range as seen with physical eyes and this fact is a very strong proof that all these astral journeys happen simply in the virtual world modeled and simulated inside the brain of the astral traveler and these virtual worlds are quite good copies of the physical world.

 

Thanda said: ↑

Are you of the opinion that energies and powers exist / can exist that can interact beyond expected physical boundaries. E.g. Do you believe it is possible to for human to know things they couldn't know through the known (or verified) natural senses?

Click to expand...

Religious adepts claim that a man born blind gains the ability to see when entering NDE (Near-Death Experience) or OOBE (Out-of-Body-Experience). One example of such claim is provided below.

http://kernz.org/nd/nde-papers/Ring/Ring-Journal of Near-Death Studies_1997-16-101-147-1.pdf
Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent Eyeless Vision
Kenneth Ring, Ph.D. Sharon Cooper, M.A. University of Connecticut
Abstract: This article reports the results of an investigation into near-death and out-of-body experiences in 31 blind respondents. The study sought to address three main questions: (1) whether blind individuals have near-death experiences (NDEs) and, if so, whether they are the same as or different from those of sighted persons; (2) whether blind persons ever claim to see during NDEs and out-of-body experiences (OBEs); and (3) if such claims are made, whether they can ever be corroborated by reference to in-dependent evidence. Our findings revealed that blind persons, including those blind from birth, do report classic NDEs of the kind common to sighted persons; that the great preponderance of blind persons claim to see during NDEs and OBEs; and that occasionally claims of visually-based knowledge that could not have been obtained by normal means can be independently corroborated. We present and evaluate various explanations of these findings before arriving at an interpretation based on the concept of transcendental awareness. <….>
Conclusion
<…> The story of Sarah implied that she really could see during her NDE, in the way that a sighted person might.
(Journal of Near-Death Studies)

Click to expand...

There are many documented cases when surgery has restored the ability of seeing in born blind adult patients. In all such cases after the recovery from blindness the patients were unable to recognize any object (as for example, were unable to distinguish a spoon from a horse, a square from circle, etc) and only after long training such man hardly learns to recognize some objects (not all objects, but only some classes of objects). In many cases such patients never learn to recognize visual objects and restored seeing is only a hindrance for a patient because main personality is irritated by signals coming from the eyes and these signals cannot be usefully processed, so these patients simply put on black glasses and continue to live fully blind life to which they are already used to.
Religious adepts claim that when a man born blind enters NDE/OOBE he gains the ability see and in an instant moment he can recognize objects, however such claims can be easily proved to be wrong by using born blind patients who recovered from blindness using surgery – these patients do see, however they are unable to recognize any visual object. Thus all reports which claim that born blind man was able to see and instantly recognize trees/table/etc in NDE/OOBE contradict medical facts. Ability of seeing and ability of recognizing objects are two separate unrelated things. In order to clarify the idea we will provide an analogy. Suppose you hear a man speaking some unknown foreign language – in this case you are able to hear sounds, however you are unable to recognize any word in continuous speech, for you the continuous speech will be equivalent to a simple noise. Exactly same situation is with born blind patients – recovery from blindness simply flushes the main personality with visual noise and none of the visual objects can be recognized and identified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_from_blindness
Recovery from blindness is the phenomenon of a blind person gaining the ability to see, usually as a result of medical treatment. As a thought experiment, the phenomenon is usually referred to as Molyneux's Problem. The first published human case was reported in 1728 by the Surgeon William Cheselden. Patients who experience dramatic recovery from blindness experience significant to total Agnosia, having serious confusion with their visual perception. <...>
In 1974, Richard Gregory described a patient, Sidney Bradford, a 52-year-old who gained vision from corneal grafts to both eyes. <...> Before surgery Bradford was a machinist, but even after acquiring vision preferred working with his eyes closed to identify tools.

Click to expand...

Religious adepts claim that flat EEG during NDE (Near-Death Experience) proves that the person was completely dead during NDE experience, however such claim is not true. The truth is that EEG is unable to register the electric potentials generated by an individual neurons, EEG is able to register only the synchronous activity of thousands of neurons. If EEG is flat then it does not mean that all neurons are “silent” and “dead”. To clarify the idea we will provide the analogy. Suppose you are walking nearby a football stadium (during a match) in which thousands of football fans synchronously loudly chant the name of their supported team – you can hear this chanting even being far away from the stadium. However if football fans do not synchronously chant loudly then you will be unable to hear what two men are talking to each other sitting in nearby seats in the stadium. Exactly the same situation is with EEG. When heart beating and breathing stops, the brain is transferred into energy saving mode and all non-vital zones of the brain are shut down saving the last resources for the neurocluster of main personality, which immediately is thrown into “spiritual worlds” (into the virtual worlds modeled by the brain). Huge zones of the brain are devoted for processing information coming from sensory organs (extracting invariant features), as for example in order to recognize visual stimulus (as for example the figure of some deity/angel/etc) coming from the physical eyes millions of neurons must do information processing and this neural activity can be registered with EEG. However when being in “spiritual world” the deity/angel/etc is modeled by relatively small number of neurons and EEG is unable to register this neural activity, EEG will be flat despite the fact that at the same time main personality is communicating with deity/angel/etc in “spiritual world”. This is elementary physics and neurobiology. The main personality can have extensive “spiritual experience” during flat EEG. When a man is in coma stage and if you will put microelectrodes into single neurons then you will be able to register neural spikes in single neurons even when EEG is flat. Neurons stop firing spikes only when they are physically damaged or destroyed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain. In clinical contexts, EEG refers to the recording of the brain's spontaneous electrical activity over a short period of time, usually 20–40 minutes, as recorded from multiple electrodes placed on the scalp. Diagnostic applications generally focus on the spectral content of EEG, that is, the type of neural oscillations that can be observed in EEG signals.
<...>
Source of EEG activity
The brain's electrical charge is maintained by billions of neurons. Neurons are electrically charged (or "polarized") by membrane transport proteins that pump ions across their membranes. Neurons are constantly exchanging ions with the extracellular milieu, for example to maintain resting potential and to propagate action potentials. Ions of similar charge repel each other, and when many ions are pushed out of many neurons at the same time, they can push their neighbours, who push their neighbours, and so on, in a wave. This process is known as volume conduction. When the wave of ions reaches the electrodes on the scalp, they can push or pull electrons on the metal on the electrodes. Since metal conducts the push and pull of electrons easily, the difference in push or pull voltages between any two electrodes can be measured by a voltmeter. Recording these voltages over time gives us the EEG.
The electric potential generated by an individual neuron is far too small to be picked up by EEG or MEG. EEG activity therefore always reflects the summation of the synchronous activity of thousands or millions of neurons that have similar spatial orientation. If the cells do not have similar spatial orientation, their ions do not line up and create waves to be detected. Pyramidal neurons of the cortex are thought to produce the most EEG signal because they are well-aligned and fire together. Because voltage fields fall off with the square of distance, activity from deep sources is more difficult to detect than currents near the skull.
Scalp EEG activity shows oscillations at a variety of frequencies. Several of these oscillations have characteristic frequency ranges, spatial distributions and are associated with different states of brain functioning (e.g., waking and the various sleep stages). These oscillations represent synchronized activity over a network of neurons. The neuronal networks underlying some of these oscillations are understood (e.g., the thalamocortical resonance underlying sleep spindles), while many others are not (e.g., the system that generates the posterior basic rhythm). Research that measures both EEG and neuron spiking finds the relationship between the two is complex, with a combination of EEG power in the gamma band and phase in the delta band relating most strongly to neuron spike activity.

Click to expand...

 

Thanda said: ↑

Are you of the opinion that energies and powers exist / can exist that can interact beyond expected physical boundaries. E.g. Do you believe it is possible to for human to know things they couldn't know through the known (or verified) natural senses?

Click to expand...

When a man is in “astral worlds” then the brain blocks the movement of the physical body, however the control of 1) the breathing, 2) eye movement and 3) tongue movement stay intact thus every action done with “astral” eyes/tongue/ breathing is perfectly mirrored in physical body. Which means, that when a man is in the “astral world” he can still send signals to physical world using his eyes/tongue movements and breathing – all you need to do is to arrange in advance the communication codes (as for example Morse code could be used) to transfer meaningful information into physical world thus proving that a man has awareness when his physical body is immobile.

Religious adepts claim that OOBE is the highest level of “astral traveling”. During OOBE the soul leaves physical body and sees physical body from aside and flies through the walls.
However in reality OOBE is not the highest level of “astral traveling”. And here is the explanation why it is so.
All “astral” phenomena which have different names and which look like different unrelated phenomena (simple dreaming, lucid dreaming, OOBE, NDE, etc) actually are various manifestations of the same identical phenomenon. The best proof for that is the fact, that very often these “different unrelated phenomena” gradually morph one into another, as for example at first man sees simple dream which gradually morphs into OOBE and then OOBE gradually morphs back into simple dream and so on.
“Astral” phenomena which have different names and which look like different unrelated phenomena (simple dreaming, lucid dreaming, OOBE, NDE, etc) differ from each other only by the degree of realism of the world which man sees and also by the degree of clarity of perception while he is inside that “spiritual world”. When the seen world differs very strongly from real physical world and when clarity of perception is very low (like being drunk from alcohol) then we have a simple dream. The more features of seen world come closer to features of real physical world and the higher the clarity of perception – the higher the level of “astral travel”.
Lucid dreaming is higher level than simple dream, because clarity of perception is higher than in simple dream. OOBE is higher level than lucid dreaming because in OOBE the seen world quite closely resembles real physical world while in lucid dream a man travels in fictitious non-existing worlds. However there are several important differences between OOBE world and real physical world. In OOBE world the man can fly in the air, man can fly through the walls, man can see his physical body from aside, etc – in other words the physical laws of real world are modeled with bugs, unrealistically.
However much higher level than OOBE is the state of “false awakening”. “False awakening” is the state when a man thinks that he has waken up and he accomplishes his daily morning rituals (like washing, cooking, going to school/work, etc) and a man is completely sure that he is in real physical world because all physical laws are modeled 100 percent perfectly. When a man is in OOBE state he can easily recognize that he is in OOBE state because physical laws are modeled with bugs – in OOBE state he can fly through the walls, he can see his physical body from aside, etc – thus he can easily recognize that he is not in real physical world. However in “false awakening” state he has absolutely no clues and no chances to recognize that he is not in real physical world, because he cannot fly through the walls, he cannot see his body from aside, etc – all physical laws are modeled much more realistically than in OOBE case – and it is impossible for him to detect that he is not in real physical world. And he can discover that it was “false awakening” only when the alarm clock rings, he wakes up and discovers that he is still lying in bed while theoretically he should be already in school/work/etc because theoretically he had waken up long time ago and had done all daily morning rituals already.
In other words, seeing own physical body from aside and flying through walls is a bug of modeling in the brain and this bug enables easily recognize that you are not in real physical world. However “false awakening” state is a result of much better quality modeling inside the brain which has no modeling bugs and is absolutely indistinguishable from real physical world, like in the movie “The Matrix”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening
A false awakening is a vivid and convincing dream about awakening from sleep, while the dreamer in reality continues to sleep. After a false awakening, subjects often dream they are performing daily morning rituals such as cooking, cleaning and eating. A subset of false awakenings, namely those in which one dreams that one has awoken from sleep that featured dreams, take on aspects of a double dream or a dream within a dream. This may be one of the causes of bed wetting, since the affected person may believe they are using a toilet.

Click to expand...

Many religious adepts claim that you can easily recognize that you are inside “astral world” by looking into the mirror – if the mirror shows nothing or distorted reflection then you can know that you are in “astral world”, and if the mirror shows undistorted good reflection then you can know that you are in real physical world. However this “mirror test” in reality is completely unreliable, because mirror reflection is missing or distorted only when a man’s brain is unable to model the correct reflected image, however if man’s brain is capable to model correct reflected image then such man will see perfect reflected mirror image when being inside “astral world” – it all depends on modeling capabilities of a particular man. The are many people who see perfect reflected mirror images while being in dream thus “mirror test” is totally non-working test for such people. The movie “Inception” also has the similar error – according to the movie a spinning tractricoid was reliable testing technique – should he spin the top and it topples over, he is awake; if it continues to spin, then he is still dreaming. However in reality such test of “spinning tractricoid” is totally unreliable – the brain of the sleeper might have no problem at all to model the spinning tractricoid which will topple over just the same as in real physical world.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

The belief that “truly gifted mediums can communicate telepathically with the astral bodies of the deceased” does not meet the scientific criteria – during the repeatable experiments under strict scientific conditions, the mediums fail to get reliable/factual information from the “spirits”.

Click to expand...

That is untrue and what the pseudo-skeptic community will claim. See some modern studies by people like Dr. Gary Schwartz. Something is indeed going on that does not fit inside the Nuerocluster theory.

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

”Spirits” can provide reliable/factual information only in the case when such information was gained by the mechanism of “perceptual blindness”.
Almost everybody has encountered in their lives a phenomenon of “perceptual blindness” (a.k.a. inattentional blindness) when a man is looking for some object and that object lies just in the front of man’s eyes however man does not see it. It is important to note here that the object lying in the front of the eyes is not seen only by the main personality however the autonomous neuroclusters (a.k.a. “subconscious”) may see this object and can remember its location. When a man goes to sleep, then during the dream the autonomous neuroclusters can forward information about the object to the main personality. When a man awakes and checks the information which he has received in the dream and when he finds out that information received in the dream is correct – then the man has no idea how he has received this information so the man decides that the source of this information is “spiritual worlds” or the God himself. However the reality is much simpler. The valuable information which he has received during the dream in reality has nothing to do with the God. Some time ago this information was simply lying in front of the man’s eyes however the main personality was blind to it and did not see it and after some time autonomous neuroclusters forwarded that information to the main personality during the dreaming process. The transfer of information from autonomous neuroclusters into the main personality usually happens in situations of “extreme importance”, for example when a man was very intensively praying and asking the God to reveal some very needed information. During the dream the main personality receives the requested information from autonomous neuroclusters and when a man awakes from a dream he becomes strongly convinced that the God himself has provided the requested information. Due to the ignorance and lack of knowledge about the physiological mechanisms of the brain the man is unable to explain the source of information which he has received – and the God (or other spiritual beings) is the only explanation which he can think of.

Here is the documentary movie which shows the perceptual blindness experiment.

selective attention test
Length: 2 minutes

Neurocluster Brain Model defines “I” as the software which runs on neural-network-hardware (i.e. on neurons of the brain).
When “I” is defined as software that means that “I-object” is a divisible object, it can be divided into many composing parts, just exactly in the same way as the large software program can be decomposed into smaller submodules/subroutines/functions/etc.
That means that large neuroclusters can be decomposed into smaller sub-clusters just exactly in the same way as the large software routines can be decomposed into smaller submodules/subroutines/functions/etc.

Even more, several neuroclusters might have overlapping areas and share the same sub-clusters just exactly in the same way as the large software routines can share the same calls into smaller submodules/subroutines/functions/etc.
As for example, several neuroclusters might share the access to the sensory input information coming from sensory organs (vision, hearing, etc) – this is the typical classic scenario. We will provide typical classic example of such case which is quite common among population. Man X has lost his keys and no matter ho hard he tries he is unable to find his keys. Then this man X goes to bed and in the dream he encounters some dream character (for example his grandfather who is already dead long time ago, or Jesus, or whatever else character) and this dream character tells him in the dream that “your keys are located in the place Y”. When man X wakes up and goes to the place Y he finds his keys in that place Y. He did not know where the lost keys were and grandfather/Jesus/etc told him the correct information. Man X is astonished that information from the dream was confirmed as true and he becomes strongly convinced that his grandfather/Jesus/etc has visited him from spiritual world – that is the only explanation that he is capable to conclude. However the real underlying mechanism of this event is different. When man X was physically nearby his lost keys the main personality missed and did not notice the keys in the visual field. However another autonomous neurocluster (which has access to the same visual field) did notice the keys and has remembered its location. During the dreaming process this autonomous neurocluster can transfer information about the keys to the main personality in the form of dream character telling where keys are located. Hundreds and thousands of such cases happen around the globe everyday.

Click to expand...

Now I think I am getting clearer picture of where you stand. You think all paranormal phenomena can be reduced to materialistic explanations. I am certain beyond all reasonable doubt that paranormal phenomena has occurred that can not be explained by the Neurocluster Brain Model. Your theory might explain some set of the less compelling phenomena but in no way will begin to touch the stronger cases. As a student of the paranormal I am aware of the skeptical arguments and they are lacking in my objective opinion.

Perceptual blindness obviously exists but it sounds to me like you are taking your pet theory too far.

 

Quite right George....the astral plane is a world of causes relative to the material plane of effects....all attempts to understand it in terms of 3D time and space is vanity... Which btw is why all black magic practices of using the astral as a means of creating targeted effects in this world, eventually leads to their undoing as they are unintentionally creating other karmic effects that will play out on themselves....

 

George-ananda said: ↑

You think all paranormal phenomena can be reduced to materialistic explanations. I am certain beyond all reasonable doubt that paranormal phenomena has occurred that can not be explained by the Neurocluster Brain Model. Your theory might explain some set of the less compelling phenomena but in no way will begin to touch the stronger cases. As a student of the paranormal I am aware of the skeptical arguments and they are lacking in my objective opinion.
Perceptual blindness obviously exists but it sounds to me like you are taking your pet theory too far.

Click to expand...

ben d said: ↑

the astral plane is a world of causes relative to the material plane of effects....all attempts to understand it in terms of 3D time and space is vanity...

Click to expand...

Let’s raise a question: how real are these “spiritual worlds”? To answer this question we will use the analogy. Let’s analyze a computer game which has its own 2D or 3D virtual world, its own virtual characters, its own laws and rules, etc. When a man plays a computer game, he interacts with this virtual game world, he communicates with virtual game characters as if this virtual world is real. However if we will physically destroy the computer then automatically this virtual world will disappear and all virtual characters will disappear too.
Exactly the same situation is with “spiritual worlds”. All these “spiritual worlds” are generated by the neuroclusters in the brain (exactly the same happens during dreaming) and the main personality (which enters such “spiritual world”) has no tools whatsoever to distinguish a simulated virtual world from the real world. When the main personality enters “spiritual world” then everything inside such “spiritual world” looks very realistic.
Like with the computer, exactly the same situation is with the brain – “spiritual world” exists only as long as the physical brain exists which generates the sounds and images of “spiritual world” – and if the brain is physically destroyed then all these “spiritual worlds” are destroyed too.
However religious adepts naively believe that “spiritual worlds” can exist without physical brain. Such a belief is equivalent to the belief that the virtual world of computer game will continue to exist after the computer has been physically destroyed.
When a man is put into “spiritual world” state, the neural circuits which do the modeling create pictures and sounds in a concordance to the belief system of that man. Let’s illustrate with several examples. The majority of so called “astral travel experts” claim that physical human body is connected with “astral body” through an “astral (silver) cord”.“Astral travel experts” claim that this astral cord is quite thick when the astral body is located near the physical body and this astral cord becomes thinner and thinner when the astral body wanders away from the physical body. If this astral cord becomes broken then the astral body is unable to return to the physical body and a man dies or in some cases some alien spiritual being (like demonic spirit) can attach itself to that broken astral cord and thus can incarnate into the human body replacing the original human soul (such phenomenon is called “demonic possession”). Such are the claims of “astral travel experts”. However the reality is completely different. If a man had been instructed about astral cord existence before this man was taught the techniques of astral traveling then such man will see and feel the astral cord during his astral traveling, such man will confirm that the astral cord surely does really exists. However if a man had never heard about astral cord existence before this man was taught techniques of astral traveling then such man will never see and will never feel any astral cord during his journeys in the “astral world”. The conclusion is simple. When a man is put into “spiritual world” state the neural circuits which do the modeling create pictures and sounds in a concordance to the belief system of that man. For example if a man believes in the existence of Jesus Christ, then such man during the travel in “spiritual world” will surely meet Jesus Christ. If a man believes in the existence of Krishna/Buddha/etc then such man will meet Krishna/Buddha/etc during his travel in “spiritual world”. The belief system of a man determines the images which he will see during the “spiritual travel”. As for example, famous Bulgarian clairvoyant Baba Vanga always saw and communicated with “saint virgin Mary” and not with Vishnu/Shiva/Krisha or whatever else non-Christian deity. Bulgarian clairvoyant Baba Vanga in her childhood was imprinted with Christian dogmatism and thus as the result Baba Vanga communicated only with Christian characters like “saint Virgin Mary” in her “spiritual visions”.
Many people have experienced leaving physical body (a.k.a. OOBE – out of body experience). When being outside of the physical body some people are able to see their own physical body, however other people do not see their own physical body. What is the cause of such difference? The answer is simple. People whose brain contains clear detailed model of their own physical body do see their own physical body while being in OOBE. The detailed model of the physical body is formed in the brain when a man spends countless hours in front of the mirror examining himself from all sides, examining every spot, every hair and other small details. However other people spend minimum of their time in the front of the mirror – such man glances briefly into the mirror to check if his nose is not smudged with tomato ketchup or if cheeks are not stuck with crumbs of cake – and that’s all he needs to know – in such case the model of the physical body in such man’s brain is very rough and smeared – and when such man experiences OOBE, there is very small probability that he will be able to see his own physical body from aside because of the simple fact – the neural circuits in his brain have too few data in order to be able to model and create image of his physical body viewed from aside (viewed from third person perspective).
The situation with the chakras is identical to the situation with astral cord. In “spiritual journeys” chakras are seen only by those people who knew and believed in advance that chakras do exist. The concept of “chakras” belong to the eastern tradition and this the reason why during “spiritual journeys” chakras are seen only by the adepts of the eastern tradition. In other religions there is no concept of “chakras” (like for example in Christianity, Islam, etc) and for that reason adepts of such religions do not report seeing “chakras” when being in “spiritual journeys”. A man can see chakras only when the model of chakras is written into brain in advance. The writing of model into the brain is accomplished when a man studies pictures with chakras, reads texts about features of chakras, listens lectures about chakras, etc.
Neuroclusters in the brain usually store models of real-world-objects, however neuroclusters can also store models of non-real-world objects (a good example or non-real-world object is “chakras”).

Models of the objects can be copied from one human brain into another human brain in the similar way like computer files can be copied from one computer into another. The model of object X is copied from one human brain into another brain when man A tells to man B the features of object X, draws and shows the pictures of object X, makes statuette of object X and shows it, etc.
When two or more people have the same identical (or very similar) model of object X written in their brains – this phenomenon is called the “egregor X”.
Egregor is the same identical object X model which is multiplied and written into the brains of two or more individuals.
Egregor is the equivalent of the computer program and has many features of computer program (it can be copied, overwritten, deleted, etc), however there are some differences from computer program.
As for example egregor has a feature called “the strength of egregor”.
The strength of egregor increases when increases the number of people who have the same object X model written in their brains. The bigger the number of people who are the carriers of egregor – the stronger the egregor.
The working principle of the egregor strength is very simple.
Suppose we have a man A whose brain has no data about object X.
If man A meets man B whose brain contains object X model, then copying of model X from man’s B brain into man’s A brain meets great resistance because of high suspicion if the model X is reliable and if the model X can be trusted.
However if man A meets two(2) other men who are the carriers of object X model, then copying of model X into man’s A brain is done more easily because the fact that two other men trust the model X decreases the suspicion that the model X is unreliable.
If man A meets ten(10) other men who are the carriers of object X model, then copying of model X into man’s A brain is done more easily because the fact that ten other men trust the model X decreases the suspicion that the model X is unreliable.
And so on.
If man A sees that a million men are carriers of object X model, then copying of model X into man’s A brain is done almost without any checks of model X validity.
The strength of egregor X is directly proportional to the number of people who are the carriers of object X model.
The strength of egregor has no correlation with the truthfulness of facts which are contained inside the egregor.
The egregor can be very strong, however facts which are contained inside the egregor can be absolutely false.
And vice versa.The egregor can be weak, however facts which are contained inside the egregor can be true.
Strong egregor has a power to force a man into accepting ideas and claims which contradict real world data.

… continued in next post ….

 

…. the continuation of previous post ….

In year 1976 British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined new term “meme” which has roughly equivalent meaning to the word “egregor”. Evolutionary biologists naively believe that the “meme” is a new revolutionary invention of twentieth century, however actually this is not true at all. Richard Dawkins invented new term “meme” because he did not knew that the word “egregor” had been already in use for at least several thousand years and that “egregor” has roughly equivalent meaning as the word “meme”. The word “meme” is simply the reinvention of the bicycle.We use the term “egregor” because the word “egregor” was already in use at least several thousand years before the introduction of new term “meme”. However there is one little technical problem with the word “egregor” – for hundreds of years the word “egregor” has been extensively used in various occult and pseudoscientific texts which mutilated, garbled and distorted the meaning and definition of the word “egregor”.
The term “egregor” was already included into “The Theosophical Glossary” published by H.P. Blavatsky in year 1892, while Richard Dawkins coined new term “meme” only in year 1976.

http://www.phx-ult-lodge.org/Aglossary.htm
The Theosophical Glossary
by H.P. Blavatsky
First published 1892.
http://www.phx-ult-lodge.org/DEFGHIJK.htm#e
Egregores. Eliphas Lévi calls them “the chiefs of the souls who are the spirits of energy and action” ; whatever that may or may not mean. The Oriental Occultists describe the Egregores as Beings whose bodies and essence is a tissue of the so-called astral light. They are the shadows of the higher Planetary Spirits whose bodies are of the essence of the higher divine light.

Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
The word meme <...> was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976).

Click to expand...

The word “egregor” was used in “The Book of Enoch” which is more than two thousand years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore
Egregore (also egregor) is an occult concept representing a "thoughtform" or "collective group mind", an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of a group of people. <…>
the word is the normal form that the Greek word ἑγρήγορος (Watcher) would take in French. This was the term used in the Book of Enoch for great angel-like spirits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch
The Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish religious work, traditionally ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. <…>
The older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) are estimated to date from about 300 BC, and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably was composed at the end of the 1st century BC.

Click to expand...

The term “atom” was coined by Democritus in 450 BCE, however this term remained unused and was not available in dictionaries until modern times. Also the modern meaning of word “atom” is different from that which was used by Democritus. Democritus did not know anything about protons and electrons and also Democritus had no tools to investigate and to prove the existence of “atoms”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom
In approximately 450 BCE, Democritus coined the term átomos (Greek: ἄτομος), which means "uncuttable" or "the smallest indivisible particle of matter". Although the Indian and Greek concepts of the atom were based purely on philosophy, modern science has retained the name coined by Democritus.

Click to expand...

Like with the term “atom” the same exact situation is with word “egregor”. Actually it does not matter at which date exactly (how many years ago) the term “egregor” was coined and used for the first time. What matters here is that the term “egregor” was already in use many years ago before Richard Dawkins coined new term “meme” in year 1976. It does not matter if the word “egregor” had slightly different meaning from the modern current meaning.
In case if some readers have any objections about the meaning of the term “egregor” – here is the alternative explanation – you can consider that we simply take the term “egregor” and redefine this term anew – we have full right to declare and to write definitions for the terms which we use. And actually we must declare the exact definitions of used terms in order the reader would be able to understand the meaning of the text.
We will repeat again the definition of the “egregor” in order to dispose of occult and pseudoscientific legacy – egregor is the same identical object X model which is multiplied and written into the brains of two or more individuals.

A “cluster” is a group or bunch of several homogeneous elements, which can be considered as a separate unit, which has certain properties. As for example, in physics cluster can be a small group of atoms or molecules, in astrophysics there are star clusters consisting of stars, and galaxy clusters consisting of galaxies, and so on. The same physical element can be assigned to different unrelated logical clusters. As for example, in human population we can divide the people in clusters using different criteria – as for example, we can divide people by their religion and we will get cluster of Christians, cluster of Muslims, cluster of Buddhists and so on, however we can divide the same exact population by the favorite color which a man likes and we will get cluster of people who like red color, cluster of people who like blue color, cluster of people who like green color and so on. It is obvious that the same exact man will get into absolutely different clusters when filtered out by religion and when filtered out by his favorite color. There will be many Christians, Muslims and Buddhists who like red color, there will be many Christians, Muslims and Buddhists who like blue color, and so on. In exactly the same fashion the neurons in the brain can be grouped into different logical clusters. The neurons can be grouped into the same cluster by the color to which these neurons respond, the neurons can be grouped into the same cluster by the same orientation visual bar stimulus to which these neurons respond, and so on.
Important notice: when we use the term “neurocluster” (neural cluster) in the context of Neurocluster Brain Model – the default meaning is “egregoric neurocluster”, i.e. neurocluster which stores information about the egregor (object X model).

 

George-ananda said: ↑

Now I think I am getting clearer picture of where you stand. You think all paranormal phenomena can be reduced to materialistic explanations. I am certain beyond all reasonable doubt that paranormal phenomena has occurred that can not be explained by the Neurocluster Brain Model. Your theory might explain some set of the less compelling phenomena but in no way will begin to touch the stronger cases. As a student of the paranormal I am aware of the skeptical arguments and they are lacking in my objective opinion.
Perceptual blindness obviously exists but it sounds to me like you are taking your pet theory too far.

Click to expand...

ben d said: ↑

the astral plane is a world of causes relative to the material plane of effects....all attempts to understand it in terms of 3D time and space is vanity...

Click to expand...

Religious adepts claim that spirits are something like “vapor/dust/light clouds” which travel via air and can interact with material objects, like for example pushing heavy furniture, smashing cups and glasses, moving around objects, etc (a.k.a. poltergeist). However techniques used in spiritualistic séances clearly show that spirits are unable to move the inanimate object – no spirit is able to move a thread with a needle when the thread is tied to some inanimate object (like for example the lamp, ceiling, etc). Spirit can manifest itself only via movements done by the alive human – thread with a needle will move only when it is held by alive human. And this raises the simple question: if the spirits were able to push and smash heavy objects (like furniture) then movement of a thread with a needle would be extremely easy task for the spirit, isn’t it? However experimental results show that spirits are unable to move such extra light object as the thread with the needle when needle is tied to some inanimate object. Spirits can manifest themselves only via the movements of the human body.
Almost all religions and cults claim exactly the same error – they all claim that spirits can exist independently from physical body. The origin of such erroneous claim is due to the fact that “spiritual travelers” very often encounter “spiritual beings” which have no match for any known object in real physical world, thus “spiritual travelers” had made incorrect conclusion that these “spiritual beings” exist without any physical body. However in reality all “spiritual beings” are simulated by autonomic egregoric neuroclusters which reside in the physical brain of the “spiritual traveler”.
Below is a classical example of such erroneous claims – Carlos Castañeda (who proclaimed himself as the follower of Southern Mexico Toltec shamanic tradition) used the term “inorganic beings” to denote autonomic egregoric neuroclusters which have no match for any known object in real physical world. Carlos Castañeda naively believed that “inorganic beings” live independently from any physical body, however in reality all “inorganic beings” are destroyed when the brain of the adept is destroyed (just like computer game characters are destroyed when the computer is physically destroyed).

http://books.google.com/books?id=_3vfmEwoO1AC&pg=PR15&dq=inorganic+beings&hl=lt&sa=X&ei=mUoRVMvtF8XgyQOd0IIw&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=inorganic beings&f=false
They saw that inanimate energy has no awareness. Awareness, for shamans, is a vibratory condition of animate energy. Don Juan said that the shamans of ancient Mexico were the first ones to see that all the organisms on Earth are the possessors of vibratory energy. They called them organic beings, and saw that it is the organism itself which sets up the cohesiveness and the limits of such energy. They also saw that there are conglomerates of vibratory, animate energy which have a cohesion of their own, free from the bindings of an organism. They called them inorganic beings, and described them as clumps of cohesive energy that is invisible to the human eye, energy that is aware of itself, and possesses a unity determined by an agglutinating force other than the agglutinating force of an organism.
The shamans of don Juan’s lineage saw that the essential condition of animate energy, organic or inorganic, is to turn energy in the universe at large into sensory data. In the case of organic beings, this sensory data is then turned into a system of interpretation in which energy at large is classified and a given response is allotted to each classification, whatever the classification may be. The assertion of sorcerers is that in the realm of inorganic beings, the sensory data into which energy at large is transformed by the inorganic beings, must be, by definition, interpreted by them in whatever incomprehensible form they may do it.
(Carlos Castañeda. The Teachings of Don Juan – A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. 1998. The Author's Commentaries on the Occasion of the Thirtieth Year of Publication of The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, XV)

Click to expand...

http://archive.org/stream/CarlosCastaneda/CarlosCastanedaCompendium1998-MagicalPasses_djvu.txt
The belief of the shamans of don Juan's lineage was that when death takes place in this fashion, all of our being is turned into energy, a special kind of energy that retains the mark of our individuality. Don Juan tried to explain this in a metaphorical sense, saying that we are composed of a number of single nations: the nation of the lungs, the nation of the heart, the nation of the stomach, the nation of the kidneys, and so on. Each of these nations sometimes works independently of the others, but at the moment of death, all of them are unified into one single entity. The sorcerers of don Juan's lineage called this state total freedom. For those sorcerers, death is a unifier, and not an annihilator, as it is for the average man.
"Is this state immortality, don Juan?" I asked.
"This is in no way immortality," he replied. "It is merely the entrance into an evolutionary process, using the only medium for evolution that man has at his disposal: awareness. The sorcerers of my lineage were convinced that man could not evolve biologically any further; therefore, they considered man's awareness to be the only medium for evolution. At the moment of dying, sorcerers are not annihilated by death, but are transformed into inorganic beings: beings that have awareness, but not an organism. To be transformed into an inorganic being was evolution for them, and it meant that a new, indescribable type of awareness was lent to them, an awareness that would last for veritably millions of years, but which would also someday have to be returned to the giver: the dark sea of awareness."
One of the most important findings of the shamans of don Juan's lineage was that, like everything else in the universe, our world is a combination of two opposing, and at the same time complementary, forces. One of those forces is the world we know, which those sorcerers called the world of organic beings. The other force is something they called the world of inorganic beings.
"The world of inorganic beings," don Juan said, "is populated by beings that possess awareness, but not an organism. They are conglomerates of energy fields, just like we are. To the eye of a seer, instead of being luminous, as human beings are, they are rather opaque. They are not round, but long, candlelike energetic configurations. They are, in essence, conglomerates of energy fields which have cohesion and boundaries just like we do. They are held together by the same agglutinating force that holds our energy
fields together."
"Where is this inorganic world, don Juan?" I asked.
"It is our twin world," he replied. "It occupies the same time and space as our world, but the type of awareness of our world is so different from the type of awareness of the inorganic world that we never notice the presence of inorganic beings, although they do notice ours."
"Are those inorganic beings human beings that have evolved?" I asked.
"Not at all!" he exclaimed. "The inorganic beings of our twin world have been intrinsically inorganic from the start, the same way that we have always been intrinsically organic beings, also from the start. They are beings whose consciousness can evolve just like ours, and it doubtlessly does, but I have no firsthand knowledge of how this happens. What I do know, however, is that a human being whose awareness has evolved is a bright, luminescent, round inorganic being of a special kind."
(Carlos Castañeda. Magical Passes – The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico.) 1998.

Click to expand...

 

I wonder if he knows we don't read these long Proselytizing rhetorical replies that carry no credibility?

 

ben d said: ↑

Which btw is why all black magic practices of using the astral as a means of creating targeted effects in this world, eventually leads to their undoing as they are unintentionally creating other karmic effects that will play out on themselves....

Click to expand...

Religious adepts are strongly convinced that during a lifetime the immortal soul/spirit collects “spiritual experience” and “develops/enhances spirituality” – at the first glance such claim looks correct, as for example, let’s take a kindergartener and an adult – in this case an adult is “much more experienced and much more spiritually developed” than a kindergartener. However this theory of “spiritual development during a lifetime” has one fundamental fault which religious adepts fail to notice, the fundamental bug of this theory is the following – when a man reaches old-age then all his mental-spiritual abilities begin to deteriorate, majority of pensioners get dementia which becomes stronger and stronger with every year – these old men lose their memories, forget their own names, etc. Only in rare exceptional cases old-man retains fully functioning vivid clear mind while the majority of old men get dementia and prayers to God and/or strict observance of religious regulations does not save them from old-age dementia.
The real world fact of old-age men getting dementia disproves the beliefs of religious adepts who claim that during lifetime human soul/spirit collects “spiritual experience” and “develops/enhances spirituality”. Even if we will make an assumption that human soul/spirit does collect “spiritual experience” then this period happens only from childhood to adulthood, however later human soul/spirit starts to lose all his “accumulated spiritual experience” – you can easily verify that by visiting any retirement home (a.k.a. old people's home) which houses many old-age people.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24171622
Meeting the religious needs of residents with dementia.
Higgins P.
Abstract
This article considers practical strategies to help nurses working in care homes meet the religious needs of people with dementia, including attending services in homes or churches, supporting them in private prayer and at the end of life. It also considers the characteristics of person-centred care for such residents and how the Mental Capacity Act 2005 may be called on to support religious needs as dementia advances. To achieve good practice in all these aspects, staff in care homes should work in partnership with local faith communities and ensure they are aware of residents' life histories and preferences, including their faith practices. The focus of the article is on meeting the needs of Christian residents. For residents from other faith groups living in care homes not affiliated to their faith, the same general approach to meeting religious needs could be adopted as a starting point.
(Nurs Older People. 2013 Nov;25(9):25-9. doi: 10.7748/nop2013.11.25.9.25.e501.)

Click to expand...

https://books.google.com/books?id=sEOzCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT24&lpg=PT24&dq=Mental+illness#v=onepage&q=Mental illness&f=false
Mental illness has also deeply touched my own life. Several years ago, my mother died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. It was heartbreaking to see her gradually lose her memories of her loved ones, to gaze into her eyes and realize that she did not know who I was. I could see the glimmer of humanity slowly being extinguished. She had spent a lifetime struggling to raise a family, and instead of enjoying her golden years, she was robbed of all the memories she held dear.
(Michio Kaku. The Future of the Mind. The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind-Doubleday. 2014)

Click to expand...

And this leads to a simple conclusion – if you believe that you will take your “accumulated spiritual experience” into post-mortal world then you should kill yourself while you are in the peak of “accumulated spiritual experience” – if you will not do that then senility will wipe out your “accumulated spiritual experience” just like the piece of ice melts under the hot sun, and into post-mortal world you will take only pity leftovers of your “accumulated spiritual experience”. One of the main reasons why people want to have children is the expectation that your children will take care of you in your elderly years. Actually, there is no guarantee that your children will take care of you in your elderly years, as for example your children may die or become invalids earlier than you, however that is not the main point. Let’s take “the best case scenario” and let’s assume that your children will take care of you in your elderly years – in that case your children will sustain you being alive longer which will result in you reaching deeper stages of dementia and losing even more of your “accumulated spiritual experience” when compared to scenario in which you had died earlier still having larger amount of “accumulated spiritual experience”. Just think for a moment – what kind of “spiritual experience” the old-man will take into post-mortal world when he is completely lost in time and space, when he does not remember his own name, etc.
Religious adepts are convinced that after the death of their physical bodies their soul/spirit will travel into the paradise/hell or will reincarnate into some other living creature/being. Let’s analyze both scenarios.
According to religious dogmas all these old-age doddering dementia-ill adepts who go to Church every weekend – all these dementia-ill adepts will get into the paradise after the death of their physical bodies. Which means that if you will get into the paradise too then you will find yourself surrounded by myriads of these dementia-ill souls who are completely lost in time and space, who do not remember their own names, etc – according to religious dogmas all these dementia-ill souls will be gathered into the paradise because they had observed religious orders during their earthly life – which raises a simple question: do you really want spend your eternity completely surrounded by these myriads of dementia-ill souls inhabiting the paradise, is it really your most desired goal?
Now let’s analyze another scenario – the reincarnation of your soul/spirit into some other living creature/being. You have had very hard time trying to accumulate “spiritual experience” during your earthly lifetime, and then in old age you become dementia-ill and lose all your accumulated “spiritual experience” and as a result you reincarnate into the cockroach. In your new cockroach-life you have no idea for what kind of “bad karma” you were punished to become a cockroach, because according to dogmatism of reincarnation the soul/spirit has no remembrance whatsoever from the previous life. So this cockroach has no idea whatsoever what sin/error he needs to repair from previous life, because the cockroach knows nothing about his previous human-incarnation. In the new reincarnation as the cockroach you again try to accumulate “spiritual experience”, then cockroach gets old age, becomes dementia-ill, loses all his accumulated “spiritual experience”, and after the death reincarnates into the amoeba. And the process is repeated again and again the infinite number of times... a really meaningless scenario of existence, isn’t it?

Below is the simple thought experiment which disproves the claim of religious adepts that during a lifetime the immortal soul/spirit collects “spiritual experience” and “develops/enhances spirituality”.
Let’s raise a simple technical question: is the soul/spirit a 1) divisible object, or 2) indivisible object? In other words, can the soul/spirit be divided into the composing parts or not?
Here we have two scenarios:
1) If the soul/spirit is divisible object then the soul/spirit is not immortal because it can be destroyed by dividing it into the composing parts.
2) If the soul/spirit is indivisible object then it cannot collect “spiritual experience” because in order to able to save the information about the “collected experience” you need to have the ability to change the states/positions of the composing parts of that object. By definition the indivisible object cannot store information about its previous experience.

In both scenarios the religious dogmas are crushed. If the soul/spirit is able to collect “spiritual experience” then this means that the soul/spirit must be composed of composing parts which means that such soul/spirit is not immortal – it can be destroyed by dividing it into the composing parts. And if the soul is immortal then it must be indivisible which means such soul/spirit cannot collect “spiritual experience” during the lifetime which means that all religious rituals/practices which supposedly collect “good spiritual experience” – all these religious rituals/practices are meaningless.
Two dogmas – 1) the immortality of the soul/spirit and 2) the collection of “spiritual experience” during the lifetime – are two dogmas which contradict each other – if one dogma is true then another dogma is automatically false, they cannot be both true simultaneously.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Let’s raise a question: how real are these “spiritual worlds”? To answer this question we will use the analogy. Let’s analyze a computer game which has its own 2D or 3D virtual world, its own virtual characters, its own laws and rules, etc. When a man plays a computer game, he interacts with this virtual game world, he communicates with virtual game characters as if this virtual world is real. However if we will physically destroy the computer then automatically this virtual world will disappear and all virtual characters will disappear too.
Exactly the same situation is with “spiritual worlds”. All these “spiritual worlds” are generated by the neuroclusters in the brain (exactly the same happens during dreaming) and the main personality (which enters such “spiritual world”) has no tools whatsoever to distinguish a simulated virtual world from the real world. When the main personality enters “spiritual world” then everything inside such “spiritual world” looks very realistic.
Like with the computer, exactly the same situation is with the brain – “spiritual world” exists only as long as the physical brain exists which generates the sounds and images of “spiritual world” – and if the brain is physically destroyed then all these “spiritual worlds” are destroyed too.
However religious adepts naively believe that “spiritual worlds” can exist without physical brain. Such a belief is equivalent to the belief that the virtual world of computer game will continue to exist after the computer has been physically destroyed.
When a man is put into “spiritual world” state, the neural circuits which do the modeling create pictures and sounds in a concordance to the belief system of that man. Let’s illustrate with several examples. The majority of so called “astral travel experts” claim that physical human body is connected with “astral body” through an “astral (silver) cord”.“Astral travel experts” claim that this astral cord is quite thick when the astral body is located near the physical body and this astral cord becomes thinner and thinner when the astral body wanders away from the physical body. If this astral cord becomes broken then the astral body is unable to return to the physical body and a man dies or in some cases some alien spiritual being (like demonic spirit) can attach itself to that broken astral cord and thus can incarnate into the human body replacing the original human soul (such phenomenon is called “demonic possession”). Such are the claims of “astral travel experts”. However the reality is completely different. If a man had been instructed about astral cord existence before this man was taught the techniques of astral traveling then such man will see and feel the astral cord during his astral traveling, such man will confirm that the astral cord surely does really exists. However if a man had never heard about astral cord existence before this man was taught techniques of astral traveling then such man will never see and will never feel any astral cord during his journeys in the “astral world”. The conclusion is simple. When a man is put into “spiritual world” state the neural circuits which do the modeling create pictures and sounds in a concordance to the belief system of that man. For example if a man believes in the existence of Jesus Christ, then such man during the travel in “spiritual world” will surely meet Jesus Christ. If a man believes in the existence of Krishna/Buddha/etc then such man will meet Krishna/Buddha/etc during his travel in “spiritual world”. The belief system of a man determines the images which he will see during the “spiritual travel”. As for example, famous Bulgarian clairvoyant Baba Vanga always saw and communicated with “saint virgin Mary” and not with Vishnu/Shiva/Krisha or whatever else non-Christian deity. Bulgarian clairvoyant Baba Vanga in her childhood was imprinted with Christian dogmatism and thus as the result Baba Vanga communicated only with Christian characters like “saint Virgin Mary” in her “spiritual visions”.
Many people have experienced leaving physical body (a.k.a. OOBE – out of body experience). When being outside of the physical body some people are able to see their own physical body, however other people do not see their own physical body. What is the cause of such difference? The answer is simple. People whose brain contains clear detailed model of their own physical body do see their own physical body while being in OOBE. The detailed model of the physical body is formed in the brain when a man spends countless hours in front of the mirror examining himself from all sides, examining every spot, every hair and other small details. However other people spend minimum of their time in the front of the mirror – such man glances briefly into the mirror to check if his nose is not smudged with tomato ketchup or if cheeks are not stuck with crumbs of cake – and that’s all he needs to know – in such case the model of the physical body in such man’s brain is very rough and smeared – and when such man experiences OOBE, there is very small probability that he will be able to see his own physical body from aside because of the simple fact – the neural circuits in his brain have too few data in order to be able to model and create image of his physical body viewed from aside (viewed from third person perspective).
The situation with the chakras is identical to the situation with astral cord. In “spiritual journeys” chakras are seen only by those people who knew and believed in advance that chakras do exist. The concept of “chakras” belong to the eastern tradition and this the reason why during “spiritual journeys” chakras are seen only by the adepts of the eastern tradition. In other religions there is no concept of “chakras” (like for example in Christianity, Islam, etc) and for that reason adepts of such religions do not report seeing “chakras” when being in “spiritual journeys”. A man can see chakras only when the model of chakras is written into brain in advance. The writing of model into the brain is accomplished when a man studies pictures with chakras, reads texts about features of chakras, listens lectures about chakras, etc.
Neuroclusters in the brain usually store models of real-world-objects, however neuroclusters can also store models of non-real-world objects (a good example or non-real-world object is “chakras”).

Models of the objects can be copied from one human brain into another human brain in the similar way like computer files can be copied from one computer into another. The model of object X is copied from one human brain into another brain when man A tells to man B the features of object X, draws and shows the pictures of object X, makes statuette of object X and shows it, etc.
When two or more people have the same identical (or very similar) model of object X written in their brains – this phenomenon is called the “egregor X”.
Egregor is the same identical object X model which is multiplied and written into the brains of two or more individuals.
Egregor is the equivalent of the computer program and has many features of computer program (it can be copied, overwritten, deleted, etc), however there are some differences from computer program.
As for example egregor has a feature called “the strength of egregor”.
The strength of egregor increases when increases the number of people who have the same object X model written in their brains. The bigger the number of people who are the carriers of egregor – the stronger the egregor.
The working principle of the egregor strength is very simple.
Suppose we have a man A whose brain has no data about object X.
If man A meets man B whose brain contains object X model, then copying of model X from man’s B brain into man’s A brain meets great resistance because of high suspicion if the model X is reliable and if the model X can be trusted.
However if man A meets two(2) other men who are the carriers of object X model, then copying of model X into man’s A brain is done more easily because the fact that two other men trust the model X decreases the suspicion that the model X is unreliable.
If man A meets ten(10) other men who are the carriers of object X model, then copying of model X into man’s A brain is done more easily because the fact that ten other men trust the model X decreases the suspicion that the model X is unreliable.
And so on.
If man A sees that a million men are carriers of object X model, then copying of model X into man’s A brain is done almost without any checks of model X validity.
The strength of egregor X is directly proportional to the number of people who are the carriers of object X model.
The strength of egregor has no correlation with the truthfulness of facts which are contained inside the egregor.
The egregor can be very strong, however facts which are contained inside the egregor can be absolutely false.
And vice versa.The egregor can be weak, however facts which are contained inside the egregor can be true.
Strong egregor has a power to force a man into accepting ideas and claims which contradict real world data.

… continued in next post ….

Click to expand...

Hmmmmm....no.....the “spiritual worlds” are not generated by the neuroclusters in the brain, the inner/higher planes of existence are not dependent on outer/lower discrete manifestations... Do they influence the human brain...yes of course they do...because the human being has subtle bodies made of the subtle energies...

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Religious adepts are strongly convinced that during a lifetime the immortal soul/spirit collects “spiritual experience” and “develops/enhances spirituality” – at the first glance such claim looks correct, as for example, let’s take a kindergartener and an adult – in this case an adult is “much more experienced and much more spiritually developed” than a kindergartener. However this theory of “spiritual development during a lifetime” has one fundamental fault which religious adepts fail to notice, the fundamental bug of this theory is the following – when a man reaches old-age then all his mental-spiritual abilities begin to deteriorate, majority of pensioners get dementia which becomes stronger and stronger with every year – these old men lose their memories, forget their own names, etc. Only in rare exceptional cases old-man retains fully functioning vivid clear mind while the majority of old men get dementia and prayers to God and/or strict observance of religious regulations does not save them from old-age dementia.
The real world fact of old-age men getting dementia disproves the beliefs of religious adepts who claim that during lifetime human soul/spirit collects “spiritual experience” and “develops/enhances spirituality”. Even if we will make an assumption that human soul/spirit does collect “spiritual experience” then this period happens only from childhood to adulthood, however later human soul/spirit starts to lose all his “accumulated spiritual experience” – you can easily verify that by visiting any retirement home (a.k.a. old people's home) which houses many old-age people.


And this leads to a simple conclusion – if you believe that you will take your “accumulated spiritual experience” into post-mortal world then you should kill yourself while you are in the peak of “accumulated spiritual experience” – if you will not do that then senility will wipe out your “accumulated spiritual experience” just like the piece of ice melts under the hot sun, and into post-mortal world you will take only pity leftovers of your “accumulated spiritual experience”. One of the main reasons why people want to have children is the expectation that your children will take care of you in your elderly years. Actually, there is no guarantee that your children will take care of you in your elderly years, as for example your children may die or become invalids earlier than you, however that is not the main point. Let’s take “the best case scenario” and let’s assume that your children will take care of you in your elderly years – in that case your children will sustain you being alive longer which will result in you reaching deeper stages of dementia and losing even more of your “accumulated spiritual experience” when compared to scenario in which you had died earlier still having larger amount of “accumulated spiritual experience”. Just think for a moment – what kind of “spiritual experience” the old-man will take into post-mortal world when he is completely lost in time and space, when he does not remember his own name, etc.
Religious adepts are convinced that after the death of their physical bodies their soul/spirit will travel into the paradise/hell or will reincarnate into some other living creature/being. Let’s analyze both scenarios.
According to religious dogmas all these old-age doddering dementia-ill adepts who go to Church every weekend – all these dementia-ill adepts will get into the paradise after the death of their physical bodies. Which means that if you will get into the paradise too then you will find yourself surrounded by myriads of these dementia-ill souls who are completely lost in time and space, who do not remember their own names, etc – according to religious dogmas all these dementia-ill souls will be gathered into the paradise because they had observed religious orders during their earthly life – which raises a simple question: do you really want spend your eternity completely surrounded by these myriads of dementia-ill souls inhabiting the paradise, is it really your most desired goal?
Now let’s analyze another scenario – the reincarnation of your soul/spirit into some other living creature/being. You have had very hard time trying to accumulate “spiritual experience” during your earthly lifetime, and then in old age you become dementia-ill and lose all your accumulated “spiritual experience” and as a result you reincarnate into the cockroach. In your new cockroach-life you have no idea for what kind of “bad karma” you were punished to become a cockroach, because according to dogmatism of reincarnation the soul/spirit has no remembrance whatsoever from the previous life. So this cockroach has no idea whatsoever what sin/error he needs to repair from previous life, because the cockroach knows nothing about his previous human-incarnation. In the new reincarnation as the cockroach you again try to accumulate “spiritual experience”, then cockroach gets old age, becomes dementia-ill, loses all his accumulated “spiritual experience”, and after the death reincarnates into the amoeba. And the process is repeated again and again the infinite number of times... a really meaningless scenario of existence, isn’t it?

Below is the simple thought experiment which disproves the claim of religious adepts that during a lifetime the immortal soul/spirit collects “spiritual experience” and “develops/enhances spirituality”.
Let’s raise a simple technical question: is the soul/spirit a 1) divisible object, or 2) indivisible object? In other words, can the soul/spirit be divided into the composing parts or not?
Here we have two scenarios:
1) If the soul/spirit is divisible object then the soul/spirit is not immortal because it can be destroyed by dividing it into the composing parts.
2) If the soul/spirit is indivisible object then it cannot collect “spiritual experience” because in order to able to save the information about the “collected experience” you need to have the ability to change the states/positions of the composing parts of that object. By definition the indivisible object cannot store information about its previous experience.

In both scenarios the religious dogmas are crushed. If the soul/spirit is able to collect “spiritual experience” then this means that the soul/spirit must be composed of composing parts which means that such soul/spirit is not immortal – it can be destroyed by dividing it into the composing parts. And if the soul is immortal then it must be indivisible which means such soul/spirit cannot collect “spiritual experience” during the lifetime which means that all religious rituals/practices which supposedly collect “good spiritual experience” – all these religious rituals/practices are meaningless.
Two dogmas – 1) the immortality of the soul/spirit and 2) the collection of “spiritual experience” during the lifetime – are two dogmas which contradict each other – if one dogma is true then another dogma is automatically false, they cannot be both true simultaneously.

Click to expand...

I see you quoted Theosophy in an earlier post....on this subject about the destiny of the soul...I think you should study the Theosophical teaching on the planetary evolutionary plan concerning the rounds and races of humanity, and the ultimate goal of it all... In one sentence....from transcendent pure non-self aware spiritual perfection (at the dawn of planetary manifestation)......to incarnate impure self aware imperfection (where humanity is at now)...and finally to transcendent pure self aware almost perfection...aka angelic kingdom...(at the end of the evolutionary process...though there are always early birds..)

 

ben d said: ↑

I see you quoted Theosophy in an earlier post....on this subject about the destiny of the soul...

Click to expand...

ben d, please provide at least one evidence that you have soul, please provide at least one evidence that you are not the agent without soul.
Below is the definition of “agent” from Wikipedia, a good example of “agents” are computer game characters. The agent can interact with environment while being without any soul, for interaction with environment the soul is not needed. When agent without soul interacting with environment is observed by the outside observer, the observer might incorrectly conclude that this agent has soul.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent
In artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent (IA) is an autonomous entity which observes through sensors and acts upon an environment using actuators (i.e. it is an agent) and directs its activity towards achieving goals (i.e. it is rational). Intelligent agents may also learn or use knowledge to achieve their goals. They may be very simple or very complex: a reflex machine such as a thermostat is an intelligent agent, as is a human being, as is a community of human beings working together towards a goal.

Click to expand...

ben d said: ↑

I think you should study the Theosophical teaching on the planetary evolutionary plan concerning the rounds and races of humanity, and the ultimate goal of it all...

Click to expand...

ben d should raise his qualification in the areas of artificial intelligence, pattern recognition/classification, and intelligent agents.
ben d, please do your homework – go to the university library, go to the section where computer science books are located (not the books about theology/literature/other_pseudosciences), then take the textbooks about the theory of artificial intelligence, about pattern recognition/classification, about intelligent agents – and study these textbooks very carefully. Do your homework – study real science. And then you will understand what the difference is between: 1) real science and 2) religious dogmas about “soul/spirit/consciousness” and other claptrap superstitions.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

ben d, please do your homework

Click to expand...

While this may or may not be true.

You sir have ZERO credibility to tell anyone to study or do homework.

Your proselytizing and it is against rules here.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

this means that the soul/spirit must be composed of composing parts which means that such soul/spirit is not immortal – it can be destroyed by dividing it into the composing parts.

Click to expand...

Nice job of defining something that does not even exist scientifically. This is 100% pseudoscience, nothing short of it.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

ben d, please provide at least one evidence that you have soul, please provide at least one evidence that you are not the agent without soul.
Below is the definition of “agent” from Wikipedia, a good example of “agents” are computer game characters. The agent can interact with environment while being without any soul, for interaction with environment the soul is not needed. When agent without soul interacting with environment is observed by the outside observer, the observer might incorrectly conclude that this agent has soul.

ben d should raise his qualification in the areas of artificial intelligence, pattern recognition/classification, and intelligent agents.
ben d, please do your homework – go to the university library, go to the section where computer science books are located (not the books about theology/literature/other_pseudosciences), then take the textbooks about the theory of artificial intelligence, about pattern recognition/classification, about intelligent agents – and study these textbooks very carefully. Do your homework – study real science. And then you will understand what the difference is between: 1) real science and 2) religious dogmas about “soul/spirit/consciousness” and other claptrap superstitions.

Click to expand...

I do not have a soul....I am a soul...my evidence is that I exist and just typed this sentence!!!
Science only deals with only the 2.5% physical matter of the universe...the remaining 97.5% is undetectable... Science does not know what it does not know and so whatever is in the books you read...remember these are early days in human learning about what and who they are in the context of the 100%...

 

George-ananda said: ↑

This is interesting but doesn't answer my question which was about mediums. How can a medium know a detail about my grandfather whom she could not reasonably have known anything about. My leading theory is that truly gifted mediums can communicate telepathically with the astral bodies of the deceased.

Click to expand...

George-ananda said: ↑

I do not hear this claim of omniscience by the more serious mediums. If you are talking about typical channeling then the knowledge will be limited to the knowledge that the less than omniscient source entity can communicate through a finite channel. I am convinced that information not known to the medium does often come through though. And that raises a conceptual challenge.

Click to expand...

Let’s examine the underlying mechanisms of invoking of spirits in the spiritualistic séance. During the spiritualistic séance spirits can be invoked in various ways, however one of the most popular and the best working method is “needle on the thread” method which works in the following way. A group of people (usually 3-10) sit around the table. A piece of paper is placed on the table. The circle is drawn on the paper and alphabet letters are written on the perimeter of the circle (image below shows an example of such “spirit board”).


Buckland Spirit Board



One of the participants takes into the hand the thread with the attached needle and stretches his hand over the table in such way that needle would hang above the center of the circle with alphabet letters. Then participants decide which spirit they would like to invoke. For example, participants have decided to invoke the spirit of Napoleon. Then all participants concentrate and begin mentally calling the spirit of Napoleon. However spirits are self-willed and invoking of the spirit can fail. It is very easy to check if the spirit invocation has succeeded or not. You need to ask questions for the spirit and the spirit provides the answers via the thread which has a needle attached at the end. After asking the question you need to hold the hand with the thread above the circle with alphabet letters and you need to look closely where the needle moves. The needle should move from one alphabet letter to another alphabet letter thus forming words and sentences. If the needle does not move at all or the movement of needle forms meaningless jumble of letters then this means that you have failed in spirit invocation. However this is not the end of the game. You can try invoking the same spirit anew, however now another participant should take thread with needle into his hand and procedure of the spirit invocation is started all over again. In case of the failure the third participant repeats the procedure again. And so on. Only in the case when none of the participants has succeeded in spirit invocation, only in that case it is considered that this particular spirit can not be invoked and participants must choose another spirit for invocation. If invoking of Napoleon spirit has failed then maybe the invocation of Abraham Lincoln’s spirit will succeed. And the invocation procedure is started all over again anew. The procedure is repeated as many times as needed until invocation of any spirit will succeed. When spirit is invoked, the communication with spirit is accomplished by asking questions and looking closely at the movement of needle over the circle with alphabet letters which should form words and sentences from single letters.

Communication with spirit (spiritualistic séance) is governed by several laws:

1) The thread the needle must be hold in the hand of alive human. If the needle with the thread will be tied to some inanimate object (like for example the lamp, ceiling, etc) then no spirit will be able to move that needle from standing still position, no spirit will be able to move that needle forming words and sentences from the letters. The needle will hang still in one place. In other words, the spirit can manifest itself only via movements of alive human. Without alive human who holds thread with the needle the spirit will be unable to manifest itself. If the needle with the thread will be tied to some inanimate object then it will hang still in one place no matter what kind of magic incantations, prayers, magic incense/candles, drum beats, chanting, etc will be used – nothing will help and the needle will hang still firmly in one place. And according to claims of religious adepts spirits are able to move and throw heavy objects (like tables, closets, etc) – in such case moving a thread with a needle must be extremely easy task for the spirit. However needle is unable to move unless it is held be alive human. The techniques of spiritualistic séances clearly show that spirits are unable to move inanimate objects – no spirit is able to move the needle from standing still position if that needle is tied to inanimate object. The spirit can manifest itself only via movements of alive human.

2) Only small percentage of people can invoke the spirit with thread and needle method. For example if you have a group of 10 participants then only 1, 3, 5, 7, etc participants can invoke the spirit. Only in rare cases the spirit can be invoked by all participants in the group.

3) Every man has the unique psychological portrait and a man can be identified by his unique characteristic speech pattern, unique characteristic vocabulary, unique characteristic style of sentences, even unique characteristic grammatical errors, etc. As for example when we have a text piece consisting of 10 sentences often we can quite clearly identify if this text was written by Peter, John, Thomas or somebody else. The same concept applies to spirits too. Spirits have their unique psychological portrait too. However it very important to note that the same spirit X (for example Napoleon’s spirit) changes its psychological portrait depending on which man is holding the thread with the needle. For example if John holds the thread with the needle then Napoleon’s spirit will become very knowledgeable in music and ignoramus in technical sciences, however if Peter takes the thread with the needle in his hands then Napoleon’s spirit becomes knowledgeable in technical sciences and ignoramus in music, when the thread with the needle is returned back to John the Napoleon’s spirit becomes again knowledgeable in music and ignoramus in technical sciences. In other words experimental results of spiritualistic séances clearly show that Napoleon’s spirit changes its psychological portrait depending on which man is holding the thread with the needle. It is obvious that if Napoleon’s spirit would be independently existing independent object then its psychological portrait would remain stable and would not change when different people take the thread with the needle into their hands. This means that Napoleon’s spirit is modeled by the neurocluster inside man’s brain. Different people have different knowledge about Napoleon and thus they have different Napoleon models inside their brain. Some things in these Napoleon models will similar however there will be also differences. And the more the knowledge about Napoleon differs in different people the more the psychological portraits of Napoleon’s spirit will be different when these people invoke Napoleon’s spirit using thread with the needle method. If a man’s brain contains insufficient knowledge about Napoleon, in other words if a man’s brain has very weak model about Napoleon then such man will be unable to invoke Napoleon’s spirit during spiritualistic séance.
Experimental results show that spirits which are invoked during spiritualistic séances are merely autonomic neuroclusters inside the man’s brain which model personality of spirit X. In other words during spiritualistic séances the man is communicating with his own autonomic neuroclusters inside its own brain in the similar way like in the split-brain experiments. Due to the ignorance of the brain physiology people naively believe that they are communicating with the spirits from outside of the material world.

… continued in next post ….

 

…. the continuation of previous post ….

4) If spiritualistic séances are performed regularly for prolonged periods of time then very often mediums begin to experience “strange unexplainable frightening things” – various objects in the home begin disappearing and reappearing in unusual places (like for example shoes in the fridge), clothes are thrown out from closets and closets are overthrown to the floor, tables overthrown, various things are broken, etc. However all these stories have one common pattern – when a man is asked “have you seen with your own eyes how these things move, fly around or break apart?”, the answer is always “no, I have not seen that with my own eyes, however when I opened the door of the room, I had found things scattered and broken, closet overthrown to the floor, etc”, in other words, he always sees only the final result (things moved or broken), however he never sees the action itself – how these things move or break. For some mediums these “strange unexplainable frightening things” disappear themselves and never come back again, however for other mediums these incidents do not stop and continue happening until a man gets crazy from permanent fear and that man ends up in a lunatic asylum.
Let’s raise a question: why spiritualistic séances often end up with “strange unexplainable frightening things” happening to the medium?
The answer is simple. When spiritualistic séances are performed regularly for prolonged periods of time then autonomic neuroclusters in the brain develop more and more the ability to control man’s body independently from main personality – at first only small microscopic hand movements and later autonomic neurocluster becomes able to take over the control of whole body and this phenomenon is called “sleepwalking”.
During sleepwalking a man gets out from the bed, walks around the home moving and breaking various objects, goes back to bed, and in the morning when he wakes up he has no remembrance of his nocturnal activity. After waking up he finds that some objects in his home are misplaced in unusual places and some of the objects are broken. A man immediately begins to panic “who has moved these objects if I was alone in the home?”. In order to remain sanity a man needs to have model of the world which would explain what is happening around him. The fastest explanation for misplaced objects is that some flying-demon-spirit has moved these objects. However the truth is that he himself has moved these objects while sleepwalking, however he does not know that, so he strongly sticks to the belief that demon-spirits are flying around in his house. During sleepwalking incidents he might even kill people and when he will wake up he will be strongly convinced that demon-spirits had killed these people.
If “strange unexplainable frightening things” happen during the night then it is the classical case of sleepwalking, however if “strange unexplainable frightening things” happen during the daytime (such cases are much more rare) then it is the case of „multiple personality disorder“.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicidal_sleepwalking
Homicidal sleepwalking, also known as homicidal somnambulism or sleepwalking murder, is the act of killing someone during an episode of sleepwalking. In a few cases, sleepwalkers kill people, usually a family member, during their sleepwalking act. There have been several rare cases in which an alleged act of homicide has occurred, and the prime suspect may have committed the act while sleepwalking.

Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouija
The Swedish-American psychiatrist Dr. Carl Wickland wrote in 1924 that he had treated the cases of "several persons whose seemingly harmless experiences with automatic writing and the Ouija board resulted in such wild insanity that commitment to asylums was necessitated.

Click to expand...

Religious adepts claim that teleportation is one of the “siddhi powers” which the adept can achieve when he has reached high spiritual states.
The underlying mechanism of “teleportation” is very simple. During sleepwalking and/or MPD (multiple personality disorder) incident the man travels to another place and when he wakes up he finds himself in a new place having absolutely no knowledge about how he has got there and thus he becomes strongly convinced that he has teleported from one location into another.

Religious adepts claim that stigmata are miracles and stigmata are the evidence of holiness. However real experimental facts show that stigmata are the result of self-mutilation during sleepwalking and/or MPD (multiple personality disorder) incidents which are usually invoked by prolonged self-starvation and prayers.

Religious adepts claim that chrism oil (a.k.a. myrrh) coming out of icons is the evidence of holiness – the majority of such cases are simple forgeries carefully plotted and made by religious adepts who are very aware of their deceptive activity, however sometimes the story behind myrrh-streaming icons is much more interesting – during sleepwalking and/or MPD (multiple personality disorder) incidents the religious adept comes to the icon and moistens it with chrism oil – when religious adept wakes up into full awareness he has no recollection of his activity and when he finds out that icon “has become myrrh-streaming” he becomes strongly convinced that he has witnessed the miracle with his own eyes. The same identical underlying mechanism (i.e. sleepwalking and/or MPD activity) is behind other religious miracles as well.
And this raises an interesting technical question: when the religious adept accomplishes “miraculous” actions during sleepwalking and/or MPD incident and when he wakes up and he has no recollection whatsoever about his sleepwalking/MPD activity and when he begins broadcasting “news about the miracle” to other people – can we consider such man as a swindler/deceiver? The main personality of such man has no knowledge whatsoever about the physical activity of the autonomous neuroclusters (inside his own brain) which have accomplished the “miracle” using the physical body of that man. Actually the main personality of such man is himself a victim of the deception accomplished by autonomous neuroclusters residing inside his own brain.

Religious adepts believe that spirits are some kind of “cloudlets”, which can travel via air, which can fly from one geographical location into another, which can throw/break material objects, which can reveal themselves to “spiritually advanced” adepts, etc.
Wrong understanding about the physical nature of “spirits” leads to wrong actions, as for example religious adepts spray with “holy water” places which are “possessed by ghosts” naively expecting that this supposedly should help.
Skeptic scientists who are ignoramus about the existence of autonomic neuroclusters make wrong conclusions too. When such skeptic scientist investigates medium who communicates with poltergeist by knock sounds (as for example one knock means “yes” and two knocks means “no”) and when he finds out that knocking is accomplished by the leg of the medium under the table, skeptic scientist declares that medium is the swindler. Yes, of course, there mediums who are swindlers, however there many cases where the main personality of the medium has no awareness about the fact that the leg of the medium is kicking the floor under the table – in this case the accusation of being swindler is actually incorrect.

 

ben d said: ↑

I am a soul...my evidence is that I exist and just typed this sentence!!!

Click to expand...

It is important to note that the arguments of the religious adepts who claim that they have soul are exactly identical to the arguments of the religious adepts who claim that they have consciousness – both cases are exactly identical:

outhouse said: ↑

I have factually proven I am self aware by my discussions here. Machines cannot factually replace forum members at this time.

Click to expand...

What about humans who are illiterate and who cannot type with keyboard? What about an infant?
Question for ben d: are such people without soul or not?
Question for outhouse: are such people without consciousness or not?

How we should call a human who fails to pass the Turing test? What word/term we should use for denoting a human who fails to pass the Turing test? If a human fails to pass Turing test then this raises a simple question: “does such human have soul/consciousness or not?”. As we can clearly see from the above examples, the Turing test is unable to determine if the object has soul/consciousness or not. There is not a single scientific tool which would be able to test for the existence of soul/consciousness which means that the term “soul/consciousness” is 100% pseudoscientific term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. In the original illustrative example, a human judge engages in natural language conversations with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give the correct answer to questions; it checks how closely the answer resembles typical human answers. The conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so that the result is not dependent on the machine's ability to render words into audio.
The test was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" Because "thinking" is difficult to define, Turing chooses to "replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words." Turing's new question is: "Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?" This question, Turing believed, is one that can actually be answered. In the remainder of the paper, he argued against all the major objections to the proposition that "machines can think".
In the years since 1950, the test has proven to be both highly influential and widely criticized, and it is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.

Click to expand...

ben d said: ↑

Science only deals with only the 2.5% physical matter of the universe...the remaining 97.5% is undetectable... Science does not know what it does not know and so whatever is in the books you read...remember these are early days in human learning about what and who they are in the context of the 100%...

Click to expand...

ben d only deals with only the 0.00000000000000000000000000000001% of information which the scientists have.
ben d does not know what he does not know.
ben d does not even know that ben d has no soul/consciousness.

 

outhouse said: ↑

I wonder if he knows we don't read these long Proselytizing rhetorical replies that carry no credibility?

Click to expand...

outhouse’s inability “to read the text longer than 10 words” (and your other personal inabilities) is not the scientific argument.

outhouse said: ↑

You might want to look up the word science and learn that definition, next credibility.

Click to expand...

Science is what you can observe and on which you can carry out reproducible experiments – everything that meets these criteria is the science; and everything that does not meet these criteria – is not the science.

outhouse said: ↑

To bad, he does not have a history or track record of credible scientific methodology. He has to move goal post to support his guessing.

Click to expand...

outhouse said: ↑

Sorry I appeal to reality.
And your pseudoscience goes nowhere here.
Your lack of ability to use credible scientific methods, means we can and will throw away imaginative explanations.

Click to expand...

outhouse said: ↑

YOU have not made a credible case.
And your lack of ability to present a credible case is not negated by YOU trying to steer the argument away from your pseudoscientific ERRORS

Click to expand...

Sapiens said: ↑

You don't even know what an appeal to authority is and when it applies.
An argument from authority refers to two kinds of logical arguments:
A logically valid argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of one or more authoritative source(s), whose opinions are likely to be true on the relevant issue.
A logically fallacious argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of a source that is not authoritative. Sources could be non-authoritative because of their personal bias, their disagreement with consensus on the issue, their non-expertise in the relevant issue, or a number of other issues. (Often, this is called an appeal to authority, rather than argument from authority.)
An expert opinion on a subject, and a journal article represents multiple expert opinions, is a logically valid argument from authority; but you're pretending, hoping we're all stupid.
Religious adepts tend to specialize in arguments from ignorance.

Click to expand...

Science is what you can observe and on which you can carry out reproducible experiments – everything that meets these criteria is the science; and everything that does not meet these criteria – is not the science.

It does not matter what do you think or what do you believe. All this talking is just a pure philosophical-theoretical blabber backed up with no experimental data whatsoever.

Let’s clean this mess and let's make things scientific.

Step #1: Scientific model/theory must be able to make predictions – do you agree with that or not?

Step #2: The predictions of the scientific model/theory must be testable by reproducible experiments – do you agree with that or not?

Step #3: Neurocluster Brain Model is able to make predictions which can be tested by reproducible experiments – so just go and do these experiments instead of your philosophical-theoretical blabber.

Step #4: Neurocluster Brain Model predicts that: after prolonged repeatable experimentation with “spiritualistic séances” you have high risk to induce sleepwalking/MPD incidents for the “medium”, during which the “medium” will be moving/breaking/etc various things in his own house, and when after awakening he finds things broken and scattered around his house, he becomes scared and strongly convinced that “evil spirits have possessed his house” – in more advanced cases this leads to the lunatic asylum.

Step # 5: Just go and carry out “spiritualistic séances” using “thread with the attached needle method” for prolonged periods of time as described in previous posts. Please note that it is important to use thread with the attached needle, do not use planchette/cup/glass/saucer (or some other heavy object) as shown in Hollywood movies. This setup (thread with the attached needle) will allow the manifestation of microscopic muscular contractions of the hand controlled by autonomous neurocluster inside the brain of the medium – with this experimental setup you can carry as many reproducible experiments as you wish. Using planchette/cup/glass/saucer will not work for average statistical man. Using planchette/cup/glass/saucer might work for people who are already in the lunatic asylum, but that’s another story. Average statistical man must use thread with the attached needle in order to succeed in “invoking spirit”.

Step # 6: Check out the results – check out if the “medium” has began having sleepwalking/MPD incidents which were not present before the experiment. The easiest and most reliable way to detect sleepwalking/MPD incidents is to use 24/7 video recording. If video recording is not available then sleepwalking/MPD incidents can be diagnosed using simple basic set of questions (however this method is less reliable than video recording).

http://neuroclusterbrain.com
Usually a man is completely unaware that he has multiple personality disorder (MPD), however it can be diagnosed with simple basic set of questions.
Diagnostic criteria for multiple personality disorder are the following:
1) Missing time and gaps in the memory.
Are there any episodes of “missing time” in your life? Are there any gaps in your memory? As for example, maybe you do not remember what you were doing yesterday from 3:00 PM till 8:00 PM, or maybe you do not remember what happened today from 8:00 AM till 12:00 PM, etc.
2) Strange things among your belongings.
Are there any episodes of you discovering the evidence of your actions and tasks that you do not recollect doing?
As for example, maybe you sometimes find new things among your belongings that you do not remember buying? As for example, maybe you have found an ashtray with smoked cigarettes in your home when you are completely sure that you are non-smoker, or maybe you have found leather clothes in your closet which perfectly fits your body however you are completely sure that you hate leather clothes, etc.
Are there any episodes of you finding (perplexing) writings, drawings, or notes among your belongings that you cannot remember doing?
Are there any episodes of you discovering injuries "coming to" in the midst of doing something?
3) Teleportation.
Are there any episodes of your teleportation? Are there any episodes when you have suddenly found yourself at work, in a nightclub, at the beach, or somewhere at home (e.g., in the closet, on a bed or sofa, in the corner) with no memory of how you came to be there?
4) Voices in the head.
Are there any episodes of you hearing voices inside your head that tell you to do things or comment on things that you are doing?
It is important to note that all these symptoms of multiple personality disorder are not attributable to psychotropic substances (alcohol, narcotics, etc) or another medical condition (e.g., complex partial seizures). These signs and symptoms may be observed by others or reported by the individual.

Click to expand...

Step # 7: Make your conclusions ONLY after you have done the experiment on statistically large sample of people (acting as mediums). If you have not done the experiment then your philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

Step # 8: Do you know of any other scientific model/theory which would predict the same outcome as Neurocluster Brain Model (“spiritualistic séances” inducing sleepwalking/MPD incidents)? If “yes” then please show this model/theory to us, it will be very interesting to see it.


If you have not done the experiment then you are not qualified as scientist to judge Neurocluster Brain Model.
If you have not done the experiment then your philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

It is important to note that the arguments of the religious adepts who claim that they have soul are exactly identical to the arguments of the religious adepts who claim that they have consciousness – both cases are exactly identical:


What about humans who are illiterate and who cannot type with keyboard? What about an infant?
Question for ben d: are such people without soul or not?
Question for outhouse: are such people without consciousness or not?

How we should call a human who fails to pass the Turing test? What word/term we should use for denoting a human who fails to pass the Turing test? If a human fails to pass Turing test then this raises a simple question: “does such human have consciousness or not?”. As we can clearly see from the above examples, the Turing test is unable to determine if the object has soul/consciousness or not. There is not a single scientific tool which would be able to test for the existence of consciousness which means that the term “soul/consciousness” is 100% pseudoscientific term.




ben d only deals with only the 0.00000000000000000000000000000001% of information which the scientists have.
ben d does not know what he does not know.
ben d does not even know that ben d has no soul/consciousness.

Click to expand...

neuroclusterbrain...I see you are a time waster so I will leave you to outhouse to wear you out... Pssst...I suspect you have a neurocluster on the brain that needs sorting out...an exorcist should be the go... perhaps outhouse knows a good one?

 

Iti oj said: ↑

we don't know...but i do ...

Click to expand...

You mean you know what you don't know...or you don't know what you know...or you know what you know and there is nothing that you do not know.....or you understand the 97.5%?

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

If you have not done the experiment then you are not qualified to judge Neurocluster Brain Model.

Click to expand...

I slept in a Holiday Inn, that over qualifies me to address this.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

If you have not done the experiment then your philosophical-theoretical blabber .

Click to expand...

Wow! how did you do it! just like every post you have made here is a prime example of philosophical-theoretical blabber and it has no value whatsoever.


Looking in a mirror?

 

Still think its all POE.

 

Iti oj said: ↑

@ben d undetectable yet we postulated it and have proofs of it and demonstrated the necessity of it, even if we don't know what it is or how it works

Click to expand...

Nice sales pitch....but I don't buy the bridge you are selling until it can be detected...

 

You know this is some serious science !!!!!! when we break out the ole Buckland Spirit Board

 

Iti oj said: ↑

ahaha

i think you missed my point and/or i missed yours...

my point is that 'dark matter' unlike the 'soul' has a bases for belief despite being 'undetectable'.

Click to expand...

I have been saying this for the last few days here.

Those who describe nothing ONLY reflect themselves and nothing more.


You happen to reflect academia and a search for the truth.


Not pseudoscience mythology and spite others are providing great examples of.


Just like when someone describes religion. It reflects the person not the religion.

 

ben d said: ↑

an exorcist should be the go... perhaps outhouse knows a good one?

Click to expand...

Catholics claim that exorcism can be performed only by an ordained priest (or higher prelate) with the express permission of the local bishop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism_in_the_Catholic_Church
Solemn exorcisms, according to the Canon law of the Church, can be exercised only by an ordained priest (or higher prelate), with the express permission of the local bishop, and only after a careful medical examination to exclude the possibility of mental illness.

Click to expand...

However this claim is false because exorcism procedures are accomplished no less successfully in other religions as well – in Islam, in Hinduism, in shamanistic cults, even in Voodoo cult, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism
Exorcism (from Greek ἐξορκισμός, exorkismos – binding by oath) is the practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or an area they are believed to have possessed. Depending on the spiritual beliefs of the exorcist, this may be done by causing the entity to swear an oath, performing an elaborate ritual, or simply by commanding it to depart in the name of a higher power. The practice is ancient and part of the belief system of many cultures and religions.

Click to expand...

Exorcisms performed by Christian Church are very rarely successful and usually improve the condition of the man only for very short period of time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism
According to Catholic understanding, several weekly exorcisms over many years are sometimes required to expel a deeply entrenched demon.

Click to expand...

The high failure rate of Christian Church’s exorcism was explained in Bible by Jesus himself – Jesus himself said very clearly that Jesus is unable to cast out demons forever and all demons return back to a man sooner or later. Below are the words of Jesus himself where Jesus clearly states that after the demons had been cast out they return back and “and the last state of that person is worse than the first”. Which means that in the Bible episode above the boy’s condition later became even worse than it was before – this is the classical example showing that “miracle healings” work only for very short period of time and later the patient’s condition becomes even worse than it was before.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+12&version=ESV
Return of an Unclean Spirit
43 “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none.
44 Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order.
45 Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”
(Bible. Matthew 12:43-45)

Click to expand...

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+11&version=ESV
Return of an Unclean Spirit
24 “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’
25 And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order.
26 Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.”
(Bible. Luke 11:24-26)

Click to expand...

As for example, Jesus had repeated the exorcism procedure for Mary Magdalene seven times. The reason why seven times were needed was explained by Jesus himself – demons do return back after cast out and demons return back even stronger than they were before.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+16&version=ESV
9 Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.
(Bible. Mark 16:9)

Click to expand...

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+8&version=ESV
1 Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him,
2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
3 and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.
(Bible. Luke 8:1-3)

Click to expand...

Let’s raise a simple question: do you need to cast out demons from mentally healthy person? The answer is obvious – mentally healthy person does not need any casting out of demons. Only mentally ill person needs casting out of demons. The conclusion is very simple – Mary Magdalene was mentally ill person who needed repetitious exorcism procedures. Mary Magdalene was the most loyal disciple of Jesus. Mary Magdalene stayed with Jesus at the cross after the other disciples (except John the Beloved) had fled. Based on Bible episode John 8:1-11Western Catholic Church claims (and Eastern Orthodox disagrees) that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute which was saved by Jesus from being stoned to death. Let’s raise a simple question: how reliable are stories which are told by mentally ill prostitute? The answer is obvious. Nonetheless Christians consider Mary Magdalene as extremely reliable source of information.

Because the failure rate of Christian Church’s exorcism is very high, in the Middle Ages the Christian Church had been solving this technical problem in a very simple way – simply by killing all “demonically possessed” people for whom exorcism procedures had failed – usually such people were burned alive in flames – and the problem is solved.
In current times the Christian Church has no longer the ability to kill “demonically possessed” people for whom exorcism procedures had failed, so in current times Christian Church disposes by “demonically possessed” people in other modern way – simply by forwarding such people to psychiatrists, claiming that this man is “mentally ill” and not “demonically possessed” and claiming Christian Church has nothing to do with such cases. This strategy is the perfect tool to improve success rate of exorcism procedures – if exorcism procedure has barely succeeded then such man is declared as “demonically possessed”, however if exorcism procedure has failed then such man is declared as “mentally ill” who needs treatment in lunatic asylum and Christian Church has nothing to do with him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism_in_the_Catholic_Church
According to the Vatican guidelines issued in 1999, “the person who claims to be possessed must be evaluated by doctors to rule out a mental or physical illness.” Most reported cases do not require an exorcism because twentieth-century Catholic officials regard genuine demonic possession as an extremely rare phenomenon that is easily confounded with natural mental disturbances. <...>
Not all exorcisms are successful the first time; it could take days, weeks, or months of constant prayer and exorcisms.

Click to expand...

… continued in next post ….

 

…. the continuation of previous post ….

Majority of doctors who treat the “demonic possession” incorrectly assume that “demonic possession” is exactly the same phenomenon as epilepsy – this confusion is due to the lack of knowledge about the existence of autonomic egregoric neuroclusters.
It is important to note that “demonic possession” and “epilepsy” are actually two different distinct phenomena. In “demonic possession” phenomenon the autonomic egregoric neurocluster takes over the control of patient’s physical body. Autonomic egregoric neurocluster can cause epileptic seizures, however epileptic seizure is the by-product of defective egregoric neurocluster’s activity, non-defective egregoric neurocluster does not cause epileptic seizures.
In classical medical cases the epileptic seizure arise without the involvement of egregoric neuroclusters, epileptic seizure arise when a small number of neurons in the brain excite themselves via positive feedback neural circuits which leads to the excitation of nearby neurons and this excessive hypersynchronous neuronal activity spreads through large areas of the brain. There are many ways to treat epilepsy however all these treatments share the same common working principle – in order to eliminate the epileptic seizures you need to suppress the excitement of neurons and you need to suppress the spread of the neural excitement through the large areas of the brain. Drugs which are used to treat epilepsy block the activity of the brain neurons thus rendering the patient into vegetable-like state to more or less degree. When a patient takes such drugs the frequency of epileptic seizures drops down or seizures disappear completely.
In psychiatry the same strategy is applied to “demonic possession” cases as well – the patient is drugged with medications which render the patient into vegetable-like state to more or less degree.
At current moment the psychiatry does not have any other tools to deal with “demonic possession” patients – the only treatment of such patient is to drug him into vegetable-like state.
However Neurocluster Brain Model gives an answer how to deal with “demonic possession” – all you need to do is (surgically or by other means) fix the brain locally in the places where egregoric neurocluster is located and thus the patient will be free from that “demon” forever.

For some movies about psychiatry please click here.
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/psychiatry_videos.html

In Middle Ages Christian Inquisition has killed millions of people who were accused as being possessed by demons. Christians are unable to answer the simple question: why Inquisition has killed so many people? The answer is very simple – all societies in all times had some percentage of mentally ill men who were impossible to cure and who caused many troubles for surrounding people. Earlier societies did not possess enough resources and technologies to be able to support these mentally ill people – thus the easiest solution was chosen – simply to exterminate these mentally ill people by accusing them as being possessed by demons. Christian Church organized public executions of these mentally ill persons making such public executions as grand shows for religious adepts. The killing of mentally ill persons was totally controlled by the Church, which besides the killings of mentally ill persons also killed mentally healthy persons who were simply opposing the Church dogmas and Church domination.
In current times the society is able to support and to keep alive mentally ill people who are kept in psychiatric hospitals (a.k.a. lunatic asylums) and this the reason why the Church stopped killing mentally ill people.
It is important to note that the Church killed only such mentally ill people whose hallucinatory visions did not match Christianity dogmas, however if mentally ill person declared that he had hallucinatory vision in which he saw Jesus, Saint Mary or some other Christian Saint, then the Church declared such mentally person as the Saint.

 

You know this is some serious science !!!!!! when we break out the ole Buckland Spirit Board

 

copy paste proselytizing is not allowed here.

It is obvious proselytizing.

 

Iti oj said: ↑

ahaha

i think you missed my point and/or i missed yours...

my point is that 'dark matter' unlike the 'soul' has a bases for belief despite being 'undetectable'.

Click to expand...

Not so...both have a basis for belief...one subjective and the other objective.... Btw, the soul is not undetectable, it is the 'I'...the incarnation of universal spirit in human physical form... And I suspect the omnipresent dark energy has its basis in omnipresent spirit....and you are free to disbelieve...but you can not disprove it just as I can not prove it...

 

outhouse said: ↑

You know this is some serious science !!!!!! when we break out the ole Buckland Spirit Board

Click to expand...

outhouse’s inability to carry out simple experiments due his religious beliefs is not the scientific argument.

Additional explanation for the adepts of mainstream religions (Christianity/Islam/etc). Adepts of mainstream religions are very afraid of spiritualistic séances because they think that this technique is only for invocation of demon-spirits. However what they do not know is that the same exactly technique (“thread with the attached needle method”) is very suitable for invoking of saint spirits like Jesus/Mary/Muhammad/Krisha/Buddha/etc.

So if you are talking with a Christian, all you need to do is to ask “Would you like to talk directly with Jesus? You can talk directly with Jesus very easily right now. Here is what you need to do. Take the thread with the attached needle….<give full instructions here>.”
During the séance he needs to say “Hello, Jesus’s spirit, please come, I want to talk with you, are you here?”. And the “Jesus” will come and the “Jesus” will talk to him directly via thread with the attached needle.
“Direct talking to Jesus” – isn’t that the most desired experience that Christians dream of? And you can talk directly to Jesus right now, just take the thread with the attached needle and carry out the séance.

As it was written in previous post, it does not matter at all which character you will choose. All that matters here is – whatever “spirit” will be able to respond and communicate meaningful messages via movements of the hanging needle, is good enough for the experiment.

The experimental setup is very simple and the cost of equipment is less than a dollar.
All you need are:
1) the needle;
2) the thread (length approximately 20-40 cm, 30 cm is the statistical average, the concrete comfortable length depends on the length of the hand of the "medium");
3) one standard A4-size sheet of paper, on this sheet of paper write down the alphabet letters in circle, which should look like this image:


Place this sheet of paper on the table, take the thread with attached needle into the hand, and then position your hand over the sheet of paper in such a way that the needle is hanging above the center of the circle with alphabet letters, however the needle is not touching the sheet of paper, the needle is hanging above the sheet of paper at a distance of several centimeters from the paper. Then concentrate and start the “invocation of the spirit”. Choose freely the character whose “spirit” you want to “invoke”, as for example your dead grandfather, some historical person, some fictional character – it does not matter at all which character you will choose. All that matters here is – whatever “spirit” will be able to respond and communicate meaningful messages via movements of the hanging needle, is good enough for the experiment. As for example, you can try invoking Napoleon’s spirit – all you need to is – while keeping the thread with the needle above the center of the circle with alphabet letters, ask the question “Hello, Napoleon’s spirit, please come, I want to talk with you, are you here?”. And watch carefully for the movements of the needle. If the needle starts moving forming meaningful words/sentences from the alphabet letters then the communication channel with the “spirit” is established. If invoking of Napoleon’s spirit has failed (the needle does not move or moves randomly without forming meaningful words/sentences) then choose another character and repeat the same exact procedure anew, like for example “Hello, grandfather’s spirit, please come, I want to talk with you, are you here?”. If invoking of spirit has failed again, then repeat the same exact procedure every time choosing another character. It is important to note here, that during the first “séances” do not expect long fluent sentences from the “spirit”, if that “spirit” will be able to form one word from letters of alphabet then that is already the great achievement. The intelligence level of majority of “spirits” is pretty low – getting one word as the answer to the asked question is a great achievement for that “spirit”. When “séances” with the same “spirit” are repeated again and again then the fluency/speed of “spirit’s speech” increases with every new “séance”. If you are lucky enough, then you can establish the communication channel with the “spirit” which will begin broadcast of the “spiritual knowledge about the structure of the universe, the moral lessons for the whole humanity across the globe, etc.” – such cases are quite rare, however you have small chance to succeed in that. One such typical classic example of autonomic neurocluster is so called “archangel Gabriel” which dictated the text of Quran to Muhammad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad
The Quran is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims believe that it represents the words of God revealed to Muhammad through the archangel Gabriel.

Click to expand...

If you are failing to establish “communication channel” with the “spirit” then below are the techniques which might help:
1) If you are holding the thread with a needle in the right hand and “invoking of spirit” fails, then try holding the thread with a needle with another hand, try with the left hand, this might help. You need to find out which of your hands (right or left) is more successful in carrying out “séances”.
2) Experimental results have shown that coffee/alcohol/cigarettes/drugs/etc affects the “communication channel with the spirit” – the usage of even small doses of coffee/alcohol/cigarettes/drugs/etc either facilitates or hinders the “communication channel” – for different people the effect is different, however in your case the effect might be facilitation, so why not to try it, it might help. Of course, the preferred experimental setup is the complete soberness of the “medium”, however if “invocation of spirit” fails no matter how hard you try, then you have nothing to lose trying the same “invocation of spirit” procedure after the usage of small doses of coffee/alcohol/cigarettes/drugs/etc.

Question for outhouse: have you carried out the experiment?

If you have not done the experiment then you are not qualified as scientist to judge Neurocluster Brain Model.
If you have not done the experiment then your judgment is based on religious dogmas.
If you have not done the experiment then your philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

 

ben d said: ↑

Btw, the soul is not undetectable

Click to expand...

It factually is undetectable.

If it was truly detectable, it would not be only mythology.

 

You know this is some serious science !!!!!! when we break out the ole Buckland Spirit Board

 

outhouse said: ↑

It factually is undetectable.

If it was truly detectable, it would not be only mythology.

Click to expand...

Nonsense....I exist......and your 'I' exists.... Do you know what and who you are in the context of the universe?

 

outhouse said: ↑

You know this is some serious science !!!!!! when we break out the ole Buckland Spirit Board

Click to expand...

"If you have not done the experiment then your judgment is based on religious dogmas." I never thought I'd see the day when you were accused of having a religious dogmatic presence here...

 

ben d said: ↑

the soul is not undetectable, it is the 'I'...the incarnation of universal spirit in human physical form... And I suspect the omnipresent dark energy has its basis in omnipresent spirit....and you are free to disbelieve...but you can not disprove it just as I can not prove it...

Click to expand...

Question for ben d: is the soul/spirit a 1) divisible object, or 2) indivisible object? In other words, can the soul/spirit be divided into the composing parts or not?
The feature divisibility/indivisibility is the most fundamental feature of the object, because it instantaneously reveals the fundamental flaws in the definition of the object.
So, what is your answer: the soul/spirit is a 1) divisible object, or 2) indivisible object?

Here we have two scenarios:
1) If the soul/spirit is divisible object then the soul/spirit is not immortal because it can be destroyed by dividing it into the composing parts.
2) If the soul/spirit is indivisible object then it cannot collect “spiritual experience” because in order to able to save the information about the “collected experience” you need to have the ability to change the states/positions of the composing parts of that object. By definition the indivisible object cannot store information about its previous experience.
In both scenarios the religious dogmas are crushed. If the soul/spirit is able to collect “spiritual experience” then this means that the soul/spirit must be composed of composing parts which means that such soul/spirit is not immortal – it can be destroyed by dividing it into the composing parts. And if the soul is immortal then it must be indivisible which means such soul/spirit cannot collect “spiritual experience” during the lifetime which means that all religious rituals/practices which supposedly collect “good spiritual experience” – all these religious rituals/practices are meaningless.
Two dogmas – 1) the immortality of the soul/spirit and 2) the collection of “spiritual experience” during the lifetime – are two dogmas which contradict each other – if one dogma is true then another dogma is automatically false, they cannot be both true simultaneously.

Religious adepts are convinced that after the death of their physical bodies their soul/spirit will travel into the paradise/hell or will reincarnate into some other living creature/being. Let’s analyze both scenarios.
According to religious dogmas all these old-age doddering dementia-ill adepts who go to Church every weekend – all these dementia-ill adepts will get into the paradise after the death of their physical bodies. Which means that if you will get into the paradise too then you will find yourself surrounded by myriads of these dementia-ill souls who are completely lost in time and space, who do not remember their own names, etc – according to religious dogmas all these dementia-ill souls will be gathered into the paradise because they had observed religious orders during their earthly life – which raises a simple question: do you really want spend your eternity completely surrounded by these myriads of dementia-ill souls inhabiting the paradise, is it really your most desired goal?
Now let’s analyze another scenario – the reincarnation of your soul/spirit into some other living creature/being. You have had very hard time trying to accumulate “spiritual experience” during your earthly lifetime, and then in old age you become dementia-ill and lose all your accumulated “spiritual experience” and as a result you reincarnate into the cockroach. In your new cockroach-life you have no idea for what kind of “bad karma” you were punished to become a cockroach, because according to dogmatism of reincarnation the soul/spirit has no remembrance whatsoever from the previous life. So this cockroach has no idea whatsoever what sin/error he needs to repair from previous life, because the cockroach knows nothing about his previous human-incarnation. In the new reincarnation as the cockroach you again try to accumulate “spiritual experience”, then cockroach gets old age, becomes dementia-ill, loses all his accumulated “spiritual experience”, and after the death reincarnates into the amoeba. And the process is repeated again and again the infinite number of times... a really meaningless scenario of existence, isn’t it?

 

outhouse said: ↑

You know this is some serious science !!!!!! when we break out the ole Buckland Spirit Board

Click to expand...

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

outhouse’s inability to carry out simple experiments due his religious beliefs is not the scientific argument.
If you have not done the experiment then you are not qualified as scientist to judge Neurocluster Brain Model.
If you have not done the experiment then your judgment is based on religious dogmas.
If you have not done the experiment then your philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

Click to expand...

ben d said: ↑

I never thought I'd see the day when you were accused of having a religious dogmatic presence here...

Click to expand...

outhouse has not carried out the experiment and this means that outhouse is the religious adept by definition.

Science is what you can observe and on which you can carry out reproducible experiments – everything that meets these criteria is the science; and everything that does not meet these criteria – is not the science.
The only judge in science is the experiment.
In science the philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

It is very easy to recognize the “religious adept” using the following diagnostic criteria: if a man says “I have not done the experiment, I will not do the experiment, I believe my religious dogma no matter what is the evidence, I will not look into the evidence, I am not interested in the evidence, I believe my religious dogma no matter what is the evidence” then such a man is classified as “religious adept”.

Definition of “religious adept”: a man who believes in religious dogma.
Definition of “religious dogma”: a claim which does not match the scientific criteria, a claim which has no experimental evidence.

The most popular religious dogma claims that man has “indivisible-single-consciousness”, the adepts of this religious dogma are scared to death by the idea that other agents/entities might be present in their own brain. That fierce fear of the possibility of other agents/entities being present in their own brain drives these people to fight until “the last drop of blood” defending the religious dogma of “indivisible-single-consciousness”.

Question for outhouse: do you have strong religious fanatic faith that you possess “indivisible-single-consciousness”?

 

Yawn.

All I ask for is a credible argument, not POE

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Let’s raise a question: how real are these “spiritual worlds”? To answer this question we will use the analogy. Let’s analyze a computer game which has its own 2D or 3D virtual world, its own virtual characters, its own laws and rules, etc. When a man plays a computer game, he interacts with this virtual game world, he communicates with virtual game characters as if this virtual world is real. However if we will physically destroy the computer then automatically this virtual world will disappear and all virtual characters will disappear too.
Exactly the same situation is with “spiritual worlds”. All these “spiritual worlds” are generated by the neuroclusters in the brain (exactly the same happens during dreaming) and the main personality (which enters such “spiritual world”) has no tools whatsoever to distinguish a simulated virtual world from the real world. When the main personality enters “spiritual world” then everything inside such “spiritual world” looks very realistic.
Like with the computer, exactly the same situation is with the brain – “spiritual world” exists only as long as the physical brain exists which generates the sounds and images of “spiritual world” – and if the brain is physically destroyed then all these “spiritual worlds” are destroyed too.
However religious adepts naively believe that “spiritual worlds” can exist without physical brain. Such a belief is equivalent to the belief that the virtual world of computer game will continue to exist after the computer has been physically destroyed.
When a man is put into “spiritual world” state, the neural circuits which do the modeling create pictures and sounds in a concordance to the belief system of that man. Let’s illustrate with several examples. The majority of so called “astral travel experts” claim that physical human body is connected with “astral body” through an “astral (silver) cord”.“Astral travel experts” claim that this astral cord is quite thick when the astral body is located near the physical body and this astral cord becomes thinner and thinner when the astral body wanders away from the physical body. If this astral cord becomes broken then the astral body is unable to return to the physical body and a man dies or in some cases some alien spiritual being (like demonic spirit) can attach itself to that broken astral cord and thus can incarnate into the human body replacing the original human soul (such phenomenon is called “demonic possession”). Such are the claims of “astral travel experts”. However the reality is completely different. If a man had been instructed about astral cord existence before this man was taught the techniques of astral traveling then such man will see and feel the astral cord during his astral traveling, such man will confirm that the astral cord surely does really exists. However if a man had never heard about astral cord existence before this man was taught techniques of astral traveling then such man will never see and will never feel any astral cord during his journeys in the “astral world”. The conclusion is simple. When a man is put into “spiritual world” state the neural circuits which do the modeling create pictures and sounds in a concordance to the belief system of that man. For example if a man believes in the existence of Jesus Christ, then such man during the travel in “spiritual world” will surely meet Jesus Christ. If a man believes in the existence of Krishna/Buddha/etc then such man will meet Krishna/Buddha/etc during his travel in “spiritual world”. The belief system of a man determines the images which he will see during the “spiritual travel”. As for example, famous Bulgarian clairvoyant Baba Vanga always saw and communicated with “saint virgin Mary” and not with Vishnu/Shiva/Krisha or whatever else non-Christian deity. Bulgarian clairvoyant Baba Vanga in her childhood was imprinted with Christian dogmatism and thus as the result Baba Vanga communicated only with Christian characters like “saint Virgin Mary” in her “spiritual visions”.
Many people have experienced leaving physical body (a.k.a. OOBE – out of body experience). When being outside of the physical body some people are able to see their own physical body, however other people do not see their own physical body. What is the cause of such difference? The answer is simple. People whose brain contains clear detailed model of their own physical body do see their own physical body while being in OOBE. The detailed model of the physical body is formed in the brain when a man spends countless hours in front of the mirror examining himself from all sides, examining every spot, every hair and other small details. However other people spend minimum of their time in the front of the mirror – such man glances briefly into the mirror to check if his nose is not smudged with tomato ketchup or if cheeks are not stuck with crumbs of cake – and that’s all he needs to know – in such case the model of the physical body in such man’s brain is very rough and smeared – and when such man experiences OOBE, there is very small probability that he will be able to see his own physical body from aside because of the simple fact – the neural circuits in his brain have too few data in order to be able to model and create image of his physical body viewed from aside (viewed from third person perspective).
The situation with the chakras is identical to the situation with astral cord. In “spiritual journeys” chakras are seen only by those people who knew and believed in advance that chakras do exist. The concept of “chakras” belong to the eastern tradition and this the reason why during “spiritual journeys” chakras are seen only by the adepts of the eastern tradition. In other religions there is no concept of “chakras” (like for example in Christianity, Islam, etc) and for that reason adepts of such religions do not report seeing “chakras” when being in “spiritual journeys”. A man can see chakras only when the model of chakras is written into brain in advance. The writing of model into the brain is accomplished when a man studies pictures with chakras, reads texts about features of chakras, listens lectures about chakras, etc.
Neuroclusters in the brain usually store models of real-world-objects, however neuroclusters can also store models of non-real-world objects (a good example or non-real-world object is “chakras”).

Models of the objects can be copied from one human brain into another human brain in the similar way like computer files can be copied from one computer into another. The model of object X is copied from one human brain into another brain when man A tells to man B the features of object X, draws and shows the pictures of object X, makes statuette of object X and shows it, etc.
When two or more people have the same identical (or very similar) model of object X written in their brains – this phenomenon is called the “egregor X”.
Egregor is the same identical object X model which is multiplied and written into the brains of two or more individuals.
Egregor is the equivalent of the computer program and has many features of computer program (it can be copied, overwritten, deleted, etc), however there are some differences from computer program.
As for example egregor has a feature called “the strength of egregor”.
The strength of egregor increases when increases the number of people who have the same object X model written in their brains. The bigger the number of people who are the carriers of egregor – the stronger the egregor.
The working principle of the egregor strength is very simple.
Suppose we have a man A whose brain has no data about object X.
If man A meets man B whose brain contains object X model, then copying of model X from man’s B brain into man’s A brain meets great resistance because of high suspicion if the model X is reliable and if the model X can be trusted.
However if man A meets two(2) other men who are the carriers of object X model, then copying of model X into man’s A brain is done more easily because the fact that two other men trust the model X decreases the suspicion that the model X is unreliable.
If man A meets ten(10) other men who are the carriers of object X model, then copying of model X into man’s A brain is done more easily because the fact that ten other men trust the model X decreases the suspicion that the model X is unreliable.
And so on.
If man A sees that a million men are carriers of object X model, then copying of model X into man’s A brain is done almost without any checks of model X validity.
The strength of egregor X is directly proportional to the number of people who are the carriers of object X model.
The strength of egregor has no correlation with the truthfulness of facts which are contained inside the egregor.
The egregor can be very strong, however facts which are contained inside the egregor can be absolutely false.
And vice versa.The egregor can be weak, however facts which are contained inside the egregor can be true.
Strong egregor has a power to force a man into accepting ideas and claims which contradict real world data.

… continued in next post ….

Click to expand...

I am overwhelmed by the quantity of your responses. Please give me one issue at a time and I can respond.

But basically:

1. I contend that there is paranormal phenomena that will never fit into a materialistic worldview.

2.. I contend that consciousness does not originate from the material but is fundamental and descends/incarnates progressively dense material levels.

Feel free to discuss with me any bite-sized issue.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Question for ben d: is the soul/spirit a 1) divisible object, or 2) indivisible object? In other words, can the soul/spirit be divided into the composing parts or not?
The feature divisibility/indivisibility is the most fundamental feature of the object, because it instantaneously reveals the fundamental flaws in the definition of the object.
So, what is your answer: the soul/spirit is a 1) divisible object, or 2) indivisible object?

Here we have two scenarios:
1) If the soul/spirit is divisible object then the soul/spirit is not immortal because it can be destroyed by dividing it into the composing parts.
2) If the soul/spirit is indivisible object then it cannot collect “spiritual experience” because in order to able to save the information about the “collected experience” you need to have the ability to change the states/positions of the composing parts of that object. By definition the indivisible object cannot store information about its previous experience.
In both scenarios the religious dogmas are crushed. If the soul/spirit is able to collect “spiritual experience” then this means that the soul/spirit must be composed of composing parts which means that such soul/spirit is not immortal – it can be destroyed by dividing it into the composing parts. And if the soul is immortal then it must be indivisible which means such soul/spirit cannot collect “spiritual experience” during the lifetime which means that all religious rituals/practices which supposedly collect “good spiritual experience” – all these religious rituals/practices are meaningless.
Two dogmas – 1) the immortality of the soul/spirit and 2) the collection of “spiritual experience” during the lifetime – are two dogmas which contradict each other – if one dogma is true then another dogma is automatically false, they cannot be both true simultaneously.

Religious adepts are convinced that after the death of their physical bodies their soul/spirit will travel into the paradise/hell or will reincarnate into some other living creature/being. Let’s analyze both scenarios.
According to religious dogmas all these old-age doddering dementia-ill adepts who go to Church every weekend – all these dementia-ill adepts will get into the paradise after the death of their physical bodies. Which means that if you will get into the paradise too then you will find yourself surrounded by myriads of these dementia-ill souls who are completely lost in time and space, who do not remember their own names, etc – according to religious dogmas all these dementia-ill souls will be gathered into the paradise because they had observed religious orders during their earthly life – which raises a simple question: do you really want spend your eternity completely surrounded by these myriads of dementia-ill souls inhabiting the paradise, is it really your most desired goal?
Now let’s analyze another scenario – the reincarnation of your soul/spirit into some other living creature/being. You have had very hard time trying to accumulate “spiritual experience” during your earthly lifetime, and then in old age you become dementia-ill and lose all your accumulated “spiritual experience” and as a result you reincarnate into the cockroach. In your new cockroach-life you have no idea for what kind of “bad karma” you were punished to become a cockroach, because according to dogmatism of reincarnation the soul/spirit has no remembrance whatsoever from the previous life. So this cockroach has no idea whatsoever what sin/error he needs to repair from previous life, because the cockroach knows nothing about his previous human-incarnation. In the new reincarnation as the cockroach you again try to accumulate “spiritual experience”, then cockroach gets old age, becomes dementia-ill, loses all his accumulated “spiritual experience”, and after the death reincarnates into the amoeba. And the process is repeated again and again the infinite number of times... a really meaningless scenario of existence, isn’t it?

Click to expand...

Depends on how we approach it..from the non-dual universal perspective...the universe is one and the underlying unity of which the apparent everything is constituted is the omnipresent energy known as spirit in the religious tradition or dark energy in science...so in this sense the universe is an indivisible one... From the dualistic perspective, there is no end to differentiation.....

 

George-ananda said: ↑

1. I contend that there is paranormal phenomena that will never fit into a materialistic worldview.

Click to expand...

Please define: what is “materialistic”? As for example, the information is “materialistic” or not?

George-ananda said: ↑

2.. I contend that consciousness does not originate from the material but is fundamental and descends/incarnates progressively dense material levels.

Click to expand...

The most fundamental existential question is “who am I?” – the same question rephrased in more scientific way is “what is the definition of “I”?”. If we answer this question incorrectly then all our subsequent actions in our life are meaningless.
Let's do simple thought experiment. Suppose I am sitting in the room and I cut off my one leg and throw it out the window, and now the question – where I am left: inside the room or outside the window? The answer is obvious – I am in the room and not outside the window, which means that the location of “I” is not in the leg which was cut off. Now let’s cut off the arm and throw it out the window, and now the question – where I am left: inside the room or outside the window? The answer is obvious – I am in the room and not outside the window, which means that the location of “I” is not in the arm which was cut off. In the same way we can cut off other parts of the body and throw them out the window as well, we can replace all internal organs with artificial ones (artificial heart, etc) throwing original organs out the window, and every time when we cut off some piece of my body and throw these pieces out the window – “I” still remains in the room and not outside the window. Some people think that “I” is located in the neurons of the brain. Well, theoretically we can replace a single original natural neuron by artificial neuron which has exactly the same functionality as the original natural neuron – in that case “I” will remain unchanged. Then we can replace the second original natural neuron by artificial neuron, then we can replace the third neuron, the fourth neuron, and so on – even when all neurons in the brain will be replaced by artificial neurons – the “I” will remain unchanged. So what is “I”, where “I” is located? Neurocluster Brain Model provides the answer to this question.
Neurocluster Brain Model defines “I” (a.k.a. “spirit”, “soul”, “consciousness”, etc) as the software which runs on neural-network-hardware (i.e. on neurons of the brain).
“I” is not the material neurons themselves however “I” is the software which runs on neural-network-hardware. “I” can be cloned/copied or ported to another hardware and can successfully run on another hardware even when the first hardware is physically destroyed – exactly in the same way as the computer program can be cloned/copied or ported to another hardware. Thus, periodical transferring of “I-software” to another new hardware provides unlimited existence time (a.k.a. “immortality”). At the current moment the cloning/copying or porting of whole “I-software” to another hardware is not technically feasible, however this might become feasible in future. However microscopic pieces of “I” can be made “immortal” even today. We will explain more detailed.
When “I” is defined as software that means that “I-object” is a divisible object, it can be divided into many composing parts, just exactly in the same way as the large software program can be decomposed into smaller submodules/subroutines/functions/etc.
For many practical applications in order to achieve the needed goal you do not need to copy the whole program code, it is enough to take and to copy just a small submodule/subroutine/function taken from that huge software project.
To demonstrate the general principle of copying ability it is enough to demonstrate that some small piece of software can be copied.
Let’s apply this to the human brain.
Suppose man X spends hundreds of hours thinking and trying to find solution to some problem Z and finally he succeeds. The solution which he has found in the form of information is saved into his brain neurons and this solution becomes the part of that man’s “I” (because by definition “I” is the software/information). This man X can tell and teach another man Y how to solve problem Z, the man X can copy the problem solving algorithm into another man’s Y brain. After the problem solving algorithm was copied into another man’s Y brain, some teeny-tiny portion of man X “I” was copied into man’s Y brain.
This simple example demonstrates the principle that some small teeny-tiny piece of “I-software” can be copied into another hardware.
To clarify the idea let’s illustrate with the concrete example. Newton discovered the formula “F=m*a” which had become the part of Newton’s “I” and later this formula “F=m*a” was copied into the brains (hardware) of other people and this formula traveling from one brain (hardware) into another brain has become “immortal”, in other words, the tiny little piece of Newton’s “I” has become immortal and lives until today.
The definition of “I” as a software which runs on neural-network-hardware is completely different from 1) the views of materialists and 2) the views of religious adepts.
Materialists consider themselves as the stack of material atoms, materialists consider themselves as DNA molecule, and materialists see their “immortality” via the replication of their own DNA molecule, thus materialists desperately desire to produce material children naively believing that production of children supposedly extends the existence of their own “I” – while not the exactly the true “I”, but at least a somewhat corrupted copy of “I” (corrupted copy of DNA molecule). It is interesting to note that biological children of the parents-scientists/discoverers usually do not carry on the ideas/experience of their parents-scientists/discoverers – the newly discovered scientific ideas, as a rule, are carried on only by strangers in blood, which means that biological children do not help at all to “immortalize” the ideas of their parents-scientists/discoverers.
Religious adepts consider that “I” is some kind of a “cloudlet” which can detach from physical body and which can float/travel through space, which can travel to paradise/hell or reincarnate into some other living creature/being, religious adepts are strongly convinced that observance of rules written in the sacred scriptures will somehow help “I-cloudlet” to reach the better existence conditions in post-mortal existence – the falseness of such claims will be explained in details in the text below which describes Neurocluster Brain Model.
It is important to note that Neurocluster Brain Model describes all processes in the brain from the information processing point of view. All objects/terms used in the dictionary of Neurocluster Brain Model (like “main personality”, “egregor”, “dream characters”, etc) actually denote information objects which have more of less equivalents in computer science like “software”, “program”, “routine”, “subroutine”, “function”, “procedure”, etc.
And this raises an interesting technical question: Neurocluster Brain Model is a materialistic model or not? The answer depends on how you answer the question: information is matter or not? Information cannot exist without a material carrier, however information itself is not a matter.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

outhouse’s inability “to read the text longer than 10 words” (and your other personal inabilities) is not the scientific argument.

Science is what you can observe and on which you can carry out reproducible experiments – everything that meets these criteria is the science; and everything that does not meet these criteria – is not the science.


Science is what you can observe and on which you can carry out reproducible experiments – everything that meets these criteria is the science; and everything that does not meet these criteria – is not the science.

It does not matter what do you think or what do you believe. All this talking is just a pure philosophical-theoretical blabber backed up with no experimental data whatsoever.

Let’s clean this mess and let's make things scientific.

Step #1: Scientific model/theory must be able to make predictions – do you agree with that or not?

Step #2: The predictions of the scientific model/theory must be testable by reproducible experiments – do you agree with that or not?

Step #3: Neurocluster Brain Model is able to make predictions which can be tested by reproducible experiments – so just go and do these experiments instead of your philosophical-theoretical blabber.

Step #4: Neurocluster Brain Model predicts that: after prolonged repeatable experimentation with “spiritualistic séances” you have high risk to induce sleepwalking/MPD incidents for the “medium”, during which the “medium” will be moving/breaking/etc various things in his own house, and when after awakening he finds things broken and scattered around his house, he becomes scared and strongly convinced that “evil spirits have possessed his house” – in more advanced cases this leads to the lunatic asylum.

Step # 5: Just go and carry out “spiritualistic séances” using “thread with the attached needle method” for prolonged periods of time as described in previous posts. Please note that it is important to use thread with the attached needle, do not use planchette/cup/glass/saucer (or some other heavy object) as shown in Hollywood movies. This setup (thread with the attached needle) will allow the manifestation of microscopic muscular contractions of the hand controlled by autonomous neurocluster inside the brain of the medium – with this experimental setup you can carry as many reproducible experiments as you wish. Using planchette/cup/glass/saucer will not work for average statistical man. Using planchette/cup/glass/saucer might work for people who are already in the lunatic asylum, but that’s another story. Average statistical man must use thread with the attached needle in order to succeed in “invoking spirit”.

Step # 6: Check out the results – check out if the “medium” has began having sleepwalking/MPD incidents which were not present before the experiment. The easiest and most reliable way to detect sleepwalking/MPD incidents is to use 24/7 video recording. If video recording is not available then sleepwalking/MPD incidents can be diagnosed using simple basic set of questions (however this method is less reliable than video recording).

Step # 7: Make your conclusions ONLY after you have done the experiment on statistically large sample of people (acting as mediums). If you have not done the experiment then your philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

Step # 8: Do you know of any other scientific model/theory which would predict the same outcome as Neurocluster Brain Model (“spiritualistic séances” inducing sleepwalking/MPD incidents)? If “yes” then please show this model/theory to us, it will be very interesting to see it.


If you have not done the experiment then you are not qualified as scientist to judge Neurocluster Brain Model.
If you have not done the experiment then your philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

Click to expand...

Step #9 the work needs to be published in a reputable peer reviewed journal.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Please define: what is “materialistic”? As for example, the information is “materialistic” or not?

Click to expand...

From Wikipedia:

Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are identical with material interactions.

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

The most fundamental existential question is “who am I?” – the same question rephrased in more scientific way is “what is the definition of “I”?”. If we answer this question incorrectly then all our subsequent actions in our life are meaningless.
Let's do simple thought experiment. Suppose I am sitting in the room and I cut off my one leg and throw it out the window, and now the question – where I am left: inside the room or outside the window? The answer is obvious – I am in the room and not outside the window, which means that the location of “I” is not in the leg which was cut off. Now let’s cut off the arm and throw it out the window, and now the question – where I am left: inside the room or outside the window? The answer is obvious – I am in the room and not outside the window, which means that the location of “I” is not in the arm which was cut off. In the same way we can cut off other parts of the body and throw them out the window as well, we can replace all internal organs with artificial ones (artificial heart, etc) throwing original organs out the window, and every time when we cut off some piece of my body and throw these pieces out the window – “I” still remains in the room and not outside the window. Some people think that “I” is located in the neurons of the brain. Well, theoretically we can replace a single original natural neuron by artificial neuron which has exactly the same functionality as the original natural neuron – in that case €œI” will remain unchanged. Then we can replace the second original natural neuron by artificial neuron, then we can replace the third neuron, the fourth neuron, and so on – even when all neurons in the brain will be replaced by artificial neurons – the “I” will remain unchanged. So what is “I”, where “I” is located? Neurocluster Brain Model provides the answer to this question.
Neurocluster Brain Model defines “I” (a.k.a. “spirit”, “soul”, “consciousness”, etc) as the software which runs on neural-network-hardware (i.e. on neurons of the brain).
“I” is not the material neurons themselves however “I” is the software which runs on neural-network-hardware. “I” can be cloned/copied or ported to another hardware and can successfully run on another hardware even when the first hardware is physically destroyed – exactly in the same way as the computer program can be cloned/copied or ported to another hardware. Thus, periodical transferring of “I-software” to another new hardware provides unlimited existence time (a.k.a. “immortality”). At the current moment the cloning/copying or porting of whole “I-software” to another hardware is not technically feasible, however this might become feasible in future. However microscopic pieces of “I” can be made “immortal” even today. We will explain more detailed.
When “I” is defined as software that means that “I-object” is a divisible object, it can be divided into many composing parts, just exactly in the same way as the large software program can be decomposed into smaller submodules/subroutines/functions/etc.
For many practical applications in order to achieve the needed goal you do not need to copy the whole program code, it is enough to take and to copy just a small submodule/subroutine/function taken from that huge software project.
To demonstrate the general principle of copying ability it is enough to demonstrate that some small piece of software can be copied.
Let’s apply this to the human brain.
Suppose man X spends hundreds of hours thinking and trying to find solution to some problem Z and finally he succeeds. The solution which he has found in the form of information is saved into his brain neurons and this solution becomes the part of that man’s “I” (because by definition “I” is the software/information). This man X can tell and teach another man Y how to solve problem Z, the man X can copy the problem solving algorithm into another man’s Y brain. After the problem solving algorithm was copied into another man’s Y brain, some teeny-tiny portion of man X “I” was copied into man’s Y brain.
This simple example demonstrates the principle that some small teeny-tiny piece of “I-software” can be copied into another hardware.
To clarify the idea let’s illustrate with the concrete example. Newton discovered the formula “F=m*a” which had become the part of Newton’s “I” and later this formula “F=m*a” was copied into the brains (hardware) of other people and this formula traveling from one brain (hardware) into another brain has become “immortal”, in other words, the tiny little piece of Newton’s “I” has become immortal and lives until today.
The definition of “I” as a software which runs on neural-network-hardware is completely different from 1) the views of materialists and 2) the views of religious adepts.
Materialists consider themselves as the stack of material atoms, materialists consider themselves as DNA molecule, and materialists see their “immortality” via the replication of their own DNA molecule, thus materialists desperately desire to produce material children naively believing that production of children supposedly extends the existence of their own “I” – while not the exactly the true “I”, but at least a somewhat corrupted copy of “I” (corrupted copy of DNA molecule). It is interesting to note that biological children of the parents-scientists/discoverers usually do not carry on the ideas/experience of their parents-scientists/discoverers – the newly discovered scientific ideas, as a rule, are carried on only by strangers in blood, which means that biological children do not help at all to “immortalize” the ideas of their parents-scientists/discoverers.
Religious adepts consider that “I” is some kind of a “cloudlet” which can detach from physical body and which can float/travel through space, which can travel to paradise/hell or reincarnate into some other living creature/being, religious adepts are strongly convinced that observance of rules written in the sacred scriptures will somehow help “I-cloudlet” to reach the better existence conditions in post-mortal existence – the falseness of such claims will be explained in details in the text below which describes Neurocluster Brain Model.
It is important to note that Neurocluster Brain Model describes all processes in the brain from the information processing point of view. All objects/terms used in the dictionary of Neurocluster Brain Model (like “main personality”, “egregor”, “dream characters”, etc) actually denote information objects which have more of less equivalents in computer science like “software”, “program”, “routine”, “subroutine”, “function”, “procedure”, etc.
And this raises an interesting technical question: Neurocluster Brain Model is a materialistic model or not? The answer depends on how you answer the question: information is matter or not? Information cannot exist without a material carrier, however information itself is not a matter.

Click to expand...

My favorite guru always asks the question 'Who are you?'. And the correct answer is 'I am Brahman'. He is getting us beyond the illusion of identifying with the illusory transient ego body.

Brahman alone is real. As is taught by the sages; He separates himself from himself and returns himself to himself. We are Brahman experiencing through temporary finite forms. ( matter can not produce consciousness (how does the movement of atoms and electrons produce consciousness?) but actually consciousness produces matter as the play/sport of the divine).

 

Sapiens said: ↑

Step #9 the work needs to be published in a reputable peer reviewed journal.

Click to expand...

No I do not think that is a criteria...there are many people doing fine science out there without getting published in peer reviewed journals... nor is it necessary to have a university degree...

This is the scientific method....

 

Sapiens said: ↑

Step #9 the work needs to be published in a reputable peer reviewed journal.

Click to expand...

Sapiens desperately insists on “reputable peer reviewed journals”.
Let's look more closely at the value of such “reputable peer reviewed journals”.

Scientific verification of “scientific” papers of psychologists has revealed that at least 80 percent of the “scientific” papers of psychologists are fakes and pseudoscientific nonsense.
That is the classical typical example of the value of so-called “reputable scientists” in so-called “reputable peer reviewed journals”.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...-on-validity-of-psychology-experiment-results
Of 100 studies published in top-ranking journals in 2008, 75% of social psychology experiments and half of cognitive studies failed the replication test.
A major investigation into scores of claims made in psychology research journals has delivered a bleak verdict on the state of the science.
An international team of experts repeated 100 experiments published in top psychology journals and found that they could reproduce only 36% of original findings.
The study, which saw 270 scientists repeat experiments on five continents, was launched by psychologists in the US in response to rising concerns over the reliability of psychology research.
<…>
John Ioannidis, professor of health research and policy at Stanford University, said the study was impressive and that its results had been eagerly awaited by the scientific community. “Sadly, the picture it paints - a 64% failure rate even among papers published in the best journals in the field - is not very nice about the current status of psychological science in general, and for fields like social psychology it is just devastating,” he said.
Study delivers bleak verdict on validity of psychology experiment results
(The Guardian. August 25, 2015)

Click to expand...

http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...nts-failing-replication-test-findings-science
Science is the best thing that has happened to humankind because its results can be questioned, retested, and demonstrated to be wrong. Science is not about proving at all cost some preconceived dogma. Conversely religious devotees, politicians, soccer fans, and pseudo-science quacks won’t allow their doctrines, promises, football clubs or bizarre claims to be proven illogical, exaggerated, second-rate or just absurd.
Despite this clear superiority of the scientific method, we researchers are still fallible humans. This week, an impressive collaboration of 270 investigators working for five years published in Science the results of their efforts to replicate 100 important results that had been previously published in three top psychology journals. The replicators worked closely with the original authors to make the repeat experiments close replicas of the originals. The results were bleak: 64% of the experiments could not be replicated.
<…>
Probably the failure rate in the Science data would have been higher for work published in journals of lesser quality. There are tens of thousands of journals in the scientific-publishing market, and most will publish almost anything submitted to them. The failure rate may also be higher for studies that are so complex that none of the collaborating replicators offered to attempt a replication. This group accounted for one-third of the studies published in the three top journals. So the replication failure rate for psychology at large may be 80% or more overall.
This performance is even worse than I would have predicted. In 2012 my anticipation of a 53% replication failure rate for psychology at large was published. Compared with other empirical studies, the failure rate of psychology seems to be in the same ballpark as replication failure rates in observational epidemiology, cancer drug targets and preclinical research, and animal experiments.
Psychology experiments are failing the replication test – for good reason
(The Guardian. August 28, 2015)

Click to expand...

Another example of the value of “peer reviewed journal” (unfortunately religiousforums.com filter automatically damages the address link, you need to fix the damaged link manually).

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/journal-accepts-paper-reading-get-me-your-****ing-mailing-list
Journal Accepts Paper Reading “Get Me Off Your ****ing Mailing List”
November 23, 2014

Click to expand...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Advanced_Computer_Technology
In 2005, two scientists, David Mazières and Eddie Kohler, wrote a paper titled Get me off Your ****ing Mailing List and submitted it to WMSCI 2005 (the 9th World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics), a conference then notorious for its spamming and lax standards for paper acceptance, in protest of same. The paper consisted essentially only of the sentence "Get me off your ****ing mailing list" repeated many times.
In 2014, after receiving a spam email from the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology, Peter Vamplew forwarded Mazières' and Kohler's old paper as an acerbic response. To Vamplew's surprise, the paper was reviewed, rated as "excellent" by the journal's peer-review process and accepted for publication. The paper was not actually published as Vamplew declined to pay the required $150 article processing fee. This case has led commenters to question the legitimacy of the journal as an authentic scholarly undertaking.

Click to expand...

Another example of the value of “peer reviewed journals”.

http://www.ibtimes.com/fake-researc...puter-generated-studies-get-published-1558725
Fake Research Papers: How Did More Than 120 'Gibberish' Computer-Generated Studies Get Published?
March 01 2014

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014...shed-science-journal-articles-just-gibberish/
Over 100 published science journal articles just gibberish
March 01, 2014

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/computerized-fake-research-papers-get-published/
Scientific world getting duped by computerized fake research papers
February 27, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...puter-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia
How computer-generated fake papers are flooding academia
26 February 2014

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t...nded_up_in_respected_scientific_journals.html
How Gobbledygook Ended Up in Respected Scientific Journals
FEB. 27 2014

Click to expand...

We will remind, that “appeal to authority” (i.e. appeal to reputable peer reviewed journal) is a form of logical fallacy.

Religious adepts can be very easily identified by using the following diagnostic criteria:
1) they use the “appeal to authority” as an argument;
2) they are unable to provide scientific definitions for the terms that they use in their texts, and instead of scientific definitions they provide crackpot blabber;
3) they are totally incapable to provide the scientific arguments and instead of scientific arguments they actively use all sorts of bureaucratic muck (write complaints/denunciations, vote “against” at the polls/ratings, etc.).
4) and so on.

“Appeal to authority” is not a the scientific argument; “appeal to authority” is a form of logical fallacy.
“Appeal to authority” is the diagnostic criteria which identifies the religious adept.
And this means that Sapiens is the religious adept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Argument from authority, also ad verecundiam and appeal to authority, is a common form of argument which leads to a logical fallacy.

In informal reasoning, the appeal to authority is a form of argument attempting to establish a statistical syllogism. The appeal to authority relies on an argument of the form:
A is an authority on a particular topic
A says something about that topic
A is probably correct

Fallacious examples of using the appeal include any appeal to authority used in the context of logical reasoning, and appealing to the position of an authority or authorities to dismiss evidence, as authorities can come to the wrong judgments through error, bias, dishonesty, or falling prey to groupthink. Thus, the appeal to authority is not a generally reliable argument for establishing facts.

Click to expand...

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Another example of the value of “peer reviewed journals”.

Click to expand...

WELL its obvious you do not understand the first thing about peer review or the credible scientific method.

Anything can be peer reviewed, but passing peer review is another matter you ignored out of severe desperation to Keep playing this POE game of yours.

You have no credibility.

 

Peer review bad! Buckland Spirit Board good !

 

outhouse said: ↑

WELL its obvious you do not understand the first thing about peer review or the credible scientific method.
Anything can be peer reviewed, but passing peer review is another matter you ignored out of severe desperation to Keep playing this POE game of yours.
You have no credibility.

Click to expand...

Science is what you can observe and on which you can carry out reproducible experiments – everything that meets these criteria is the science; and everything that does not meet these criteria – is not the science.
The only judge in science is the experiment.
In science the philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

outhouse said: ↑

Peer review bad! Buckland Spirit Board good!

Click to expand...

Reviews of religious adepts (a.k.a. “peer review”) bad! Scientific Experiment good!

outhouse’s inability to carry out simple experiments due his religious beliefs is not the scientific argument.

outhouse is afraid of “Buckland Spirit Board” because of his religious beliefs.

In case if some readers are too afraid to carry out the experiment of “spiritualistic séances” then there is an alternative experiment which is much safer. The alternative safe experiment is the investigation of the dream characters.
It is very easy to prove experimentally that dream-characters do have their own “awareness/consciousness/soul/spirit/etc”. The experiment setup is very easy. Next time when you go to sleep and when you have a dream and when you see some dream-character-of-human-form (father/mother/brother/sister/friend/relative/etc) in your dream, go closer to that dream-character and ask him a simple question: “do you have your own awareness/consciousness/soul/spirit/etc?” and then wait for the answer from that dream-character.
Let’s raise a simple question: who is the best expert to decide whether dream-character has “awareness/consciousness” or not?
The answer is obvious: the best expert in this question is the dream-character himself.
So your job is very simple – just ask the dream-character himself whether he has “awareness/consciousness” or not.

In case if you have troubles to carry out this experiment during the dream (inability to control yourself during the dream) then this problem has easy technical solution – just use the techniques developed by Michael Raduga and you will be able to achieve lucid dream and/or OOBE state.
For more details please read articles in mass media about Michael Raduga's experiments at page:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/michael_raduga_articles.html
The techniques for artificial induction of OOBE and/or lucid dreaming phenomena are described in details in Michael Raduga’s books which are available at the address:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/michael_raduga_books.html
The more efficient way to get acquainted with techniques of Michael Raduga is to watch video lectures instead of reading books, which are available at the address:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/michael_raduga_videos.html

Another experimental proof is experiments of “spiritualistic séances” using thread with the attached needle method as described in previous posts. After you will succeed in invoking the “spirit” simply ask him “do you have your own awareness/consciousness/soul/spirit/etc?” and then wait for the answer from that “spirit”.
Again, let’s raise a simple question: who is the best expert to decide whether the “spirit” has “awareness/consciousness” or not?
The answer is obvious: the best expert in this question is the “spirit” himself.
So your job is very simple – just ask the “spirit” himself whether he has “awareness/consciousness” or not.

It is interesting to note that all “proofs” which pseudoscientists are able to provide trying to prove that they themselves have “consciousness” always can be simplified/reduced into the following scenario: “I tell you that I have consciousness. How do you dare not to believe what I say? I tell you that I have awareness and I have consciousness. You must believe what I say – you must believe that I have consciousness.”
Pseudoscientists say that they have “consciousness” and that is the only “proof” that are able to provide.
And now go and do the described experiment – ask the dream-character/“spirit” himself about whether he has “consciousness” or not.

The difference between the scientist and the religious adept is the following:
1) The scientist does the experiment and checks out if the predictions of the model/theory are confirmed or not, and then based on the experimental results the scientist makes conclusions.
2) The religious adept says “I have not done the experiment, I will not do the experiment, I believe my religious dogma no matter what is the evidence, I will not look into the evidence, I am not interested in the evidence, I believe my religious dogma no matter what is the evidence”.

Neurocluster Brain Model is scientific model, so if you want to check whether it is correct or not – all you need to do is to carry out the experiments which are described in Neurocluster Brain Model.
If you have not carried out the needed experiments, if you do not have experimental results, then you are not qualified as scientist to make the judgment, your judgment is based purely on religious dogmas.

The most popular religious dogma claims that man has “indivisible-single-consciousness”, the adepts of this religious dogma will fight until “the last drop of blood” defending the religious dogma of “indivisible-single-consciousness”.

Here is homework task for the development of logical thinking for religious adepts who have strong religious fanatic faith that “man has indivisible-single-consciousness”:
Are you completely sure that your brain is really able to contain one(1) personality? What about the scenario when one(1) personality is unable to fit in the brain, and only half(1/2) or a quarter(1/4) or a tenth(1/10) of personality is able to fit in the brain – how about that? Let’s suppose that we claim that your brain is too small to contain whole one(1) personality, one(1) personality is unable to fit into your brain/head, and we claim that your brain/head contains only tenth(1/10) of personality – flag into your hands, go ahead and try to disprove the claim that your brain contains only tenth(1/10) of personality. The reasoning behind that is very simple: if man’s brain is able to fit one(1) personality then such man is able to carry out scientific experiments to check whether experimental results confirm the predictions of model/theory or not, however if the man’s brain is too small to fit one(1) personality then such man says “I have not done the experiment, I will not do the experiment, I believe my religious dogma no matter what is the evidence, I will not look into the evidence, I am not interested in the evidence, I believe my religious dogma no matter what is the evidence”.

If you have not done the experiment then you are not qualified as scientist to judge Neurocluster Brain Model.
If you have not done the experiment then your judgment is based on religious dogmas.
If you have not done the experiment then your philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

outhouse has not carried out the experiment and this means that outhouse is the religious adept by definition.

 

ben d said: ↑

No I do not think that is a criteria...there are many people doing fine science out there without getting published in peer reviewed journals... nor is it necessary to have a university degree...

This is the scientific method....

Click to expand...

Feynman is correct, as far as he goes, but Einstein and many others would disagree. Feyman fails to come to grips with "thought experiments" (See: http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Chasing_the_light/ ) and the fact that a hypothesis is more than a guess.

Please list three people who are doing, "fine science out there without getting published in peer reviewed journals."

Similarly, please list three people who are doing fine science and lack an advanced degree.

 

Sapiens said: ↑

Feynman is correct, as far as he goes, but Einstein and many others would disagree. Feyman fails to come to grips with "thought experiments" (See: http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Chasing_the_light/ ) and the fact that a hypothesis is more than a guess.

Please list three people who are doing, "fine science out there without getting published in peer reviewed journals."

Similarly, please list three people who are doing fine science and lack an advanced degree.

Click to expand...

Robert Evans...Australian Astronomer, Stephenen Felton...American Paleontologist , Richard Leakey ...Kenyan Anthropologist

 

ben d said: ↑

There is 97.5% of existence undetectable by physical science....you don't know what you don't know and never will until you understand a lot more than just the 2.5% physical.... Atheists ....just ignorant arrogant young souls...haha....

Click to expand...

Can you provide a source for this information? I assume there must be one, as you claimed a pretty precise number.

 

leibowde84 said: ↑

Can you provide a source for this information? I assume there must be one, as you claimed a pretty precise number.

Click to expand...

I think he is talking about so-called dark matter that science can show exists by gravitational effects but can't directly detect with any physical instruments. I think he is saying atheists just consider the matter within the range of their senses and dismiss the importance of what may be beyond the senses. I, in opposition to atheist-materialists, believe in unusual states of consciousness where normal people can glimpse things beyond the senses. People gifted psychically and advanced souls can tell us what lies beyond but because these things can not be shown with 'physical instruments' the materialist can only hold a very limited view of existence.

 

ben d said: ↑

There is 97.5% of existence undetectable by physical science....you don't know what you don't know and never will until you understand a lot more than just the 2.5% physical.... Atheists ....just ignorant arrogant young souls...haha....

Click to expand...

If you are referring to "dark matter", you are way off. Atheists have no issue with believing in dark matter. So, your point is nonsensical.

 

leibowde84 said: ↑

If you are referring to "dark matter", you are way off. Atheists have no issue with believing in dark matter. So, your point is nonsensical.

Click to expand...

He is talking religious dogma with no support of any kind. Mythology is all he is promoting.

 

outhouse said: ↑

He is talking religious dogma with no support of any kind. Mythology is all he is promoting.

Click to expand...

And, when pressured for evidence ...

 

leibowde84 said: ↑

And, when pressured for evidence ...

Click to expand...

You silly young soul LOL

 

leibowde84 said: ↑

If you are referring to "dark matter", you are way off. Atheists have no issue with believing in dark matter.

Click to expand...

Question for leibowde84: does leibowde84 have any issue in believing that leibowde84 possesses “indivisible-single-consciousness”?

outhouse said: ↑

You silly young soul

Click to expand...

Personal insult is not the scientific argument.

outhouse said: ↑

He is talking religious dogma with no support of any kind. Mythology is all he is promoting.

Click to expand...

outhouse has strong religious fanatic blind faith in the religious dogma that outhouse possesses “indivisible-single-consciousness”, this religious dogma has no evidentiary support of any kind, outhouse is promoting mythology about “indivisible-single-consciousness”.

 

George-ananda said: ↑

I, in opposition to atheist-materialists, believe in unusual states of consciousness where normal people can glimpse things beyond the senses. People gifted psychically and advanced souls can tell us what lies beyond but because these things can not be shown with 'physical instruments' the materialist can only hold a very limited view of existence.

Click to expand...

Adepts of the eastern esoteric tradition (various yogis, etc) devote their lives and spent many years struggling their way towards “nirvana” (or out-of-body state) using various techniques like ascetics, yoga, pranayama, etc. Despite huge endeavors and decades of practice only very small percentage of eastern-adepts succeed in reaching the desired goal, and the ones who have reached this goal are considered as great “gurus” (spiritual teachers) and thousands of disciples flow to such gurus with the desire to learn to reach this goal.
The highest spiritual state which is accessible only to the greatest gurus who exercise titanic endeavors and decades of time can be easily reached in several hours without any ascetics, yoga, pranayama or any other “spiritual techniques”. The technology is very simple. All you need to do is to disconnect the main personality from all sensory inputs and after several hours a man will be thrown into “nirvana” and/or other “spiritual worlds” automatically. The technical implementation is very simple. All you need to do is to put a man into special tank called „sensory deprivation tank“ (a.k.a. isolation tank, flotation tank, John C. Lilly tank, REST tank, sensory attenuation tank, and think tank) – a lightless, soundproof tank inside which subjects float in salt water at skin temperature, which results in elimination of all sensory inputs. When a man is put into sensory deprivation conditions, such man will be thrown into “nirvana” and/or other “spiritual worlds” after several hours and he will be able to meet and speak with various “spiritual beings” like angels, demons or even God himself. Astronauts in space also sometimes experience sensory deprivation, as for example, Edgar Dean Mitchell Sc. D., (an astronaut who walked on the Moon) claims that on his way back to earth during the Apollo 14 flight he had a powerful Savikalpa samādhi experience (in Hinduism Savikalpa samādhi is a state of samādhi in which one's consciousness temporarily dissolves into Brahman).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_deprivation
Sensory deprivation (Sendep) or perceptual isolation is the deliberate reduction or removal of stimuli from one or more of the senses. Simple devices such as blindfolds or hoods and earmuffs can cut off sight and hearing, while more complex devices can also cut off the sense of smell, touch, taste, thermoception (heat-sense), and 'gravity'. Sensory deprivation has been used in various alternative medicines and in psychological experiments (e.g., see isolation tank). Sensory deprivation can be used also in sexual acts to produce a feeling of repression or make other senses more sensitive, for example feel of touch can be stronger if blindfold is in use.
Short-term sessions of sensory deprivation are described as relaxing and conducive to meditation; however, extended or forced sensory deprivation can result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, and depression.
A related phenomenon is perceptual deprivation, also called the ganzfeld effect. In this case a constant uniform stimulus is used instead of attempting to remove the stimuli, this leads to effects which has similarities to sensory deprivation.
<...>
Studies have been conducted to test the effect of sensory deprivation on the brain. One study took 19 volunteers, all of whom tested in the lower and upper 20th percentiles on a questionnaire which measures the tendency of healthy people to see things not really there, and placed them into a pitch black, soundproof booth for 15 minutes. After, they completed another test that measures psychosis-like experiences, originally used to study recreational drug users. Five people reported seeing hallucinations of faces, six reported seeing shapes/faces not actually there, four noted a heightened sense of smell and two people reported sensing a "presence of evil" in the room. Unsurprisingly, people who scored lower on the first test experienced fewer perceptual distortions; however, they still reported seeing a variety of delusions and hallucinations.
According to the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease the hallucinations are caused by the brain misidentifying the source of what it is currently experiencing, a phenomenon called faulty source monitoring.
<...>
In January 2008, the BBC aired a Horizon special entitled "Total Isolation." The premise of the show centered on 6 individuals agreeing to be shut in a cell inside a nuclear bunker, alone and in complete darkness for 48 hours. Prior to isolation, the volunteers underwent tests of visual memory, information processing, verbal fluency and suggestibility.
After the two days and two nights the subjects noted that their inability to sense time, as well as hallucinations, made the experience difficult. Of the six volunteers, three experienced auditory and visual hallucinations — snakes, oysters, tiny cars and zebras. One was convinced their sheets were wet. Two seemed to cope well.
When complete, the same tests were conducted a second time. The results indicated all volunteers' ability to complete the simplest tasks had deteriorated. One subject's memory capacity fell 36% and all the subjects had trouble thinking of words beginning with a nominated letter; in this case, the letter "F". All four of the men (neither of the two women) had markedly increased suggestibility.

Click to expand...

Many religious leaders had been practicing prolonged sensory deprivation procedures which help to induce artificial hallucinations in which the religious adept can hear the voice of God and/or the voice of other various spiritual beings. In order to achieve sensory deprivation, the religious adepts usually climb onto high mountains, lodge in the cave and so on. As for example, the founder of Islam Muhammad climbed onto the mountain called Jabal an-Nour (near Mecca) and stayed alone for many days in the cave called Hira, in which, after many days of sensory deprivation, Muhammad began hearing the voice of “archangel Gabriel” who dictated the text of Quran to Muhammad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad's_first_revelation
According to Islam, Muhammad's first revelation was the event in which Muhammad was visited by the archangel Gabriel who revealed to him a verse from the Quran. The event took place in a cave called Hira, located on the mountain called Jabal an-Nour, near Mecca.
According to biographies of Muhammad, while on retreat in a mountain cave near Mecca (the cave of Hira), Gabriel appears before him and commands him to recite the first lines of chapter 96 of the Quran. Muhammad's experience is mentioned in the Quran 53:4-9 <...>
http://www.sahih-bukhari.com/Pages/Bukhari_1_01.php
Volume 1, Book 1, Number 3:
Narrated by 'Aisha
(the mother of the faithful believers) The commencement of the Divine Inspiration to Allah's Apostle was in the form of good dreams which came true like bright day light, and then the love of seclusion was bestowed upon him. He used to go in seclusion in the cave of Hira where he used to worship (Allah alone) continuously for many days before his desire to see his family. He used to take with him the journey food for the stay and then come back to (his wife) Khadija to take his food like-wise again till suddenly the Truth descended upon him while he was in the cave of Hira. The angel came to him and asked him to read. The Prophet replied, "I do not know how to read. <...>
(Sahih Bukhari. Volume 1, Book 1, Number 3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahih_al-Bukhari
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Arabic: صحيح البخاري‎), is one of the Kutub al-Sittah (six major hadith collections) of Sunni Islam. These prophetic traditions, or hadith, were collected by the Iranian Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Bukhari, after being transmitted orally for generations. Sunni Muslims view this as one of the three most trusted collections of hadith along with Sahih Muslim and Muwatta Imam Malik. It is also used as an authentic hadith collection by Zaidi Shia Muslims. In some circles, it is considered the most authentic book after the Quran. The Arabic word sahih translates as authentic or correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith
Different branches of Islam refer to different collections of hadith, though the same incident may be found in hadith in different collections:
● In the Sunni branch of Islam, the canonical hadith collections are the six books, of which Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim generally have the highest status. The other books of hadith are Sunan Abu Dawood, Jami` at-Tirmidhi, Al-Sunan al-Sughra and Sunan ibn Majah. However the Malikis, one of the five Sunni "schools of thought" (madhhabs), traditionally reject Sunan ibn Majah and assert the canonical status of Muwatta Imam Malik. The Fath al-Bari commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari and Al-Nawawi's commentary on Sahih Muslim are studied alongside the hadith, although they are sharh and not part of the hadith themselves.
● In the Shi'a branch of Islam, the canonical hadith collections are the Four Books: Kitab al-Kafi, Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih, Tahdhib al-Ahkam, and Al-Istibsar.
● In the Ibadi branch of Islam, the main canonical collection is the Tartib al-Musnad. This is an expansion of the earlier Jami Sahih collection, which retains canonical status in its own right.
● The Ahmadiyya branch of Islam generally relies on Sunni hadith collections.

Click to expand...

… continued in next post ….

 

…. the continuation of previous post ….

When a man is in the normal awareness state his brain keeps active the brain zones which “criticize” the surroundings – too hot, too cold, too dark, too bright, too tight, etc. The necessity for such “criticism” has a good explanation in the theory of Artificial Intelligence – without mechanism of “criticism” the agent becomes apathetic, the agent does not take any action in order to improve the current situation, and as a result the agent perishes because of the changing surrounding factors. In other words, the mechanism of “criticism” is necessary in order for the agent would survive in the surrounding conditions which are changing.
In biological brain it is possible to turn off (or partially subdue) the “critics” and force them stop “criticizing”. This can be checked by the following experiment. When you go to sleep you need to put the headphones on with music turned on and then close the eyes and sleep. During the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep stage there are high chances that the music played via headphones will come into the plot of the dream when the “critics” are turned off – the result will be that you will hear super magnificent divine music which will be the most beautiful music which you have ever heard during your entire life. After awakening if you will still remember your dream (technical problem is that not all dreams can be recalled) you will have the remembrance of super magnificent divine music. If you will listen to the same music again when you are awake – you will find that the same exact music is not so divinely beautiful after all – some notes will appear to sound ugly, some instruments will sound too loud or to quiet, etc. However during the dream when all “critics” are turned off – and no matter what crap is playing – it will appear like super magnificent divinely beautiful music.
The physiological mechanism of the brain – the possibility to turn off the “critics” in the brain – is the reason why the majority of artists are winos and dependant on alcohol/tobacco/narcotics/etc. After drinking of alcohol (or taking of narcotics) in dizziness state the “critics” in the brain become turned off and as the result any crap which is painted/composed/etc begins to appear like super magnificent and divinely beautiful. As the result the artist becomes strongly convinced that drinking of alcohol (or taking of narcotics) helps to create the art and provides artistic inspiration. Artistic inspiration plays a vital role in the survival of the artist so the artist begins to use alcohol (tobacco/narcotics/etc) more and more often in order to get more “artistic inspiration” and as the result the artist becomes a totally wino.

http://georgeorwellnovels.com/journalism/review-of-a-modern-de-quincey/
What are the pleasures of opium? Like other pleasures, they are, unfortunately, indescribable. It is easier to describe the miseries which the smoker suffers when deprived of his drug; he is seized with feverish restlessness, then with violent fits of yawning, and finally howls like a dog, a noise so distressing that when an opium-smoker is imprisoned in an Indian jail he is usually, quite illegally, given diminishing doses to keep him quiet. Like many other smokers, Captain Robinson felt himself, while under the influence of the drug, to be possessed of almost divine wisdom. He was aware that he not only knew the secret of the Universe, but had reduced this secret to a single sentence, which he was unfortunately never able to recall when he woke up. One night, so as to make sure of remembering it, he took a pad and pencil when he lay down to smoke. The sentence in which all wisdom was contained turned out to be: “the banana is great, but the skin is greater.”
(Review of “A Modern de Quincey” by Captain H. R. Robinson
A review by George Orwell in The Observer, 13 September 1942.)

Click to expand...

It is very easy to prove that intelligence level of the “voice of God” is very low. All you need to do is to go to the people who claim that they can communicate with the “voice from heaven”, “voice of cosmos”, “angel Gabriel”, angels, gods, etc, and then you need to check the IQ level of that “voice from heaven” using tasks from school textbooks and you will see that “voice from heaven” is incapable to solve even simplest tasks from school textbooks, the “voice from heaven” is able only to babble inconsistent nonsense using phrases like “be obedient, be humble, increase your spirituality, love is everywhere, use spiritual energy from cosmos, Atlantis, Shambala, Pleiadians, quantum reality, etc” – the repertory of “divine sources” is limited to such kind of worthless babble.
The “voice of God” claims that he is God who created universe and all living beings, however if you will ask him simple questions like “how many teeth does the rabbit have?”, the “voice of God” will fail to provide the correct answer. This leads to simple conclusion: if he is the God who created universe and created all living beings then he must surely know how many teeth the rabbit has, otherwise he is not the omniscient creator of all living beings. When the “voice of God” is asked simple testing questions, like what is the number of teeth in various animals, the “voice of God” begins to ramble. Try that and you will see it yourself.
Several dental formulae examples are provided here.
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/dental_formulae_examples.html

 

leibowde84 said: ↑

Can you provide a source for this information? I assume there must be one, as you claimed a pretty precise number.

Click to expand...

Sure, just read the first two paras......http://spaceref.com/astronomy/what-is-the-universe-made-of.html

 

leibowde84 said: ↑

If you are referring to "dark matter", you are way off. Atheists have no issue with believing in dark matter. So, your point is nonsensical.

Click to expand...

I said 97.5% of the theoretical universe was undetectable....what has atheists believing in dark matter got to do with anything....had you been drinking?

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Question for leibowde84: does leibowde84 have any issue in believing that leibowde84 possesses “indivisible-single-consciousness”?

Click to expand...

Yes, I do. With what we know about how memories are formed, it seems that consciousness can be divided and seen physically in the brain, nervous system, etc.

 

ben d said: ↑

I said 97.5% of the theoretical universe was undetectable....what has atheists believing in dark matter got to do with anything....had you been drinking?

Click to expand...

Oh ... I get what you were saying. Sorry about that.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Adepts of the eastern esoteric tradition (various yogis, etc) devote their lives and spent many years struggling their way towards “nirvana” (or out-of-body state) using various techniques like ascetics, yoga, pranayama, etc. Despite huge endeavors and decades of practice only very small percentage of eastern-adepts succeed in reaching the desired goal, and the ones who have reached this goal are considered as great “gurus” (spiritual teachers) and thousands of disciples flow to such gurus with the desire to learn to reach this goal.
The highest spiritual state which is accessible only to the greatest gurus who exercise titanic endeavors and decades of time can be easily reached in several hours without any ascetics, yoga, pranayama or any other “spiritual techniques”. The technology is very simple. All you need to do is to disconnect the main personality from all sensory inputs and after several hours a man will be thrown into “nirvana” and/or other “spiritual worlds” automatically. The technical implementation is very simple. All you need to do is to put a man into special tank called „sensory deprivation tank“ (a.k.a. isolation tank, flotation tank, John C. Lilly tank, REST tank, sensory attenuation tank, and think tank) – a lightless, soundproof tank inside which subjects float in salt water at skin temperature, which results in elimination of all sensory inputs. When a man is put into sensory deprivation conditions, such man will be thrown into “nirvana” and/or other “spiritual worlds” after several hours and he will be able to meet and speak with various “spiritual beings” like angels, demons or even God himself. Astronauts in space also sometimes experience sensory deprivation, as for example, Edgar Dean Mitchell Sc. D., (an astronaut who walked on the Moon) claims that on his way back to earth during the Apollo 14 flight he had a powerful Savikalpa samādhi experience (in Hinduism Savikalpa samādhi is a state of samādhi in which one's consciousness temporarily dissolves into Brahman).

Many religious leaders had been practicing prolonged sensory deprivation procedures which help to induce artificial hallucinations in which the religious adept can hear the voice of God and/or the voice of other various spiritual beings. In order to achieve sensory deprivation, the religious adepts usually climb onto high mountains, lodge in the cave and so on. As for example, the founder of Islam Muhammad climbed onto the mountain called Jabal an-Nour (near Mecca) and stayed alone for many days in the cave called Hira, in which, after many days of sensory deprivation, Muhammad began hearing the voice of “archangel Gabriel” who dictated the text of Quran to Muhammad.



… continued in next post ….

Click to expand...

I think one thing you dismiss or choose not to talk about are paranormal phenomena that indicate something 'real' is often going on. Things like detailed knowledge not learned through normal channels tells me something 'real' is indeed going on. Also I am aware of many types of physical phenomena associated with the paranormal that can never be explained by the theories you are espousing. I am aware of the arguments pseudo-skeptics make against any 'real' paranormal phenomena ever occurring but I find their explanations become desperate attempts to maintain materialism in the face of the strongest evidence. Just my study of one particular eastern master shows me that reality and consciousness are vastly deeper than your theories reach.

I believe we need a worldview that is post-materialism.

To me, your arguing technique is to bring up just the examples your theory could have answers to and to deny the existence of anything further. There may be something to some of what you say, but I think you are taking your pet theories way too far.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

the founder of Islam Muhammad climbed onto the mountain called Jabal an-Nour (near Mecca) and stayed alone for many days in the cave called Hira, in which, after many days of sensory deprivation, Muhammad began hearing the voice of “archangel Gabriel” who dictated the text of Quran to Muhammad.

Click to expand...

Apologetic rhetoric that is factually unsubstantiated.

muhammads cousin was a heretic Christian priest who perverted the bible in Arabic and then found him and took him in at 5 years of age. No angel needed nor a need for seeing things not there.

Pieces of koran have been dated to possibly before his birth.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

It is very easy to prove that intelligence level of the “voice of God” is very low

Click to expand...

unsubstantiated rhetoric, like most of your work

What people here is factually not evidence something exist. Voices in someone's head does not equal voices of god, but thanks for showing your false assumptions and how poor your work actually is,

 

outhouse said: ↑

Voices in someone's head does not equal voices of god, but thanks for showing your false assumptions and how poor your work actually is

Click to expand...

The answer for outhouse is marked in bold shrift in the text below.

The experimental setup is very simple and the cost of equipment is less than a dollar.
All you need are:
1) the needle;
2) the thread (length approximately 20-40 cm, 30 cm is the statistical average, the concrete comfortable length depends on the length of the hand of the "medium");
3) one standard A4-size sheet of paper, on this sheet of paper write down the alphabet letters in circle.

Place this sheet of paper on the table, take the thread with attached needle into the hand, and then position your hand over the sheet of paper in such a way that the needle is hanging above the center of the circle with alphabet letters, however the needle is not touching the sheet of paper, the needle is hanging above the sheet of paper at a distance of several centimeters from the paper. Then concentrate and start the “invocation of the spirit”. Choose freely the character whose “spirit” you want to “invoke”, as for example your dead grandfather, some historical person, some fictional character – it does not matter at all which character you will choose. All that matters here is – whatever “spirit” will be able to respond and communicate meaningful messages via movements of the hanging needle, is good enough for the experiment. As for example, you can try invoking Napoleon’s spirit – all you need to is – while keeping the thread with the needle above the center of the circle with alphabet letters, ask the question “Hello, Napoleon’s spirit, please come, I want to talk with you, are you here?”. And watch carefully for the movements of the needle. If the needle starts moving forming meaningful words/sentences from the alphabet letters then the communication channel with the “spirit” is established. If invoking of Napoleon’s spirit has failed (the needle does not move or moves randomly without forming meaningful words/sentences) then choose another character and repeat the same exact procedure anew, like for example “Hello, grandfather’s spirit, please come, I want to talk with you, are you here?”. If invoking of spirit has failed again, then repeat the same exact procedure every time choosing another character. It is important to note here, that during the first “séances” do not expect long fluent sentences from the “spirit”, if that “spirit” will be able to form one word from letters of alphabet then that is already the great achievement. The intelligence level of majority of “spirits” is pretty low – getting one word as the answer to the asked question is a great achievement for that “spirit”. When “séances” with the same “spirit” are repeated again and again then the fluency/speed of “spirit’s speech” increases with every new “séance”. If you are lucky enough, then you can establish the communication channel with the “spirit” which will begin broadcast of the “spiritual knowledge about the structure of the universe, the moral lessons for the whole humanity across the globe, etc.” – such cases are quite rare, however you have small chance to succeed in that. One such typical classic example of autonomic neurocluster is so called “archangel Gabriel” which dictated the text of Quran to Muhammad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad
The Quran is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims believe that it represents the words of God revealed to Muhammad through the archangel Gabriel.

Click to expand...

<…>
When some former colonial country breaks apart from the empire and declares independence then after some time that country may become even more powerful than the former empire – a good example of such scenario is USA which declared independence from British Empire on July 4, 1776. Exactly in the same way some cluster of neurons may declare independence from the main personality and may become stronger and stronger eventually becoming even more clever/powerful than the main personality. Some esoteric schools provide courses for “intuition training” claiming that increasing the level of intuition is advantageous. However, let’s raise a simple question: training neuroclusters in your own brain to become independent from the main personality is an advantage or not? Having no control over your own brain is an advantage or not?
The brain is parallel computing machine which solves many tasks in parallel and neurons group themselves into clusters for solving one or another task. Some neuroclusters can “steal” neurons from other neuroclusters thus expanding their own domination and power, also some neuroclusters may force other neuroclusters to subdue. If some neurocluster takes over enough amount of resources (i.e. enough number of neurons) then it can become powerful enough to compete with the main personality. If such neurocluster takes over even more resources then it may become even more clever than the main personality.
When autonomous neurocluster becomes more clever than the main personality then it can surprise the main personality by its level of knowledge and the main personality will start to believe that he is communicating with “higher spiritual beings” or even God himself.
If autonomous neurocluster has friendly symbiotic attitude towards the main personality then it is called as “angel/archangel/God/etc”, however if autonomous neurocluster has hostile attitude towards the main personality then it is called “demonic/satanic/black spirit”.
The brain may contain not one but many autonomous neuroclusters which are more clever than the main personality and these neuroclusters are competing for the resources – all the battles between Gods and demons are happening inside the same territory – inside the brain of the man.
It is important to note that when a God/demon settles inside the brain of the man then the strength/power of that God/demon is at the expense of the main personality. The more recourses the God/demon steals from the main personality the more powerful the God/demon becomes. In other words, the more clever becomes the God/demon the more dumber becomes the main personality. It is important to note that prayers to the particular God strengthen the neurocluster which represents that God, thus the more religious adept prays to his God the more dumber becomes the main personality of that religious adept – such are the laws of brain physiology.
When the main personality has no control over some areas of the brain then the following scenarios are possible with these uncontrolled areas:
1) they may become a chaotic anarchy (which happens very often) and such phenomenon is called “schizophrenia” – lunatic asylums are full of such people and many such people are freely walking in the streets;
2) these uncontrolled areas may be taken over by Gods/demons (such cases are quite rare). In psychiatry it is considered that if a man has began talking with “cosmos/higher intelligence/god/angels/demons/aliens/etc” then such condition is considered to be the highest stage of mental illness which is impossible to cure – such patients are drugged with psychotropic drugs which render the patient into vegetable-like state – the psychiatry has no other effective tools how to treat “talking with cosmos”.
Almost all religious teachings use the phrase “this man sold his soul to the devil”. The physiological meaning of this phrase is very simple – the main personality voluntarily “sells” the brain resources (areas of brain) to the demon naively believing that he will get something valuable in exchange/return. The demon/God happily takes over given areas of brain, however if the demon/God will thank to the main personality for the gift – that remains an open question – the most probable scenario is that demon/God will give nothing valuable in return.
Esoteric schools provide various techniques for development of “astral body” which provides the ability to travel into “spiritual worlds”.
The physiological nature of the “astral body” is exactly identical to physiological nature of demons/Gods which were described above, the only difference from demons/Gods – the “astral body” is not independent – the “astral body” is like a diving/space-suit, a vehicle into which the main personality can transfer itself and the main personality can use this vehicle for traveling inside “spiritual worlds”. If you want to be able to travel inside “spiritual worlds” then having “astral body” in your disposition is not enough. You also need that your “astral body” would be strong and powerful because feeble “astral body” is incapable to carry you far away. The analogy is the car. If your car is broken/rotten/decayed then you will be unable to travel far away using such car. You need to take care of your car and it will take care of you. Exactly the same situation is with “astral body” – you need to take care of your “astral body” in order to keep it strong and healthy. The “astral body” is represented by cluster of physical neurons – if man’s physical brain is functioning poorly then “astral body” will function poorly too. If areas of physical brain containing “astral body” will be physically damaged/destroyed then “astral body” will be damaged/destroyed too and man will lose the ability to travel inside “spiritual worlds”.

 

outhouse said: ↑

muhammads cousin was a heretic Christian priest who perverted the bible in Arabic and then found him and took him in at 5 years of age. No angel needed nor a need for seeing things not there.
Pieces of koran have been dated to possibly before his birth.

Click to expand...

Question for outhouse: what angel told to outhouse that outhouse supposedly has “consciousness”?
The religious dogma of “consciousness” existed long before the birth of outhouse.
outhouse was imprinted with religious dogma that outhouse has “consciousness”.
However outhouse is unable to provide any evidence that outhouse has “consciousness”.
outhouse is extreme fanatic religious adept.

leibowde84 said: ↑

consciousness can be divided and seen physically in the brain, nervous system, etc.

Click to expand...

leibowde84, please provide at least one evidence that leibowde84 has “consciousness”.

George-ananda said: ↑

I think one thing you dismiss or choose not to talk about are paranormal phenomena that indicate something 'real' is often going on. Things like detailed knowledge not learned through normal channels tells me something 'real' is indeed going on. Also I am aware of many types of physical phenomena associated with the paranormal that can never be explained by the theories you are espousing. I am aware of the arguments pseudo-skeptics make against any 'real' paranormal phenomena ever occurring but I find their explanations become desperate attempts to maintain materialism in the face of the strongest evidence. Just my study of one particular eastern master shows me that reality and consciousness are vastly deeper than your theories reach.
I believe we need a worldview that is post-materialism.
To me, your arguing technique is to bring up just the examples your theory could have answers to and to deny the existence of anything further. There may be something to some of what you say, but I think you are taking your pet theories way too far.

Click to expand...

George-ananda, please provide at least one evidence that George-ananda has “consciousness”.

Science is what you can observe and on which you can carry out reproducible experiments – everything that meets these criteria is the science; and everything that does not meet these criteria – is not the science.
The only judge in science is the experiment.
In science the philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

Definition of “religious dogma”: a claim which does not match the scientific criteria, a claim which has no experimental evidence.
Definition of “religious adept”: a man who believes in religious dogma.

 

PSEUDOSCIENCE!!!!!!! is not science.

 

outhouse said: ↑

PSEUDOSCIENCE!!!!!!! is not science.

Click to expand...

Very big size of font of outhouse’s text is not the scientific argument.
Pseudoscientist outhouse is not scientist – that is for sure.

Religious adept outhouse naively believes in religious dogma that outhouse supposedly has “consciousness”.
However outhouse is unable to provide any scientific evidence that outhouse has “consciousness”.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Question for George-ananda #1: why Jesus/Mary never show up for savage/aboriginal people (who had no contacts with Western missionaries)? Why Jesus/Mary does not enlighten these savage/aboriginal people about the “true religion”? Why Jesus/Mary let these savage/aboriginal people go into hell without even getting an opportunity to “be saved”?

Click to expand...

George-ananda said: ↑

Different cultures have different spiritual traditions. All of these entities with different names and forms all issue from the same source/Brahman. Visions come in the form the receiver understands. The outward name and form is not important.

Click to expand...

It does not matter whether all of these entities issue from the same source/Brahman or not.
What matters here is that all of these entities with different names and forms (Jesus, Krishna, etc) all compete with each other for the number of adepts.
What matters here is that all of these entities with different names and forms (Jesus, Krishna, etc) even command people to kill other people who worship other entities.
What matters here is that all of these entities with different names and forms (Jesus, Krishna, etc) use whatever means necessary (even the most despicable means) to increase the number of their adepts.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+15&version=ESV
2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt.
3 Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”
(Bible. 1 Samuel 15:2-3)

Click to expand...

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+21&version=ESV
2 And Israel vowed a vow to the Lord and said, “If you will indeed give this people into my hand, then I will devote their cities to destruction.”
3 And the Lord heeded the voice of Israel and gave over the Canaanites, and they devoted them and their cities to destruction. So the name of the place was called Hormah.
(Bible. Numbers 21:2-3)

Click to expand...

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+31&version=ESV
17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him.
18 But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.
(Bible. Numbers 31:17-18)

Click to expand...

So, we repeat again the question for George-ananda: why the entities with the name “Jesus” and “Mary” never show up for savage/aboriginal people (who had no contacts with Western missionaries)?

 

Third person POE


Where is the Ouija board LOL

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

It does not matter whether all of these entities issue from the same source/Brahman or not.
What matters here is that all of these entities with different names and forms (Jesus, Krishna, etc) all compete with each other for the number of adepts.
What matters here is that all of these entities with different names and forms (Jesus, Krishna, etc) even command people to kill other people who worship other entities.
What matters here is that all of these entities with different names and forms (Jesus, Krishna, etc) use whatever means necessary (even the most despicable means) to increase the number of their adepts.

Click to expand...

Jesus and Krishna are in no competition with each other. It is their least spiritually developed fanatical devotees that are in conflict.

I and many on the spiritual path hold the Old Testament verses to be a product of their time. We don't hold to Biblical infallibility.

 

George-ananda said: ↑

At the most advanced levels the religions merge.

Click to expand...

That is correct. In all religions, no matter what is the name of that religion, the highest spiritual state is exactly identical by its underlying physiological mechanism and its physiological manifestation.
“The highest spiritual state” is usually accompanied by epileptic seizures. Epilepsy is a phenomenon when a small number of neurons in the brain excite themselves via positive feedback neural circuits which leads to the excitation of nearby neurons and this excessive hypersynchronous neuronal activity spreads through large areas of the brain. When epileptic neuron impulse firings hit the motor cortex in the brain then man’s body goes into convulsions.
In all religions in the highest spiritual state adepts exactly identically shake in epileptic convulsions and evoke epileptic neuron impulse firings into pleasure center of the brain.
The effect of these epileptic neuron impulse firings into pleasure center of the brain is much more dizzying than that of alcohol or narcotics and for that reason the adept becomes addicted to them and adept is unable to live without them exactly in the same way as drug addict is dependable on narcotics.

Many leaders of religious cults had been having chronic epileptic seizures during which they traveled into “spiritual words” and gained “divine knowledge”. Even more, many religious cults consider that epileptic seizures are the proof of divinity, below are some examples.
“Ecstatic love for Krishna” is the highest spiritual state in International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).
The founder of International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda listed eight symptoms of “ecstatic love for Krishna”:

http://vedabase.com/en/nod/28
There are eight symptoms of existential ecstatic love: becoming stunned, perspiring, standing of the hairs on the body, faltering of the voice, trembling of the body, changing of bodily colors, shedding of tears and devastation.
(A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. The Nectar of Devotion. Chapter 28: Existential Ecstatic Love)

Click to expand...

http://vedabase.com/en/nod/27
The bodily symptoms manifested by a devotee in expressing ecstatic love for Kṛṣṇa are called anubhāva. Practical examples of anubhāva are as follows: dancing, rolling on the ground, singing very loudly, stretching the body, crying loudly, yawning, breathing very heavily, neglecting the presence of others, drooling, laughing like a madman, wheeling the head and belching. When there is an extraordinary excess of ecstatic love, with all of these bodily symptoms manifested, one feels relieved transcendentally.
These symptoms are divided into two parts: one is called śīta, and the other is called kṣepaṇa. When there is yawning, the symptoms are called śīta, and when there is dancing they are called kṣepaṇa.
Dancing <...>,
Rolling on the Ground <...>,
Singing Loudly <...>,
Crying Loudly <...>,
Yawning <...>,
Breathing Heavily <...>,
Neglecting the Presence of Others <...>,
Drooling <...>,
Belching <...>.
Sometimes trembling of the whole body and hemorrhaging from some part of the body are also manifested in response to ecstatic love for Kṛṣṇa, but such symptoms are very rare, and therefore Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī does not discuss any further on this point.
(A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. The Nectar of Devotion. Chapter 27: Symptoms of Ecstatic Love)

Click to expand...

ISKCON holy scripture “Caitanya Caritāmṛta” claims that (the founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism) Caitanya Mahāprabhu was experiencing all symptoms of ecstatic love for Krishna in his visions in which he saw Krishna.

http://vedabase.com/en/cc/antya/14
CC Antya 14.68: They almost died when they saw Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu with His mouth full of saliva and foam and His eyes turned upward.
<...>
CC Antya 14.98: When Svarūpa Dāmodara and the other devotees reached the spot and saw the condition of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, they began to cry.
CC Antya 14.99: All eight kinds of transcendental transformations were visible in the Lord's body. All the devotees were struck with wonder to see such a sight.
(A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. Śrī Caitanya Caritāmṛta. Chapter 14: Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu's Feelings of Separation from Kṛṣṇa)

Click to expand...

http://vedabase.com/en/cc/madhya/18
CC Madhya 18.159: While walking, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, understanding that the others were fatigued, took them all beneath a tree and sat down.
CC Madhya 18.160: There were many cows grazing near that tree, and the Lord was very pleased to see them.
CC Madhya 18.161: Suddenly a cowherd boy blew on his flute, and immediately the Lord was struck with ecstatic love.
CC Madhya 18.162: Filled with ecstatic love, the Lord fell to the ground unconscious. He foamed about the mouth, and His breathing stopped.
CC Madhya 18.163 While the Lord was unconscious, ten cavalry soldiers belonging to the Muslim Pāṭhāna military order rode up and dismounted.
CC Madhya 18.164 Seeing the Lord unconscious, the soldiers thought, “This sannyāsī must have possessed a large quantity of gold.
<...>
CC Madhya 18.168 The brāhmaṇa said, “You Pāṭhāna soldiers are all under the protection of your king. Let us go to your commander and get his decision.
CC Madhya 18.169 “This sannyāsī is my spiritual master, and I am from Mathurā. I am a brāhmaṇa, and I know many people who are in the service of the Muslim king.
CC Madhya 18.170 “This sannyāsī sometimes falls unconscious due to the influence of a disease. Please sit down here, and you will see that He will very soon regain consciousness and His normal condition.
<...>
CC Madhya 18.183: Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu said, “These are not rogues. They are My associates. Being a sannyāsī beggar, I do not possess anything.
CC Madhya 18.184: “Due to epilepsy, I sometimes fall unconscious. Out of their mercy, these four men maintain Me.”
(A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. Śrī Caitanya Caritāmṛta. Chapter 18: Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu's Visit to Sri Vrindavana)

Click to expand...

From neuroscience point of view symptoms of ecstatic love for Krishna of Caitanya Mahāprabhu described in “Caitanya Caritāmṛta” perfectly match musicogenic epilepsy (a.k.a. audiogenic epilepsy) criteria.

http://voices.yahoo.com/musicogenic-epilepsy-other-seizure-triggers-837061.html
Reflexive epilepsy is a form of epilepsy in which seizures are triggered by environmental stimuli. Musicogenic epilepsy, according to Dr. Acerkman if Temken Mercy Medical Center and Doctor Martha E. Banks, is just one of many forms of reflexive epilepsy in which a seizure is triggered by music or specific frequencies.
Sensitivity to music varies from patient to patient. Some are sensitive to a particular tone from a voice or instrument. Others are sensitive to a particular musical style or rhythm. Still others are sensitive to a range of noises such as a blowtorch or revving engine.
Musicogenic Epilepsy is relatively rare. Brain surgery last week at Long Island Jewish Medical Center to cure a woman with musicogenic epilepsy has raised awareness of the neurological condition. According to the Associated Press, 25 year-old Stacey Gayle's seizures were triggered by reggae and hip-hop artist Sean Paul's music. Following brain surgery, Gayle hasn't experienced another seizure, to date.
Reflexive seizures are difficult to identify, because often the stimuli is unknown. Although musicogenic epilepsy is not common, according to Doctor's Daly and Barry, Jr., the first case was reported in 1884. Dr. Acerkman and Banks study verified Daly and Berry's conclusion that both psychoacoustic and psychological factors play a role in inducing reflexive seizures. This means that in part musicogenic seizures are caused by certain noises and in part they are caused by negative associations with certain noises or music.
Additional indications which have been observed in patients with reflexive epilepsy include: déjà vu, hearing loss, twitching, loss of consciousness, head tilts, increased blood pressure, respiration changes, elevated temperature, incoherence, trembling of limbs, feeling of a need to grasp a thought that has just escaped their mind, and perspiration.
Reflexive epilepsy can be triggered by a number of things. In addition to musicogenic epilepsy, researchers have found reflexive epilepsy to be triggered by a tap on the shoulder, flashes of light, alcohol, temperature changes, exercise exhaustion, stress, and menstrual cycle or other hormonal changes. Insomnia, video games, insomnia and fatigue, and specific visual pattern have also been known to trigger epileptic seizures. Rarely, seizures may be triggered by thinking, eating, or soaking in water. <...>
(Wendy Dawn, Yahoo Contributor Network. Jan 23, 2008
Musicogenic Epilepsy and Other Seizure Triggers.)

Click to expand...

See below the documentary movie which shows how the reception of the Holy Spirit looks in Christianity. Exactly in the same identical way Jesus was giving the Holy Spirit to his adepts.


Беснования харизматов (starting from 1 minute 38 seconds).
Length: 2 minutes


Benny Hinn – Power of God Falling In Philadelphia
Length: 8 minutes


Benny Hinn – Raw Anointing of the Spirit (1)
Length: 10 minutes


Benny Hinn – Incredible Demonstrations of God's Power.
Length: 6 minutes


Benny Hinn – Holy Spirit Flow Through Me
Length: 10 minutes

… continued in next post ….

 

…. the continuation of previous post ….

When a man receives Holy Spirit then following scenarios are possible:
1) if the amount of Holy Spirit is small then a man simply faints and unconsciously slumps on the floor;
2) if the amount of Holy Spirit is big then in man’s brain the epileptic neuron impulse firings are initiated which fire into the pleasure center of the brain and this process is accompanied by epileptic convulsions of the man’s body. These epileptic neuron impulse firings into pleasure center of the brain evoke euphoric state for a man who has received the Holy Spirit. The effect of these epileptic neuron impulse firings into pleasure center of the brain is much more dizzying than that of alcohol or narcotics and for that reason if the man has received such Holy Spirit several times then such man becomes addicted to Holy Spirit and man is unable to live without Holy Spirit exactly in the same way as drug addict is dependable on narcotics.

In all religions, no matter what is the name of that religion, the highest spiritual state is exactly identical by its underlying physiological mechanism and its physiological manifestation.
“The highest spiritual state” is usually accompanied by epileptic seizures. Epilepsy is a phenomenon when a small number of neurons in the brain excite themselves via positive feedback neural circuits which leads to the excitation of nearby neurons and this excessive hypersynchronous neuronal activity spreads through large areas of the brain. When epileptic neuron impulse firings hit the motor cortex in the brain then man’s body goes into convulsions.
In all religions in the highest spiritual state adepts exactly identically shake in epileptic convulsions and evoke epileptic neuron impulse firings into pleasure center of the brain.
The effect of these epileptic neuron impulse firings into pleasure center of the brain is much more dizzying than that of alcohol or narcotics and for that reason the adept becomes addicted to them and adept is unable to live without them exactly in the same way as drug addict is dependable on narcotics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure_center
Pleasure center is the general term used for the brain regions involved in pleasure. Discoveries made in the 1950s initially suggested that rodents could not stop electrically stimulating parts of their brain, mainly the nucleus accumbens, which was theorized to produce great pleasure. Further investigations revealed that the septum pellucidium and the hypothalamus can also be targets for self-stimulation. More recent research has shown that the so-called pleasure electrodes lead only a form of wanting or motivation to obtain the stimulation, rather than pleasure. The weight of evidence suggests that human pleasure reactions occur across a distributed system of brain regions, of which important nodes include subcortical regions (such as the nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum) and cortical regions (orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex).

Rodent experiments
The pleasure center was discovered in the 1950s by two brain researchers named James Olds and Peter Milner who were investigating whether rats might be made uncomfortable by electrical stimulation of certain areas of their brain, particularly the limbic system. In the experiment, an electrical current was given to rats if they entered a certain corner of a cage, with the hypothesis that they would stay away from that corner if the effect was uncomfortable. Instead, they came back quickly after the first stimulation and even more quickly after the second. In later experiments, they allowed the rats to press the stimulation lever themselves, to the effect that they would press it as much as seven-hundred times per hour. This region soon came to be known as the "pleasure center".
Rats in Skinner boxes with metal electrodes implanted into their nucleus accumbens will repeatedly press a lever which activates this region, and will do so in preference over food and water, eventually dying from exhaustion. In rodent physiology, scientists reason that the medial forebrain bundle is the pleasure center of rats. If a rat is given the choice between stimulating the forebrain or eating, it will choose stimulation to the point of exhaustion.

Human experiments
● Dr. José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado implanted electrodes in the brains of 25 people.
● 1963: "Electrical self-stimulation of the brain in man." by Dr. Robert Heath.
● 1972: A 24-year-old man with temporal lobe epilepsy, identified as patient "B-19". "He was permitted to wear the device for 3 hours at a time: on one occasion he stimulated his septal region 1,200 times, on another occasion 1,500 times, and on a third occasion 900 times. He protested each time the unit was taken from him, pleading to self-stimulate just a few more times... "
● 1986: A 48-year-old woman with chronic pain. "the patient self-stimulated throughout the day, neglecting personal hygiene and family commitments."

Click to expand...

If epileptic neuron impulse firings do not hit the pleasure center in the brain then religious adepts consider this phenomenon as “demonic possession”.
For some movies about “demonic possession” please click here.
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/demonic_possession_videos.html

To read about the detailed analysis and underlying mechanisms of the Holy Spirit please click here.
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/holy_spirit.html

In yoga the highest spiritual state is called “Awakening of the Serpent Power” (a.k.a. “Kundalini awakening”, some academics use the term “Kundalini syndrome” or “Physio-Kundalini syndrome”).
The highest spiritual state in yoga (“Awakening the Serpent Power”) is fully identical by all parameters to Christian “receiving of the Holy Spirit” – yogis shake in epileptic convulsions and evoke epileptic neuron impulse firings into pleasure center of the brain exactly in the same way as Christians are “receiving the Holy Spirit”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini_syndrome
Table 1: The Kundalini Scale
Symptoms
1. Feelings of energy in the hands.
2. Feeling deep ecstatic sensations.
3. Experiencing severe, or migraine type, headaches.
4. Awareness of energy discharges, or currents, flowing through the body.
5. Sensations of tickling, itching or tingling on, or underneath, the skin.
6. Awareness of internal lights or colors.
7. Hands feeling hot.
8. Sensations of extreme heat or cold moving through the body.
9. The body shakes, vibrates or trembles.

<...>
Table 2: The Physio-Kundalini Syndrome Index

Motor symptoms
1. Body assuming and maintaining strange positions for no apparent reason.
2. Body becoming frozen or locked into strange positions and immovable.
3. Breathing spontaneously stopping or becoming rapid, shallow, or deep for no apparent reason.
4. Spontaneous involuntary bodily movements.

Somatosensory Symptoms
5. Spontaneous deep ecstatic tickle or orgasmic feeling.
6. Physical sensations starting in the feet, legs or pelvis, and moving up the back and neck to the top of the head, down the forehead, over the face, then to the throat, and ending in the abdomen.
7. Extreme sensations of heat or cold moving through the body.
8. Moving pockets of bodily heat or cold being extreme enough to burn or otherwise affect someone else or an inanimate object.
9. Pains in specific parts of the body that begin and end abruptly.
10. Tingling, vibration, itching or tickling on the skin or inside the body.

Audiovisual symptoms
11. Internal noises, such as whistling, hissing, chirping, roaring or flutelike sounds.
12. Internal voices.
13. Internal lights or colors illuminating parts of the body.
14. Internal lights bright enough to illuminate a dark room.

Mental symptoms
15. Observing oneself, including one's thoughts, as if one were a bystander.
16. Sudden, intense ecstacy, bliss, peace, love, devotion, joy, or cosmic unity.
17. Sudden intense fear, anxiety, depression, hatred or confusion.
18. Thoughts spontaneously speeding up, slowing down, or stopping altogether.
19. Experiencing oneself as physically larger than the body.

Click to expand...

It is important to note that all religious teachings claim that epilepsy is the proof of the divinity and also at the same time they claim that epilepsy is the proof of the demonic possession – these two statements contradict each other and that proves logical inconsistency of religious teachings.

… continued in next post ….

 

…. the continuation of previous post ….

Below is a classical example when epilepsy is confused with the demonic possession – Jesus claims to have cast out the demon from the boy. Actually, the description of boy’s condition in the Bible clearly shows that the boy is having chronic epileptic seizures. Jesus simply stands nearby the boy until the epileptic seizure had ended and then Jesus declares that the boy was healed from demonic spirit – actually standing nearby and waiting until the epileptic seizure had ended has nothing to do with the healing – all epileptic seizures end up themselves sooner or later, thus this episode in the Bible clearly reveals the charlatanic nature of “miracle healings” of Jesus.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+9&version=ESV
Jesus Heals a Boy with an Unclean Spirit
14 And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them.
15 And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him.
16 And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?”
17 And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute.
18 And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.”
19 And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.”
20 And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.
21 And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood.
22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”
24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
25 And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”
26 And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.”
27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.
28 And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”
29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.
(Bible. Mark 9:14-29)

Click to expand...

 

Benny Hinn wow the POE is strong in this one!

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

It does not matter whether all of these entities issue from the same source/Brahman or not.
What matters here is that all of these entities with different names and forms (Jesus, Krishna, etc) all compete with each other for the number of adepts.
What matters here is that all of these entities with different names and forms (Jesus, Krishna, etc) even command people to kill other people who worship other entities.
What matters here is that all of these entities with different names and forms (Jesus, Krishna, etc) use whatever means necessary (even the most despicable means) to increase the number of their adepts.
<…>
So, we repeat again the question for George-ananda: why the entities with the name “Jesus” and “Mary” never show up for savage/aboriginal people (who had no contacts with Western missionaries)?

Click to expand...

George-ananda said: ↑

Jesus and Krishna are in no competition with each other. It is their least spiritually developed fanatical devotees that are in conflict.

Click to expand...

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda claims that Jesus is the incarnation/representative of Krisha.

http://www.harekrishnatemple.com/chapter27.html
Chapter 27 - Krishna and Jesus Christ
Sometimes Sri Krsna descends Himself, and sometimes He sends His representative. The major religions of the world-Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Moslem-believe in some supreme authority or personality coming down from the kingdom of God. In the Christian religion, Jesus Christ claimed to be the son of God and to be coming from the kingdom of God to reclaim conditioned souls. As followers of Bhagavad-gita, we admit this claim to be true. So basically there is no difference of opinion. In details there may be differences due to differences in culture, climate and people, but the basic principle remains the same-that is, God or His representatives come to reclaim conditioned souls.
(Raja Vidya Chapter 6: Knowledge of Krsna's Appearance and Activities)

Click to expand...

We will remind that according to the Vedas Krishna lived about 5,000 years ago.
Meanwhile, Christ lived about 2,000 years ago.
In other words, Krishna came earlier than Jesus.
And now let's have a closer look at what Jesus said about those who came before Jesus:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+10&version=ESV
7 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.
8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.
9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Click to expand...

Jesus said very clearly that “all who came before me are thieves and robbers”.
Jesus stated very clearly that Krishna was thief and robber, and you must believe only in Jesus, if you will believe in thief-robber-Krishna then you will go to hell.

George-ananda should raise his qualification in the teachings of Jesus.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

That is correct. In all religions, no matter what is the name of that religion, the highest spiritual state is exactly identical by its underlying physiological mechanism and its physiological manifestation.
“The highest spiritual state” is usually accompanied by epileptic seizures. Epilepsy is a phenomenon when a small number of neurons in the brain excite themselves via positive feedback neural circuits which leads to the excitation of nearby neurons and this excessive hypersynchronous neuronal activity spreads through large areas of the brain. When epileptic neuron impulse firings hit the motor cortex in the brain then man’s body goes into convulsions.
In all religions in the highest spiritual state adepts exactly identically shake in epileptic convulsions and evoke epileptic neuron impulse firings into pleasure center of the brain.
The effect of these epileptic neuron impulse firings into pleasure center of the brain is much more dizzying than that of alcohol or narcotics and for that reason the adept becomes addicted to them and adept is unable to live without them exactly in the same way as drug addict is dependable on narcotics.

Many leaders of religious cults had been having chronic epileptic seizures during which they traveled into “spiritual words” and gained “divine knowledge”. Even more, many religious cults consider that epileptic seizures are the proof of divinity, below are some examples.
“Ecstatic love for Krishna” is the highest spiritual state in International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).
The founder of International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda listed eight symptoms of “ecstatic love for Krishna”:



ISKCON holy scripture “Caitanya Caritāmṛta” claims that (the founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism) Caitanya Mahāprabhu was experiencing all symptoms of ecstatic love for Krishna in his visions in which he saw Krishna.


From neuroscience point of view symptoms of ecstatic love for Krishna of Caitanya Mahāprabhu described in “Caitanya Caritāmṛta” perfectly match musicogenic epilepsy (a.k.a. audiogenic epilepsy) criteria.


See below the documentary movie which shows how the reception of the Holy Spirit looks in Christianity. Exactly in the same identical way Jesus was giving the Holy Spirit to his adepts.

Беснования харизматов (starting from 1 minute 38 seconds).
Length: 2 minutes


Benny Hinn – Power of God Falling In Philadelphia
Length: 8 minutes


Benny Hinn – Raw Anointing of the Spirit (1)
Length: 10 minutes


Benny Hinn – Incredible Demonstrations of God's Power.
Length: 6 minutes


Benny Hinn – Holy Spirit Flow Through Me
Length: 10 minutes

… continued in next post ….

Click to expand...

Good post....that has been my own experience of physio-kundalini syndrome...and you have made some astute observations in this long post...I have been through most of it hopefully...the end is nigh.. Btw, I am quite sure the Egyptian use of the serpent coming out of the top of the head and the serpent in the garden of Eden are both to do with the kundalini serpent which, when the disciple is sufficiently purged of error, will radiate from the top of the head....the aura of the spiritually pure, shown in both Christian and Indian religious art...

 

outhouse said: ↑

Third person POE
Where is the Ouija board LOL

Click to expand...

outhouse, tell the programmer who programmed the bot with the name “outhouse” that the-bot-outhouse does not even pass a Turing test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. In the original illustrative example, a human judge engages in natural language conversations with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give the correct answer to questions; it checks how closely the answer resembles typical human answers. The conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so that the result is not dependent on the machine's ability to render words into audio.
The test was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" Because "thinking" is difficult to define, Turing chooses to "replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words." Turing's new question is: "Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?" This question, Turing believed, is one that can actually be answered. In the remainder of the paper, he argued against all the major objections to the proposition that "machines can think".
In the years since 1950, the test has proven to be both highly influential and widely criticized, and it is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.

Click to expand...

outhouse, tell the programmer who programmed the bot with the name “outhouse” that the-bot-outhouse is even unable to carry meaningful conversation.
The-bot-outhouse just contaminates the forum with irrelevant/off-topic phrases-of-several-words-length written in big size font.
outhouse, tell the programmer who programmed the-bot-outhouse that he should raise his qualification in the programming of bots – have a look at the-bot-A.L.I.C.E. which has much higher intelligence level than the-bot-outhouse, just have a chat with the-bot-A.L.I.C.E. and you will see that yourself, the address is:
http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=f5d922d97e345aa1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Linguistic_Internet_Computer_Entity
A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), also referred to as Alicebot, or simply Alice, is a natural language processing chatterbot—a program that engages in a conversation with a human by applying some heuristical pattern matching rules to the human's input, and in its online form it also relies on a hidden third person. It was inspired by Joseph Weizenbaum's classical ELIZA program. It is one of the strongest programs of its type and has won the Loebner Prize, awarded to accomplished humanoid, talking robots, three times (in 2000, 2001 and 2004). However, the program is unable to pass the Turing test, as even the casual user will often expose its mechanistic aspects in short conversations.

Click to expand...

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Question for George-ananda #2: how is that possible that Southern Mexico Toltec shamanic teaching about “subtle bodies” is incompatible with the eastern teaching? Shouldn’t they be both clones of each other? How is that possible that they are totally incompatible with each other?

Click to expand...

George-ananda said: ↑

I have not studied Southern Mexico Toltec shamanic teaching in any detail but I question how incompatible the two are because I did not get that impression from reading Carlos Castenada. It was more that they were focusing on different aspects and some of it with the elemental beings etc. seemed quite consistent. But again, Toltec shamanism is not my specialty.

Click to expand...

These two teachings about “subtle bodies” are totally incompatible with each other.
The essence of Southern Mexico Toltec shamanic teaching is that the “assemblage point” can be moved across the “luminous energy egg” and as a result of that “assemblage point” movement the main personality gets into completely different “astral worlds/planes/realities”.
In the eastern teaching there is no equivalent of “assemblage point which can be moved across the luminous energy egg”.
The teaching of Southern Mexico Toltec shamans is more powerful than the eastern teaching, so George-ananda should study it instead of the eastern teaching.

Religious adepts claim that spirits are something like “vapor/dust/light clouds” which travel via air and can interact with material objects, like for example pushing heavy furniture, smashing cups and glasses, moving around objects, etc (a.k.a. poltergeist). However techniques used in spiritualistic séances clearly show that spirits are unable to move the inanimate object – no spirit is able to move a thread with a needle when the thread is tied to some inanimate object (like for example the lamp, ceiling, etc). Spirit can manifest itself only via movements done by the alive human – thread with a needle will move only when it is held by alive human. And this raises the simple question: if the spirits were able to push and smash heavy objects (like furniture) then movement of a thread with a needle would be extremely easy task for the spirit, isn’t it? However experimental results show that spirits are unable to move such extra light object as the thread with the needle when needle is tied to some inanimate object. Spirits can manifest themselves only via the movements of the human body.
Almost all religions and cults claim exactly the same error – they all claim that spirits can exist independently from physical body. The origin of such erroneous claim is due to the fact that “spiritual travelers” very often encounter “spiritual beings” which have no match for any known object in real physical world, thus “spiritual travelers” had made incorrect conclusion that these “spiritual beings” exist without any physical body. However in reality all “spiritual beings” are simulated by autonomic egregoric neuroclusters which reside in the physical brain of the “spiritual traveler”.
Below is a classical example of such erroneous claims – Carlos Castañeda (who proclaimed himself as the follower of Southern Mexico Toltec shamanic tradition) used the term “inorganic beings” to denote autonomic egregoric neuroclusters which have no match for any known object in real physical world. Carlos Castañeda naively believed that “inorganic beings” live independently from any physical body, however in reality all “inorganic beings” are destroyed when the brain of the adept is destroyed (just like computer game characters are destroyed when the computer is physically destroyed).

http://books.google.com/books?id=_3vfmEwoO1AC&pg=PR15&dq=inorganic+beings&hl=lt&sa=X&ei=mUoRVMvtF8XgyQOd0IIw&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=inorganic beings&f=false
They saw that inanimate energy has no awareness. Awareness, for shamans, is a vibratory condition of animate energy. Don Juan said that the shamans of ancient Mexico were the first ones to see that all the organisms on Earth are the possessors of vibratory energy. They called them organic beings, and saw that it is the organism itself which sets up the cohesiveness and the limits of such energy. They also saw that there are conglomerates of vibratory, animate energy which have a cohesion of their own, free from the bindings of an organism. They called them inorganic beings, and described them as clumps of cohesive energy that is invisible to the human eye, energy that is aware of itself, and possesses a unity determined by an agglutinating force other than the agglutinating force of an organism.
The shamans of don Juan’s lineage saw that the essential condition of animate energy, organic or inorganic, is to turn energy in the universe at large into sensory data. In the case of organic beings, this sensory data is then turned into a system of interpretation in which energy at large is classified and a given response is allotted to each classification, whatever the classification may be. The assertion of sorcerers is that in the realm of inorganic beings, the sensory data into which energy at large is transformed by the inorganic beings, must be, by definition, interpreted by them in whatever incomprehensible form they may do it.
(Carlos Castañeda. The Teachings of Don Juan – A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. 1998. The Author's Commentaries on the Occasion of the Thirtieth Year of Publication of The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, XV)

Click to expand...

http://archive.org/stream/CarlosCastaneda/CarlosCastanedaCompendium1998-MagicalPasses_djvu.txt
The belief of the shamans of don Juan's lineage was that when death takes place in this fashion, all of our being is turned into energy, a special kind of energy that retains the mark of our individuality. Don Juan tried to explain this in a metaphorical sense, saying that we are composed of a number of single nations: the nation of the lungs, the nation of the heart, the nation of the stomach, the nation of the kidneys, and so on. Each of these nations sometimes works independently of the others, but at the moment of death, all of them are unified into one single entity. The sorcerers of don Juan's lineage called this state total freedom. For those sorcerers, death is a unifier, and not an annihilator, as it is for the average man.
"Is this state immortality, don Juan?" I asked.
"This is in no way immortality," he replied. "It is merely the entrance into an evolutionary process, using the only medium for evolution that man has at his disposal: awareness. The sorcerers of my lineage were convinced that man could not evolve biologically any further; therefore, they considered man's awareness to be the only medium for evolution. At the moment of dying, sorcerers are not annihilated by death, but are transformed into inorganic beings: beings that have awareness, but not an organism. To be transformed into an inorganic being was evolution for them, and it meant that a new, indescribable type of awareness was lent to them, an awareness that would last for veritably millions of years, but which would also someday have to be returned to the giver: the dark sea of awareness."
One of the most important findings of the shamans of don Juan's lineage was that, like everything else in the universe, our world is a combination of two opposing, and at the same time complementary, forces. One of those forces is the world we know, which those sorcerers called the world of organic beings. The other force is something they called the world of inorganic beings.
"The world of inorganic beings," don Juan said, "is populated by beings that possess awareness, but not an organism. They are conglomerates of energy fields, just like we are. To the eye of a seer, instead of being luminous, as human beings are, they are rather opaque. They are not round, but long, candlelike energetic configurations. They are, in essence, conglomerates of energy fields which have cohesion and boundaries just like we do. They are held together by the same agglutinating force that holds our energy
fields together."
"Where is this inorganic world, don Juan?" I asked.
"It is our twin world," he replied. "It occupies the same time and space as our world, but the type of awareness of our world is so different from the type of awareness of the inorganic world that we never notice the presence of inorganic beings, although they do notice ours."
"Are those inorganic beings human beings that have evolved?" I asked.
"Not at all!" he exclaimed. "The inorganic beings of our twin world have been intrinsically inorganic from the start, the same way that we have always been intrinsically organic beings, also from the start. They are beings whose consciousness can evolve just like ours, and it doubtlessly does, but I have no firsthand knowledge of how this happens. What I do know, however, is that a human being whose awareness has evolved is a bright, luminescent, round inorganic being of a special kind."
(Carlos Castañeda. Magical Passes – The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico. 1998.)

Click to expand...

 

Where is the Ouija board??? ??

Such academic heights !!!!!!!! of POE

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Strict scientific examination of reports of NDE experiences shows that information “gained” during NDE experience is always a distorted version of real world facts:
1) NDE patients report incorrect location of many objects, as for example, the table was at the other side of the room than reported by NDE patient, and so on.
2) NDE patients report incorrect number of many objects, as for example, during the time of NDE the room contained two chairs, however NDE patient reports that room contained three chairs, and so on.
3) NDE patients report incorrect features of many objects, as for example wrong color/texture/form/size/model/etc of the object.
4) and so on.

However the religious adepts are so overwhelmed by stories of NDE patients that they are simply blind to the errors in these NDE stories.

Click to expand...

George-ananda said: ↑

I would be surprised if they were always perfect, just like in waking recollections. However the collection of anecdotal cases by the most serious researchers shows an astonishing amount of specific detail that can not be explained away as fortuitous guesses or recording only the 'hits'. These include NDEs of people that had gone blind later in life getting visual level information including clothes and hairstyles. A whole book was recently done on this.

Click to expand...

George-ananda, the best way to go is to carry out your own experiments with OOBE state and then check out the results.
In order to get into OOBE state you do not need NDE.
You can get into OOBE state without being “dead”.

In case if you do not know how to achieve OOBE state then just use the techniques developed by Michael Raduga and you will be able to achieve OOBE state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body (autoscopy).

Click to expand...

Despite the fact that the humankind had been researching OOBE (out-of-body-experience) topic for thousands of years and there are myriads of tractates written on this topic, however from the scientific point of view all these works are at extremely low level.
The breakthrough was done only in year circa 2000 when Michael Raduga began conducting experiments almost at industrial scale using thousands of people as a research object.

Michael Raduga has conducted repeatable experiments using groups of people and during these experiments people have experienced:
1) leaving the physical body;
2) clinical death experience;
3) meeting with the dead people;
4) meeting with the dead angels/demons/aliens/etc;
5) recreated biblical stories of “divine visions”;
6) etc.

For more details please read articles in mass media about Michael Raduga's experiments at page:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/michael_raduga_articles.html

The techniques for artificial induction of OOBE and/or lucid dreaming phenomena are described in details in Michael Raduga’s books.
Please note that Michael Raduga is from Russia and his English writings are quite hard to read because Michael Raduga is not fluent in English.
So in case if you know Russian language then it is much better to read his books in original Russian language because Russian originals are much better than English translations.
Original books in Russian language and English translations are available at the address:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/michael_raduga_books.html

The more efficient way to get acquainted with techniques of Michael Raduga is to watch video lectures instead of reading books, which are available at the address:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/michael_raduga_videos.html

The bad thing is that these lectures are mostly in Russian language (let’s hope they will be translated into English some day), however if you know Russian language then these lectures are really worth watching, especially the 3 day length seminar with the title “Exiting your body in 3 days”.


(In Russian) Михаил Радуга - "Выход из тела за 3 дня". Весь семинар.
Length: 9 hours 43 minutes

Also Michael Raduga provides live teaching of OOBE induction techniques in his experimental seminars and whoever wants can attend these seminars .
Michael Raduga guarantees that about 50-70% of people attending the experimental seminar in two days will experience OOBE from 1 to 6 times. This guarantee is based on previous seminars in which thousands of people attended Raduga’s seminars and have learned to artificially induce the OOBE state.

Science is what you can observe and on which you can carry out reproducible experiments – everything that meets these criteria is the science; and everything that does not meet these criteria – is not the science.
The only judge in science is the experiment.
In science the philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

George-ananda, instead of your philosophical-theoretical blabber, the best way to go is to carry out your own experiments with OOBE state and then check out the results.

 

Such academic heights !!!!!!!! of POE

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

…. the continuation of previous post ….

Below is a classical example when epilepsy is confused with the demonic possession – Jesus claims to have cast out the demon from the boy. Actually, the description of boy’s condition in the Bible clearly shows that the boy is having chronic epileptic seizures. Jesus simply stands nearby the boy until the epileptic seizure had ended and then Jesus declares that the boy was healed from demonic spirit – actually standing nearby and waiting until the epileptic seizure had ended has nothing to do with the healing – all epileptic seizures end up themselves sooner or later, thus this episode in the Bible clearly reveals the charlatanic nature of “miracle healings” of Jesus.

Click to expand...

Well when I said all religions merge in One; I was talking about Brahman-Realization which is a state of pure Consciousness sat-chit-ananda (being-awareness-bliss). These epileptic seizure-like states was not at all what I was talking about. The state I was talking abut is much in the future of most of us.

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda claims that Jesus is the incarnation/representative of Krisha.

We will remind that according to the Vedas Krishna lived about 5,000 years ago.
Meanwhile, Christ lived about 2,000 years ago.
In other words, Krishna came earlier than Jesus.
And now let's have a closer look at what Jesus said about those who came before Jesus:

Jesus said very clearly that “all who came before me are thieves and robbers”.
Jesus stated very clearly that Krishna was thief and robber, and you must believe only in Jesus, if you will believe in thief-robber-Krishna then you will go to hell.

George-ananda should raise his qualification in the teachings of Jesus.

Click to expand...

Seriously? Jesus was talking to a group that had no knowledge of ancient Vedic culture and couldn't possibly have been referring to Krishna. No offense but your knowledge in some areas exceeds your knowledge in other areas.

 

TL;DR

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

These two teachings about “subtle bodies” are totally incompatible with each other.
The essence of Southern Mexico Toltec shamanic teaching is that the “assemblage point” can be moved across the “luminous energy egg” and as a result of that “assemblage point” movement the main personality gets into completely different “astral worlds/planes/realities”.
In the eastern teaching there is no equivalent of “assemblage point which can be moved across the luminous energy egg”.

Click to expand...

I'm not so sure. Could the assemblage point refer to the flame of Brahman consciousness in all of us. And this point can move producing new states of awareness?

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

The teaching of Southern Mexico Toltec shamans is more powerful than the eastern teaching, so George-ananda should study it instead of the eastern teaching.

Click to expand...

I see no indication of that.

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

Religious adepts claim that spirits are something like “vapor/dust/light clouds” which travel via air and can interact with material objects, like for example pushing heavy furniture, smashing cups and glasses, moving around objects, etc (a.k.a. poltergeist). However techniques used in spiritualistic séances clearly show that spirits are unable to move the inanimate object – no spirit is able to move a thread with a needle when the thread is tied to some inanimate object (like for example the lamp, ceiling, etc). Spirit can manifest itself only via movements done by the alive human – thread with a needle will move only when it is held by alive human. And this raises the simple question: if the spirits were able to push and smash heavy objects (like furniture) then movement of a thread with a needle would be extremely easy task for the spirit, isn’t it? However experimental results show that spirits are unable to move such extra light object as the thread with the needle when needle is tied to some inanimate object. Spirits can manifest themselves only via the movements of the human body.
Almost all religions and cults claim exactly the same error – they all claim that spirits can exist independently from physical body. The origin of such erroneous claim is due to the fact that “spiritual travelers” very often encounter “spiritual beings” which have no match for any known object in real physical world, thus “spiritual travelers” had made incorrect conclusion that these “spiritual beings” exist without any physical body. However in reality all “spiritual beings” are simulated by autonomic egregoric neuroclusters which reside in the physical brain of the “spiritual traveler”.
Below is a classical example of such erroneous claims – Carlos Castañeda (who proclaimed himself as the follower of Southern Mexico Toltec shamanic tradition) used the term “inorganic beings” to denote autonomic egregoric neuroclusters which have no match for any known object in real physical world. Carlos Castañeda naively believed that “inorganic beings” live independently from any physical body, however in reality all “inorganic beings” are destroyed when the brain of the adept is destroyed (just like computer game characters are destroyed when the computer is physically destroyed).

Click to expand...

Well, the careful observations of innumerable individuals would say that something physically paranormal is going on besides fraud. The quantity, quality and consistency of the evidence makes me believe physical paranormal phenomena occurs beyond any reasonable doubt.

 

George-ananda said: ↑

Well when I said all religions merge in One; I was talking about Brahman-Realization which is a state of pure Consciousness sat-chit-ananda (being-awareness-bliss). These epileptic seizure-like states was not at all what I was talking about. The state I was talking abut is much in the future of most of us.

Click to expand...

However...the process of kundalini arousal is unique with each individual....I don't know about the seizures, but an EEC will indicate a slight tendency to epilepsy...once it has reached critical mass...there is no stopping it as it burns away the karmic blocks and corrects errors....the brains storms are changing ceaselessly...bipolarity is common...all this precedes the 7th chakra opening which is Brahman realization...

 

neuroclusterbrain said: ↑

George-ananda, the best way to go is to carry out your own experiments with OOBE state and then check out the results.
In order to get into OOBE state you do not need NDE.
You can get into OOBE state without being “dead”.

In case if you do not know how to achieve OOBE state then just use the techniques developed by Michael Raduga and you will be able to achieve OOBE state.

Despite the fact that the humankind had been researching OOBE (out-of-body-experience) topic for thousands of years and there are myriads of tractates written on this topic, however from the scientific point of view all these works are at extremely low level.
The breakthrough was done only in year circa 2000 when Michael Raduga began conducting experiments almost at industrial scale using thousands of people as a research object.

Michael Raduga has conducted repeatable experiments using groups of people and during these experiments people have experienced:
1) leaving the physical body;
2) clinical death experience;
3) meeting with the dead people;
4) meeting with the dead angels/demons/aliens/etc;
5) recreated biblical stories of “divine visions”;
6) etc.

For more details please read articles in mass media about Michael Raduga's experiments at page:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/michael_raduga_articles.html

The techniques for artificial induction of OOBE and/or lucid dreaming phenomena are described in details in Michael Raduga’s books.
Please note that Michael Raduga is from Russia and his English writings are quite hard to read because Michael Raduga is not fluent in English.
So in case if you know Russian language then it is much better to read his books in original Russian language because Russian originals are much better than English translations.
Original books in Russian language and English translations are available at the address:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/michael_raduga_books.html

The more efficient way to get acquainted with techniques of Michael Raduga is to watch video lectures instead of reading books, which are available at the address:
http://neuroclusterbrain.com/michael_raduga_videos.html

The bad thing is that these lectures are mostly in Russian language (let’s hope they will be translated into English some day), however if you know Russian language then these lectures are really worth watching, especially the 3 day length seminar with the title “Exiting your body in 3 days”.


(In Russian) Михаил Радуга - "Выход из тела за 3 дня". Весь семинар.
Length: 9 hours 43 minutes

Also Michael Raduga provides live teaching of OOBE induction techniques in his experimental seminars and whoever wants can attend these seminars .
Michael Raduga guarantees that about 50-70% of people attending the experimental seminar in two days will experience OOBE from 1 to 6 times. This guarantee is based on previous seminars in which thousands of people attended Raduga’s seminars and have learned to artificially induce the OOBE state.

Science is what you can observe and on which you can carry out reproducible experiments – everything that meets these criteria is the science; and everything that does not meet these criteria – is not the science.
The only judge in science is the experiment.
In science the philosophical-theoretical blabber has no value whatsoever.

George-ananda, instead of your philosophical-theoretical blabber, the best way to go is to carry out your own experiments with OOBE state and then check out the results.

Click to expand...

I know zero Russian. But I'm guessing what you are trying to say is the OOBE is all hallucination. I can't speak for the phenomena you are discussing above, but I believe the NDE has veridical elements that can not be explained away as hallucinations.

 

outhouse said: ↑

No.

Factually it is likely that all animals have a conscious mind, and not a mythological concept..


Ancient men had no real concept of such and uses a mythological soul to describe the conscious mind in their little mythological world.

Click to expand...

The soul is in no way related to the mind conscious or unconscious.
we do not think or act with our souls.
It is more like the spark of life our connection to God.

 

viole said: ↑

My impression is that all this is irrelevant towards proving the existence of spirits. I don't see anything spiritual in the description you posted.

Btw, do spirits vibrate? With what frequency?

Ciao

- viole

Click to expand...

I understood that we were discussing the existence or no of the omnipresent aether which I say is the zpe by another name and that dark energy and spirit both are theorized as also being omnipresent and thus occupying the same space...not about spiritual entities plural.. And yes..the vibrationary field of spirit is part of a continuum whose frequency wavelength is from the infinite to the infinitesimal.. The frequency wavelength of that part of the continuum represented by the concept of spirit is from the infinitesimal to some unknown longer wavelength that is still way beyond human technological ability to monitor...