There has been an intense discussion this week about “psi” this
past week, sponsored by the Vedanta Society but including major skeptics,
leading parapsychologists, neuroscientists and others. Here is what I come out
with from that.
Contents: the bottom line for humanity here; issue of whether it
is real; why I propose the “baby noosphere” theory to explain it; practical
applications, response to what they sent me about “third eye” yoga; and evaluation of the mixed impact we have seen from major religions, sometimes helpful and sometimes serving other interests.
BOTTOM LINE
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Many of us believe that there is overwhelming evidence that
humans have “psi” abilities beyond what we can explain by the mundane
capabilities of the brain. In my view, there is no way to explain such a thing
rationally without assuming that we have what some call “souls” – living parts
of us. I will give you my logic soon, but first, as a quick summary – it is
like Dante’s idea that we ourselves are half beast and half angel. It leads to
the old Rosicrucian idea that we should not waste time and energy on wars
between the beast and the angel, but should seek an amicable and efficient
“alchemical marriage” of close cooperation between the two.
For me, the bottom line is as follows: In trying to help
humanity as much as I can, I focus on two ultimate, overriding values: (1)
minimizing the probability that our mundane species (“the beasts”) becomes
extinct before its time; and (2) maximizing the full attainment of human
potential, for example by developing special schools aimed at maximizing the
growth and strength of human bodies, brains AND souls. (Friends Community
School in Maryland was set up with that charter, as was West Point! But on a
recent visit to West Point, their talking points about soul all involved
football and such, not quite living up to all that we humans can learn to do.
George Washington understood better, but I guess he was never on their
faculty.) The challenge of developing the soul part is an age-old value, which
has inspired all kinds of wild efforts, but if we can understand better what is
going on here, we may be able to do better.
ISSUE OF WHETHER IT IS REAL
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In my view, it is rational that some people simply do not
believe in the existence either of psi or of soul. Others disagree. The
discussion:
X wrote: However,
from my perspective as an empiricist, I see the insistence of a theory before
acceptance of data as not only completely backwards, but antithetical to
science. Data must be allowed to trump theory, otherwise
science is the same as religion.
My reply:
OK, epistemology,
including epistemology of science (first person or third person), is a proper
subject for this list. There are times when the followers of Popper and even
Kuhn seem to be as far out of touch as the most extreme hermits in the woods..
but the subject is important.
I deeply respect
Donald Hebb's reasons for rejecting parapsychology, and believe we need to
understand and respect them. Hebb understood what science IS as much as anyone.
I view him as the grandfather of the neural network field, on its mother's
side. (Von Neumann being the other grandfather, more my side.) His book, The
Organization of Behavior, does say a FEW things which now look silly to me, but
it is far more profound than most of what I see written today about those
subjects, and I recommend it to anyone who is serious about brains and
consciousness.
In the preface to his
book, he argues that we need to think of inference by science itself in
Bayesian terms. (My updated version of that is in www.werbos.com/Mind_in_Time.pdf, published in
Russia.) As we try to develop the kind of theories which are capable of
predicting things, we ask what their probability of truth is. From Bayes Law,
we know that it is a convolution of the "likelihood" term
(probability we would have seen what we did, if the theory is right, REQUIRING
stochasticity in serious theories) WITH the "prior" term. The two
terms are precisely EQUAL in importance in the mathematics. For psi, he argues
that the likelihood is better than what we see with most theories in psychology
(lots of evidence) but not so much better that it outweighs the low prior
probability based on what we know about how the universe works. For many years,
I agree with Hebb, but then two things happened to change MY first person
probability assessment:
(1) a
direct personal experience so overwhelming (veridical) that it forced me to be
open-minded, to upgrade the likelihood term;
(2)
after I was open-minded, not only more experience, but study of physics showing
me that it is not so physically impossible as I had thought (for reasons I have
mentioned here).
It is quite rational
for some people to feel that there is very little probability of psi being
real, based on the information available to THEM about the likelihood term and
the prior term.
It is rational for
scientists engaged in science to follow Bayesian thinking. Discussions related
to the prior term are also within the rules of third person science, if those
discussions themselves are rational.
I discussed this in
more detail in the Mind_in_Time paper. I have wondered: how many of us have had
the kind of first person experience which justifies our paying real attention
to this area? One of the Vedanta discussion group members recently told us
about a study which shows that the belief of scientists in psi correlates very
closely with whether they really looked in a serious way at the empirical
findings, which in turn correlates with their personal experience, but how many
of us are there? Heisenberg’s interest in yoga and Vedanta is very
well-documented, as is Schrodinger’s in Sufism, but activist opponents have
argued that people like Heisenberg and Schrodinger were just sloppily falling
into believing what their parents believed or that they were not as independent
and creative in their thinking as the activists themselves. I wonder.
How many of us are
there? The best information I know of to answer that question comes from a
massive NSF-funded survey aimed at
probing the deep values of the American people. The survey had many findings,
but I am most intrigued by those described in a popular summary written for the
New York Times Magazine, “Are we a Nation of Mystics?”, by Greeley and
McCready, reprinted in Goleman’s book Consciousness (which I recommend very
highly to anyone interested in that subject). Based on their analysis of
variance, about 70% of Americans with PhDs in the peak earning years would
answer “yes” to the question: “Have you ever had the feeling of being very
close to a powerful spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself?” That
sounds a lot more lurid than the experience in March 1967 which drive me to be
open-minded about psi, but also a lot less
“veridical”. (That
experience is described in section 3 of http://www.werbos.com/Space_personal_Werbos.htm,
a chapter in Krone, R. M. (2006). Beyond earth: the future of
humans in space (Vol. 58).
Collectors Guide Pub., Apogee Books.) Greeley and McCready called for
further survey research to learn what is really going on here, but I haven’t
found any evidence that it was ever funded.
70?!!!
Could it really be that high? Could it be that issues like psi and
spiritual experience have become taboo subjects, like sex in the Victorian era,
when babies still kept being born but many people pretended they had no idea
how or had nothing to do with it personally? As best we know, that’s how it is
here. In any case, those of us who seriously think there may well be (or certainly
is) something real here have good reason to pay lots of attention to the big
question:
What IS going on
here? How could we possibly explain it? What does it imply, logically, for our
larger plans in life?
My answer:
The Vedanta group recently discussed two issues
regarding psi: (1) demonstrating
that psi is real (where I basically just agree with Dean Radin); (2)
understanding how and why it works, SO THAT we have a basis for expanding and
developing it further.
Many years ago, in
pondering the second question, I asked myself questions like: "Does QED
allow the construction of a box smaller than a sphere of diameter one meter,
capable of using quantum technology to pick remote sites anywhere on earth at
will and send back an image of what is there?" Governments have spent
billions on that kind of thing, and I don't see any sign of a hope of a
possibility of doing it. If WE HUMANS can do it (as in the huge literature on remote
viewing), how could we explain it , in a way which helps us do it better?
I am sorry, Ram, but I
don't see how attaching words like "consciousness" to fields like the
fields of QED and EWT would make the explanation easier, or the device
constructable, either by machines or in biology. The sheer switching capability
involved in picking a remote part of the earth, or, even more, tapping into
thoughts far away,
is ONLY plausible in
my view, if it exists as a property of an EVOLVED COMPLEX BIOLOGICAL SYSTEM
CONNECTING those remote locations with our location.
In short, it requires
a "noosphere," a living "brain" based on something OTHER
than the familiar fields of QED. Since we know that dark matter is more
plentiful than ordinary matter in our cosmos, and we now know that it forms a
kind of vast connected ocean, this is actually a very natural and logical
explanation, once you get used to it. One would actually EXPECT evolution to
lead to bodies, brains and consciousness in such an ocean of life anyway; the
idea that we are CONNECTED to such a noosphere brain is just as
plausible as any of the other proposed answers I have heard to Fermi's paradox.
(Brin's pleasant novel Existence includes a nice review of the others.)
I do hope that some of
you would be interested in following up on that approach and what it implies,
citing:
[2] David Brin, Existence,
Tor Books, 2012
[1] is not just an
abstract explanation; in fact, it points to operational possibilities for
trying to enhance paranormal and spiritual development, presented (if slightly
veiled) in my 2012 paper in Neural networks. And yes, it was informed by
reviewing lots of practical mystical literature, including yoga and many other
traditions.
My theory here is NOT
identical to that of Teilhard de Chardin, who suggested (like Verdansky) that
our noosphere is simply the product of evolution on earth. But in
practical terms, there are many similarities, and similarities as well to folks
like Sheldrake. For example, de Chardin's book The Activation of Human Energy
is very important to the praxis here. Those who just disappear into a cave and
seek nothingness may indeed dissolve away into nothingness (as folks like
Bannon and ISIS may do in a more active way), but that is not the more natural
and sane goal of "mindfulness" which the Dalai Lama talks about. Our
progress and survival is very much a function of the invisible spiritual
connections we grow to the rest of humanity and to our local (earth? solar
system?) noosphere in general. And, OK, it's not JUST connectedness,
it is also what we contribute to those connections, as the word
"mindfulness" BEGINS to suggest. The analogy to the internet is
somewhat useful, but of course it is a much richer network than all of
that.
Perhaps my new theory
might be called the “Baby Noosphere Theory: From Gaia to Terry.”
So what are the practical implications of the
new theory, relevant to practical issues in psi?
An initial discussion:
Dear Alex,
Have you seen the video posted by
Kushal about third eye demonstration? I would like to know your
opinion, since you are both a scientist and Vedanta scholar. I am circulating
this among my scientist friends to see their opinion. I posted it on a physics
blog. The two responses I got were saying that it must be a scam! It is a tough
road ahead for scientists studying paranormal activity!
Best Regards.
Kashyap
Thank you, Alex and
Kashyap!
I am sorry that those
two people were so virulent in dismissing this. But there are many times when
the two people who speak first on a list are not representative, but merely the
most extreme and overconfident.
I am also reminded
again of what the followers of Levi-Strauss said: remember the witch doctors
who unknowingly used penicillin. Even if you dismiss the theory, don't ignore
the experience or data which can be found there. If I were not overbooked this
week, I might look more deeply into the issue of how to extract what can be
learned from this group, and how.
There is a very
readable simple book by Paul Sanders, You are Psychic, probably
inexpensive from Amazon, which INCLUDES related experience as one of the four
types of psi he has tried to work with in a very practical way. In many ways, I
prefer Sanders' treatment, because he is not pretentious, because he
focuses very directly on what he has learned over the years paying real
attention to hundreds of people, and because the "third eye"
part is rightly seen as just one of several ways people can develop their psi
capabilities. Sanders is highly empirical, not up to the usual
standards of third person science, but neither was Carl Jung; even
Freud did not quite make it, and it took many years before his most basic ideas
were translated into workable mathematics which we now use to build intelligent
machines. But the kind of start which Sanders (and earlier Freud)
offer is an important part of the "food chain" of scientific
understanding, and it should be valued.
My explanation of
this, and of "chakra" stuff in general, is NOT that any part of the
brain functions as a third eye, or as a dedicated
receiver/transmitter of the force fields which carry psi information. Instead,
the active receiver/transmitter is located in our "souls", the
nonmundane biological part of our being, which are also capable of learning
over time. Some people LEARN to interface via the frontal part of the brain (as
do the "third eye" people, as do the folks whom Sanders classifies
as the "intuitive" types). Some people learn more to interface
through visual cortex, or auditory cortex. Part of the learning is in brain,
but more is in "soul" learning better how to express itself through
brain, in a process somewhat related to poltergeist and PK.
Actually, my wife and
I and younger son had great fun playing with Sanders' book when we first
saw it in my brother's house. (It now sits in the kindle reader on the Imac I
am typing into right now.) I clearly fit into his "intuitive"
category ( a third eye type), while my wife was roughly half
that and half clairovoyant. (The system is oversimplified, but so much better
than assuming just one type like third eye.) One can use exercises of
various kinds to try to enhance or diversify -- and it really would be
important to understand better exactly how to do that, on a more comprehensive
basis. In minor efforts to improve clairovoyance, I have found it helpful to
focus on the visual cortex area WHILE also providing the kind of training input
related to that task, in real time (not once-per-minute cards and such).
Correct, concrete theoretical understanding does help, even if it is far from
the explicit mathematical level. Of course, many attempts at training exercises
have been tried by many groups through the millennia, sometimes with success,
sometimes not, certainly all needing improvement.
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One of the Vedanta people argued that the leaders of major religions have been 100% helpful in raising consciousness and capabilities here... but I argued that it has been a kind of mixed picture, like Toynbee's picture of the up-and-down progress of civilization in general:
How much have factors like simple mundane adrenalin, testosterone and androgen converted human religions and ideologies into a mixed bag, some growth but some regression, even at the birth of great cultural movements?
I referred to only TWO aspects of how I have at times analyzed the progressions in more detail: the new Freudian concept of defense mechanisms (as people may learn more mature ego defense mechanisms, described by Valliant) and a more general Hegelian concept (resolving contradictions, as in thesis antithesis synthesis, perhaps familiar to Joe as the "law of the triangle" in Western mysticism). But I also felt bad later that I did not even mention Freud's initial core concept, of working out traumatic (or euphoric) memories which bias the mind; we now understand these in mathematical terms, and this mathematics is what I was REALLY thinking about when I referred to "hot buttons".
Those of you who have already attained godhood (unlike humanity as a whole or even the noosphere as a whole) need not learn more about the challenges of further spiritual progression, and may simply sign out of discussing details irrelevant to them. But I for one freely admit I am quite imperfect, and need to work on all these dimensions (and more) of my own personal consciousness, both mundane and spiritual, both of self and of Self. Even our authentic spiritual leaders have had imperfections and struggles; indeed, they would never have gotten as far as they did WITHOUT those struggles, struggles which like physical exercises in childhood are vital to development and growth.
We started this thread discussing Islam, an aspect of our collective intelligence which we will never forget if our consciousness is at a high enough level. There are certainly some interesting stories out there of the struggles which Mohammed went through, as there are of Jesus in the desert and such. I especially remember the story of a general confronting Mohammed as to whether his feelings about a coming battle were part of his verified spiritual input (like the white horse place) or a more ordinary mixed kind of feeling. Mohammed struggled with that (as best I recall), and said that THIS case was more the second type. His struggle and his admission were crucial to the success in that battle. At that moment, he struggled with a common kind of delusion of grandeur, and won that struggle with himself, his itzjihad. But victory was not just done and over. ALL of us on a meaningful, authentic spiritual path must CONTINUE to constantly struggle both with delusions of grandeur and delusions of helplessness. None of us are infallible, not even the leaders of authentic spiritual movements, let alone political imitators of such.
I also felt bad, thinking over my initial post, that someone might imagine a criticism of Pope Francis. (Since many people "hear" things different from what I wrote, I have been even more worried.) The doctrine of infallibility, like the doctrine that Mohammed is the last prophet, do both have a kind of basic status of anathema, but Francis in particular has done so much to bring back more authenticity and spirit to the Catholic Church that I would certainly not want to propose changes which elevate folks like Ted Cruz instead. Somehow that reminds me of Condoleeza Rice and the challenge of how to actually strengthen democracy and freedom in a meaningful way -- not a trivial challenge, and not unrelated to allowing authentic growth of the spirit.
As for Yeshua himself -- certainly a valid theme for discussion, but this particular email is maybe too long already. I did mention him in my initial post -- a long post, but brief relative to the subject itself.
VINOD:
During Vashshitha or Vishwamitra's period, neither there were temples nor Hindus. Their message was meant for all humans of that period as well as for future generation.
During Buddha's period, neither there were Buddhists nor any pagodas. The message of Buddha was equally applicable to all sections of humanity at that period and of future.
Perhaps I should at least have added Buddha to my brief list. Fair enough. I was just giving examples, but yes Buddha is important enough I should have added one word anyway. Sorry.
As for the Aryan initiators of core Vedas, I deliberately did NOT pick an example, because it is too complicated and too hard to access in an agreed fashion so many millennia later in time. I would sooner have picked Lao Tzu, who is said by some serious people to be more than one person. But certainly they were wrestling with very serious and cosmic issues, beyond even just this tiny planet, even as they also had struggles with lots of adrenalin, testosterone and androgen. (Indeed, how much did estrogen and progesterone get reflected directly in the Vedas too? I leave that questoin for others to wrestle with.) If I felt called to write a longer summary of the spiritual history of humanity, I would certainly have mentioned "the people of the horse" (like the early Indo-Aryans and like Genhghiz Khan of "the great blue sky" and Tiananmen and my wife's people and Scythia), the "people of the boat", the shamans of hunter-gatherers, and the priest kings of settled agriculture from early Sumeria. Lessons from that entire history are pertinent to this list, but again this email is a bit long already, especially when some folks may only read the first sentence or two.
Then who did prompted the dogfights? some mistaken followers of these spiritual leaders, who forget and started misinterpreting the universal teachings of their own spiritual leaders. created an ironclad institutional set up around their teachings. The fact is that over the period universal teachings of the great spiritual leaders have become secondary while institutional setup, having a complex network of customs/rules/regulations. This is the irony of every religion on the globe.
Yes. Even science and ideology have the same kind of entropy at work. (PLEASE, no one, take this use of the word "entropy" in too much of a cosmic or absolute sense!) Many forms of growth are "punctuated," with periods of surge forward, and periods of reconsolidation. The "entropy" both in religion and in government world-wide seems so overwhelming that I would EXPECT this species to go extinct relatively soon, were it not for a serious hope of "divine intervention" -- an intervention which we as part of the noosphere can contribute to directly, if we care enough to struggle enough with ourselves. I do consider the initial elevation of Pope Francis to be an example of that.
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OK: they asked more..
... wrote:
Regarding what Charles Whitehead wrote: """What impresses me is not that psi disobeys natural laws, it doesn't seem too obey any laws at all, natural or supernatural. To me, this suggests that psi comes from a more fundamental level of reality than the laws of physics. """ and your and others' replies...
Me: This quotation from Whitehead should be followed by a quotation from Arthur C. Clarke, easily found on a google search:
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Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Clarke's Fourth Law: For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert. Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas: Every revolutionary idea — in science, politics, art, or whatever — seems to evoke three stages of reaction
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I really enjoy being able to recall an old book, and instantly get a link to where you could buy it for $3 from Amazon if you are really interested in the topic. (Lately, I do a lot of"kindle one-click" to see something instantly.) Clarke's "Third Law" has rightly drawn a lot of attention:
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The term "doesn't seem to obey any laws" certainly applied to things like weather and lightning for many centuries. What "seems" magical and inexplicable is relative to what one understands.
In the Western tradition, Rosicrucians have been especially emphatic that nothing they study is "supernatural"; it is all about trying to understand and apply the relevant natural laws. That approach certainly goes back to the ancient Greeks. I have wondered at times how much Yeshua himself might have owed to Empedocles... though ofcourse we now have more of the prerequisites to understand such things. (Actually, there is a part of the New Testament where someone asks Yeshua why he uses parables so much, instead of being explicit. As best I recall, Yeshua replied: "Sorry, you don't have the prerequisites yet to understand it all explicitly. But in the future, the Spirit of Truthwill appear upon the earth, and the prerequisites will be made available." I sure hope so, and I hope we survive this very difficult period we are entering. It is so much like teenage years in nature, where we may grow or we may die.
On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 a..... wrote:
Regarding your, """If we were still awaiting the Spirit of Truth then I think I would agree with your [Paul's] somewhat despairing tone.
Me: This is an interesting sentence for me to wake up to today. {SHUTDOWN DAY 2). There are days when we must wrestle with delusions of grandeur, and days when we must wrestle with delusions of helplessness. All of us must, forever, except on OTHER days, and except for those who are resigned to ... less connection. But today's despair feelings are not at all related to what I said about spirit of truth. I understand Colin's reading of what I said, but when I posted that quote from Yeshua/Jesus I had a thoroughly positive view. The view is that a lot of the apparent insanity and fragmentation in our world is NOT really insanity, but is ACTUALLY just a natural, normal process of immaturity and growth. Like three year olds looking at a car, we don't know the algebra needed to really know how cars really work (like Carnot's Laws), but we WILL learn it in time, and it IS HERE to some extent now.
What causes me to feel bad this morning are reminders, for example, that presence of the spirit of truth and the acceptance of that spirit are not the same thing. Access to an algebra class is not the same as learning algebra. Debates on the government shutdown now underway here
have involved issue not only of truthfulness, but of respect for honor, duty, and the basic simple floor provided by basic principles of the constitution (which does NOT speak on all issues, but speaks very clearly on some). I even did facebook and twitter posts yesterday:
"How to create an instant swamp: wait until 100,000 people come to the national mall, and then lock up all the bathrooms." (The reality of this was brought home to me because my wife and I walked from one side of the mall to the other, and back, and took pictures of this.)
But there are other difficulties which I probably should not discuss here and now.
It is wrong to elevate the words "calm, relax" (CR?) into a theory of the meaning of life (or lack of it), but there are times when that is what is called for as one part of the larger rhythm, as we sort things out. It is ironic that one of the topics of debate in Washington is whether certain people (like certain Zen style Buddhists, quite the opposite of Tibetan in some ways) have OVERUSED the CR, and avoided what must be faced up to.
Who knows?
Best of luck,
Paul
HIM: However, as I suspect that the Spirit of Truth is what has got us to this point, I think we have reason for hope (though I would agree that it looks like there are difficult times ahead). Of course, we all must die. Science certainly gives us reason to doubt that any afterlife we have will be anything rich and meaningful if it is up to chance where we end up. Consequently, if there is any hope of beating chance through securing the assistance of an omnipotent consciousness, I would jump at that opportunity.""",
ME: It doesn't have to be omnipotent or omniscient to offer more hope. Maybe when children are VERY small, their chances of survival are greater if they simple assume their parents are all-wise, so that they listen when given guidance that can save their lives. But at some point, we can realize BOTH that our parents are not abstract deities, AND that we should listen to them, and even try hard to learn to listen better.
HIM: My guess, regarding the Spirit of Truth trying to communicate with humans through individual humans, is s/he/it would often likely have to settle for "Close enough..." where we move through a series of successive approximations, via shifting tectonic plates, more or less like we witness as having happened and doing.
I apologize that I did not make this point myself clearly enough to begin with
