Are xians schizophrenic?
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It is the description of activities of the soul. The individual soul is described in Vedic literature as Brahman (spirit), an atomic portion of Param-Brahman (Supereme Soul). It's constitutional position is that of loving servitor to God, it is eternal, full of knowledge and ecstacy.
When the individual spark desires to enjoy as an individual (God) as opposed to being part and parcel of the whole, he enters into the material atmosphere where he acts out his fantasies but due to forgetfulness of his original primeval identity, he gets caught up in a network of activities (conditioned) and becomes locked in a perpetual cycle of birth and death (karma).
Spiritual acitvity helps the individual remember his true identity (self-realisation), in order to get out of the conditioned state of existence, cycle of birth and death (samsara), and go back home, back home to Godhead.
Why not?
Can a body without a brain still be alive?
Everything we experience is directly related to chemical reactions in the brain, but the experience is real and does not occur by the brain, but by the mind. The mind dictates to the senses then the brain reacts.
Why do you think it is considered natural?
I agree with you, but this isn't spirituality.
I think we should talk more about spirituality in the hope of better understanding.
You're being delusional, you don't understand what spirit is.
Love
Jan Ardena.
Jan,
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/neuronewswk.htm
http://www.quinion.com/words/turnsofphrase/tp-neu2.htm
Briefly – what scientists are finding is that the brain generates the spiritual experiences that many people across the world and of all faiths experience. Many do not experience any such experiences. Others experience the same through mediation or through the use of drugs.
The conclusion I see is that spirituality is less about a supernatural influence than it is about normal brain function, i.e. the cause of those experiences is entirely due to the material brain.
See the current research in neurotheology.
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/neuronewswk.htm
http://www.quinion.com/words/turnsofphrase/tp-neu2.htm
Briefly – what scientists are finding is that the brain generates the spiritual experiences that many people across the world and of all faiths experience. Many do not experience any such experiences. Others experience the same through mediation or through the use of drugs.
The conclusion I see is that spirituality is less about a supernatural influence than it is about normal brain function, i.e. the cause of those experiences is entirely due to the material brain.
How do they know it is the same experience?
[/quote]The conclusion I see is that spirituality is less about a supernatural influence than it is about normal brain function, i.e. the cause of those experiences is entirely due to the material brain. [/QUOTE]
Firstly i don't see how you put "super-nature" and "spirituality" in the same sentence, they are two completely different things.
Secondly, what do you regard as a spiritual experience?
Love
Jan Ardena.
Ofcourse brain only can generate experiences. Generation of brain generated experiences caused by either medi(t)ation OR drugs OR unknown inducing force. Unless the complete mechanism of these brain activities by various causes is shown beyond doubt for any case of spiritual experience your argument is debatable.
Not yet the time for assertions, Cris.
A simple example would be fine :
In a closed room if you find a wire passing thro the opposite walls
and you measure a mild potential difference in volts between visible ends of that wire you can come to a conclusion that the actual ends of the wire might be connected to a battery / AC outlet. What most (not physicists) would miss is the possibility of a moving/oscillatiing magnetic field that could induce current and hence the potential difference.
I think there is a similarity between schizophrenia and christianity, however, if you ever met anyone who is both christian AND schizophrenic, you would see that is much, much worse.
Dolphins sleep, dogs sleep and dream are you suggesting dolphins and dogs have spirits? Or maybe dreaming is part of the mechanics of having a large brain and therefore just another biological function no different than immune response.
Ergo bacteria are also “spiritual beings”. Could it not be that death is just another biological function no different than immune response? If our bodies are viewed as machines used by genes to propagate copies of themselves then death isn’t so spiritual and becomes just another step in successful replication.
Everneo,
What I gleam from Neurotheology is that when the brain is suitably conditioned and receptive it will generate a spiritual experience. The trigger becomes largely irrelevant.
The essential issue is that the spiritual experience is not an experience of God or some other external supernatural force but something that the brain generates.
The first two are OK, but you can’t conclude that the brain can be stimulated by alleged unknown forces. We don’t know about any such things.
I disagree. For example - I know how a car operates but I don’t have to show and list all the people or beings that know how to drive a car.
What I gleam from Neurotheology is that when the brain is suitably conditioned and receptive it will generate a spiritual experience. The trigger becomes largely irrelevant.
But these are the findings of the research.
The essential issue is that the spiritual experience is not an experience of God or some other external supernatural force but something that the brain generates.
Or there could be no soul and what you perceive as a soul is nothing more than an explanation for an emotional experience caused by chemical reactions in the brain. I wonder if that’s in any way similar to the feelings achieved by someone on the drug – which is aptly called – “ecstasy”. In short there is not one shred of evidence for this elaborate tale you have just woven - while juxtapose, chemical and mechanical euphoria are well documented.Originally posted by Jan Ardena
It is the description of activities of the soul. The individual soul is described in Vedic literature as Brahman (spirit), an atomic portion of Param-Brahman (Supereme Soul). It's constitutional position is that of loving servitor to God, it is eternal, full of knowledge and ecstacy.
When the individual spark desires to enjoy as an individual (God) as opposed to being part and parcel of the whole, he enters into the material atmosphere where he acts out his fantasies but due to forgetfulness of his original primeval identity, he gets caught up in a network of activities (conditioned) and becomes locked in a perpetual cycle of birth and death (karma).
Spiritual acitvity helps the individual remember his true identity (self-realisation), in order to get out of the conditioned state of existence, cycle of birth and death (samsara), and go back home, back home to Godhead.
Obviously physical senses are physical.
Yes, so I’ll ask again, Does a body without a brain still have “spirituality”?
Experience does not occur in the brain Aye? In the mind Huh? Jan, you can not separate the mind from the brain. The “mind” is a construct created from the intricate pattern of neurons that make up the brain. If I reach into your head with a spoon and scoop a bit of brain out – you can bet it will have an affect on your mind.
The mind is not the brain . . . Pfff
Everything we experience is directly related to chemical reactions in the brain, but the experience is real
The experience may indeed be real. That has nothing to do with reality. Did you ever watch/read “A Beautiful Mind”? If you had, you would know that some of the characters in the protagonists life were “real” and some where “real experiences” for the protagonist but were nevertheless, not real people. I just happen to believe that the “real experiences” you feel and have been interpreted as a “soul” do not represent a soul but do represent “real experiences” you have had that were simply formed from complex chemical reaction in your brain.
Certainly, you would agree that a person on the drug ecstasy is not in touch with god? Even if their experiences of coming together with god are real these are just the effects of tacking a drug-trip. Hence the name taking “drug-trip”. If you should think that is the case then I think we can agree that all objectivity it gone and it is no longer worthwhile to remain on this track.
Nothing I have related to you is “delusional” - it’s actually scientific dogma. From your reasoning the entire scientific world is delusional while you Jan are the only one who is sane.
Now who again is delusional?
My point about spirit is this. You have no evidence for spirit. You can not measure spirit. You clam that there exists a physical realm and a spiritual realm and that the spirit is in a spiritual realm. I simply said – then you would never know about it – obviously you would need a physical interaction with your physical brain at some point to comprehend spirit. At that point there would be a physical interaction. So you can not say there are two separate realms. If that were the case then the spiritual realm would be measurable. As there has never been any evidence for a spiritual realm, never a single measurement, then I think it probably is as likely to exist as a chocolate jelly bean realm
So what does that leave us with? It’s obvious that there is one thing explicable in the physical world that could be a rationalization for the emotional experiences that leads some to believe that they posses a “soul”. That being chemically induced emotions. These are arrived at by plain old chemical reactions in the brain. If I give you a bit of psychotropic drug – you Jan, will experience feelings of euphoria and may attribute these feelings to a god or gods. One can also, without the help of drugs, experience chemical related euphoria. When people do they naturally try to come up with an explanation.
As for the “love” emotion that I was describing. Most everyone has had the emotion. Some more than others. Some to an extreme irrational state. In the same manner many people have had emotional experiences related to a godly feeling of euphoria – perhaps of being in the presence of a higher being. All of which can be duplicated via drugs. However, at the lower extreme people do experience this godly-euphoric feeling and then want an explanation. In your case someone told you it was god and perhaps went on to talk about the word “soul” and how it is in touch with god – *eerry Simpson’s music* in the Spirit Realm. Just like a drug-tripper you will forever remember this feeling and cling to the explanation someone gave you for it. If you had lived in a country that doesn’t have the concept of soul you would have never arrived at that explanation. Maybe someone would have told you it was the Wolf-Prince blessing you and that would have been your explanation. So just like the Wolf-Prince Realm you have no evidence for this “Soul” of yours in touch with this “Spirit Realm” of yours.
So Jan, you can now see it’s all quite coherent, logical, and scientifically replicable. Perhaps it is you that are marginally delusional with your fanciful stories of Brahman (spirit), an atomic portion of Param-Brahman (Supereme Soul).
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Although this is true, then by you saying it you would agree that I can say that generation of brain generated experiences is caused by invisible chocolate jellybeans interacting at a sub-sub-subbidy-tubbidy-atomic level.
everneo, I think we can agree chemical reactions occurring in the brain are what shape our perceptions of the world and induce the emotions we experience. These can and do occur quite naturally and there is no need to introduce god(s), spirits, and/or chocolate jellybeans to the equation.
Flores living a dream-state:
The cause of spirituality is indeed material and is also due to the fact that we are spiritual beings temporary occupying material suits.
When did this become fact and by whose authority?
We reflect on our material lives and our spiritual brain struggles to understand and we mature spiritually.
What is the difference between the spiritual brain and the brain?
I have always wondered why god created sleep? Why do we sleep everyday for extended hours?
Our bodies require sleep to regenerate; your gods had nothing to do with it.
Sleep and dreams are spirituality.
So, when the frontal lobe of the brain is damaged and dreaming becomes impossible, does that mean there no longer exists spirituality?
Our mind must rest from being exposed to all these materials and our spiritual brain needs time to rest and record this foreign materials.
So, the ‘spiritual’ brain is working overtime recording foreign materials? The ‘silly meter’ just went off the scale.
Do you know that if you are deprived of sleep, you start hallucinating. Hallucination is a separation from reality.
You must be continually deprived of sleep. Hallucination is the perception of something that is not there. One is not separated from reality.
Without the much needed sleep, our spiritual self would separate from the foriegn reality. Without death, we would separate and hallucinate....
Huh??? At what point do we ‘separate and hallucinate’? Can you verify anything you’ve stated thus far?
We die because we are spiritual beings… If we were purely material beings, then we would live forever and never need to sleep die.
Seems like it should be the other way round. If spiritual, we should live forever. It is the degradation of our bodies that causes us to die.
We don't live to be spiritual as you state. We are what we are because we are spiritual.
Then we have no need for these so-called ‘material suits.’
Most, if not all of your posts are pretty silly, but you’ve certainly outdone yourself with this one.
The cause of spirituality is indeed material and is also due to the fact that we are spiritual beings temporary occupying material suits.
When did this become fact and by whose authority?
We reflect on our material lives and our spiritual brain struggles to understand and we mature spiritually.
What is the difference between the spiritual brain and the brain?
I have always wondered why god created sleep? Why do we sleep everyday for extended hours?
Our bodies require sleep to regenerate; your gods had nothing to do with it.
Sleep and dreams are spirituality.
So, when the frontal lobe of the brain is damaged and dreaming becomes impossible, does that mean there no longer exists spirituality?
Our mind must rest from being exposed to all these materials and our spiritual brain needs time to rest and record this foreign materials.
So, the ‘spiritual’ brain is working overtime recording foreign materials? The ‘silly meter’ just went off the scale.
Do you know that if you are deprived of sleep, you start hallucinating. Hallucination is a separation from reality.
You must be continually deprived of sleep. Hallucination is the perception of something that is not there. One is not separated from reality.
Without the much needed sleep, our spiritual self would separate from the foriegn reality. Without death, we would separate and hallucinate....
Huh??? At what point do we ‘separate and hallucinate’? Can you verify anything you’ve stated thus far?
We die because we are spiritual beings… If we were purely material beings, then we would live forever and never need to sleep die.
Seems like it should be the other way round. If spiritual, we should live forever. It is the degradation of our bodies that causes us to die.
We don't live to be spiritual as you state. We are what we are because we are spiritual.
Then we have no need for these so-called ‘material suits.’
Most, if not all of your posts are pretty silly, but you’ve certainly outdone yourself with this one.
W
WildBlueYonder
Guest
ever stop to ask yourself why we have that so-called 'God module'? Ah, could it be that we are connected to God, hard-wired to the Creator? Think about that for awhile, and to quote a famous line, "Explain!"
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WildBlueYonder
Guest
W
WildBlueYonder
Guest
a better question would be"Is Medicine*Woman schizophrenic?" or depressed? or Bipolar?
Randolfo,
All of this seems to indicate overwhelmingly that the experience is simply a brain generated phenomenon.
That could make sense if God, with such a perfect direct connection actually made use of it to transmit truth, but what we observe is that largely depending on what country you are born into you will tend to interpret the experience as pertaining to the teachings of your local religion, theist or otherwise. And those with a secular outlook will see it as personal inspiration, and the drug induced citizens see it as escape.
All of this seems to indicate overwhelmingly that the experience is simply a brain generated phenomenon.
W
WildBlueYonder
Guest
could it be we put 'static', 'snow' or 'noise' into the equation, thereby making it hard to distinguish from the noise of our society, culture?
We would not know any such things unless exploring all the possibilities rather than asserting what we know is the ulitmate truth.
We don't know about brain as much,or completely, as we know about car. BTW, it is not listing of all the people that know driving but all operations of car and their causes / reasons.
experiences induced by drugs is no match for experiences caused with an intention and control, for that matter trigger plays a role. Removing the safety pin of a granade and pressing the start/stop button of nuclear reactor trigger different type reactions though both are explosions but the latter is controlled ; mean to say the different effect of different triggers make triggers very relevant.
Findings always forthcoming, one after another either refining or denying the earlier findings.
I already agreed that brain generates, but the issue is denial of further exploration of the causes other than drugs and other knowns.