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General Epistemology        Chapter III-9       

 

Chapter III-9 To test

 

 

(Permalink)(Was chapter 28 in version 1) (note 93 on the use of ©)

 

The previous chapter is interesting, as it points at several testable consequences of these otherwise «very abstract» metaphysical reflections. In more, these consequences are not far away or very difficult to find: they are known phenomena, which occur in everyday life. Some of these phenomena have strong scientific evidences of their existence, and anyways scores of persons experienced them (including me). So studying these phenomena becomes the scientific mean of understanding reality, beyond the limitations of physics, into the realms of consciousness, «paradise universes», and a wealth of wonderful applications. But we shall see in the fourth part on physics that this metaphysics is also a good explanation of our physics, especially it explains simply all the «strange» points of quantum mechanics.

 

The very first consequence of the possibility of a conscious principle, is to allow for a theoretical frame to study several phenomena considered as heretic by classical science, such as parapsychology or UFOs. This theoretical frame was noted as missing by people such as the PEAR Laboratory team (archive of the censored initial site) of the Princeton University, and most classical scientists argue that this missing frame was forbidding the «rational study» of these phenomena. We now have such a frame to allow this study. And this already has a consequence: the adjective «antiscientific» now goes to the ones who will still refuse this study.

 

But, back to the ongoing discussion, the possibility of an immaterial conscious principle provides us with a test about other universes and the whole theory: such a conscious principle may be able to go into another universe and back, with its own memories. Without a conscious principle, it seems definitively impossible to transfer the required information to reconstruct a brain with the correct memories. (This is true for the inter-universe travel, but also in the much more common case of the reincarnation). We shall further see these tests in the fifth part on consciousness, where this conscious principle explains many things in the domains of morals and meaning of life, and the seventh part on unexplained phenomena, where it also allows for likely and logical explanations of phenomena considered as «irrational».

 

 

For now, we saw that several kinds of logical self-generation processes may exist, each one with its own way to interact. Let us see these different cases of logical self-generation processes, from the most classical to the most innovative:

 

 

Mathematical theories

(Permalink) Starting from some axioms and possibly some founding contradictions (non-self-containing sets, i, no division by zero...) a mathematical theory unfolds with an absolute determinism until the infinite, chaining theorems to other theorems, generating complex sets such as vector spaces, some of them reproducing the most bizarre phase spaces of quantum physics and relativity. Mathematical theories are dependent on nothing. However the human consciousness is able to explore them without sensory organs, from its capacities of logical reflection and visualization.

Physical world

(Permalink) As we shall study in details in the fourth part on physics, the physical world is a logical self-generation process, which self-generation law is the set of the laws of physics. It started with the Big Bang, and it creates the physical reality. Consciousness perceives it as «real» and «concrete», because the sensory organs send it overwhelming messages from this physical world, under the forms of images, sounds, feelings such as time and space. Consciousness can also interact on it with muscles. The exact relation is complex, and it will be explored in the fifth part on consciousness.

Computer program

(Permalink) The running of a computer program starts from some initial state, and chains new states at each clock tick, according to the program and its instructions. Ideally, this is a perfect logical self generation process. However, a computer is a physical object, dependent on events such as data entries, malfunctions, etc. which will interact with the process and alter its course.

So it is not exaggerated to speak of «dematerialisation» of documents entering the computer system, or to say that computer worlds are «virtual». Things work like this, but if the physical computer is destroyed, the program and all the documents stop existing. The computer data is dependent upon the physical world. Systems implemented in the brain may make it dependent on consciousness (or the consciousness depend of the computer, in the totalitarian version).

Computer simulation

(Permalink) Scientists use many kinds of computer simulations, in order to model and understand physical phenomena. A computer simulation starts from an initial state, and chains states according to the simulated laws of physics. We must not however confuse an ideal simulation, which will entail continuous variations, with a real simulation, which is a computer program. Real simulations will exhibit defects such as steps, accumulating rounding errors, programming errors, etc. These difficulties limit the accuracy and repeatability of simulations. However we are allowed to add arbitrary events to a simulation, and even physically impossible events. So, simulations of physics largely depend on the programmer.

Night dreams

(Permalink) The most banal example of logical self-generation process involving elements of the consciousness experience (images, sounds...) is quite simply the dream. Ordinary dreams seem to be only an emanation of the activity of the brain. However it seems that it shares the main properties of a true psychical universe, which would be kind of the contrary of virtual: simulated physically. Anyway it is really a logical self-generation process, on the elements of the consciousness experience, as we can expect of a true psychical universe. From here the interest of studying dream. Especially the «dream engine»© of the dream seems to function with successive generations of elementary scenes chained together to form a story. So we can expect that true psychical universes work in a similar way of the dream engine. And real visitors of psychical universes often report a dreamlike or symbolic unfolding of their experiences.

In a science book, it is useless to comment all the masochist theories which see in dreams the emergence of a frightening or sordid «Unconscious», which we would ignore while our enemies would know it very well.

The seemingly incoherent or absurd look of most dreams is generally explained by a process of random generation of scenes. I would rather say that the chaining of scenes would obey to logical laws, non-Aristotelian but rigorous. As far as I can guess, the dream engine would create first a simple scene. This scene would appear to the consciousness through the channels normally devoted to senses, and would thus appear «real». Then, other elements are added or subtracted to form other elementary scenes. Each elementary scene is instantaneous, and would result of a single coherent burst of neural activity, activating several sets of neurones, each for an elementary image in the visual cortex. These coherent neural discharges would be the nib of the dream «universe». A dream is made of a succession of such elementary scenes, which chaining appears like a continuous consciousness experience, like the images in a movie. The logical self generation process of the dream is made apparent (and different of a random process) when we observe constraining logical relations between successive scenes. For instance I happened to dream that I was to get surgery, and I waited the anaesthesia to become effective. But the anaesthesia was not working, so I had to get surgery in full awareness! The appearance of such an absurd and fearsome scenario however has a very simple cause: we cannot lose consciousness in a dream, and any scene of losing consciousness forcibly leads to the following scene where this loss of consciousness does not take place, against the inner logic of the scene, but in accordance with the logical functioning of the dream engine! Another common example of apparent illogicality: in order to escape a pursuer, we climb in an aircraft, which takes off, leaving the pursuer on the ground. But suddenly the pursuer re-appears into the aircraft! Simply the dream engine modified an element of the scene: the place, without modifying the element «pursuit». The sometimes very strict and repetitive ways of recalling painful elements of real life, also speak for a strong logical determinism of the generation laws of dream scenarios. So the dream engine produces something like a deterministic chaos, from its complexity or by mixing a great number of very different elements. So we really have a logical self-generation process at work, based on neural logic.

Waking state

(Permalink) Without entering into justifications that we shall see in the fifth part on consciousness, we can say that the waking state works the same way as the dream state, but with several important differences: 1) the inputs of the senses are heavily impacting the self generated content 2) we have memory and intention, which allow us for a continuity of action and intent. 3) We are able to recognize the likeliness of the scenes. So we really have a self-generation process, probably using the same neural functions than the dream, but open to the influences of the senses, and with additional capabilities normally disabled in the dream. This process is, in this case, and unlike the dream, heavily dependent on the physical world. If we compare with the computer, the dream is a simulation running without control and without outside interference, while the waking state, using the same program, deals with data entries, and with specific intentions.

Sleep paralysis

(Permalink) This is another kind of dream, much less common, also called hypnagogic or hypnopompic experiences. In this state of consciousness (that 25% of the population had at least once) the most common scene is to see ourselves in our bed, in our room, but nearby paralyzed. Often take place feelings of shock, vibrations, cold, crushing, etc. Sometimes supplementary elements appear, such as characters, unless we fly across the ceiling.

It is what happened in the Middle Age when people reported seeing incubus or succubus, and today many call this abusively «alien abduction», as we shall see in chapter VII-2. The traditional name of this state of consciousness is «nightmare» (etymologically: a night phantom). In German it is «alpentraum» (Dream of Elves) and in French: «cauchemar» (crushing phantom). This tells us that sleep paralysis is known from ancient times, and they were the source of an abundant folklore. These experiences can be unpleasant to blissful, but somebody unwarned will usually be scared to death. Anyway today's pig ignorance of the spiritual domain made forget their existence, and the very word «nightmare» was made Newspeak, to mean something horrible, surround all this with fear, and remove any mention to this very interesting state of consciousness.

Obviously, sleep paralysis work like dreams, although the connexions may be different. So they are very similar logical self-generation processes. However I strongly suspect that, to the difference of ordinary dreams, sleep paralysis may be true psychical experiences, independent of the brain. This would explain that their content is so different of what of dreams, and make then closer to NDE or OBE.

Specialists like Simon J. Sherwood, of the Psychology Department of the University of Edinbourg (Relationship between the hypnagogic/hypnopompic states and reports of anomalous experiences) (Alternative source) note that sleep paralysis is much more conducible to the appearance of true parapsychological phenomena than the ordinary wake state. As for me, my checked experiences are almost equally shared between waking time, dream and sleep paralysis. Given the time I spent in each of these states, it is clear than my dreams were twenty time more productive than my wake state, and my sleep paralysis ten thousands times more than my dreams. We can expect such differences, after the theory of psychical universes, if sleep paralysis are more psychical. But even dreams seem to also have some psychical content.

OBE

(Permalink) OBE («Out of the Body Experiences» or «astral voyage») seem to be more advanced state of sleep paralysis, where we see ourselves going out of our body, and we perceive the physical world from another place, sometimes very far (ESP, standing for Extra Sensorial Perception). There are numerous cases where this perception was found true, even when the experiencer directly sensed the thought of somebody he met. I enjoyed a case of OBE with a checked ESP, and a well known OBE experiencer such as Robert Monroe had numerous cases of checked ESP, often very far. OBE with checked ESP are clearly psychical experiences, which cannot be explained by an activity of the brain, as there is a physically impossible information transfer. However the later is still working, its physical state is normal, just it seems to be into some special mode. ESP during OBE is the easiest to check of all the parapsychological phenomena, provided that we have a psy subject having them often enough. But we clearly need all the cautions described in chapter II-9...

NDE

(Permalink) The NDE («Near Death Experiences») are experiences which take place during fainting, anaesthesia, or coma, see when physicians declared the person dead. NDE experiencers report very varied visions, but which are organized around a small number of stereotypes: getting out of their body in an OBE style, passage through a dark tunnel, encounter with a «light being», life judgment with instantaneous recall of all our memories. The experience generally ends with an unpleasant return into the body, when the person «awakes». Some longer experiences seems to lead toward alternate worlds, often very beautiful, where one encounters very friendly beings, crystal cities, spiritual teachings, etc. There experiences are often described as «more real than reality», very enthralling. They often produce positive changes in the experiencer, such as to no longer fear death, to be interested in ecology, spirituality, into other persons. There exist atypical cases of NDE, and even unpleasant NDE resembling some fearsome sleep paralysis. Numerous cases of NDE are reported in the litterature.

In 2011, NDE are scientifically proved beyond any rational doubt to be physically unexplainable, as many occur while the brain has stopped any activity. Numerous checked ESP still further validate the phenomenon, while pseudo-rational explanations such as the «neurotransmitters firework» were shown to be of the «swamp gas» category. In the frame of the metaphysical theories of this book, NDEs can be interpreted as true psychical phenomena, activity of the conscious principle (small «psychical universe») stripped of any sensory input or brain stuff. In the extreme cases, it seems that this conscious principles experiences contact with full fledged psychical universes (Even if no objective description of a given place has emerged yet, we have coherent general characteristics). These psychical universes also look «dreamlike», as we can expect from their nature. This makes of the NDE one of the best available today evidence of the survival of the consciousness after death, into other psychical universes. They also are one of the best available tests of the metaphysical theories explained here. By the way, this metaphysical theory is the only one passing this test, and it has no competitors to date, save for the Buddhist philosophy antecedent.

However numerous points remain to explain. The most difficult is the problem of the memories of the psychical life written in our material brain, at a moment where the later is not working. There is clearly an «impossible» telekinesic interaction of the psychical on the material! This very interesting point will be debated in the fifth part on consciousness, and in the seventh part on the unexplained phenomena. Better explanations may be obtained with the CE3, a still more interesting phenomena, but much more difficult to observe.

Instants of superconsciousness

(Permalink) A reduced form of NDE seems to be instants of superawareness, short periods in our apparently ordinary waking state. The experiencers report acute burst of spiritual understanding (meaning of life and happiness), premonition of an invisible danger, or the way to escape this danger, etc. This happen when we are confronted to a danger, just escaped a danger, at a moment of great happiness, or during meditation sessions.

I myself had such an experience where I could avoid an immediate hazard, without the latency time of reflexes, when people around had no time to move. In another instance I was warned of an hidden viper just where I was to pose my hand. Myself and many others were induced into spirituality after experiencing such flashes of understanding, breaking through the ordinary grey certainty of «realism».

Instants of superconsciousness are clearly episodic psychical interactions on the brain, when the later is its ordinary physical state. However it is clearly not a simple phenomenon: the interaction is clearly a message, answering a precise situation, something intentional, as would do another person intervening at this moment. Probably the conscious principle works on its own at this moment, instead of just being stuck to the brain as it uses to do.

My personal feeling in such episodes was that, kind of another instance of myself was speaking to me, but much wiser, and completely disengaged of the dreadful situation.

CE3

(Permalink) However there are about two hundred well documented cases of UFO close encounter, see of «abduction» in a «spaceship», that specialists call CE3 («Close encounter of the third kind», or in French RR3, «Rencontres Rapprochées du 3eme type»). This started in the 1950 years, and it is still going on today.

A typical RR3 starts with a feeling of presence, or the appearance of a far object. The scenario is also very stereotyped: a «spaceship» lands, «extraterrestrial» humanoids take the (sometimes several) witness, who is submitted to various absurd medical tests strongly hinted at sex or reproduction. In a second step, more varied experiences, more or less spiritual, take place, such as calls for peace or ecology. Then the witness is suddenly rejected in the ordinary world. He only brings back memories from his experience, sometimes objects, very precious to him but anything but convincing to the eyes of any other. To the difference of NDE however, the «spaceship» or the hijacking are often seen by other witnesses, or they leave physical traces. Experiencers of RR3 are often strongly traumatized, but some evolve positively, in a similar way of the NDE experiencers.

We noted that the millions of «alien abductions» reported by witnesses are rather sleep paralysis, and not UFO spotting.

There also are probably hundreds or thousands cases intermediate between RR3 and ordinary sleep paralysis, with RR3-like scenarios, but happening like sleep paralysis, in the bedroom, without the appearance of a «spaceship». (Okie, some will be pleased to hear that I myself saw a «grey» with a silvery suit in one of my sleep paralysis). However these cases are often ill documented, given the dogmatic madness which usually surrounds the abduction stories and makes objective inquiries very difficult.

 

CE3 seems to be what looks the more like a brief visit into another psychical universe: we see many materially unexplainable phenomena (Light without shadows, miraculous healing, telepathy…), while the experience in the «spaceship» seems to take place out of the ordinary space and time («missing time»: experiencer remaining several days in the «spaceship» while a quarter of an hour elapsed in the ordinary world). However the body of the experiencer seems also concerned. So, contrarily to NDE, RR3 are not just a consciousness experience. The phenomenon also acts in the physical universe, in an ununderstandable mixing of physical elements and dream elements.

 

However appears here an unexpected difficulty: the snippets of psychical universes caught during these experiences appear incoherent, variable, dreamlike. So it is difficult to speak of perceptions of places which would exist objectively. If such places exist, these short experiences not yet provided any access to them. At best we would see temporary constructions, proper to the experiencer, built in a similar way of the ordinary night dreams, but of psychical nature, by a psychical dream engine© which self-generation laws would imitate the ones of the neural dream engine©, with just a different content. And, for now at least, some stereotypes or common spiritual advices would be the only objective data for us to grind about. We however note that, in cases with several witnesses, they tell the same story, up to the details...

The Bardo

(Permalink) The Bardo Thödol, the famous tibetan book of the deads, precisely claims to describe true psychical universes, where the deads would dwell, waiting a reincarnation or permanently. This is not just an anecdote: all the Tibetan Buddhist metaphysical and spiritual system revolves around such notions, presented as common experience by its authors.

We note that the tibetan notion of the Bardo doesn't simply match with the christian notion of «after life». There are in facts several possible Bardos, which are rather «states of consciousness» than actual places. In short: -the incarnation in our physical universe; -the «Bardo of Becoming», a completely disincarnated state occurring immediately after death; -the incarnation in a psychical universe, such as a paradise or a hell; -dream; -meditation.

A common abuse of language among Westerners is to say «the Bardo» for the only Bardo of Becoming. It however has very different properties than the others.

It is clearly explained in this strange book that the experiences in the Bardo of becoming are basically illusory, with the nature of a pure psychological projection. The problem is that, in this state necessarily deprived of sensory organs, we are in a situation similar to sensory deprivation: tied to the only content of the experience, without any «real» perception to «wake up» and realize that it was «not true». The self-generation process, using consciousness elements, reificate any thought into images and feelings, with an absolute force, for our greatest joy, or our greatest terror. This word «reificate», which looks like built purposely for the translations of the Bardo Thödol, literally means to make real, or, in the instance, to give a very strong feeling of concrete reality, as in the physical experience of the usual material world. And the strongest the emotion, the more efficient the reification is. Somebody who meditates enough to master his mind (the wild chaining of thoughts and emotions which is our every second experience) will not be bothered by the visions of the Bardo of becoming, when an untrained person could have horrible or terrifying experiences, however void of any real danger.

But now, the other worlds beyond death, hells or paradises, look much more familiar, with their landscapes and their inhabitants. These would however be psychical universes, created and operated, after the Bardo Thödol, by the thought power of very evolved beings (the Buddhas), and much resembling virtual words created by computers: the ordinary inhabitants will experience them as much like the physical world (without the limitations), while their creators would be able to modify them as with «magic», from their only will, just as when we build a virtual world on the Internet.

The scientist will note that the description of the Bardo of Becoming is well suited to various conditions such as sleep paralysis (where it still keeps some contact with the brain and the senses), NDE (between the tunnel and the «spiritual worlds», or «negative» NDEs) and RR3 (Where supplementary physical interactions happen). In these experiences, consciousness evolves on its content alone, with reduced or no interaction. The «spiritual worlds» of the NDE could on the contrary be real psychical universe, where the consciousness meets an objective reality (landscapes, other people) which appear «real» as the physical world. However, we don't have enough evidence yet on these worlds to be able to scientifically conclude on their objective existence. This should be one of the main studies about NDEs, but the experimental conditions cannot be published.

Evidences?

(Permalink) So the whole metaphysical theory explained in this third part allows for things such as psychical universes and a conscious principle, which are logical self-generation processes on the elements of the consciousness experience. Interactions of these processes with the logical self-generation process of the physical world may be good explanations of experiences of the NDE or CE3 type. Further, this theory allows for the existence of psychical universes, that we would be able to join after death.

The different phenomena in this chapter may have each their own causes and modalities of appearance. However they all more of less imply psychophysical interactions, that we could classify into five categories:

1) An ESP (Extrasensorial perception) is when information passes from our physical universe toward a psychical consciousness.

2) Telepathy is an exchange of information between two psychical consciousnesses.

3) Psychokinesis (or telekinesis) is the passage of information from a psychical consciousness toward the physical world (or, said otherwise, when the later is modified).

4) Teleportation would be the exchange of information (or objects) between two physical universes (Or between two far away places of our universe).

So this is not a psychical phenomenon, but it could be provoked by psychical causes. We don't know such examples, save some very unreliable stories of «contactees». Today physics knows little about teleportation.

5) Transubstantiation would be the transportation of an object (most often a body) from the physical world toward a psychical world (or the reverse). This phenomenon seems to be more or less at work in CE3, and it is mentioned about great meditators of any spiritual path. We shall see this again about CE3 in chapter VII-3 and chapter VII-4.

It is to be noted that, in order to have the two first types of interaction observable in our physical universe, the third must also take place (The psychical consciousness of the experiencer must modify the brain, to write a memory in). This is happy, as it allows us to use the classical physical «objective» methods, to observe and prove those phenomena.

 

These phenomena can be considered as evidences of my theory, if we can show that they are not dreams or hallucinations of the physical brain. NDE were subjected to detailed science studies, which last point, the Dutch study, ensured then definitively the statute of a 100% valid and recognized scientific fact, while being materially unexplainable. An experiment on OBE, due to Charles Tart, among many others, showed the existence of an extrasensorial perception into this state. Extrasensorial perception, telepathy and psychokinesis were confirmed by many science works. Especially, the researches of the Pear laboratory in the Princeton University put a final period to the demonstration of the existence of psychokinesis. So, it is today anti-scientific to deny the reality of the three kind of interaction. That consciousness experiences, whatever they are, can take place when the brain is stopped, or provoke other physically impossible phenomena, is enough to constrain us to admit that consciousness can work without the brain, according to my theory or to any other. Down with materialism.

 

We shall study these psychophysical phenomena with more details, in the seventh part.

 

We however missed our initial objective, which was to prove the existence of full fledged objective psychical universes, or other physical universes, by analysing reports of visitors. This test seems possible, although the proof will probably be difficult, with long inquiries. But at least we can scientifically envision this possibility as very likely.

This problem is like trying to prove that tourist really visited the same far country, if they do not know its name, they don't understand what the objects they see are for, and in more they all visit a different house. To analyse the varied accounts of NDE arises practical difficulties of this kind. The methods cannot be published.

 

 

 

 

 

 

General Epistemology        Chapter III-9       

 

 

 

 

 

 

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