I've been reading some interesting books lately. It started with The Biology of Belief, which is basically a book about mind over matter, written by a cell biologist from Stanford specializing in stem cells. Much of what I know fit with what the author posited, and I'm sure many of us have examples they can share where their thoughts really helped focused their subconscious drives. In other words, it is possible to influence the manner in which your body works (state of growth, state of decay) based on your thoughts and your emotions towards life and yourself.

Then I read The Ultimate Journey, by Stanislav Grof, a Czech psychiatrist. This book is about death and human rituals/beliefs about the process of death and the after-life. There were many startling stories of precognitive dreams, past-life memories that all hold up to be true, and some great accounts of near-death experiences. Perhaps the craziest part of this book was the chapter on various religious and cultural beliefs as to what the moment of death will be like. The Buddhist interpretation (Bardo Chikal) sounds ineffably similar to "trip" reports on DMT, a chemical that some believe is the cause of NDE.

Recently I've been reading Entangled Minds by Dean Radin, one of maybe several dozen scientists in the world actively researching psi phenomena such as clairvoyance and precognition. Did you know that Hans Berger performed the first EEG when after an accident on his horse, his sister many miles away "felt" like he was in danger?

So S2ki, has there ever been an experience you thought could not be summed up as a coincidence? Maybe an episode of deja vu? Has anyone here had a near death experience?

According to Bell's theorem, there are no hidden variables that support locality of quantum mechanisms; rather, experiments have shown what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" to be real, although many still remain skeptical as the assertion of non-locality is heavy, heavy stuff.

What do you guys think? Is there something strange going on, or what?

 

Dude, put the joint down!

 

Ok so 1 no...

You can call me crazy, but the road leading to the atomic bomb started with the discovery of isotopes; and the discovery of isotopes involved psi phenomena where a peculiar neon atom was visioned to have an atomic mass of 22.33 or something close. Researchers then discovered this isotope soon after.

If you need to get over a "hump", then you can start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f...apers/bell.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

I don't understand quantum physics, because I'm not a quantum physicist. So I can see why you'd think I'm high, as many others do. I guess Einstein and friends were on crack.

 

Quantum physicists don't understand quantum physics. The best they can do is make observations and try to model (mathematically) the phenomena they observe.

Douglas Hofstadter, in his book Metamagical Themas, writes:

A typical abuser of physics in this way is Arthur Koestler; in his book The Roots of Coincidence, he purports to explain "psi phenomena" in terms of some five-dimensional theory of particle physics that includes a host of hypothetical particles called "psitrons".

To me, a very troubling aspect of an "explanation" such as this (which, actually, Koestler didn't invent himself but borrowed from a physicist named Adrian Dobbs) is that very similar explanations are used by physicists themselves - not so often of "psi phenomena", but of currently unexplained real phenomena in particle physics. When I was a graduate student in particle physics, quite a number of years ago, I read paper after paper in which not only new particles were invoked to explain some observation, but new families of particles were routinely postulated. As a matter of fact, one of those papers was the straw that broke tha camel's back, as far as I was concerned. In that three-author paper, the authors had the audacity to invent some totally off-the-wall superfamily of particles that consisted of a large number of families, each containing quite a few particles on its own. As I recall, there were something like 140 new particles introduced in one fell swoop - and, mind you, this was done merely to explain some rather small discrepancies between things measured and things predicted by previous theories. A far cry from the days when it was a highly daring step to introduce even one new particle! It was at that point that I decided I should bow out of that branch of theoretical physics.

 

All we know is that there are a lot of unknowns. At this stage we can't rule anything out, there are so many unknown areas in science, esp quantum physics.

Also with the long and resilient history of culture around esp/ghosts/crazy theories, you would think there may be some kind of truth to it.

 

This is all a little, um, deep for a friday afternoon, dontcha think?

Ill read again on monday

 

I've been near death many many times (motorcycle accident, collapsed lungs, mortars landing within 30 yds of me in Iraq, etc etc).

I've also had many "dreams" that come true. I don't know what to think of those. No crazy dreams or anything just settings and people doing certain things.

 

I've had the occasional Deja-vu like most people.

There was one really, really unexplainable thing that happened between my girlfriend and I at the time. I was living 4 hours away from her, and suddenly one night studying I got this incredibly real sense that she was in danger. Nothing specific, just intense. I called her and she didn't answer (which didn't help!) so I just kinda kept going with my schoolwork. The next day she called to see what I wanted and it turns out an old stalker boyfriend had cornered her in the parking lot at a bar, trying to take her home and such. Luckily a cop was driving by at the time. To this day, neither of us can explain it.

Spooky action at a distance? Yeah, it is!

 

Can you describe your NDE? Anything stand out? They say that, for example someone falling from a high place, time dilates and your thoughts are actually crystal clear as you come to terms with what is happening, and often you go through several calculations as to how you can help yourself and the outcome of your actions. Very strange that in what may seem a split instant, there is a period of almost ephemeral thinking.

I've also experienced things like deja vu, where often someone may be speaking to me or I may be in a current situation, and the vision that my eyes form seem oddly similar to a dream I had in the past. Happens a lot, actually, and usually it is of a certain significance that it makes me stop what I'm doing completely to try and pick up what is happening.

Sobe, really cool story; we've all heard parents talk about being able to sense when their child is in danger, without actually being around. I think one day we will find that there are more "signals" being sent out into physical space than our brains can perceive at this stage in evolution. It may be why some people feel like someone is watching over them, or why so many humans from all corners of the globe "sense" a spiritual side to life. What could theoretically be the next step for the nervous system?

Magician-this is what I meant by I do not understand quantum physics; I simply have no comprehension of the math or the spacial arrangement of subatomic particles and so on. It may be better that way, as I would probably drive myself insane if I was adept enough to study quantum physics and find all these strange occurrences going on around us.

 

The trouble is that what goes on in the mind cannot be viewed by anyone else, and given the fact that at times of great stress or intoxication, the mind can play the most awesome tricks, it's an unquantifiable science. Unprovable and irrefutable at the same time. One cannot say that what someone believes is definitely only in their head, but the individual cannot prove otherwise either, it's a theoretical stalemate.

I believe that the human mind may have the potential to direct energy, though what that will allow us to do is of course beyond my prediction, and no doubt this would be a very advanced evolutionary stage...I don't think anyone has 'real' telekinesis, would be too easy to prove.

Consider how far the human body has come in just a few hundred thousand years. Continuing at this rate of evolution, in half a million years, humans will look DRAMATICALLY different. Who knows how the mind will develop.

Will we ever make it that far though? I seriously doubt it...

A million years is a glactic millisecond. Consider that radio waves have been emanating from the earth at the speed of light since 194X. This can be expressed as an expanding bubble of radio emanating from the earth. To give you some idea of how big this bubble is, first consider that our galaxy compared to the universe is the size of a large cell (say a skin cell) compared to the size of this planet. Then consider that the size of this radio bubble compared to the size of the galaxy is like the size of a golf ball compared to the size of the earth. Consider then, that the universe as we know it was 'created' some 15 or so billion years ago, and that the earth has already been through thousands of 'exctinction' events through it's existence. Actually, they happen like clockwork around every 350 million years, due to our 'bobbing' movement up and down through the densely populated central disc of the galaxy. Guess what folks... The dinosaurs were wiped out around 350m years ago by a cosmic event.

What I'm saying is that another half million years of evolution, is unlikely on a cosmic level, let alone whether or not in the meantime we destroy ourselves through some other means.

Finally, consider; our sun is dying, it's on it's last legs right now. We need to find a way to get off this rock in only a few million years before the inner planets and eventually Earth will be swallowed by the massive dying sun as it becomes a red giant.

Things don't look good for long term evolution.