How do you describe an experience of totality? What words could possibly be used to describe the feeling of 'being in the presence of God'?
Trippy.
Only if the trip is a permanent one.
Reading over your last post again, I'm pretty sure you're a crazy person.
Besides which, it's no secret that plenty of religions have used narcotics to feel closer to got.
Reading over your post, you're probably only semi-literate.
The picture of Charleton Heston tends to add to the 'crazy' atmosphere. Call it subliminal advertising.
Peyote, Ayahuasca, and Salvia Divinorum are used as a 'religious' means for connecting and communicating with a higher being. However, not one of these drugs possess seriously addictive qualities. Also, all are produced by nature, which does nothing for the argument against the profundity of a helmet that can allow you to experience the results of deep meditative states usually only accessible to those who've been practicing for years or even decades.
Peyote, Ayahuasca, and Salvia Divinorum are used as a 'religious' means for connecting and communicating with a higher being. However, not one of these drugs possess seriously addictive qualities. Also, all are produced by nature, which does nothing for the argument against the profundity of a helmet that can allow you to experience the results of deep meditative states usually only accessible to those who've been practicing for years or even decades.
Alternatively I could get high on any of those, hop on TS or Vent and you'd all think I was hilarious but probably likely to die young in a very Hendrix-style way. What about a helmet means that the experiences I have with it can't be as deep or significant as any others? Why can I not access god via technology?
Peyote, Ayahuasca, and Salvia Divinorum are used as a 'religious' means for connecting and communicating with a higher being. However, not one of these drugs possess seriously addictive qualities. Also, all are produced by nature, which does nothing for the argument against the profundity of a helmet that can allow you to experience the results of deep meditative states usually only accessible to those who've been practicing for years or even decades.
Alternatively I could get high on any of those, hop on TS or Vent and you'd all think I was hilarious but probably likely to die young in a very Hendrix-style way. What about a helmet means that the experiences I have with it can't be as deep or significant as any others? Why can I not access god via technology?
Seriously, assuming magic, why can't technology be used to harness magic? What do people have against Shadowrun (and by Shadowrun I mean actual Shadowrun, not the MS property)?
Peyote, Ayahuasca, and Salvia Divinorum are used as a 'religious' means for connecting and communicating with a higher being. However, not one of these drugs possess seriously addictive qualities. Also, all are produced by nature, which does nothing for the argument against the profundity of a helmet that can allow you to experience the results of deep meditative states usually only accessible to those who've been practicing for years or even decades.
Alternatively I could get high on any of those, hop on TS or Vent and you'd all think I was hilarious but probably likely to die young in a very Hendrix-style way. What about a helmet means that the experiences I have with it can't be as deep or significant as any others? Why can I not access god via technology?
Seriously, assuming magic, why can't technology be used to harness magic? What do people have against Shadowrun (and by Shadowrun I mean actual Shadowrun, not the MS property)?
See, because magic and plants are natural.
Anything else isn't natural. Steel comes from other dimensions.
Peyote, Ayahuasca, and Salvia Divinorum are used as a 'religious' means for connecting and communicating with a higher being. However, not one of these drugs possess seriously addictive qualities. Also, all are produced by nature, which does nothing for the argument against the profundity of a helmet that can allow you to experience the results of deep meditative states usually only accessible to those who've been practicing for years or even decades.
Alternatively I could get high on any of those, hop on TS or Vent and you'd all think I was hilarious but probably likely to die young in a very Hendrix-style way. What about a helmet means that the experiences I have with it can't be as deep or significant as any others? Why can I not access god via technology?
Seriously, assuming magic, why can't technology be used to harness magic? What do people have against Shadowrun (and by Shadowrun I mean actual Shadowrun, not the MS property)?
See, because magic and plants are natural.
Anything else isn't natural. Steel comes from other dimensions.
I thought it just came from space, which also isn't natural?
I think that the real danger here is of this experience becoming commercialized, and almost becoming like a "drug".
"Hey, I'm feeling a bit crap today, I think I'll go strap on my God Helmet"
I dunno. I'm pretty ignorant of a lot of brain-stuff, but I've always felt that the problem with abusing various substances (like booze) to avoid problems is that you're avoiding problems. If you're simply down in the dumps because your brain chemistry has gone bland, I don't see a problem with putting on a happy hat to get better.
I think that the real danger here is of this experience becoming commercialized, and almost becoming like a "drug".
That would be awesome.
From my wikipedia understanding of this device, all it does it make it seem like someone else is in the room? I may have misunderstood it but that seems like a pretty crappy "drug". I'm in rooms with other people like all the time and it's just ok.
I think that the real danger here is of this experience becoming commercialized, and almost becoming like a "drug".
That would be awesome.
From my wikipedia understanding of this device, all it does it make it seem like someone else is in the room? I may have misunderstood it but that seems like a pretty crappy "drug". I'm in rooms with other people like all the time and it's just ok.
But what if there were a way to achieve the same "high" sensation as one can get from illegal drugs, anytime, anywhere, and without the chemical side effects and criminal motivation?
You mean pot? Oh no, you mean electrocuting your brain with permanently-implated electrodes and batteries!
I think that the real danger here is of this experience becoming commercialized, and almost becoming like a "drug".
That would be awesome.
From my wikipedia understanding of this device, all it does it make it seem like someone else is in the room? I may have misunderstood it but that seems like a pretty crappy "drug". I'm in rooms with other people like all the time and it's just ok.
But what if there were a way to achieve the same "high" sensation as one can get from illegal drugs, anytime, anywhere, and without the chemical side effects and criminal motivation?
You mean pot? Oh no, you mean electrocuting your brain with permanently-implated electrodes and batteries!
I just meant as far as machines that manipulate your brain are concerned.
Yeah I dunno, it seems like installing electrodes permanently inside my skull is a little much. I think even people I know who hate drugs forever would rather smoke pot than go that route if forced to go with one or the other.
Yeah I dunno, it seems like installing electrodes permanently inside my skull is a little much. I think even people I know who hate drugs forever would rather smoke pot than go that route if forced to go with one or the other.
Until they're "experiencing an almost overwhelming euphoria and elation, and have to be disconnected, despite their vigorous protests."
I am saying this would be a better drug than a "someone else in the room" drug. Referring to the god helmet becoming a drug.
From my wikipedia understanding of this device, all it does it make it seem like someone else is in the room? I may have misunderstood it but that seems like a pretty crappy "drug". I'm in rooms with other people like all the time and it's just ok.
But what if there were a way to achieve the same "high" sensation as one can get from illegal drugs, anytime, anywhere, and without the chemical side effects and criminal motivation?
You mean pot? Oh no, you mean electrocuting your brain with permanently-implated electrodes and batteries!
Pot is not universally fun.
Well, I mean, no drug is. Which, come to mention it, is the point.
Yeah I dunno, it seems like installing electrodes permanently inside my skull is a little much. I think even people I know who hate drugs forever would rather smoke pot than go that route if forced to go with one or the other.
Until they're "experiencing an almost overwhelming euphoria and elation, and have to be disconnected, despite their vigorous protests."
It may have been a mistake for me to have posted that link, however. I didn't really mean to bring this up to talk about its viability, just showing that the god helmet is pretty tame compared to other ways people have found to alter someone's state of mind with technology.
So we can now replicate experiences that are described, by those who experience them, as "divine"? Sweet.
Combined with the "god module", this suggests rather strongly that "god" is nothing but a product of an over-active imagination.
Not unless this thing makes you see burning bushes. Too bad no one's prophesizing these days, I'd love to see a comparison of their fMRIs compared to someone hooked up the machine.
I agree - Lokes is saying that because Persinger is a media-loving, attention grabbing hack (my words, not his, not necessarily my opinon) that the whole discussion has been framed inappropriately (or at least may well have been framed inappropriately) in terms of religion and deities.
Lokes has largely stayed above the fray with regard to the profoundity/mundanity of the experience itself.
I am overly harsh on Persinger because I only know of him in the context of his experiments with electromagnetic field, which he typically tends to couch in terms of "look at how we're making people see God" without a whole lot to back that up. The qualitative data that I've seen from temporal lobe stimulation does not really lead to any immediate religious connotations in my mind, except in terms of the meditative effects I've already described.
It just doesn't strike me as a particularly relevant or interesting addition to religion and neurology. As for the profoundity/mundanity of the experience... eh. The profoundity/mundanity of the spiritual experience is a completely separate debate, removed from our understanding of the mechanisms involved. I like the way William James explained things back in the 1800s...
there is not a single one of our states of mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic process as its condition. Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind. So of all our rapturer, and our drynesses, our longings and pantings, our questions and beliefs. They are equally organically founded, be they of religious or of non-religious content.
When we speak disparagingly of 'feverish fancies,' surely the fever-process as such is not the ground of our disesteem- for aught we know to the contrary, 103 degrees or 104 degrees Fahrenheit might be a much more favorable temperature for truths to germinate and sprout in, than the more ordinary blood-heat of 97 or 98 degrees. It is either the disagreeableness itself of the fancies, or their inability to bear the criticisms of the convalescent hour. When we praise the thoughts which health brings, health's peculiar chemical metabolisms have nothing to do with determining our judgment. We know in fact almost nothing about these metabolisms. It is the character of inner happiness in the thoughts which stamps them as good, or else their consistency with our other opinions and their serviceability for our needs, which make them pass for true in our esteem.
Posts
Only if the trip is a permanent one.
Reading over your last post again, I'm pretty sure you're a crazy person.
Besides which, it's no secret that plenty of religions have used narcotics to feel closer to got.
Reading over your post, you're probably only semi-literate.
The picture of Charleton Heston tends to add to the 'crazy' atmosphere. Call it subliminal advertising.
Peyote, Ayahuasca, and Salvia Divinorum are used as a 'religious' means for connecting and communicating with a higher being. However, not one of these drugs possess seriously addictive qualities. Also, all are produced by nature, which does nothing for the argument against the profundity of a helmet that can allow you to experience the results of deep meditative states usually only accessible to those who've been practicing for years or even decades.
Alternatively I could get high on any of those, hop on TS or Vent and you'd all think I was hilarious but probably likely to die young in a very Hendrix-style way. What about a helmet means that the experiences I have with it can't be as deep or significant as any others? Why can I not access god via technology?
Seriously, assuming magic, why can't technology be used to harness magic? What do people have against Shadowrun (and by Shadowrun I mean actual Shadowrun, not the MS property)?
See, because magic and plants are natural.
Anything else isn't natural. Steel comes from other dimensions.
I thought it just came from space, which also isn't natural?
I dunno. I'm pretty ignorant of a lot of brain-stuff, but I've always felt that the problem with abusing various substances (like booze) to avoid problems is that you're avoiding problems. If you're simply down in the dumps because your brain chemistry has gone bland, I don't see a problem with putting on a happy hat to get better.
From my wikipedia understanding of this device, all it does it make it seem like someone else is in the room? I may have misunderstood it but that seems like a pretty crappy "drug". I'm in rooms with other people like all the time and it's just ok.
This seems like a better drug.
I just meant as far as machines that manipulate your brain are concerned.
You could make a happy hat.
You'd wear a happy hat right?
I am saying this would be a better drug than a "someone else in the room" drug. Referring to the god helmet becoming a drug.
Pot is not universally fun.
Well, I mean, no drug is. Which, come to mention it, is the point.
That sounds pretty dangerous frankly.
It may have been a mistake for me to have posted that link, however. I didn't really mean to bring this up to talk about its viability, just showing that the god helmet is pretty tame compared to other ways people have found to alter someone's state of mind with technology.
Combined with the "god module", this suggests rather strongly that "god" is nothing but a product of an over-active imagination.
Not unless this thing makes you see burning bushes. Too bad no one's prophesizing these days, I'd love to see a comparison of their fMRIs compared to someone hooked up the machine.
I am overly harsh on Persinger because I only know of him in the context of his experiments with electromagnetic field, which he typically tends to couch in terms of "look at how we're making people see God" without a whole lot to back that up. The qualitative data that I've seen from temporal lobe stimulation does not really lead to any immediate religious connotations in my mind, except in terms of the meditative effects I've already described.
It just doesn't strike me as a particularly relevant or interesting addition to religion and neurology. As for the profoundity/mundanity of the experience... eh. The profoundity/mundanity of the spiritual experience is a completely separate debate, removed from our understanding of the mechanisms involved. I like the way William James explained things back in the 1800s...