Mod+ 266. RICK ARCHER, CAN CONSCIOUSNESS CHANGE CULTURE?

Physicists today might think this way but for a being a long way in the future ? If you're limiting your thought to mainstream science it will only get you so far imo.

Most UFO sightings can be explained away by reason of optical illusions or other such reason, but some small percentage (many) are not easily explained. The UFO stuff around nuclear facilities is really difficult to explain, when the reporters are serious minded military personnel like Robert Salas ?

http://theunexplained.tv/paranormal-podcasts/edition-177-robert-salas

Just one example from many ?

Mainstream science is what we have to work with as far as UFO's go. Putting aside the almost incredible unlikelihood that aliens could travel the vast distances involved in tiny spacecraft that are what people report they see, why would they decide to spend 50 years hiding from us apart from abducting the occasional person and not provide us any clear objective evidence of their presence. It is fine to speculate about technologies and intelligences vastly ahead of ours, I just don't believe they would behave the way UFO 'sightings' are reported.
 
Please take the time to listen to the Robert Salas interview, it's around an hour.

I don't know what their motives may be, but Robert's experience at a missile base in Montana sure is hard to explain

I appreciate that many people don't have as much time as I do,but listen to it if you can ?

Regards.
 
The laws of physics preclude alien visitation.
No one can exceed the speed of light and in fact even highly advanced civilizations are unlikely to be able to travel anywhere near the speed of light. Therefore to travel to our planet would take thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years.
Alien visitation, if it happens, may not necessarily be in the form of physical beings and ships.

But on the space travel hypothesis, consider physicist Stanton Friedman's answers in this article:
http://www.stantonfriedman.com/index.php?ptp=articles&fdt=2009.02.03
 
The laws of physics preclude alien visitation.
Hi Doug... it's been interesting to see you work thru this dialog. I can relate! This mirrors my Skeptiko process. So you have this data, (Jim_Smith and others showed you some, I would add this: http://www.skeptiko.com/grant-cameron-ufo-sightings-and-extended-consciousness/) and on the other hand you have what you've been told are the "laws of physics", but what you're really saying is that you have these really strong beliefs telling you that this stuff can't possibly be true.

That's your starting point... that was my starting point... that's everyone's starting point. So, the next move is yours. You can stick to what you "know" is true, or you can turn your life totally upside down and start digging into the data.
 
Please take the time to listen to the Robert Salas interview, it's around an hour.

I don't know what their motives may be, but Robert's experience at a missile base in Montana sure is hard to explain

I appreciate that many people don't have as much time as I do,but listen to it if you can ?

Regards.
There has been some controversy concerning the Robert Salas case. James Carlsson, the son of one of the officers allegedly involved, has vehemently denied that the incident happened, basically accusing Salas of lying. But I think Salas did have corroboration from another officer although his name escapes me at the moment. Another point of criticism was that Salas apparently underwent hypnosis in order retrieve memories of the event according to this blogpost. To some critics the use of hypnosis casts doubt on the validity of his testimony.
 
There has been some controversy concerning the Robert Salas case. James Carlsson, the son of one of the officers allegedly involved, has vehemently denied that the incident happened, basically accusing Salas of lying. But I think Salas did have corroboration from another officer although his name escapes me at the moment. Another point of criticism was that Salas apparently underwent hypnosis in order retrieve memories of the event according to this blogpost. To some critics the use of hypnosis casts doubt on the validity of his testimony.

I read the blog and was quite disappointed at the content until I saw the posters 'about me'.
Tim Hebert
Escondido, California, United States
I'm a former SAC missile crew commander and staff officer, currently in the psychiatric healthcare field. I'm interested in how people apply critical thinking skills concerning obscure and strange phenomena. I believe that most if not all events or stories have a reasonable explaination.

I'm sure he can explain all 'obscure and strange phenomena' with his 'critical thinking' and that he believes too that 'extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence' as his leaders Dawkins and Randi require !

It is not at all surprising to me that Salas tried hypnosis to remember an event that he had been ordered to try to forget for the last 30 or more years. Salas interviews as a genuine guy, and I would tend to believe him rather than someone who happens to have been an SAC staff officer, now conveniently in the psychiatry field.
 
My big question was this: what does a society transformed by enlightenment actually look like? Vague references to peace and love and harmony don't cut it with me. How are goods and services delivered? I always get the sense that 'consciousness raising' is more about promoting a utopian progressive agenda than anything else. What is the practical application of enlightenment?
 
My big question was this: what does a society transformed by enlightenment actually look like? Vague references to peace and love and harmony don't cut it with me. How are goods and services delivered? I always get the sense that 'consciousness raising' is more about promoting a utopian progressive agenda than anything else. What is the practical application of enlightenment?

Yeah, I know what ya mean. It's one thing to say your a Christian, another to try to live as Christ would.
 
My big question was this: what does a society transformed by enlightenment actually look like? Vague references to peace and love and harmony don't cut it with me. How are goods and services delivered? I always get the sense that 'consciousness raising' is more about promoting a utopian progressive agenda than anything else. W+hat is the practical application of enlightenment?
I'm not sure whether this is a serious question or an attempt at satire. It almost sounds like a fear-based argument for doing nothing. i.e. we'd better not try to improve things in case we make them worse.

On the purely practical front, such as "How are goods and services delivered", the answer is: exactly the same as now. "What is the practical application of enlightenment?" - that question doesn't have any real meaning. Nor does that imply that it is impractical. It is nether practical nor impractical.
 
My question is serious. I remember a koan saying that before enlightenment you “chop wood and draw water” and that after enlightenment you “chop wood and draw water.” Apparently the point is that the actual work of living goes on the same as before with just a change of attitude. Except that’s not what I’m hearing from Rick. He’s saying that a change in the ‘ambient’ level of consciousness in society will produce real change. I’d like to hear the non-dualists put some meat on those bones. Are we talking about windmill vegetarianism or nanotech space exploration?

One thing I specifically heard from Rick is the idea of everyone working in such harmony that actually government becomes either unnoticeable or practically non-existent. That sounded very libertarian to my ears. For some reason, I don’t think that is a direction the non-dualists would actually support.
 
I must admit I don't like the divisions implied by terms such as "libertarian" or "non-dualist". To me that implies a them-and-us viewpoint. I don't see things that way. There's something in this for everyone, no matter where one sits with regard to the fence - one side, the other, or perched on top.
 
I guess to return to a previous comment I wrote, on "What is the practical application of enlightenment?", I don't have a way to address this directly. I would instead try to make an analogy. If we were to ask instead, ""What is the practical application of air?" - then we could get detailed answers from chemists, physicists, biologists, aero-engineers and so on. But for the ordinary person, who wants to know why they need air in their home, the answer is much more simple. It is a necessity for life. At the risk of making an unrealistic comparison, I might stretch the analogy a bit further to add, when deprived of air, a person will become unconscious. At that point I might suggest that without enlightenment people become unconscious too.
 
Consciousness, as a phenomenon, is fundamental. But that is not how Rick is using the term. He’s talking about something transformative, both personal and societal. I want him and his fellow non-dualists to spell it out. What type of day-to-day real world transformations do they hope to achieve?
 
"Can consciousness change culture?"

Some think that history shows that philosophy does influence culture...
.
(partial cross post from: http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threa...chemist-i-dont-know-how-evolution-works.1951/)
http://www.jmtour.com/personal-topi...-the-christian-creationist-and-his-“science”/
Viktor Frankl ... a former Auschwitz inmate wrote in The Doctor and the Soul, that the source for much of the 20th Century’s inhumanity has come from the very origins being discussed here.

“If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone.

“I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment; or as the Nazi liked to say, ‘of Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers [emphasis added].
Related:

The Biology of the Second Reich: Social Darwinism and the Origins of World War 1

 
"Can consciousness change culture"?

Jeffery Martin mentioned that when he was interviewing enlightened research subjects, their enlightenment started to influence his own state of consciousness. That would suggest that the presence of greater numbers of enlightened beings could influence civilization.
 
I know this thread hasn't been commented on for a few weeks but I thought I'd put my 2 cents in since I just joined the forum.

My view is consciousness raising is a step by step affair. I definitely believe mankind as a whole has become moderately more enlightened since for instance the middle ages. The cruelty and callousness toward human life was appalling. If nuclear weapons had existed with the people in that state of consciousness the earth would have been obliterated without question.

So can enlightenment change culture? You bet it can. Many would use the term enlightenment to refer to a spiritual experience where the oneness of all life is experienced although there are various definitions. If a person after his experience lives his life in accordance with his experience his whole manner of being will change. If you have experienced and believe that your coworker are connected and one, will you talk behind his back to perhaps make yourself look better in comparison? If you see all life as part of an extended you, everything changes. If a critical mass of people experienced enlightenment and lived in accordance with that revelation society would completely change.

I think it is one of the most practical things one can do. So IMO enlightenment is a gradual affair but an enlightenment experience can happen out of the blue.
 
I know this thread hasn't been commented on for a few weeks but I thought I'd put my 2 cents in since I just joined the forum.

My view is consciousness raising is a step by step affair. I definitely believe mankind as a whole has become moderately more enlightened since for instance the middle ages. The cruelty and callousness toward human life was appalling. If nuclear weapons had existed with the people in that state of consciousness the earth would have been obliterated without question.

So can enlightenment change culture? You bet it can. Many would use the term enlightenment to refer to a spiritual experience where the oneness of all life is experienced although there are various definitions. If a person after his experience lives his life in accordance with his experience his whole manner of being will change. If you have experienced and believe that your coworker are connected and one, will you talk behind his back to perhaps make yourself look better in comparison? If you see all life as part of an extended you, everything changes. If a critical mass of people experienced enlightenment and lived in accordance with that revelation society would completely change.

I think it is one of the most practical things one can do. So IMO enlightenment is a gradual affair but an enlightenment experience can happen out of the blue.
I agree. I sometimes like to poke Rick about "the eminent consciousness transformation" because I think that's a kinda dubious idea, but I do agree with you that we can see a patter of change in this direction.
 
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

What do you think it would take for our culture to experience a shift in consciousness and become more "enlightened"?

I think it will require an increase in empathic thinking and a decrease in analytical thinking. Meditation is a good way to decrease analytical thinking. Certain forms of religion, spiritual teachings, and also certain forms of meditation could help increase empathic thinking.

A lot of our social problems might be due to the fact that empathic thinking and analytical thinking are mutually exclusive.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/252241.php

Brain Can't Empathize And Analyze At Same Time, New Study

Scientists have discovered that the brain circuits we engage when we think about social matters, such as considering other people's views, or moral issues, inhibit the circuits that we use when we think about inanimate, analytical things, such as working on a physics problem or making sure the numbers add up when we balance our budget. And they say, the same happens the other way around: the analytic brain network inhibits the social network.

Perhaps the study, led by researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, in the US, and reported early online on 27 October in the journal NeuroImage, explains why some business leaders sometimes overlook the public relations consequences of their cost-cutting exercises.
Materialism and capitalism (and scientism) cultivate analytical thinking while de-emphasizing empathic thinking. However Christianity emphasizes empathic thinking so it might hold a solution to the problems caused by materialism.
 
Enlightenment won't come from your head thinking about it. It will come from your backside - sitting down and meditating.

According to Wikipedia:
"In Hinduism, Brahman is "the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world", which "cannot be exactly defined". It has been described in Sanskrit as Sat-cit-ananda and as the highest reality... According to Advaita, a liberated human being ... has realised Brahman as his or her own true self."

People who have had realizations of the ultimate reality, Brahman, experience themselves as the consciousness that creates all reality. They see themselves as all things and they see all beings are one. They see that ordinary reality is an illusion projected by the mind. They understand the Buddhist concept of emptiness: all is illusion, individual self is an illusion, material reality is an illusion, separate (other) beings are illusions. There is only Brahman. Even the unity of self and other is still illusion because there is no self, there is no other, there is only Brahman.

This realization cannot come to you as a thought or as a logical understanding. The analytical mind is no help here, in fact it is the problem. The realization is going to come to you as an experience when you stop using the mind, stop thinking about the world through the mind and stop thinking of yourself through the mind. The mind only projects illusion, the illusion of self, the illusion of things, the illusion of other separate beings. To attain realization, you have to turn your attention inward so far inward that you go inward to a point before all conceiving of or thinking of.

There are various ways to free yourself from the illusions projected by your own mind. One is through insight / mindfulness practices in which you observe how the mind produces illusions. Another is meditation where you still the mind by thinking of one thing, meditating with a single pointed, focused mind, until there are no other thoughts, then let go of that one thing. Another is working with a koan such as Who am I, What am I, or What is this?
 
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