Having many times had the experience of ‘contacting alien intelligences’ thru the curious methodology of astral projection training, I can certainly confirm that this kind of experience – the vivid sense of communication with “aliens” – does happen during astral projection training and so-called ‘astral travel’. I’m not claiming the experiences are true. Any close examination of teh inconsistencies of those experiences, their essential ‘oddness’, suggests that they are clearly not true in the sense that the word true is usually used. But they are vivid, stiking, strangely compelling and persistent, and seem to be something that occurs naturally and often within these types of meditative or mental training methods.
My theory? That these experiences are, like so much else, a special category of ‘simulation’ – a type of metaphor or interface.
Anyway – here’s an article about the study.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45051979/ns/technology_and_science-science/
According to lead researcher Michael Raduga, more than half the volunteers experienced at least one full or partial out-of-body experience, and seven of them were able to make contact with UFOs or extraterrestrials during these dream-like experiences.
Raduga designed the experiment to test his theory that many reports of alien encounters are actually instances of people experiencing a vibrant, lifelike state of dreaming. If he could coach people to dream a realistic alien encounter, he said, that could prove that reports of such encounters are really just a product of our imaginations.
“When people experience alien abductions in the night, they usually don’t know they are actually in REM sleep and having an out-of-body experience,” Raduga told Life’s Little Mysteries, adding than an estimated 1 million Americans have such experiences each year.
“It’s very realistic and people cannot understand how it happens. [Our study] shows that it’s not about aliens, it’s about human abilities, and it can happen to almost anyone.” [ 7 Things that Create Convincing UFO Sightings ]
Study participants were told to try to “separate from their bodies” every time they became half-awake or lucid during the night. If they were able to dream that they had separated from their sleeping bodies, they were then supposed to look for aliens in their homes. If they were unable to have an out-of-body dream experience, they were told to go back to sleep and try again later in the night.
Good old uncle Tim gets reprinted by truthout – nice to see him again. His ideas will reappear in time to be studied anew. This snippet starts with some mention of his idea of neurogenetic castes and stages.
http://www.truth-out.org/timothy-leary-wall-street-occupation-movement/1319050501
After the tribal (familial) and feudal (childlike) stages of human evolution came the industrial (insectoid) society, where the individual is a worker or manager; in later stages, a worker-consumer.
In all these static, primitive societies, the thinking is done by the organizations that control the guns. The power of open-minded individuals to make and remake decisions about their own lives, to fabricate, concoct, invent and reinvent is severely limited.
Youth had no power, no voice, no choice.
The post-political information society does not operate on the basis of obedience and conformity to dogma. It is based on individual thinking; scientific know-how; quick exchange of facts around feedback networks; high-tech ingenuity; and practical, frontline creativity. The society of the future no longer grudgingly tolerates a few open-minded innovators. The cybernetic society is totally dependent on a large pool of such people, communicating at light speed within and without geographical boundaries. Electrified thoughts invite fast feedback, creating new global societies that require a higher level of electronic know-how, psychological sophistication and open-minded intelligence.
This cyber-communication process is accelerating so rapidly that to compete in the world information marketplace of the 21st century requires the navigational skills of change-oriented, innovative individuals who are adept in communicating via the new cyber-electronic technologies.
You can fool yourself – and intuition is often mistaken. This is not fashionable to say in certain circles, in which intuition is given a special status. And yes, the brain and mind con do some amazing things, and intuition is often astonishingly right, especially certain types of intuition, in which, for example, we ‘intuit’ how another person is feeling, or even what thoughts they are having.
But, intuition is, or can be, just as subject to “filter mistakes” as any other function of consciousness. What are filter mistakes? A filter error happens when we make assumptions, and filter out information that doesn’t support those assumptions, and filter in information that does. Another term that we might apply to my expression “filter mistake” is perception bias or cognitive bias.
A recent article on The Hazards of Confidence talks about these kinds of conghitive biases – worth a read – and consider how these kinds of problems may be affecting your training and exploration.
Because our impressions of how well each soldier performed were generally coherent and clear, our formal predictions were just as definite. We rarely experienced doubt or conflicting impressions. We were quite willing to declare: “This one will never make it,” “That fellow is rather mediocre, but should do O.K.” or “He will be a star.” We felt no need to question our forecasts, moderate them or equivocate. If challenged, however, we were fully prepared to admit, “But of course anything could happen.”
We were willing to make that admission because, as it turned out, despite our certainty about the potential of individual candidates, our forecasts were largely useless. The evidence was overwhelming. Every few months we had a feedback session in which we could compare our evaluations of future cadets with the judgments of their commanders at the officer-training school. The story was always the same: our ability to predict performance at the school was negligible. Our forecasts were better than blind guesses, but not by much.
We were downcast for a while after receiving the discouraging news. But this was the army. Useful or not, there was a routine to be followed, and there were orders to be obeyed. Another batch of candidates would arrive the next day. We took them to the obstacle field, we faced them with the wall, they lifted the log and within a few minutes we saw their true natures revealed, as clearly as ever. The dismal truth about the quality of our predictions had no effect whatsoever on how we evaluated new candidates and very little effect on the confidence we had in our judgments and predictions.
I thought that what was happening to us was remarkable. The statistical evidence of our failure should have shaken our confidence in our judgments of particular candidates, but it did not. It should also have caused us to moderate our predictions, but it did not. We knew as a general fact that our predictions were little better than random guesses, but we continued to feel and act as if each particular prediction was valid. I was reminded of visual illusions, which remain compelling even when you know that what you see is false. I was so struck by the analogy that I coined a term for our experience: the illusion of validity.
I had discovered my first cognitive fallacy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Summary – In general, however, you should not take assertive and confident people at their own evaluation unless you have independent reason to believe that they know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, this advice is difficult to follow: overconfident professionals sincerely believe they have expertise, act as experts and look like experts. You will have to struggle to remind yourself that they may be in the grip of an illusion.
I personally am more interested in qabalah than kabbalah.
Qaabalah is the fusion product of the mixing of european hermeticism and memory theatre technology with the bits and pieces of kabbalistic teachings that started to move thru the european noosphere and culturesphere as a result of the religions turmoil that first allowed islam and judaism into europe in medeival times, then attempted to suppress it and drive it out at the end of the medeival period.
To simply the comparison – qabalah (or cabala) is essentially a form of christianized hermeticism, while kabbalah is a stream of schools of jewish mysticism and magic. They both use some common elements, but they use them differently.
I practiced qabalah quite intensively, and in a miniaturized form it still forms part of my tool kit. At this stage in my work I am most interested in qabalah’s effects on memory and intelligence – I have said, qabalah improves memory, and since an improved memory is an essential part of increased intelligence, it can also be said that qabalah as a training method can increase intelligence. Qabalah training also does something else that GREATLY increases intelligenece – and that is, certain training methods greatly increase visual thinking and the capacity for visual thinking, and visual thinking is one of the most powerful tools I’ve found to enhance intelligence and creativity.
—
Anyway – The Kabbalah Center, a rather famed school for the jewish mysticism and magic branch of this stream of esoteric material and content, is in the news these days.
Couple’s success spreading kabbalah yields to discord, tax probe
Karen began to study kabbalah seriously. They argued over what to do with
Philip’s spiritual knowledge. She suggested teaching kabbalah to anyone who
wanted to learn about it, including women and those without yeshiva training.
Philip acquiesced, and in so doing elevated Karen to a status well above a
rabbi’s wife. In the eyes of followers, Karen became Philip’s peer: He had the
education, she had the nerve.
In the eyes of followers, Karen became Philip’s peer:
He had the education, she had the nerve.
“What Karen Berg has done is what no man in history has done,” said Phillips,
the family friend. “Never have the words ‘kabbalah’ and ‘Zohar’ been known
outside the small circle of kabbalists.”
The Bergs advertised introductory classes; the cost was about “the price of a
falafel,” one former member recalled. The New Age seekers, retirees and others
drawn to the courses in Tel Aviv were from secular homes and knew little about
their Jewish heritage.
“We loved that we found mysticism in our own backyard, in Judaism. The
teacher spoke of things that very much resonated with us…. There was no
pressure to be observant,” said one longtime member who became disillusioned and
left the center after two decades. The former member, who continues to practice
kabbalah’s philosophy of helping others, asked not to be named because relatives
are still involved.
Philip held himself out as the spiritual successor to Brandwein and used the
name of a kabbalah yeshiva founded in Jerusalem in 1922. But Brandwein’s heirs,
who were running the yeshiva at the time, publicly disavowed any connection to
Berg.
Philip had fewer than two dozen regular students in 1977 when Langford
enrolled. Langford said he was captivated by the rabbi’s teachings: “Everything
we did felt so important. The future of spirituality was dependent on us.”
The Bergs spoke constantly of expanding and in published materials sometimes
exaggerated the size of the organization, he said. “There was a joke that
anywhere he had sneezed he would say there was a branch there,” Langford
said.
In the classroom, Philip, known as the rav, or rabbi, was beloved for his
clear explanations of lofty concepts such as shame and mercy. At home, his
conversations with Karen often concerned less spiritual topics.
“She was always talking about money and the need to have it,” Langford said.
Karen wanted a big house and her husband agreed, saying it could attract new
students, he said.
“He could see in her no evil. He could see in her no wrong,” recalled
Langford, who was the first student promoted to teacher. He is now a glass
artist in Israel and said he still studies kabbalah.
In the early 1980s, the Bergs returned to the U.S.
“He came to me and said that if he wants to make it big time, it can’t be
done in Israel,” Langford said.
One of the topics I tend to emphasize is that the ability to think abstractly, to use signs symbols and language, is THE important human invention that led to the type of complex mind and memory systems (including the external memory systems of language, imagery, alphanumerics, writing, and now digitization) that make our current type of consciousness possible, and that are the stepping stone to the types of consciousness we can develop and that we may see in teh future.
One of the ways I’ve looked at this question is thru the study of ancient art, cave art, neo and paleolithic art, and what little we can see of the art and decorative and symbolic crafts of deep paleo humankind.
And now we have discovered the oldest human art tool kit, a small “factory” for producing paints from ocher - and dated at 100,000 years, the oldest evidence for a fully developed practice of art among humans yet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15257259
The hoard includes red and yellow pigments, shell containers, and the
grinding cobbles and bone spatulas to work up a paste – everything an ancient
artist might need in their workshop.
This extraordinary discovery is reported in the journal Science.
It is proof, say researchers, of our early ancestors’ complexity of
thought.
“This is significant because it is pushing back the boundaries of our
understanding of when Homo sapiens – people like us – first became
modern,” said Prof Christopher Henshilwood from the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
“These finds indicate that humans were certainly thinking in a modern way, in
a way that is cognitively advanced, at least 100,000 years ago,” he told BBC
News.
Prof Chris Stringer from London’s Natural History Museum commented: “Twenty
or 30 years ago, there was a view that Europe was really the place where all the
big action was taking place – wonderful painted caves 30,000-35,000 years ago,
and people decorating their bodies.
“We now know that this behaviour goes back far further in Africa; it goes
back to 100,000 years, perhaps even more than 100,000 years.
“People were starting to express social identity in completely new ways. And
there is a view that this behaviour is linked with complex language. So, it may
indicate these people were communicating in a fully modern way,” he told BBC
News.
Life magazine has been posting photos from it’s older collections, and a recent one featured Aleister Crowley. Yeah yeah, spooky right? No. Crowley was a jerk, a freeloader, and a drug addict, and a bit of a religious crank, but some of his work is brilliant, and like a lot of the creative people of his time (the early 1900s) studying religion, philosophy, and psychology, his books are still worth reading.
I think all these photos have been seen before, but they are still interesting. I think the hipster vibe of the pic I screengrabbed and linked is kinda funny. The slide show (yuck) is worth a click and a look.
Here’s my prediction – December 21st 2012 will come and go like every other solstice. Things here in the US will be just as messed up as they have been, but that’s because of our political and economic choices in the face of peak oil and other macro economic forces and resource depletions, not so much because of a “spiritual transformation”, or lack of same, caused by a millenial event. Our civilization will continue it’s myopia.
Humans will continue to have the same limited choices for self-development. Enlightenment, in the form in which I model it, will continue to be very rare. As before, people will still participate in the “spiritual entertainment industry”, pretending to seek a fictional “enlightenment”, and as life here on the surface of our beautiful planet gets harder, before long the spiritual entertainment industry will pick a new date for a new judgment day, far enough away for the harmonic convergence and the mayan 2012 to be forgotten, and the cycle of entertainment will continue.
In any case, I read an article today that contained some interesting observations and comments, that might be worth your time.
Here’s a few snippets I thought tasty – be warned, it’s not a feel-good article:
“Predictably, Kohoutek fizzled as well. That same year, the science writers John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann published The Jupiter Effect, a bestseller predicting the devastating results (earthquakes, tidal waves, etc.) of a curious alignment of the planets on one side of the sun. When the alignment took place and nothing happened, they wrote a second book, The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered, explaining what went wrong. Not surprisingly, this sequel didn’t sell as well.
There were other millennial dates too. Remember the solar eclipse of 1999 and Y2K, the millennium bug? But the most significant millennial date so far in my lifetime surely was 1987, the year of the Harmonic Convergence—another planetary alignment—which was seen as the kickoff for the most anticipated apocalyptic event in recent years, the year 2012. For those unaware, proponents of 2012 argue that an ancient Mayan calendar—combined with permutations of the I Ching—predicts that tremendous changes will take place in that year and that, as one advocate expresses it, a “singularity,” an event of unprecedented ontological character, will take place and, as the saying goes, transform life as we know it. Recalling Norman Cohn’s criteria for millenarian belief, from everything I’ve heard about 2012, it fits the bill nicely.”
…
“In his Study of History, an account of the rise and fall of civilizations, the historian Arnold Toynbee argues that there are two stereotypical responses to what he calls a “time of troubles,” the crisis points that make or break a civilization. One is the “archaist,” a desire to return to some previous happy time or golden age. The other is the “futurist,” an urge to accelerate time and leap into a dazzling future. That both offerings are embraced today is, I think, clear. The belief that a saving grace may come from indigenous non-Western people untouched by modernity’s sins is part of a very popular “archaic revival.” Likewise, the trans- or posthumanism that sees salvation in some form of technological marriage between man and computer is equally fashionable. The 2012 scenario seems to partake of both camps: It proposes a return to the beliefs of an ancient civilization in order to make a leap into an unimaginable future. What both strategies share, however, is a desire to escape the present. Given our own “time of troubles,” this seems understandable enough.”
It was sweet to see Selena Fox in the news. And on the autumnal equinox as well.
Gotta love the autumnal equinox – a mysterious time of the year, the day’s length changing so fast.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/22/gop-candidates-witchcraft-dabbling-worries-wiccan/
 Selena Fox on Beliefnet There’s an irony to the timing of this hubbub, says Selena Fox, 60, who led her first Pagan ritual in 1971.
Twenty-five years ago, almost to the date, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) – who Fox says called Wiccans Satanists – led the charge to try to pass legislation that would have taken away tax-exemption status for Wiccan churches. This attempted infringement on her church’s constitutional rights led Fox and others to form the Lady Liberty League, to educate lawmakers and others, dispel misconceptions and promote Pagan civil rights.
“It was the first time in American history that Wiccans, other Pagans and those of other religions and belief systems came together to defeat an unconstitutional piece of federal legislation directed against the Wiccan community,” she says.
Pagan, she explains, is the “umbrella term for nature religion practices with roots in Old Europe.” Wiccans represent one branch of Paganism, as do Druids and Heathens, for example, she says.
Nailing down the exact number of Wiccans and practitioners of related Pagan paths in America is next to impossible, Fox says, in part because of people’s fears of discrimination. But her church, which sits on a 200-acre nature preserve, has been in contact with more than 250,000 practitioners in the U.S. since it started in 1974. She’s also heard estimates that the U.S. numbers are anywhere between 500,000 and 1 million.
Numbers measured by the American Religious Identification Survey, most recently completed in 2008, suggest that practitioners may be getting more comfortable owning up to their beliefs. Those identifying as Pagans jumped from 140,000 to 340,000 between 2001 and 2008, according to the survey.The number of Wiccans skyrocketed as well in that time frame, climbing from 134,000 to 342,000.
Erik Davis is often interesting, tho arguably forced by his circumstances to focus on creating popular content – and he’s an excellent writer and considerably-better-than-average thinker – so even tho it’s an old and much discussed topic, his latest article on tarot and it’s most well known deck is worth reading.
I especially enjoyed the mention of Pamela Coleman Smith, and her photo. The illustrations that accompany the article are worth taking a look, even if Erik’s writing is too textured for the net attention span, lol.
POP ARCANA – catchy clever title, eh?
An example of Erik’s intelligence and rigor:
“This point is important to emphasize, given the curious fog that cloaks our appreciation of the occult streams that animate the West. On the one hand, secular historians (and most of the better-informed adepts) recognize that the forms and even the content of much of today’s ancient or traditional lore are modern reconstructions rather than unbroken currents. We recognize, in other words, that Court De Gébelin was hallucinating his hieroglyphs, that Lévi was constructing the links between Tarot and Kabbalah. But this insight is often deployed for no other purpose than to expose the fantasies that, more often that not, “authenticate” occult claims through appeals to hidden tradition. It does not bloom into the more interesting (if more disturbing) conclusion: that the occult is now. The modern imagination — our imagination — is the theatre that stages these uncanny synchronicities, these resonances across time, these spectral encounters. This is the sort of serious play that Johann Valentin Andreae suggested when he used the phrase ludibrium to characterize the Rosicrucian mysteries he helped invent out of whole cloth in the 17th century, and that subsequently became an actual and deeply significant stream of Western esoteric thought and practice — including the Golden Dawn. The modern occult is at root an enchanted game, a round of hide-and-seek in a half-manufactured forêt des symboles. No wonder that one of the most popular vectors of the modern occult would be a deck of cards.”
Erik tells us what most people who are fascinated by the new age and occult material would rather not hear – this is mostly modern material, invented, mixed with rehashed ideas from much older texts, but still very modern.
We probably won’t awaken from that dream, even tho we should.
The ancient world and it’s part in the evolution of our current kind of mind seems to be a theme for me these days. So here’s a bit more, inspired by a recent post on metafilter about the Bradshaws, rock paintings in Australia. From the excellent cave and rock art site named after those paintings, the Bradshaw Foundation, come a batch of great pages on the great painted caves of France including Lascaux, on cro-magnon art mobilier (the hand held art carvings such as venuses and animal art), and this interesting page on geometric signs in the ancient painted caves.
Geometric signs from cave art at Niaux Ive always thought the geometric signs in the caves, typically dots, dashes, lines, and simple shapes, were some of the most interesting and mysterious things left behind by our big-brained ancestors in those natural time capsules. I have long thought that they were evidence of the beginning of evidence of the human power of abstraction, which is the origin of writing, numbers, mathematics, and geometry, money, calendars, and so many of the things which made modern civilization and the modern kind of humans possible. Now, as the “Indiana Jones” days of painted cave study is thankfully (but sadly) over, we can start to see a new type of research be carried out, as we apply the best modern techniques and the new types of imaging to studying ancient art and technology.
Geometric signs in cave art
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