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Showing posts with label Quantum Self. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quantum Self. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Human consciousness is much more than mere brain activity
If you think the brain is a machine then you are committed to saying that composing a sublime poem is as involuntary an activity as having an epileptic fit. You will issue press releases announcing "the discovery of love" or "the seat of creativity", stapled to images of the brain with blobs helpfully highlighted in red or blue, that journalists reproduce like medieval acolytes parroting the missives of popes. You will start to assume that the humanities are really branches of biology in an immature form. link
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Meditation changes temperatures: Mind controls body in extreme experiments
In a monastery in northern India, thinly clad Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room where the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6-foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees) and placed them over the meditators' shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering. If body temperatures continue to drop under these conditions, death can result. But it was not long before steam began rising from the sheets. As a result of body heat produced by the monks during meditation, the sheets dried in about an hour. Attendants removed the sheets, then covered the meditators with a second chilled, wet wrapping. Each monk was required to dry three sheets over a period of several hours. Why would anyone do this? Herbert Benson, who has been studying g Tum-mo for 20 years, answers that "Buddhists feel the reality we live in is not the ultimate one. There's another reality we can tap into that's unaffected by our emotions, by our everyday world. Buddhists believe this state of mind can be achieved by doing good for others and by meditation. The heat they generate during the process is just a by-product of g Tum-mo meditation." link
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Kymatica (2009)
"Sometimes the best way to effect change you wish to see in the world is to change the way you see the world."
"Kymatica will open your eyes to why your every day thoughts and actions directly correspond to what's going to happen if we don't change them." talismanicidols.org
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Terence McKenna's Final Earthbound Interview
In this last video interview before his untimely death, Terence McKenna describes Novelty Theory to director John Hazard with an elaboration of its core principles involving hyper-complexification and the compression of Time. He holds forth on the correspondences between the structure of the DNA molecule and the Chinese I-Ching, then shows how his notion of an Archaic Revival leads from the theories of mind and the art movements of the early 20th century to the Shaman as the quintessential figure of the 21st century, with psychedelic substances being the bridge between these worldviews. link
Friday, April 29, 2011
Brains of Buddhist monks scanned in meditation study
Since 2008, the researcher has been placing the minds and bodies of prominent Buddhist figures into a five-tonne (5,000kg) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.
The scanner tracks blood flow within the monks' heads as they meditate inside its clunky walls, which echoes a musical rhythm when the machine is operating. Dr Josipovic, who also moonlights as a Buddhist monk, says he is hoping to find how some meditators achieve a state of "nonduality" or "oneness" with the world, a unifying consciousness between a person and their environment. link
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Across the Threshold
...Forty years later, that world is falling apart at an accelerating rate. The stories that undergird our civilization are crumbling. Two are primary: the story of the self, and the story of the people. The first is the discrete, separate self, a Cartesian mote of consciousness looking out onto an objective universe of soulless masses and impersonal, deterministic forces. In biology, the separate self manifests as the paradigm of the selfish gene seeking to maximize its reproductive self-interest; in economics, it is homo economicus, who seeks to maximize rational self-interest as measured by money. In psychology, it is the skin-encapsulated ego; in religion, the soul encased in flesh but separate from it. Such a self is naturally in opposition to all other beings, whose interests are indifferent to or at odds with its own. Spiritual teachings based on this story of self, then, tell us we must try very hard to rise above nature, to conquer our biological and economic drive to maximize self-interest at the expense of other beings. link
Nonduality, Neuroscience, and Postmodernism: The Dream of the Self
The conventional nondual inquiry begins with asking "Who am I?"
So, who are you? If you ask most people what makes them who they are, chances are you'll get an answer that has to do with the self, the personality -- perhaps even the "soul," something distinctively individual, psychological or spiritual. As all of us mature, we come to know ourselves, and form personal, professional, familial, and other identities. And those identities are usually disembodied (we usually say we have bodies, rather thanthat we are bodies), and connected with thoughts, habits, preferences, and feelings. Yet if you look closely at the personality (or mind, or heart, or soul), you discover that it isn't there -- at least, not in the way you thought. link
So, who are you? If you ask most people what makes them who they are, chances are you'll get an answer that has to do with the self, the personality -- perhaps even the "soul," something distinctively individual, psychological or spiritual. As all of us mature, we come to know ourselves, and form personal, professional, familial, and other identities. And those identities are usually disembodied (we usually say we have bodies, rather thanthat we are bodies), and connected with thoughts, habits, preferences, and feelings. Yet if you look closely at the personality (or mind, or heart, or soul), you discover that it isn't there -- at least, not in the way you thought. link
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Demystifying meditation -- brain imaging illustrates how meditation reduces pain
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The scans taken after meditation training showed that every participant's pain ratings were reduced, with decreases ranging from 11 to 93 percent, Zeidan said. link
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
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