Echoes and Mirrors » n-th dimension

At least this guy is optimistic

Daniel — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:32:00 +0000

How celestials assist humanity with extraterrestrial life

Numerous individual testimonies and historical records describing physical contact with extraterrestrial life refer to highly developed ethical beings often witnessed in association with extraterrestrials. In contrast to extraterrestrials, these beings do not appear to be dependent on technologies for communication and travel. These highly developed ethical beings have been described as Angels, Ascended Masters, Elohim, and similar terms used to signify highly developed states of consciousness or ‘spiritual awareness’. The term ‘celestial’ can be used for any life form that has achieved higher states of consciousness whereby they display a number of remarkable abilities without technological assistance.

I suspect somebody has used DMT, and that that somebody is the author of this article. Of course, the rest of the article posits that the US government has signed treaties with extraterrestrial life, so it could be the result of a flat-out delusional psychotic break from reality.

After reading it for fifteen seconds, it occurred to me that Michael Salla, Ph.D. was referring to the Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Also, celestials have attained advanced states of consciousness wherein they have attained a level of oneness or ‘cosmic consciousness’ with the universe, and do not identify themselves exclusively with a stellar region, civilization, time or dimension. This ability again distinguishes them from extraterrestrial entities that exclusively identify themselves with particular stellar regions, civilizations, times or dimensions. Finally, celestials are not limited to any one physical form, and can change their form at will to suit whatever circumstances they are in. This ability again distinguishes them from extraterrestrial entities that identify with a particular physical form or genetic characteristics, and require technology to change their physical characteristics or how they are perceived by others.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – Arthur C. Clarke

Michael Salla has a Ph.D, which is making me wonder two things: first, where the hell does one do doctoral work in being a kook and second, should this be warning for me not to pursue those mystical three letters myself?

Being Chemistry trailer

Daniel — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:15:00 +0000

No related posts.

I wrote a story about something just like this a few weeks ago

Daniel — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:34:00 +0000

Altered states of consciousness and Space Travel:

Their experiences, along with dozens of other similar experiences described by other astronauts, intrigue scientists who study the brain. This “Overview Effect”, or acute awareness of all matter as synergistically connected, sounds somewhat similar to certain religious experiences described by Buddhist monks, for example. Where does it come from and why?

Andy Newberg, a neuroscientist/physician with a background in spacemedicine, is learning how to identify the markers of someone who hasexperienced space travel. He says there is a palpable difference in someone who has been in space, and he wants to know why. Newberg
specializes in finding the neurological markers of brains in states of altered consciousness: Praying nuns, transcendental mediators, and others in focused or “transcendent” states.

Newberg can actually pinpoint regions in subjects’ gray matter that correlate to these circumstances, and now he plans to use his expertise to find how and why the Overview Effect occurs. He is setting up advanced neurological scanning instruments that can head into space to study–live–the brain functions of space travelers. If this Overview Effect is a real, physiological phenomenon—he wants to watch it unfold.

Newberg’s first test subject will not be an astronaut, but rather a civilian. Reda Andersen will be leaving the planet with Rocketplane Kistler. She says, that as one of the world’s first civilian space adventurers, she is more than happy to let Andy scan her brain if it can help unlock the mystery. Why do astronauts all seem to experience a profound alteration of their perceptions when entering space, and will it happen for Rita and the other civilian explorers as well?

Pretty much amazing, these psychologists, and their cognition and what-have-you. Peeling back the layers of the sublime and mystical are very necessary endeavors: it shows how much we are connected with the universe around us (as a part of it). This is an important lesson about nature.

Free Will from Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principal

Daniel — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Free-will vs. determinism is a very scary subject to broach and one that most people will avoid like the plague. It impedes on our very self-worth. Our uniqueness stems from our individuality, which stems from the fact that each and every single one of us is the master of our own destiny. And because without it, there might not be a God.

If this were an illusion (hard determinism) then the implication is that our actions are akin to a very complex set of dominoes cascading. Our creations are just echoes of machinations that appear to be freely chosen, but cannot occur any other way. Even natural, random events are pre-determined and human reaction is determined. The entirety of existence would be a very precisely tuned Rube-Goldberg and that idea scares the living crap out of every one of us. Having developed such a complex psychology begs that there is something more to existence than highly ordered and complex systems. Our brains are wired to operate within a relative range, unable to really comprehend either infinity nor absolute nothing, and hyper-actively recognizes patterns. They can be grasped a priori, but there will never be a postiori evidence for either non-existence or infinity. But they’re fascinating none the less.

Which is why we attempt to rationalize everything.

Some people use religion. Others use Quantum Mechanics and mathematics:

“We must believe in free will, we have no choice,” the novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer once said. He might as well have said, “We must believe in quantum mechanics, we have no choice,” if two new studies are anything to go by.

Early last month, a Nobel laureate physicist finished polishing up his theory that a deeper, deterministic reality underlies the apparent uncertainty of quantum mechanics. A week after he announced it, two eminent mathematicians showed that the theory has profound implications beyond physics: abandoning the uncertainty of quantum physics means we must give up the cherished notion that we have free will. The mathematicians believe the physicist is wrong.

And if they decide that there is determinism at the quantum level, then it’s kind of depressing… you are like one of those little toy monkeys that bangs cymbals together and then die. Interaction with the universe is still limited to influence and it still seems real, but the illusion would just mask the fact that humans are automatons.

But the very fact that the illusion exists is what troubles me. There are three possibilities that I’m going to consider:

Thoughts are products of the physical activity within the gray bits in a skull. They are the products of very complex machinations.
Thoughts are actions, not the product of actions.
Thoughts are a combination of some attribute unique to each individual and the resulting feedback of its interaction with the physical universe, even the gray bits inside the skull.

The third option is more or less dualism. There is strong evidence for complex feedback loops, but they apply in all situations. There is also a slippery slope for the mystical with every postulation and premise. This covers in the internal. The external has roughly the same options:

Chaos is fictional but we cannot recognize the pattern because it is too expansive.
Chaos is real.
There are large expansive patterns that overlap with chaos in a system, but do not interact.

I don’t like the idea of being a slave to determinism. If we take 1 from both as true, then we are slaves to a universe that is predetermined. Taking 2 from both as true, free will is very much alive and kicking. Taking 3 from both is a compromise that allows humans to influence the universe, but restricts us through systems and laws. Option 3 is an acceptable comprimise to most people because it retains the individual self but accepts that there are limits.

But there is much more work to be done in this line of thought, I think. The marriage of quantum mechanics and philosophy seems to be very important.

But why is Will such an important guy that he should be freed? I say we pitch in to support his appeal and get him some good lawyers.

The 4th Dimension

Daniel — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:35:00 +0000

You know you want to click it.

bye bye 4th amendment

Imaginary Friends & The Universe

Daniel — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:53:00 +0000

Born Believers: How your brain creates god:

WHILE many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.

This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.

Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Until recently, science has largely shied away from asking why. “It’s not that religion is not important,” says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, “it’s that the taboo nature of the topic has meant there has been little progress.”

The origin of religious belief is something of a mystery, but in recent years scientists have started to make suggestions. One leading idea is that religion is an evolutionary adaptation that makes people more likely to survive and pass their genes onto the next generation. In this view, shared religious belief helped our ancestors form tightly knit groups that cooperated in hunting, foraging and childcare, enabling these groups to outcompete others. In this way, the theory goes, religion was selected for by evolution, and eventually permeated every human society (New Scientist, 28 January 2006, p 30)

I’ve mentioned it before, but this is a much more in-depth piece. From my rudimentary knowledge of psychology, the brain interprets and pieces together sensory information, even using imagination to weave a cohesive reality together (which is also why memories are so often wrong and why we can’t ‘get’ something we have zero knowledge/context from which to understand it). This is a protective mechanism to shield us from how shitty the cold, uncaring universe really is. There are probably more mechanisms like this than we realize (morality would be a good example of this). Previously, I’ve mentioned the brain’s aversion to non-existence.

Part of it might simply be the brain’s way of exhibiting dissatisfaction with the mere physical existence it has. This is why you should feed it.

Another step closer

Daniel — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:24:00 +0000

From Psychedelic Medicine News:

Scientists have been searching for years for naturally occurring compounds that trigger activity in the protein, the sigma-1 receptor. In addition, a unique receptor for the hallucinogen, called dimethyltryptamine (DMT), has never been identified.

The UW-Madison researchers made the unusual pairing by doing their initial work the “old-fashioned,” yet still effective, way. They diagrammed the chemical structure of several drugs that bind to the sigma-1 receptor, reduced them to their simplest forms and then searched for possible natural molecules with the same features. Biochemical, physiological and behavioral experiments proved that DMT does, in fact, activate the sigma-1 receptor.

“We have no idea at present if or how the sigma-1 receptor may be connected to hallucinogenic activity,” says senior author Arnold Ruoho, chair of pharmacology at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. “But we believe that the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) may be interested in biological mechanisms underlying psychoactive and addictive drug action.”

In addition to being a component of psychoactive snuffs and sacramental teas used in native religious practices in Latin America, DMT is known to be present in some mammalian tissues, and it has also been identified in mammalian blood and spinal fluid. Elevated levels of DMT and a related molecule have been found in the urine of schizophrenics.

Ruoho speculates that the hallucinogen’s involvement may mean that the sigma-1 receptor is connected in some fashion to psychoactive behavior. When his team injected DMT into mice known to have the receptor, the animals became hyperactive; mice in which the receptor had been genetically removed did not.

“Hyperactive behavior is often associated with drug use or psychiatric problems,” says Ruoho. “It’s possible that new, highly selective drugs could be developed to inhibit the receptor and prevent this behavior.”

The study revealed an additional neurologic link by confirming that the sigma-1 receptor and some compounds that bind to it inhibit ion channels, which are important for nerve activity. Work by many researchers — including some from UW-Madison — initially showed this relationship in earlier studies.

Some studies have also linked the receptor to the action of antidepressant drugs, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists recently found that it appears to serve as a “chaperon,” helping proteins to fold properly.

This is very exciting stuff if you have any interest in the psychedelic experience or the brain. Or living, for that matter. We are now another step closer to figuring out how Eris speaks to us.

Imaginary Friends & The Universe

Dead-Alive Cats

Daniel — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:30:00 +0000

It wasn’t the purpose or the function, but the style and that didn’t make sense to me. I counted style as a secondary objective. It was a matter of importance, but less importantly a matter of interest. Some days, he did nothing but write, and man, his work fucking howled. Other days he got carried away, pacing the living room while ranting about Schrödinger’s cat.

“Fucking dead-alive cats roaming the streets, meowing and unstoppable,” he was frenzied, “they are/aren’t there/gone. They won’t play or kill mice, because they don’t know where they are.”

According to him, the world would be overrun with dead-alive cats and we were all headed to that same fate. He had never been more sure of anything in his life. Superposition, he called it. I called it groovy and decided that it would be fulfilling to experience superposition. I checked the cupboards and found two bags containing Psychotria Veritas and Syrian Rue.

I heated up the stove and began to prepare for the weekend. Being interesting and having a purpose is always more important than the style in which you do it, but style is necessary to avoid being dull.

“If you’re dead-alive, do you care about getting hurt?” It seemed like a pressing question, which presumably made him think I was crazy. I stood in my kitchen, brewing a pot of that Amazonian tea, and by god that bastard was going to drink some. We would see whether the style overcomes the function, and whether or not you can be alive and dead at the same time.

That night we witnessed the collapse of the wave function, returned and were vacantly aware of the cats’ demise: they’re minds just could not handle it.

Dig it.

Daniel — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:09:00 +0000

Watch Imagining the ten dimensions in How to Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

This brings me back to when I read Rudy Rucker’s Infinity and the Mind. The explanations in this video are broken down for the layman. Do not fuckin’ cry about not getting it. Also, do not accept it as truth -process it and use your damn brain to extrapolate something real from the ideas presented therein (what?).

Cheerio!

ghosts

Daniel — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:00:00 +0000

As someone who has had a very creepy encounter with a a ghost-like event, I find this pretty interesting.

I won’t say it was a ghost, but dammit, something was not quite right. Didn’t see anything, but several people heard it over the course of three years. This particular ghost occupied the restaurant I worked at and would call out people’s names. When they were the only person in the building. I heard it come from inside the building once when it was locked and empty. Very unnerving, honestly.

Could have been a drafty area in the second floor and our minds being creative. Either way, unnerving.