The War on Consciousness - Graham Hancock

After Skool

"What is death? Our materialist science reduces everything to matter, materialist science in the West says that we are just meat, we’re just our bodies. So when the brain is dead, that’s the end of consciousness, there is no life after death, there is no soul; we just rot and are gone. Actually, many honest scientists should admit that consciousness is the greatest mystery of science and that we don’t know exactly how it works. The brain is involved in it some way but we’re not sure how. It could be that the brain generates consciousness the way a generator makes electricity, if you hold to that paradigm, then of course you can’t believe in life after death, when the generator’s broken, consciousness is gone. But it’s equally possible that the relationship — and nothing in neuroscience rules it out – that the relationship is more like the relationship of the TV signal to the TV set, and in that case, when the TV set is broken, of course the TV signal continues. 

And this is the paradigm of all spiritual traditions, that we are immortal souls temporarily incarnated in these physical forms. If we want to understand consciousness, the last people we should ask are materialist scientists. Instead, we should look at ancient cultures, like the Egyptians, who highly valued dream states. Many ancient cultures around the world used hallucinogenic plants to understand consciousness and expand their minds. However in today's society, visionary plants are highly illegal because they promote a state of consciousness that does not agree with the agenda of profit.

Substances, like coffee, alcohol, sugar and pharmaceuticals, are forced upon the population, but possession of even small quantities of cannabis, Ayahuasca or psilocybin will land you in jail. If we do not recognize the right of adult sovereignty over consciousness, then we can NOT claim to be free. Look at what our moderns state of consciousness has done. We have destroyed the natural gifts of earth in pursuit of short-term, selfish gain. We must reconnect with spirit immediately or else we will encounter disaster. Visionary plants could be the remedy for our current sickness."

New Theory Says Multiple Personality Disorder Could Solve the Mystery of Consciousness

Chris Mahon
Outer Places

Ready to have your mind blown?

A new paper published in The Journal of Consciousness Studies claims that consciousness isn't a unique property of humans—rather, the entire universe is conscious, and humans are all manifestations of its multiple personalities.

The proposition, based on research into dissociative identity disorder in humans, is meant to solve a perennial problem in philosophy: the "hard problem" of finding where consciousness comes from and understanding its true nature.

The hard problem of consciousness can be summed up like this:

Humans are made up of a bunch of matter (atoms) that organizes itself into biological systems (sensory organs, the brain, etc.), but if humans are just assemblies of various systems, why are we able to reflect on those systems and have individual, subjective experiences?

Why aren't we unthinking automatons?

Of course, the question of where human consciousness comes from is made even more difficult by the fuzzy definition of what actually constitutes "consciousness."

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Duped By the Beast of War

Paul Levy
Awaken in the Dream

As if living in a never-ending “war-time,” the war drums are once again fast approaching on the horizon. The country I live in, the United States of America, already involved in multiple wars – some overt, others covert – is threatening to attack another sovereign nation, this time Syria. The whole thing is totally insane; our government’s reliance on military solutions is pathological,[1] a form of mental illness.[2] It certainly seems as if our country doesn’t know how to imagine solutions outside the paradigm of war. The fact that we, as a species, are investing our creative genius to conjure up an endless war which is unceasingly draining us of our most precious resources is complete and utter madness. We are truly in the midst of a global collective psychosis of epic proportions, what the Native Americans call “wetiko psychosis.”

War is really an epidemic of madness. Throughout human history, war is the most violent and destructive activity in which we human beings have been engaged. It is an irrational phenomenon that can’t be stopped or controlled with rational arguments, for its source is the shared unconscious of humanity. Author Barbara Ehrenreich, in her book Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War, writes, “However and wherever war begins, it persists, it spreads, it propagates itself through time and across space with the terrifying tenacity of a beast attached to the neck of living prey. This is not an idly chosen figure of speech. War spreads and perpetuates itself through a dynamic that often seems independent of human will. It has, and we like to say of things we do not fully understand, ‘a life of its own.’”[3] In war our species has created an out-of-our-control Frankenstein monster that has developed a seemingly autonomous and independent “life of its own.” When I first read Ehrenreich’s words, I immediately thought of “wetiko” (which, simply put, refers to the spirit of evil), which I had written extensively about in my book Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil. Originating in the psyche,[4] wetiko – a psychospiritual disease of the soul – similarly develops an apparently autonomous and independent life and will of its own. The more I studied Ehrenreich’s work, the more I realized that the beast of war is a virulent incarnation of the wetiko bug writ large on the world stage.

An out-of-control robotic golem, the war machine develops a seeming autonomy that (just like the wetiko virus) generates its own self-sustaining momentum; war is simultaneously its own cause and effect. Seen as a cultural trait, war has evolved in the way that it has simply because it is advantageous to and profits from itself. In a self-perpetuating vicious and violent cycle of infinite regress that is a self-fulfilling feedback loop, the only defense against war is war itself. Thus war metastasizes and spreads, steamrolling all peaceful solutions under its relentless, circular and self-justifying logic. Once the cycle of violence starts and the dogs of war are unleashed, there is simply no stopping nor predicting it. A force of nature unlocked, once the Pandora’s box of war is opened, there is no coaxing the genie back into the bottle. Social scientists, in mathematical studies looking at the outbreaks of wars and national decisions to participate in wars, have shown strong indications of epidemicity, which is to say that war spreads in patterns identical to those of disease outbreaks. War is a living flesh and blood example of how human societies can fall prey to systems of behavior that are entirely of their own creation that can sweep up and devour all who are involved. This is reminiscent of the legendary resurrected tiger which devours the magician who restored it to life out of its skeletal bones. In war we have fallen prey to the power of our own misguided magic.

The first principle of psychological method is that any phenomenon to be understood must be sympathetically imagined. No syndrome can be truly dislodged from its cursed condition until we first move imagination into its heart. Due to its traumatizing nature, many of us don’t even know how to think about war. Interestingly, Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during much of the Vietnam War, reflecting upon its horrors, writes, “we can now understand these catastrophes for what they were: essentially the products of a failure of imagination.” The same phrase – “failure of imagination” – was used during the Bush Administration as an excuse for why they weren’t prepared for the 9/11 attacks. If war escapes the reach of our imagination, it will dictate, enforce and establish dominion over all of us. First and foremost an act of imagination, war enlists our own imagination to become an agent of negation and destruction. In modern times, the majority of people apparently find the most decisive and captivating manifestations of power to be in that which destroys, rather than that which creates; this is an expression of collective subconscious and un-integrated trauma. The imagination of a people as a whole must be conscripted and reshaped in order to prepare a reluctant citizenry for war. War, and the weapons of collective death that are its accessories, are the products of the greatest creative power operating within the human spirit – the human imagination; and human imagination, it must be added, is capable of getting rid of them. Since our species has invented war, we can also invent and manifest peace. If we can’t imagine this, then what are we thinking? An impaired imagination, unable to even imagine peace, is simultaneously a cause and effect of the proliferation of war. While on one level the war we are involved in uses such things as bombs, the real war is a war on consciousness (see my article “The War on Consciousness”), which is nothing other than a war on the imagination itself. A debilitated imagination fundamentally weakens humanity, making it easier prey to be manipulated by a predatory elite.

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A conscious universe: Does science allow for life after death?

Dr. Rolf Froböse
Huffington Post

Some international physicists are convinced, that our spirit has a quantum state and that the dualism between the body and the soul is just as real to as the "wave-particle dualism" of the smallest particles.

Dr. James G. of San Francisco, a former coworker of the German Max-Planck Society in Frankfurt, reported the following incredible story. "I studied not only in the USA, but I also studied chemistry in London for a few semesters. When I came to England, the student housing was full, so I added my name to a waiting list. A short time later, I received the joyous news that a room had become available. Shortly after I had moved in, I awoke one night and in the twilight was able to see a young man with curly, black hair. I was terrified and told the alleged neighbor that he had the wrong room. He simply cried and looked at me with great sadness in his eyes.

"When I turned on the light, the apparition had disappeared. Since I was one hundred percent sure it had not been a dream, I told the housemaster about the strange encounter the next morning. I gave her a detailed description of the young man. She suddenly paled. She looked through the archives and showed me a photo. I immediately recognized the young man who had visited me in my room the evening before. When I asked her who he was, she replied with a quivering voice that it was the previous renter. She then added that my room had become available because he had taken his life shortly before." The author would never have recorded the story had "James" not been an absolutely trustworthy person.  

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Transhumanist Wants to Teach Kids That "Death Is Wrong"

Motherboard

Gennady Stolyarov is afraid to die, and not afraid to say so. He also strongly believes that human beings don’t have to die, or at least, will live much, much longer in the future. A writer and transhumanist activist, Stolyarov sees death as something that can be "solved" by technology and science, and one day it will possible to extend life indefinitely. To that end, he’s trying to buck the cultural perception that mortality is inevitable, and he’s starting with kids.

Stolyarov published the children’s book Death Is Wrong in November, and Zoltan Istvan, author of The Transhumanist Wager, unearthed the story in a post on Psychology Today. Now Stolyarov is promoting the book with an Indiegogo campaign, trying to crowdfund $5,000 to print and distribute 1,000 copies of the book and get the anti-death word out. (Hat tip to "The mainstream of society remains pervaded by the old death-acceptance arguments," the campaign page explains. To get rid of these "pro-death prejudices," the book gives an overview of the major reasons that life extension is feasible and desirable. It makes the case for immortality—for ages eight and up.

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A Call For an Open, Informed Study of all Aspects of Human Consciousness

copyright Infrakshun

 

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Etzel Cardeña

Lund University, Sweden 
 

Science thrives when there is an open, informed discussion of all evidence, and recognition that scientific knowledge is provisional and subject to revision. This attitude is in stark contrast with reaching conclusions based solely on a previous set of beliefs or on the assertions of authority figures. Indeed, the search for knowledge wherever it may lead inspired a group of notable scientists and philosophers to found in 1882 the Society for Psychical Research in London. Its purpose was “to investigate that large body of debatable phenomena… without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled Science to solve so many problems.” Some of the areas in consciousness they investigated such as psychological dissociation, hypnosis, and preconscious cognition are now well integrated into mainstream science. That has not been the case with research on phenomena such as purported telepathy or precognition, which some scientists (a clear minority according to the surveys conducted1) dismiss a priori as pseudoscience or illegitimate. Contrary to the negative impression given by some critics, we would like to stress the following:

1) Research on parapsychological phenomena (psi) is being carried out in various accredited universities and research centers throughout the world by academics in different disciplines trained in the scientific method (e.g., circa 80 Ph.D.s have been awarded in psi-related topics in the UK in recent years). This research has continued for over a century despite the taboo against investigating the topic, almost complete lack of funding, and professional and personal attacks2. The Parapsychological Association has been an affiliate of the AAAS since 1969, and more than 20 Nobel prizewinners and many other eminent scientists have supported the study of psi or even conducted research themselves3.

2) Despite a negative attitude by some editors and reviewers, results supporting the validity of psi phenomena continue to be published in peer-reviewed, academic journals in relevant fields, from psychology to neuroscience to physics e.g., 4-7.

3) Increased experimental controls have not eliminated or even decreased significant support for the existence of psi phenomena, as suggested by various recent meta-analyses 5, 8-16.

4) These meta-analyses and other studies17 suggest that data supportive of psi phenomena cannot reasonably be accounted for by chance or by a “file drawer” effect. Indeed, contrary to most disciplines, parapsychology journals have for decades encouraged publication of null results and of papers critical of a psi explanation18-19. A psi trial registry has been established to improve research practice20. 

5) The effect sizes reported in most meta-analyses are relatively small and the phenomena cannot be produced on demand, but this also characterizes various phenomena found in other disciplines that focus on complex human behavior and performance such as psychology and medicine21-22.

6) Although more conclusive explanations for psi phenomena await further theoretical and research development, they do not prima facie violate known laws of nature given modern theories in physics that transcend classical restrictions of time and space, combined with growing evidence for quantum effects in biological systems23-24.

With respect to the proposal that “exceptional claims require exceptional evidence,” the original intention of the phrase is typically misunderstood25. Even in its inaccurate interpretation what counts as an “exceptional claim” is far from clear. For instance, many phenomena now accepted in science such as the existence of meteorites, the germ theory of disease, or, more recently, adult neurogenesis, were originally considered so exceptional that evidence for their existence was ignored or dismissed by contemporaneous scientists. It is also far from clear what would count as “exceptional evidence” or who would set that threshold. Dismissing empirical observations a priori, based solely on biases or theoretical assumptions, underlies a distrust of the ability of the scientific process to discuss and evaluate evidence on its own merits. The undersigned differ in the extent to which we are convinced that the case for psi phenomena has already been made, but not in our view of science as a non-dogmatic, open, critical but respectful process that requires thorough consideration of all evidence as well as skepticism towards both the assumptions we already hold and those that challenge them.

See full article for list of name.

History... Solutions: How to Escape the Psychology of Control with Mark Passio

Tonight, on History So it Doesn’t Repeat: We ask the question: What Is Truth? Beginning with defining our reality (using the Philosophy of Natural Law), and juxtaposing it to the propaganda we’ve been fed throughout history. Together with our guest, Mark Passio (creator of the What On Earth Is Happening? podcast), we’ll discover a method of cognitive liberty, and peer into the origins, form, and function of intellectual self-defense. Learning’s the Answer, What’s the Question? It’s all coming up next, on History So It Doesn’t Repeat.

Mark Passio: www.WhatOnEarthIsHappening.com

Is there an afterlife? The science of biocentrism can prove there is, claims Professor Robert Lanza

 
The Independent
 
It’s a question pondered by philosophers, scientists and the devout since the dawn of time: is there an afterlife?

While the religious would argue that life on earth is a mere warm up for an eternity spent in heaven or hell, and many scientists would dismiss the concept for lack of proof – one expert claims he has definitive evidence to confirm once and for all that there is indeed life after death.

The answer, Professor Robert Lanza says, lies in quantum physics – specifically the theory of biocentrism. The scientist, from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, says the evidence lies in the idea that the concept of death is a mere figment of our consciousness.

Professor Lanza says biocentrism explains that the universe only exists because of an individual’s consciousness of it – essentially life and biology are central to reality, which in turn creates the universe; the universe itself does not create life. The same applies to the concepts of space and time, which Professor Lanza describes as “simply tools of the mind”.

In a message posted on the scientist’s website, he explains that with this theory in mind, the concept of death as we know it is “cannot exist in any real sense” as there are no true boundaries by which to define it. Essentially, the idea of dying is something we have long been taught to accept, but in reality it just exists in our minds.

Professor Lanza says biocentrism is similar to the idea of parallel universes - a concept hypothesised by theoretical physicists. In much the same way as everything that could possibly happen is speculated to be occurring all at once across multiple universes, he says that once we begin to question our preconceived concepts of time and consciousness, the alternatives are huge and could alter the way we think about the world in a way not seen since the 15th century’s “flat earth” debate.

He goes on to use the so-called double-slit experiment as proof that the behaviour of a particle can be altered by a person’s perception of it. In the experiment, when scientists watch a particle pass through a multi-holed barrier, the particle acts like a bullet travelling through a single slit. When the article is not watched, however, the particle moves through the holes like a wave.

Scientists argue that the double-slit experiment proves that particles can act as two separate entities at the same time, challenging long-established ideas of time and perception.

Although the idea is rather complicated, Professor Lanza says it can be explained far more simply using colours. Essentially, the sky may be perceived as blue, but if the cells in our brain were changed to make the sky look green, was the sky every truly blue or was that just our perception?

In terms of how this affects life after death, Professor Lanza explains that, when we die, our life becomes a “perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse”. He added: “Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. When we die, we do so not in the random billiard-ball-matrix but in the inescapable-life-matrix.”

Professor Lanza's theory is explained in full in his book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe.

War on Consciousness

 

Reality Sandwich

Consciousness is one of the great mysteries of science – perhaps the greatest mystery. We all know we have it, when we think, when we dream, when we savour tastes and aromas, when we hear a great symphony, when we fall in love, and it is surely the most intimate, the most sapient, the most personal part of ourselves. Yet no one can really claim to have understood and explained it completely. There’s no doubt it’s associated with the brain in some way but the nature of that association is far from clear. In particular how do these three pounds of material stuff inside our skulls allow us to have experiences? 

Professor David Chalmers of the Australian National University has dubbed this the “hard problem” of consciousness; but many scientists, particularly those (still in the majority) who are philosophically inclined to believe that all phenomena can be reduced to material interactions, deny that any problem exists. To them it seems self-evident that physical processes within the stuff of the brain produce consciousness rather in the way that a generator produces electricity – i.e. consciousness is an “epiphenomenon” of brain activity. And they see it as equally obvious that there cannot be such things as conscious survival of death or out-of-body experiences since both consciousness and experience are confined to the brain and must die when the brain dies. 

Yet other scientists with equally impressive credentials are not so sure and are increasingly willing to consider a very different analogy – namely that the relationship of consciousness to the brain may be less like the relationship of the generator to the electricity it produces and more like the relationship of the TV signal to the TV set. In that case when the TV set is destroyed – dead – the signal still continues. Nothing in the present state of knowledge of neuroscience rules this revolutionary possibility out. True, if you damage certain areas of the brain certain areas of consciousness are compromised, but this does not prove that those areas of the brain generate the relevant areas of consciousness. If you were to damage certain areas of your TV set the picture would deteriorate or vanish but the TV signal would remain intact. 

We are, in other words, confronted by at least as much mystery as fact around the subject of consciousness and this being the case we should remember that what seems obvious and self-evident to one generation may not seem at all obvious or self-evident to the next. For hundreds of years it was obvious and self-evident to the greatest human minds that the sun moved around the earth – one need only look to the sky, they said, to see the truth of this proposition. Indeed those who maintained the revolutionary view that the earth moved around the sun faced the Inquisition and death by burning at the stake. Yet as it turned out the revolutionaries were right and orthodoxy was terribly, ridiculously wrong.

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Five practical ways to raise your consciousness in 2012

Natural News

Last week, I declared 2012 the "Year of Consciousness" for NaturalNews (http://www.naturalnews.com/034554_c...) and pointed out that the ultimate solution to ending tyranny, wars, corporate deception and environmental destruction is to upgrade our consciousness rather than "killing our enemies." This announcement was greatly appreciated by NaturalNews readers, who for the most part have a very positive outlook on 2012 and beyond.

But there was something missing from the announcement: How do we achieve higher consciousness?

And I don't mean burning a roomful of candles, chanting mantras for seven years and mastering the art of transcendental meditation (which takes a lifetime or more). That's not practical for most people in the real world today. What we need is a practical way to upgrade our consciousness right now, here in 2012, in our own living rooms.

That's what this article is about: Five practical ways to raise your level of consciousness starting right now. (I'm also publishing a follow-up article listing things to avoid that crush your consciousness.) For this article, by the way, "raising your consciousness" means expanding your awareness of reality, expanding your connection with other human beings and living systems, and deepening your sense of free will, liberty and being the master of your own destiny through applied decisions and actions. It is not just a "sense of self" but also a heightened sense of how your actions impact the world around you.

Here are the five steps:

 

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Extracts from Dr. Thomas Campbell's My Big TOE: a trilogy unifying Philosophy, Physics and Metaphysics Part I

(From "My Big TOE" By Thomas Campbell, Chapter 8 pp. 113 - 118)

Ego and Intellect, humility, compassion and love

Now that we are talking about feelings, personality, and ways of being, a discussion on the role and function of ego and its relationship to fear will be helpful. To understand ego you must first understand fear. At the deepest level, fear is generated by ignorance within a consciousness of low quality. Fear and high entropy are mutually supportive - one creates and encourages the other. 

Earlier we mentioned that evolutionary pressure was at the root of the four major motivators of humankind: 1) survival and material success, 2) male-female relationship and sex, 3) influence, control and power and 4)  self-improvement, love and fear. The first three are the direct result of physical evolution whereas the last is a product of consciousness evolution. All four are uniquely blended together within each individual. It is this motivational mixture that drives the bulk of our choices.

Whenever an individual perceives that he or she is seriously lacking any of the first three, fear is generated, especially if the consciousness quality is low. Additionally, fear arises from incomplete knowledge or understanding - it leaps up in dread of unknown possibilities. Worry, anxiety or feelings of inadequacy breed insecurity and fear. Ignorance fanning the flames of fear can quickly whip itself into a blaze of insecurities building one upon the other.Many of us have experienced this unhealthy degenerative process when a loved one becomes unexpectedly ill, hurt or is unaccounted for and we do not know how the situation is going to turn out. 

Fear resides in the intent or motivation, not in the action. For example, purposely avoiding trouble may be an act of good judgement and not necessarily an act motivated by fear. Fear as a product of intent represents a state or condition of consciosuness. Fear is like mind-cancer; it is a disease of consciounsess, a dysfunctional condition of ignorance trapped in a little picture [as oppose to a Big Picture view] Fear is expressed by a high entropy intent driving action that reflects neither understanding or vision. Like a biological cancer, fear is debilitating and destructive of the system in which it grows. 

Ego is the the direct result of fear. Needs, wants, expectations and desires are generated by the ego as part  of its short-sighted strategy to reduce the anxiety produced by fear. Desire is generated by wants and needs, but not all desire is fear-based or counter-productive. Basic (lower level) desires such as sex and hunger are not necessarily fear-based, and the desire to improve yourself (if the motivation is correct) can be a strong positive incentive. In general, when I speak of desire, I am referring to the desire that arises in response to the needs of the ego.

The ego and intellect are expressions of the individual being; they reflect the quality of the consciousness of that being. Fear is the reaction of that being to the perception of a vulnerability, problem or difficulty. The ego lives and works between the fears and desires on one side, and the intellect on the other. It is a trusted advisor to the intellect with the special job of neutralizing the dysfunctional effects of the fear, as well as defining and focusing on things desired (wants, needs and expectations).

A simple example of a fear-desire pair is the fear of being inadequate coupled to a need of appearing to be inadequate.  The ego-need is usually satisfied by any contrivance that appears to deny the existence of, or compensate for, the fear - regardless of how superficial or transparent this strategy is to others. The ego is hard pressed to create a viewpoint that decreases the anxiety produced by the fear - any viewpoint that works and works quickly is satisfactory. Holes and discrepancies in the rationality of the ego's viewpoint are quickly filled by convenient beliefs. It is the ego's job to reduce anxiety and discomfort by sweeping disconcerting fears under the rug. The ruling principle is out of sight, out of mind; or equivalently, out of awareness; out of personal reality. 

An individual's ego and intellect work together to develop and justify those wants, needs, desires, expectations and belief that are required to prevent fear from adversely affecting the functional (operative) awareness of the individual - their mission is to make sure the individual always feels good about him or her self. No ploy or deceit, as long as it can be suitably justified, is off limits. This dynamic-duo's most useful strategy is to maintain a fantasy of power, significance, importance, adequacy, correctness, competancy, invulnerability, superiority, righteousness, or whatever it takes to allay the anxiety produced by the fear. 

Fantasy or delusion is integrated into the perceived reality of the individual by that individual's interpretation of the experience. Of the three (fear, ego and intellect) the fear is the only one that is fundamentally powerful. The others, like the Wizard Of Oz, derive most of their power from illusion and trickery. 

But what about the power of the intellect?  The intellect of mankind is the evolutionary accomplishment of which we are most proud. Our intellect, like Samson's hair, is the source of our power both individually and as a species. It provides the evolutionary advantage that allows us to dominate other creatures and exploit the earth.

The intellect has at least some access to, and control of memory and processing power. It can perform deductive and inductive analysis and make logical assessments by employing approximately the same approach that a computer would use to accomplish the same tasks - except the human intellect is not nearly as good at logical process as a computer. Human thinking excels at data collection, interpretation and synthesis as well as creative expression but is notoriously weak at employing logical process. We have learned to use mathematics as a tool to extend our naturally diminutive logical abilities. Without mathematics to brace our lack of natural logic ability, our ascent to power would have stalled in the nineteenth century if not before. Being logical to any significant depth does not come naturally to mankind (much less to womankind) because it is not particularly important to our purpose.

We need only enough acumen for logical processing to provide the feedback required to evolve our consciousness efficiently. We excel at data collection, interpretation and synthesis because those are the abilities we need to evolve our consciousness. More often than not, what we let pass for logical thinking in personal matters simply makes our progress more difficult. Justifying our ego, wants, needs, and desires as apparently logical requirements of our continued happiness demonstrates how our intellect can become a detriment to successful consciousness evolution. By justifying our beliefs (making them appear rational) our intellect becomes part of the belief trap's trapping mechanism. Most of us believe ourselves to be much more logical than we are.

When it comes to those activities that are most profitable to the evolution of our consciousness ( personal interaction and relationship, for example)  most of us are barely rational, much less logical. We have much to learn before we are ready to take effective charge of the more important aspects of our life and existence - that is why we are enrolled in PMR [Physical Material Reality] kindergarten for young, low quality consciousness. And why the psi uncertainty principle ... is a requirement within PMR.

Did the words "low quality" in the previous paragraph prick your ego just a little? Did you feel an emotional downer or dislike the personal implication? If it did and you did, I rest my case.

Art, intuition, and creativity do not typically flow from the intellect - though the intellect aids them all with definition and process. Pattern recognition and creative synthesis, two of our more complex cerebral functions primarily lie outside the intellect's operational capability. 

As the champion tool users in PMR, our intellect is undeniably the source of our technical prowess. Our ability to use and design more powerful tools, accmulate resources and outsmart Mother Nature, each other and ourselves is a tribute to the inventiveness of our intellect, the power of our mathematics, and our irrepressible drive to control and dominate. However, in terms of consciousness, personal power refers to the power to make right choices that lead to right action. In the Big Picture of mind-space your power is derived from the quality of your consciousness, not from your ability to force issues to resolve to your satisfaction. 

In matters of importance the intellect seldom has but a tiny fraction of the truth data required for useful logical analysis. Nevertheless, the intellect offers an illusion of being logical as it creates a smokescreen of self-serving belief, need and fear-based rationale to serve the ego's needs. It is in the service of the ego that the average intellect spends most of its time and energy. There are exceptions but they are exceedingly rarer than a poll of intellectuals would indicate. Most of the exceptions belong to a relatively small and impersonal set of crank turning tasks that require some serious intellectual effort (mostly day jobs requiring a high level of analytical skills). 

The ego, being closer to the fear, has the job of building and maintaining a feel-good fantasy barrier between the fear and the intellect. The ego, in collusion with the intellect builds a complex delusional structure held together by convenient beliefs that justify an intricate web of interactive needs, wants and desires. The ego is reactive and has no power of its own, though it has great influence by virtue of its job of counter-balancing the fear.

The intellect has the job of justifying, approving, or blessing the construction materials ( beliefs, attitudes, pseudo-knowledge, and strategies) of the ego. The information processing function develops whatever analysis (reasoning) that is resuired to support the ego's needs. Developing adequate justification for the beliefs and attitudes of ego, along with developing and executing strategies and plans to support fantasy creation  and management are the intellect's primary duties. The intellect has another job: it also processes and stores the information in memory that is required to drive a car, hold a job, earn a degree, be an engineer, find your missing car keys, get out of the rain, and so on. 

The intellect cannot, by itself, either love or lower entropy; nor does the intellect direct intent or will as you might imagine. Intent is a reflection of consciousness quality; will is applied intent - neither can be directed by analyzing data. Intent and will operate at a deeper level than intellect, which represent only the functions of information storage and data analysis. 

In summary, the intellect justifies and rationalizes what the ego requires to fabricatethe appropriate fantasy structure that must counterbalance each fear.Your fantasy structure is a system of finely tuned personal beliefs that are specifically designed to meet your needs, wants and desires and to mollify your fears. The intellect's justification defines and legitimizes the fantasy as a rational reality. 

The common ego attributes of arrogance, self-importance and self-righteousness are merely a few of the construction devices such as arches, vertical walls, and pitched roofs that the ego uses to build and maintain its delusion. If others evaluate an individual as egotistical, it means the fantasy built by that individual's intellect-ego reality construction team is obvious to the vision and understanding of others.  The degree to which you are capable of understanding the fantasy structures of others is dependent on your own personal fantasy structures. 

The devices you use to maintain your fantasies and delusions are largely not understood for what they are - whether they are employed by yourself or others. To see with clear vision you must first become detached and fearless in the face of ignorance. Without fear, there is no need for ego; no use for needs, wants and beliefs. What basic desires remain are natural, healthy and in consonance with right being and spiritual growth - they create no conflict. 

To complete the picture of ego, as defined above, you must be aware of its opposites: humility and compassion. Humility allows for confidence, certainty, self-assuredness, purpose and passion while carrying an underlying implication of awareness and recognition of limitations. The limitations of which humility is aware can originate inside or outside the individual (a wholly artificial distinction, but one that will aid the clarity of the explanation). 

An awareness of inside limitations recognizes the limits of individual knowledge and understanding (it acknowledges its own ignorance and is accepting of the ignorance of others).  An individual who fully appreciates the value, significance, and importance of others, as well as understands his or her own responsibility to be of service, reflects genuine humility. Humility breeds compassion and vice-versa. Outside limitations spring from an undestanding of the laws, properties, and requirements of reality. humility and compassion require an individual to understand their limited role within the Big Picture. As arrogance waxes, humility wanes.

In effect, humility and compassion are the antithesis of ego - they are what is left over when the ego is gone. As humility and compassion emerge, ego disappears and vice-versa. It is exceeedingly difficult to consciously and purposely develop humility, develop the quality of your consciousness, drop ego, or grow spirituality without some knowledge or undestanding of the Big Picture. Thus humility and compassion are the correct for ego, while knowledge and courage (open-minded skepticism in the relentless pursuit of truth) are the correcting mechanism for fear. Love is the result of the success of both corrections. 

Your capacity to love ( a measure of the entropy in your system) is inversely related to the ego and fear your being contains. Because the ego is generated in response to fear you can see that to love, to increase your capacity or ability to love, you must primarily let go of fear. Without fear there is no need for ego but without fear and with humility there is no ego. Both fearlessness and humility are required and are the byproducts of a successfully evolving consciousness.

A consciousness becomes the embodiment of love, humility and compassion as it engages its free-will to reduce its entropy toward the positive side of being. Thus increasing your quality of consciousness increases your capacity to love and allows your intents and actions to be animated by love. Love is the natural result of low entropy, high quality consciousness.

"Love" is the word we use to describe how a low entropy, high quality consciousness interacts with other individuated consciousness and other sentient or non-sentient entities. Love is the result of successful consciousness evolution. The capacity, ability and willingness of an individual to love is a function of how much entropy their individuated consciousness contains. Love capacity is a direct measure of entropy within consciousness. I bet you never thought you would ever see a technical definition of love.

While we are being both technical and surprising, let's give the concept of spirituality a technical definition as well. Spirituality, as it is used in this book, is equivalent to consciousness quality. You become more spiritual, demonstrate a higher spiritual quality and make progress on a spiritual growth path by lowering the entropy of your consciousness. A consciousness with lower entropy produces a consciousness of higher quality. In other words, the level of spirituality ( or degree of consciousness quality) of an individual is inversely related to the entropy the individuated consciousness contains. It is obvious that an individual's spiritual quality is directly related to his or her capacity and willingness to love.


PART II will follow sometime this month...

Dr Thomas Campbell - My Big TOE

Physicist and consciousness researcher, Thomas Campbell, Discusses the nature of reality in terms of consciousness -- this video logically and scientifically explains the normal and the paranormal, mind and matter, physics and metaphysics, philosophy and theology.

The Hidden Wisdom Within Addiction

awakeninthenow.com/ via serendipity

I’ve had a number of people in my life who have struggled with various forms of substance addiction. I myself have struggled with it at different times in my life. One of the most significant qualities of substance addiction is the obsessive desire to consume the substance of choice and the longing to change one’s state of consciousness. There is a consistent feeling of aversion to the usual state of consciousness which can involve painful emotions the addict has suppressed and is not prepared to deal with, often related to unresolved past trauma. A dissatisfaction with the usual state of consciousness. This is also present in people who choose to take psychoactive substances to alter their consciousness although in non-addicts there is a lesser degree of aversion to the normal state as well as the absence of the compulsive quality. Almost everyone consumes substances to alter their state of mind, consider not only alcohol, marijuana and psychedelics but also coffee, tea, sugar, etc. So there is nothing particularly unusual about this.

There is no question of the destructiveness of addiction in our society. However there is another element within this process that I’ve recently begun to explore. I’m calling this the hidden wisdom within addiction. The unwavering desire to change one’s state of consciousness out of a profound dissatisfaction with the usual state can be seen as a healthy motivation and possibly as a distorted representation of a spiritual drive to realize freedom. If we consider the normal state of consciousness of the average person in our society it becomes easy to understand why people would be dissatisfied with it. Most of us live in a mind state that can be characterized as subdued madness in my view. The baseline collective consciousness is one that is based in separation/isolation, low-level fear/anxiety, low-level depression, a very limited experience of the world based on a tight set of mental filters and most importantly a disconnect from source or spirit. Is it any wonder that so many people feel such a drive to alter their state of consciousness given the limitations and stifling isolation of everyday consciousness? The desire to expand conscious experience can easily be seen as a powerful urge to grow and evolve.

Our society however does not reward or encourage expansion of consciousness and spiritual growth, in fact it often punishes it. As soon as psychedelics began to be seriously researched in the late 50s and early 60s and their potential as a healing tool was realized they were immediately criminalized. The evidence suggested further study and potentially powerful positive effects from careful intentional use in a wide variety of contexts from the treatment of mental health issues to their use as a spiritual tool. We are conditioned into limited perspectives and beliefs about our world and how life should be lived and most of us to some degree buy into these limitations. Psychoactive substances temporarily dissolve these limitations but they are an imperfect solution because their effects cannot be maintained without continuous or repeated consumption. However they provide a window or a glimpse of other states of consciousness and a reminder that our usual state is only one possible perspective. If the desire behind addiction can be channeled into a spiritual path that is uniquely tailored for the individual’s needs and personality that desire will have another outlet besides addictive use of substances or other behaviors. For many this spiritual alternative may include mind altering substances used with a different intention than what we find in an addictive context. The intention of truly achieving personal freedom rather than escaping from unpleasant experience.

The value of seeing this aspect of addiction is not to condone the destructiveness of it, rather it is to see that there can be a positive underlying motivation that is needing expression. This helps to let go of judgment, blame and shame which are the truly enabling aspects of addiction. If we can see the that there is a wisdom that is trying to be expressed through it we can approach it in a creative way that aims to redirect the expression rather than forcefully stop it out of judgment. It is a common aspect of addiction that when people forcefully stop their addictive use of a substance, the addictive behavior is often transferred to another substance or behavior. It cannot be stopped but it can be transformed. Transformation is only possible with acceptance however. With acceptance the inner battle ceases and we have many more options open to us to grow in a creative way. The prevalence of addiction and the use of psychiatric drugs in our society suggests that we as a society are screaming for true paths to freedom and growth. Those path are available if we can open our minds to what is possible and if we have the courage to face our inner demons.