h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The qestion you have to ask yourself is....maybe when I die, my next experience will be that of a sheep. Will I then be indifferent if people care for me, poke me with a stick or slaughter me! You never know - you may be 5 minutes away from actually finding out.

Genetically I would hazard a guess that there's not much to choose between us and sheep - we both have a body made from meat and a mind. Two legs compared to four. Just because you do not beleive this does not mean that it isn't true.

That would be a laugh, wouldn't it? Suppose it's probably the Buddhist view. If any of that supernatural stuff turned out to be true, it would be very entertaining if everybody got reincarnated as whoever they'd treated worst.

An intelligent conversation with a Mugwump - life just got interesting.

You got it right - the Buddhist angle. Well my thing is to take the ism's out of things - just a label after all, and like all labels they mean nothing - just preconceptions really. Lets just go for sublime logic and theory - put the ideas to the test.

So a little thought to ponder.

Ever had a dream about flying? Humans don't fly unless you count Superman, so where does this experience come from? A previous memory maybe - of being a bird!

All right then. I've had dreams about flying. We see flying birds and insects, gliding mammals and reptiles. We have an imagination and empathy. I don't think we need to resort to supernatural explanations to explain how we can imagine the feeling of flying. I've also dreamed about swimming underwater without the need for breathing apparatus. I know how it feels to swim and I know how it feels to breath. I've seen nature programmes showing birds like penguins flying under water. Put them together and what have got? All you need is imagination.

Exactly.

The thing is - what is the difference between imagination and reality.
You may be suggesting one is real and the other is not - in so far as you refer to what i talk of as supernatural.

A building is real, it exists. But it first existed in the mind of the architect. Without his imagination the reality (the building) could not have come into being all by itself. What we imagine with our mind comes true - we experience it. So maybe you could create the causes to experience life as a bird and fly or as a fish and swim.

When you dream - at that time - what you experience appears as real and solid. It's only when you wake up that you don't beleive - as you come back to reality. When we die - will we wake up - and if so - will we have a different body. 2 legs, four legs or 1000 legs or are only humans realy awake?

Well, imagination is real. What did Descartes say - "I'm pink, therefore I'm spam"? The fact that imagination is real doesn't imply that everything you could possibly imagine can be made real. You're up against the laws of physics. It never surprises me to see a building. I see them all the time but I've never seen a human flying unaided. There's a reason for that and it's not just lack of imagination or acid.

You may not always know when you're dreaming but I bet you're pretty confident that you're awake now. How do you know you're awake now? Try flying now. If you were dreaming, you could probably do it. But you can't do it now because you're limited by physical reality.

I've no memory of any former life or of existing separate from this body. I have no reason to believe that my mind could become detached from my brain when I die. There seems to be good reason to believe that mind is the product of brain activity. I can't think of any reason to believe that my mind might continue to exist once my brain ceases to function. Do you know of a reason to believe your mind could survive without your brain?

Not sure what you mean about only humans being awake. Do you mean self-conscious?

I'm glad you mentioned about the brain. I am my brain and when that shuts down so do I. Seems very reasonable I agree. Our conciusness seems very routed in our head.

However there was an interesting revelation the other week.

Someone from the medical establishment who had no beleif whatsoever in the idea that the mind carried on after the death of the body (and the brain) had a bit of a shock, which seems to have rocked his boat somewhat.

He had an experience which went something like this:

He had a few minutes previously left the operating theatre, where he had declared a patient dead. Technically speaking the patients heart has stopped beating and all electrical activity in the brain had also ceased - brain stem death I beleive. This is the point where, having given one's consent they could rip youre organs out.

Well he came back in to theatre a while later, quite astonished to see the patient alive again. Even more shockingly the patient then proceeded to recall to him the exact words the surgeon had uttered on declaring the very same patient dead. The patient recalling that he had an experience of leaving is body and watching the scene from above his bed.

So an experience of mind after the body and brain had stopped functioning. Slightly worried by this he began to research other similar cases and discovered similar results.

The medical profession is now in a bit of a quandry....when is someone actually dead?..........more questions I know.

As for the other bits,
the only other thing I could say is what about the old saying mind over matter - remote sensing, Yogic flying, martial arts, telekenisis. This world may not be as solid as one thinks - have you watched The Matrix?.

The mind is a formless continuuum - no form or weight. Physics says you cannot travel faster than the speed of light - something to do with gravity. Mind is unobstructed by such things. Who knows what is achievable if one understands the true nature of the mind - I think this is what I mean by being truly awake - to know thyself........(not just a biblical quotation - I don't mean it in that context.

Interesting discussion. I don't if it can go anywhere...the only things we can prove ourselves - eventually.

There was the old Chinese story about the man who went to sleep and dreamt he was a butterfly, and from that day forth he could never be sure if he was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Doesn't get anyone any further, but it's a nice story.

I think the operating theatre experience just confirms that we don't know that much about how the brain works.

We had a researcher (I think for a writer called Rupert Sheldrake who's into this sort of stuff) visit the martial arts club where I practise who carried out the following experiment. One of us would sit in a chair, and she sat behind us. She had in her hand a 'clicker', and every time she clicked it, we had to say if she was looking at us or not (she would either stare at the back of our heads, or at the floor). She kept a record over a hundred clicks. I forget the actual figures, but I recall that those of us who took part (who had all trained quite extensively) were right more than 3 times out of 4, which I believe is statistically significant.

What was going on? I could give an explanation based in the martial arts and Eastern philosophy, concerning energy. I'm never sure how genuine that is, but I can make it work. I can get myself into a very receptive state, where I don't seem to think and feel that I react very quickly, yet don't appear to be moving quickly at all. Students think it's timing. I call it by an esoteric Japanese name. Athletes call it the zone. Similar effects are claimed for positive thinking, (auto-) hypnosis, meditation, yoga. Scientists have measured diferences in the brain waves of people in this sort of state.

I personally think that this is all a normal function of the brain, and that there is a 'straight' scientific explanation - we just don't know what it is yet - or at least I don't. Or perhaps there's nothing happening at all - it all depends on your perceptions and whether you can believe them, which has defeated better philosophers than me.

There you go, that's added nothing at all to the total sum of human knowledge, but I enjoyed writing it.

I should have mentioned in the last posting that the researcher I described decided whether she was looking or not on the toss of a coin each time.

And I enjoyed reading it! and it sort of says most of what I'd want to say in reply to your last message, WolfieBro.

I'd only add:

1) Have you seen that yogic flying? It just looks like people bouncing around on their bottoms on springy mattresses to me. Don't get me wrong. I couldn't do it. I get the impression you'd need to be strong, fit, energetic and unselfconscious to do it, but it didn't look to me as though there was anything magical or mysterious about it.

2) The Matrix is just a movie with good special effects.

3) Quantum physics has a different view of the speed limit for quantum particles now. Sounds like voodoo to me but I'm also kind of intrigued.

4) More than 75% success rate on that ESP type test sounds absolutely extraordinary. Statistically significant? I should say so! Was there any attempt to repeat the experiments under controlled conditions with scientific observation and recording?

1. Yogic flying - I saw it demonstrated when the Natural Law Party first stood in a General Election. It looked very strange, and I have no idea how it's done, but magic wouldn't be my first guess! I know it's not technology, but I believe that Arthur C Clarke once said that any technology we cannot understand is indistinguishable from magic.

2. Yes, I thought that the Matrix was a great movie with good special effects, and an interesting concept, but no more.

3. I had the idea that physicists now believe that some particles travel faster than light, but you can never see or measure them. I can't remember whether they're the ones that you can see where they've been, or the ones that you just sort of deduce from the other stuff that's about. I know that when you know how fast something is going you can't know where it is, and if you know where it is you can't know how fast it's going. That may be Heidelburg (or one of his relative's) Uncertainty Theorem, or then again it may not. There's something about a cat (Schroedinger's Cat?) that is simultaneously alive and dead as well. It's way over my head. I think that physicists have different mental wiring from us normal types, it enables them to think in more dimensions. It makes my brain go all fuzzy!

4. What is really extraordinary about our test is that we didn't think it extraordinary at all, we expected to be able to do it. It's important that the 'starer' stares hard, 'with intent' as we'd describe it. Having said that, this was done in a church hall without any controls - we were told the woman was carrying out background research for a book. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we couldn't reproduce it in scientifically controlled conditions, because I don't know what's really going on, and I find it hard to convince myself I'm doing something impossible even when I apparently am.

This is the subject of lively debate amongst my friends, who mostly feel the same as me, having all been educated in the sciences. We have various exercises based on knowing when one is about to be hit without any visual or aural clues (we're practising a martial art, not telepathy), and we try to exclude the possibility of involuntary 'cheating', but we are not in a laboratory, nor are we trying to prove a theory.

I can't help being reminded of Clever Hans, the horse who could apparently count. You may recall that when he couldn't see his trainer, he could no longer do it, and it was shown that he was picking up almost imperceptible signals that his trainer was unaware he was sending. Perhaps this is what I am doing when I practise - but ultimately all we are concerned about is that it works.

Having said all of that, I recently went to watch the monks from the Shaolin Temple (you know, the 'Grasshopper' monks depicted in the TV series Kung Fu - they're real) in their travelling show, Wheel of Life. If you get the chance, go to see it. There's a video, and a website. They have some demonstrations that I find difficult to explain, except in the terms they would use, things like balancing prostrate on a spear.

It's worth recalling that their explanation, like my explanation for the things that we do, is based on what the Chinese call Chi energy, the Japanese call Ki, and the Indians call Prana, and this theory is accepted throughout Asia and forms the basis of acupuncture (which also seems to demonstrate the seemingly impossible), yoga and most martial arts. Perhaps they are describing something which we have yet to discover that those physicists will explain soon.

There you go, I've gone on for ever and reached the same non-conclusion! We need the physicists to get on with it!!

It's not Heidelberg, is it, it's Heisenberg. Or not, I'm not certain. This was bugging me all day in work, and I thought that when I got home I'd go online and post a correction, because I can't get online at work. Does this indicate that I don't get out enough?

I haven't got much time just at the mo to pick the bones or chew the fat over the last couple of postings but it is getting interesting (to me at least). I will endeavour to do so soon.

I stuck the yogic flying in for a bit of a laugh (Ted) - it seems to get everyone going though!

Was it the salamander or the kebab who said there are lots of things about the brain which we don't yet understand. My point - as a piece of logic - was that if, using the scientific measure of when we as an individual cease to be, as in "The brain is dead - i'm going for your'e liver" - "you won't feel anything coz youv'e shaken off this mortal coil".

How can experience go on if the very thing we are suppositing as responsible for our awareness has ceased to function?

If you syphon all the petrol (and the gas in the tank) out of a car, you wouldn't expect it to still work. This is logical. Same logic if you ask me. In the case of the car you would conclude that it's source of energy was to be found elsewhere, and you would conduct a new search. If our awareness carries on after our brain has stopped functioning, we should conclude that the source of this awareness lies somewhere seperate from the brain. Therefore no matter how much we know about the brain, we would still be looking in the wrong place.

What meditators have said for 2,500 years is that our awareness is coming from mind and that our mind is not our brain. Yes - they have a connection - but they are not the same. The mind is a formless continuum, seperate from the body - no surgeon has ever operated and found our mind.

Scientists look for ultimate truths seperate from themselves. They invent theories - supposit them to exist, only to keep revising them again and again. If they say what they said before is now wrong how can we beleive what they now say is right? The closer they get the more problems they encounter. What's happened to the theory of everything they have been going on about? Gravity - that existed long before scientists called it gravity. A scientist matbe just a giver of names - someone who points things out.

Science - looks into outer space. Meditators look into inner space. If only one of these holds the key to understanding the ultimate nature of things, of life, the universe and everything, then which one is right? There is no third possibility. The question we have to ask ourselves as individuals is whether an we are sure we are not looking in the wrong place? In out, in out, shake it all about.........

Can Science and spirituality bridge the gap. Is there common ground. Are we really talking about the same thing.

We can but try.......

Which came first - the chicken or the egg. The old ones are the best.