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Immortality and Science |
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Greg
Command Sergeant Major
Gender: Male
Location: Springfield, Missouri Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 432 |
     
 Posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007 @ 09:02 PM
I have been giving a bit of thought for some time now to the idea of immortality. It seems within the realm of possibility, to me anyway, that if immortality is entered into by the portal of the death of the body then perhaps there may come a time when science sees some evidence of its plausibility, through a greater understanding of our biological systems. Has anyone here run across anything on this subject? My best wild speculation at this point would be something akin to an electromagnetic imprint of the brain being released or transmitted - kind of like a radio wave transmission. Good beer drinking conversation. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007 @ 09:12 PM
My first thought is the unknowing of the exact time of death. If you where to try to view it on screen with sensitive instuments in a energy safe setting. I would say maybee the electric so to speak goes as the heart monitor goes beeeeeeeeep. Not a conclusion I could come to using deduction anyway. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007 @ 09:51 PM
http://www.iprfinc.com/brian4.html This site seems to claim It is 60 bioelectric hertz ..to me seemed to be the only valuable bit on the page. At least you would know what type of gadgetry you would need. Consider the source though lol. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007 @ 11:38 PM
If there is some some electromagnetic field released upon death you could collect it in a glass bottle with a magnet at the bottom. Then you could fill it with chicken noodle soup and give it away at christmas with a copy of chicken noodle soup for the soul.  If this isn’t the most twisted idea I’ve come up with shoot me. Rofl. I haden’t a been a driinking oficacr.That is blank blank gifted private gump.
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sara
Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Feb 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 1253 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 09:17 AM
Greg, as I mentioned previously, my new tenant is interested in Quantum Physics, String Theory, etc. I’m married to a Physics major, so I know a bit about the subject myself. If you are looking for a connection between the physical/spiritual, then modern physics might be a subject for you to explore. I’m sort of involved in it now because my tenant piqued my interest in the topic again. As with everything, I am of two minds. A skeptical believer/A believing skeptic. One of the leading proponents of these ideas is Deepak Chopra. Again, I have mixed feelings about him. Sometimes I think he is a charlatan; other times I think he is brilliant. Maybe he’s both? Here briefly, is a synopsis of his beliefs…. According to Chopra, there are six lines of evidence that convince him that the soul is real and eternal: Near-Death Experiences and Altered States of Consciousness. There are thousands of people who have been pronounced dead, usually from heart attacks, who are subsequently resuscitated and report experiencing some aspect of the afterlife — floating out of their bodies, passing through a tunnel or white light, and seeing loved ones or witnessing God, Jesus, or some manifestation of the divine on the other side. If these patients were brain dead, then their conscious “self,” their “soul,” must survive the death of the body. ESP and Evidence of Mind. Here Chopra relies on psi research in remote viewing and telepathy, in which subjects locked in a room alone can apparently receive images from senders in another room without the use of the five senses. Quantum Consciousness. The study of the actions of subatomic particles through quantum mechanics produces what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” where the observation of a particle in one location instantaneously effects a related particle at another location (which could theoretically be in another galaxy), in apparent violation of Einstein’s upper limit of the speed of light. Chopra takes this to mean that the universe is one giant quantum field in which everything (and everyone) is interconnected and can influence one another directly and instantly. Deepak and others also apply quantum mechanics to the study of consciousness to explain how the brain represents the entire tangible world through biochemical signals. Through quantum consciousness “we may find out how the brain might create subtler worlds, the kind traditionally known as heaven. If the secret lies not in brain chemistry but in awareness itself, the afterlife may turn out to be an extension of our present life, not a faraway mystical world.” Psychic Mediumship and Talking to the Dead. Deepak reviews the extensive studies on psychic mediums and their apparent ability to communicate with the dead, and then reveals that he participated in an experiment in which contact was apparently made with his father, whose recent death triggered his research and writing of this book [Life After Death: Burden of Proof]. Prayer and Healing Studies. Chopra discusses research on distant intercessory prayer, in which patients who are prayed for from a distance by strangers appear to get well faster and more often than non-prayed for patients. This implies that action at a distance through thought alone — whether through the intervention of a deity or through some cosmic force — is real, can be manifested, and connects us to the cosmos and everything in it. Information Fields, Morphic Resonance, and the Universal Life Force. Chopra claims that nature preserves data in the form of information fields, and he cites experiments conducted by the Cambridge University-trained scientist Rupert Sheldrake, who presents evidence that people can sense when someone is staring at the back of their head and neck, that dogs know when their owners are coming home, that it is easier to complete the Sunday crossword puzzle later in the day because others have already solved it, and that these and many other mysterious psychic phenomena can be explained by “morphic resonance fields” that connect all living organisms to one another. Information cannot be created or destroyed, only recombined into new patterns, so our personal patterns — our “souls” by my definition — are packages of information that precede birth and survive death. You might also want to explore the concept of the Holographic Universe. The leading proponents of this concept are David Bohm and Karl Pribram. Here is a brief intro. to them, (thanks of course to Google) In the movie Star Wars, Luke Skywalker’s adventure begins when a beam of light shoots out of the robot Artoo Detoo and projects a miniature three-dimensional image of Princess Leia. Luke watches spellbound as the ghostly sculpture of light begs for someone named Obi-wan Kenobi to come to her assistance. The image is a hologram, a three-dimensional picture made with the aid of a laser, and the technological magic required to make such images is remarkable. But what is even more astounding is that some scientists are beginning to believe the universe itself is a kind of giant hologram, a splendidly detailed illusion no more or less real than the image of Princess Leia that starts Luke on his quest. Put another way, there is evidence to suggest that our world and everything in it — from snowflakes to maple trees to falling stars and spinning electrons — are also only ghostly images, projections from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond both space and time. The main architects of this astonishing idea are two of the world’s most eminent thinkers: University of London physicist David Bohm, a protege of Einstein’s and one of the world’s most respected quantum physicists; and Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist at Stanford University and author of the classic neuropsychological textbook Languages of the Brain. Intriguingly, Bohm and Pribram arrived at their conclusions independently and while working from two very different directions. Bohm became convinced of the universe’s holographic nature only after years of dissatisfaction with standard theories’ inability to explain all of the phenomena encountered in quantum physics. Pribram became convinced because of the failure of standard theories of the brain to explain various neurophysiological puzzles. However, after arriving at their views, Bohm and Pribram quickly realized the holographic model explained a number of other mysteries as well, including the apparent inability of any theory, no matter how comprehensive, ever to account for all the phenomena encountered in nature; the ability of individuals with- hearing in only one ear to determine the direction from which a sound originates; and our ability to recognize the face of someone we have not seen for many years even if that person has changed considerably in the interim. But the most staggering thing about the holographic model was that it suddenly made sense of a wide range of phenomena so elusive they generally have been categorized outside the province of scientific understanding. These include telepathy, precognition, mystical feelings of oneness with the universe, and even psychokinesis, or the ability of the mind to move physical objects without anyone touching them. Indeed, it quickly became apparent to the ever growing number of scientists who came to embrace the holographic model that it helped explain virtually all paranormal and mystical experiences, and in the last half-dozen years or so it has continued to galvanize researchers and shed light on an increasing number of previously inexplicable phenomena. For example: In 1980 University of Connecticut psychologist Dr. Kenneth Ring proposed that near-death experiences could be explained by the holographic model. Ring, who is president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, believes such experiences, as well as death itself, are really nothing more than the shifting of a person’s consciousness from one level of the hologram of reality to another. In 1985 Dr. Stanislav Grof, chief of psychiatric research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, published a book in which he concluded that existing neurophysiological models of the brain are inadequate and only a holographic model can explain such things as archetypal experiences, encounters with the collective unconscious, and other unusual phenomena experienced during altered states of consciousness. At the 1987 annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Dreams held in Washington, D.C., physicist Fred Alan Wolf delivered a talk in which he asserted that the holographic model explains lucid dreams (unusually vivid dreams in which the dreamer realizes he or she is awake). Wolf believes such dreams are actually visits to parallel realities, and the holographic model will ultimately allow us to develop a “physics of consciousness” which will enable us to begin to explore more fully these other-dimensional levels of existence. In his 1987 book entitled Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind, Dr. F. David Peat, a physicist at Queen’s University in Canada, asserted that synchronicities (coincidences that are so unusual and so psychologically meaningful they don’t seem to be the result of chance alone) can be explained by the holographic model. Peat believes such coincidences are actually “flaws in the fabric of reality.” They reveal that our thought processes are much more intimately connected to the physical world than has been hitherto suspected. Sorry this material is so long, but I belatedly realized that the review discusses dreams & synchronicity, which we recently discussed on another post. I explored these ideas many years ago and my interest has been renewed because of recent discussions with my new tenant, who is an avid believer in these concepts. Again, I am undecided. As with everything, there are arguments for and against. My own is opinion is a that expressed by a character in one of Dostoevsky’s novels…….. “….there have been and still all geometricians and philosophers who doubt whether the whole universe was only created in Euclid’s geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines may meet somewhere in infinity. I have come to the conclusion that, since I can’t understand even that, I can’t expect to understand about God. I acknowledge humbly that I have no faculty for settling such questions. I have a Euclidean earthly mind and how could I solve problems that are not of this world?” However…it is all so fascinating, isn’t it? |
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cferraro
Master Sergeant
Gender: Male
Location: Custer, SD Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 125 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 03:22 PM
Yes it is Sara! I think I believe what I can understand. It is like Eric was saying in one of the thousands of profound thoughts of his that when we are in the very center of God’s will that we can get “feelings” about things and they be right. The right bank line to go into. What if being in the center of God’s will was being in the center of you place in the universe, and when you are there, you resonate like strings on an instrument, pinging off of other greater beings than yourself. As though the harmonics of your spirit aligned with those in that same vibe. |
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sara
Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Feb 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 1253 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 03:26 PM
See, Chuck, we do agree about some things! Maybe we’re on the same vibe… 
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 06:20 PM
In the words of Jeff Goldbloom ” Your scientists where so preoccupied if they could they didn’t stop to think if they should.” lol I don’t know seemed appropriate. |
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Greg
Command Sergeant Major
Gender: Male
Location: Springfield, Missouri Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 432 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 08:59 PM
Sara, Thanks the great clues to looking into it further. I have been particularly interested in the “One’s whole life flashing before the eyes” thing that is testified to by some who have had a NDE. I don’t think I have ever heard anyone elaborate on that particular type experience though - but it really makes me wonder about why this might occur - as if the info is being downloaded so to speak. |
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Admin
General
Gender: Male
Location: USA Registered: Jan 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 810 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 09:13 PM
By the way, I would also thank you for your posts to Greg on looking further into such questions. He’ll buy the books, we’ll have the conversations, and the result will filter back through Le Penseur Réfléchit. I catch up on my reading in this way, he catches up on the classroom to a degree, and really all in all it is a pretty effective way to learn, as it requires assimilation and a high level of recall. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 10:20 PM
Greg you know someone who has died and come back. I am not speaking of anyone divine. In fact if my memory serves correct died twice. I don’t think I ever asked them about it. Oops may have given it away. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 10:43 PM
I sure hope they are wrong about the parallel reality thing regarding lucid dreaming. |
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Admin
General
Gender: Male
Location: USA Registered: Jan 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 810 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 10:47 PM
Why? |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 11:31 PM
Well I’ve had a couple lucid dreams and it was no reality I would want to be in more then two seconds. I may have created this reality all on my own. With my creative mind that is even more scary. If parallel means like this reality not sure I would want to live in it either eternally anyway. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ 11:36 PM
Well it is off to bed for me got to work…oh great. lol see you soon. |
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sara
Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Feb 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 1253 |
Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 @ 07:50 AM
I thought I posted a comment before I went to bed last night, but maybe it was a lucid dream. I wanted to mention a few things quickly, Greg, because although it may not seem like it, I do have a life away from this computer. If you would like a few recommendations from me about books on holographic universe/quantum consciousness, etc, I have read a lot on these topics. The subject fascinates me, although some of the proponents of these concepts can get pretty far out. (pun intended) In regard to NDE’s, I met an 80 year old woman a few months ago, who told me that she had drowned when she was 12. Before she was resusitated, and after she had inhaled the water, she experienced a sense of bliss, then a life review, and lastly, a feeling of repentence for all the “sins” she had committed, which were childish faults like lying to her mother, etc. What fascinated me was that she is now and has always been an atheist….even as a child. Her parents were intellectuals and didn’t want to her to be mislead by sentimentalists who had the ridiculous belief that God existed. It surprised me that this NDE didn’t influence her thinking, but she was adamant. My nephew claims to have died three times. The third time, after he went through a tunnel of light (which had grown familiar to him by now) the angels who met him yelled at him and told he had to stop dying. I thought that was hilarious. What totally convinced me that NDE’s are a real phenomenon is that my best friend, who was quite a bit older than me, told me that she had several out of body experiences in the 50’s and 60’s, way before it became a popular subject. She was a Fundamentalist Christian at the time, and when she told her Pastor about it, he told her it was Satanic, so she fought against having them. Eventually, she left the church (was shunned because she kept asking too many questions) and didn’t think about it much after that, although she resumed her Christian studies on her own. Anyway, when she told me about her experience (and she described the event in detail…even to the silver cord extending from her astral body to her physical body), I was excited and affirmative and encouraging, but she never had the experience again. What convinced me it was real was because she described the event to me so vividly, although she knew nothing about the subject at all. I mean, if it happened to me, I’d be suspicious because it has become a subject of popular culture, so I would suspect that I fabricated it all out of my imagination. She didn’t, because she hadn’t read anything about it. Is that cool, or what? |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 @ 08:36 AM
That is SO cool regarding the out of body experience of your friend. I was meditating very deep one time just because I liked the relaxation that came with it. I’m a very visual thinker so maybe that explains what happened next …given your friends story though makes me wonder. I was thinking pretty much nothing except listening to my breathing all of the sudden I visualize myself floating in some sort of weird bubble semitransparent I tried to look at myself in the bubble with no success. I came up through what looked to me to be an ocean although slightly lavender colored , besides the ocean I remember seeing a beach of sorts…now here is where it gets weird I see two of myself sitting in lawn chairs identical except one has his feet under the sand and the other had his feet on top of the sand. To this day have no idea. Long story short the story of your friend having some cord attached to them….I wonder if this is sybolic in some way of being attached to the earth? Very interesting thanks for telling it. |
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Greg
Command Sergeant Major
Gender: Male
Location: Springfield, Missouri Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 432 |
Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 @ 10:00 AM
Sara, Not long after I got out of the army in college I also became interested in astral projection. I read a book that I believe is the cult classic on the subject….but I can’t remember the title. Anyway it was a “How TO” book. And so I practiced several times a day for about a week - each time anticipating the steps that were described in the book…ie….the feeling of becoming detached from your body…..the feeling of lifting up parallel out of your reclining body…..the turning around to face your body on the bed….the seeing of the astral cord attached to your forehead…..etc. Well….after about a week I came home after my classes and had laid down to take a nap. I was not really attempting to go into the meditative state you are supposed to attempt when doing the steps. And I got to that point when taking a nap when you are just on the verge of falling asleep and I then felt a bit of a bump to my body….as though I was being kept from falling asleep by something that knocked me just out of that over the edge state. But I did not open my eyes…but instead I became alert and immediately started concentrating on my body…..I then began to feel it start to lift out of itself. I was doing my best to not become anxious (because the book said this will stop the flow)…..and then I did actually feel my body lift up out of itself and I could feel myself start to become upright and I was turning to face myself….but I still had my eyes closed…..I then opened my eyes and I was indeed hovering over my body….but I saw no cord that I remember…..but when I looked down at my body lying in the bed it was covered over with the sheet on my bed….as though someone had come in and pulled the sheet up over my face ….like you would a dead person. I could see through the sheet however….and I had been split right down the middle from head to toe…..and one half of my body appeared to be white….and the other half was black. When I saw this I freaked out big time…..and immediately found myself back in my body awake. Yikes…….I didn’t know what to make of this…..except perhaps it was some sort of vision. And so I abandoned the astral projection idea out of fear that this had been a bad sign. |
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karen
First Sergeant
Gender: Unspecified
Location: US Registered: Feb 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 209 |
Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 @ 10:29 AM
This really is a fascinating subject, although I certainly don’t understand things like quantum physics and have only a vague concept of electromagnetic fields. I have watched numerous people near death, actively dying, and breathe their last. I have seen them from the time of death, to hours after death. What always fascinates me is the distinct line between life and death, and the seeming fluidity of the time of death. There was a time (sorry, don’t know the reference but likely Catholic) when they waited 3 days to bury a body to make sure the soul was gone. I recently participated in 2 code blues where the person was clearly dead, but was resuscitated. What I take away from all these experiences, as well as my own (floating out of my body and feeling wonderful on my way to “heaven” only to be slapped on the back and sent back into my body) is that we don’t know. And I sure would like to. I do believe that our autonomous consciousness extends beyond the state we know here as “life.” I look forward to those discussions between Greg and Eric and the distillation of information filtering down to a level I can grasp it. |
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Greg
Command Sergeant Major
Gender: Male
Location: Springfield, Missouri Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 432 |
Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 @ 10:44 AM
Sara, I think I will hold off on reading anything more than what I have on my plate right now. But if you do have something that you thought was really interesting and not “too far out”…I would like the title. thanks. Karen….what exactly do you mean by “the seeming fluidity of the time of death” I have almost zero experience with death. I have lost both of my parents but was not able to see them until several days afterward. The thing that always seems to strike me though is the odd sensation when I look at the body of someone I know is that I feel that “They aren’t there”. As in I have this awareness that they are no longer in the body….because there is just something odd about the body that gives me the impression of the loss of some aspect of the person. Hard to describe. |
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karen
First Sergeant
Gender: Unspecified
Location: US Registered: Feb 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 209 |
Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 @ 11:21 AM
Greg, what I meant is somewhat what you describe. I don’t think the soul or consciousness exits the body at an exact time following cessation of signs of life for every person. Some people seem still to “be there” for awhile, while others are clearly gone quickly. I have seen some people who I knew had no vital signs, yet they didn’t seem to be gone yet. Others were definitely gone when vital signs were. And what I base that on is what you describe, a sense - is it electromagnetic? Is it metaphysical? Is it intuition? - there is just a sense beyond the sensation of warmth or cold skin, heartbeat or no, breaths or no, of being next to, touching a body that the soul has exited and one where the soul remains. An example of the latter is a young woman who died following a relatively simple surgery. I saw her about 1–2 hrs after she died (coroner’s case, airway still in, all tubes still in.) Her husband beside himself. He had come early to check her out to go home, and she died while he was enroute. When I saw her I wasn’t at all sure she was gone. I could still “feel” or sense her presence, even though her body was cold and mottled and she was clearly without signs of life. So when I say fluidity, I am trying to convey simply that it’s a different time for different people IMO |
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sara
Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Feb 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 1253 |
Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 @ 11:28 AM
Yikes, that was a scary story, Greg. I understand it no more than you do. Probably less, because I haven’t read a lot of material on astral projection. When I said I would recommend some books, I was referring more to the Holographic and or Multi/dimensional Universe concepts, two subjects which have fascinated me for many years. Your experience sounds more like lucid dreaming to me; another subject which I know little about. I’m kind of feet-stuck-in-the-mud kind of gal. Not much imagination or intuition at all, which is a bit disappointing because I have never had or have any cool transcendent weird experiences, except the few I mentioned on this Forum. In my youth, when I was a hippie dippie, & indulged in psychedelics at concerts and (yes, believe it or not…Be-ins), I would watch my friend’s minds float off to all sorts of exotic (and sometimes frightening) places, and I couldn’t understand it at all. They’d be crying and emoting all over the place, and I’d be trying to reason with them. I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t recognize that everything they were experiencing was induced by chemical changes in their brains. For some reason, I never lost touch with that Observer in my mind who witnesses everything. Once I saw the ceiling over my head crack wide open, but I knew it was a hallucination. I tried to analyze what I was seeing; I wanted to figure out what part of my brain was altered. So, I’ve lived most of my life deprived of cool experiences. Again, I think it is because I’m stuck in my left-brain and my right brain has atrophied. For instance, I have very little appreciation of art & music. My husband loves baroque and operas and falls into an altered state when he listens to Bach or Mozart Not me. Sigh. It is such a loss. I think I am handicapped because….and this is strange, but true…I grew up in silence, except for the sounds of nature. My childhood home was located on a rather isolated beach, & my parents didn’t listen to music or watch very much TV. I played outside or read books. Oh well. At least you guys will know that if I tell you God talked to me, it is quite likely that GOD TALKED TO ME! |
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Admin
General
Gender: Male
Location: USA Registered: Jan 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 810 |
Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 @ 03:18 PM
I was reading one of Hawk’s replies on the recently resurrected What does God think of you? (or me) thread. He writes: Quote: I believe we have the ability to produce very good things in life but that usually has to start in the spirit. If you are content and with love and peace you will probably live well. I also think that the spiritual real controls the visible realm. i.e. Whatever we think, dream, and believe will tend to happen, and not just because we go out and make it happen. I think there is an actual spiritual control. The budhists know that, and they are not wrong. Jesus said, according to your faith be it so whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive hey, and don’t forget the fig tree. He said that you too could curse a fig tree and it would die and that with a little faith you can cast a mountain into the sea. In a later post, he adds: Quote: I’m not saying that their is not a need to wait sometimes but I think we misunderstand the reason for the waiting. We wait and pray, not for God to come around, but to conquer our own doubts. Jesus always said, “your faith has made you well.” The purpose for prayer and fasting and all things spiritual is not to get God to come around but rather so we can overcome the doubts of our own carnal minds. That, I believe, is the way to a victorious life. I found his comments especially interesting in light of the apparently “non-spiritual” (in the classical sense) notions of the interconnectedness of the universe, our ability to “image” worlds for ourselves, and the like. Re-reading some of the older entries on the post above after having read in particular Sara’s book synopses above obviously brought Hawk’s words to life in a way that I think only further accentuates their meaning. And speaking of the reviews above: Quote: Information cannot be created or destroyed, only recombined into new patterns, so our personal patterns — our “souls” by my definition — are packages of information that precede birth and survive death. How fascinating an idea. An equivalency not only of mass and energy (as per E=mc2), but also of information “clusters”? And a holographic universe? My mind’s working overtime, as it generally does when such topics are brought to the fore. In fact, I am very pleased to see these topics come to the surface, because as I wrote in the newsletter, often such aspects of “alternate spirituality” are precisely the kinds of things that turbo-charge my faith. Quote: Quantum Consciousness. The study of the actions of subatomic particles through quantum mechanics produces what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” where the observation of a particle in one location instantaneously effects a related particle at another location (which could theoretically be in another galaxy), in apparent violation of Einstein’s upper limit of the speed of light. Chopra takes this to mean that the universe is one giant quantum field in which everything (and everyone) is interconnected and can influence one another directly and instantly. Deepak and others also apply quantum mechanics to the study of consciousness to explain how the brain represents the entire tangible world through biochemical signals. Through quantum consciousness “we may find out how the brain might create subtler worlds, the kind traditionally known as heaven. If the secret lies not in brain chemistry but in awareness itself, the afterlife may turn out to be an extension of our present life, not a faraway mystical world.” Fascinating. And about creating heavens—and about Hawk’s comments about “the Buddhists know that”—what of the so-called Pure Land Buddhists, or “The Pure Land School” (浄土宗  ? In this system, a Buddha (and maybe even a bodhisattva) can “go and prepare a place” for his or her followers, a sort of mental stomping grounds. Or at least, if that is no longer possible, then Amitabha in his compassion has created such a place of respite and relief for those who follow the path of devotion called Amitabha’s Western Paradise, or Sukhavati in Sanskrit.Last of all, about astral projection, this brings to mind many conversations from some time ago. The silver cord is sometimes attached to the forehead, the navel, and other places, but at least appears in all the literature. And since we especially like to see things in print that are written in one very special piece of literature, I submit to you the following (given that I resonated powerfully with Ecclesiastes, I am pleased to say I made this connection before it became fashionable to do so): Quote: Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, “I have no delight in them”; before the sun and the light, the moon and the stars are darkened, and clouds return after the rain; in the day that the watchmen of the house tremble [the “house” being a metaphor for the earthly body], and mighty men stoop [the legs and thighs, which bear the burden of the body], the grinding ones [teeth] stand idle because they are few, and those who look through windows [eyes] grow dim; and the doors on the street [the lips as the gateway to the mouth and tongue] are shut as the sound of the grinding mill is low [the food being chewed within], and one will arise at the sound of the bird [the elderly do not sleep deeply or well], and all the daughters of song will sing softly [their ears do not hear very well]. Furthermore, men are afraid of a high place and of terrors on the road [in such an enfeebled state]; the almond tree blossoms [white hair, resembling an almond tree in full blossom], the grasshopper drags himself along, and the caperberry is ineffective. For man goes to his eternal home while mourners go about in the street. Remember Him before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:1–7) Given the metaphoric nature of the “house,” the silver cord could mean something else. However, Matthew Henry’s classic commentary, from which I originally derived my interpretation (and looked up again all these years later to refresh my memory), has this to say about the silver cord and the golden bowl: Quote: Then shall the silver cord, by which soul and body were wonderfully fastened together, be loosed, that sacred knot untied, and those old friends be forced to part; then shall the golden bowl, which held the waters of life for us, be broken; then shall the pitcher with which we used to fetch up water, for the constant support of life and the repair of its decays, be broken, even at the fountain, so that it can fetch up no more; and the wheel (all those organs that serve for the collecting and distributing of nourishment) shall be broken, and disabled to do their office any more. The body shall become like a watch when the spring is broken, the motion of all the wheels is stopped and they all stand still; the machine is taken to pieces; the heart beats no more, nor does the blood circulate. Some apply this to the ornaments and utensils of life; rich people must, at death, leave behind them their clothing and furniture of silver and gold, and poor people their earthen pitchers, and the drawers of water will have their wheel broken. [4.] Death will resolve us into our first principles, v. 7. Man is a strange sort of creature, a ray of heaven united to a clod of earth; at death these are separated, and each goes to the place whence it came. (Matthew Henry Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes 12) --------------------
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
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Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 @ 05:12 PM
Sara..the conditions in which you grew up to me sounds ideal for creative thought. Reading books and music in particular is known for painting pictures in the mind. I wonder if you are thinking so rapidly you don’t slow down much. When I imagine or daydream it is a detachment from that normal verbal type of thought. Your brain could have atrophied. Seems unlikely to me though what about those parts of your brain you have not used for ten years or more and when you smell or hear something to stimulate that firing of juice in your brain you recall it. I took a writing class believe it or not  and the teacher had us do an experiment in creative thought. She had us close our eyes and recall a place we had been recently..prompting us as time passed and what did the floor look like, and what was the mood in the room, and what where the smells there. This I think was trying to use more then one sense to recall memory. It really makes for a rich experience. Since then I have walked around in mostly complete former locations in my mind. Use of that particular area will strengthen it. I have a suspicion you may know all this already as sometimes your intelligence shows in your comments almost as if your playing dumb sometimes. Sorry didn’t mean it to come out like that.
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Sunday, November 18, 2007 @ 07:56 PM
Greg, you should watch this tv show. It is this supposedly psychic lady Lisa Williams. I saw an episode recently and thought wow this is either very good acting or real. I have media com not sure what you have. It is on lifetime Friday 8:oo central. There is also one called “Psychic Detectives”a sort of psychic competition. The episode I saw she walks into a shop and over to some girl she doesn’t know and tells her she is a medium or something and she has a message for her. She starts sticking out her tongue and making stupid faces then shaking her butt around…lol. This woman tears up and supposedly instantly recognizes it is her dead father. If nothing else it is kind of entertaining. |
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sara
Major
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Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 08:47 AM
Painter, Sorry, but there have been such a flurry of responses on this Forum the last few days that I totally missed your comment about my “right brain atrophy.” You are right, I was exaggerating to make a point, but there is an element of truth in my observations. I know that there are critical ages for language acquisition (if a child doesn’t learn to speak by a specific age, it is impossible of him or her to learn, no matter how much instruction is given), so I assume there are critical ages for the attainment of other skills. Mozart wouldn’t have become Mozart unless he were exposed to music in his youth. I’m less certain about the development of artistic talents. Everyone, unless visually impaired “sees”, so perhaps people can become artists at any age. However I’m fairly certain that we all can’t become art “appreciators” at any age. We must be taught discrimination. But I could be wrong. Bonnie might know more about these matters than I. However, I can speak for myself and admit that I possess very little ability to appreciate fine art. I respond to the content of a work (I’m deeply moved by cheap sentimentality), but fail to recognize the distinctions between good and bad art. This is especially true on an emotional level. Many people sigh over VanGogh or Monet, & gasp over Jackson Pollock’s splattering, but I feel absolutely nothing, other than puzzlement. What are they SEEING that I don’t. My response is almost entirely intellectual. I think of poor Van Gogh and remember the lovely letters he wrote to his brother, and wonder if would still be a great artist if he were given anti-depressants. Pollock makes me angry because he was such an ass in his personal life and killed this poor young girl (who could have been me!) because he insisted on driving when he was drunk on the day of his fateful car crash. When I mentioned that I grew up without being exposed to music, I meant that almost literally. For some bizarre reason, my mother disliked music. It irritated her and we never listened to it in my home. I sincerely believe that this is the reason I don’t respond to it like other people seem to do. Now, I can whistle a happy tune and clap along with strong rhythms, and I enjoy certain moods created by music, but I never swoon or weep or respond with exhilaration when I hear a particular piece, like my husband does. He LOVES music. Did you know that infants have more brain cells and neural connections than adults? Yep…use em or lose em. Let me take a moment to Google…. The Young Brain is a Work in Progress: A young child’s brain is a work in progress, and scientists are now able to watch it unfold. Thanks to new, computer-based imaging technologies, such as ultrasound, MRI, and PET scans, they can now see the brain’s structures in greater detail than ever before. They can get a glimpse of how the brain responds to different experiences and how it uses energy. They can see how the brain looks and functions at different stages of development, including in the months before birth. Crucial steps in brain development take place early in pregnancy, before many women know that they are expecting. Within weeks of conception, cells that are destined to become neurons have to find their way to the correct position in the part of the brain most responsible for reasoning and learning. For brain development to proceed normally, each cell has to make its journey at the right time, in the right order. Nature has powerful mechanisms to guide the process, including genetic coding, and expectant parents can rest assured that in the vast majority of cases, development proceeds just as it should. But even in the womb, the brain is vulnerable to environmental influences. When pregnant women have inadequate nourishment, when they smoke, drink, or take drugs, or are exposed to toxic substances, their babies’ brain development may be jeopardized. Research also suggests that when women suffer abuse, extreme stress, or severe depression, their babies may be affected. Newborns have more awareness of the world than most of us realize. On the first day of life, a newborn can look at his surroundings, study objects, and gaze in the eyes of his mother or father. Infants as young as 2 days of age will sometimes suck at the mere sight of a breast or bottle, suggesting that learning takes place from a child’s earliest hours of life. But the process of getting to know the world is just beginning. At birth, a newborn cannot yet make sense of the flood of sensation and information that comes his way. As new experiences arrive, young children’s brains respond by forming and reinforcing trillions of connections, or synapses, among neurons. In the time that it takes for mom to nurse the baby or for grandpa to read Goodnight Moon, thousands of new synapses are produced. At the same time, thousands of existing synapses are used or “fired” and, in the process, reinforced. Connections form so quickly that by the time children are three, their brains have twice as many synapses as they will need as adults. These trillions of synapses are competing for space in a brain that is still far from its adult size. According to Rethinking the Brain, a report by the Families and Work, by the age of three a young child’s brain is apt to be more than twice as active as that of her pediatrician. Children are biologically primed for learning, and the first 3 years are particularly crucial. If children have more synapses than they will have as adults, what happens to the trillions of excess connections? The answer is they are shed as children grow. Scientists report that throughout the development process, the brain is producing new synapses, strengthening existing ones, and getting rid of synapses that aren?t used often enough. Before the age of 3, synapse production is by far the dominant process; from 3 to 10, the processes are relatively balanced, so the number of synapses stays about the same. But as children near adolescence, the balance shifts, and the shedding of excess neurons moves into high gear. Brains downsize for the same reasons so many other “organizations” do: with streamlined networks, they can function more efficiently. But how does the brain “decide” which connections to shed and which to keep? Here again, early experience plays a decisive role. Each time synapses fire, beginning with the early months and years of life, they get sturdier and more resilient. Those that are used often enough tend to survive; those that are not used often enough are history. In this way, a child’s experiences in the first years of life affect her brain?s permanent circuitry. Don’t feel sorry for me, Painter. You can’t miss what you haven’t experienced. And, besides, you’re right…. growing up by the seashore was, in many ways, an idyllic childhood. I may not know a lot about music, but I know more about seaweed than anyone else I know and have seen every shade of blue/green/gray/black that a body of water can reflect. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 09:14 AM
Sara, as for art goes it is a personal experience. I admit myself not being moved so to speak with every work I see. I think it is just a connection that has to be made a feeling being transferred . Symbolic of ideal or bliss sometimes does it for me. Maybe you will see one that has the exact similarities to a loved pet of yours who has since past. I think a lot of people try to add more than is there staring at a giant red dot. If that red dot moves them emotionally it is art to them though. |
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cferraro
Master Sergeant
Gender: Male
Location: Custer, SD Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 125 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 12:51 PM
Sara! So fluent and thoughtful in that last post. I wonder if being in perfection would have something to do with becoming light or pure energy. It makes sense to me that light can be everywhere at everytime since it is moving at the speed of light. Since space/time are relative to one another, then covering so much space in so little time could be some how projecting into eternity. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. When we are “vibe’in” sometimes we know each other’s thoughts and have seamless conversation without saying a word. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 05:57 PM
This really makes me wonder why someones soul would be sticking around for three days…or instantly gone. The one that sticks around may be hesitant to go anywhere else but earth. hmm???? The other thing that interests me as of late are black holes. Yeah it’s a free for all. This seems the thread to talk crazy talk. A black hole is created on a stars death creating a vacuum , some spin some don’t, Once something enters it it’s gone?? or maybe gone. Light can not even escape. Abyss…time warp…portal…??? anyway that’s crazy signing off. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 06:08 PM
Greg, not finding this verse in exodus about the silver chord. |
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Admin
General
Gender: Male
Location: USA Registered: Jan 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 810 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 06:33 PM
You’re not finding any silver thread in Exodus because you’re looking in the wrong book. Try Ecclesiastes, the 12th chapter.
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sara
Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Feb 2006 Status: Offline Posts: 1253 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 06:41 PM
Chuck, For a long time, I have “thought” of God in terms of light; in fact I wrote a prayer once, the first line of which was “Light of Light, Within Without”. (It’s here some place on the Forum) I needed a symbol to which I could attach my brain, because “Father” never worked for me and “I AM” was too intangible. I felt the desire to pray to a noun, not a verb (although I’ve been leaning toward the verb concept of God in recent months). Yes, Painter, black holes are pretty interesting, aren’t they? My husband thinks they are portals into another dimension, which sounds reasonable, if you don’t use your reason. Lately, I’ve been thinking of the Universe as similar to a boiling liquid (I AM) the bubbles being new worlds created out of I AM. Or something like that. Fun to think about. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 06:43 PM
Thanks . 
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Greg
Command Sergeant Major
Gender: Male
Location: Springfield, Missouri Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 432 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 08:41 PM
I listened yesterday to an interesting PBS radio show about brain image maps. Apparently recent research has discovered that you can not only provoke an out of the body experience by stimulating a section of the brain but you also can provoke it by immersing in a virtual world and being stimulated in a certain way. If the out of the body experience is proven to be merely a trick of the brain then I wonder what we are to make of all of the NDEs where the out of the body experience is a major factor? Somebody needs to start getting a brain scan on these dead people that come back…lol |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 09:10 PM
What is more interesting is if they are dead. There energy or soul what ever you want to call it is not in them. Then they come back? Why would you come back , or if you see your dead body jump back in it. Maybe you are pulled. Does anyone actually have memory of seeing themselves out , or just this typical white light tunnel etc. The only person I know that has died and come back to earth was given a drug to remove his short term memory after a traumatizing event. You are still stuck to earth by gravity?? These are questions I would love to ask a second-lifer. Here is one, you see your life flash before your eyes is it in reverse or from infancy to death. These memories are you in a sense. Greg your upload theory is interesting. lol to many questions. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 09:16 PM
These neuro test victims where still alive which you have pointed out. They where merely scanning the physical body or brain I would assume not energy that may have been projected into the room. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 09:23 PM
It would also be interesting to test a natural out of body. A monk in a room told before hand while projecting don’t walk out of the room. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 09:32 PM
lol yeah another reply…. I also would think the testers would assume lack of omnipresence. Assuming we are created in his image as the bible says, how deep does that go? Our hands look like his, our pinkie toe only ..etc. For instance the particle experiment where the one particle directly affects another in a completely different location. Omnipresence being the point. I wonder if they would say look the energy is still here in the human body so it is not anywhere else. Like Admin. said or something similar ” I think God transcends logic. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 09:43 PM
I think I need a brain scan. |
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Painter1013
Sergeant Major
Gender: Unspecified
Location: Registered: Nov 2007 Status: Offline Posts: 390 |
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 @ 11:40 PM
That is the last time I comment before reading the former thoughts. |
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