Sorry I haven't been posting as much, but I have been dealing with a personal matter that has been taking up most of my thoughts, lately.
I'm going to share with you my view on something I've been mulling over.
In understanding quantum mechanics, and in the hypotheses of how atoms/matter are not actually physical, but are actually comprised of thought, in sharing with you my views of how we believe ourselves to 'disappear', I don't mean that we physically disappear.
What I mean is that we move out of the area of the brain that has to do with our personality.
It has to do with our association to people, or association to places, our association to things and times and events..
We don't exist in the associative centers of our brain that reaffirm our identity...that reaffirm our personality. For the average person in the world who lives life and considers their life boring or uninspiring- it's because they've made no attempt to gain knowledge and information that will inspire them.
They're so hypnotized by their environment...through the media, through their family members, coworkers, doctors...others who live to create ideals and obstacles for some of us to struggle to become, that some of us can not become...in terms of the physical..the intellectual, and valor..
they are their illusions, not ours, and unfortunately most of us surrender and end up living life in mediocracy, to appease them.
Some of us may live that life and our souls may never really....our desire may never really rise to the surface so that we never want to be something other than what we have become.
But if one does rise to the surface...and ask themselves if there is something more..
or why am I here? What is the purpose of my life? Where am I going? What happens when I die? They start to ask those questions..they start to flirt with and interact with the perception that they may be having a nervous breakdown when in reality what they are doing is...their old concepts of how they've viewed their life in the world...that view starts to fall apart to make room for a new and beautiful view.
Create your own beautiful reality and stop using someone else's as you have been doing. You have more power than you think you do.
Believe in yourself as I do you.
Nova

Is this like "Wherever you go, there you are?"


Hope you feel better.:)

Kinda :0)
More like in accepting that all of us have some 'addictive receptors' that we should just be accepting of, and come to terms with...in that we all need 'something' that we have to do to make us feel good..but maybe we should do something more productive in conjunction with the destructive in our lives to balance things out a little at times. I keep saying all of us have a talent..even if we don't believe we do..I know for a fact we all do. Do something with it. It doesn't have to be something that has to make money. It just should be something that should be 'allowed out' every now and again so you acknowledge its existence.
And yup, McT. Wherever you go..there you are..in more than one place..simultaneously. <WINK>. Matter is not physical...Bunny..lol !
Good to know at least one person 'gets me' on here, lmao !!!
I miss you.
smooches!
Nova

Hey, you started the party without me…

OK, let’s see: virtually every part of your description of your experience and how your brain and mind works is accurate, according to the best models we have of neural function and the mind.

Dead boring almost mechanical stuff, neurons firing and relaxing, firing and relaxing, only…

you’re not supposed to be able to see it. In fact, have you ever considered how it is you perceive such workings of your inner self? There aren’t any sensory organs per se that allow us in_sight,

so the only candidate is out_sight; we see our inner selves reflected in the outside world.

And indeed we do. Your vision of your inner self arises from models that you’ve devised to explain cues and clues you’ve picked up from being out there with others, looking back at you, in here.

And look at what that perception brings you: knowledge of a universe inside, of your own making, and of a fundamental truth of reality,

that we make it ourselves, all of it, with everything and everyone we know and know of,

in_side,

in pretty much exactly the way you described.

Chicken and egg:

If you ‘see’ the inner workings of your mind and brain
as a reflection of yourself in others, the external reality
that is actually an illusion, actually an internal reality
of our own making,

who made you?

Part II: Revenge of the nerds…

We do create our own reality, literally, not some deep philosophical or spiritual concept. And not exactly quantum mechanics, either, although that does share a common flavor of counterintuitive strangeness.

Meaning? All inside, entirely provided by us. Nature doesn’t have any, won’t take it if offered. Order? Beautiful patterns, mathematical truths writ in the fabric of the Universe? All ours, all in here, in_side.

We’re in here right now, in_side. No external reality. No such animal. Just us, here, alone, in_side.

It is a bit disconcerting at first. I start with this and do this and follow this and all the sudden, we have a map of how we perceive reality, and as we trace the path through the map, from out_side to in_side, all there is appears out of nothing, like a wraith on the wind, solidifying into your Uncle Harry’s Studebaker, the smell of the hot metal and oil, the way the stiff fabric of the back seat chaffed your calves the gum turning turgid flavorless in your mouth the wind through that funny half-window…

All in here. None of it out there. For real, as shivering strange as wave-particle duality, wave function superposition, Schrödinger’s cats collapsing into cat at the literal wink of an eye.

And all following from a purely pedestrian application of what neurons do. The only thing that doesn’t follow is the sense that others don’t do it or see it, or at least, why others don’t do it:


For the average person in the world who lives life and considers their life boring or uninspiring- it's because they've made no attempt to gain knowledge and information that will inspire them…
It isn’t what you think; they can’t do what you do so casually, and the longer they wait, the further away you soar.

Not everybody can do what you do, or has the will. I have been diverging for twenty years from my little brother, until we can’t even speak without him becoming upset with something implied by my words.

I live with the knowledge that it’s too late for him; he will never catch up, even if he had the will to turn around and start to build his inner models reflecting his perception of his inner self as reflected in the outer reality that is really in here.

This is a bright guy, too, with a PhD in math, a college professor; we were as close as can be, worked together, lived together, shared our reality, until he needed to match another reality, the flat one he perceived necessary to do math on a high level.

And now, he’s an artifact. It isn’t a big deal; nobody that makes that sort of decision is wrong, even though they don’t know what they’re giving up. But they’re not frozen in the way you would have to be, if you did what they did.

They can’t help it, and the way we look at it is this: if they don’t want to dance, we're not going to let that stop us from doing the Huckle-ty-buck.

Remember the end of the John Travolta / William Hurt movie Michael?

Cut yourself a break. That‘s you out there, dancing through the traffic unseen…

Hey Nova,

I started there, and I am now here, and I got there, through losing here, and there was a collapse, and here lies C.S.Lewis, for there was a block, and I tried to hear, and theirs was was not mine, lend me your ear, the air is not stale, staple stability from Stabile's table, wish you were here?
A wise choice,

I-C-U-u-u-u-u-u!

SB.

Ok..here goes..I haven't talked with anyone on here about this because I thought that there wasn't anyone on this board that could relate :0).
It's ok to not relate fully..but to at least keep an open mind..which seems to be the case with you two..actually you two seem to be able to relate fully, which is a relief.
I have many other friends who are capable of relating to this concept, which is wonderful, as most people tend to think that it is 'loopy'..but as you have 'observed' (lol)..I'm not one who takes their viewpoints to mean truth :0)

We create the world as we observe it, and that every single thing is comprised of atoms. Since atoms are divisible to infinity, it suffices to say, the smallest dividend, has to be that of thought. So my view is that atoms are comprised of thought.

Everything from the chair you sit in, to the book you read, to your hands that hold up that book..all are less substantial than fairy dust..and I do believe in fairies..I do..I do.

Leave the room..and your computer ceases to exist..at least as matter most think to understand it to mean.
Only when we observe 'matter' do we collapse the quantum wave functions describing it an allow it to become reassuringly solid.

If you need me to describe the basics of collapsing wave functions, I'd be happy to do so. I assume the two of you to be intellectually capable of understanding the mechanisms involved..so I don't want to patronize you by doing so...but if you need me to do so, please ask and I will be happy to oblige. There is nothing shameful in obtaining information..ever.

In being blessed with ambidexterity..I'm able to 'talk the talk' meaning that I can converse with all, in the language that is most comfortable and easy to comprehend, for all..and I can switch back and forth, as easy as switching a light switch on a wall..
It also has the detriments of switching back and forth between analysis and emotions..as you can tell within my posts, which contain BOTH reason and rhyme, as my Granmere used to say about ME :0).

So in other words..my view is that our physical surroundings are not real in the sense of how most are used to thinking of them..I believe that there is no deep reality, but that reality is an illusion and that only our mind is real. Reality is malleable and we can and do shape it. We shape the world consciously, in consensus with the natural creative forces of the universe.

Reality is created by observation-specifically phenomenal reality, and we create it by observing and interacting with it. I know all about how most theorists and physicists can not agree on what constitutes 'observation', but I do know that empirical data suggests that the term observation has included the term 'belief'.
The foundation of the power of positive thinking: Believe in something strongly enough, and you are indeed creating, shaping, or reshaping it.

Undivided wholeness is reality. The observer literally is part of the observed structure.
There is absolutely no difference between the observer and the observed..between the world and the person in it.

That is why I adamantly believe that we create our own reality with our perceptions..may they be enhanced or distorted..it all depends on that moment..and our choice in perception..because we always have a choice.

I'm going to let you in on a personal story only to further prove how we do have power over creating our own reality. I don't normally divulge personal information unless it provides a means of good, and to be honest, I have been at the bottom of the barrel, and since I am determined in creating a more healthy, and positive reality for myself, once more, I am able to share this, now, with you.

In the beginning of June of 2005, when in Ohio, I was feeling the accumulation of invisiblity. No matter what I accomplished at work, in my personal life, in school, nothing was allowing me to feel 3D, as I was accustomed to feeling. I hadn't been able to articulate my thoughts for the past eight months, and when I did, intermittently, I was told they were frivolous, and I was disregarded as so, once more. I became quietly, the most introverted, that I had ever become, in my entire lifetime. While doing so, I was bombarded with the most negative and most hostile work environment also.
So while not being able to voice outloud my thoughts, and not being able to have nurture and feedback and the closeness and love that I needed...I became invisible.

I saw no one. I was the most depressed than I have ever known or allowed myself to ever be. To the outside world I still functioned on automatic. People would briefly say
"You don't look so good..Now can you believe this class I'm taking..and what a jerk my teacher is.." or "Are you ok...I can't believe she said that about me"

I weighed 74 pounds at the time and was still losing weight. I was creating my reality of becoming invisible.

On June 6, a Monday night, I found myself screaming inside my mind, so loudly, that I actually believed my neighbors to have heard me. The next night, and the night after, and the night after and so on, I went online, and sent resume after resume, until by June 14th, I obtained my current job.
Determination, job skill, education and having absolutely nothing left to lose, including my self, obtained and secured that job for me.
I gave my resignation notice to my employer the very next day, and started searching for hotel suites to live in until I could find other dwellings in the nearby area.

Since August 1st, I have found a great doctor who has helped me immensely.
I have severed ties, completely, with the people who were contributing to my damaged reality perception. I have found a great apartment in a suburb in MD, twenty minutes NE of DC. I have been diagnosed with right temporal brain seizures, but I haven't allowed to myself to perceive that in a negative way, because it shouldn't be viewed as such..it isn't life threatening, and even if it was, I firmly believe in reincarnation, so it would be hypocritical of me to do so, considering my spiritual faith :0)
And...TaDa......I am up to a whopping 92 pounds as of today !

We create our own reality each and every day. I would suggest to everyone to make it a great one !

I would to hear your views on this entire subject, Stabile and SB !!!
Nova

What makes up things are not things...but what makes up things are:
Ideas
Concepts
Information
In other words...thoughts.
Nova

What makes up things are not things...but what makes up things are:
Ideas
Concepts
Information
In other words...thoughts.
Nova
We’re thinkin' on it…

(Where’s the weekend when you need it?)

We’re thinkin' on it…

(Where’s the weekend when you need it?)
Here and gone to the parallel universe, LOL, where someone might be saying the same exact thing !!
Don't get me started :0)
Nova

Also..chew on this, while you're at it...
Why can almost all of us, remember our past events, but only a few of us, have access to pre-cognitive gifts, in viewing some of our the future events ?

AND how many believe they can change their behavior by acting 'now', and how they have control over their future in that manner, but many don't believe they are able to go back in time, and take care of karmic debt, by re-doing damages they have inflicted upon another...even if it means saying 'I'm truly sorry for...'(fill in the blank) to that person...

Go through the looking glass...Alice...reality is meant to be as malleable as digital photoshop..create whatever your heart desires with it..

Otherwise it's just a rigid regular ol' photograph.
Fun...but still 1D level..and not at all malleable...
Nova ;0)

Sorry my ADD kicked in and I was able to read like the frst 3 sentances. However Mctavish was able to sum it up nicly for me.

Nova's story gripped and chilled me. 74 pounds! My God, I hope you were exaggerating. I've known anorexics for whom it seemed non eating was associated in some way with physical appearance. But in your case there seems to have been awful mind issues that put you in a downward spiral.

You know, there's an occupational hazard for us academic people - ideas are all important. I am not sure we'd find a stevedore, furniture mover, or a long-distance truck driver get close to that kind of trouble.

I grew up in an extremely intellectual family, and the awful complexes coming out of that were just starting to get resolved when I married an alcoholic. Pink cloud romance but I started slipping back, went into a tailspin and crashed. Fortunately, by then I was a member of Al Anon, the partner group to AA, which I have attended ever since - even after I remarried.

The 12 -step programs have a misleading slogan called KISS (keep it simple, stupid). By misleading I mean it isn't at all easy to keep the simple basics in mind.

For me it means whereas in the workplace, etc. it's ok to be complicated if that's what the task or goal requires, in my personal lives (including relationships with bosses or coworkers) there are time-tested guidelines that keep me sane - well, rather, keep restoring sanity.

I don't think humans were intended to operate alone. It's too easy for the rocket to misfire. I have to regularly get my distorted perspectives straightened out at meetings. It's been compared to commercial airline pilots. They are on course only 5% of the time. the rest of the time they're making adjustments to their course.

Martin Luther said it best. "Man is like a donkey, who is sometimes ridden by God and sometimes by the Devil".

Nam

================================================== =======Ok..here goes..I haven't talked with anyone on here about this because I thought that there wasn't anyone on this board that could relate :0).
It's ok to not relate fully..but to at least keep an open mind..which seems to be the case with you two..actually you two seem to be able to relate fully, which is a relief.
I have many other friends who are capable of relating to this concept, which is wonderful, as most people tend to think that it is 'loopy'..but as you have 'observed' (lol)..I'm not one who takes their viewpoints to mean truth :0)

We create the world as we observe it, and that every single thing is comprised of atoms. Since atoms are divisible to infinity, it suffices to say, the smallest dividend, has to be that of thought. So my view is that atoms are comprised of thought.

Everything from the chair you sit in, to the book you read, to your hands that hold up that book..all are less substantial than fairy dust..and I do believe in fairies..I do..I do.

Leave the room..and your computer ceases to exist..at least as matter most think to understand it to mean.
Only when we observe 'matter' do we collapse the quantum wave functions describing it an allow it to become reassuringly solid.

If you need me to describe the basics of collapsing wave functions, I'd be happy to do so. I assume the two of you to be intellectually capable of understanding the mechanisms involved..so I don't want to patronize you by doing so...but if you need me to do so, please ask and I will be happy to oblige. There is nothing shameful in obtaining information..ever.

In being blessed with ambidexterity..I'm able to 'talk the talk' meaning that I can converse with all, in the language that is most comfortable and easy to comprehend, for all..and I can switch back and forth, as easy as switching a light switch on a wall..
It also has the detriments of switching back and forth between analysis and emotions..as you can tell within my posts, which contain BOTH reason and rhyme, as my Granmere used to say about ME :0).

So in other words..my view is that our physical surroundings are not real in the sense of how most are used to thinking of them..I believe that there is no deep reality, but that reality is an illusion and that only our mind is real. Reality is malleable and we can and do shape it. We shape the world consciously, in consensus with the natural creative forces of the universe.

Reality is created by observation-specifically phenomenal reality, and we create it by observing and interacting with it. I know all about how most theorists and physicists can not agree on what constitutes 'observation', but I do know that empirical data suggests that the term observation has included the term 'belief'.
The foundation of the power of positive thinking: Believe in something strongly enough, and you are indeed creating, shaping, or reshaping it.

Undivided wholeness is reality. The observer literally is part of the observed structure.
There is absolutely no difference between the observer and the observed..between the world and the person in it.

That is why I adamantly believe that we create our own reality with our perceptions..may they be enhanced or distorted..it all depends on that moment..and our choice in perception..because we always have a choice.

I'm going to let you in on a personal story only to further prove how we do have power over creating our own reality. I don't normally divulge personal information unless it provides a means of good, and to be honest, I have been at the bottom of the barrel, and since I am determined in creating a more healthy, and positive reality for myself, once more, I am able to share this, now, with you.

In the beginning of June of 2005, when in Ohio, I was feeling the accumulation of invisiblity. No matter what I accomplished at work, in my personal life, in school, nothing was allowing me to feel 3D, as I was accustomed to feeling. I hadn't been able to articulate my thoughts for the past eight months, and when I did, intermittently, I was told they were frivolous, and I was disregarded as so, once more. I became quietly, the most introverted, that I had ever become, in my entire lifetime. While doing so, I was bombarded with the most negative and most hostile work environment also.
So while not being able to voice outloud my thoughts, and not being able to have nurture and feedback and the closeness and love that I needed...I became invisible.

I saw no one. I was the most depressed than I have ever known or allowed myself to ever be. To the outside world I still functioned on automatic. People would briefly say
"You don't look so good..Now can you believe this class I'm taking..and what a jerk my teacher is.." or "Are you ok...I can't believe she said that about me"

I weighed 74 pounds at the time and was still losing weight. I was creating my reality of becoming invisible.

On June 6, a Monday night, I found myself screaming inside my mind, so loudly, that I actually believed my neighbors to have heard me. The next night, and the night after, and the night after and so on, I went online, and sent resume after resume, until by June 14th, I obtained my current job.
Determination, job skill, education and having absolutely nothing left to lose, including my self, obtained and secured that job for me.
I gave my resignation notice to my employer the very next day, and started searching for hotel suites to live in until I could find other dwellings in the nearby area.

Since August 1st, I have found a great doctor who has helped me immensely.
I have severed ties, completely, with the people who were contributing to my damaged reality perception. I have found a great apartment in a suburb in MD, twenty minutes NE of DC. I have been diagnosed with right temporal brain seizures, but I haven't allowed to myself to perceive that in a negative way, because it shouldn't be viewed as such..it isn't life threatening, and even if it was, I firmly believe in reincarnation, so it would be hypocritical of me to do so, considering my spiritual faith :0)
And...TaDa......I am up to a whopping 92 pounds as of today !

We create our own reality each and every day. I would suggest to everyone to make it a great one !

I would to hear your views on this entire subject, Stabile and SB !!!
Nova

Don't let this post baffle your scientific mind, Doc...lol !
As you'll note I have the best sense of humor..and I have to take what's left of life with whatever spices are available to me :0)
I wasn't exaggerating about my weight..I did weigh 74 pounds at the time I left Ohio in August..But I am a robust 92 pounds as we text now..so mind over 'matter' so to speak..lol !!
It's all in how you want to perceive your world.
Positive or negative.
You should read more posts on here.
They truly are delightful..I mean that from my heart.
There are an abundance of miracles to be found on this board.
You'll be amazed if you just think outside that ' safe and familiar' box of yours. :0)
Nova

There is no reality in the absence of observation.
- The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

I went to the Baltimore Aquarium yesterday and spent the majority of the day there.
It was an amazing experience. I've been to aquariums before, many times, but this day left me, breathless.
The place was crowded, but I was so absorbed with the beauty of my surroundings, that I didn't notice the crowd, after a while.
What I did notice leads me back to this discussion..how we perceive reality..as observers..
And without the observer..reality ceases to exist.
The fish are colorful for their own reasons...survival...attracting mates...whatever that reason may be...
I noticed that I had difficulty locating most of them and had to really focus...and scan their environment to seek them out.
It reminded me of those puzzles..where I had to s.l.o.w.l.y pull the puzzle away from my face...in order to eventually 'see' the actual picture.
Sometimes I would have to do that two or three times..sometimes I could see the picture the first time I did it.
This is my definition of how we perceive reality. It is what we choose to see when we take the time to focus on what is 'real' to us, and collapse the waves, in order to 'see', to make it 'real'.
Without the observer, reality doesn't exist.
Try explaining the color 'red' to someone without the swatch that matches the exact color you are describing..and even then...how are you able to ascertain that both of you are 'seeing' it exactly in the same shade ? It is only an assumption made by both of you.
If we demand that one another must perceive reality in accord to our controlled, exact perceptions, we will come to the conclusion, that it is impossible to force those perceptions on one another.
It's much more amazing to let humans perceive their own reality, in accord to their own...because there is no other way it is meant to happen.
They will just humor you otherwise, when forced to..
Or..once in a while...you'll have individuals who are able to closely perceive reality in a similar manner...it still isn't exact. But it is close...(0:

Peace out,
Nova

I'm shocked a amazed that nobody has noticed the connection you've made with the material put forth in the film "What the *BLEEP* to We Know?"

I won't tell you what I think of it; you don't want to know. But, you might enjoy it if you are enjoying this thread and haven't seen it.

Following suggestions, I tried to read this thread carefully. My scientific training was in chemistry and earth science, not physics. Nova and another respondent seem at home in quantum mechanics - but you'd have to explain those aspects to me in simple terms (e.g. collapsing wave).

However, I do understand what you are saying about the observer having a lot to do with the "reality" we observe. Even with a rock a meter wide, different observers would have very different perceptions. I understand that painters before Leonardo da Vinci didn't like mountains, thought they were ugly, difficult to traverse, and were not interested in details. They might just see a mass of troublesome material.

A geologist with good petrographic training would probably groove on the rock, and with the help of a knife and a hand lens could write pages, not just on the larger dimensions, but the size and composition of the crystals, lineation, evidences of melting vs "baking temperature " if it was a metamorphic/igneous rock, or dwell on the original environment of deposition if it was a sedimentary rock. In the latter case, a good paleontologist/stratigrapher could identify microfossils and give a pretty fair geologic age date, within 5 million years or less. Then the rockhound would look at the relationship of the rock to the terrain from which it came etc. etc.

A nature-loving poet might admire the rugged features of the rock, and look around it for signs of life, lichens, tiny sprouts from crevices in the rock, beetles and other insects in soil protected from erosion by the massive hunk of earth material. The rock might be seen as a sentinel, an outpost for the mountain behind it.

I tend to be more of an observer, less a creator - except in terms of discerning patterns and relationship when it comes to people stuff. The Russian writer and historian, Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said

Adversity is a treasure that God grants to those willing to accept it.

I guess there have been some profound treasures in your lives in which I recognize my and most peoples' inability to properly empathize. But I respect those experiences deeply.

warmly, NAm

Thank you Nam !
When I spoke with you the first day...I thought you might have an interest in this thread..due to your background..and my perception in how you love 'digging deeper' to find how things work.
Like I said to a friend of mine..humans are not like computer programs..they are not binary..zeroes and ones..
They are complex..and malleable and so is their perception of what constitues real or what doesn't.
Nova

I've read 'What the Bleep'..and I've every other book written about Quantum Physics/Theory and firmly adhere to all the theories principles.
Why ?
Because they are factual and true in what 'matters' most. No pun intended.

If you want to stick with Newtonion Physics..that's perfect for the Biggies..no one is going to debate that issue with you.

If you want to get nitty gritty with subatomic particles..you have to understand Quantum Physics, folks...
You can dig your heals in the sand all your want...it's still going to happen with or without you...because the theories are bigger than you or me..and they don't need you or I to exist..so you can try and understand them now...or refuse to understand them..and keep running with the theories you are familiar with.

I really appreciate your views..but I have created this thread as a way to expand other's minds about the Quantum Physics, Perception and Reality.

It is posted in an area where it is supposed to be posted.
It is posted on a forum where there are individuals who are highly functional, creative, brilliant and are highly capable of understanding this topic as well as many many other subjects and topics such as this.

This thread was not created as a slanderous debate on Quantum Physics/Theory (which by the way, as I know them to be one and the same), nor did I create this thread as a slander to that specific movie or book of the same title.

I do thank all of you, in advance, who do not choose to join this discussion, to remember to be courteous to those of us who would like to expand our minds, and enjoy a discussion once in a while, that would cojoin the ADD/HD mind with another topic.

It will give all those who read this thread the opportunity the chance to our posts and think about what we are saying..
Just like all our threads on here do...

Nova (0:

Nova and another respondent seem at home in quantum mechanics - but you'd have to explain those aspects to me in simple terms (e.g. collapsing wave).


Nam-
Let me get back to you.
I'll post information for you and anyone else who would be interested in this subject.

I note your educational background and achievements, and would never patronize you by not remembering that, or remembering that for any other member on here.

As soon as I do that, I will post the basics of the theories on this thread in an outline form.
Nova

I really appreciate your views..but I have created this thread as a way to expand other's minds about the Quantum Physics, Perception and Reality.

Nova,

Calm down, please. I did NOT post my opinions about this interpretation of Quantum Physics and have no intentions to debate this topic on your thread. I simply thought, given the initial post, that you or others involved in the discussion might enjoy the movie. Sheesh.

If you ask why I included the comment "you don't want to know what I think", it's an effort to distance myself from something that does not promote by views.

I'll leave you alone now; I certainly didn't intend to crash your party.

Nova,

Calm down, please. I did NOT post my opinions about this interpretation of Quantum Physics and have no intentions to debate this topic on your thread. I simply thought, given the initial post, that you or others involved in the discussion might enjoy the movie. Sheesh.

If you ask why I included the comment "you don't want to know what I think", it's an effort to distance myself from something that does not promote by views.

I'll leave you alone now; I certainly didn't intend to crash your party.
Actually, Barb..
My reply wasn't meant to be an attack on you..(0:
I'm sorry if it came across as that.
It was meant to be a polite way so people can enjoy coming on here and speaking about a topic that usually isn't discussed.
Anyone can join this discussion..I would just hope everyone would be courteous..we all can tend to get overheated (myself included)...
I just don't want that to happen..and fingers to start pointing..because this really isn't the thread for that to happen.

I believe if we use the phrase 'In my opinion' quite a lot to this..if we aren't using references..it would be beneficial to eliminate finger pointing..
Thanks Barb.
Nova

I believe if we use the phrase 'In my opinion' quite a lot to this..if we aren't using references..it would be beneficial to eliminate finger pointing..
Thanks Barb.
Nova
'sOK. I won't join in; I can't keep my opinions on the topic to myself and I get your intent. I don't want to debate with people who don't want to debate :).

If anyone DOES want to discuss the science of this topic, I'm sure they will start a thread that clearly states so. Then I'll join in ;).

Have fun. I'm unsubscribing so I'm not tempted!

Coming back to 'Collapsing the Wave' concept..
SB and Stabile..
Have you ever read the theory called Schrodinger's cat?

Nam...this has to do with the how Quantum Physics views matter as a 'wave'..and when the observer views it..or collapses the wave..it becomes 'real' ..

In 1925, French Physicist Loyis de Broglie published that if light waves had a particle nature, then matter had a wave nature.
The way electrons behaved was a lot more wavelike than particle like.
Matter as a wave.

Erwin Schrodinger expanded upon Broglie's idea.
He stated that electrons existed not in planetlike orbits, in in clouds ov various lobed shapes, depending on the energy level..clouds of probability.
Matter itself exists not as matter..but as a wave function. At least until it collapses into the state in which we see it.

What makes the wave collapse?
We create reality by our observation of it no matter what that observation of it happens to be.

In my opinion...
If you look away...even from the laptop or pc..or the homeless man on the street that you choose not to 'see'...they no longer exist to you..

Only when we choose to observe matter, and collapse the quantum wave functions describing it...that is when we allow it to become 'solid reality'...matter...real...or our perception of reality as we know it..
That is my view..That is the Quantum Physics that I've researched and studied for years and years and will continue to study, because it is my passion.
And my perception is that it isn't comprised of pseudo science or sold by 'Snake Oil' scientists..as someone once told me (0:
But....everyone is entitled to their own perception of reality..
And that is the topic of this thread.
We create our own reality.
We create our own amazing success and hinderance in our life.
We choose love or hate.
We choose to perceive Sparklies or Dismals daily.
We create our own reality.
Peace out,
Nova

Heya Nova!

I've written a couple of times about a hunch that I've had, which is just a hunch -- but which satisfies a need that I seem to have.

So -- it's kinda like this.
That the fundamental particles here strings/string theory and the structure of mind -- the logical structure ... are 11-13 dimensional structures of the same form.
That these structures are the most efficient forms -- formed from binary 1 and 0.
Binary 1 and 0, is the only requirement here, and may be seen as an explanation of logic being an intrisic part of reality/nature. Somehow - my hunch is that this connects through to particle/wave duality, as well as mind/body duality.

I've just posted a paper interspersed with 'Strawberry Fields forever' -- the paper identifies a theoretical n-dimensional (11 or 13 -- :-) can't remember) -- which sits at the limit of efficiency for storage/retrieval.
The n-dimensional (11-13) nature of strings, is better (!) defined.

All of this is a little 'way out' -- but heck ... what're we meant to do, stare blankly into space and 'dream of genie' or dream about 'genes, ingenuity, Genesis'.

Hope you're well Nova ... :-)

And don't let the particular issue that you've just mentioned -- get you down ....
you know dat 'derr' one.

:-)

SB.

I'll grab another look at this thread tomorrow -- and see whether I've posted info that's tangential to the thrust of your idea. It's after 2 am here --- and it is Monday !

That can only mean one thing :-( !

Thanks SB,
I'd love to hear about it !
Sleep well- it is late by you.
Nova

You can look at the phenomenon of causing a wave function to collapse by observing it in a much more prosaic way, by simply recognizing that your process of observation presumes a particle interaction with the wave function.

It must collapse, or you won’t observe it; in that sense it all happens by definition, simply because your sample set contains no instances in which a particle interaction doesn’t take place.

Most of the ‘spooky’ stuff happens out there where you consider the implications of the fact that up until that exact moment it wasn’t really ‘something’ at all, but really actually fur honest fur sure just a statistically defined moosh of potential to be something, spread out in a somewhat diffuse way about where that something would be, if it was.

So it’s more accurate to say that the freaky thing is that everything we’re not observing is in this state we wouldn’t recognize, except of course recognizing it would cause everything to collapse into exactly what we expect, so that’s clearly the wrong way to say it after all.

Something useful we can get right of the bat from this is an estimate of how what we call reality is related to ‘real’ reality; clearly, it’s not directly representative of what reality is like when we aren’t observing it, a no-brainer of sorts.

But the implication is that there is some difference between what we believe to be reality, and what is provably going on out there. Our reality is based on our memory of what we can observe, and so everything looks like it’s in the collapsed state all the time to us.

That’s interesting enough, but the really freaky stuff then arises from an entirely different consideration. If we ‘create’ our own version of reality in this way that is known to cause a kind of defect in how we perceive it’s true nature, what other differences might be hiding that we aren’t aware of?

Intimately intertwined with that is consideration of the way that this internal model of reality arises, perhaps warped in unknown ways, and the implications for what we might expect of other mechanisms that must be functioning in our heads.

* * * * *

Some of the sort of ‘out’ experiential stuff Nova’s referring to can be explained easily enough by tracing the way that our experience of being arises, and noting that despite the fact that conscious awareness is confined in a way to a certain region, there is in principle no reason that a valid experience of being couldn’t arise in immediately adjacent regions, which are in many ways identical.

What would be missing is the function that is directly associated with the region that supports conscious awareness, consciousness itself. The nature of such an experience is well described in many different places, from some experiences of dreamlike realities, to extraordinary states brought on by extreme stress, to some religious experiences, to Baba Ram Dass’ heavily borrowed Be Here Now.

We can go further than that, though, by noting that there isn’t any reason in principle that these areas of the brain nearby the neural structures that directly support consciousness shouldn’t be able to do some of the same tricks, such as recognizing interesting patterns in the sensorium, or gestalt sensory input stream.

There is a significant difference in the information that is available in which one could observe patterns, though. The division between conscious areas and those areas immediately preceding it in the hierarchical chain of neural structures that feed sensory information in to our conscious centers is marked by the process that (in effect) ‘filters out’ much of what is available at any given moment.

So you might reasonably expect to perceive patterns that are absent in your stream of consciousness, but without the ordinary quality of conscious awareness of the pattern. Kay calls these patterns ‘whispers’, and that term seems to fit pretty well with my experience with them.

The process of accessing whispers is very much one of making a conscious transfer into our conscious awareness. It feels to us like an exercise in honesty, watching a little bubble form and then slowly watching yourself consciously admit it’s presence as it grows, to finally pop into being as a conscious thought that you can articulate with speech.

There’s more that can be accomplished, including entire complex experiences and interactions that take place in part outside the ordinary conscious context. And at the extreme, it seems likely that there are implications for how we model reality itself, very possibly what SB is referring to.

When we looked briefly at the entire process of perception of reality back at the beginning, one of the possibilities was that there might be other ‘mistakes’ in how our model of reality is formed analogous to the one that quantum mechanics reveals. The primary candidate so far is the possibility of forming more complex models that don’t have the filtering effect of our conscious processes.

In effect we might be able to build models of reality that more closely approximate it’s true nature, which is very likely even stranger than stodgy old quantum mechanics predicts. But all of this implies that we have the tools to form such models, and also that they can take a more complex form than our traditional models of reality.

That last is likely the driver, or at least, the enabler, in our estimation. The structure of the pathways that conduct sensory information in to the conscious centers have been around for at least as long as consciousness itself, and likely far longer.

Developing the ability to model patterns in sensory information in these areas presently (as opposed to any other time in the past) requires hypothesizing a relatively recent change that allows us to form models of increased complexity.

The structural form we call the metamodel web would be the obvious candidate. That’s in our opinion, of course, not a surprise since we were likely the first to identify it, in logical structures used in communication. Which, not coincidentally, are a part of the gestalt of models that define our reality.

So to us, it all hangs together very sweetly, and the only thing we can’t do is predict what it would be like to make that transition permanently, and model reality in a way closer to it’s true nature, and therefore ours as well.

Some of the ordinary stuff we can tell you. For example, we see hawks. That’s not a big deal in itself; hawks are in abundance where we live. But we are the only people we know that see them all the time. We make a point of asking, too; not even local wildlife officers see them as often as we do.

What else? We put out streetlights. We drive along at night, and get into a certain mood, and the next thing you know streetlights start to flick out, just like that. Sometimes whole strings go out; we’re famous for putting out all of the lights on a large freeway bridge, for example.

Other people don’t do this, but they do see us do it occasionally. So how is it happening? Are we doing something remarkable to the lights themselves? I hate to disappoint anyone looking for such things, but you won’t find them in this example. The almost certain explanation is that the streetlights go out all the time, but virtually nobody notices them doing it.

When we’re driving with someone else, our awareness of it we can draw their attention to the sensory information still hanging around in their brains, and if they know how they can retrieve it. In fact, that’s how we do it, too; we realize something happened (a whisper), look at what’s milling around in there, and realize we saw the light flick out.

After some practice, the lag becomes indistinguishable from the normal lag in what we perceive, and we watch them flick out in (almost) real time.

There’s more that we could tell you about that sort of thing, but that’s only our anecdotes, really. The cool stuff is in exploring what we might be able to do with it, and as we said, that’s likely where SB’s whispers are taking him.

Nova’s whispers are directly relevant, too, as are all the little nagging impressions that we can collect in a small lifetime of being. Whatever sum they add up to, in the end it’s not likely to be any more mysterious as to how it arises than our putting out streetlights.

But the things that actually arise from it, including ‘new’ models of reality and our experience of being in it, they’re going to blow away trivial ‘mind control’ of highway infrastructure. And whatever it turns out to be like, it’s likely to be at least as spooky as quantum mechanics. If nothing else, quantum mechanics is just telling it like it is out there.

And I am going to switch to right brain just for a sec..until I can get back on this thread..but I wanted to let you know Stabile..You kick derierre for saying this !!!
Nova

'When we’re driving with someone else, our awareness of it we can draw their attention to the sensory information still hanging around in their brains, and if they know how they can retrieve it. In fact, that’s how we do it, too; we realize something happened (a whisper), look at what’s milling around in there, and realize we saw the light flick out.

After some practice, the lag becomes indistinguishable from the normal lag in what we perceive, and we watch them flick out in (almost) real time.

There’s more that we could tell you about that sort of thing, but that’s only our anecdotes, really. The cool stuff is in exploring what we might be able to do with it, and as we said, that’s likely where SB’s whispers are taking him.

Nova’s whispers are directly relevant, too, as are all the little nagging impressions that we can collect in a small lifetime of being. Whatever sum they add up to, in the end it’s not likely to be any more mysterious as to how it arises than our putting out streetlights.'



Extremely well versed, Stabile.
I try to be articulate..sigh....but in utilizing both hemispheres, simultaneously, at times due to excitability, I come across as Edgar Mitchell and Daffy Duck all rolled up into one (0:

I have also had many experiences that you've described (0:
It's so much easier to understand Quantum Physics if we do observe our surroundings and participate as observers..isn't it ? (0:

In my opinion, what Quantum Physics teaches, is this:

You are not changing the reality out there.
You are not changing the Sports Utility Vehicles, or the slum areas of downtown...
You are changing how you perceive them, or how you think about them or the many other objects that you may dislike... how you feel about things...how your sense the world.

Most of us, have lost the power of observation, as Stabile was eloquent enough to point out.
Observation, and being in the moment of our surroundings, absolutely has a direct impact on our life...and how we choose to 'see' things..absolutely has a direct impact on our lives..

Especially we, who have ADD...who lose our attention span frequently, and do not stay still long enough to observe our surroundings...we tend to be poor observers...
And our perception of our 'real' world can, therefore, be slightly tainted, in my opinion..

Stabile and SB,
I also understand, as well as you two do, that the brain is not capable of deciphering between what it sees 'live' versus what it remembers to have seen.
Our perception of reality is based upon introspection of our internal 'memory mirror'...this 'mirror' reflects pattern identities, per se...habit/memory/past patterns...

And in understanding this, then theory must holds true for the equation of:

Past Memory <LINKS to>Perception <LINKS to>Observation <LINKS to>Affecting Reality


No ?


I'm going to leave you with a quote I found by Mr. J Robert Oppenheimer, on his thoughts pertaining to the electron:

If we ask whether the position of the electron remains the same we must say 'no'
If we ask whether the electron's position changes with time we must say 'no'
If we ask whether the electron is at rest we must say 'no'
If we ask whether it is in motion we must say 'no'

I only posted this quote pertaining his thoughts on electrons only (0:

Peace out,
Nova

Most of us, have lost the power of observation… Observation, and being in the moment of our surroundings…
Yeah, but be fair to yourself, Nova. We all lost that a long time ago. That’s what ‘getting back to the garden’ is all about.

In some ways, what we can find our there is just our selves, left long ago. But we take all of this in here, our ability to be in a conscious context and all that implies, with us.

As much as it’s going to be a sort of homecoming, it’s also bound to be very different.

It’s progress, not egress…

Especially we, who have ADD...who lose our attention span frequently, and do not stay still long enough to observe our surroundings...we tend to be poor observers...
And our perception of our 'real' world can, therefore, be slightly tainted, in my opinion…
There’s at least as large an element of that ‘taint’ being due to us seeing it correctly (but differently) as to not getting it right.

If we form a model that is different in noticeable ways from the normal one, we naturally have a tendency to look around for a reason. Maybe that description you gave, lacking attention and being poor observers, is really a sort of apologia for the fact that we get it right, or perhaps more right…


Past Memory Perception Observation Affecting Reality

No ?
Yes, I think…

What else? We put out streetlights. We drive along at night, and get into a certain mood, and the next thing you know streetlights start to flick out, just like that. Sometimes whole strings go out; we’re famous for putting out all of the lights on a large freeway bridge, for example.

Other people don’t do this, but they do see us do it occasionally. So how is it happening? Are we doing something remarkable to the lights themselves? I hate to disappoint anyone looking for such things, but you won’t find them in this example. The almost certain explanation is that the streetlights go out all the time, but virtually nobody notices them doing it.

When we’re driving with someone else, our awareness of it we can draw their attention to the sensory information still hanging around in their brains, and if they know how they can retrieve it. In fact, that’s how we do it, too; we realize something happened (a whisper), look at what’s milling around in there, and realize we saw the light flick out.
Could you please clarify for me? I don't understand what you mean about putting out streetlights. Do you mean that you are causing them to go out and others can see this happen? Can you then control others' reality as well?

It was supposed to read like this:

Past Memory (which links to) Perception (which links to) Observation (which links to) Affecting Reality

Is that better to comprehend ? (0:
Nova

Could you please clarify for me? I don't understand what you mean about putting out streetlights. Do you mean that you are causing them to go out and others can see this happen? Can you then control others' reality as well?
Anilyze,

Stabile explained that streetlights go out constantly and that hardly anyone notices that happening..but he does when that happens.
And no..only you are truly able to control your own reality.

However..if you are a person who allows others to control you, then you are allowing someone else to control your reality, don't you agree ?
If you allow someone to tell to you that you are too fat, or not smart enough, or not pretty enough, and you believe them, you are also allowing them to control your reality as well.

This is how you can change your perception and change your reality.
By not allowing someone else to control it for you either via the media, or a controlling, or envious or pessimistic person who has an intent that differs than your own.

Again...this thread isn't about selling any BS or pseudo science.
It is intended to expand the mind of any members willing to come on and discuss how to improve their lives.

I for one believe in doing that.
I've been through another incredibly difficult time, and I'm understanding why some situations keep reacurring in my life, and I'm taking responsibility for why they keep happening.
And I'm not going to allow that to happen anymore.
It takes time and effort for that knowledge, but it has been well worth it.
And my life and happiness is well worth it.

Sorry Stabile (0:
Didn't mean to hog your stage, lol !
Oh Crapola/ Blurt Out Disease snuck up on me again !
Nova

It was supposed to read like this:

Past Memory (which links to) Perception (which links to) Observation (which links to) Affecting Reality

Is that better to comprehend ? (0:
Nova
That’s what it seemed to imply, as written. It’s pretty interesting that you’ve correctly separated perception and observation.

There are more links in that chain: …(which links to) Affecting Reality (which links to) Experience (which links to) Memory (which presently becomes) Past Memory (which links to)…

So life is a merry-go-round, after all.

It’s an interesting exercise to consider how the process might get started.

* * * * *

BTW, that was only supposed to represent the right-brained view; it doesn’t in any way invalidate other (usually less boring) views, but compliments them.

It helps to keep practical types off your back, i.e., those who might criticize ‘softer’ styles of expression as somehow being inaccurate.

Sort of like your Oppenheimer quote does…

only you are truly able to control your own reality…
True, but this is where the analog of quantum weirdness sets in at the highest levels.

As soon as you get that idea firmly in hand, that you create your own individual reality, you have to shift mental gears: that is reality, the real reality that you experience as the external physical universe.

The actual physical universe lies somewhere beyond that; what we see as outside is really inside, and that actual external world will always remain unseen to a large extent, regardless of what do to escape the inner ‘outer reality’.

And just when you grasp that model, the inner world that we see as an actual external reality, the whole thing repeats: you’re once again looking at something entirely inside. The actual universe outside out heads is nowhere to be seen.

The merry-go-round spins and spins…

That’s what it seemed to imply, as written. It’s pretty interesting that you’ve correctly separated perception and observation.

There are more links in that chain: …(which links to) Affecting Reality (which links to) Experience (which links to) Memory (which presently becomes) Past Memory (which links to)…

So life is a merry-go-round, after all.

It’s an interesting exercise to consider how the process might get started.

* * * * *

BTW, that was only supposed to represent the right-brained view; it doesn’t in any way invalidate other (usually less boring) views, but compliments them.

It helps to keep practical types off your back, i.e., those who might criticize ‘softer’ styles of expression as somehow being inaccurate.

Sort of like your Oppenheimer quote does…

In my opinion, we are life.
As being observers and interacting in our life.

And this thread doesn't allow for criticism because it is about how we perceive life.
There is plenty of room on this board for debait sections on similar threads if others feel the necessity to do so.
That's the beauty of in having generous moderators and administrators on here. They understand that concept.

I want this thread to be one of beauty and understanding of quantum physics at it's best and basic level, so even if one person walks away believing in themselves...the title to this thread will have been worth the effort..

Nova

It’s your stage, kiddo, not ours. Look up there at the top. See? It says ‘Nova’…


However..if you are a person who allows others to control you, then you are allowing someone else to control your reality, don't you agree ?
If you allow someone to tell to you that you are too fat, or not smart enough, or not pretty enough, and you believe them, you are also allowing them to control your reality as well.
Also true, and once again, an analog to quantum weirdness arises. When this sort of thing happens, it’s controlling real reality. The fact that happens to coincide with your personal internal reality is of no consequence; all of the significance is in the fact that it’s actually real.

The minute you start to think in terms of this stuff happening in your head, you’ve lost your grasp on it once again. It does happen entirely in your head, but it is real, in exactly the way it’s meant by anyone, especially Oppenheimer.

Anyone can argue correctly (in a sense) for the existence of a real external physical reality, such as the one Oppenheimer’s team of Quantum Raiders blew a hole in that morning, that changed reality forever.

That, too, is entirely inside, cooperatively created, manipulated and really experienced by all of us. In a fundamental logical sense, the hole the Quantum Raiders blew in reality was entirely in our heads.

Out there, where things are either weird or much weirder yet, there is no significance at all that one bit of subatomic stuff happens to be associated with another, and those with others to form an atom that might be split on command to change reality. Meaning exists entirely in our minds, arising though the operation of the mind.

Meaning is not an intrinsic property of nature, except insofar as it arises through mechanisms that in turn arise from intrinsic properties of nature. i.e., us.

Follow that chain down through the logic of our construction of reality to the logic of neural function to the logic underlying the biochemical processes that underlie that neural function, and you’re once again back staring quantum mechanics in the face.

Does that mean quantum mechanics really defines logic? It’s possible in a way to say that, but it’s really only because it reflects the fundamental nature of nature itself, and logic is inherent to that nature.

Did you ever see the photographs of the amazingly detailed structure in the fireball the instant after the explosion? Now that’s spooky…

I read this the other day:

How to find your life's purpose in 20 minutes -

Take time out in a quiet place where you won't be interrupted, put pen to paper (or open notepad) and start listing what you think might be your purpose. Write anything, just start the list. Keep it up, even when you think you're getting nowhere with it, push through that feeling. If you're real stubborn it may take as much as an hour BUT as you're writing the list of possible meanings for your life you will get to one that, as it's written, will bring up such emotion in you that it will make you cry.
That one is your purpose.

I haven't tried it yet - mainly because when I'm not asleep I've got noisy sons with noisy friends in my house, effectively nulling any power of thought in my brain - but I want to. Let me know if any of you find your answer this way.
Here's the link where I found the instructions. The author explains it better than I - http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/

Metapatterns-r-us

I refer to metapatterns as repeated layers upon layers of thoughts, memories, beliefs, knowledge, emotions, ...results of associations of data that create patterns within our minds.
In other words-overlapping/interacting patterns representing the sum total of information about an entity, a phenomenon, or an object.


For example...if I were to say the word apple...you hear the word and connect immediately with a huge body of information (data) that you associate with it.

You remember how an apple looks...smells...feels...and tastes.
Maybe you remember the last time you ate one...what you were doing at the time, like watching a show..or sitting outside...

If I say spinach, instead..a completely different network of data comes to mind..different memories..among them some newly formed associations..

What if I were to say I love you...
or I want to have sex with you...
or Trust me....

These are some variations of metapatterns.
Think of all the words associated with metapatterns we encounter daily..
Think of the ones which make us grin and think of those which make us cry or make us angry...
And think of why...

Think of how you still eat apples (if you like apples that is) even if you get a spoiled one every now and then, you just bite around the bad areas..but you don't throw away the entire apple...do you...?
And yet some lump entire groupings of humans because of one bad apple every chance they get..
Or are lumped with the bad apples by another human and never given the chance to prove themselves and don't use their voice because state so...

Just an example...
Metapatterns might be difficult to change....if you don't want to change them..if the familiarity of them over-rides the need to change them...so so many layers..where do you begin....??? (0:
But when they become hindering in one's life..and do not promote healthy growth....

Nova

I read this the other day:

How to find your life's purpose in 20 minutes -

Take time out in a quiet place where you won't be interrupted, put pen to paper (or open notepad) and start listing what you think might be your purpose. Write anything, just start the list. Keep it up, even when you think you're getting nowhere with it, push through that feeling. If you're real stubborn it may take as much as an hour BUT as you're writing the list of possible meanings for your life you will get to one that, as it's written, will bring up such emotion in you that it will make you cry.
That one is your purpose.

I haven't tried it yet - mainly because when I'm not asleep I've got noisy sons with noisy friends in my house, effectively nulling any power of thought in my brain - but I want to. Let me know if any of you find your answer this way.
Here's the link where I found the instructions. The author explains it better than I - http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/

I think anytime you take for introspection, Cham, is important.
Quiet time alone is important..it allows us to find solutions within our minds.
You can't do this in a noisy environment, or when you have stress, i.e. tests, work project, supper to be fixed, home demands etc...
Someone has to take over for about half an hour..and you either have to go outside to a park somewhere, or take a s.l.o.w walk, and just stay still inside...
I haven't found my purpose yet, LOL !
My life is continuous, so my purpose won't be found for a while yet (0:
But like I said..anytime anything makes you think about 'you', and not in a selfish way...it's always a good 'thing'.

Peace out,
Nova

Stabile:"That, too, is entirely inside, cooperatively created, manipulated and really experienced by all of us. In a fundamental logical sense, the hole the Quantum Raiders blew in reality was entirely in our heads."

There's part of lyrics to a song that I adore by Sting
(I love all songs by Sting, as anyone who loves me, knows that) that goes:

Mr. Oppenheimer says we will bury you
I don't subscribe to that point of view

I concur.


Again, the reference to Mr. Oppenheimer, is only pertaining to Stabile's previous comment regarding how we perceive situations.

And I dissent with your claim, Stabile, that this is my stage (0:
True, I started this thread..but it is all of our stage...
As is this Universe.
We're all interconnected, remember ?
I can't do this alone.
I would hope more members join us..not to debait (0:
But to be curious and to question to learn..Just like you and I and SB did initially.

What is the reality of a wave collapsing if an observer is not there to observe it? (0:
I KNOW YOU got that message, Stabile, LMAO !!!!! (0:

I don't feel like my question was answered, but that's okay. I'll just see myself out of the thread. :cool:
I don't think anything but criticism would come of carrying on and you specifically said you don't want to deal with that or hear that. Perhaps a different thread.

I don't feel like my question was answered, but that's okay. I'll just see myself out of the thread. :cool:
I don't think anything but criticism would come of carrying on and you specifically said you don't want to deal with that or hear that. Perhaps a different thread.

Please understand that no one has the right to manage or dictate the flow of a thread, as long as it is posted and follows guidelines; ONLY mods and admins determine whether guidelines are being violated. There is no reason that each and every contribution on this board could not or should not be considered and appreciated. Each and every point of view matters here.

Once again, ONLY moderator's and admins have the ability and right to change the flow of a thread and that is only done to ensure that guidelines are being met. I encourage all to contribute as they feel comfortable.

Anilyze
I spoke on behalf of Stabile, earlier, (please see above) pertaining your thoughts, but I think you might have missed this post... (0:

Stabile will speak for himself, I'm sure, as I've never known him to be at a loss for words, either. (0:

I only logged on so you wouldn't think no one cared about you or how you felt.
I will be back in about a week or so.
Hopefully Stabile, SB and the rest of you will continue to keep this thread going while I'm gone.
Be well,
Nova



Quote:
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=6 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=alt2 style="BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset">Originally Posted by anilyze
Could you please clarify for me? I don't understand what you mean about putting out streetlights. Do you mean that you are causing them to go out and others can see this happen? Can you then control others' reality as well?
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Anilyze,

Stabile explained that streetlights go out constantly and that hardly anyone notices that happening..but he does when that happens.
And no..only you are truly able to control your own reality.

However..if you are a person who allows others to control you, then you are allowing someone else to control your reality, don't you agree ?
If you allow someone to tell to you that you are too fat, or not smart enough, or not pretty enough, and you believe them, you are also allowing them to control your reality as well.

This is how you can change your perception and change your reality.
By not allowing someone else to control it for you either via the media, or a controlling, or envious or pessimistic person who has an intent that differs than your own.

No, I didn't miss that.

I think allowing someone to say something as subjective as how smart or pretty you are is not the same as allowing someone to "alter reality" so that you see lights go out. Would doing the latter require telling someone you're going to make them go out and then they "see" that or say they see that or when they're "made" to go out, do others around (who would allow it to happen as you say) see them go out with no real suggestion?

Hi,

The street lights are an example of something a little different Anilyze.

Imagine your attention as a spot-light, and imagine a stage of players -- something going on on the whole stage, but the spot-light indentifying only a small section -- the section which the director would like you to examine.

Imagine though that you are looking at the whole stage, listening to the actors on the whole stage -- absorbing sensations from all of your senses ---- and then filtering them, so that all that is left -- is the action that has taken place under the spot-light (in your mind -- in conscious awareness).

But just imagine, if you could pop down to wherever it was, that the sensations of the little old man coming onto the stage to pick up the discarded clothes and taking them away in the dark -- was filtered out -- and there, you could crystallize a memory from the perceptual stream -- that wasn't ever given permission to join the conscious awareness party.

...ie to kinda' shift conscious awareness processes in effect, around the brain -- exposing 'whispers' or crystallizing into conscious awareness -- the sorts of 'things' that just don't make the grade -- ordinarily :-)

SB.

No, I didn't miss that.

I think allowing someone to say something as subjective as how smart or pretty you are is not the same as allowing someone to "alter reality" so that you see lights go out. Would doing the latter require telling someone you're going to make them go out and then they "see" that or say they see that or when they're "made" to go out, do others around (who would allow it to happen as you say) see them go out with no real suggestion?
OK, maybe I can make some sense of this for you. The basic misunderstanding is in the illusion (which we all share) that it’s possible for a separate, independent group of observers to exist. None of us are actually independent in this way.

There are two ways to think about reality, as we’ve been talking about it.

One way is it’s the sum of what we see of the Universe. In this case, the Universe is the physical reality that we find clues to by interpreting our sensory input stream. We weave those clues together to form the sum just mentioned.

It’s important to recognize that the sum of all of those clues, what we can imply of the physical world, is the reality we experience as real.

Another way to think of this is from the point of view of how we exist in reality, as a process that defines our experience of being.

Here, we further interpret reality to include others that share the same reality we experience, which allows us to interact in complex ways and communicate. All of this then feeds back to affect the stream of sensory input that we interpret to discover clues to what the external world is like.

Now, when you talk about ‘altering reality’ there are several different ways we could take it.

When someone gives you a compliment at a party it alters your reality and theirs. That change ripples out to affect the reality of all those that can see the change in your reality, including perhaps the person that brought you to the party. The change might then feed back as an interaction that further changes your reality and that of the person that paid you the compliment, and so on.

Lest this seem too trivial, note that everything we’ve been discussing comes into existence through this process, including the elements of physical reality that are associated with those street lights and what Oppenheimer’s Quantum Raiders manipulated.

Meaning and significance are purely internal, so that there is literally no way to speak about anything without bringing it inside. We might imagine an independent world in which a streetlight suddenly stops emitting photons, but we can’t access it. The only reality in which we can experience it flickering out is the internal one.

So that is where it takes place, not for purely practical reasons, but in actuality. We exist in a complicated dance with the external world, observing patterns in our stream of sensory input and interpreting them, then interacting with those patterns and interpreting the patterns that arise from that, and so on.

It would be wrong to say that the elements that comprise the streetlight don’t exist, or that we don’t affect them. But the reality they inhabit is internal, purely logical. The fact that two atoms might be adjacent to each other in some physical structure is irrelevant; their physical existence is only significant at the deepest subatomic levels, where the existence of matter itself is intertwined with the fabric of physical reality.

There is a reasonable argument that even that distinction is arbitrary and false, just pushing the contradiction down to the deepest possible level. The ultimate extension of this idea has our existence responsible for the actual existence of physical reality, in a complicated form of the quantum mechanical principles Nova mentioned in the thread starter.

In this scenario, our process of observation actually brings physical reality into existence. If that were the case, anything we did, even at the highest levels (like offering someone a compliment) could feed back to affect even the arrangement of the wave functions that define physical reality.

Unfortunately, we can’t look at reality to determine if this is how it works, for the exact reasons that we’ve been describing. Is there any way, then, to think about this that makes some sense of it for us? Certainly; we can start by observing that it doesn’t matter whether we cause reality or it causes us, because we know we can’t determine which is true.

One way to understand this is to consider the feedback between nature and our observation of it. It’s easy to see that no matter where we jump into the loop it still closes back on itself. We observe patterns in reality, interact with those patterns and cause new patterns to form, which we can then observe to form the basis of further interactions and so on.

All that tells us is that we can’t know the answer by jumping into the process itself. But considering reality as a kind of social process was only the second of two different ways to think of it. What about the first?

If you look back at that original definition, you’ll see it, too, described a process, one that resulted in a sum of impressions that we form of the nature of nature by observing and interpreting patterns in our stream of sensory input. In effect the only difference is that we have removed interactions with others in a shared common model of reality; we only consider our own interactions with the external physical Universe.

While that does get us closer to the real thing, it doesn’t really fix the problem. We still depend on process, and it’s possible the process itself is what we’re observing. The loop is tighter, but it’s still a loop.

By now it should be obvious that there is no way to observe nature directly without being insulated from it by a process that derives the observation. Once we arrive at that conclusion, we can begin to think about what we can know, specifically the possibility of knowing anything about the nature of nature in an absolute sense.

Appropriately enough, the one place we can see a kind of direct evidence of nature is the process itself. If we exist at all, if an external physical reality actually exists, that process must arise from nature. Anything we can see in the nature of the process itself must reflect some aspect of the nature of nature itself.

That would seem a somewhat different undertaking than the study of quantum mechanics, but in truth they’re merely reflections of each other. Both are processes by which we are probing our stream of sensory input to try to determine fundamental properties of reality.

Your original questions suggested a difference between a kind of weakly defined reality (as reflected in social interactions) and a more strongly defined, perhaps absolute reality in which streetlights emit photons. The problem with such distinctions is that they can only be made in the context of the weaker reality, and (as we’ve just explored) it turns out the distinction can’t be made at all in an absolute sense.

It might seem that avoids the issue, but nothing could be further from the truth. We model the streetlight as real (as existing in a real physical reality) as a convenience. Does it really matter if Oppenheimer’s reality is purely social? One might argue that it couldn’t be so, but unless the principles of quantum mechanics are an integral part of his social reality, all he’s ever going to do in the deserts of Nevada is have a nice picnic.

I mentioned that we noticed streetlights going out when we were in a particular mental state, and that bit seems to have been missed in the discussion. It’s important to recognize that if we’re not thinking about our own reality in the correct way, we don’t see the lights go out, either.

What we do to ‘make’ others see them go out is complicated, in part a process by which they observe how we’re observing reality though their interactions with us, and seek to understand it by trying to assume a similar take on their own internal world.

When we’re ‘seeing’ hawks, or streetlights flickering out, we’re in a kind of wild state, not necessarily off our meds wild, but in the kind of place that we don’t just ‘see’ the hawks. In a sense we merge with them: we’re right there, riding the thermals, sensing the slightest shift of their pinions as they feel their way through the air, as if they were extensions of our selves.

For that moment, we’re up there with them, sharing a part of their sense of being. A person in the car with us when the streetlights go out will do the same trick, if they notice us noticing the lights. It’s built in, one part natural curiosity, one part the drive we feel to keep our internal models of reality synchronized. And because patterns persist in our brains for a short time, you can find that you, too, saw the light go out if you look for it quickly enough, before the resonance fades.

All it takes is a clue that it’s there, and in this case, it’s the pattern that you observe in our response to the light that provides it. Awareness of the phenomenon becomes shared for that moment. If it were something truly new like recognizing the possibility of nuclear fission, that awareness might be unprecedented, a first for the species.

Even though that holds a much more powerful mojo than putting out streetlights, it’s a mistake to think it’s actually real. But it’s also incorrect to think that it isn’t actually a change in our real reality, in the same way that making your front door change color or even disappear would be.

Making streetlights go out by noticing that they do so with some regularity makes a kind of sense; making your door disappear and quantum mechanics are far less sensible by comparison. The spookiness of quantum mechanics is caused by exactly that lack of sensibility; it seems completely unlikely, yet it’s been proven beyond a doubt to be a reasonably good description of reality.

Making magic with your front door is unlikely in the same way, and I hope you can see where we’re going with this. We can determine a kind of probability that something might be true, a measure of its sensibility in the context of our internal reality.

At any given instant the state of your front door can be thought of as a superposition of all possible states, including unlikely ones such as being a different color or not existing at all. Some states have a higher probability of matching what you observe when you turn the corner and it comes into sight, while the probabilities of other states are vanishingly small.

We could determine a function that describes the probability distribution of the set of all possible states of your front door, and until you turn the corner and actually observe it that probability function is all you really know about its state. Your process of observation resonates with the function to collapse it, selecting the unitary state you recognize as your front door.

The neural structures in your brain actually store a model of your front door that is closer to this probability function than you might think. That’s in part why you recognize the door as the same object whether or not it’s open, or even if someone paints it a different color while you were at the store.

The probability function isn’t actually stored as such, but rather is estimated continuously in real time as a kind of ‘super-resonance’, a metapattern that defines your entire state of being in reality at any given instant.

Your process of observation also resonates with the wave function of the particles that comprise the door, collapsing them into the state you recognize. The difference is the social significance and meaning implicit in the object ‘door’ and your expectations of it being in a sensible state, as defined in that context.

The question, then, is whether the same ‘spooky’ properties that arise in quantum mechanics might be reflected in your experience in a social context, and the answer is most definitely. Your impression of the state of your social context is similar to the impression that you have of the state of your physical context, as in the example of your front door.

It seems singular and well defined, but underneath it arises from the collapse of the same kind of probability function as the door, or the individual atomic particles comprising it. The same kind of spooky effects arise when some unexpected circumstance causes the wave function to collapse in a state with one of those vanishingly small probabilities.

The key to discovering quantum mechanics was looking at those apparently contradictory effects and understanding how nature must work for such things to arise. We can do the same on the social level, looking for contradictions in patterns of accepted behavior to find clues to the underlying nature of our internal experience of being.

The same evidence serves to help us understand how the brain works, how neural function gives rise to our experience of being. The parallels to quantum mechanics are too numerous to list, and the significance of the undeniable common connection to the underlying nature of nature can’t be overemphasized.

Ultimately, the answer is this: yes, it’s possible for strange things to happen, whether they’re the result of social interactions or something that seems more profoundly defined, like photons streaming from a hot wire. They might be improbable, but if quantum mechanics teaches us anything, it’s that even the improbable happens sometimes.

Does that help?

Imagine your attention as a spot-light…identifying only a small section -- the section which the director would like you to examine…

…the sensations of the little old man coming onto the stage to pick up the discarded clothes… was filtered out -- and there, you could crystallize a memory from the perceptual stream -- that wasn't ever given permission to join the conscious awareness party…

...ie to kinda' shift conscious awareness… around (in) the brain -- exposing 'whispers' or crystallizing into conscious awareness -- the sorts of 'things' that just don't make the grade – ordinarily…
..but also, imagine that all of this is very ordinary nonetheless.

Better yet, imagine that some people walk around all the time in a world that includes that little old man, and neither you nor they realize that your two worlds are very different.

The truth of what’s happening in any typical crowd is even stranger than that. Reality is a very shaky proposition as long as we’re talking about our conscious experience of being.

BTW: the traditional way to navigate through these non-traditional experiential spaces is by the ‘feel’ of experiences that derive nearby but outside the ordinary conscious context. Many mystical disciplines refer to various kinds of blank, hypnotic or euphoric mental states, often associated with cessation of the normal stream of conscious logical analysis of one’s immediate circumstances.

I described the sense of sharing the hawk’s sense of being for a moment; the feeling of soaring up there as a part of the hawk’s experience is decidedly non-standard. You wouldn’t want to try to balance your checkbook while in that state (for example).

The sense of pulling yourself back into a suitable frame of mind for such a task is the sensation of traversing these nearby non-traditional experiential spaces. Almost all of us do this sort of thing every day without thinking anything of it.

Hi,

The street lights are an example of something a little different Anilyze.

Imagine your attention as a spot-light, and imagine a stage of players -- something going on on the whole stage, but the spot-light indentifying only a small section -- the section which the director would like you to examine.

Imagine though that you are looking at the whole stage, listening to the actors on the whole stage -- absorbing sensations from all of your senses ---- and then filtering them, so that all that is left -- is the action that has taken place under the spot-light (in your mind -- in conscious awareness).

But just imagine, if you could pop down to wherever it was, that the sensations of the little old man coming onto the stage to pick up the discarded clothes and taking them away in the dark -- was filtered out -- and there, you could crystallize a memory from the perceptual stream -- that wasn't ever given permission to join the conscious awareness party.

...ie to kinda' shift conscious awareness processes in effect, around the brain -- exposing 'whispers' or crystallizing into conscious awareness -- the sorts of 'things' that just don't make the grade -- ordinarily :-)

SB.Crystallizing a memory? You're talking about sensory memory. There's nothing magical about that.
The ability to draw people's attention to something they may not have otherwise been paying attention to isn't new.
Check out Sperling's work.

Sperling, G. (1960). Information available in brief visual presentations. Psychological Monographs, 74 (Series 498)

…Better yet, imagine that some people walk around all the time in a world that includes that little old man, and neither you nor they realize that your two worlds are very different…
I should have mentioned that these people also have their own further removed versions of the little old man that they fail to recognize consciously in the same way.

There is always a logical context just outside the limits of the conscious context that contains a rich tapestry of sensory patterns that never make it into the plot of the conscious ‘play’. The original comments were meant to point out that some segments of the human crowd don’t have as strict a limit on what gets processed consciously.

The most obvious class is females. We often speak of the ‘male extra half-model’, an additional layer of modeling that most males seem to apply to filtering what gets through to their conscious context.

In this sense women are generally closer to nature than men. That’s a good thing, even though it’s not always meant in a complimentary way. The advantage of the extra half-model doesn’t look like much compared to the extra wide view of reality you can get without it.

Remember: most people don’t notice the hawks. In a strictly general sense, men shut off a part of their reality in the same way, and lose sight of a view that women retain. As near as we can tell women are perfectly capable of doing the same trick when they feel the need, and in fact often do so when they’re offered an appropriate opportunity.

But perhaps more often women may choose a different solution, one that doesn’t require them to ‘lose the view’. A great example if this is the entirely different management style commonly found in predominately female organizations.

The interesting question is why men generally don’t turn it off when they don’t need it.

There are many other similar dividing principles, different classes of realities related to characteristics other than gender. The most significant is cultural, and these differences in how reality is modeled trigger a kind of natural internal alarm that is the basis of human conflict.

What sets off that alarm is a kind of xenophobia, but perhaps the best way to describe it is as a ‘not-normal alarm’. Any hint of a particular kind of fundamental difference in our realities is seen as not being normal, in a way that drives us to act with no regard for the traditional boundaries of polite social interaction, ordinary respectful behavior, or even cultural taboos.

Contrast that with the almost complete lack of concern for and awareness of the details of the difference between a man’s and a woman’s reality, and you begin to see some of the contradictory effects we can study to better understand how we work, and how our brains work as well.

Some of the differences in the way that ADDer’s generate their internal models of reality set off those ‘not-normal’ alarms, even to an extent in ourselves. That’s only the most obvious of many connections of the ideas in Nova’s thread starter to our experience of having/being AD/HD.

Some fun, eh?

...their physical existence is only significant at the deepest subatomic levels, where the existence of matter itself is intertwined with the fabric of physical reality.
Isn't that circular? Their physical existence is only significant at the subatomic levels where their existence is part of physical existence?

The ultimate extension of this idea has our existence responsible for the actual existence of physical reality, in a complicated form of the quantum mechanical principles Nova mentioned in the thread starter.So the world did not exist until humans did?

In this scenario, our process of observation actually brings physical reality into existence. If that were the case, anything we did, even at the highest levels (like offering someone a compliment) could feed back to affect even the arrangement of the wave functions that define physical reality. What are the wave functions that define physical reality and where do they originate from?


I mentioned that we noticed streetlights going out when we were in a particular mental state, and that bit seems to have been missed in the discussion. It’s important to recognize that if we’re not thinking about our own reality in the correct way, we don’t see the lights go out, either.
You said particular mood.

When we’re ‘seeing’ hawks, or streetlights flickering out, we’re in a kind of wild state, not necessarily off our meds wild, but in the kind of place that we don’t just ‘see’ the hawks. In a sense we merge with them: we’re right there, riding the thermals, sensing the slightest shift of their pinions as they feel their way through the air, as if they were extensions of our selves.

For that moment, we’re up there with them, sharing a part of their sense of being. A person in the car with us when the streetlights go out will do the same trick, if they notice us noticing the lights. It’s built in, one part natural curiosity, one part the drive we feel to keep our internal models of reality synchronized. And because patterns persist in our brains for a short time, you can find that you, too, saw the light go out if you look for it quickly enough, before the resonance fades. You can't know that what you're imagining is the merging of your senses with the hawks. It's what you think it would feel like.

All it takes is a clue that it’s there, and in this case, it’s the pattern that you observe in our response to the light that provides it. Awareness of the phenomenon becomes shared for that moment. If it were something truly new like recognizing the possibility of nuclear fission, that awareness might be unprecedented, a first for the species.

Even though that holds a much more powerful mojo than putting out streetlights, it’s a mistake to think it’s actually real. But it’s also incorrect to think that it isn’t actually a change in our real reality, in the same way that making your front door change color or even disappear would be.

Making streetlights go out by noticing that they do so with some regularity makes a kind of sense; making your door disappear and quantum mechanics are far less sensible by comparison. The spookiness of quantum mechanics is caused by exactly that lack of sensibility; it seems completely unlikely, yet it’s been proven beyond a doubt to be a reasonably good description of reality.Can you state this more clearly and simply? What has been proven beyond a doubt to be reality? That you can make a door disappear?
You said earlier in your post that it can't be proven if we create reality or sense a reality that exists independently... are you now saying that's not the case?


Making magic with your front door is unlikely in the same way, and I hope you can see where we’re going with this. We can determine a kind of probability that something might be true, a measure of its sensibility in the context of our internal reality.

At any given instant the state of your front door can be thought of as a superposition of all possible states, including unlikely ones such as being a different color or not existing at all. Some states have a higher probability of matching what you observe when you turn the corner and it comes into sight, while the probabilities of other states are vanishingly small.

We could determine a function that describes the probability distribution of the set of all possible states of your front door, and until you turn the corner and actually observe it that probability function is all you really know about its state. Your process of observation resonates with the function to collapse it, selecting the unitary state you recognize as your front door.

The neural structures in your brain actually store a model of your front door that is closer to this probability function than you might think. That’s in part why you recognize the door as the same object whether or not it’s open, or even if someone paints it a different color while you were at the store.

The probability function isn’t actually stored as such, but rather is estimated continuously in real time as a kind of ‘super-resonance’, a metapattern that defines your entire state of being in reality at any given instant. Your process of observation also resonates with the wave function of the particles that comprise the door, collapsing them into the state you recognize. The difference is the social significance and meaning implicit in the object ‘door’ and your expectations of it being in a sensible state, as defined in that context.Have you read any of the literature on pattern recognition? There are explanations of how we recognize objects.



The question, then, is whether the same ‘spooky’ properties that arise in quantum mechanics might be reflected in your experience in a social context, and the answer is most definitely. Your impression of the state of your social context is similar to the impression that you have of the state of your physical context, as in the example of your front door.

It seems singular and well defined, but underneath it arises from the collapse of the same kind of probability function as the door, or the individual atomic particles comprising it. The same kind of spooky effects arise when some unexpected circumstance causes the wave function to collapse in a state with one of those vanishingly small probabilities.
What do you mean by the "state of your social context"? Are you talking about a sense of self? If you are, it's widely accepted that our identities of self shift.


Ultimately, the answer is this: yes, it’s possible for strange things to happen, whether they’re the result of social interactions or something that seems more profoundly defined, like photons streaming from a hot wire. They might be improbable, but if quantum mechanics teaches us anything, it’s that even the improbable happens sometimes.I think probability and statistics teaches us that. The very definition of improbable means that there is a low probability, but a probability nonetheless. That's why there's another words for when there's no probability: impossible.
Does that help?Not at all. Your posts are very difficult to read. You say things in the garrulous way possible. I don't know why you don't just simply say what you mean. It's like trying to make sense of a word salad similar to what people with Wernicke's aphasia. They speak fluently and with correct sentence structure, but make no sense at all. I'm not trying to insult you, so please don't take it this way. I'm just trying to describe what it's like for me... describing my reality, if you will.

Crystallizing a memory? You're talking about sensory memory. There's nothing magical about that.
The ability to draw people's attention to something they may not have otherwise been paying attention to isn't new.
Check out Sperling's work.

Sperling, G. (1960). Information available in brief visual presentations. Psychological Monographs, 74 (Series 498)
Not exactly. We’re describing a more general filtering of the sensory stream that excludes all kinds of information, including some that reveals patterns in nature that contradict our ordinary sense of how reality operates.

When we talk about experience outside the ordinary conscious context, we literally mean an experience that doesn’t have the implicit sense of conscious awareness that we’re accustomed to.

You’re describing phenomena that occur primarily within the conscious context. There’s really no ‘bubbling up’ needed, and these are not what we usually mean when we speak of ‘whispers’.

The sort of directed experiments into the nature of perception that I believe your citation refers to (1960 was a long time ago, not so easy to find stuff from back then) were in part probing the edges of the conscious neural context. But all of the information accessed was already entirely inside; the effort required to access it involves directing conscious attention within that context.

You’re right, there’s nothing magic about that. There’s nothing really magic about any of the rest of it, either. But some if it is counterintuitive in the same way that quantum mechanics is, and for similar (or the same) reasons.

Confronting that will always put us face-to-face with apparently contradictory, extraordinary states of being that reflect aspects of nature that aren’t represented accurately in our model of what constitutes normal being. The only way to change that is to change our idea of reality itself in fundamental ways.

Isn't that circular? Their physical existence is only significant at the subatomic levels where their existence is part of physical existence?
Yup. It’s a loop, as we described a bit further on. But we didn’t mean it the way you took it, exactly.

What we’re saying is that significance in a pure physical sense only exists at the point at which physical reality is instantiated, where there’s a sort of implicit and obvious reason for why in this particular bit of space-time an electron pops into existence, while over here there’s apparently nothing at all.

Obviously, whatever’s going on there gives rise to us as well. It’s possible to study the way it’s reflected in the processes that define our existence.


So the world did not exist until humans did?
Not the world. In these models nothing exists without our observation of it.

Some of the contradictions inherent in that may be addressed by noting that this merely removes the burden of existence from physical objects, leaving us with no good words to describe what they’re doing when we’re not around.

But contradictions are the nature of the beast, and all we can hope to do is push them into a different form. Clearly, this idea does that.

It illustrates the problem of being in a real context that is nevertheless purely logical and internal, and in which all meaning and significance (as we normally know it) arises. There isn’t much left for what’s actually out there, is there?


What are the wave functions that define physical reality and where do they originate from?
The idea of where they originate from is kind of out of bounds. Wave functions themselves are integral to the body of theory we call ‘quantum mechanics’; if you’ve heard of the wave-particle duality of light, or the two slit experiment, then you’ve seen a part of it.

‘Where they come from’ doesn’t actually apply; they only arise as a part of a grand description of some aspects of physical reality that is consistent in several different ways, in particular logically and mathematically, which has been proven to more or less accurately describe some properties we can observe in nature.

It’s a fundamental error to ask where they arise, or even if they’re real. They’re a real enough pattern that we can describe with at least three different mathematical systems. But we can’t consider them to ‘be’ reality. Wave functions are strictly an element of our internal human reality, and that’s the only sense that we can consider them as a natural part of the Universe itself.


You said particular mood.
Right; it’s casual language. Most of us recognize the state of a person’s internal experiential context by assessing their ‘mood’.


You can't know that what you're imagining is the merging of your senses with the hawks. It's what you think it would feel like.
…in the same way that you can’t know what I mean by the word ‘in’ at the beginning of this sentence. It’s only your imagination, right? (grins…)

Seriously, this is a good point. Communication is bilateral; the hawk is communicating with us in a particular way that we can interpret with confidence as representing the bits we noted: the feel of the thermal, the sense of the barest motion of the pinions subtly sculpting the path we carve through the air, and so on.

Are we telling you this is what’s in a hawk’s head? Well, yes and no; the only sense to these statements is in our conscious context, which the hawk doesn’t share. But the processes that are at work are plain to see, as surely crafted by neural mechanisms as our own.

The sum of the patterns interpreted in the hawk’s mind establishes a reality in the same way it does in ours. If a hawk wishes to participate in celebrating being in reality with us, it surrenders its right to have a different kind of reality.

We all do that; the big pieces are forged by the process of selective disillusionment, as we’ve mentioned previously. The finer points, the fine-tuning of the actual reality we inhabit, are continuously tweaked as long as we remain resident.

We all of us give up the right to exist in a different reality when we join the human game; it’s the price of entry, that allows us to communicate with others that inhabit the same reality. The hawk occupies a subset of that same reality, which we can share under certain circumstances.

It communicates, primitively but bilaterally, in the same way we do, by revealing its internal models in its interactions with the external world.

If you believe otherwise, try catching one sometime. If you get lucky, try catching another. Then try to figure out where the rest went.

You might be able to get very good at finding and catching hawks, but all that would demonstrate is the extent to which you do share the same reality, and also to which yours is a superior model.


Can you state this more clearly and simply? What has been proven beyond a doubt to be reality? That you can make a door disappear?
No, quantum mechanics.


You said earlier in your post that it can't be proven if we create reality or sense a reality that exists independently... are you now saying that's not the case?
No, we’re saying that your idea of what is ‘real’ is slippery in exactly the way the meaning of those few paragraphs seem to have slipped away from you when you read them.

The problem of what actually exists and what doesn’t will never go away. We may have derived the basis of a hard proof of that, but that’s work in progress. Regardless, it’s clear that resolution of the question is beyond our ordinary grasp.

The question becomes one of whether you can know anything in an absolute sense, and the answer to that appears to be that we can. But we can’t do it by staring earnestly at what reality seems to present us.

In exactly the same way that the development of quantum mechanics followed from trying to understand certain contradictions presented by the ordinary view of nature, we can discern some of the underlying mechanisms by which our experience of being arises by studying contradictions arising in how we perceive and think about reality.


Have you read any of the literature on pattern recognition? There are explanations of how we recognize objects.
Yup. We’re pretty familiar with this stuff. We have our own theoretical framework for this, developed primarily from James Albus’ study of structures in the cerebellum.

Most of the explanations we’ve seen for positional invariance of internal logical models of objects in our environment neglect feedback from the conscious context.


What do you mean by the "state of your social context"? Are you talking about a sense of self? If you are, it's widely accepted that our identities of self shift.
No, not at all, and I have to say that I’m unfamiliar with your idea that ‘identities of self shift’. I suppose I really don’t understand how you’re using the terms here, not your fault.

What we meant is simply that your sense that your social context is singularly defined at any moment is illusory in the same way that your sense that the front door is a discrete physical object is illusory on at least two different levels.

We casually derived the wave function of the front door in the context that you experience conscious being as an example of how the principles demonstrated by quantum mechanics and applicable in a subatomic context are reflected elsewhere in our reality.


I think probability and statistics teaches us that. The very definition of improbable means that there is a low probability, but a probability nonetheless. That's why there's another words for when there's no probability: impossible.
Right, but that isn’t the point. If all we saw revealed in quantum reality were some things that were possible and some other things that were impossible, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

The entire point is that we can prove that some things are possible that nonetheless still appear to be impossible, if we rely on what physicists refer to as our ‘physical intuition’.

Some of what we’re beginning to be able to show about our social context has a similar contradictory character; some of what we know about the processes that give rise to the perception that we are real, existing in an actual physical reality display that character as well.

Part of the point of what we’re saying in this thread is that we can show logically that the contradictory nature of quantum mechanics has common elements with our experience of being in a conscious context, and we can expect similar contradictory views to arise.

As indeed, many have already noted.


Not at all. Your posts are very difficult to read. You say things in the garrulous way possible. I don't know why you don't just simply say what you mean. It's like trying to make sense of a word salad similar to what people with Wernicke's aphasia. They speak fluently and with correct sentence structure, but make no sense at all. I'm not trying to insult you, so please don't take it this way. I'm just trying to describe what it's like for me... describing my reality, if you will.
(grins…) I don’t think it’s possible for you to insult us. We don’t know you that well.

I think the key phrase here is, “…why you don't just simply say what you mean?”

That is the simple expression. Your impression that it’s simpler, or should be simpler, is in part what Nova’s thread starter addresses. You’re in good company; this ‘defect’ in human perception is indeed a human attribute, shared by all.

Everybody that works with quantum mechanics retains their physical intuition, and from that perspective it remains as spooky and counterintuitive as it was at first sight.

We experience a similar effect working with models of how the human brain and mind function to give rise to all of this, and everything else as well. We don’t expect that to ever diminish.

A simple rule that we always apply is If it seems simple, we’re probably missing something important.

The same evidence serves to help us understand how the brain works, how neural function gives rise to our experience of being. The parallels to quantum mechanics are too numerous to list, and the significance of the undeniable common connection to the underlying nature of nature can’t be overemphasized.


one word:
neuropeptides (0:

As in the chemicals released by our brains that allow for the rush that is achieved (endorphins) when are we 'addicted' to 'something'.

Whether that may be drugs, alcohol, sex, love with our other half during the infatuation phase of the relation (hopefully some of us are evolved enough to go past this point..I have never had this luxery, myself), debait, wallow, intellectual conversations, limelight....
The list goes on and on and on...

The definition of addiction (BLAH...this onomatopoeia is just my own personal reflection of one resource, and it is only one resource, of a plethora available, thank you.) won't be found in the DSM-IV..:

An addiction can be defined as:

Something you can not stop doing.

Think about it before the 'squirrel chattering' starts (0:


Thanks, and ya'll be well.

Nova

Okay, I know I said I’d leave you guys alone, but I’m obviously not the only one itching to debate this topic, so I’m jumping in.<o ="">

</o> This interpretation of quantum mechanics is not testable, and therefore one must rely on purely on faith for any hope of understanding.

That is the simple expression. Your impression that it’s simpler, or should be simpler, is in part what Nova’s thread starter addresses. You’re in good company; this ‘defect’ in human perception is indeed a human attribute, shared by all.
…..
Everybody that works with quantum mechanics retains their physical intuition, and from that perspective it remains as spooky and counterintuitive as it was at first sight.
…..
A simple rule that we always apply is If it seems simple, we’re probably missing something important. I think this is insulting to Anilyze’s intelligence. I have yet to see a complex topic that couldn’t be explained in simple terms/plain English, and that includes quantum mechanics. Whether or not something is counterintuitive is independent of its complexity.
<o =""></o>
BTW, How is quantum mechanics counterintuitive? I see nothing counterintuitive about it.

The spookiness of quantum mechanics is caused by exactly that lack of sensibility; it seems completely unlikely, yet it’s been proven beyond a doubt to be a reasonably good description of reality. <o ="">

</o>While I agree that there exists empirical support for quantum theory, it has not been, and cannot be, “proven”. We’re back to that old chicken & egg argument – how do you prove?

Not exactly. We’re describing a more general filtering of the sensory stream that excludes all kinds of information, including some that reveals patterns in nature that contradict our ordinary sense of how reality operates.<o ="">
</o>
filtering of sensory information = selective attention<o =""></o>

What is being contradicted? Give an example. What is the definition of “ordinary sense”?<o =""></o>

When we talk about experience outside the ordinary conscious context, we literally mean an experience that doesn’t have the implicit sense of conscious awareness that we’re accustomed to. I’m assuming you meant “explicit”, not implicit. We call this subliminal processing. What does this have to do with quantum mechanics?

Wave functions are strictly an element of our internal human reality, and that’s the only sense that we can consider them as a natural part of the Universe itself. The entire point is that we can prove that some things are possible that nonetheless still appear to be impossible, if we rely on what physicists refer to as our ‘physical intuition’. The same evidence serves to help us understand how the brain works, how neural function gives rise to our experience of being. The parallels to quantum mechanics are too numerous to list, and the significance of the undeniable common connection to the underlying nature of nature can’t be overemphasized.

one word:
neuropeptides (0: What does quantum mechanics have to do with neuropeptides?

Quantum mechanics does not dictate any of this.

<o>
</o> This interpretation of quantum mechanics is not testable, and therefore one must rely on purely on faith for any hope of understanding.I think this is the bottom line... It's just a belief that cannot be tested. In other words, it's not falsifiable, so it can't be tested scientifically.

I think this is insulting to Anilyze’s intelligence. I have yet to see a complex topic that couldn’t be explained in simple terms/plain English, and that includes quantum mechanics. Whether or not something is counterintuitive is independent of its complexity.
<o></o>Thanks. I agree that it can be stated more simply. I think I've read a good deal of scientific research, journal articles, textbooks, etc and I haven't encountered anything that couldn't be summarized or simply stated either.

Seems like this way of stating things is like the smoke and mirrors in a magic show. Unless something's being intentionally hidden or misrepresented, it should be stated plainly.

What does quantum mechanics have to do with neuropeptides?

Quantum mechanics does not dictate any of this.<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

__________________
Barb



Why don't you graciously explain this to us, Barb ? (0;

I'd like to hear your view as well, since I tend to gab so much..
Nova

What does quantum mechanics have to do with neuropeptides?

Quantum mechanics does not dictate any of this.<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

__________________
Barb



Why don't you graciously explain this to us, Barb ? (0;

I'd like to hear your view as well, since I tend to gab so much..
Nova
How can I explain how neuropeptides and quantum mechanics are related? I don't see how they are.

My view? My view is that this is a distortion of quantum physics to support a metaphysical viewpoint. I stole the words from someone else, but it's a pretty accurate description of what I think. Murray Gell-man calls it "Quantum Flapdoodle".

Barb,
I tried to look up 'Quantum flapdoodle' in Websters dictionary and I couldn't locate the definition (0:

So, with that being said, here are a few quotes you may want to pontificate upon while creating more colorful words to define Quantum Theories (0:

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized.
In the first, it is ridiculed.
In the second, it is opposed.
In the third, it is regarded as self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer


A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light. But rather because its opponents eventually die.

Niels Bohr

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world."
Buddha


Please remember, to be courteous to all members who wish to participate in this discussion, and remember that this board is gracious enough to allow for members to start their own thread, if they so choose, on any baiting or hostile disagreements, pertaining to any replies (0:
Please do not use this thread to undermine, or patronize, mine, or any other member's replies.
This thread was not created to be used as a form of 'hit and run'.
It is an intelligent thread, and is created and maintained, by highly intelligent members as a source of education.
As are all threads on this board.
Thank you for being courteous to the rest of the members who choose to expand their minds on this forum.


Thoughts and Emotions -and how they are substanially linked in how we choose to perceive situations, and how neuropeptides come into play (emotional reactionary patterns, we are 'addicted' to, that become habitual)

Thought is a great dynamic force with tremendous power. An simple atom radiates an electromagnetic field or EMF. A molecule radiates yet a stronger EMF. A large number of molecules form a cell in which the human brain contains at least 200 million such cells. These atomic waves seem to include the emotions and are thought to be superimposed within the EMF frequencies. These vibrations are sent out into the physical world extending outward into the "non-physical" world. The historian Arthur Koestler refers to this as the capacity of the human psyche to "act as a cosmic resonator". Thoughts paired with Intent equals a very powerful mixture of "mental stuff".

Thoughts and emotions happen as a result of you interactions with the world based on your perception of past experiences. It how you perceive this world of events that form our thought processes that become reactions and behaviors, unconsciously or consciously. Your thoughts create your feelings, emotions, behavior and what you attract and magnetize into your life.

In minding your thoughts, there is also a Japanese principle known as the "Kototama Principle" meaning "word soul". When one develops the right connection to language and words, this deep connection "becomes a 'mirror' against which one reflects his concerns in order to have a better sense of their nature, place, and relationship to a totality." This "hidden" philosophy is just now re-emerging as our understanding how thought and feelings affect our realities.

Emotion is the fuel of creation...... "everything you dwell upon in your mind and heart, everything that you believe in, is drawn into physical manifestation. This is happening more and more quickly. As the masters have advised you for thousands of years"...

The very fabric of space/time that makes up the world is composed of threads and we can/are collectively changing it and bending it to the will of a love-centered reality. Not only an emotion, Love is a genuine power in and of itself. The world isn't set in "physical laws" or "immutable constants" it is ever changing, every fluctuating and we do change that with the tiniest thought.

"Thank goodness for feelings that create our emotions. Feeling and emotion are what will ignite your desire to know the love that is within you."
Alana, The Seven Sacred Steps

The Brain

"The human brain being formed of an inestimable number of spherical resonators, termed in medical science nerve cells, forming the gray matter of the brain, these minute spheres take up the thought force which permeates all space in endless waves, eternally active. This force we term atomolic; the cells are composed of *atomoles, whose vibratory motions under the action of universal thought force result in the phenomena of thought, cognition, intellection, etc. Understanding this, no one should continue to feel surprise at the caring emotions and impulses of a human being in an undeveloped state, as only by developed WILL can the motions of this force be directed."
(*Atomoles are elementary units of matter uniform in size and weight, and exist in solid, liquid, gaseous, and isolated forms. "Keely and His Discoveries" by John Ernst Worrell Keely)

A physics theory that was predicted in 1925, that resulted in the ever popular example of superconductivity in 1995, is The Bose-Einstein condensation.

This condensation is viewed as the most highly ordered structures in nature. This property is equivalent to a laser but the particles behave as a single particle and seem to possess a form of free will. The energies merge to become part of the whole. The Bose-Einstein condensate was later applied to living tissues and the results were astonishing for quantifying human consciousness.

In 1989 the British psychiatrist Ian Marshall, showed whenever the condensate in the brain is excited by an electrical field, conscious experience occurs. In his studies, the millions of neurons in the brain would maintain coherent thought processes, the neurons working as one structure. In other studies, it has also been determined by the encephalograph that all reasoning processes are actual waveform transmissions. Additionally, quantum wave function of the brain is not completely random and seems to have a "phase difference" which implies the parallels of mind and body to the duality of the wave and particle. The wave aspect of nature yields the mental, the particle aspect of nature yields the material.

Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigione of the University of Texas is studying the "spontaneous formation of coherent structures," how chemical and other kinds of structures evolve patterns out of chaos. Karl Pribram, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, has proposed that the brain may be a type of "hologram". He theorizes the brain is a pattern and frequency analyzer which creates reality by interpreting frequencies from beyond space and time dimensions. On the basis of this model, the physical world "out there," is, in Pribram's words, "isomorphic with"--that, the same as, the processes of the brain.

Again, referencing to the physicist David Bohm, he writes, "in the deep structure of the brain. The new meaning will produce different thoughts, and therefore an entirely different function of the brain...As this changes, the whole universe changes."

"Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do,when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire."
Orison S. Marder

In a New York Times article dated April 26th, 2003, Tenzin Gyatso of Dharamsala, India, wrote a column about his recent investigation of emotions and behavior. This being a recent publication of the science of the emotions and the mind in Buddhism, in which many such similar scientific studies have been done.

"It is for this reason that I visited the neuroscience laboratory of Dr. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin. Using imaging devices that show what occurs in the brain during meditation, Dr. Davidson has been able to study the effects of Buddhist practices for cultivating compassion, equanimity or mindfulness. For centuries Buddhists have believed that pursuing such practices seems to make people calmer, happier and more loving. At the same time they are less and less prone to destructive emotions.

Dr. Davidson tells me that the emergence of positive emotions may be due to this: Mindfulness meditation strengthens the neurological circuits that calm a part of the brain that acts as a trigger for fear and anger. This raises the possibility that we have a way to create a kind of buffer between the brain's violent impulses and our actions.

Dr. Davidson using electroencephalographs to measure brain waves. According to Dr. Davidson, the abbot had the highest amount of activity in the brain centers associated with positive emotions that had ever been measured by his laboratory. After eight weeks, Dr. Davidson found that in these people, the parts of their brains that help to form positive emotions became increasingly active.

But reflection shows that in our lives much of our suffering is caused not by external causes but by such internal events as the arising of disturbing emotions. The best antidote to this disruption is enhancing our ability to handle these emotions."

Laughter:

We have all heard that laughter is the best medicine. The emotions that come from humor and laughter help people cope better with the stress of daily life. Studies have shown that people who laugh often live longer and are much healthier compared to those that find it difficult to laugh due to life's circumstances and personality types. This common reflex affects the body by activating the cardiovascular system, helps lower blood pressure and also exercises the muscles of the body. Research has shown that parts of the limbic system are involved in laughter as well. The limbic system is a primitive part of the brain that is involved in emotions and helps us with basic functions necessary for survival.

Dr. Lee S. Berk, at Loma Linda University School of Medicine and Public Health in California, and endocrinologist Stanley Tan, studied various groups of adults and found that laughter also stimulates our endocrine system and the pituitary gland, which in turn, stimulates release of endorphins and enkephalins, natural painkillers that are chemical cousins to opiates such as morphine and heroin. They found that both arms of the immune system got a boost out of laughter. Other studies have shown laughter improved functioning in those with breast cancer, marital stress and also those in the grieving process.

Silvia Cardoso, a behavioral biologist reports, "Repeated short, strong contractions of the chest muscles, diaphragm and abdomen increase blood flow into our internal organs, and forced respiration--the ha! ha!--makes sure that this blood is well oxygenated. Muscle tension decreases, and indeed we may temporarily lose control of our limbs, as in the expression "weak with laughter". It may also release brain endorphins, reducing sensitivity to pain and boosting endurance and pleasurable sensations. Some studies suggest that laughter affects the immune system by reducing the production of hormones associated with stress, and that when you laugh the immune system produces more T-cells."

Recent surveys indicate that laughter can enhance the quality of our conversations and productivity and social interactions. It simply makes people feel closer to each other. In his book, "Laughter: A Scientific Investigation", Provine says "that laughter is the oil in the social machine, helping human interactions run more smoothly".

Laughter sounds also have on emotional responses in listeners. Recent studies "support the notion that one important function of laugh acoustics is to influence the emotional responses of listeners," the researchers from the Acoustic Society of America meeting conclude.

I had stated in the Frequency and Sound portion of this site, "The universe consists solely of waves of motion...There exists nothing other than vibration." relates Walter Russell in "A New Concept of the Universe". In vibratory physics, the principles that make sound into harmonious music are the same principles that govern all associating vibrations throughout the universe - and that includes everything that there is. Vibrations are dynamic things not unlike "living" things since they are in a mutual state of "harmony".

Biology:

"David Bohm summarizes M=E=I formula (matter = energy = information) when he writes: 'there is a limitless amount of information enfolded into the structure of the universe and we are a manifestation of that energy. Every body event, whether the workings of enzymes, neuropeptides, hormones, blood, or skin, is an info-energetic event.'"

"Science has discovered startling new possibilities regarding how we think, feel, love, heal and find meaning in our life...research suggests that the heart thinks, cells remember and that both of these processes are related to an as yet mysterious, extremely powerful, but very subtle energy. Science may be taking the first steps to understanding more about the ancient shamans/healers/leaders - the energy of the human spirit and the coded information that is the human soul."

Many cardiologists have combined their knowledge of biology and new physics - the study of subtle energy and the invisible atomic world and modern cardiology. Energy cardiology is based on the "dynamic systems memory theory", the idea that all systems are constantly exchanging mutually influential energy, which contains information that alters the systems taking part in the exchange. From the "Heart's Code" web site, "Our billions of heart cells are able to form a quantum energy generator...by laws of the quantum world such as nonlocality...the info-energetic connection that constitutes all systems in the Universe." ffice:office" /><O:p></O:p>
Kinesiology
Another field, Kinesiology, has made strides in determining feelings and emotions on the well-being of the body. David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD. conducted a 29 year study that demonstrated the human body becomes stronger or weaker depending on a person's mental state using kinesiology, or muscle testing. Dr. Hawkins developed a scale of 1-1000 that maps human consciousness: 200 (or 20,000 cycles per second) weakens the body and from 200 to 1000 makes the body stronger. At various points above this are intellect, psychology, science, genius, heart and enlightenment which moves us from duality to non-duality. This Map of Consciousness is based on a logarithmic scale which means there is an enormous increase in power with even a small increase in the number on the scale.

The lowest vibration rate is described as "Force". This exhibits a weak kinesiologic response with a vibration under 200 which includes shame, then guilt, apathy, grief, fear and anxiety, craving, anger and hate. All these feelings weaken you. Levels at 200 and above are described as "Power," which elicit a strong kinesiologic response. At 250 you have neutrality and trust - this strengthens you.

Going up on the scale there is: willingness, optimism, acceptance and forgiveness, reason and understanding, love and reverence, joy and serenity.

Courage calibrates at 200
Willingness calibrates at 310
Reason calibrates at 400
Unconditional Love calibrates at 500
Joy, and the ability to communicate healing energies to another calibrates at 540
Gratitude calibrates at 560
Praise at 570
Peace and bliss is rated at 600
Enlightenment and Ineffability at 700-1000.

Dr. Hawkins conjectures the great scientists such as Newton and Freud calibrate at 499 and Carl Jung calibrates at 540, the highest level of the intellect we have known to this point.

At the highest end of the kinesiological scale of human experience, 600 to 1000, are qualities that transcend duality. This is the level of "enlightenment" and "pure bliss" of consciousness.

The highest calibration in this study was 700 by Mother Theresa who exuded peace and joy by her mere presence. Dr. Hawkins reports that Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, the greatest prophets recorded in human history all calibrate at a scale at 1000 along with their messages of Unity, Peace and Love calibrated near 1000. <O:p></O:p>

Cycles Conversion of Hawkin's scale illustrate:<O:p></O:p>

<TABLE style="mso-cellspacing: 0in; mso-padding-alt: 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt 3.75pt" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=1><TBODY><TR><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #ece9d8; PADDING-RIGHT: 3.75pt; BORDER-TOP: #ece9d8; PADDING-LEFT: 3.75pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 3.75pt; BORDER-LEFT: #ece9d8; PADDING-TOP: 3.75pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: #ece9d8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent">Hawkin's Scale

100
200
300
500
1,000<O:p></O:p>





</TD><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #ece9d8; PADDING-RIGHT: 3.75pt; BORDER-TOP: #ece9d8; PADDING-LEFT: 3.75pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 3.75pt; BORDER-LEFT: #ece9d8; PADDING-TOP: 3.75pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: #ece9d8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent">Cycles P/Second = Hz

10,000
20,000
30,000
50,000
100,000<O:p></O:p>





</TD><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #ece9d8; PADDING-RIGHT: 3.75pt; BORDER-TOP: #ece9d8; PADDING-LEFT: 3.75pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 3.75pt; BORDER-LEFT: #ece9d8; WIDTH: 52.5pt; PADDING-TOP: 3.75pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: #ece9d8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" width=70>kHz or kc/s

10
20
30
50
100 <O:p></O:p>





</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

Please reference the section on Frequency (http://www.starstuffs.com/physcon2/freqamp.html) which has a listing of comparative measurements<O:p></O:p>

The frequencies from light, sound, to physiological functions (as demonstrated in the Frequency section) along with bio-scientific studies show definite resonances in all things and ultimately shows the dual nature of our physical being and how we are energetically linked to everything else.

"Energy waves build the human body by radiation in intrauterine life, as a pattern of energy currents, and continue to maintain it by this energy flow as wireless currents."
Dr. Randolph Stone -Polarity Therapy Book 1

Prayer

To "feel" combines our emotions merged with our thoughts - energy follows attention. When we pray we realize and acknowledge there are many possibilities and by the act of praying-focusing-feeling, we direct that energy into an opportunity that we *choose* to experience - of all the possibilities available.

A Tibetan abbott said on prayer, "Feeling - the object of each prayer is to achieve "feeling". When we pray, we feel on behalf of all beings, everywhere. We are all connected. We are all expressions of one life. No matter where we are, our prayers are heard by all. We are all the same one."

"Unless you, yourself, enter the image and think from it, it is incapable of birth."
Neville

Gregg Braden and others have spoken about the power of prayer and the physics principles at work. "Through the language of time waves, quantum outcomes, and choice points.." we determine our future probabilities. "Our individual choices merge into our collective response to the present" whose rings span far into the depths of time/space."

The matrix grid of consciousness, Jung's collective unconscious, is the nervous system for the earth, our thoughts effect this system and everything contained therein.

The universe can be crafted with a simple working of your will. Mages and mystics and shamanic healers have taught this truth throughout the ages. Thoughts and feelings manifest itself into reality. This makes us co-creators with the universe. Quantum physics even suggest that by redirecting our focus and our attentions we can bring a new course of events into action.

"Everything we think, feel, and do has an effect on our ancestors and all future generations and reverberates throughout the universe."
Thich Nhat Hanh

A tiny emotion becomes a thought of a one raindrop, thousands of drops turn into a flood. There is true magic-alchemy in the power of will, we shape the world by our desires, thoughts, intents and actions. So in relation to mankind's "ascension" it is the product of many working, thinking, acting, and living as a higher unit of collective thought energy processes.

Kabalistic teachings there's a saying, "think well of everyone". In Kabbalah, what we do in this world always has effects in the spiritual dimension. There is also the term "cycle of reciprocity": what is going out from your mind is always coming back to you.

Dhyani Ywahoo, a Cherokee spiritual teacher, says it beautifully: "Be aware of the power of mind, remember that we are all in process of unfolding. We can choose, we can weave; we hold the form, we dance it, and the moment comes when it is recalled in each of us...By the power of its sound it is a reality...The Beauty Path, the Great Peace, is the meeting of ourselves, the perceptions of our minds, and the cessation of those waves and thought forms that create discord. Let us sow the seed of peace in all our actions, thoughts and words."

The Spiritual Path assists "mortal man in gaining and understanding of his/her place within the Divine Order and allows mankind to experience the greater purpose of evolution from a more Universal perspective."
Akhenaton

"When mankind perceives reality through an open, evolved heart chakra, mortal man experiences reality by "feeling" the energy states of that reality." We can safely say that real truths cannot be said, talked about or even written, they must be lived, experienced and felt."

"Remember to be cautious with your thoughts and your words; they are the tools of creation.
Remember cause and effect.
Remember there is nothing more important than love."
(Mary Sparrowdancer - "The Love Song of The Universe") <O:p></O:p>

<O:p></O:p>

Barb,
I tried to look up 'Quantum flapdoodle' in Websters dictionary and I couldn't locate the definition (0:
So, with that being said, here are a few quotes you may want to pontificate upon while creating more colorful words to define Quantum Theories (0:
If you read my post again, you'll find I don't claim to be the source of this term. It's the creation of a well-respected physicist named Murray Gell-man. The definition: distortions of quantum theory to support a mystical viewpoint.


Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized.
In the first, it is ridiculed.
In the second, it is opposed.
In the third, it is regarded as self-evident.
Playing the victim does not refute criticism.

Other things that have been ridiculed and/or opposed:
-- Cold Fusion
-- Extra-Sensory Perception
-- Astro-Projection
-- Crystal Power
-- Prestidigitation



A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light. But rather because its opponents eventually die.

This isn't science. Science, by definition, requires testability. Faith-based concepts don't fall under the realm of science.

It's been brought to my attention that, while Nova invited me to post my view, this was probably a curtesy and not a desire to feul a debate on this topic.

I'd like to apologize for crashing this thread when I said I would not, and invite anyone who would like to debate the validity of this topic to join me on another thread in the private debates area.

Requests for passwords for the debates forum should be sent via private message to its moderators, who, I believe, are "wheezie" and "meadd823".

Nova,

Holy man. That was impressive.

I'd like to tell you that I read it all and understood it, however, the part I related to the best was about the Univ. of Wisc;Madison. That place rocks. Saw the Stones there.:)

Seriously, that was one of the most insighful posts I've ever (almost completely ) read; and not because of the complicated subject matter (no pun intended).

You've included references,which, as you know, I really like to see.

But even more so, your going to visit researchers shows the passion you have for the field.

The week I spent training in Door County (beautiful place btw) was completely out of pocket.

Since we don't itemize, we coudn't deduct it. However, it was worth it and I'd do it again in a heart beat.

The point is you went out of your way to speak with someone who's a leading reseacher in the field.

That's cool.

Leaving you with some more humor; we were shopping yesterday and my wife pointed out how our kids saw a book they wanted to get me for Christmas.

It was a new publication entitled, READING SUCKS by Beavis & Butthead, and contained the moving short piece, "Chicken Soup for the Butt."

My response was a dignifed "Yeees;" followed by "You know I still want the Mike Judge dvd collection, complete with the bad videos?"

Thanks again for the obvious effort and passion you put into your work.

tc
mctavish23 (Robert)

p.s.

How many people do you know who could manange to slip B & B references into this post?:)

Hey McT-
Considering how I never cared for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, I really think the 'Chicken Soup for the Butt' book, would be more my style, too (0:

You're not the only one who gets bored fast..remember why we're all on this board, LOL !!
My threads tend to be longwinded..it's easy to write them, because I'm writing them..

When I have to read a longwinded thread..I have to read my own..as well as any long thread in increments..as in coming back to it, or any book over and over and over..
So yes...I get passionate because it does take an ENORMOUS amount of effort to read these books...or any books of which I have studied from.

Quantum, Psychology, Criminal/Forensics, Sociology- reading is a HUGE effort, and I, also have to do it entirely in small, painstaking increments.

I totally admire you, myself, and everyone else who is taking the time, to overcome these hurdles, McT.

It takes a HUGE effort to create a positive reality, (taking an entire month to read and re-read one book so to understand it) and not buy into the easy route, of just giving up, and playing the victim game.

Mail me a copy of that Chicken Soup for the Butts when you get it, will you (0;

Nova

np :)

Well said about the Forum members.

Looking back, the only things I've ever re-read were the Letherstocking Tales, by James Fenimore Cooper, the first Castanada and ADHD and the Nature of Self -control.


I admire your tenacity.

Nice website (starstuffs), Nova!

Lot of work and reading and integration.

Remindes me a little of the Whole Earth Catalog -- but, now I'm dating myself.

McT- Carlos Castanada? In honor of his passing, I read his final book (I think)-- forget the title-- which resolves all-and-everything into a platonic-ideal template of humanity -- sad, the old trickster resorts to old tricks.

Cheers

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized.
In the first, it is ridiculed.
In the second, it is opposed.
In the third, it is regarded as self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light. But rather because its opponents eventually die.
Niels Bohr


Hey Nova,

Thanks for those quotes.
They're real pertinent.

A general point that I try to adhere to, is to drill down -- as far as is necessary, until at the depth of thought of your partner in communication -- and only then to develop the model - with that partner -- being on the same page is just that important.

Probably should also drop that quote -- from Hyperion of Bertrand Russell ... here (and maybe a few other of my favourites - that impinge).

It bears repeating -- and is probably best dwelt upon, by those that feel 'sure' ... we haven't even begun to scratch the superficial outer surface off the thein exterior facade of 'internal reality' --- but I do believe that with a little free-thinking ... that we might be able to punch through that facade.

Anyway great quotes ... all pointedly used:

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

************************************************** *
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
OR
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
************************************************** *

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

************************************************** *
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
OR
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
************************************************** *

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

SB.

The biggest shame -- when one cannot control one self sufficiently to choose appropriate words to echo one's stance.

In 1989 the British psychiatrist Ian Marshall, showed whenever the condensate in the brain is excited by an electrical field, conscious experience occurs. In his studies, the millions of neurons in the brain would maintain coherent thought processes, the neurons working as one structure. In other studies, it has also been determined by the encephalograph that all reasoning processes are actual waveform transmissions. Additionally, quantum wave function of the brain is not completely random and seems to have a "phase difference" which implies the parallels of mind and body to the duality of the wave and particle. The wave aspect of nature yields the mental, the particle aspect of nature yields the material.

Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigione of the University of Texas is studying the "spontaneous formation of coherent structures," how chemical and other kinds of structures evolve patterns out of chaos. Karl Pribram, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, has proposed that the brain may be a type of "hologram". He theorizes the brain is a pattern and frequency analyzer which creates reality by interpreting frequencies from beyond space and time dimensions. On the basis of this model, the physical world "out there," is, in Pribram's words, "isomorphic with"--that, the same as, the processes of the brain.

Again, referencing to the physicist David Bohm, he writes, "in the deep structure of the brain. The new meaning will produce different thoughts, and therefore an entirely different function of the brain...As this changes, the whole universe changes."


Nice work Nova :-)

SB.

np :)

I admire your tenacity.
Well..at this point...from a personal perspective, considering my health, I only have one other choice. I have only tenacity left, correct, in order to become healthy again, Counselor (0;





I have to take time off for personal reasons, but I'll see y'all when I get
back (0:
Keep laughing, y'all.
It's scientifically proven to be good for your heart.

Nova

Nice website (starstuffs), Nova!

Lot of work and reading and integration.

Remindes me a little of the Whole Earth Catalog -- but, now I'm dating myself.

McT- Carlos Castanada? In honor of his passing, I read his final book (I think)-- forget the title-- which resolves all-and-everything into a platonic-ideal template of humanity -- sad, the old trickster resorts to old tricks.

Cheers


Thanks, Sweetie !

Carlos fought Ol' Don quite a bit, didn't he ?
But then again..everybody has to learn at their own pace...otherwise everyone would be on the same plane..

The one thing I did learn though, is that you can't really teach someone, something, unless they are ready to learn the concept...

and those 'wow' moments have nothing to do with you (what a blow to my ego sometimes (0:, huh ?)...you just through the ideas out there..and when the person is ready to grasp them, they will...

I was taught that consciousness is, in actuality, a series of 'wow' moments..

And trust me..you're not dating yourself, Stan..
I know what you're referring to with that catalog.

And there probably are a whole bunch of members on here that know what we're all taking about, regarding that entire generation, LOL !!

Hey !!!
Any other Used-To-Be / or know of any Flower Children on this forum ??? LOL !!!

Peace,
Nova

... physical world/external reality isomorphic with mind ...

Really ... Nice work Nova :-)

SB.

I just wanted to thank all of you, once more, for continuing to participate in this thread.
Please look at the scale, below, again from my 'perception', and note that I regard most members on this forum, at the 570 point level.
That includes you guys who have helped me keep this thread alive !

Thank you so much !

Moi




Kinesiology
Another field, Kinesiology, has made strides in determining feelings and emotions on the well-being of the body. David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD. conducted a 29 year study that demonstrated the human body becomes stronger or weaker depending on a person's mental state using kinesiology, or muscle testing. Dr. Hawkins developed a scale of 1-1000 that maps human consciousness: 200 (or 20,000 cycles per second) weakens the body and from 200 to 1000 makes the body stronger. At various points above this are intellect, psychology, science, genius, heart and enlightenment which moves us from duality to non-duality. This Map of Consciousness is based on a logarithmic scale which means there is an enormous increase in power with even a small increase in the number on the scale.

The lowest vibration rate is described as "Force". This exhibits a weak kinesiologic response with a vibration under 200 which includes shame, then guilt, apathy, grief, fear and anxiety, craving, anger and hate. All these feelings weaken you. Levels at 200 and above are described as "Power," which elicit a strong kinesiologic response. At 250 you have neutrality and trust - this strengthens you.

Going up on the scale there is: willingness, optimism, acceptance and forgiveness, reason and understanding, love and reverence, joy and serenity.

Courage calibrates at 200
Willingness calibrates at 310
Reason calibrates at 400
Unconditional Love calibrates at 500
Joy, and the ability to communicate healing energies to another calibrates at 540
Gratitude calibrates at 560
Praise at 570
Peace and bliss is rated at 600
Enlightenment and Ineffability at 700-1000.

Dr. Hawkins conjectures the great scientists such as Newton and Freud calibrate at 499 and Carl Jung calibrates at 540, the highest level of the intellect we have known to this point.

At the highest end of the kinesiological scale of human experience, 600 to 1000, are qualities that transcend duality. This is the level of "enlightenment" and "pure bliss" of consciousness.

Hey SB !!

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

This quote rocks !!! (0:
It defines this entire thread.
Thank you for sharing it-


I wish I could find a way to put it as the first thread somehow...

Moderators ??? (as I look *up* as I'm asking them, LOL !!!)
Any way I could do that ?

Nova

Unfortunately -- especially as of recently, there appears to have been a change in tact within threads here -- with individuals adopting unduly belligerent poses, instead of honest inquiry, in the face of unintuitively graspable positions....Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves....Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric....It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this....Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones....Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so....
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education....
......We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought....
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt....The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts....The biggest shame -- when one cannot control one self sufficiently to choose appropriate words to echo one's stance.
SB,

Instead of speculating about my motives, "comfort levels", or levels of understanding about the issue at hand behind my back and on a thread on which I've stated I would not criticize, why not put your money where your mouth is and join me in the debate forum?

Unfortunately -- especially as of recently, there appears to have been a change in tact within threads here -- with individuals adopting unduly belligerent poses, instead of honest inquiry, in the face of unintuitively graspable positions.

Could this be mud raking? It's not the first time that I have read stuff on a thread completly unrelated to the current topic and speaking of past issues. You would hope that all members treat past issues as water under the bridge.

Could this be mud raking? It's not the first time that I have read stuff on a thread completly unrelated to the current topic and speaking of past issues. You would hope that all members treat past issues as water under the bridge.

He's talking about ME !!!!!....geeezzzzzzzz !
Would everyone just stop thinking of themselves for one darn moment in time !!!!

Stop already, for hades sakes !
Do I have to spell out EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME for y'all, LOL !!!

Scuro..you know something about Quantum Physics (0:
I know you do.

Spill..Gorgeous !

Nova

Just in case everyone didn't see me post this the first time.



Originally Posted by scuro


Could this be mud raking? It's not the first time that I have read stuff on a thread completly unrelated to the current topic and speaking of past issues. You would hope that all members treat past issues as water under the bridge.




Folks, SB is talking about ME !!!! Geeeeeeeeeeeeezzz !!!

Please stop thinking of yourselves for one moment in time...
Man oh man...
Little paranoid..aren't y'all ?

Can we pllleeeeeeeeeeeease move on already..



Hey Scuro-

I know you know something about Quantum Physics.
Spill.. Gorgeous !

Nova












Just in case everbody missed this the first time I posted it. (0:
Now can we plllllllllleaaaaaaaaase move on already...

No more Baiters...K ?
Be grownups..or as grownup as much as possible, y'all !!! (0:
Nova

Ok, please continue with the initial thread topic, unless there is no more about the quantum to be shared, and the thread can be closed.

Any who are interested in a full on debate, do continue in the private debate forum.

enjoy!

thanks

cs

Anybody(s) want to tackle 'consciousness' while I'm gone (0:
Nova

"Please stop thinking of yourselves for one moment in time...
Man oh man...
Little paranoid..aren't y'all"?

Look at the pot calling the kettle black lol.
I do have one genius friend. He comes over occasionally and we play some chess, drink beer, and laugh a lot. Then as it gets later in the night he tells me about Quantum Physics and chance theory. This stuff usually blows my mind...maaannnn. :eyebrow: :D :faint:

Quantum physics and consciousness seem to be real good bedfellows.

These two guys seem to share the unenviable title of 'least well understood phenomena'.

I first associated the two of these, whilst reading some words on the forum on a member's description of consciousness; some of the words were identical to those used in atto- and macro-level physics.

To extend my previous positions -- I see microscopic to macroscopic as representing a single basic repeating structure now ... perhaps the structure that we've talked about on this thread previously.

Consciousness exists to model reality, with the mind a collection of processes with pattern recognition their fundamental goal.

Interestingly -- the mind and consciousness from DNA (through instinct) - the modern equivalent of the drive for DNA to replicate, however, without a gene(s) for 'mind and consciousness'.

And what's the deal with reality -- it's all there is, when the continued existence of DNA is at stake.
Drive yourself into a dead-end, down ozone layer depletion alley into the flooded plains, and DNA won't be a happy chappy -- at all, at all .... at least without an ark of sorts.

If reality exists on n-d space, then consciousness would surely aspire to a similar structure (repeating?) to converge with that other structure ... 'reality'.

And at the heart of this structure is logic .. which I believe we'll shortly see, employing just binary 1 and 0 -- is capable of building that definite structure ... with that definite structure representing a theoretical configuration, which sets it as the most complexity that can be permitted without instability.

So, questions -- what is the mind - what is its motivation?
Perhaps incorrect to question its motivation -- but considering the mind as nothing more than a pattern matcher and reality generator -- the mind would surely be at its 'happiest' ... when all patterns could be matched and reality fixed, ie convergence between the mind of the individual on reality ... in such a way that those internal models of reality accurately represent what's out there.

But there are clearly problems -- we have major areas where we are floundering - not able to build appropriate models, and therefore having little black boxes which we label and ascribe functionality to -- and which we hope that we'll not be asked mechanistic questions on.

EF is an example of one of these boxes ... executive function.

So, simplicity is everything -- everything can be expressed simply.
This seems like a common phrase on the forum too.
For me, at least, this is way off the mark.

How can I communicate with you, unless you see what I see.
Unless we share sufficient ground -- communication is doomed to failure.

The elegance of the way that I've seen some of the effective communicators here work, is in their manner of building models -- sometimes from scratch -- laying foundations for the ideas that are needed to answer the specific question ... to hang off.

Communication by allegory.

Another effective technique in communication -- identify flaws in current thought; but why would this approach fail - well, I guess it'd fail, if one is standing on top of the flawed floor, as it is floored ... crumbling.

But where is this all going?

Consciousness -- the mind driven by a motivation to make sense of what's around us -- fuelled by what it doesn't understand -- a sort of delta, but not in the sense that delta has been used here, previously.

Why isn't this all just too obvious?

Well -- I think it is.

But I had to be told it first, before I kinda' reacted 'well, duh! :-)'

When I was first lead down this basic path -- I couldn't entertain the thought that any other mechanism could explain the extant.

That feeling that comes with some other part of our Universe making sense within -- is what I'm describing here.

There're a few interesting points that come out from all of this though.
One of which is -- that learning/education -- in their true sense, are what we need to do.

Perhaps another, is that we don't define what we should learn -- that's handed down to us, by the structure whose 'motivation' we feel through our unique experiential perspective of it within us.

If you like -- it as our spectacles.

So a little ADD break -- ADD as we know it, as the experiential perspective of an individual owning a structure which can more closely approximate to the structure of reality.

Ownership of this structure, when developed - yields greater potential in modelling reality in relation to the older though equally developed structure.

And with this comes 'through the eyes of the ADDer'.

The structure differs from older structures in that it affords little care in its control of the individual - and will drive the individual to apparent inattentiveness, drives the individual to distraction, whilst the individual is driven with a deeper intensity, into another area of that structure -- less well developed and in need of filling.

Boredom -- anyone??

So quantum physics and consciousness -- other than a great title for a book .. will yield definitive proof that not everything can be explained simply. In fact, it's going to take a certain type of mind to describe and to understand what we will discover soon to be the common link binding these 2 -- but at least for now -- enigmas.

SB.

Taoism and Quantum Physics

You might ask what these two things have in common. The answer is simple . . .

Possibilities.

Taoist philosophy is filled with paradoxes and ponderances that lead one to think that anything is possible if one puts their mind to it. What is normally accepted as fact, may not be real, and what is considered mystical fantasy could very well be realities not yet explored.

ChuangTzu once wrote about a dream he had where he was a butterfly fluttering from flower to flower. When he woke, he considered whether he was a man awakening from a dream about being a butterfly, or whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man.

Realities become as fluid as water when one learns that realities are only perceptions and viewpoints, most of which we've had pre-programmed into us from childhood. Throughout the course of our lives these perceptions change or they get solidified. Some people are prone to fail at anything they attempt because of fear, or because they've come to expect it based on past experiences.

Thus these "pictures" get locked in our minds and play back whenever we come across a new situation that triggers these memories. If the perception isn't manually changed, we repeat the same mistakes and fail again and again.

When we learn to change our viewpoints, we see things differently. We're able to reprogram our minds and see things from a new perspective.

This is what Taoist thought is all about. Removing the "names" of things and viewing them anew. Labels and names solidify perceptions and thus lock us in to a specific reality. Removing the labels and names allows us to create our own reality of them and open our minds to new possibilities.

This can also be applied to the "labels and names" we've placed on ourselves. If we've seen ourselves as failures, we will fail. But if we change that perception, even in the most remote way, we will see the open doors waiting for us to go through into new successful journeys.

In fact, it's possible to create a new you each and every day of your life if you're willing to yield to the unknown and make it real.

Perception and Stagnation

To put everything in a nutshell, we see things the way we see them because of our perceptions of what they are. We understand solids and so we see ourselves and all other things around us as solid.

Things become definitive and hold their form only because that's how we were taught to perceive them. It's hard to imagine it any other way, isn't it?

Yet we've discovered that nothing is really solid. The smallest atom that makes up every living thing is made up mostly of empty space and even that which it contains, namely neurons and electrons are constantly coming and going. Nothing within an atom is stagnant or permanent.

Likewise then, if our bodies are made up of billions of cells that are made up of billions and billions of atoms, we can thus be only as tangible as that which we are made of. And so if atoms are basically made of nothing, what are we?

If we fully sat and pondered this, the possibilities would be astounding. If we could master this natural and scientific reality, we could do anything our hearts desired.

But we seemed to be locked in to this perception of solids and autonomous entities. But is it real? Or is it just the reality we've allowed ourselves to be stagnated into?

The ancient Taoist sages taught that perceptions can either free us to the endless possibilities of the universe, or stagnate us into fearful existence. They cited things like laws and rules, names and labels as that which perpetuates the stagnation process by preventing us from seeing the constant flow and connectivity of everything around us.

We then become locked in a world of segregation and autonomy never seeing how everything is connected an all are just parts of the same thing, interchanging and passing through itself.

But perhaps changing our perception of the universe may be too much to digest to do anything about it right now. Maybe it would be better to take "baby steps" as we approach our profound journey to the unknown?

Fortunately and unfortunately, our stagnated perceptions of who and what we are filter in to how we view the daily activities of life. Maybe if we take a look at how a simple change of perception toward what we tend to expect out of life can make some enormous and unexpected leaps toward a new awareness, we might see the possibilities of going further.

Mind Over Matter

You know the old saying, "you won't know until you try it". Simple words but they hold true for so many things we face each and every day.

Yes every day, all of us face the unknown. Some with fear, others with a sense of adventure. For most, they face a new day completely unaware of what it will bring them. Yet there are some who know what each will bring because they "create" it the way they want it to be.

And make no mistake, the difference between the two perceptions makes all the difference in the world! So how come most people don't opt for the choice of making their day what they want it to be?

The answer is that most people face each new day like the they did the day before. If the day before brought them problems, they expect more of the same today. If they failed miserably yesterday, why should today be any different?

Talk about stagnation! The worse perceptions we can have are those based on fear. Fear of failure, fear of criticism, fear of disappointment, fear of being afraid. So many things to worry about, and be afraid of it makes you want to curl up and hide!

Unfortunately for the world, a great number of people think this way all the time. Living life, always expecting "the other shoe to drop", is no way to live. No one is happy with it, yet so many do it.

And it is unfortunate for the world at large, because it means that there are so many possibilities that have been left undiscovered because people were just too afraid to try something new, or venture beyond what they perceive as familiar and safe.

But it could be different! If we could perceive the constantly renewing universe within ourselves, we would see that every second of our lives can mean a new beginning. It would be possible to reinvent ourselves with new strengths and new abilities whenever we wanted, or whenever the need arose.

Our lives could become as fluid and ever moving as the vast unknown if we only put our minds to it. Failures would only be momentary glitches in our forward motion. Fears would fade in comparison with the constant flow of power surging through our bodies. Challenges and obstacles would melt into nothing if we could see them as merely something new to learn and conquer.

And if tomorrow did bring more of the same, then we'd simply see it as a lesson not yet learned.

But if we really stuck our necks out and viewed yesterday, today and tomorrow as insignificant "blips" on the radar of time, then we could see that nothing that happens now is all that important when compared to the entire culmination of our life span.

There are endless chances and innumerable possibilities waiting all of us.

LaoTzu once said . . .

"There is nothing weaker than water
But none is superior to it in overcoming the hard."

It takes nothing to move water, it yields to the slightest touch. Yet a river, made up of water can wear down the hardest rock and mold it to its will. All the while though, you could put your hand through this very same water and have no problem penetrating it.

This teaches a very important lesson. One that we've been discussing throughout this whole piece, and that is . . .

The less rigid, the more powerful!

We live in an ever flowing, ever changing universe. It, and everything in it is made up of basically nothing, yet its inexhaustive power radiates throughout in some awe inspiring ways. At the same time, it yields and adapts to whatever comes about by its own movements, and in doing so, it creates yet more.

Our lives are a part of this universe. We too flow, change and adapt. It is simply the laws of nature.

But if we live our lives resisting this constant movement and try to define things as solid, or become solid ourselves, we are fighting a losing battle. Our perceptions of our universe and ourselves has worked against us and has caused us harm by forcing us to live contrary to the natural laws.

Only when we yield and allow ourselves a different perception will we find harmony and peace.

This is not only true toward our view of science and nature, but it's also true of how we carry on our daily activities. Being rigid in our beliefs or in our methods, without looking at other possibilities, falling back on the familiar or our past to comprehend our futures, keeps us locked and stagnated in a rigid and unnatural world.

This is why societies and civilizations crumble and vanish. This is why there are so many unhappy people, and why many of us live in fear.

To become true human beings, we have to become more fluid, less tangible in our thoughts and our actions. By doing so, we'll be able to harness the 'energy' of the ever moving world around us, and embark on the ride of our lives.

This is the truth that's been discovered by the principles of Quantum Physics.


Nova

There is one simple point that can make all of this more sensible for anyone, regardless of where you might fall on the ‘open belief / pragmatic doubt’ spectrum.

There is always a question about why one person ‘sees’ something another doesn’t. Why were the principles of the Tao obvious to Lao Tzu? What makes them difficult to embrace, requiring ‘special’ language and presentation? Why do they seem intrinsically mysterious?

Similar questions arise for every topic this thread has touched upon. There are various ways to deal with them; some invoke unseen external causes of various types, some prefer to embrace the inherent mystery as sufficient, others invoke a kind of hierarchy of human capability by citing genius, and so on.

Let us go on record right now: in all of our study of the human brain and mind, we have never seen anything that convinces us that one relatively fit brain is superior in any significant way to any other.

What we do with it differs greatly, of course, and our minds may be very different. But that appears to be entirely a matter of choice, or perhaps chance, in how we use the same basic capabilities to shape our own minds.

Unfortunately, that leaves the majority of the differences that we see in these questions unexplained. Lao Tzu was clearly operating in a different internal universe, as were (apparently less mysterious) examples like Einstein or even Picasso.

We do see one important difference in how individuals use their brains, but it seems on the surface to be almost trivial: some of us use a slightly modified logical structure to store and analyze information. But despite the relative simplicity of the difference, the effect can be profound.

The best way to explain the difference is to compare the understanding you gain by studying a set of architectural blueprints to that gained by studying a detailed model.

While it’s possible to derive a physical intuition for the structure by studying blueprints, it requires a concerted mental effort and detailed knowledge of the construction process and materials. Even then, the result is often inferior to what any ordinary observer might develop from only a few minutes looking at the model.

In the big picture it makes more sense that Lao Tzu used the same fundamental equipment that everyone else possesses in a special way, rather than assuming he had the advantage of special equipment.

It’s not that humans don’t exhibit considerable variation from one example to another; we do. But the kind of variation that results in the Tao is of an entirely different class, not really on the same scale of ordinary measures of variability. The difference is the same one that distinguishes Einstein’s work and the efforts of Bohr, Heisenberg and others that produced quantum mechanics.

It’s also the difference between a set of architectural drawings and a model. In the model, the metarelationships that must be derived from study of the drawings (by applying detailed knowledge and experience) are directly represented in a form we can instantly recognize and interpret with our ordinary physical intuition.

The difference in the modified logical structure is exactly that, the inclusion of information that represents metarelationships. It’s important to understand that using the modified logical structure doesn’t require anything new. The same basic neural capabilities are applied in the same way; the only difference is in what associations we happen to observe and subsequently store.

If we directly observe metarelationships, over time our internal neural structures will reflect that fact. The resulting experience of using the stored information can be significantly different, in a way equivalent to the difference between looking at an architectural model of a building instead of a set of blueprints.

Assuming that we all really have about the same potential under the hood, imagine how much more could be accomplished by applying the effort and expertise expended on examining the drawings to the model instead. That picture is pretty close to what we see with examples like Lao Tzu and Einstein, in our opinion.

There are a few remaining questions, such as why this kind of knowledge seems to develop differently than more familiar forms, and why such a difference should arise at all.

The first is easy to explain; the grand logical form of knowledge stored in the modified logical structure is much more complex, just as the architectural model is much more than a few sheets of paper. In fact, the complexity appears to be much higher than the difference in development time would seem to imply, indicating there are efficiencies in their use that partly compensate for the difference.

The second is more difficult, and so far the only reasonable hypotheses are those that point to evolutionary events that occur over extremely long time scales, i.e., speciation.

Does that mean that Lao Tzu was a different species? An early example, perhaps, but it’s important to understand that he couldn’t have been too far from normal at his time.

It’s virtually impossible to account for individual variation much beyond the ability of the average brain, simply because such differences preclude ordinary communication. Examples might exist, but we will never hear about them by definition; thus, it’s certain Lao Tzu wasn’t one.

What does this mean to us, or the present discussion? Simply put, it gives us a framework to explain why Lao Tzu’s perception of reality was different than the ordinary perception that persists even today. The same explanation applies to Einstein’s work and quantum mechanics; if some of these ideas seem difficult, it only indicates a problem with how they’re being modeled, not the underlying capability of the machinery we apply.

That problem can be addressed, although looking at how we model reality is admittedly not the first thing one might think of as a solution to difficulty understanding something. In a way, that’s what Lao Tzu addresses in the Tao; it seems clear he didn’t necessarily expect others to follow in that sense, but the way is nevertheless clearly laid out as a challenging example.

One last thought: we ADDers all tend to have a problem recognizing when we do understand something. Looking at an architectural model is too simple; it can be difficult to accept that it might give us a grasp of what the building will be like as good or superior to that of an engineer looking at the blueprints.

We’re all looking at this stuff many generations removed from the time of Lao Tzu. If anything, we should be better able to grasp the Tao than people were at the time it was written. But it just won’t seem as mysterious, and we know people that have gone back over and over again, looking for mysterious depths that for them probably just don’t exist.

Can’t tell them that, though. ADD, anyone? (grins…)

The best way to explain the difference ... architectural blueprints ... vs. ... detailed model.

... why this kind of knowledge seems to develop differently than more familiar forms?
->the modified logical structure is much more complex

... why such a difference should arise at all?
->evolutionary events

One last thought: we ADDers all tend to have a problem recognizing when we do understand something.
The blueprint vs model explanation really hits home for me. And feeds directly into the point about that feeling of understanding.

I'd express it as feeling as though there is no understanding -- even though there is, at least in comparison to others, up until some point -- where one knows one understands something -- and that nobody can shake your understanding -- and in that subject -- that proper thinking (not rote learning rote thinking) is possible. Hitting that threshold brings about cool feelings of satisfaction ... of understanding ... that you've finished painting the first room in your house -- the job is immaculate ... and it's time to move onto the next room.

???...gestalt...???

That feeling -- dwelling on it for a moment -- is, i think where I'm going to shift my chips.
The feeling that reality is a little more predictable -- running back through ... the mind as a pattern matching reality generator -- with a goal of matching all patterns and generating a reality (internal) which is superimposable on that which we observe internally of that external reality.

So ... the two whys above ... ?
Not too sure that we can break them up into two parts :-) -- as they both reflect the same basic 'motivation' ... driver ...

Simplistically viewing evolution as a series of genetic events conferring advantages on man ... is ridiculous.
Language is widely believed to have evolved, much more quickly that it should have done ... given mutation as our only trick.
Shifting us into the realms of the speciation of modern man -- as the adoption of some other characteristic.

Continuing on -- within the mind, and drawing in, that feeling that I described ... the :-) reality driver :-) ... I believe, is both the reason for why the second model not only came about, sticks around and will eventually be the last model standing :-) ... but also, that it's improved capacity at conferring a more detailed model of reality (given training) ... necessitates a more complex structure ... and so couldn't have arisen without ...

Questions that I have though are whether other structures could surrogate, and whether this event is merely one in a series, each of which taking man closer to a shared and accurate copy of external reality, internally?

What is holding up various disciplines from viewing the mind as a logical structure, instead of as a '1:1' Structure:Function neurone to 'mental process' engine?

Whether our view of external reality mirrors model topology -- or whether our model topology mirrors external reality?
This cuts into quantum theory and string theory.
Are these models closer to that external reality? or the best we can do given our most complex form of structure which we can consciously think about, explain? .... or just not very good ... but the best we can do?

So here -- it's the mind's limitations at thought based around the mind's actual topological-logical structure.

The metamodel web as a top -o- logical logical structure :-)
The metamodel web as a top =+= logical logical structure :-)
The metamodel web as a top -o- -o- logical logical structure :-)
The metamodel web as a top =+= =+= logical logical structure :-)

I enjoy the irony of this thread being within 'chit-chat' -- I don't think that I have ever been part of a more important conversation, than this.

The realization that comes when one understands all of this ... and knows in social circumstances what others will say, or how they'll react .... and sees the contradictions that are delivered ... and all of this just to re-iterate, that the new and developed general form of the metamodel web, envelops the general form of the older series of models ... quite effectively ... but importantly --- so effectively, that the inconsistencies that arise through unconstrained logic, can be seen.

And nothing does seem so mysterious ... and it's funny ... because elements that seemed 'way out', no longer do ... and one starts to see the line between the previously 'way out' and true and the 'way out' and false ... the use of metaphysical words chained meaninglessly together by those that seek to convince others of their enlightenment, for some sort of personal benefit.

SB.

I knew you'd grasp this science, SB. (0:

I posted the theory of perception, in a different 'flavor', (from the Taoism perspective) so that others might be able to grasp it from a different perspective.

Sometimes seeing 'things' through Bohm's glasses, like Stabile stated, isn't always easy.



All Quantum does is offer more options.
Whether anyone chooses to utilize them or not... is yet another option, isn't it ? (0:

Nova

I like this thread.. I'm gonna have to come back to it later to add

Good !

SB, Meadd, Stabile, and I (as well as a few other members) would be glad, if you did. (0:

We create our own (rr)reality.
If nonADDer (rr)reality is made up of blocks, ADDer reality is made up from a many-varied assortment of geometrically exquisite multidimensional shapes ... and so ... ~yes~ ... Nova, MeADD, Stabile and another (and others) would be *glad*, if you did ...

...:-)...

SB.

Hm-m-m, those are really deep thoughts. I've always believed parallel universes exsist because how else can the feelings of de'javu be explained. why else would it be we immediately like or dislike a person we have either only seen or only just met? I fully believe we as humans live in other dimensions, even though we don't fully comprehend them in the sense of subjective reality as we know it. Dreams are a classic example of what I am referring to. People while not fully understanding why we dream can rationalize it as something we do in the seemingly safe parameters of sleep. But when asleep are we not in some other dimension? Our awareness of "Self" morphs into what we call a dream state where our complex minds sort thing out into some nebulous thought patterns. So maybe we do create our own reality because there are things our soul need to learn. We really only grow and learn through adversity and or pain. Which then brings to mind
what really is our condition of AD{H}D that is both a blessing and a curse-once again dependent on our own unique perceptions of it and how it impacts our individual world or is it just another dimension of "Self."?
And really what is this thing we call Reality....? :faint:

:) :cool: :D ;) :) :cool: :D ;)