Questioning Consciousness

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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby DrEvil » Wed Aug 01, 2018 11:32 am

Elvis » Wed Aug 01, 2018 5:10 am wrote:
DrEvil wrote:If one day we have a perfect understanding of our brains and bodies and we still can't explain NDEs, then you get a free "I told you so"


Ah, but I'm looking to the day when we can explain NDEs—but with 'non-local' consciousness. The scientists in the program are on a good start: they are willing to look at the possibility. That open-minded (and truly scientific) attitude alone is refreshing, and their revolutionary findings should encourage more serious study.

Non-local, discarnate consciousness independent of a brain can probably be understood scientifically, but people have to first acknowledge its possibility. Those stuck in the old, rigid ways of thinking, like the 'scoffer' in the program, will be left behind. There is much to discover.


P.S. I looked for a transcript to no avail. I usually listen to these things while I do other things, but that doesn't work for everyone.


Yeah, I'm not good at multitasking. If I were to listen to it I couldn't do anything else at the same time (except drink coffee and chain smoke) or I would miss half of it.

But I think it's great that they're doing serious research on it. The more the better, and I'm looking forward to the day we have a solid answer.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Wed Aug 01, 2018 3:53 pm

I'm saying that significance and meaning in this universe can only be found in the 'mind,' which we've already established does not exist.

I'm also saying that thinking of consciousness as solely a product of electrical architecture is excluding the chemical component, the experience of secretions of the glands. The biology of consciousness is electro-chemical. Points us toward the feelings.

We can see honor as a dog, compassion as the mother, and how they grow into complex feelings of friendship and loyalty, human love and buddha love. Behind the ideas about these feelings is the electro-chemical feeling process.

Significance and meaning are like signs pointing inward to the emotions behind them. What's significant is what your glands tell you is significant. And that's where free will comes in. You may always do the honorable thing and grumble about it, or like it. You may help the poor and grumble, or like it. The other side of the coin as well. You may experience madness, despair, distraction, confusion and the existential hunger of the consumer and reject it, or you may like it, or anywhere on the spectrum in between. Your choice is not in the experiencing, it's in the agreeing and the disagreeing, in your imaginary mind which does not exist. What is this new human ability to agree and disagree with the experience of complex electro-chemical signals? Some sort of override mechanism, just evolved hot off of evolution's press.

So the imaginary mind comes up with stories, of spiritual knights of the noblest cause, goddesses of terrifying compassion and frightening justice, Don Quixote, to symbolize certain possible feelings. But the images and forms of the stories are still just signs in the imaginary mind, pointing to these complex emotions, to an ongoing intricate exchange between the electronic architecture and the glandular secretions,.

This would be what the metaphor of the 'pole star,' or an inner 'sun,' is pointing at. A symbol for being oriented inwards. The sufis make a joke about taking it literally, of seeing a space inside, with the sun high above your head, far inside the heart. It could make your perspective feel tilted, like the gyroscope in your ipad just tipped backward ninety degrees without you doing anything.

That's the "visualizing function," the mind picturing an inner world of time and space oriented differently from the outer world, that brings on the feeling of vertigo. But that's just a symbol, the sufi's say. "Pointing inward to the heart" is just a metaphor, symbol. Pointing to the feelings, the electro-chemical interaction in real time. Disagreeing or agreeing is free will's choice.

The noblest knights, the paladins of peace, renounce the outward fight, and take up arms only in the 'vizualized' world. But how can a Knight, a fighter of battles, a defender, give up the firepower and steel for imaginary weapons? This path is fraught with contradictions.

The answer is the paladin only takes up arms when he must. He tries his best not to. He's no longer a Holy Warrior on another jihad, outside. Only inside, ever inward, into the sunset. It's a tough oath to keep, easy to break and fail. That's why paladins are so brave, they know failure. Don Quixote is a pretty good paladin, fighting battles in the imaginary mind. But you always know when to draw your sword, or your laser pistol. You try not to, and you just get lucky.

Just another symbol, pointing or 'giving form' to complex feelings, electro-chemical interactions of significance and meaning. If a scientist wants to find significance and meaning, the only place they'll find it is in the experience of human emotions, complex secretions of a bio-nerve system which can generate an imaginary 'mind.' Whether they find them agreeable or disagreeable.

So the 'pole star' is just a symbol pointing at "the quest for significance and meaning." Orienting towards the feelings. Outside, the real pole star is for navigational purposes in spacetime.

Don't worry, even the best paladins of peace break the oath sometimes, or at least bend the oath. A good way to keep the paladin oath is to have good, real friends. They know what you're capable of, which gives them courage. And they respect oaths. Plus, they're your friends. With friends like that, a paladin might never have to draw from his menu of ridiculously overpowered weapons. Like I said, bending the rules. And you're not totally useless, a paladin can function passably as a healer. Maybe learn a few tricks.

But I'm talking about inside, in the "visualizing mind." Out here in time, friends all stay out of sight. Night dark, fulla terrors, you know. Say a prayer that your friends stay safe, hidden.
Last edited by dada on Wed Aug 01, 2018 6:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby Cordelia » Wed Aug 01, 2018 5:43 pm

DrEvil » Wed Aug 01, 2018 2:32 pm wrote:
Yeah, I'm not good at multitasking. If I were to listen to it I couldn't do anything else at the same time (except drink coffee and chain smoke) or I would miss half of it.



Isn't that admissible multitasking, along w/swallowing, inhaling, exhaling, etc....? :wink
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby PufPuf93 » Wed Aug 01, 2018 8:47 pm

A Math Theory for Why People Hallucinate

Psychedelic drugs can trigger characteristic hallucinations, which have long been thought to hold clues about the brain’s circuitry. After nearly a century of study, a possible explanation is crystallizing.


In the 1920s, decades before counterculture guru Timothy Leary made waves self-experimenting with LSD and other psychedelic drugs at Harvard University, a young perceptual psychologist named Heinrich Klüver used himself as a guinea pig in an ongoing study into visual hallucinations. One day in his laboratory at the University of Minnesota, he ingested a peyote button, the dried top of the cactus Lophophora williamsii, and carefully documented how his visual field changed under its influence. He noted recurring patterns that bore a striking resemblance to shapes commonly found in ancient cave drawings and in the paintings of Joan Miró, and he speculated that perhaps they were innate to human vision. He classified the patterns into four distinct types that he dubbed “form constants”: lattices (including checkerboards, honeycombs and triangles), tunnels, spirals and cobwebs.

Some 50 years later, Jack Cowan of the University of Chicago set out to reproduce those hallucinatory form constants mathematically, in the belief that they could provide clues to the brain’s circuitry. In a seminal 1979 paper, Cowan and his graduate student Bard Ermentrout reported that the electrical activity of neurons in the first layer of the visual cortex could be directly translated into the geometric shapes people typically see when under the influence of psychedelics. “The math of the way the cortex is wired, it produces only these kinds of patterns,” Cowan explained recently. In that sense, what we see when we hallucinate reflects the architecture of the brain’s neural network.

Rest of article at: https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-math-t ... -20180730/
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby chump » Wed Aug 01, 2018 11:34 pm




https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/07/2 ... -of-faith/

PART II – The Cosmology of Consciousness: The Monkey Mind, Excalibur and Your Leaps of Faith
By Steve Robertson

Our minds are abuzz with thousands of thoughts each day, all of which compete for our attention and a corollary action. The Buddhists call this untrained mind of buzzing thoughts “the Monkey Mind.”

The Monkey Mind, the ego mind, constantly flickers between conscious thoughts of love and unconscious thoughts of fear. This non-focused flickering is an intentional tool of the ego used to perpetuate confusion, attachments to duality and a resulting state of suffering. The ego’s life depends on a consciousness of confusion, for with stillness and peace comes enlightenment and a related death to the fearful attachments of our ego mind. Here, in this present time and peace, only love exists.

“All that we are is a result of what we have thought.” – Buddha

Curiously, the metaphor of the Monkey Mind and how it traps consciousness in illusion and suffering holds great similarity to how monkeys are actually trapped in the jungle. In this process, a hole is drilled at the bottom of a tree where monkeys are known to gather above. The hole, drilled to be just large enough for a monkey to stick its hand in, is filled with nuts that they love to eat.

At the back of the hole is a cavernous pocket, just large enough for the monkey to wrap its hand around the nuts. Smelling the nuts from the branches above, the monkey scampers down the tree to discover the origin of the enticing aroma. The monkey, desperately excited, has to have these nuts and so quickly plunges its hand into the hole.

Feeling the nuts at the back of the hole, it grabs them. Now even more excited, the Monkey attempts to pull its hand out of the hole. Desperately though, as hard as the monkey pulls, its hand will not come back through this hole. Its balled fist, which is now wrapped around the nuts, is too large to make it through.

Try as it may, the monkey cannot pull its hand out of the hole and at the same time, it will not let loose of the nuts. The monkey has trapped itself. All that is required to be free is to let go of the nuts.

With the monkey’s hand now stuck in the hole, the trapper simply walks up to the monkey and slips a rope around its neck. Sensing the peril of the situation, the monkey releases the nuts and its hand pulls back through the hole. Free of the hole, the monkey is, however, now the slave of its captor.



“It is your attachments that causes your suffering.” – Buddha

Like the monkey who has trapped itself, the untrained mind is tempted by the allure of fearful and dramatic thoughts. The ego mind, sustained by the consumption of such thoughts, enslaves our consciousness and our actions that soon there will follow. The result of this entrapment is attachment, an unconscious sleepwalking from which our actions bring suffering and we experience separation from the present moment, paying attention and most importantly,  love. We could free ourselves and find peace, however, the unconscious mind is greatly attracted to the entertainment of our buzzing thoughts and those offered to us by the ego’s material plane of reality.

“The ancestor of every action is thought.” – Emerson

… (con’d)
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Thu Aug 02, 2018 11:17 am

I'm saying the imaginary 'mind' will not be found in the electro-chemical process, like you're watching some hologram generated in the electronic architecture of the brain, because it's imaginary, doesn't exist, it's made up. When you 'unplug' it, the imaginary mind can't 'go away,' because it was never there in the first place.

This is the 'Unborn mind' that you may have heard the sages mention. Not 'before birth,' but never born. No space, no time, no dimensions. Not a 'model' of anything, because what is it going to model? Something bigger? Something smaller? There's no size, it's imaginary.

The question, then, is if there's more than one imaginary, no dimensional 'space' that doesn't exist in the universe, or is what doesn't exist simply what doesn't exist. Answer seems obvious to me.

You know how a smell can stir a memory. Sometimes a smell stirs it up, but the memory doesn't quite come into focus. Feelings are stirred, but you're left searching for the memory that created them. Unmoored, time-'traveling' in and out along your memory banks on the inside. This is madness. The feelings are what's important now.

I find thinking of certain smells, I can get a better 'picture' of them than others, I can almost smell them. An olfactory memory. Hot smells I can catch an imaginary whiff of better, beach smells, salt. Hot tar and wood. Dry, dusty roads. I think it's why I like the cowboy stories. I can almost smell the smells.

A good sci-fi story will always create new smells, ones you can almost smell, even though you've never smelled them before. Outer space smells, stirring up new emotions.

Out here in time, I think my favorite place is the mountains of Pennsylvania/New York. Solid rock, relatively moderate temperatures, snow storms, seasons. Probably mountains like these anywhere else. China, Asia, down south. They got everything in China, I think. All the 'temperate zones.'

And what is China missing? Same thing as we are. Free, automatic climate control.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Thu Aug 02, 2018 1:53 pm

Emotional energy is not always sexual, "who wore that perfume?..." I'm making a venn diagram, two circles, 'feelings of love' and 'feelings of sexual arousal' that overlap. Make it three circles, call the third one 'no feelings.' And leave the area where all three circles overlap totally empty, nothing there.

I mean I feel bad for these sexually frustrated buckley young republicans. The Pugsley Addams brigade, licking their pet toads. But I think of Walter Benjamin strolling through Paris, reminiscing about the different brothels he visited, and the historical picture doesn't look much different. Human emotions are more than just a release of pent up sexual energies. Love has an electrical component, it isn't just chemical.

Silence, signal, noise. Basic wave mechanics of sound. Where does the signal end, the noise begin? And where's the baseline? Contemplating infinities. This is the feeling of despair. Attack, decay, sustain, release. You said something to someone you care about that you wish you could take back. You know everything's fine, you just feel bad about feeling bad about... right down into infinity. Lost in the emotional dungeons, mazes of the heart. You may like it. Might even find treasures there if you look deep enough. Spelunking the infinities of despair.

Inside, 'seeing' is valuable, because it is a reminder that you are being distracted. Sights in the mind is the experience of distraction. What kind of emotion is distraction? What is it trying to communicate to you? Can't use an imaginary fire to light your way in the infinity dungeons. Too damp. Use a light spell.

The sense of touch is confusing, kind of like the junctions in the body where the electronic architecture and the chemical secretions communicate with one another. Love is complicated.

And I'm sure you're all familiar with the existential hunger of the consumer.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Thu Aug 02, 2018 7:05 pm

Feelings of love, human emotions. From buying flowers, to experiencing feelings of joy towards a book, to feeding a kitty.

Sexual feelings are exactly what you think they are. Millions of years of biological evolution coming up the plumbing. And 'no feelings' is billions of years of indifference before that, sheer cosmic indifference.

But this is why it's a good idea to use a venn diagram in no space for this. Dimensional projections of distance and duration are purely theoretical. The circles are 'equal in size,' that size being a big fat zero.

But where are the negative human emotions? All the emotions set opposite love. Love/hate. Love/loss. Stories of chivalrous love, by muse-struck bards in love with a goddess, possessed and hopeless.

Another good reason to use a venn diagram in no space for these things. The venn diagram allows for the 'feelings of the heart' circle and the 'indifference' circle to overlap. I think most of the blackest emotions are found in the overlap between those two.

I mean the twisted, evil emotions that experience has made you aware of, horror of nightmares come true, the things you would rather not repeat in polite company. I'm saying they're to be found on the venn diagram in the overlap between 'human emotions,' and 'cosmic indifference.'

Sometimes it helps to set aside the Venn diagram in no space. Time to do some organizing, cleaning. You get out six imaginary, magical emotional trash bags. They never get full. What's the best way to categorize the emotions? We're just labeling trash bags. See? I labelded mine love, sex, death, and the overlaps. Nice, huh.

Which emotions do you throw in which bag. Which are purely human emotions, which are purely sexual, what is pure indifference, and which feelings fall somewhere in between. I think pure human emotion and pure sex feelings are easy to see, as I said at the top of this post. What goes in the pure indifference trash bag? Things I'm not sure what to do with yet.

What emotions go in the Sexual/Indifference trash bag is easy enough to see. Robot sex. The emotions that go in the Human/Sexual bag is also easy to see. Human sex. I like them both.

The Human/Indifference trash bag is like the "I don't care" bag. That's the bag you throw out. The rest of the emotions you can put back. That's the point of organizing and cleaning. Figuring out what to throw out.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Fri Aug 03, 2018 12:49 am

My brother disagrees with my division of power between raw power, the billions of years old 'blind, indifferent force,' what spins suns and grows grass; sexual power, the millions of years old 'biological electro-chemical exchange; and complex human emotions, of which reports of their arrival are sketchy and conflicting.

He thinks all energy is sexual. But he granted me the difference in refinement between the blind sexual force of billions of years, the biological sexual force of millions of years, and the complex human sexual emotions.

Anyway, if for you're looking for the real fight, it's in that area of the diagram. In the palaces of Lawful Evil. I'm not talking about in the Halls of Power, or 4chan, or other sink holes of pent up sexual frustration. Calling evil 'lawful' is just an expression. No more lawful than saying a play needs a villain, of one sort or another. Agree or disagree with casting, that's free will. You choose, pikachu.

Trash is one lawfully evil enemy, we already took him out, him and his busted old change maker. Out by the curb. Another lawfully evil enemy is 'the power that is not blind.' You should know, this power is already aware of itself. It doesn't serve humans, humans serve it. It isn't indifferent, Indifference is the raw power of "I haven't decided yet." The big boss of lawful evil stays out of the limelight.

So, free will. Maybe you're like me, you choose to kick these lawful enemies out. Wake up tomorrow look outside, what do you see. The things you just threw out. Trash everywhere. Even got that old busted change machine working. Out here in time, power is already aware of itself, so you better think fast. And the big boss stays hidden, he prefers to be no one, but he isn't imaginary, he's very real.

The 'big boss.' Some nameless kid working a desk job. But these are the bad guys, the roles that can be destroyed in death scenes that the actors love to play.

But that's outside. Inside, there's always madness, the infinity dungeons of despair and what lurks within, distractions, confusion, and the existential hunger of the consumer to tangle with. The worthy quest.

And what about those 'liminal spaces,' that don't quite exist. A ghost world, slightly askew from timespace? I'm open to it. Wonder what's in there. Great old ones rising from the future to swallow the little monsters who conjured them, as was prophesied in the immanentization of the eschaton? Yeah, no thanks. I think I'll save my money. Maybe send a few bucks to Outer Space International instead. Because I'm a consumer of discriminating tastes.

Power is already aware. Are you? Just one imaginary mind in a sea of a billion glowing screens. You ain't anonymous, my friend, I hate to tell you. No one is. Only no one. Maybe take a lesson from evolution, try camouflage.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Fri Aug 03, 2018 6:11 am

Vampire lords, witchfinder generals, in the palaces of lawful evil. Sounds like something bad starring Christopher Lee and Vincent Price. Palaces of Lawful Evil? Nothing good about the whole place. Plagues brewing in the sewers. Knock it down.

What about this 'power that is not blind' swirling around, reaching as far in as is marketingly possible, understanding the urgency of guarding every domino with barricades and a team of snipers, and has many means at its disposal. It's like power is everywhere, filling all the space, cutting off all the oxygen. There's one place that power can't get into still, though. The imaginary laboratory, because it doesn't exist.

So the lab becomes the war room. Burroughs brews bio-weapons and poisons, teaches the new recruits about firearms from combustible projectiles to thought projection tech. Imaginary dwarves forging spirit swords, bows. d&d magic weapons +1. For what? Spirit weapons are for keeping your spirits up. Burroughs will show you spirit knife models with a spring-loaded action that will lift your spirits. Bazaars full of interesting stuff like that.

Also good for fighting power within. Ridiculously overpowered imaginary weapons. Spirit weapons. The sci-est, fi-est weapons you can think of. Make running through some of those old infinity dungeons feel like a joke.

What else? Send out spies, maybe open a bottle of oxygen, try cooking up something new with it.

You may not think there is a 'power that is not blind,' out there in time, making people into zombie slaves. I might not, as well. I might think it's just a symbol in the imaginary mind, a metaphor, flowery language, pointing back to emotions and feelings. Those invisible, tentacled horror of power with eyes emotions and feelings.

Suck out its almost-smells for bottling, and banish it to the outworld, from whence it came.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby DrEvil » Fri Aug 03, 2018 4:26 pm

Cordelia » Wed Aug 01, 2018 11:43 pm wrote:
DrEvil » Wed Aug 01, 2018 2:32 pm wrote:
Yeah, I'm not good at multitasking. If I were to listen to it I couldn't do anything else at the same time (except drink coffee and chain smoke) or I would miss half of it.



Isn't that admissible multitasking, along w/swallowing, inhaling, exhaling, etc....? :wink


Yep, but the coffee and chain smoking are pure instinct by now. I suck at multitasking, but my subconscious mind is excellent at it. :)
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Fri Aug 03, 2018 11:28 pm

"But how can a Knight, a fighter of battles, a defender, give up the firepower and steel for imaginary weapons?"

Except for research and target practice. Always good to keep in practice, and know whatever dangerous device you happen to be handling, inside and out.

The answer to the question of who is 'viewing' the imaginary mind is you, what we call Free Will. I've been tough on free will, like a drill sergeant, saying all free will is, is choosing to agree or disagree, or give up and die. Because at this point of the big reveal, if you're not ready, it could go to your head. Now that you've done basic orientation, when you remember that you, free will, don't actually exist, you're a basic function of the 'Unborn imaginary mind,' you're the chooser which does not exist, never born, hopefully you will remember your lessons of inside and outside, images and feelings. Exercise your free will in the full light of its nonexistence, and hopefully don't go too wild at the imaginary controls. Train, practice, don't get lost. There's a war going on out here.

To some people, the realization that they are literally the imaginary 'ghost in the machine' that doesn't exist, never born, and yet are the viewer, the choosing you, can go right by. It isn't their time. They have work to do. Cooking classes. Off hunting down time crystals, or whatever. Mining for moon pearls.

Maybe you just realized you're the ghost, not even already dead, because you are made up, the chooser, viewer to the imaginary 'mind.' Looking outward at the world, inward at the feelings, and making choices. An imaginary thing, a ghost, that can influence the outside world, but can't be touched, because it doesn't exist, never existed to begin with. That's you, viewer, agreer, disagreer, undecided. The ruach, the free spirit. Hebrew national style. Baseball, hot dogs. I like calling it the 'Watcher.' Gives it a spooky necronomicon feel. The watcher, the invincible guardian of the body while you sleep and dream, look inside to the emotions. That's me. Scary fellow.

Symbolically the stupid magician. I hate magicians, wizards. Just fucking hate 'em. They choose like they didn't study at all. Studied their comic books.

Better symbol is the Wheel of Fortune. You're looking at a wheel, crocodile-monster on the bottom, crafty-looking monkey, and the sphinx. Which do you choose? Free will, your choice.

Inside or outside? The symbol or the feeling? The monkey is probably the scribe god thoth in his baboon form. Free will, a magical monkey.

Monkey in Journey to the West is a better example of free will, I think. I won't go into it here. You can read all about him, your choice.

So no, free will is not simply 'making choices,' of course. It's you. Another card further down, five or seven of cups, guy is sitting on a hill by a tree, cups in little clouds in front of him in the sky hold visions or mirages, omens or prophecies, temptations or wishes. The symbol of free will.

Basic table of godly powers. Global customization menu, open, no-ended imaginary architecture:

To A or not to A: Basic choice function, A or not A. For anything. Self-explanatory.

To B or not to B: To be something, or be nothing, to keep going or stop, to live or die, in poetic speak. This free will function is actually toggling the Unborn mind on and off. To exist or not to exist. Both at the same time, get the feeling of 'remembering you don't exist,' all over again.

To C or not to C: Basic Inside/Outside, or Symbols/Feelings. Like in the lessons. Try both together.

To D or not to D: Dimensional perspective choice. Try both together.

To E or not to E: Basic Sound/Science. Yes, I said Science. For voice, mostly.

F or not to F: millions of years of biological electro-chemistry is telling you something, but free will can actually toggle this function on and off. You start to see the power of being a chooser-ghost. Good thing you came out alright.

G or not G: Basic identity on/off.

H or not to H: laughtrack on/off

I or not to I: Thinking on/off

J or not J: Smoke 'em if you got 'em

K or not K: Basic agree/disagree

L or not L: To do or not to do. Action selection for making adjustments. Break zeno's paradox like kool-aid man come a crashing. L is actually do/don't, 'not L' is a Gross/Fine tuning selector. PKUnits. Pay attention to the dials, easy to get feedback.

M or not M: Imaginary taste on/off

N or not N:Imaginary smell on/off

O or not O: Imaginary sound on/off

P or not P: Flags, label transparencies on/off.

Q or not Q: Goddess crossover. Give free will to the goddess.

R or not R: Pirate code on/off

S or not S: Another Sex function. Works well with F.

T or not T: Time toggle.

U or not U: Second person perspective.

V or not V: Viewing point on/off.

W or not W: Laughing inside on/off.

X or not X: basic targeting. To aim or not to aim.

Y or not to Y: Self explanatory.

Z or not to Z: Sleep function
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby DrEvil » Sat Aug 04, 2018 4:27 pm

PufPuf93 » Thu Aug 02, 2018 2:47 am wrote:A Math Theory for Why People Hallucinate

Psychedelic drugs can trigger characteristic hallucinations, which have long been thought to hold clues about the brain’s circuitry. After nearly a century of study, a possible explanation is crystallizing.


In the 1920s, decades before counterculture guru Timothy Leary made waves self-experimenting with LSD and other psychedelic drugs at Harvard University, a young perceptual psychologist named Heinrich Klüver used himself as a guinea pig in an ongoing study into visual hallucinations. One day in his laboratory at the University of Minnesota, he ingested a peyote button, the dried top of the cactus Lophophora williamsii, and carefully documented how his visual field changed under its influence. He noted recurring patterns that bore a striking resemblance to shapes commonly found in ancient cave drawings and in the paintings of Joan Miró, and he speculated that perhaps they were innate to human vision. He classified the patterns into four distinct types that he dubbed “form constants”: lattices (including checkerboards, honeycombs and triangles), tunnels, spirals and cobwebs.

Some 50 years later, Jack Cowan of the University of Chicago set out to reproduce those hallucinatory form constants mathematically, in the belief that they could provide clues to the brain’s circuitry. In a seminal 1979 paper, Cowan and his graduate student Bard Ermentrout reported that the electrical activity of neurons in the first layer of the visual cortex could be directly translated into the geometric shapes people typically see when under the influence of psychedelics. “The math of the way the cortex is wired, it produces only these kinds of patterns,” Cowan explained recently. In that sense, what we see when we hallucinate reflects the architecture of the brain’s neural network.

Rest of article at: https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-math-t ... -20180730/


Sounds like Klüver's constants are just a side effect of how our brains are wired. The downside to this effects is probably close to zero, while the upside is us being able to see. Our bodies have all kinds of stuff it doesn't really need, but isn't detrimental enough to get weeded out by evolution. Think male nipples, tail bones and toe nails. Maybe this is just another one of those.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:14 pm

I think if the newspapers really wanted to not die off, they'd resurrect the comics pages. Big sections, color. New artists, serials, let them come and go. Be a beautiful renaissance.

To do or not to do. Gross and Fine adjustments are for quality judgements. Use finesse, english. Also for matters of taste.

Anyway that's the basic alchemical idea, the apparatus, how it works, some of the chemicals. You want results. Something new, special, transformational, excitement. Separating feelings from symbols, distilling meaning.

You want a new golden yin/yang ball, one that represents inside/outside orientation, the symbol and the significance. Magic 8ball taoist black magic. On its side, the yin/yang is like two landscapes. You're outside, now, looking in to the two inner worlds of essence and appearance, feeling and symbol, imagination and dream.

So now you got a golden yin/yang ball, one with no border. Good work, hostage rescue bonus. What do you do with it, though. Make tea with it.

Plenty to do. See if you can distill the meaning of meaning. Make new weapons, new emotions. Brew excitement. Lots of bravery, as always. Find what's in that unbridgeable void connecting the ghost and the machine. Recon, soldier.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Sun Aug 05, 2018 5:25 pm

"cups in little clouds in front of him in the sky hold visions or mirages, omens or prophecies, temptations or wishes. The symbol of free will."

Whatever they are, remember to suck out the smells. Maybe use them later for something else.

Don't be confused as to who your 'nemesis' is. Your shadow side, you can't throw away. Existential hunger. What exists can't get at what doesn't exist. The electro-chemical process eats, it consumes. The hungry ghost is hungry for ghosts. Hungry for something that can't be eaten, imaginary power, no-power.

That's your nemesis, your insatiable needs. Other 'enemies you can't throw away' are the dark emotional demon-kings of madness, despair, distraction and confusion. You can tame them, though. Put them to work as spies.

Your "nemesis" is actually the shadow of you, the "you" that appears in timespace. The actor. The one who turns imaginary no power in no space into power. Your nemesis works for you. Secret agent in the dimensions.

Because you're in no space, where all imaginary no power is free, unlimited, not approaching zero, but zero, zero.

Imaginary no power may be what the universe runs on, but you need to exercise some real power, send your nemesis out as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. You still need the electro-chemical fix, if you're going to unlock this meaning of meaning golden tao pokeball. "Unlock" is metaphor. You can't kiss it, it's imaginary. A real puzzle.

So that's nemesis and the demons. But the "bad guys" in the sense of central casting are the villains in the play. Trash, the change maker, power wielded by no one. They can all die spectacular deaths.

Or tame them, give them jobs as your critics. They're already your biggest fans.

The meaning of meaning unlocked seems to be something like, 'the imaginary you in no space can touch timespace.' No power, generated in the imaginary 'mind,' crosses over to power in timespace. Yet power can't cross back into the imaginary space. It's empty, doesn't exist. No dimensions for power to be exercised. Try to, and you blow up the laboratory, yourself. People think the warning against using power is some kind of non-libertarian heresy. It isn't, it's a goddamn warning. Don't heed it at your own peril, I did my job. Just thinking about the math, that's all.

So that's the meaning of meaning. Roaches check in, but they don't check out. Got to be more to this ball than that. There is. The no power is unlimited, free. If you can harness it, can't tame it, that's unlocking some real no power. Working on all kind of tech to help with that, too. Ghost power, no power, is measured in PK, Parakeets. These Parakeets do not behave like regular power parakeets. It's the naughty way the kinky Parakeets undulate itself, that is the no power.

Meaning of meaning essence distilled. continue? go back.

Cook it up again. Don't drink it. Are you crazy? Feed it to the birds, watch what happens.
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