immortal

Why does he think that Wigner, Roger Penrose, Von-neumann and Henry Stapp are New age hucksters? What if they were all right and he is wrong?

If reality doesn't exists then the equipment doesn't really exist.

So you can't use it to prove anything.

Empirical reality is a dream, working scientists have underestimated religion and have underestimated the Lord. Even in dreams entities appear to exist independent of us but in reality we know that it is only a state of mind and similarly even in this empirical reality the equipment appears to exist independent of us but in reality this empirical reality is only a state of mind. The equipment exists but only in your mind and hence it is not objectively real.

"9—10 In dreams, what is imagined within the mind is illusory and what is cognized outside by the mind, real; but truly, both are known to be unreal. Similarly, in the waking state, what is imagined within by the mind is illusory and what is cognized outside by the mind, real; but both should be held, on rational grounds, to be unreal"

- This is the decision of Vedanta, the eastern philosophical system or school of thought. Science is not all there is.

Chapter II — Vaitathya Prakarana (The Chapter on Illusion)

 

1 Harih Aum. The wise declare the unreality of all entities seen in dreams, because they are located within the body and the space therein is confined.

 

2 The dreamer, on account of the shortness of the time involved, cannot go out of the body and see the dream objects. Nor does he, when awakened, find himself in the places seen in the dream.

 

3 Scripture, on rational grounds, declares the non—existence of the chariots etc. perceived in dreams. Therefore the wise say that the unreality established by reason is proclaimed by scripture.

 

4 The different objects seen in the confined space of dreams are unreal on account of their being perceived. For the same reason i.e. on account of their being perceived, the objects seen in the waking state are also unreal. The same condition i.e. the state of being perceived exists in both waking and dreaming. The only difference is the limitation of space associated with dream objects.

 

5 Thoughtful persons speak of the sameness of the waking and dream states on account of the similarity of the objects perceived in both states on the grounds already mentioned.

 

6 If a thing is non—existent both in the beginning and in the end, it is necessarily non—existent in the present. The objects that we see are really like illusions; still they are regarded as real.

 

7 The utility of the objects of waking experience is contradicted in dreams; therefore they are certainly unreal. Thus both experiences, having a beginning and an end, are unreal.

 

8 The objects perceived by the dreamer, not usually seen in the waking state, owe their existence to the peculiar conditions under which the cognizer i.e. the mind functions for the time being, as with those residing in heaven. The dreamer, associating himself with the dream conditions, perceives those objects, even as a man, well instructed here, goes from one place to another and sees the peculiar objects belonging to those places.

 

9—10 In dreams, what is imagined within the mind is illusory and what is cognized outside by the mind, real; but truly, both are known to be unreal. Similarly, in the waking state, what is imagined within by the mind is illusory and what is cognized outside by the mind, real; but both should be held, on rational grounds, to be unreal.

 

11 If the objects perceived in both waking and dreaming are illusory, who perceives all these objects and who, again, imagines them?

 

12 It is the self—luminous Atman who, through the power of Its own maya, imagines in Itself by Itself all the objects that the subject experiences within and without. It alone is the cognizer of objects. This is the decision of Vedanta.

Immortal,

 

The question remains, what bearing, does reaching nirvana have, on reality and the rest of us? How would you define the difference between understanding ultimate reality, by taking LSD, or learning the secret of the Vedas?

 

Regards, TAR2

You have misunderstood many things, mysticism is not entirely subjective, it can be empirically studied. For example, St Teresa of Avila shattered the whole room so much that her nuns came running to see what happened to her, you might not know the power of the numinous and might go on and fool yourself but I am not and also when they opened her cremation again her body gave out an aromatic fragrance which is a common phenomena among the mystics of all cultures.

Scientists have ignored such phenomena and have decided not to investigate the supernatural but I doesn't want to show such biases and ignore such phenomena by saying such silly things as they were all on LSD.

"Do you know that in principle I can strip off all the properties of that equipment and transfer it to the other side of the universe instantaneously and obtain a duplicate, there by destroying the original equipment?"

No, because that would need travel faster than light.

However if you drop the "instantaneously" bit then yes, You can do it.

That's because the effect is real.

The far end of the universe exists in the same reality as this end- so the outcome of similar experiments will be the same.

 

And you are still ignoring the point that you need real equipment to do experiments so any experiment you cite is evidence against you idea that reality does not exist.

Of course Bob at the other side of the universe need to receive information classically in order to make the necessary unitary transformations. What I was trying to say is that entanglement is still instantaneous, the fact that you cannot send meaningful information through entanglement doesn't change the fact that the two entangled objects are correlated instantaneously.

You take one entangled subsystem at one side of the universe and an another entangled subsystem at the other side of the universe and according to quantum mechanics no matter how far apart they are they need to be treated as a single quantum system which defines the states of the subsystems.

This says something profound about the nature of reality, it says that information is a far more fundamental concept of the universe. In philosophical circles an object's properties is what defines an object and if the properties of the two subsystems are undefined prior to measurements it doesn't make any sense to assume that the subsystems as an independent reality.

Bell state measurements.

Science has found God and I don't need to redefine anything, the evidence is out there for everyone to see, science and religion are converging.

BTW, do you realise that citing papers is still an appeal to authority?

(even more so when they are both by the same author)

Entanglement is a fact and we know it happens outside of space-time irrespective of what X or Y says. As per your request I have shown you that reality isn't real. Don't tell me that I shouldn't tell you that the real world isn't here.

Bernard is right.

"In an article in the Guardian titled Quantum weirdness: What we call 'reality' is just a state of mind d'Espagnat wrote that:

"What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of as "self-existent". He further writes that his research in quantum physics has led him to conclude that an "ultimate reality" exists, which is not embedded in space or time."

If the equipment is not real then you can't do experiments with it because it doesn't exist

 

Still, I was right about the illogical appeals to authority..

Do you know that in principle I can strip off all the properties of that equipment and transfer it to the other side of the universe instantaneously and obtain a duplicate, there by destroying the original equipment? What does it say about the nature of reality? It says reality is abstract. Just because something isn't objectively real doesn't mean it is not virtually real either. The properties of the system exist virtually and we can do experiments with it and make rational conclusions from the results obtained from it.

Physical world as virtual reality

The emergence of physical world from information processing

Immortal, are you deliberately missing the point?

re "There is nothing special about the equipment.

 

Radioactive element--->Detector(your equipment)-->Trigger's Poison-->Schroedinger's Cat(neither Dead nor Alive)-->Wigner's friend.

 

The entire room is treated as a quantum system and it exists in a superposition of states and it is a well established fact that the properties of a system doesn't exist until a measurement is made..."

 

But, if reality doesn't exist then the room and its contents don't exist because they are part of reality.

So you are left trying to do an experiment with equipment that doesn't exists.

When you say "There is nothing special about the equipment."

You are quite right.

One of the things about it which is not "special" is that the equipment is real.

But you also say that nothing is real.

Do yo not see the contradiction there?

You say the equipment is real and you say that nothing is real.

I didn't said the equipment is real, you have misunderstood, when I said there is nothing special about the equipment I meant that even the equipment can be treated as a quantum system and that's when the measurement problem actually arises.

And re "I didn't defined religion, traditions defined it and I just accepted their definition."

you are simply wrong.

You said "Only those who are in the right process of Henosis are religious"

 

And you go on "Only those who are divinized means only those who are united with the One can know or knows what the will of the divine is, not some Islamic fundamentalists or Heinrich Himmler or not even those who blindly believe in their scriptures, religion has got nothing to do with belief, religion is about doing not believing, even they are not religious, this concept of henosis exists in all the religions of the world and hence my definition is universal whether you or any mods accept or reject it will not change the facts." (my emphasis).

 

So, you plainly did define religion in a way that's at odds with everyone else's definition and you keep ignoring the fact that you contradict yourself when you say that nothing exists but we can do experiments with things (which do exist).

 

Are you delusional or are you trolling?

And you go on "Only those who are divinized means only those who are united with the One can know or knows what the will of the divine is, not some Islamic fundamentalists or Heinrich Himmler or not even those who blindly believe in their scriptures, religion has got nothing to do with belief, religion is about doing not believing, even they are not religious, this concept of henosis exists in all the religions of the world and hence my definition is universal whether you or any mods accept or reject it will not change the facts."

You have emphasized the later part but not the part which I said before which I have corrected for you, I have no freedom to define religion, traditions places constraints as to what constitutes religion and I just went by them, I didn't made up this definition on my own which is what you're implying which is very wrong.

Immortal,

 

But consider this question. If you were to reach a perfect state of henosis, at one with the Godhead, what would you do next? Would there be a more perfect state to achieve? And more importantly, what good would that do me, and what would you then eat for dinner?

 

Regards, TAR2

 

Or assuming you are fasting to reach such a state, what would you have for breakfast?

This passage is very much relevant to your question and it answers it perfectly.

12. "As a lump of salt dropped into water becomes dissolved in water and cannot be taken out again, but wherever we taste the water it tastes salt, even so, my dear, this great, endless, infinite Reality is Pure Intelligence alone. This self comes out as a separate entity from these elements and with their destruction this separate existence also is destroyed. After attaining oneness it has no more consciousness. This is what I say, my dear." So said Yajnavalkya.

13. Then Maitreyi said: "Just here you have bewildered me, venerable Sir, by saying that after attaining oneness the self has no more consciousness." Yajnavalkya replied: "Certainly I am not saying anything bewildering, my dear. This Reality is enough for knowledge, O Maitreyi."

14. "For when there is duality, as it were, then one smells another, one sees another, one hears another, one speaks to another, one thinks of another, one knows another. But when everything has become the Self, then what should one smell and through what, what should one see and through what, what should one hear and through what, what should one speak and through what, what should one think and through what, what should one know and through what? Through what should One know That owing to which all this is known—through what, my dear, should one know the Knower?"

- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

In the west this is called as realized eschatology.

Hey everyone! Thanks for taking the time to read this topic. I really do appreciate it. But as the topic says. What is a good programming language to learn, I kinda know Java and a little bit of Python. I know HTML and CSS are not programming languages but I know them pretty good. Thanks and bless your faces!

If you know HTML and CSS which are mainly used for the front end GUI then you should start learning about the coding at the back end, so learning SQL will be a good idea and also you can learn about Javascript and xml.

Here's a good website where you can begin with: W3Schools.com

But I would advice you to start learning either C or C++.

 

immortal, on 14 Feb 2013 - 20:29, said:

 

I didn't defined religion, traditions defined it and I just accepted their definition.

Are you sure about that?

Yes, when you apply negative theology based on the available empirical evidence and ask what god cannot be you'll get that god cannot be anything else other than a hypercosmic being and only a few religions who taught the existence of a hypercosmic God survive and other religions are falsified.

And you can go and study those traditions which I have mentioned there and they all teach that one need to become the 'Father(God)' to be religious and it is the heart of their doctrine.

I want two things:

1. I want working scientists to use weak objective statements while publishing their results or when they write text books.

2. a) I want those who use Pagan ideas to not discredit the religious elements associated with such ideas, if you're a platonist then accept Plato's Gods or else don't interfere with such ideas, its better to keep yourself away rather than distorting and misinterpreting pagan doctrines and beliefs.

b) When I say your understanding of pagan doctrines are wrong they say what authority do you have to speak on such matters and when I cite that the scholars who study those doctrines are themselves saying that your understanding are wrong you guys say you're making an appeal to authority since there seems to be no end for your arrogance and ignorance such lack of understanding is inexcusable in a world where three out of four people can read and write.

If there weren't any problems then obviously my reasons for arguing would have been pointless.

Still waiting for Immortal to explain his experiments that prove that the experimental equipment doesn't exist.

Or, if you prefer, waiting for him to realise that his position is not just wrong, but absurd.

Asking the same question again and again will not change the answer which has been given to you because a fact is a fact and facts don't change. There is nothing special about the equipment.

Radioactive element--->Detector(your equipment)-->Trigger's Poison-->Schroedinger's Cat(neither Dead nor Alive)-->Wigner's friend.

The entire room is treated as a quantum system and it exists in a superposition of states and it is a well established fact that the properties of a system doesn't exist until a measurement is made on the quantum system and therefore its the very act of observation by Wigner is when nature decides which possibility to realize, the poor cat inside the box doesn't exist independent of Wigner's friend and Wigner's friend inside the room doesn't exist independent of Wigner. Kant argued that the mind is not passive but instead it participates in the retrospective creation of reality, in other words this empirical reality is merely a phenomena which mind makes a form of from the real noumenon. There is something real that exists out there but its definitely not this empirical reality, this reality is only a state of our mind.

Vladko Vedral, quantum physicist - "Rather than passively observing it, we in fact create reality" or in other words your mind which is nature is what creates reality.

Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger on unreality

 

Alain Aspect is the physicist who performed the key experiment that established that if you want a real universe, it must be non-local (Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”). Aspect comments on new work by his successor in conducting such experiments, Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues, who have now performed an experiment that suggests that “giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned.”

 

Be clear what is going on here. Quantum mechanics itself is not crying out for such experiments! Quantum mechanics is doing just fine, thank you, having performed flawlessly since inception. No, it is people whose cherished philosophical beliefs are being threatened that cry out for such experiments, exactly as Einstein used to do, and with exactly the same hope (we think in vain): that quantum mechanics can be refined to the point where it requires (or at least allows) belief in the independent reality of the natural world it describes.

 

Quantum mechanics makes no mention of reality (Figure 1). Indeed, quantum mechanics proclaims, “We have no need of that hypothesis.” Now we are beginning to see that quantum mechanics might actually exclude any possibility of mind-independent reality⎯and already does exclude any reality that resembles our usual concept of such (Aspect: “it implies renouncing the kind of realism I would have liked”). Non-local causality is a concept that had never played any role in physics, other than in rejection (“action-at-a-distance”), until Aspect showed in 1981 that the alternative would be the abandonment of the cherished belief in mind-independent reality; suddenly, spooky-action-at-a-distance became the lesser of two evils, in the minds of the materialists.

 

Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.

 

RICHARD CONN HENRY

henry@jhu.edu

 

STEPHEN R. PALMQUIST

stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk

My studies of religion very early proved me that the atheistic position is fundamentally flawed, atheism is dead and its theistic scientists who are unbiased and are being honest with themselves.

I predict that, rather than doing either of those things, he will try to support his bizarre beliefs with an appeal to authority because he doesn't understand that such an appeal is a logical fallacy.

The other sources are posted to rightly convey my position, it doesn't mean just because some X person says it is true it must be true, experiments are unbiased and independent of authorities and anyone can repeat the experiments and testify the truth for themselves whether its me, you or a 8 year old. I don't do science or religion based on authority, I test them for myself whether it agrees with nature or not and hence the reason why I hold such a radical position, I really don't care how many degrees he or she has or the kind of reputation that they have, even Einstein was wrong in his analysis.

I can single handedly defend my position I don't need anyone, before I used to argue alone but now I have a fringe scientific consensus along side with me.

The earth was not created in 6 days.

6 days? In Divine Time or Human Time.

What kind of information pertaining to the story of creation does Ramban reveal? Frankly, astounding information. For example, his description of the development of the universe bears an uncanny resemblance to Big Bang descriptions found in today’s physics books:

 

"At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard. The matter at this time was very thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter. From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so. As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it. From this initial act of creation, from this ethereally thin pseudosubstance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed."

 

This was written about 800 years ago.

 

Isaac ben Samuel of Acre14 (fl. 13th-14th century), a Kabbalist who lived in the land of Israel 800 years ago, was the first to state that the universe is actually billions of years old, at a time when the prevalent thought was that the universe was thousands of years old. Isaac arrived at this conclusion by distinguishing between time as experienced by humans and time as experienced by God, here in described as Human Time and Divine Time, respectively. However, his work was only brought to light recently in English by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (1979).

 

- The Genesis One Code

7000*365250*5.375 = 13.74 billion years which is same as the age of the universe as affirmed by science.

Immortal,

 

Answer me this, if you will.

 

Why is your "now", the same as my now?

 

Is this not indication that we belong to the same reality?

 

That we are in sync with the cycles of the same Earth?

 

Your day is my night, if we live on opposite sides of the planet, and we neither see the mars rover do anything until 14 minutes after it does it, but there is only one instance of the Mars rover, and only one instance of you, and only one of me.

 

And we all three belong to the same reality, that has a history, a current arrangement, and a future that has not yet been realized.

 

Don't you think?

 

Regards, TAR2

Just because two people share the same dream doesn't mean that the dream is real and when you come out of your dream you'll surely know it was all a dream and was only a state of mind. People who have visited the numinous and came back claim that living just for a couple of minutes in the numinous implies that 15 days have been passed on this empirical reality.

“For a thousand years in your sight are but like yesterday when it is past” (Psalm 90:4)

Similarly those who have made an ascent to heaven knows that this empirical reality is a dream and its only a state of mind and its not out there in the physical world independent of us.

Even science says the same thing and this is an established fact.

For his part, Wheeler has focused on the delayed-choice phenomenon that may be explored in double-slit experiments. He has proposed a variety of arrangements allowing the experimenter to decide what he will observe while a photon or electron is in mid flight, but after it has.passed through either a single or a double-slit aperture, and therefore after it is presumably committed to exhibit either its particle like or wavelike property. The outcome of such experiments bears significantly upon notions of time, causality, and a reality independent of .the observer.

 

Says Wheeler:

 

"After the quantum of energy has already gone through the doubly split screen, a last-instant free choice on our part...gives at will a double-slit interference record or a one-slit beam count. Does this result mean that present choice influences past dynamics, in contravention of every formulation of causality? Or does it mean [us to] calculate pedantically and not ask questions? Neither; the lesson presents itself rather as this, that the past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present. It has no sense to speak of what the quantum of electromagnetic energy was doing except as it is observed or calculable from what is observed. More generally, we would seem forced to say that no phenomenon is a phenomenon until, by observation, or some proper combination of theory and observation, it is an observed phenomenon. The universe does not 'exist out there/ independent of all acts of observation. Instead, it is in some strange sense a participatory universe."

No matter how many times you insist that this empirical reality has an objective existence out there in physical world it has no bearing in reality what so ever, it is simply your belief, a belief which is fundamentally flawed, devoid of any evidence or merit. Start accepting facts of nature first or admit you don't have self respect and that you want to go on and believe in any damn thing you want irrespective of what the evidence says, don't display your double standards with me.

Color: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/42/18034.full

Taste: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustatory_cortex

http://www.tastescience.com/abouttaste2.html

 

Care to try again?

I don't want a philosophical zombie, remember redness and sweetness doesn't exist in the physical world and if you insist that they are just patterns of the brain then you should be able to replicate it or reproduce it and make us realize what it is like to be to experience an artificially created qualia and only then your assumption that qualia are just patterns of the brain stand or else they are non-physical.

Cognitive science has definitely sidelined that issue and many cognitive scientists with in the community insist that qualia should be taken seriously and investigated.

Immortal,

 

I think the laws of probability and some common sense would say that Immortal is not the first human who "thinks" he has it all figured out correctly. And being as that Immortal is not the first or the last to address the issue, I would say it is rather clear that arriving at a final, correct answer is not very likely. Throw in the wide disagreements in the important details between the plethora of religious beliefs that exist on this planet, and I would say that your thesis about the true nature of reality being found in the teachings of the ancients is highly fragile, and has very little solid evidence behind it.

Differences exist only in the outer branches but as you move towards the root the differences dilute and become non-existent.

According to Max-Muller the proto Indo-Iranian religion started off as sun worship.

The present day Indians and Iranians might have forgotten their origins but I have not.

So my friends who worship the Moon Goddess Adrianna are not part of your set of real religions?

Pagans are liberal, so liberal that they teach that one should not assume that only the rituals of one's own country works but also the rituals and names of gods of other countries work too, yes they are pluralistic. If you actually study the Indo-Eupropean religion you will realize that same gods exist in different cultures and in some cultures that god is given a minor role and treated as a lower god where as in an another culture the same god is given a major role and treated as the God of the Gods, none the less even religion evolves over time and theists of different religion aren't divided much as atheists happen to think so.

Christine Downing recounts the Greek view of the gods as energies that affect everyone. In so being they are referred to "as theos, that is, as immortal, permanent, ineluctable aspects of the world".[2] Disputes among the Greek pantheon were frequent, yet, Downing emphasizes, no god of the Classical era ever denied the existence of another god. And she cautions us as humans that to deny even one of the pantheon diminishes the richness of individuals and of the world.[3]

 

- Polytheistic myth as Psychology.

All Hindus and Buddhists are pagans but all pagans are not Hindus and Buddhists.

Hindus and Pagans one billion strong.

But I don't agree with the thing said in that link.

“Most importantly, we need to work together more closely. Tremendous challenges loom – the decline in pluralism over thousands of years will take decades if not hundreds of years to reverse. However, challenges present opportunities. The Hindu American Foundation has made pluralism part of its motto “promoting understanding, tolerance and pluralism,” and pluralism is one of the defining characteristics of Hindu and Pagan traditions. Hindus and Pagans can make a lasting contribution to the world by once again promoting pluralism as a core value of society and its individuals – something evidently lacking in the world today in which intolerance is so prominent. We need to challenge ourselves to make pluralism a value similar in respect to values such as honesty and charity. People should be proud to proclaim that they are pluralist – that they revel in and respect the diversity around them. Children should be raised with this value. For the survival of not only our traditions but humanity altogether, we must move from the motto of, “I will tolerate you though you are wrong,” to a true commitment to pluralism.”

That's not how one ensures the survival of humanity altogether, by blindly accepting even when people are doing wrong in front of your eyes, blindly accepting their ignorance, if its anything that ensures the survival of humanity altogether is education, its the truth which brings humanity together and not tolerance of ignorance. He who worship a deity separate from himself is ignorant, a slave of gods and poor and those who know that the Father and I are one(John:10:30) are truth, rich and immortal.

Just because something is supernatural doesn't mean it is holy or religious, evil things do come from the supernatural, there is this thing called Left Hand path tantra and right Hand path tantra. With in Buddhism it is accepted that there exist supernatural beings who not enlightened and there are men who are well versed in the tantras and use that knowledge to make evil things from those unenlightened supernatural beings.

One need to differentiate the culture from the supernatural and differentiate the religious from the supernatural, if we let everyone have their own notions of religion the true message of the divine gets distorted and lost in the process and everyone will fall into ignorance and it is this ignorance that people doesn't know that they are contained with in the Father is the root source of all evil and sin of humanity and only by knowing the truth you can obtain freedom from bondage. Pluralism is welcoming but distortion of the true message of the divine in the name of pluralism is not welcoming at all.

You can pontificate all you want about true religions and religious traditions, but do you really want to get into a discussion where your first sentence into it is unbelievably incorrect?

​ I am skeptical...

 

 

This is demonstrably not true, immortal why do you not see this? Your mind does not exist independent from the brain, your brain is all you have, change it in even a minor way and your mind is no more...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

The fact that he is still conscious of himself and his body even after such severe damage to the brain begs the question whether consciousness has anything to do with the brain at all.

Ummm... which Pagan Religion are you talking about dude?

The religion of the Greeks.

"Tradition is important and it is tradition which defines religion,"

Not according to what you have posted before.

It was, at that point, you who defined religion.

Anyway, any progress on doing experiments with non existent equipment?

Remember, if reality doesn't exist, there is no real equipment to do experiments with.

So, what do you use?

Incidentally, , here's a quote from that page you cited. It's weird, but that's not the problem.

"Uninostril breathing facilitates the performance on spatial and verbal cognitive tasks, said to be right and left brain functions, respectively. Since hemispheric memory functions are also known to be lateralized, Naveen et al. assessed the effects of uninostril breathing on the performance in verbal and spatial memory tests. School children (N = 108, whose ages ranged from 10-17 years) were randomly assigned to four groups. Each group practiced a specific yoga breathing technique: (a) right nostril breathing, (b) left nostril breathing, © alternate nostril breathing, or (d) breath awareness without manipulation of nostrils. These techniques were practiced for ten days. Verbal and spatial memory was assessed initially and after ten days. An age-matched control group of 27 children were similarly assessed. All four experimental groups showed significant increases in spatial test scores at retest, but the control group showed no change. Average increase in spatial memory scores for the trained groups was 84%. It appears yoga breathing increases spatial rather than verbal scores, without a lateralized effect."

 

Did you see what they did there?

"Uninostril breathing facilitates the performance on spatial and verbal cognitive tasks"

"Average increase in spatial memory scores for the trained groups was 84%. It appears yoga breathing increases spatial rather than verbal scores, without a lateralized effect."

So, breathing through one nostril makes a difference.

But it doesn't matter which one.

But spatial and verbal skills are lateralised, so , according to the dogma, it should matter which nostril you use (of course, according to common sense, it doesn't- the air goes to the lungs, not directly to the brain).

They have actually contradicted their own doctrine, but not noticed.

That should lead you to wonder what happened. Of course the answer is right there.

There's no reference intervention. So they have successfully verified the placebo effect- nothing more.

The epistemology of religion is completely different, when our ancients speak of life air, Prana, they mean something different.

"When the living entity is in deep sleep, when he faints, when there is some great shock on account of severe loss, at the time of death, or when the body temperature is very high, the movement of the life air is arrested. At that time the living entity loses knowledge of identifying the body with the self. (SB 4.29.71)"

Prana is at the heart of the quantum mind-body problem, it is prana which keeps your Self bonded to the Nous(Mind) and thence by to this empirical reality, this has nothing to do with air moving to our lungs, remember the pagan religions are based on the belief that this world is a duplicate of a world of platonic forms in the real Platonic world. Things are not what you seem it is.

You chaps do know you are using up your living hours on this, no refund? On your death bed, you're going to think I argued with immortal for..._ hours of my life. I just skipped every 2nd page, to 10, in 1 go.

 

Whilst immortal's family may be grateful for the break, immortal enjoying more intellectual attention than he has in years, isn't it time he gets his own 'special' section, where he can pop back and give names of new followers, who actually are true religionists, by his definition, add new revelatons of the day, startling solitary truths, warnings and his own bible with only the truthful bits in it.

 

In return, we'll promise to pop in and read and seriously think about the latest stuff, but we won't leave any messages, because we don't really exist in reality, and we have now established we know nothing, and will never be able to qualify for any religion, even if we actually apply. Is that the gist?

 

I am not capable of following such a mind, such a broadly read, analytical mind. I was following some sort of logic line, the page long lost in my fading memory, and for the life of me, I swear I had a vision of Father Dougal, and his REALITY cartoon bubble he had to study, with REALITY clearly marked, and relaxed rabbits in his cartoon head, marked DREAMS, wasn't it? suddenly being added to the end That appealled to me - but I don't want my rabbits to speak, because that isn't real - OR IS IT? so I'm going to happily remain 100% atheist, PURELY because I don't really exist, and true religion is beyond my comprehension. I think that is what we've establshed, after 10 pages?

 

Even better, next time we get really confident religionists, desperate to enlighten us, can we have a contact email for immortal, and we'll let him know, and we can let THEM discuss stuff.

 

I'm going to start a new thread. Can you read enough stuff, know there is an undefined further stuff to come, and realise you are losing the will to live?

This body of mine only exists in your mind, its not out there in the physical world, separability is an illusion, that's our basic view of the world and even science says the same thing, I really don't have to care for such crackpottery comments.

Immortal,

 

I am stuck on your contention that an 8 year old, schooled in Eastern systems of thought knows more about the nature of reality than a physicist.

 

I am envisioning a barefoot, poor, starving wretch searching some garbage pile in Mumbai, and countering the image with a scientist at CERN.

I was envisioning something different.

Effect of yogic education system and modern education system on memory

Tradition is important and it is tradition which defines religion, there is an orthodoxy, religion is not something where anything goes and anyone comes up with any nonsense notion of God and demands that we should accept it, no it doesn't work like that.

We have preserved the Vedic Aryan Religion and it is going to correct science and we will continue to model the world that a mind and an intellect exists in the platonic world separate from the brain and our model indeed works and it is the truth of this world.

Bollocks

It may well be your (de)fault position, but that doesn't make it true.

 

Anyway, back at the question:

How can you show that reality doesn't exist?

By performing experiments which violate Local Realism. I can cite loads of evidence for it, working scientists should abandon the belief that this empirical reality exist independent of us because facts established from experiments contradicts that belief.

Bell’s theorem represents a significant advance in understanding the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics. The theorem shows that essentially all local theories of natural phenomena that are formulated within the framework of realism may be tested using a single experimental arrangement. Moreover, the predictions by these theories must significantly differ from those by quantum mechanics. Experimental results evidently refute the theorem’s predictions for these theories and favour those of quantum mechanics. The conclusions are philosophically startling: either one must totally abandon the realistic philosophy of most working scientists, or dramatically revise our concept of space-time.

 

Nonetheless, we find this conclusion disturbing, since the philosophical point of view which most working scientists have found natural, at least until quite recently, requires a local realistic theory. Because of the evidence in favour of quantum mechanics from the experiments based upon Bell’s theorem, we are forced either to abandon the strong version of EPR’s criterion of reality-which is tantamount to abandoning a realistic view of the physical world (perhaps an unheard tree falling in the forest makes no sound after all)-or else to accept some kind of action-at-a-distance. Either option is radical, and a comprehensive study of their philosophical consequences remains to be made.

 

- Bell’s theorem : experimental tests and implications, JOHN F CLAUSER, ABNER SHIMONY

Either accept these facts or accept that working scientists have lost their self respect, intellectual honesty and credibility.

What do you make the equipment from?

I can simulate a virtual environment and make you feel that the equipment exists out there for real by stimulating your senses in a certain way so that it gives you the experience of touch, pressure, haptic, audio etc and make the equipment as real as out there but in actuality the equipment doesn't exist, the same is with this world the moon doesn't exist when no one is looking at it. This empirical reality is a retrospective creation of the Nous(Mind), a product of a divine God.

Natural Interactive Walking Project

.Anyway,

perhaps you would like to stop the pointless debate about who said what to whom and when (which is only ever going to be evidence of what they thought- rather than evidence of what is true) and answer my question

How can you show that reality doesn't exist?

What do you make the equipment from?

So you don't think that some of Hinduism might have been borrowed by Christians? Isn't that more likely than the Aeons exist? It's certainly demonstrable that Christianity borrowed many concepts from other religions, the trinity for example... In fact I think that all religions have borrowed from those that came before and any profound connection is more likely to be due to plagiarism than divine revelation... The Earth is not composed of many cultures existing in a vacuum, all of the earth is connected culturally at some level... On top of that you have humans all with very similar minds having similar "revelations" and not unexpectedly similar hallucinations when exposed to similar hallucinogens ... wouldn't occam's razor suggest the connection is the biological mind instead of the divine?

Its a highly valid hypothesis.

It is worth noting that Valentinianism shows an astonishing degree of similarity to another monistic system, the Advaita Vedanta school of Indian philosophy. In Advaita, the material world is an illusion (maya) attributed to ignorance (avidya) of the true reality. Through knowledge (jnana) of the ultimate reality (brahman), the world of multiplicity vanishes. True redemption (moksha) is the knowledge of one's true nature.

 

This raises the intriguing possibility of some kind of connection between the two. There was some awareness of Indian thought in the ancient Roman world. However, at the time of Valentinus, there was no systematic statement of Advaita thought. It is possible that Valentinus came into contact with some form of early Advaita Vedanta teaching. Advaita philosophy as it now stands was given its definitive form by Shankara in the 6th or 7th century AD. There also exists the possibility that he was influenced by Valentinian thought. Valentinians are known to have been active in the Middle East as late as the seventh century. It is possible that Valentinian missionaries or refugees may have made their way to India and come into contact with Shankara or his immediate predecessors. However, any connection between the two remains purely hypothetical.

 

- Valentinian Monism

I really wish people would stop trying to extrapolate quantum physics into spirituality issues, which one might term Choprafication. "Reality" in this context (i.e. quantum reality) is not the same as what is being discussed. The physics experiment uses a very specific definition of the word, as one might expect. It has nothing to do with whether observations are merely a state of mind.

OK, I can play the game. There was a survey of top physicist taken by Maximilian Schlosshauer, Johannes Kofler, and Anton Zeilinger and published on arXiv on matters pertaining to foundational principles of quantum mechanics. They specifically asked about the role of the observer in QM. Only 6% said consciousness of the observer is required for wave-function collapse.

 

Which implies your view is in the minority. Appeal to authority and cherry-picking results makes for an intellectually dishonest argument.

D'Espagnat won the Templeton prize because holds a philosophy that they like, not because of any objective truth he has uncovered.

You are badly mistaken.

It takes a lot to make me feel bad for Christians, but you've managed to do it. They've been putting up with your kind of crazy for 2,000 years. They've had to hold ranks against the Jim Jones and David Koresh types -- people who build mountains of insanity on top of christian beliefs. The secularists can dismiss you with the same indifferent trollishness that your writing takes, but sincere and devout Christians unfortunately have to deal with you which makes me feel orders of magnitude more sympathetic towards them.

 

And, you chose to regurgitate it on a science forum? I don't get that at all. You make positive claims about "33 Aeons" on a science forum and you aren't swatted back like a delusional fly?

 

Whatever. I don't have to put up with it. The best of luck to you.

Just because a belief is popular it doesn't make it true. Since I criticize Christians and Hindus alike I don't have to be sympathetic to anyone who doesn't go with evidence. Yes, this is a science forum, whether those Aeons exist or not is one thing but the fact remains that 33 Aeons exist in Christianity as well as in Hinduism.

"Yes empirical things are the things which exists inside our minds and the things that religion deals with is what exists out there in noumenal world. That's our basic view of the world in the east."

 

Then Jesus came along, and told us God had been a little rough on us at first, and he really was a kinder sort, and loved us dearly, and if we just loved one another, and held the Savior in our hearts, Jesus himself would guide us through the gates of heaven.

But humanity has forgotten the Father who sent Christ for us.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0319.htm

(and by the way I want an experiment, not the words of some professional windbag)

Insulting someone who is always way ahead of everyone is not a good idea, instead it makes you sound foolish especially when he is speaking based on evidence.

Statements From Scientists On Bernard d’Espagnat Wins 2009 Templeton Prize

Nope, that won't do at all.

You said "That's a cop out to escape from the facts of nature."

and when I asked what facts you said

"The fact that what we call empirical reality is only a state of mind" in answer to

You and you said you could prove it.

Do so.

I contend that you can not, and never will be able to, show that your (obviously absurd) belief is true.

 

So, once again, what experiment could you do to show that the real world isn't here?

What you contend as possible or impossible has no bearing in reality or in nature. That's the way nature is, accept this basic fact first instead of accusing that my beliefs are absurd, my beliefs are based on facts established from experiments.

Experiments have shown that it is the premise realism which is at stake here and that's an established fact.

Hence the conclusion,

"The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."

"A dicovery that discredits a basic assumption about the structure of the world, an assumption long held and seldom questioned, is anything but trivial. It is a welcome illumination."

- Bernard D'Espagnat, Quantum Theory and Reality.

"Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of 'realism' - a viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs. According to Bell's theorem, any theory that is based on the joint assumption of realism and locality (meaning that local events cannot be affected by actions in spacelike separated regions) is at variance with certain quantum predictions. Experiments with entangled pairs of particles have amply confirmed these quantum predictions, thus rendering local realistic theories untenable. Maintaining realism as a fundamental concept would therefore necessitate the introduction of 'spooky' actions that defy locality. Here we show by both theory and experiment that a broad and rather reasonable class of such non-local realistic theories is incompatible with experimentally observable quantum correlations. In the experiment, we measure previously untested correlations between two entangled photons, and show that these correlations violate an inequality proposed by Leggett for non-local realistic theories. Our result suggests that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned"

- A Test for Non-Local Realism.

Your equipment doesn't exist independent of us, empirical reality is not externally out there, our ancients knew what this world is made of.

Idealism in Ancient philosophy

 

The oldest reference to Idealism in Hindu texts is in Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda. This sukta espouses panentheism by presenting cosmic being Purusha as both pervading all universe and yet being transcendent to it.^[1] Absolute idealism can be seen in Chāndogya Upaniṣad, where things of the objective world like the five elements and the subjective world such as will, hope, memory etc. are seen to be emanations from the Self.

Its not my problem if majority of people aren't well versed in pagan religions. Science and religion is converging and this is the point where they converge.

But that pointer is part of the reality which you say does not exist.

If you are right then this experiment is a figment of your imagination.

It's a dream.

Exactly, that's why the conclusion What we call reality is only a state of mind. - Bernard D'Espagnat.

You can't base any conclusions on it.

So, once again, if reality doesn't exist, what experiments can you do to prove it?

We don't have to be embarrassed that this position leads us to solipsism. There is an alternative.

Immortal,

 

Which of the four quadrants of religion and spirituality do you figure yourself to inhabit.

 

I would guess that you promote first, your own spritual nature (nothing is real except the unreal) and that you have chosen the Gods of the Buddist to be the most descriptive of reality?, so you appear to me to have chosen to be a rather strong inhabitant of the upper left quadrant.

Some where in this thread I have said that there is no such thing as spiritual but not religious, either you are religious or you're not and anything else is complete nonsense. Being religious means knowing thyself, knowing the One(Your soul) from which everything emanated, who here knows the One, only he is religious, I certainly don't know it. Did you got my position?

My thought on this, or should I say my thought on you, is that you yourself have set yourself up as a perfect strawman. Your views can be so easily taken apart and defeated as contradictory and false, that you, by taking the ultimate non-secular positon, have soundly defeated yourself, and given secularity a solid boost.

I not only argue for the Gods of Buddhism but also for the Aeons of Valentinianism, Devas of Vedism, Taoism and Sefirot of Judaism, I am just going by what scholarly evidence is saying, that's all, whether it is secular or non-secular I really don't care.

Another proof of this is your insistence that science and religion are two separate things. Your thesis is that the only real connection, the only solid connection to reality that a human has is his/her ability to completely discount reality, and become one with its "essence" instead. An essence that is supernatural and unreal, by definition. And since YOU know this imaginary thing, better than most, then only folks teaching or recognizing the same delusions as you have witnessed reality at all.

Yes empirical things are the things which exists inside our minds and the things that religion deals with is what exists out there in noumenal world. That's our basic view of the world in the east.

In actuallity you have very little claim to knowing reality. You have only claim to knowing the visions of the Vedic masters. These portions of reality are not accessable to me. I do not know these particular secrets. There is no evidence for them. They are themselves illusions. Reality is quite real, on its own, without such imaginary, "supernatural" additions.

For your kind information scientific realism is dead, your continuous insistence that an objective reality exists independent of us has been falsified numerous times by experiments and yet you continue to blindly argue that this objective reality exists out there, instead of giving up your enshrined beliefs you are in the dream that nature agrees with you, so please change your perspective of things. We need to abandon the notion of an objective reality existing independent of us.

If you cannot provide evidence that shows where religion and spirituality is actual pertinent to reality, and what their basis might be in reality, then you are dreaming. And your dream is no more real than mine.

 

Regards, TAR2

I have come out of my dream and even you should too.

Immortal, will you please answer my question

Sure, I will.

Exactly how could you, even in principle, do an experiment that showed that reality didn't exist?

They did it like this.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0262407907615838

If reality doesn't exist then what do you make the equipment from?

On what do you record the results?

The pointer position of the apparatus will be also in a superposition of macroscopically distinct states and hence it doesn't make any sense to assume that what we cannot measure about a system has an independent reality. In simple terms empirical reality doesn't exist out there, it doesn't exist independent of us.

One minute you're saying that the core of religious experience is so similar among all religions that it must be true and the next you're saying that most religious people aren't religious at all. What a mess your quest for secret truth has made you.

No, it has made me wise, I am at rest. I can go to any extent and say that the majority of the so called Christians and Hindus are not really religious people at all.

There are 33 Aeons in Christianity and there are 33 devas in the Vedas and the Upanishads. There are many more core agreements like such, for now that's enough.

Almost 99% of so called Christians and Hindus of today aren't really aware of these 33 Aeons or do not even take their existence seriously and have deviated from the things which exists with in their own religious scriptures.

No one really smiles more than me when they read the secrets of the Kingdom of God daily and yet they do not understand them.

Forcing children to be educated on religion is the surest way to produce young atheists.

Very nice, the sooner they start questioning the beliefs of orthodox religions and come out of its grips the better, its good if they develop that scientific bent of mind at an early age so that they question beliefs which are held on strong prejudices, the sooner they go through that atheistic phase in their life the better it is for them so that they better accept and understand different points of view.

What a stupid thing to say. Tertullian knew the gnostic fathers personally. He heard them speak. He had access to all of their writings. You suggest that we know more because we dug up 12 books buried in a jar? You have no sense of proportion or historic truth. You're just arguing as a pretense to preach your cultish beliefs, and frankly no form of communication could be more boring.

The books of Nag Hammadi Library shed more light on whether the accusations of church fathers like Ireneaus and Tertullian were true or not and scholars working on such works very well know what the truth is.

There is core agreement between atheists of every culture that supernatural claims are bogus and it should be accepted that they are able to access an objective truth on the topic. This is undeniable. The evidence is too great to ignore.

 

Who can't play this boring game?

Many people don't take up science because it is boring for them but that doesn't mean it is boring for scientists who do science, what is boring to you was gold for our ancients.

People who under go religious experiences are healthy individuals and without positive evidence otherwise to account for such religious experiences the atheist claim that they are hallucinations doesn't really stand when compared to the amount of theological agreement that exists across different cultures and of disconnected time and places.

Trying to discuss anything with you while you use the exchange as an opportunity to proselytize your bizarre theories would be a double standard on my part.

Admit that you were wrong I'll withdraw this discussion immediately, if not all I did was offer scholarly evidence refuting your position.

Immortal, please don't get so lost in the discussion of double standards that you forget to answer my earlier question.

 

immortal, on 09 Feb 2013 - 18:08, said:

 

"That's a cop out to escape from the facts of nature."

Exactly what facts are those?

Sure.

The fact that what we call empirical reality is only a state of mind and once you accept this fact you are not far away from realizing that this mind is the product of a divine God.

These are facts established from experiments and its a cop out by those who doesn't want to accept it and doesn't allow to discuss such things, a cop out to keep humanity in deep ignorance.

Quantum Enigma Controversy

Your common sense disagrees with the common sense of 99.9% of religious people. There is therefore nothing common about it. If what you are saying is true then your sense is extraordinary. You have information denied to mortals.

That's not my problem, I am going with what scholarly evidence and empirical evidence are saying, just because a majority of people revere a particular belief doesn't make it true, the majority of those who call themselves religious are just wrong for they don't know the things that exists with in their own religious scriptures.

If you refuse to make a list for us, I suggest you at least take to the streets and announce from a soapbox that you know who has the favor of God. Don't you think they deserve to know?

I believe that everyone should know the truth, so introducing this in schools will be a better idea so that it will at least prevent a society from producing atheists and fanatics.

That's cute. You're quoting the online Gnostic Society Library.

 

I prefer to quote Tertullian, who summed up everything that Valentinus was and everything that you are 1800 years ago in one shot:

1800 years, Humanity has been in ignorance for way too long but things have changed, today's scholars have access to truth, mainly the well written Gospel of Truth.

"Through this, the gospel of the one who is searched for, which <was> revealed to those who are perfect, through the mercies of the Father, the hidden mystery, Jesus, the Christ, enlightened those who were in darkness through oblivion. He enlightened them; he showed (them) a way; and the way is the truth which he taught them."

Today's generation knows what the truth is and no one can deceive them.

The Gnostic Paul; heresy, secrecy, Christ myth, entheogens, fatedness

"This is the knowledge of the living book, which he revealed to the aeons at the end as his letters, revealing how they are not vowels nor are they consonants, so that one might read them and think of something foolish, but (rather that) they are letters of the truth, which they alone speak who know them. Each letter is a complete <thought>, like a complete book, since they are letters written by the Unity, the Father having written them for the aeons, in order that by means of his letters they should know the Father.

The Father reveals his bosom. - Now his bosom is the Holy Spirit. - He reveals what is hidden of him - what is hidden of him is his Son - so that through the mercies of the Father, the aeons may know him and cease laboring in search of the Father, resting there in him, knowing that this is the (final) rest."

- Gospel of Truth

The Aeons are at the heart of the truth about Christianity, you reject them you kill Christianity. Either the catholic church should stop misinterpreting the works of Paul and accept this explicit teachings or keep the Pauline epistles separate from their Christianity, anything else is shear double standards, today I have questioned it, tomorrow someone will.

 

No sooner had that argument been made, Bertrand Russell refuted it.

 

In fact, the website you're quoting goes on to say:

 

Russell’s position is the stronger, because his argument uproots a fundamental element of Broad’s argument. By taking away the religious experience’s gift of moral information, Broad very little to argue. Broad’s only evidence for the veridicality of these experiences were ethical truths. If the experiences have no evidence of being veridical then there is no reason to believe that they are anything other than delusions. Broad admitted this when he said that the experiences could be considered true "…unless there be some positive reason to think otherwise.(Broad 2008, 217)"

 

It is for that simple reason that Russell has the stronger position. This is a good example of how an argument doesn’t have to be long or complex to successfully refute a long or complex argument. Broad’s analysis was in-depth, and very thorough. He considered many rebuttals, and defended his hypothesis very well. However, he left a glaring hole in his logic, which was immediately seen in another situation by Bertrand Russell, and much like a complex machine, that missing piece was a fatal flaw in the whole.

 

Religious Experience: An Analysis

Were you purposefully taking your quote out of context, or did you just not read the rest of the page?

Comparative religious studies has put some broad light on religious experiences since the time of Broad, and we know a lot now, the ethical structure of those who have had religious experiences are not the only reasons why such experiences should be accepted as veridical, there is a much more stronger argument than that.

I'm afraid of being bored senseless by this discussion.

No, no, wait, don't get away, shouldn't I expose some of your double standards.