The Soul

Look, i am coming from a position of a kinda 'i dont know'. the thing i have noticed about theists and athiests is that they both are SO sure!
The athiest will explain that they CAN be, because of the scientific method and so on. But what about EXPERIENCE?

i have had a very powerful 'OBE' (in commas cause 'i dont know')...and i can tell you it is extraordinarily real. i met entities, and what happened informs what happened after
Now i come to you athiests and tell you about this, one of THe most important meaningful experiences of my life, and you
take it upon yourself to explain it away, as mere this that....
The theists would probably call my experience 'evil' cause it involved Nature spirits--Satyrs
So, both of you--in my view--spin your respectives dogmas at me, which demand i dismiss it as 'wrong'...and other peoples deep experiences as wrong

and the really comical thing, is that the proper scientists i have read and listened to are as ARROGANT as you amatuers. Some say they just dont know when faced with such accounts.
So please admit. you just dont know do you? not really.....
 
meant to say "distinguished scientists ARen't as arrogant..." and the caps aren't me shouting. i just dont have access to using italic
 
Itseemstome,

I think we're on different parts of the brain. I saw a report on an area that ceases all activity during meditation and the like.
Click to expand...

OK - please post the reference if you can. Usually during meditation the brain becomes very active.
 
Duendy,

I have been fully anaesthetized a number of times in my life and the dreams I have experienced under such conditions have been incredibly vivid and seemingly real. The brain I have come to learn is a very powerful mechanism for generating illusions and real-life-like hallucinations.

While your experiences seem very real to you can you really be sure they were not images created by your brain only? This is by far the most credible explanation based on what we know the brain can do. Speculating that the effect had a supernatural cause is a massive quantum leap and I don’t see how that can be reasonably substantiated.
 
Duendy,

Here are three first hand accounts I have heard of OOBEs from a few notes I wrote a couple of years ago. All three are perfectly sensible people and two of them said they never talked about the experience for fear of disbelief. They told me when they saw that I was seriously interested in that type of thing.

‘Again as a child another man, who told me this, was taken on holiday. I believe it was to be his first beach holiday and he was very excited. As they had arrived in the evening he had been put to bed without seeing the beach, which was some distance away. During the night there was a thunderstorm, in the course of which he found himself out of his body and over the house in which they were staying. He saw the way to the beach, which was fairly complicated. In the morning, after breakfast, he led his family to the beach as he now knew the way, having never, of course, been there before. I have heard a number of first hand, and other hand, accounts of ‘Out of body’ experiences (OOBE’s). Two single event, first hand, accounts immediately spring to mind which frightened the life (good phrase!) out of those who experienced them. One was my father and the other a Flight Engineer, both of whom found themselves outside their bodies during sleep. The sincere wish of both, which in each case has so far been realized, was that it should not happen again.’

All three, I am sure, genuinely believed that their mind had somehow left their body. OK, lets both sit back and hear the shouts of 'Rubbish!!'
 
Everneo,

Whether (1) brain creates spritual sensations or (2) it just reacts to them or (3) brain is the necessary tool for spiritual experience, is debatable.
Click to expand...

The experiments demonstrated cause and effect. Specific drugs and other electrical stimuli can produce, on demand, a wide range of specific hallucinogenic effects. These effects range from excitement, depression, soporific, intense joy, spiritual, far out, etc. These are descriptions of differing emotional experiences and it is very difficult to see how they are the result of anything other than the initiating stimuli. For example why claim that a soporific effect is not caused by an external supernatural force but that that one described as spiritual is?

Without any other precedent for supernatural interaction we should have little doubt that spiritual sensations are entirely generated by the brain, especially when we can create them on demand.
 
Itseemstome,

All three, I am sure, genuinely believed that their mind had somehow left their body. OK, lets both sit back and hear the shouts of 'Rubbish!!'
Click to expand...

At your service -

The story you quote is typical of hundreds of similar apocryphal stories that have the same salesmanship style –

(1) Assert that these were normal and sensible people. Attempt to establish credibility.
(2) Assert that they saw things in their experience that they had not seen before. Attempt to provide proof.
(3) Assert appropriate amazement. Implies they would otherwise have been skeptical.
(4) Assert that the victims truly believed their claims. Attempt to reinforce credibility.

Unfortunately no such experiences ever occur under monitored scientific conditions so no such stories can be verified. However, there is a vast quantity of believable and mundane hallucinatory experiences that have been monitored under scientific conditions. What argument then is the more credible and likely? Deliberate fraud is the other believable alternative, but exaggeration and appropriate embellishments are the usual techniques. Under much closer objective interrogations such stories tend to fall apart quite quickly.
 
audible said:
wtf, are we on the same planet.
Click to expand...

We are the same self, expressing itself through different bodies. We are not on a planet. The planet and everything else that you see is just a sensation created by your MIND. Nothing is physical, everything is spiritual. It's unscientific to think that the universe has a selfgoverning existence, because we can't be conscious of something outside our consciousness. The universe comes from nothingness, and it is nothingness. Because the conscious mind won't accept something as simple as nothingness it creates everything. Everything is created by two opposites which cannot remains steady, and the sum of these two opposites is nothing.

You are eternal, free and all-powerful. But if you believe yourself to be your body, and that you are eternal and all-powerful, forget it. Look around you. You are conscious because you consider the world around you to be outside of yourself. Because you consider it as non-you. Anti-you. Without this feeling, you couldn't say "I". So the world is a part of your consciousness. But you always feel yourself to be in the center of it, in the center of yourself.

You are MIND, and MIND contains everything. If you don't understand everything, it's because you refuse to accept your infiniteness, because you want to identify yourself with something, an EGO, a part of the whole self. Understanding the universe is not a matter of intelligence, but of courage. Don't be afraid of yourself, trust your infiniteness. You know everything, including all this what I'm writing, since it's not "Yorda" who is writing, but YOU, the self of all things. But because you want to defend your personality, one part of the infinity, you refuse your omniscience, you create an outer teacher and lose your knowledge. You want to identify yourself with something instead of everything.

EGO is your conscious mind, the rest of the world is your unconscious mind. Matter is the resistance of the material world, consciousness is the resistance of the spiritual world inside man. Stop fearing the changes in your life, they are the evolution of your EGO. Your mind is the only mind that exists. Everybody is inside it. Why not love them as yourself?

We believe we are several minds, aware of a real universe, but in fact, we are only one mind, conscious of an infinity of illusory, personal universes. Nothing is objective. It is you who create all this knowledge. Every being is a universe (men, animals, cells, vegetables, rocks, particles and so on), is a personal universe, because each one is simultaneously a way of refusing, and a will towards, unity.

The expansion of the universe accelerates because it apporaches it's goal, the fuel is magnetism - "love". Just like when we approach the earth, the speed accelerates. The source of energy not an origin in the past, but an aim in the future. Our consciousness restricts the infinite speed of our evolution. Just as "matter" restricts the universe from falling to nothingness, to a singularity, to "paradise", so does the consciousness resist the infiniteness by not accepting the outer to be within.
 
itopal said:
No it is not - remove a part of the brain, emotional connections to others - gone.
. . . remove another part of the brain, thinking is diminshed.
. . . continue removing parts and eventually (while you might still be alive); all capicty for thinking, experiencing anything - is gone.
Click to expand...

Brain is the controller of all body & intellectual functions; no brain - you are clinically dead. That is known. But work allocation to parts of the brain is not fixed.

Brain is more amazing than thought of earlier. Half the brain removed still no major set back. Can't believe ? Find out here :

- http://www.dental.am/eng_news/63.html

Dr Johannes Borgstein told the Daily Telegraph: "It was amazing. I had to tell my students to forget all the neurophysiological theory they were learning."

We are still in infancy as for as neuroscience is concerned to assert what brain does/doesn't to have certain experiences.


Whether . . . (3) the brain is the necessary tool for spiritual experience is debatable.

Are you suggesting something else - like your foot?
Click to expand...

My dick. Sometimes it seems to have its own agenda discarding the brain.

Seriously, spritual experiences cannot bypass brain to make you 'experience' something. Brain is a gateway/tool OR it is the sole cause , is still debatable.
 
Yorda said:
We are the same self, expressing itself through different bodies. We are not on a planet. The planet and everything else that you see is just a sensation created by your MIND. Nothing is physical, everything is spiritual. It's unscientific to think that the universe has a selfgoverning existence, because we can't be conscious of something outside our consciousness. The universe comes from nothingness, and it is nothingness. Because the conscious mind won't accept something as simple as nothingness it creates everything. Everything is created by two opposites which cannot remains steady, and the sum of these two opposites is nothing.

You are eternal, free and all-powerful. But if you believe yourself to be your body, and that you are eternal and all-powerful, forget it. Look around you. You are conscious because you consider the world around you to be outside of yourself. Because you consider it as non-you. Anti-you. Without this feeling, you couldn't say "I". So the world is a part of your consciousness. But you always feel yourself to be in the center of it, in the center of yourself.

You are MIND, and MIND contains everything. If you don't understand everything, it's because you refuse to accept your infiniteness, because you want to identify yourself with something, an EGO, a part of the whole self. Understanding the universe is not a matter of intelligence, but of courage. Don't be afraid of yourself, trust your infiniteness. You know everything, including all this what I'm writing, since it's not "Yorda" who is writing, but YOU, the self of all things. But because you want to defend your personality, one part of the infinity, you refuse your omniscience, you create an outer teacher and lose your knowledge. You want to identify yourself with something instead of everything.

EGO is your conscious mind, the rest of the world is your unconscious mind. Matter is the resistance of the material world, consciousness is the resistance of the spiritual world inside man. Stop fearing the changes in your life, they are the evolution of your EGO. Your mind is the only mind that exists. Everybody is inside it. Why not love them as yourself?

We believe we are several minds, aware of a real universe, but in fact, we are only one mind, conscious of an infinity of illusory, personal universes. Nothing is objective. It is you who create all this knowledge. Every being is a universe (men, animals, cells, vegetables, rocks, particles and so on), is a personal universe, because each one is simultaneously a way of refusing, and a will towards, unity.

The expansion of the universe accelerates because it apporaches it's goal, the fuel is magnetism - "love". Just like when we approach the earth, the speed accelerates. The source of energy not an origin in the past, but an aim in the future. Our consciousness restricts the infinite speed of our evolution. Just as "matter" restricts the universe from falling to nothingness, to a singularity, to "paradise", so does the consciousness resist the infiniteness by not accepting the outer to be within.
Click to expand...
a lot written but nothing said.
I was absolutely right when I said "wtf are we on the same planet", because quite clearly we are not, you floating around in your own little space, I'd go and see a doctor, you remind me of my brother john, he used to read between the lines of books, literally, he saw things that nobody else did, and he died in a lunatic asylum.
 
No it is not - remove a part of the brain, emotional connections to others - gone.
. . . remove another part of the brain, thinking is diminshed.
. . . continue removing parts and eventually (while you might still be alive); all capicty for thinking, experiencing anything - is gone.
Click to expand...
Well, you don't know that. All visible capacity for thinking is gone. We couldn't know whether that person is experiencing anything.

No brain - no experience; and outside influences; so-called astral projections; spiritual realms; are proof-less conjecture; mythology-theology about how we feel in-mind.
Click to expand...
Your conclusion doesn't follow. If the brain is how the soul communicates to the material world, then if the soul's communication is shut off, then its material communication is shut off. If its communication is only partially shut off, then its communication is partially shut off.
 
Cris said:
Duendy,

I have been fully anaesthetized a number of times in my life and the dreams I have experienced under such conditions have been incredibly vivid and seemingly real.

d)))that's strange in itself. i have NEVE experienced vivid dream under anesthesia. it is more totla non-consciousness. as though i wake up soon after i have been injected with no memory of in-between including dreams.
I would like yo inquire what were the nature of your 'vivid dreams' in detail. And why also should you deem them illusory. why do you dismiss the dreaming part of your being?

The brain I have come to learn is a very powerful mechanism for generating illusions and real-life-like hallucinations.

d))))Yes, but can you not see that that insight implies to so-called sober reality. that you MAY be experiencing 'illusion's right now due to the acculturation process. the pervailing paradigm that has been drilled into you via schooling, the media etc?

While your experiences seem very real to you can you really be sure they were not images created by your brain only? This is by far the most credible explanation based on what we know the brain can do. Speculating that the effect had a supernatural cause is a massive quantum leap and I don’t see how that can be reasonably substantiated.
Click to expand...

But as i say. that is what we do anyhow. we create images--about people, about events etc in real awake life. think of the racist or homophobe for example. When this person looks at people he considers that his brain is making images of them isn't it? is THAt real?
 
Hey Itseemstome, i encourage you not to be itimidated by the 'expected calls of "Rubbish"'. THEy REALLY do not know. that is why they are so dismissive, with such a DEFENSIVE attitude.

It is really interesting, you stoy about the man who saw the way to the beach.
Don't know if you know the author, Alan Watts. He illustrated the current paradigm which oppresses itself on modern humans as being a sense of being a "skin-encapsulated ego". Meaning that only 'in here', the body (some even reduce it to the brain) is there any consciousness/awareness. All out there is 'dead'.
If we backstep a little to the preceeding paradigm of the Christian church, we got indoctrinated the idea of the separate 'soul'. So you can see how the same premise is from there and gets modified once science arrives, as separate 'consciousness'.
Many Indigenous people who were victims of the Church's mithering misionary-izing found it difficult to accept the Christianized version of a SEAPARATe soul. because being animist they understood 'spirit' to be shared throughout reality.

we have to therefore ask ourselves (us 'moderns') what we MEAN by 'consciousness'. for example physicalist scientific theories assume the brain produces consciousness. but what if consciousness is FEELING. that it can Be anywhere, that it isn't 'in' the brain like the brain's in the scalp. that is is not-located yet all-pervasive. not limited by our theories of it.
 
audible said:
a lot written but nothing said.
I was absolutely right when I said "wtf are we on the same planet", because quite clearly we are not, you floating around in your own little space, I'd go and see a doctor, you remind me of my brother john, he used to read between the lines of books, literally, he saw things that nobody else did, and he died in a lunatic asylum.
Click to expand...

It's just that I've never believed in doctors, and I think that some who are called lunatics, living in mental hospitals, are geniouses. I really believe that audible and Yorda are one and the same self, because I read about it on www.hatem.com and it sounds true. But thanks for caring about me, you're a nice person.
 
We are not on a planet. The planet and everything else that you see is just a sensation created by your MIND. Nothing is physical, everything is spiritual.

If true, then a baseball bat planted firmly in your forehead will not produce pain or blood, nor will it crack your 'spiritual' cranium.

I think that some who are called lunatics, living in mental hospitals, are geniouses.

Coming from you, that statement does not surprise me.
 
(Q) said:
If true, then a baseball bat planted firmly in your forehead will not produce pain or blood, nor will it crack your 'spiritual' cranium.
Click to expand...

If someone would hit me with a baseball bat, my mind would put me into a state of great suffering because I identify myself with this body. The things that happen outside doesn't really affect us, but only what happens inside. But when I have realized the true reality of nothingness, there is no such thing as baseball bats or any other visions.
 
Regarding the loss of a brain hemisphere etc -

It is perhaps of more interest to consider the cases where the connection between the two hemispheres is completely severed. The individual goes on to develop two distinct personalities. Does this mean that a new soul was born the instant the brain was damaged? I think it is examples like this that reveal the ludicrous nature of the soul concept.
 
No, the right has all the abilities of a chimpanzee, adding up to 20, map reading(?? some chimp!! OK a few more than a chimp) and recognising faces whilst the left does all the bits that an animal doesn't require.
 
itopal said:
(Comment on article: I am already aware of the ability of the brain to assume duplicate function of a damaged portion of the brain; but this is only proof of brain-complexity; and in terms of the child; it has a greater chance of assuming functionality of the missing-side-functions; than an adult; recuperating the same level of functionality; in this particular case.)
Click to expand...
..but still you are keeping on plugging out parts of brain to show the reduction in experiences..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top