Just thought everyone should see this. http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/22FhG9/www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DoPEdDcs_8ZQ
He implies that, because the brain has electrical activity, that it's a part of a global network of brains that share information. There is no evidence for that. He makes a number of sweeping generalisations that are too broad a take on other ideas to get his point across. I didn't agree with his conclusions about who and what we are and the way society can be held together. The last part about the action of the left hemisphere isn't accurate either. It smacked of cult propaganda TBH, and it started with the same process as a cult 'sell'. Tell your listener that what they know is wrong, that they have unnecessary biases - and that if they do hold onto any old beliefs (I assume about religion and science) they are inferior beings who are holding back the rest. Very cult-like. What did you think? MelT
Fear and Trembling Has TLE changed the course of civilization? LaPlante and many other TLE experts speculate that the mystical religious experiences of some of the great prophets were induced by TLE - because the historical writings describe classic TLE symptoms. The religious prophets most often thought to have had epilepsy are Mohammad, Moses, and St. Paul. Dostoevsky, another famous epileptic whose works are filled with ecstatic visions of universal love (and terrible nightmares of uncanny fear and radical evil), thought it was obvious that Mohammad's visions of God were triggered by epilepsy. "Mohammad assures us in this Koran that he had seen Paradise," Doestevsky notes. "He did not lie. He had indeed been in Paradise - during an attack of epilepsy, from which he suffered, as I do." When Mohammad first had his visions of God, he felt oppressed, smothered, as if his breath were being squeezed from his chest. Later he heard a voice calling his name, but when he turned to find the source of the voice, no one was there. The local Christians, Jews, and Arabs called him insane. When he was five years old, he told his foster parents, "Two men in white raiment came and threw me down and opened up my belly and searched inside for I don't know what." This description is startling similar to the alien abduction experience described by people with TLE. Note that the overriding emotion experienced by Mohammed, Moses and St. Paul during their religious visions was not one of rapture and joy but rather of fear. When Moses heard the voice of God from a burning bush, he hid his face and was frightened. Luke and Paul both agreed that Paul suffered from an unknown "illness" or "bodily weakness" which he called his "thorn in the flesh." Many biblical commentators have attributed this to either migraine headaches or epilepsy. Paul did once have malaria, which involves a high fever that can damage the brain. Other psychologists have noted that likely TLE sufferers such as Moses, Flaubert, Saint Paul, and Dostevesky were also famous for their rages. However, psychologist William James has argued that religious states are not less profound simply because they can be induced by mental anomalies: "Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensitivity liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features have helped to give them their religious authority and influence. To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value is quite illogical and arbitrary. [Because if that were the case], none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of the possessor's body at the time. Saint Paul certainly once had an epileptoid, if not an epileptic, seizure, but there is not a single one of our states of mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic processes as its condition." More recently, several TLE nuns have provided further evidence for an epileptic root of many mystical religious experiences. For example, one former nun "apprehended" God in TLE seizures and described the experience: "Suddenly everything comes together in a moment - everything adds up, and you're flooded with a sense of joy, and you're just about to grasp it, and then you lose it and you crawl into an attack. It's easy to see how, in a prescientific age, an epileptic or any temporal lobe fringe experience like that could be thought to be God Himself." Even the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel had a TLE-like vision reminiscent of modern UFO reports - the famous, fearsome Ma'aseh Merkabah, the Vision of the Chariot: "And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire enfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire.... Also out of the midst thereof, came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance, they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot; and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass." Read more: Transcendent Experience
Being a student of neurology all of the information was accurate and should be very eye opening to individuals whom have not began to delve into this information.
being a victim of neurology myself.....i can say that there are some symptoms which may surprise people... a bunch of discussion of it here... http://forum.grasscity.com/spirituality-philosophy/909899-tls-mystical-experience.html you do know they have attempted to "replicate" the experience.... [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YPOTaUyvA0]Dr. Persinger's God Helmet - YouTube[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y02UlkYjSi0]THE GOD HELMET (Koren Helmet) Michael Persinger - YouTube[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eid6fiAj8WY]God and the Brain - The Persinger 'God Helmet', The Brain, and visions of God. - YouTube[/ame] Neurotheology 1 - This talk, called "God and the Brain", is a discussion of the Persinger "God Helmet" (actually the Koren Helmet) and the 8 Coil Shakti. It covers visions of God, Near-Death Experiences, and other themes in neurotheology, the field that integrates neuroscience and spirituality. This is the first of six lectures on Spirituality and the Brain by Todd Murphy, inventor of the 8 Coil Shakti and the Shiva Neural Stimulation system, which duplicates the procedures used in the God Helmet experiments. He has been a member of Laurentian University's Behavioral Neuroscience research group, under the direction of Dr. M. A. Persinger since 1998. See Persinger and the New Brain Sciences of Neurotheology and Magnetic Neurotechnology. Note that the closed captions are suggested for all viewers.
http://forum.grasscity.com/spirituality-philosophy/833323-searching-god-brain.html Neurology of the Weird Read more: Neurology Of The Weird
TLE is responsible for only some experiences of transcendency. I've studied it as a subject for about 3o years. TLE has particular symptoms that aren't found in experiences of eastern enlightenment. What Persinger forgets to point out that there are no directed currents powerful enough in real life to create the effects he gets when using the helmet. It's all well and good saying that if you direct a current at this part of the brain X will happen, nature doesn't provide anything that can zero in on just one part of the brain in the same way, and with enough frequency to account for experiences of realisation. Not a fan. MelT PS, I forget to mention the OP and its content. The author is not someone we would be wise to trust for correct info, but a World of Warcraft expert who, with the rest of his site, think of themselves as 'entertainers'. I do love a good prophet... "...Hi, I'm Chiren from Athenewins on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/athenewins ),... We're very well known as entertainers but what really drives us is that, with our fanbase, we have a platform for activism surrounding issues such as net neutrality, for which we're known to have done many viral stunts in the past (and we continue to be active). Reddit has been one of the main sources of inspiration for my videos and helps me to stay up to date with a lot of news and stuff that is relevant to what we do without having to spend too much time digging into it myself. ...I'm mainly known for breaking world records in world of warcraft & poker and for profiling myself as 'best gamer in the world'.tl;dr Chiren of Athenewins AMA..." The video is a promotional stunt, in part created I believe by 'Monstercat Productions', a PR company for bands.
I am too, and his information, particularly about the left hemisphere and its functions, is now out of date. There are certainly facts and generalisations in there which are correct, but not all of it is true. Could you tell me instances of proven interaction of all brains with each other in a world wide neural net, as he suggests? MelT
the thing i like to give these guys credit for is they are at least smart enough to always say that they havent proven shit- and they are right.....doesnt make it any less interesting you are right- now i believe you will also agree-there are lots of people who have these experiences all on their own....for no known reason at all....which is what inspired these guys to go looking to begin with..... i personally am far more interested in what inspired their research then i am in what they have found themselves.... btw- my "symptoms" are far from typical also: i dont think i would consider an idea that said "all" experiences of transcendency are the same or come from the same place.....as holding much merit i would however consider that they are likely all related to one another each in their own ways.....
You misunderstand me I certainly find it interesting, as I say above, (though I've read some of it before) but the problem isn't that they're talking about these experiences - I'm in favour of that - but that both Persinger and Susan Blackmore have said that they've proven that many experiences (inlcuding alien abduction) are caused by local geomagnetic fields. Persinger can not be right in his claims, as the cosmic consciousness of the sort that Buck and James and the Buddha spoke of - enlightenment - contains no presence, no sense of god. The idea of 'transcendence' began in the east. What the west has turned it into is not what it originally meant by any means. Cosmic consciousness contains no sense of other. "...Persinger reports that at least 80 percent of his participants experience a presence beside them in the room, which ranges from a simple 'sensed presence' to visions of God.[11] About one percent experienced God, while many more had less evocative, but still significant experiences of "another consciousness or sentient being". Certainly, again, see above. Spontaneous experiences outside of meditation (and TLE) happen all the time. I'm a believer in the state, what I'm not a believer in is that TLE accounts for all experiences, or that Persinger has found the answer. I'm on your side, but not theirs. There is only one type of actual transcendency: ie, realisation, as sought by all eastern traditions, which is always the same from tradition to tradition. Religious experiences are completely different to realisation and MAY be just TLE. TLE is different again, but it isn't any form of transcendence. I'd love to hear your symptoms?. MelT
Bear in mind that Persinger is out to show that the experiences aren't real: Other criticisms The correlation drawn between temporal lobe epilepsy and religious experience, as discussed by Persinger, has been questioned. The auditory and visual hallucinations as well as emotional states experienced by Temporal Lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients during the seizure state typically induce sensations of malcontent, rather than ecstatic or pleasant sensations that are integral to spiritual experience, as noted by neurologist John R Hughes: "Auditory and visual hallucinations are very uncommon in epilepsy. Epileptic phenomena are nearly always brief and primitive, like light flashes"[44] Persinger counters that even though only a small percent of TLE seizures include religious experiences, the study of these individuals nevertheless provides important evidence concerning the neural basis for religious and mystic experiences.[45][46] Persinger's findings regarding the effects of environmental geomagnetic activity have, to date, not been independently replicated. One published attempt to create a feeling of a "sensed presence" using an EM- and ultrasound-based "haunted room" instead of a God Helmet, found that reports of unusual experiences were uncorrelated with the presence or absence of "complex" environmental eletromagnetic fields similar to Persinger's. Reports of unusual experiences were however, predicted by the personality characteristics and suggestibility of participants.[47] Replication attempts and subsequent debate In December 2004 Nature reported that a group of Swedish researchers led by Pehr Granqvist, a psychologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, had attempted to replicate Persinger's experiments under double-blind conditions, and were not able to reproduce the effect.[8] The study was published in Neuroscience Letters in 2005.[7] Granqvist et al concluded that the presence or absence of the magnetic field had no relationship with any religious or spiritual experience reported by the participants, but was predicted entirely by their suggestibility and personality traits. Persinger, however, takes issue with the Swedish attempts to replicate his work. "They didn't replicate it, not even close," he says.[8] He argues that the Swedish group did not expose the subjects to magnetic fields for long enough to produce an effect. Dr. Granqvist, however replied that Dr. Persinger agreed to a 15 minute time period for PET study beforehand.[38] Persinger also stresses that many of his studies were indeed double blinded[39] The Swedish group disagree.[10]
i havent yet read anything where they claim to have "proven" anything....but it does not surprise me... there is much correlation between temporal fringe experiences and these events being disused...visitations/abductions....all of which make alot of sense.....but dont prove anything..... they certainly havent found or proven their to be any place that gives off enough energy naturally to induce these experiences...for those who have them -they come from the inside humans are great a ruining a good thing to say that this neuron activity is more then just a piece in a much bigger puzzle is assuming too much..... we still dont know i would like to know what some one would find....going into the same experiments....with a more open mind.... send someone in to do the research without any idea what to expect.... instead of going in looking for something specific.... i had lived and read uncountable numbers of temporal events long before i came to know anything about these guys.... fuck i lived these events for 32 years before i knew what they were at all.... i never thought we were not on the same side and it would seem in the end we agree completely as i have had a life time of symptoms...it would take a lifetime to tell.....there are bits of it here and there already ....in other threads... i will give you this here ... i would feel it coming on ....like every cell changing the rate at which it vibrates....a sudden shift in pressure... my stomuck turns as a metallic taste rises the air would become thick and every neuron is suddenly alive with deep vibrating music the whole world would turn red as if a red light had risen from behind me black and grey would then creep in from the sides like the night sky alive with stars in motion......like static on the tv within this static would be visions....flashes of things i had dreamed...things that had not yet happened.... even this would tear open and i would be able to see for a moment into the place that the music came from.... words fail so miserably when trying to describe the place...the feeling... i would repeat to myself the bits of phrases i could pull back from there with me.....i held on to ever second of it for as long as i could ....everytime..... i would give up all of this life to go and stay there you would not have to ask twice i could go on and on.....
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YltzGpQomug&feature=related]Symphony of Science -- DNA and Life - YouTube[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZGINaRUEkU&feature=related]Symphony of Science - the Quantum World! - YouTube[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB7jSFeVz1U&feature=related]Ode to the Brain! by Symphony of Science - YouTube[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk&feature=related]Symphony of Science - 'We Are All Connected' (ft. Sagan, Feynman, deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye) - YouTube[/ame] "The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together." "The cosmos is within us, we're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan. That my friends, is consciousness. The truth lies in the metaphysical mind and its instruction upon the physical. DNAphotons relate to amazonian myths
This was a really good video, some parts I didn't understand. The brain is nearly as fascinating as the universe to me, that's all we are in the end, just electrochemical impulses