Near Death and Out of Body Experiences

[Donn]

You and a whole army of fellow like-minded thinkers might not think so. That alone does not make it so.

That is very true. It's the evidence and the network of interrelated facts which are predicable and have been tested multiple times that supports those like-minded thinkers. They are like minded because of the convincing power of the science.

But you know this too.

 

[dlorde]

So the model is not calling type 1 and 2 'different aspects of an entity' but are referring to thought processes which the entity experience?

Types of thought processes that occur in people.

So called 'introspection' is of no value in determining anything important as it is far more rewarding to poke and prod and muck into the physical and observe what happens and discuss how that fits in with the status quo and agree together and apply for more grants etc.

Because even if what is being observed and assumed about can speak for itself, it is not allowed to do so because some rule says so.

And that is 'the scientific way'.

Do I detect a note of sarcasm? I think your summary is mistaken. The model I have described is based on observations and experiments that did not involve introspection.

If a suitable method or technique could be developed for the scientific investigation of introspection, I dare say it would be done. Given the entirely subjective nature of introspection, and the emphasis on objective criteria of scientific methodologies, it seems unlikely, even as a mass statistical study. However, it might be of interest to psychologists.

 

[Navigator]

I don't think so. If one of us is clear but cannot explain to the other how the negation of a thing is the thing itself, we are left not speaking a common language, no matter how deep is the incommunicable wisdom. We are left with the same linguistic dead end in which nothing is a kind of something.

Unconscious = not being conscious of anything, including not being conscious of being unconscious. It is thus a state which can only be observed by the conscious, and recalled consciously as being a state which is not conscious of having experienced anything. That is how it is remembered.

Non conscious processes = individual consciousness which is not conscious of processes which are happening in relation to itself, be these other planetary life forms evolving in the local galaxy or conscious processes happening within the brain.

Processes = things that are not things. They are rather the observed reactions of things which are actually things. The things observed reacting are things but the reactions which are processes are not things.

 

[tsig]

You and a whole army of fellow like-minded thinkers might not think so. That alone does not make it so.





Is it the fault of the individual common garden variety human being (follower) that scientists (and lawyers and indeed all leadership positions) choose to invent and communicate in languages which are foreign to the individuals they have ruling positions over?

Is not not logical that when I am told by one person that there is no such thing as non physical and then told by another of their peers that some things are not things, that I am inclined towards the idea that I am being misled?

The door to learning is open, all you have to is enter. Standing outside and throwing rocks at those who do enter is rude.

 

[dlorde]

Is not not logical that when I am told by one person that there is no such thing as non physical and then told by another of their peers that some things are not things, that I am inclined towards the idea that I am being misled?

I think there may be some confusion between physical things and abstractions. The point is that abstractions (e.g. concepts, ideas) are not physical in themselves, but are physical in their representation or instantiation.

The concept of a table isn't a (physical) thing, but actual instances of table are physical things, and representations of the concept are physical (e.g. a picture of a table, the word 'table', a description of a table, the pattern of neural activity when we think of the concept).

 

[bruto]

You and a whole army of fellow like-minded thinkers might not think so. That alone does not make it so.





Is it the fault of the individual common garden variety human being (follower) that scientists (and lawyers and indeed all leadership positions) choose to invent and communicate in languages which are foreign to the individuals they have ruling positions over?

Is not not logical that when I am told by one person that there is no such thing as non physical and then told by another of their peers that some things are not things, that I am inclined towards the idea that I am being misled?

Your very response suggests how difficult you find it to express yourself in a language that makes a lot of sense, quite apart from the irrelevant political interjection. Nobody can say that some things are not things without committing nonsense. You can disagree with others on what belongs to the class of things, but this disagreement does not make nothing something. Philosophy has struggled long and hard with the limitations of language, but I suspect you have not availed yourself of the best the discipline has to offer. If you dismiss the difficulty as a problem in politics nothing is solved.

If nothing is a kind of something and the unconscious a kind of consciousness, everything is possible and nothing can be excluded. Like a hugely overexposed image, everything is clipped to white. If we must believe everything we can discern nothing.

 

[Navigator]

Types of thought processes that occur in people.

Involving of course, consciousness

Do I detect a note of sarcasm?

No. Well a wee bit yes. But is does this make it false?

I think your summary is mistaken. The model I have described is based on observations and experiments that did not involve introspection.

Sure. But that is because there is no similar funding for introspective scientific investigation. Not because it cannot be approached scientifically.

If a suitable method or technique could be developed for the scientific investigation of introspection, I dare say it would be done. Given the entirely subjective nature of introspection, and the emphasis on objective criteria of scientific methodologies, it seems unlikely, even as a mass statistical study. However, it might be of interest to psychologists.

Therefore that which can speak for itself is gagged and yet scientists have the audacity to claim to speak on its behalf and tell us what it is.
And you believe that they are able to do so because they are being objective altogether?

It does not matter how many individuals subjectively experiencing the reality of the physical, altogether they can still only act as a subjective body.

Agreeing that what they observe as being the only way to observe it, is not an objective thing - not really.

So my seeming sarcasm is really only emphasis on the importance of investment and return and what will be focused upon and what will be largely ignored. Neither of which are decisions made through scientific processes unless one counts the stock market being such.

 

[Navigator]

The door to learning is open, all you have to is enter. Standing outside and throwing rocks at those who do enter is rude.

I quite agree. Almost anyone can learn to use the ideomotor effect as a tool for communication and discover for themselves the great intelligence and depth of that which can be communed with using the process.

 

[dlorde]

Unconscious = not being conscious of anything, including not being conscious of being unconscious. It is thus a state which can only be observed by the conscious, and recalled consciously as being a state which is not conscious of having experienced anything. That is how it is remembered.

Non conscious processes = individual consciousness which is not conscious of processes which are happening in relation to itself, be these other planetary life forms evolving in the local galaxy or conscious processes happening within the brain.

Processes = things that are not things. They are rather the observed reactions of things which are actually things. The things observed reacting are things but the reactions which are processes are not things.

Wow...

 

[Navigator]

Your very response suggests how difficult you find it to express yourself in a language that makes a lot of sense, quite apart from the irrelevant political interjection. Nobody can say that some things are not things without committing nonsense. You can disagree with others on what belongs to the class of things, but this disagreement does not make nothing something. Philosophy has struggled long and hard with the limitations of language, but I suspect you have not availed yourself of the best the discipline has to offer. If you dismiss the difficulty as a problem in politics nothing is solved.
If nothing is a kind of something and the unconscious a kind of consciousness, everything is possible and nothing can be excluded. Like a hugely overexposed image, everything is clipped to white. If we must believe everything we can discern nothing.

Well we cannot ignore the political motivations - because they are undeniably present.

Unconscious = not being conscious of anything, including not being conscious of being unconscious. It is thus a state which can only be observed by the conscious, and recalled consciously as being a state which is not conscious of having experienced anything. That is how it is remembered.

 

[Donn]

Unconscious = not being conscious of anything, including not being conscious of being unconscious. It is thus a state which can only be observed by the conscious, and recalled consciously as being a state which is not conscious of having experienced anything. That is how it is remembered.

2 + 2 = 5
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Doubleplus unconscious.

 

[Navigator]

Wow...

Exactly!

Isn't that what I am being told here.

Processes = things that are not things. They are rather the observed reactions of things which are actually things. The things observed reacting are things but the reactions which are processes are not things.

The process were called 'Non Conscious Processes'

Perhaps things drifted?


Some of the problem is that there are many folk in the group giving their particular slant on things (because of that subjective thing) and this is confusing because they themselves are not speaking in the same language as one another.

But mainly what the group seems to say together regarding processes seems to suggest that non conscious processes are those things which the individual is not conscious of but which are happening in the background and have effect on the individual even if the individual is not conscious of thos processes.

Where there is disagreement isn't in that but in my claiming that the processes the individual is not aware of are themselves products of consciousness which the individual is also not aware of.

Consciousness it seems, is not an actual real thing as far as the group seems to be saying. It is just a process.

Therefore my use of ideomotor and all communications to do with that and the data accumulated through the process is not actually real but an abstract.

 

[Navigator]

Processes = things that are not things. They are rather the observed reactions of things which are actually things. The things observed reacting are things but the reactions which are processes are not things.

It's hard to subscribe to the idea of an intelligence behind evolution when the record is so filled with mass extinctions.

Why do you equate extinctions with lack of intelligence?

It could just as easily be equated with having less intelligence than that which has more. But that is neither here nor there as I was using 'intelligence' as a blanket thing rather than a quota thing.
(also it could be very indicative of intelligence - removing the less useful which are going nowhere particularly useful in relation to evolution and reason - reason also indicative of consciousness)

And as a blanket thing, it (intelligence) is indicative of consciousness.

It matters not that a fool lacks a full quota of intelligence. It still can be seen that the fool is conscious and displaying consciousness.

The whole process of evolution is undeniably an intelligent one AND thus consciousness must be involved.
(By examining the evidence it can also be said that it is possibly most likely that the process is more intelligent now than it was when it first began.) Perhaps that is indicative also that the consciousness involved is also more conscious than when it first began?

 

[bruto]

Well we cannot ignore the political motivations - because they are undeniably present.

Unconscious = not being conscious of anything, including not being conscious of being unconscious. It is thus a state which can only be observed by the conscious, and recalled consciously as being a state which is not conscious of having experienced anything. That is how it is remembered.

Well, no.

We cannot remember the state of unconsciousness. If we could it would not be actual unconsciousness. We can only know that it occurred, if we have some clue, an observed gap in the chain of events, a clock, or the account of someone else. By definition there is no content, and thus nothing to remember. We're back to the idea that you can describe the contents of an empty box or the attributes of something that does not exist.

I remain unconvinced that reality is a political ploy.

e.t.a. posts occurring too fast to keep up with, but with regard to intelligence in evolution, I would vigorously reject the idea that it is "undeniably" an intelligent process. Of course, in the world where anything can be believed, one can believe that as well, and sure, mass extinctions could be an intelligent being deciding to cull the useless, but it is hard to reconcile this with the idea that the same intelligent being, at other times, fine tunes the smallest details in order to make the useless useful. Of course you can always just toss this in the "god works in mysterious ways" pile, but that's not conducive to intelligent argument.

God could be a petulant or whimsical child and the universe the equivalent of his electric train set, and thus anything is possible. I recall long ago a Tom Robbins novel in which it's surmised that the world is God's pinball machine, and earthquakes and the like the evidence that he's cheating. But seriously....

 

[Navigator]

No, I don't, and no, it's not.

Going to a discussion forum full of people who have spent an extended period of time surrounded by others who accept these sorts of stories without question, were likely never particularly skeptical or rigorous in their posts in the first place, and who have demonstrable cognitive bias on the subject is not even research of first-hand accounts of OOBs, let alone a reliable way to learn about them directly.

Oh I see. All research has to be scientific in order to be called "research."

I should have said something more along the lines of 'go and read what others are saying regarding their experiences to find out more about OOBEs from that perspective."

 

[Navigator]

...

I remain unconvinced that reality is a political ploy.

..

That is good because I wasn't inferring it was. I was saying that how people express themselves into reality often has political motivation.

 

[Navigator]

We cannot remember the state of unconsciousness.

"This here apple is an onion"

If there is no reference why is it called anything? Why exactly is it called unconscious - the state of being unconscious? How can it be recalled if it cannot be remembered?

It is remembered as being something in which no thing happened.

If we could it would not be actual unconsciousness.

But we can. We recall it as being a state where nothing happened. Nothing was experienced.
Unconsciousness was experienced. One was not conscious of experiencing nothing. Therefore one was not conscious.

The memory of experiencing nothing at all came when the individual regained consciousness.

We can only know that it occurred, if we have some clue, an observed gap in the chain of events, a clock, or the account of someone else. By definition there is no content, and thus nothing to remember. We're back to the idea that you can describe the contents of an empty box or the attributes of something that does not exist.

Those external things are part of the process. We regain consciousness and thus we recall not being conscious. We don't regain consciousness and then have no idea we were unconscious - it is in the regaining process that we understand that we were unconscious.

We cannot describe unconsciousness as being anything other than 'nothing' because we have no memory of 'something' which is what 'unconscious' means.

e.t.a. posts occurring too fast to keep up with, but with regard to intelligence in evolution, I would vigorously reject the idea that it is "undeniably" an intelligent process. Of course, in the world where anything can be believed, one can believe that as well, and sure, mass extinctions could be an intelligent being deciding to cull the useless, but it is hard to reconcile this with the idea that the same intelligent being, at other times, fine tunes the smallest details in order to make the useless useful. Of course you can always just toss this in the "god works in mysterious ways" pile, but that's not conducive to intelligent argument.

However your rejection is based on your bias against things to do with 'god concepts' and those very concepts are most likely totally incorrect in the first instance - generated though Ego personalities with political agenda.

I am not viewing things from that perspective simply because they are likely totally off the mark.

Since I am able to view consciousness and intelligence in a far different light I am not subject to having to frame a wall of rejection around the notion and having to resort to denying the obvious. Evolution is an intelligent process and therefore a conscious one.

Human conceived god concepts are irrelevant in relation to that observation.

God could be a petulant or whimsical child and the universe the equivalent of his electric train set, and thus anything is possible. I recall long ago a Tom Robbins novel in which it's surmised that the world is God's pinball machine, and earthquakes and the like the evidence that he's cheating. But seriously...

Human conceived god concepts are irrelevant in relation to the observation that the process of evolution is intelligent and thus conscious.

They are much the same as the concepts formed through Christians claiming the ideomotor effect is a tool of the devil or skeptics claiming introversion is not able to be scientifically examined. The concepts are inevitably incorrect.

 

[Donn]

If there is no reference why is it called anything? Why exactly is it called unconscious - the state of being unconscious? How can it be recalled if it cannot be remembered?

It is remembered as being something in which no thing happened.

Consider this radical thought: other people observe and remember when you went unconscious. They tell you.

Another: you have a wrist-watch. The gap is thus defined, but you can't remember what happened in it.

This is not salad origami.

Since I am able to view consciousness and intelligence in a far different light I am not subject to ...

Quite. You are a special pleader in your special palace, feeling special. You are not subject to the rules that bind us plebs.

How can you know if you are ever wrong?

Evolution is an intelligent process and therefore a conscious one.

Of course. It all makes sense now. Literally. There's nothing that is not intelligent.

I will rewrite your line more intelligently: Intelligence is an intelligent intelligent process of intelligence and therefore, which is really intelligent, a consciously intelligent intelligence.

After a while one begins to see that even full stops are intelligent. See I just used one. And another! They're smart, the way they prowl among our posts.<---another!

I can't escape intelligence. Is that you Spock. Why is the air all purple. Have we crashed?

 

[MuDPhuD]

...I have barely shared any details in regard to my investigation and content of my communication through ideomotor.

It has not been useless to me. The data has been valid.

How many of these experts have even bothered to utilize ideomotor and determine in that way whether indeed their combined opinions are actually valid?
It is unlikely they have not done so because it is impossible to conduct such investigation scientifically.

No they are not useless.
In the course of this interaction I have discovered very valuable and useful data.

There is not one person that I have found who has done this and whom I can thus compare data etc.

I trimmed out quite a bit for clarity.

So, you have not shared the details of your "investigation", thus we can not replicate your findings; your investigations are specifically not conducted scientifically; you insist you have discovered valuable and USEFUL data. ETA but you have no one to compare data with!

I am frankly stunned at your lack of understanding of the most basic tenets of science, why mankind has found it so useful, why the scientific method has improved man's condition and increased his knowledge of the universe, and why any other method fails to produce useful results. Its like talking to someone who arrived here in a time machine from the stone age.
I'm sure you wont read this either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Can you give examples of the valuable and useful data you have?

Certainly I do have a different understand of consciousness in relation to ideomotor. I am the only one I know of who has taken it to the lengths I have..that is because I was willing and attentive among other things. OBC is fascinating and intelligent beyond anything I have ever encountered. How could I not?

You have developed some understanding of something, and no one else understands it. When you explain it to educated people they all tell you you are mistaken, and that there are plenty of qualified interested trained researchers who are investigating this something, but have come to other conclusions than yourself.
I predict you will persist in your own beliefs in spite of this, but I hope to make your failure here more clear to other readers who may follow.

It is really rather simple.

Moving with the sun, smelling like rotten meat, looking attractive to bees etc are clear signs of intelligence, and intelligence clearly signals (implies) that consciousness is involved.

This statement belies your complete lack of knowledge of biology and evolution. Its not really as simple as you think, and once again you clearly have a lot of reading to do to catch up.

Plants tracking the sun (phototropism) has been well studied and is well understood: you are simply ignorant of the results.
Here is a video which may explain it to you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdA11OalmSQ

The evolution of symbiotic relationships is also a topic which has been discussed and investigated at length over many decades by well educated, well trained, and intelligent individuals,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317043/
none of whom suggest that "intellegence" or consciousness is involved in the evolution of these complex relationships.

 

[dlorde]

Isn't that what I am being told here.

Not from where I'm sitting. It comes across as a deliberate attempt to distort and misconstrue what's been said, but it may just be complete lack of understanding. The best way to achieve understanding is to ask for additional explanation of things you don't understand. Alternatively, you could read the references provided.

Where there is disagreement isn't in that but in my claiming that the processes the individual is not aware of are themselves products of consciousness which the individual is also not aware of.

This is quite opaque, as you seem to have your own personal definition of consciousness. But, assuming the semantics the rest of us are familiar with, I'd say there is no evidence for this claim from neurological observation or experiment.

Consciousness it seems, is not an actual real thing as far as the group seems to be saying. It is just a process.

Yes, consciousness is a process, digestion is a process, photosynthesis is a process. A process is, broadly, a particular series of steps, actions, or events that produce some required result. A process is real, and is physical in as much as it consists of physical activities, but it isn't a physical object.

Therefore my use of ideomotor and all communications to do with that and the data accumulated through the process is not actually real but an abstract.

I can't make enough sense of this to comment.