Supernatural phenomena are a product of the brain!

[MartialDev]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

People do die from collapsed bridges, plane crashes, and surgery. An objective belief system doesn't eliminate those risks.

For a subjective belief system to be accurate, it must be congruent with your experience of reality. A genuine subjective belief system doesn't make you any less capable of functioning in the physical world. Overall it makes you more capable by reducing fear and encouraging more action.

Imagine playing a computer game. Does the knowledge that it's just a simulation prevent you from learning the rules of the game and becoming an accomplished player? Of course not. In fact, you may be more likely to become a skilled player vs. someone who is totally convinced the game is real, especially if the game involves risk.

The major difference between subjective and objective reality is a matter of perspective. There's nothing to stop someone with a subjective belief system from mastering the rules of the physical universe. It's much like deciding to master a computer game -- it takes a lot of practice.

Sounds to me like you've redefined subjectivism as empiricism. Deliberate, or accidental?

[MartialDev]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Take the Mario example. Lets asume the controller is defect and sometimes when the player presses the button nothing happens. Sometimes when the player doesn't press the button, the controller acts like when it is pressed.
When Luigi observes Mario he must come to the conclusion that Mario is retarted.

What a funny choice of analogies. When Mario faces ghosts, they all disappear!

[Athena]

Originally Posted by Radical

Lol, yes live in the 'real world' whilst it suits you

hahaha. I'm trying to see the balance between the logical/objective dimension and the spiritual/subjective dimension. So far I've only heard people either totally subjective or totally objective sound their views. I think a third holistic view could see that the reality we live in has both objective and subjective layers, that the dimensions coexist and even overlap a bit.

The reason why SOME people feel safer in a totally objective world may be because they are in a phase of life that is meant to see the concrete view of things. I can't imagine skipping over concrete science, math, logic, and going to pure airy subjective reality while growing up and forming our view of the world. I think that objective nature of parts of reality might be the more FUNDAMENTAL (not juvenile view, MartialDev) aspect of life on earth, and that subjective parts are meant to be figured out later, as the icing on the cake.

So I think that reality is both layered with objective and subjective dimensions, and that discovering them happens phase-wise as we learn.

But anyways, on this forum, I think that it's futile to try to convince Radical and other purely objective people of the subjective aspect of reality until they finds it out themselves through action. You can't really argue someone into believing in subjective reality, they have to live it and find out themselves. Obviously he very strongly believes in something, and if exploring the world with a purely objective frame of reference is what he wants to do, maybe that's what he's supposed to do right now.

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by MartialDev

Sounds to me like you've redefined subjectivism as empiricism. Deliberate, or accidental?

Empiricism is a rather different sort of lens. There are lots of lens that achieve similar effects, but their perspectives are quite different. Empiricism won't get you very far in studying subjective phenomena like your personal experiences with astral projection or lucid dreaming, since it requires empirical data for validation.

A closer fit to subjective reality would be dimonstrazione - testing through personal experience and learning from mistakes.

[ReallyGoodIdeas]

Sean M Connelly,

Yes - me too! I find it interesting that my "logical" friends are the unhappiest ones as well.

I agree - its a learning process. If you read Power vs Force, it's a progression through the levels of consciousness. And all levels are valid, but the "truths" at one level seem like rubbish at another level. We are all meant to be at the levels we're at so we can progress through them. And all our interactions are for us to learn from.

Joy to you
Hazel

[phire]

Originally Posted by Sean.M.Connelly

But there was an underlying problem: how could there be so many delusional people? How could that be? How was it that everyone around me was stupid, and I was the only smart one? Now sure... you can say "coincidence", or "you're a nut", or "you're lying"... but after a while, those words start to lose meaning. You can only say that so many times before you start to think to yourself, "Hmmm ... maybe there is something else going on here? Because I sure am resorting to those three explanations quite a lot. These situations just seem more complicated than that."

Watch these videos by Derren Brown and you may find that skepticism coming back.

Voodoo

Remote viewing

One inch punch

Instant religious conversion

The mind is a very powerfull organ that we do not fully understand yet. The subconcious mind is especially strong. It has the ability to affect the way we view reality much more so than even our conscious mind. It can prevent the conscious mind from accessing certain memories, it can change the way we remember those memories, it can make us feel things with no physical stimuli, it can prevent us from seeing things and it can also help us to notice small details.

In truth a person cannot trust their own experiences any more than they can trust a strangers advice. Even though we like to think our conscious mind (the "I") is in control, the subconscious mind is the one that really runs the show. Experiences are based on what we can perceive but you can never be 100% sure that you are perceiving all that you need to come to an accurate conclusion of what happened.

My belief is that we do live in a objective mechanical universe. However, that being the case, each of us still lives in our own subject universe in our own minds. We have different ideas on what is important in life, our own purposes, and the many other aspects that make us human are all variables that create our own subjective reality.

[Sean.M.Connelly]

Originally Posted by phire

...

In truth a person cannot trust their own experiences any more than they can trust a strangers advice.

...

I love Derren Brown, and actually bought some of his DVDs :-P. Although I found out the hard way that my DVD player is Region 1.

Self delusion is always possible, I completely agree. In fact, I agree with pretty much everyone you wrote in your post. I'm not saying my own subjective experience is something that CONVINCES me... I am saying that if I experience something bizarre, and I can't explain it, then that makes me curious :-P.

Whenever I have the ability to repeatedly test a bizarre experience, I try to. I'm not a scientist, but I am as scientific as a layman can get, I imagine :-P. For example, here is one experiment I performed, that produced measurable results: Peebrain's Psi Journal: Reproducible Results

I've also done experiment with out of body experiences that led me to conclude that I am perceiving the external world to some extent. I posted about it here: Peebrain's Psi Journal: Awesome OBE

My original post was saying that the question of "how can this many people be delusional?" was a question that started to get me more curious and open-minded about psychic abilities. That question alone didn't convince me of anything. Only years of practice and research has actually convinced me :-P.

~Sean

[Reality Handbook]

Originally Posted by phire

My belief is that we do live in a objective mechanical universe.

I'm willing to believe that subjective experience can be an ever-receding frontier...constantly giving way to a body of shared knowledge of how systems are interconnected.

But the idea that our present state of established consensus has all the connections right is pretty crazy. There's a 2,400 year old debate on whether people can sense barometric pressure "in their bones"...and the establishment opinion (as of 1997) in the National Academy of Sciences discarded the idea based on studying 18 people. So don't be surprised if another study comes out which reverses that.

Originally Posted by phire

Watch these videos by Derren Brown and you may find that skepticism coming back.

Where I personally look in order to keep my mind open is art. As Shakespeare said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." So the kind of videos I encourage people to watch are ones like this one, that reminds me of the dizzying array of possibilities:

YouTube - Royksopp - Remind Me

The moon affects the tides, so planets may influence your life in other ways. I don't personally believe in astrology, but it could be the proto-science whose body of evidence leads to a serendipitous discovery on that front. The only way to know is to not be a knee-jerker when someone uses a certain terminology to describe their experience...

[Alyssa]

woah that's so intense
it probably took so long to write that
but man, we need to hang out
even if some of your facts were wrong
but maybe you were stoned
o.o

[astra]

Originally Posted by Radical

Let us take an example. Suppose you are healthy today. Then one day your hand gets cut off. You recovered and after that you will still feel that you have the same central entity “I” within you. You will say “my hand got cut off but I did not die”. So hand is not “I”. You will have same perception of “I” before and after the accident when your hand got cut off. Take another example, suppose you got a heart transplant and after your recovery you will say that I have now different heart but I am still alive. Here again your perception of “I” is still same. You still have same habits. You have all your memory still intact. “I” still is same before and after heart transplant.

How do you know this? Has your hand been cut off? Have you had a heart transplant? I've heard of many cases where, after an organ transplant, people develop habits or tastes for food or remember things related to the person who donated the organ to them. If you truly believe this and want to convince people of it, you need more solid foundations than 'This is how I believe things are'. More to the point, while I have no problem with people presenting different ideas and having different beliefs (and, in fact, I encourage it), I don't believe in trying to force it down people's throats and make them beleive it (especially hard if your logic's shaky). IMO, this only makes people reject it more. I say this with the experience of someone forced to attend a catholic school for several years which led to my conclusion that it's all just a really entertaining historical story (no offence to any catholics/christians out there btw). I'm sure it's real to some people, but we each choose our reality, perhaps not consciously, but belief is a choice still.

Anyway, I could go on about this subject for ages, but I think i've made the main points.

[sanatogen]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

@Radical: Your belief system is similar to what I believed when I was your age (19).

And mine

[sanatogen]

My original post was saying that the question of "how can this many people be delusional?" was a question that started to get me more curious and open-minded about psychic abilities.

Agreed, the sheer number of folk interested and involved has piqued my curiosity. It has done in the past, but I'm ready and willing to engage.


That question alone didn't convince me of anything. Only years of practice and research has actually convinced


And thats what I hope to gain.

[Billy]

Originally Posted by Radical

Also, when we are asleep we are not conscious, and our brains don't have any perceptions. We may have dreams, but they are just hazy thoughts floating around from previous perceptions.

I think your logic is sound in the fact that it is an attempt to break down and isolate what it is that makes us concious living beings, but its just that I know from personal experience that essentially the human being can and does exist outside of the body. I have had out of body experiences where I was completely concious of my surroundings and could observe my physical body which strangely enough just kept on working and talking to people in my workplace and many other OOB experiences. Dreams are not devoid of awareness for me, in fact I have little problem in realising my situation in dreams and acting with lucidity. What you have brought up regarding the limitations of the human body :ie cutting bits off did occur to me years ago but I just can't avoid what all of my experiences have taught me and that is that life does exist outside of the physical without a doubt.

[VoodooChile]

I can't believe this post has actually gone this far. Why do people try to bring others down? If you're 19 years old, please don't preach to people who have far more life experience than you. It doesn't make you look smart.

[Erin Pavlina]

This is an extremely old thread. Why don't you guys start a new thread on the topic if you're interested. The original poster was banned a long time ago.