History of the End of the World

How Do You Think the World Ends?
Shifting one’s perception, from seeing the glass as half empty to seeing it as half full, creates a minor miracle. It changes an impoverished world into one of opportunity. Does that count also as an actual change in the real world? Some say yes, some say no. Could this difference in understanding be fueling today’s culture wars?
In his book, A history of the end of the world: How the most controversial book in the Bible changed the course of western civilization (HarperSanFrancisco), Jonathan Kirsch presents the history of the book of Revelation, from the time of conception through it’s impact upon current events. Revelation’s basic theme is that history is something God planned in advance. There are good guys and there are bad guys, both with support from divine sources. The end is preceded by a major battle between Good and Evil. Good finally triumphs and Earth is restored to its rightful condition of peace and harmony. We all know that story.
Revelation has some thematic elements so common to human nature that it seems to justify, if not invite, certain human predilections. Apocalyptic (the Greek equivalent of the Roman term for “what will be revealed”) books, authored through divine intervention, was common at the time Revelation came into being. One Jewish source mentions over seventy other “future histories,” or divinely channeled accounts of the end of the world, which were held in sacred regard. Apocalypses were found among the Dead Sea scrolls. End of the world prophecies existed in most other cultures, each having an equivalent thematic form.
Kirsch places the first apocalypses around the time of Zoraster in Persia. He suggests that the Hebrew versions began after Alexander the Great invaded Judea, when Jewish culture was under threat of the foreign, and much more liberal, culture of Greece. The Hebrew apocalypses thus emerged to combat the cultural invasion by casting anything Greek as part of the “evil empire,” while divisions among the Jewish people began to reflect this difference in values. Thus the apocalypses became a tool in what we now call the “culture wars.” Kirsch describes a pattern, manifesting from Biblical times on up to our modern era, where those who perceive they are suffering because of the behaviors of other groups of people, who have heinous values, and look forward to the day when Good will triumph over the Evil ones to create a New Age of Peace. Thus Revelation seems to be a timeless archetype of political struggle powered by religious fervor.
From the earliest time, however, the theme that the “end of the world is at hand” proved to be an unfulfilled claim. To bolster the power of the apocalypses, therefore, it became useful to view these texts as symbolic, leading to various interpretations of their meanings. Augustine (354-430, A.D.), for example, an influential theologian of the early Christian church, argued that Revelation shouldn’t be taken literally, but as an allegory of the “moral conflicts within each person.” Kirsch traces the history of Revelation as it continues into the New World, firing the imagination of the Pilgrims. It played a role in Joseph Smith’s founding of the Mormans. It plays a role today in the thinking of the current United States administration. It continues to fit the way people experience their struggles.
One interpretation, however, that Kirsch never mentions, is the one that two influential symbolists independently envisioned. Edgar Cayce, operating from a deep intuition, and Carl Jung, a psychiatrist who studied comparative religion and mythology, both saw Revelation as a blueprint for a radical shift in consciousness. In this interpretation, Revelation is a process of enlightenment that changes the person’s perception of reality, especially that of the human-God relationship. Cayce identified the experience as coming to know oneself as an individual yet one with God. Carl Jung interpreted the Christ symbol as a portent of a transformation of consciousness similar to Cayce’s description. After such an experience, the person lives in a totally different world.
If Revelation is symbolic of an inner process, can it tell us anything about the future of the world? Suppose many people were to experience enlightenment. Would the world “out there” become different because so many people are experiencing reality in a new and different way? Edgar Cayce speaks of the return of Christ as an inner event that more and more people will come to experience. Jung predicted an increase in this transformation as reflecting the coming “Aquarian Age.” Both men saw consequences for world history arising from the collective effect of the transformation of individual lives. However, whether ridding the world of evil requires an external extermination or an internal transformation seems to be a question that plagues us today. A reconciliation of these two viewpoints is probably in order.

Themes in the Future of Consciousness

Hi Folks:
Are you still enjoying getting updates on consciousness? I’ve got a moment’s break from my required writing routine to flash out this bit of musing to you, something I’ve been pondering for awhile and I’d appreciate your input. As I get more volunteers to do book summaries, the more new book topics arise that seem to need attention. Given my nature, I like to keep focus on the target, yet not be blinded by assumptions. I was wondering, what shall be included?
One in our community wanted to deal with near-death experiences. Another mentioned non-dual awareness. I was familiar with both areas, and it got me thinking.
Take near-death experiences. Do we learn about the future of consciousness from these studies, or mainly that life goes on after death? It profoundly changes the experiential perspective of those who’ve had the NDE, but does our second hand knowledge of it have any bearing on the future of consciousness? Life has always existed after death, so maybe there’s no news here, thus nothing regarding the future of consciousness.
Non-dual awareness is the new term for the old notion of satori, enlightenment, pure awareness, unconditioned awareness, etc. etc. I’ve had enough tiny moments of it to know they are talking about something real, that consciousness itself, or awareness itself, exists in its own right, and is the supreme “being” we’ve all confused with ourselves. Anyway, that truth, even though it is being discovered by more and more people and gaining its own western psychology, is something that has always been true, so it is no news.
On the other hand, might we not consider that the type of psychology, the quality of consciousness, of humanity’s most evolved beings, and the kind of consciousness, or mentality developed by some of us, as a result of therapy, vision questing, volunteer service, a life of spirituality, or whatever—might these observed trends in humans who are creatively growing be signposts to the future of consciousness? Can we predict the future of consciousness by looking at the trends in those people who evolve themselves in their lifetimes? If so, then many of the various spiritual development schemes (Course in Miracles, NeoJungian psychology, Transpersonal, Holotropia, etc. etc.), each with their own descriptions of the kinds of improved functioning, shifts in awareness, etc. that can be obtained, these assertions could be clues to the direction of evolving consciousness.
What about other factors, having little to do with humans working it out? Can spiritual forces play a role? If so, what kind of role and to what effect? What books are best to describe that possibility? What about cosmic events? Might a natural disaster, like the comet researchers today said may have wiped out the Neanderthals, wipe out all but a few humans, those left initiating a new trend in consciousness? Could there be a “singularity” in our future, something that only certain folks survive, folks who share a certain attribute? If so, could such a culling result in a “transformation of consciousness”? I’m asking.
While we are together at the Indiana conference, we’ll employ a variety of intuition technologies to “channel” information about the future of consciousness. And we’ll use intuitive methods as well as intellectual ones to discover the common patterns in the various theories we’ll be able to review, and we’ll experience their various methodologies and their impact upon our consciousness. In preparing for these events, it is helpful to develop some kind of preview, or overview of the territory, to help focus the questions we want to explore.
As I’ve mentioned, my own research has focused on one challenge that is in our future that has profound implications on consciousness—that of our dissolving boundaries in almost every aspect of earthly life—and one quality in the transformation of consciousness (it has many names, “to know yourself to be yourself and one with All,” universal heart awareness, Christ Consciousness, Universal matrix, Self, etc. etc.). When I combine those two studies, what emerges is a crossroads, a “Rapture or Rupture” in the experience of humans. Rupture comes for those overwhelmed by the psychic resonance with millions of others who have repressed hurt, anger and other destructive emotions. Rapture comes to those who have surrendered to an “empty self,” who witnesses experiences to flow by. Influenced by science fiction themes that have attempted to envision a schism in the future, I have envisioned a group of people who, when physical life is temporarily unviable, join psychic hands in going into an out of body limbo, helping one another keep focus until the crisis is past, then re-incarnating in uninhabited physical bodies whose previous owners had died of fright. I’m sure I’m having some cryptomnesia, and this fantasy is reflective of some science fiction novel I’ve encountered. However, bizarre sounding that fantasy is, one theme is certainly emerging in the news: some folks are getting by better than others and the divide is widening. That “divide” could cut many ways, depending upon the nature of the pressure on the population. The devastating Tsunami divided those natives who “sensed” danger and evacuated in time, and those immigrants who hadn’t a clue. Different pressures will divide us differently, but challenges that elicit the “survival of the fittest” seems to be inevitable.

near death studies

Altered States
Scientists analyse the near-death experience
Lee Graves
Rocky collected money for the Mafia. A typical bagman, he was immersed
in the material world of fast cars, quick cash and getting ahead by
butting heads
One day, he was shot in the chest and left for dead on the street.
He survived, though, and lived to tell of an experience that changed his life.

"He described a blissful, typical near-death experience—seeing the
light, communicating with a deity and seeing deceased relatives," says
Bruce Greyson, a U.Va.-trained psychiatrist who interviewed Rocky
after the shooting.
"He came back with typical near-death aftereffects. He felt that
cooperation and love were the important things, and that competition
and material goods were irrelevant."
That change in attitude didn't sit well with Rocky's Mafia friends,
but they let him leave the family circle. It was his girlfriend who
screamed bloody murder when he changed careers and started helping
delinquent children and victims of spousal abuse.
"She was just disgusted with him because, as she put it, he no longer
cared for things of substance, meaning money and jewelry and fast
cars. She couldn't believe what happened to this guy," Greyson says.
So it is with hundreds and hundreds of people, those who have had
near-death experiences and those who have been close to them. For 30
years, they have been the subjects of research that has taken Greyson
and other scholars in U.Va.'s Division of Perceptual Studies deeper
into a field where the raw material of spirituality, the fundamentals
of consciousness, the ethereal realm of the afterlife and the scrutiny
of science intersect.
Over those three decades, Greyson, who directs the Division of
Perceptual Studies, has witnessed an evolution in our knowledge about
near-death experiences. "Back in the early 1980s, when we would
present information about these experiences at medical conferences,
after the conference was over doctors would come to us individually
and say, 'I had one of these experiences. Let me tell you about it.'"
Several factors made them reluctant to speak publicly. The experiences
are intensely private, and people had yet to learn how common they
were. In addition, the field of study had yet to gain wide acceptance.
As knowledge has grown, reticence has waned. "Now they're more willing
to say that during the conference in front of an audience," Greyson
says.
About one person in 20 has reported having a near-death experience,
according to one study. The International Association for Near-Death
Studies estimates that 12 percent of people who have had a close brush
with death will later report having a near-death experience. The
elements of that phenomenon are so consistent that Greyson developed a
systematic scale of 16 items to gauge the depth of the event.

A classic example would begin with a person in an accident or medical
emergency having a sense of physical death accompanied by an
out-of-body experience—feeling like he is floating, possibly seeing
his own body and surroundings. The sensation is not alarming and
generally is peaceful. Some senses, such as hearing, become
heightened.
A period of transition, many times described as moving swiftly through
a tunnel, follows. The individual enters a realm of indescribable
radiance, where he is met by deceased relatives and friends. A central
being of light, often interpreted as a deity, emanates profound joy
and unconditional love. The individual then undergoes a life review,
where the actions of a lifetime unfold in a vision. He is told or
decides that it is not time to die and returns to his body, not always
willingly.
The power of the experience often is life-altering. Fear of death
vanishes. Love of life blossoms. Spirituality strengthens. Compassion
and connectedness become central principles.
"[Experiencers] feel they're part of something greater than
themselves. They feel that they're all part of this universal whatever
you want to call it—nature, the godhead," Greyson says.
Though the research is modern, the phenomenon is ancient. The
afterlife has fascinated mankind since he was wrapped in the swaddling
clothes of civilization. Egyptian lore and spiritual texts such as The
Tibetan Book of the Dead abound with accounts and descriptions of the
passage from life to death. In the Bible, St. Paul describes a
mystical experience "whether in the body or out of the body I do not
know."
One ancient text in particular piqued the interest of Raymond Moody
while he was a student at U.Va. Plato's Republic ends with the story
of Er, a warrior who "dies" in battle only to be revived after 10
days. He describes, among other things, a towering band of
otherworldly light that serves as a passageway for souls.
Moody, whose studies at U.Va. led to a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1969,
initially found little practical connection between classical text and
contemporary experience. In 1965, however, a colleague related details
of his own near death. When Moody later taught at East Carolina
University, a student who had been severely injured in an accident
stopped him one day after class.
"I'll never forget it. He said, 'Dr. Moody, I wish we could talk about
life after death in this philosophy class.'
"I said, 'Why do you want to talk about that?'
"He said, 'About a year ago, I was in an accident, and my doctors said
I died. I had an experience that has totally changed my life, and I
haven't had anybody to talk about it with,'" Moody relates.

The student's story not only paralleled that of Moody's
Charlottesville colleague, but also had echoes of Plato. "At that
point, I realized there had to be more of them," he says. Moody began
conducting interviews and in 1975, while doing his medical residency
as a psychiatrist at U.Va., published Life After Life.
It proved a seminal work. Moody coined the term "near-death
experience" and outlined aspects common to the phenomenon. The book
generated a tidal wave of interest, and Moody was inundated with mail,
far more than he could manage given the demands of his residency.
In 1975, Greyson was an assistant professor of psychiatry at
U.Va. Moody showed him a box overflowing with one week's worth of
letters and asked him if he wanted to follow up. "Of course I couldn't
put them down," Greyson says.
So began a life's work of methodical inquiry into an area little
explored by Western science. Moody's book, coupled with the writings
of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross on the death experience, sparked interest
that now blazes among a host of individuals, groups and interests.
There now is a scientific Journal of Near-Death Studies (Greyson is
editor) and the International Association for Near-Death Studies. The
phenomenon has been mainstreamed to the point that readers can now
turn to reference books such as The Complete Idiot's Guide to the
Near-Death Experience.
Popular acceptance, however, is no substitute for empirical analysis
in the scientific community. Greyson is a skeptic; he believes only
conclusions supported by data. "Science is my game. I can understand
that there are philosophical or theological ways of approaching this,
but that's not my interest," he explains. "My interest is in the
scientific understanding of it."
The cumulative weight of personal stories certainly counts in this
regard, but Greyson employs a number of different studies to test for
veracity. To analyze whether accounts are embellished over time,
Greyson asked 72 patients who had completed the 16-item scale in the
1980s to complete the scale again without referring to their original
responses, then compared the results for variations. To gauge how a
near-death experience affected one's ability to cope with stress,
another researcher studied 18 participants of support groups sponsored
by the International Association of Near-Death Studies, then set up a
control group of 25 people from the same support groups who had not
had a near-death experience.
Greyson's studies, combined with research by others in the field, have
methodically addressed questions such as: Do people of different
cultures report similar phenomena? Do people tend to embellish or
elaborate on their experiences over time? Are reports recorded before
Moody's influential 1975 book consistent with those afterward? Can't
near-death experiences be attributed to other causes—medication,
mental illness, religious preconceptions, wish fulfillment,
hallucinations?
And finally: How can the mind continue to operate—record perceptions,
senses and thoughts—and be conscious if the brain is dysfunctional?
Researchers have concluded that people of different cultures report
similar phenomena but interpret them differently (the being of light
may be God or Christ to a Christian, Allah to a Muslim). Reports
studied over two decades showed no embellishment, underscoring the
reliability of experiencers' accounts. Reports recorded before Moody's
book are consistent with those afterward, indicating that people did
not alter their accounts to conform to his model.
The effects of medication, mental illness, wish fulfillment and other
psychological models are significantly different from near-death
experiences and there is no scientific evidence connecting them,
according to Greyson.

The mind-brain question is particularly absorbing to Greyson and
fellow faculty in the Division of Perceptual Studies. He, Edward F.
Kelly and Emily Williams Kelly (Grad '86) co-authored Irreducible
Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, published in December
2006.
Emily Kelly writes about F.W.H. Myers, a 19th-century psychologist
whose work supports the view that the mind is not generated by the
brain but is constrained by it. She and Greyson examine how near-death
experiences and other phenomena contravene conventional wisdom that
the brain has to be functioning properly for consciousness to exist.
Current models of mind-brain interaction need to be re-examined,
Greyson argues. Even Newton's laws of physics break down at the
extremes. "I think it's the same with mind-brain," he says. "Our
mind-brain identity model works fine for everyday walking and talking,
but when you're looking at times when the brain is not functioning and
the mind seems to function quite well, you get into that extreme area
where we need to look at some other models."
Such inquiry has profound implications for consciousness and its
relation to the physical body, but it lacks the immediacy or
life-saving potential of research into cancer and heart disease. That
kind of medical research has priority when it comes to funding, always
a concern for scientists in a university setting.
The Division of Perceptual Studies receives virtually no state or
federal money. Founded in 1968 by the late Ian Stevenson as a research
unit of U.Va.'s Department of Psychiatric Medicine, it is housed in a
modest former residence blocks away from the bustle and construction
swirling around the U.Va. Health System. The late Chester F. Carlson,
inventor of xerography who late in life studied Buddhism, was the
division's first and main benefactor, and other private bequests have
fueled the research.
As with other medical advances, lives sometimes do hang in the
balance. Greyson works extensively with patients who have attempted
suicide, and his investigations of near-death experiences inform their
treatment.
Experiencers generally lose their fear of death. Logic dictates that
this would lower inhibitions about suicide, but the opposite has
proved true. "It makes people much less suicidal. It's as if, if
you're no longer afraid of death, you're no longer afraid of living
life to the fullest," Greyson says. People look at their problems
differently, and it's that change in attitude that leverages coping
skills.
Not all near-death experiences are uplifting, however. For some, the
initial aspects—sensing death, floating out of the body—are
terrifying. A few report experiences that conform to traditional views
of hell: fire, brimstone, demons and tortured souls. One researcher
even says that near-death experiences are the work of Satan.
Negative characteristics constitute 1 to 2 percent of recorded
near-death experiences. More may be out there, Greyson says, but
people might not be as eager to share such trauma. Research also has
shown that these accounts do not have the consistency that marks other
reports.
More common are negative consequences among friends and family.
Experiencers are transformed by the light and love they encounter, and
by the review of their actions. They often change attitudes, jobs and
behavior, not always to the approval of those close to them.
Though he is one step removed, Greyson has not been untouched by the
cumulative impact of story after story of transcendent experience. His
scientific objectivity remains unwavering, but his outlook has shifted
subtly. "I don't think I was uncompassionate before this," he says.
"But before I started in this field, I saw things like the Golden Rule
as things we were supposed to try to live up to. People come back from
near-death experiences and say, 'It's not a guideline for you. This is
the way the universe works. We're all in this together. If I hurt you,
I'm hurting myself. There's no distinction between you and me.'
"That sense tends to rub off after you hear it week after week, year
after year, that we are all in this together. … It becomes not a
matter of following a rule, but living your life according to these
principles."
Advances in science—genetic research, magnetic resonance imaging—give
new tools for a field that Greyson believes will inform broader
applications in psychiatry and elsewhere. Acceptance in the scientific
community has come almost begrudgingly, but the landscape is far
different from three decades ago.
"It has been said that science progresses funeral by funeral. I think
we're seeing that as time goes on," Greyson says. "More and more
people are growing up with knowledge about the near-death experience
and accepting it as part of the human legacy."

http://www.uvamagazine.org/site/c.esJNK1PIJrH/b.2704235/k.8958/Altered_States.htm

future of intelligence

Note in this story: internet-facilitated populist journalism will mean
that stories will circulate regardless of their factual nature....
i.e. the imagination will rule!

Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future
Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday April 9, 2007
Guardian
Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse
weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role
of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East
increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls.
"Flashmobs" - groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists
groups.
This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence
team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic
context" likely to face Britain's armed forces. It includes an
"analysis of the key risks and shocks". Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head
of the MoD's Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre which drew up the
report, describes the assessments as "probability-based, rather than
predictive".
The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the
growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of
space, and even what it calls "declining news quality" with the rise
of "internet-enabled, citizen-journalists" and pressure to release
stories "at the expense of facts". It includes other, some
frightening, some reassuring, potential developments that are not so
often discussed.
New weapons
An electromagnetic pulse will probably become operational by 2035 able
to destroy all communications systems in a selected area or be used
against a "world city" such as an international business service hub.
The development of neutron weapons which destroy living organs but not
buildings "might make a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing
in an increasingly populated world". The use of unmanned weapons
platforms would enable the "application of lethal force without human
intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues". The
"explicit use" of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear
weapons and devices delivered by unmanned vehicles or missiles.
Technology
By 2035, an implantable "information chip" could be wired directly to
the brain. A growing pervasiveness of information communications
technology will enable states, terrorists or criminals, to mobilise
"flashmobs", challenging security forces to match this potential
agility coupled with an ability to concentrate forces quickly in a
small area.
Marxism
"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the
role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The
thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the
super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social
order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to
knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in
their own class interest". Marxism could also be revived, it says,
because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral
relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the
"sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious
orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and
Marxism".
Pressures leading to social unrest
By 2010 more than 50% of the world's population will be living in
urban rather than rural environments, leading to social deprivation
and "new instability risks", and the growth of shanty towns. By 2035,
that figure will rise to 60%. Migration will increase. Globalisation
may lead to levels of international integration that effectively bring
inter-state warfare to an end. But it may lead to "inter-communal
conflict" - communities with shared interests transcending national
boundaries and resorting to the use of violence.
Population and Resources
The global population is likely to grow to 8.5bn in 2035, with less
developed countries accounting for 98% of that. Some 87% of people
under the age of 25 live in the developing world. Demographic trends,
which will exacerbate economic and social tensions, have serious
implications for the environment - including the provision of clean
water and other resources - and for international relations. The
population of sub-Saharan Africa will increase over the period by 81%,
and that of Middle Eastern countries by 132%.
The Middle East
The massive population growth will mean the Middle East, and to a
lesser extent north Africa, will remain highly unstable, says the
report. It singles out Saudi Arabia, the most lucrative market for
British arms, with unemployment levels of 20% and a "youth bulge" in a
state whose population has risen from 7 million to 27 million since
1980. "The expectations of growing numbers of young people [in the
whole region] many of whom will be confronted by the prospect of
endemic unemployment ... are unlikely to be met," says the report.
Islamic militancy
Resentment among young people in the face of unrepresentative regimes
"will find outlets in political militancy, including radical political
Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and
resistance to capitalism may lie uneasily in an international system
based on nation-states and global market forces", the report warns.
The effects of such resentment will be expressed through the migration
of youth populations and global communications, encouraging contacts
between diaspora communities and their countries of origin.
Tension between the Islamic world and the west will remain, and may
increasingly be targeted at China "whose new-found materialism,
economic vibrancy, and institutionalised atheism, will be an anathema
to orthodox Islam".
Iran
Iran will steadily grow in economic and demographic strength and its
energy reserves and geographic location will give it substantial
strategic leverage. However, its government could be transformed.
"From the middle of the period," says the report, "the country,
especially its high proportion of younger people, will want to benefit
from increased access to globalisation and diversity, and it may be
that Iran progressively, but unevenly, transforms...into a vibrant
democracy."
Terrorism
Casualties and the amount of damage inflicted by terrorism will stay
low compared to other forms of coercion and conflict. But acts of
extreme violence, supported by elements within Islamist states, with
media exploitation to maximise the impact of the "theatre of violence"
will persist. A "terrorist coalition", the report says, including a
wide range of reactionary and revolutionary rejectionists such as
ultra-nationalists, religious groupings and even extreme
environmentalists, might conduct a global campaign of greater
intensity".
Climate change
There is "compelling evidence" to indicate that climate change is
occurring and that the atmosphere will continue to warm at an
unprecedented rate throughout the 21st century. It could lead to a
reduction in north Atlantic salinity by increasing the freshwater
runoff from the Arctic. This could affect the natural circulation of
the north Atlantic by diminishing the warming effect of ocean currents
on western Europe. "The drop in temperature might exceed that of the
miniature ice age of the 17th and 18th centuries."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2053020,00.html

The future of sensation

Mixed Feelings
See with your tongue. Navigate with your skin. Fly by the seat of your
pants (literally). How researchers can tap the plasticity of the brain
to hack our 5 senses — and build a few new ones.
By Sunny Bains

For six weird weeks in the fall of 2004, Udo Wächter had an unerring
sense of direction. Every morning after he got out of the shower,
Wächter, a sysadmin at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, put on
a wide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads — the same
weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judder. On the outside
of the belt were a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's
magnetic field. Whichever buzzer was pointing north would go off.
Constantly.
"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the bike,
it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations
he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally
understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to
deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a
distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly
realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal
map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home.
Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new
place."
The effects of the "feelSpace belt" — as its inventor, Osnabrück
cognitive scientist Peter König, dubbed the device — became even more
profound over time. König says while he wore it he was "intuitively
aware of the direction of my home or my office. I'd be waiting in line
in the cafeteria and spontaneously think: I live over there." On a
visit to Hamburg, about 100 miles away, he noticed that he was
conscious of the direction of his hometown. Wächter felt the vibration
in his dreams, moving around his waist, just like when he was awake.
Direction isn't something humans can detect innately. Some birds can,
of course, and for them it's no less important than taste or smell are
for us. In fact, lots of animals have cool, "extra" senses. Sunfish
see polarized light. Loggerhead turtles feel Earth's magnetic field.
Bonnethead sharks detect subtle changes (less than a nanovolt) in
small electrical fields. And other critters have heightened versions
of familiar senses — bats hear frequencies outside our auditory range,
and some insects see ultraviolet light.
We humans get just the five. But why? Can our senses be modified?
Expanded? Given the right prosthetics, could we feel electromagnetic
fields or hear ultrasound? The answers to these questions, according
to researchers at a handful of labs around the world, appear to be
yes.
It turns out that the tricky bit isn't the sensing. The world is full
of gadgets that detect things humans cannot. The hard part is
processing the input. Neuroscientists don't know enough about how the
brain interprets data. The science of plugging things directly into
the brain — artificial retinas or cochlear implants — remains
primitive.
So here's the solution: Figure out how to change the sensory data you
want — the electromagnetic fields, the ultrasound, the infrared — into
something that the human brain is already wired to accept, like touch
or sight. The brain, it turns out, is dramatically more flexible than
anyone previously thought, as if we had unused sensory ports just
waiting for the right plug-ins. Now it's time to build them.
How do we sense the world around us? It seems like a simple question.
Eyes collect photons of certain wavelengths, transduce them into
electrical signals, and send them to the brain. Ears do the same thing
with vibrations in the air — sound waves. Touch receptors pick up
pressure, heat, cold, pain. Smell: chemicals contacting receptors
inside the nose. Taste: buds of cells on the tongue.
There's a reasonably well-accepted sixth sense (or fifth and a half,
at least) called proprioception. A network of nerves, in conjunction
with the inner ear, tells the brain where the body and all its parts
are and how they're oriented. This is how you know when you're upside
down, or how you can tell the car you're riding in is turning, even
with your eyes closed.
When computers sense the world, they do it in largely the same way we
do. They have some kind of peripheral sensor, built to pick up
radiation, let's say, or sound, or chemicals. The sensor is connected
to a transducer that can change analog data about the world into
electrons, bits, a digital form that computers can understand — like
recording live music onto a CD. The transducer then pipes the
converted data into the computer.
But before all that happens, programmers and engineers make decisions
about what data is important and what isn't. They know the bandwidth
and the data rate the transducer and computer are capable of, and they
constrain the sensor to provide only the most relevant information.
The computer can "see" only what it's been told to look for.
The brain, by contrast, has to integrate all kinds of information from
all five and a half senses all the time, and then generate a complete
picture of the world. So it's constantly making decisions about what
to pay attention to, what to generalize or approximate, and what to
ignore. In other words, it's flexible.
In February, for example, a team of German researchers confirmed that
the auditory cortex of macaques can process visual information.
Similarly, our visual cortex can accommodate all sorts of altered
data. More than 50 years ago, Austrian researcher Ivo Kohler gave
people goggles that severely distorted their vision: The lenses turned
the world upside down. After several weeks, subjects adjusted — their
vision was still tweaked, but their brains were processing the images
so they'd appear normal. In fact, when people took the glasses off at
the end of the trial, everything seemed to move and distort in the
opposite way.
Later, in the '60s and '70s, Harvard neuro biologists David Hubel and
Torsten Wiesel figured out that visual input at a certain critical age
helps animals develop a functioning visual cortex (the pair shared a
1981 Nobel Prize for their work). But it wasn't until the late '90s
that researchers realized the adult brain was just as changeable, that
it could redeploy neurons by forming new synapses, remapping itself.
That property is called neuroplasticity.
This is really good news for people building sensory prosthetics,
because it means that the brain can change how it interprets
information from a particular sense, or take information from one
sense and interpret it with another. In other words, you can use
whatever sensor you want, as long as you convert the data it collects
into a form the human brain can absorb.
Paul Bach-y-Rita built his first "tactile display" in the 1960s.
Inspired by the plasticity he saw in his father as the older man
recovered from a stroke, Bach-y-Rita wanted to prove that the brain
could assimilate disparate types of information. So he installed a
20-by-20 array of metal rods in the back of an old dentist chair. The
ends of the rods were the pixels — people sitting in the chairs could
identify, with great accuracy, "pictures" poked into their backs; they
could, in effect, see the images with their sense of touch.
By the 1980s, Bach-y-Rita's team of neuroscientists — now located at
the University of Wisconsin — were working on a much more
sophisticated version of the chair. Bach-y-Rita died last November,
but his lab and the company he cofounded, Wicab, are still using touch
to carry new sensory information. Having long ago abandoned the
vaguely Marathon Man like dentist chair, the team now uses a
mouthpiece studded with 144 tiny electrodes. It's attached by ribbon
cable to a pulse generator that induces electric current against the
tongue. (As a sensing organ, the tongue has a lot going for it: nerves
and touch receptors packed close together and bathed in a conducting
liquid, saliva.)
So what kind of information could they pipe in? Mitch Tyler, one of
Bach-y-Rita's closest research colleagues, literally stumbled upon the
answer in 2000, when he got an inner ear infection. If you've had one
of these (or a hangover), you know the feeling: Tyler's world was
spinning. His semicircular canals — where the inner ear senses
orientation in space — weren't working. "It was hell," he says. "I
could stay upright only by fixating on distant objects." Struggling
into work one day, he realized that the tongue display might be able
to help.
The team attached an accelerometer to the pulse generator, which they
programmed to produce a tiny square. Stay upright and you feel the
square in the center of your tongue; move to the right or left and the
square moves in that direction, too. In this setup, the accelerometer
is the sensor and the combination of mouthpiece and tongue is the
transducer, the doorway into the brain.
The researchers started testing the device on people with damaged
inner ears. Not only did it restore their balance (presumably by
giving them a data feed that was cleaner than the one coming from
their semi circular canals) but the effects lasted even after they'd
removed the mouthpiece — sometimes for hours or days.
The success of that balance therapy, now in clinical trials, led Wicab
researchers to start thinking about other kinds of data they could
pipe to the mouthpiece. During a long brainstorm session, they
wondered whether the tongue could actually augment sight for the
visually impaired. I tried the prototype; in a white-walled office
strewn with spare electronics parts, Wicab neuroscientist Aimee
Arnoldussen hung a plastic box the size of a brick around my neck and
gave me the mouthpiece. "Some people hold it still, and some keep it
moving like a lollipop," she said. "It's up to you."
Arnoldussen handed me a pair of blacked-out glasses with a tiny camera
attached to the bridge. The camera was cabled to a laptop that would
relay images to the mouthpiece. The look was pretty geeky, but the
folks at the lab were used to it.
She turned it on. Nothing happened.
"Those buttons on the box?" she said. "They're like the volume
controls for the image. You want to turn it up as high as you're
comfortable."
I cranked up the voltage of the electric shocks to my tongue. It
didn't feel bad, actually — like licking the leads on a really weak
9-volt battery. Arnoldussen handed me a long white foam cylinder and
spun my chair toward a large black rectangle painted on the wall.
"Move the foam against the black to see how it feels," she said.
I could see it. Feel it. Whatever — I could tell where the foam was.
With Arnold ussen behind me carrying the laptop, I walked around the
Wicab offices. I managed to avoid most walls and desks, scanning my
head from side to side slowly to give myself a wider field of view,
like radar. Thinking back on it, I don't remember the feeling of the
electrodes on my tongue at all during my walkabout. What I remember
are pictures: high-contrast images of cubicle walls and office doors,
as though I'd seen them with my eyes. Tyler's group hasn't done the
brain imaging studies to figure out why this is so — they don't know
whether my visual cortex was processing the information from my tongue
or whether some other region was doing the work.
I later tried another version of the technology meant for divers. It
displayed a set of directional glyphs on my tongue intended to tell
them which way to swim. A flashing triangle on the right would mean
"turn right," vertical bars moving right says "float right but keep
going straight," and so on. At the University of Wisconsin lab, Tyler
set me up with the prototype, a joystick, and a computer screen
depicting a rudimentary maze. After a minute of bumping against the
virtual walls, I asked Tyler to hide the maze window, closed my eyes,
and successfully navigated two courses in 15 minutes. It was like I
had something in my head magically telling me which way to go.
In the 1970s, the story goes, a Navy flight surgeon named Angus Rupert
went skydiving nude. And on his way down, in (very) free fall, he
realized that with his eyes closed, the only way he could tell he was
plummeting toward earth was from the feel of the wind against his skin
(well, that and the flopping). He couldn't sense gravity at all.
The experience gave Rupert the idea for the Tactical Situational
Awareness System, a suitably macho name for a vest loaded with
vibration elements, much like the feelSpace belt. But the TSAS doesn't
tell you which way is north; it tells you which way is down.
In an airplane, the human proprioceptive system gets easily confused.
A 1-g turn could set the plane perpendicular to the ground but still
feel like straight and level flight. On a clear day, visual cues let
the pilot's brain correct for errors. But in the dark, a pilot who
misreads the plane's instruments can end up in a death spiral. Between
1990 and 2004, 11 percent of US Air Force crashes — and almost a
quarter of crashes at night — resulted from spatial disorientation.
TSAS technology might fix that problem. At the University of Iowa's
Operator Performance Laboratory, actually a hangar at a little
airfield in Iowa City, director Tom Schnell showed me the
next-generation garment, the Spatial Orientation Enhancement System.
First we set a baseline. Schnell sat me down in front of OPL's
elaborate flight simulator and had me fly a couple of missions over
some virtual mountains, trying to follow a "path" in the sky. I was
awful — I kept oversteering. Eventually, I hit a mountain.
Then he brought out his SOES, a mesh of hard-shell plastic, elastic,
and Velcro that fit over my arms and torso, strung with vibrating
elements called tactile stimulators, or tactors. "The legs aren't
working," Schnell said, "but they never helped much anyway."
Flight became intuitive. When the plane tilted to the right, my right
wrist started to vibrate — then the elbow, and then the shoulder as
the bank sharpened. It was like my arm was getting deeper and deeper
into something. To level off, I just moved the joystick until the
buzzing stopped. I closed my eyes so I could ignore the screen.
Finally, Schnell set the simulator to put the plane into a dive. Even
with my eyes open, he said, the screen wouldn't help me because the
visual cues were poor. But with the vest, I never lost track of the
plane's orientation. I almost stopped noticing the buzzing on my arms
and chest; I simply knew where I was, how I was moving. I pulled the
plane out.
When the original feelSpace experiment ended, Wächter, the sysadmin
who started dreaming in north, says he felt lost; like the people
wearing the weird goggles in those Austrian experiments, his brain had
remapped in expectation of the new input. "Sometimes I would even get
a phantom buzzing." He bought himself a GPS unit, which today he
glances at obsessively. One woman was so dizzy and disoriented for her
first two post-feelSpace days that her colleagues wanted to send her
home from work. "My living space shrank quickly," says König. "The
world appeared smaller and more chaotic."
I wore a feelSpace belt for just a day or so, not long enough to have
my brain remapped. In fact, my biggest worry was that as a
dark-complexioned person wearing a wide belt bristling with wires and
batteries, I'd be mistaken for a suicide bomber in charming downtown
Osnabrück.
The puzzling reactions of the longtime feelSpace wearers are
characteristic of the problems researchers are bumping into as they
play in the brain's cross-modal spaces. Nobody has done the imaging
studies yet; the areas that integrate the senses are still unmapped.
Success is still a long way off. The current incarnations of sensory
prosthetics are bulky and low-resolution — largely impractical. What
the researchers working on this technology are looking for is
something transparent, something that users can (safely) forget
they're wearing. But sensor technology isn't the main problem. The
trick will be to finally understand more about how the brain processes
the information, even while seeing the world with many different kinds
of eyes.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp_pr.html

Autism

Hello Henry, I want to make a few comments on the [Consciousness] [1REED] Shall We Live in our Imaginations?



First off I remember reading an article about the PINEAL. The article stated that in the most remote past and before our bodies became as dense as they are now, the PINEAL was located on the outside of the forehead. So in essence we spent more time in the dreamtime and less in the physical. Could we be returning to this state again? I wish I could remember where I read it but I can't so the source cannot be verified for authenticity. I thought it was Cayce that said it but I can't find it anywhere. The second thing I want to comment on is autistic children. My eleven year old great nephew has autism. His autism is not severe as some children but it took about four years from birth to detect the problem. Up until then the family thought he was just spoiled when he had his temper tantrums. When Jake was five my niece ask him what he would buy if they won the million dollar lottery. He was sitting at the coffee table playing with action toys when he looked up at her and said, "I HAVE ALL I NEED AND MORE." Another thing he does that can create a problem with others is that he appears to snitch. He cannot grasp the concept of not being honest. It is not his intent to be snitching; he honestly sees it as deviating from the rules or law. Sort of like it is his job to let others know about rules and he is there to help them understand. One last thing since as synchronicity will have it my daughter-in-law just called and interrupted this e-mail to tell me about a high school honors presentation that they added last night. It seems a senior was honored because of his genius for science. In his junior year he submitted a project that MIT sent back to the school thinking a young person could not have created this without help. In his senior year he created and built a new type of car. (SMALL) What absolute miracles our beautiful children are bringing to us. There was also another amazing story regarding a young lady. INDIGO and AUTISTIC children let us focus on both.
Carol Nemeth

Shall We Live in our Imaginations?

Yesterday in the news was a piece about “virtual religion.” On the internet site, “second life” someone had set up a church for people to attend vicariously and virtually by having their “avatars” (or alter ego that exists in cyber-space) attend and participate in the online service. One man, whose avatar looked like Puss’n’Boots, commented that in the virtual church he felt accepted in a way more profound than in actual churches.
The piece reminded me that one of the trends that might have to do with what’s upcoming regarding the transformation of consciousness is that we come to live in our minds more than in our bodies. The future of consciousness, to put it bluntly, may lie in out of body awareness or lucid dreaming. In many ways, electronics have supported advances in virtual reality. Here’s one way virtual reality may relate to the future of consciousness, using the noboundaries paradigm of transformation: Both virtual reality, near-death studies, and mediumship dissolve the boundary of what is “real.” There are some other trends that seem to be pushing for us living in virtual reality.
Coming from another perspective entirely, Terrence McKenna, prime spokesperson for the implications of psychedelic reality, predicted years ago that the transformation of consciousness would involve a basic shift in perspective. Whereas now we take the data of our senses to provide us with our connection to reality—physical reality is what we recognize—while we relegate the imagination to a secondary, sub-standard reality. In the coming transformation, McKenna proposes, this situation will be reversed. We will come to live in our imagination, he says, while our physical bodies will be in the subliminal background. Lest we consider this proposition too wild, too “psychedelic,” consider this quote from Teilhard de Chardin, in The Future of Man:
“The more I think about this mystery [how the world will end], the more it appears to me, in my dreams, as a ‘turning about’ of consciousness—as an eruption of interior life—as an ecstasy. There is no need to track our brains to understand how the material vastness of the universe will ever be able to disappear. Spirit has only to be reversed, to move into a different zone, for the whole shape of the world immediately to be changed.”
I’m gathering other tidbits from writers that echo this surprising theme. It could be a part of a doomsday scenario, when the planet’s surface would be uninhabitable, so everyone is below ground on life support, living their lives in their imagination. Stephan Hawkins shows how productive such a life can be. The other fantasy, not involving doomsday so much as simply advances on the planet that remove most of our physical challenges, putting us in a spot where we experience all through a form of dreaming rather than physical participation.
I’m gathering up book titles to present to the many folks who have volunteered to create book summaries to form our manual for our consciousness conference. Even if you are not volunteering to create a book summary, I’d still like to hear from you regarding suggestions for books to summarize. To be a good book for summary, the book should
1) be on topic. For example, a book on near death experiences could be useful if the author draws inferences from the experiences regarding the direction of the evolution of consciousness. A book on near death that simply attempts to show us that there is life after death doesn’t seem that related to our theme.
2) Be by a reputable author. Reputable doesn’t necessarily mean academic/scholarly. Though scholarly books have the advantage of the author having searched the past for relevant material so as not to re-invent the wheel, intuitional or channeled books can provide genuine inspiration. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, especially when it comes to “channeled” material. One measure I use is how popular is the channel, has that channel inspired others to take up related investigations. Cayce, Seth, Hand Clow, Course in Miracles, Steiner, and others I can’t think of right now.

I would appreciate your suggestions. The book list I’m compiling for those who have volunteered include Pinchbeck’s 2012, Fred Wolf on the new consciousness, a Jungian book on The Return of the Goddess, Tarnas on Cosmos and Psyche, Goswami on the Self-Aware Universe. One challenge in selecting these books is to make a decision as to whether the book is primarily bringing up new evidence for an ancient view (Goswami’s thesis that consciousness is primary to matter is an old idea) is whether or not the book makes arguments for why our consciousness may be trending toward having that ancient view be in full conscious, lived awareness, rather than remaining as a background fact available only to the mystically inclined.

Another interesting issue has to do with what I would call fore-runners. For example, I think that the “co-dependent” syndrome is part of a forward action by a group of people who are struggling with something we may all have to struggle with later: How do you distinguish your own thoughts, feelings and needs from those of people around you? It would seem that these folks are anticipating our loss of psychic boundaries. As another example, there is the question of childhood autism. While we may recognize the work on “Indigo children” as relevant to our topic, suggesting that the evolution has already begun and new consciousness is entering via the children, what about autistic children? There has been some suggestions here and there that autism may have some hints about what is coming down the road regarding shifts in consciousness. I’ve found that the challenge in pursuing this with those who claim to be autistic is that they may have trouble putting into words their ideas on this question in a way that will speak to us. I’m hoping to get some good, useable information on this aspect of the trends in consciousness.

I’ve added to the website, www.henryreed.com/indiana some new links, related to book summaries and essays already in hand that could be relevant to our theme.
I look forward to any of your suggestions.

Sincerely,
Henry Reed

Boundaries in Consciousness

One of my starting points, years ago, was to imagine what it would be like for people to experience oneness. That led me to realize that many boundaries we used to take for granted were dissolving. And, I noticed, our response to the dissolving of a boundary has been upsetness and attempts to reinstate it somehow rather than learning how to exist without that boundary. Examples: pollution that crosses national boundaries, computer viruses, terrorism, AIDS, digital information, immigration, world economy, near-death experiences. As the world becomes more inter-dependent, we can expect greater interaction among us at the psychic level. The boundary between minds is also dissolving. I've posted on our conference website, www.henryreed.com/indiana, two links to articles I've written on that subject, one on the coming "crisis in boundaries" and one on the future of consciousness, "rapture or rupture?"
Also new on the web site is a link to a beautiful, wonderful, inspiring six minute video, a guided meditation on universal consciousness, thanks to someone on our list who sent the link to me to share.
I am grafeful to all of you who have emailed me volunteering to do a book summary to contribute to our conference manual. I'll be in touch soon with a book list and a process by which you can all get the books you want.
And, the next time I update the conference website with some new links or information, I'll be getting back to you all.
Sincerely,
Henry