Nelson Apostata, Extended Consciousness, ET, NDE |553|

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Nelson Apostata, Extended Consciousness, ET, NDE |553|
by Alex Tsakiris | May 24 | Consciousness Science, Near-Death Experience, Others
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Yep thank you
Nelson Apostata was an ancient history scholar before becoming interested in ETs and NDEs.
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Overall, an excellent discussion with some really important commentary on the erosion of academic freedom. Some of the other content, like consciousness, NDEs, etc are still fuzzy around the edges Maybe that will eventually evolve on its own. The offhand comment about not caring what people think about the vaccination issue seemed rather callous, but no point dwelling on it. Lots of other interesting threads in the show that deserve further discussion. Looking forward to the follow-up episode.
 
Some of the other content, like consciousness, NDEs, etc are still fuzzy around the edges Maybe that will eventually evolve on its own.

Yes, and that is of course a crucial task in any inquiry: to define terms. That's why I was so cautious with the wording in the interview. The "content" or data sets, such as what has been labelled as mythology, folklore, witch trials, ufology, NDE research, reincarnation studies, etc., might be describing (to a degree) the same phenomena.
 
Great interview, about this consciousness thing!
Could it be that what we see and experience is caused by our state of consciousness and is real , ie if 2 people
are together their state of consciousness could be affected by multiple factors, diet, personal lens, ideology, weather, geographical position and many other factors , they observe something ( ufo, plant, whatever) and see different things, both see the correct thing. Not sure how this works with something like the Fatima mass sightings though, but there were slightly differing observations.
 
if 2 people
are together their state of consciousness could be affected by multiple factors, diet, personal lens, ideology, weather, geographical position and many other factors , they observe something ( ufo, plant, whatever) and see different things, both see the correct thing.

That's an important question. We could add the technological level of the witnesses too. For example, why in earlier centuries were air ships seen in the sky, with sails etc., whereas in recent times high-tech UFOs are seen...
 
Question: "What do you make of Nelson's suspicion about love in the extended consciousness realm?"

I am suspicious as well. Can't help but repost this:

https://images.app.goo.gl/2nunMWYKEUSkpfZK7

Love is an "epiphenomenon" arising from an environment where the older entities fade and die and power and resources must be voluntarily transferred from the older to the newer entities in order for those entities to survive. Within the human species is contained the maximum tension between empathetic love and predation. We are apex predators shaped by a harsh environment and yet we have the most delicate young requiring a strong parental team and requiring the most care of any species and this has developed our empathy. Jesus or "Christ consciousness" or the brilliant light and love experienced by some is an empathy program... a set of ideals around love. Love is a necessary ingredient of a stable psyche and a societal structure. If we are an experiment being run by "ET" then it is understandable why ET might want to inject a little Love here and there to see how things develop from there... but not too much love and empathy or everything will fall apart as well... it is a delicate balance.

By calling love an "epiphenomenon" I admit I'm being a little provocative... I'm not really saying love is only an epiphenomenon existing uniquely at our level of development, but that Love appears when the conditions are right and that the conditions are right at various repeating fractal scales of reality from top to bottom. As above, so below... we can assume "the higher powers" also have an axis or a polarity around empathy and predation but this requires a form of death and birth. If they have attained "tree of life technology" to overcome death, then the lack of a death/birth environment is a kind of limitation upon the set of meaningful choices they can have and so they must revisit a realm that has death in order to be revitalized.

The development of human consciousness and civilization requires this tension between empathetic love and predation. Without a harsh predatory environment, the species weakens physically and mentally. Without empathy, intelligence and group cohesion decreases.

To understand any entity and the actions it takes, you must also understand its environment and its body.

Our choices require limitations. Choice without limits is meaningless chaos. The environment and the body are the set of limits upon the entity which provide meaningful choices. They are the rules of the game.

ET and entities encountered in "extended realms" must have rules limiting their choices as well - otherwise they wouldn't have meaningful choices or ability to interact. Any star-faring civilization must either have time traveling abilities or operate on longer time scales than we can imagine. They have a different set of limitations than we can imagine which makes understanding their actions difficult.

We can relate this to our development of AI agents in which we run millions of simulations... placing an AI agent in a simulated environment and let it figure things out over millions of iterations and because our "clock speed" is different than that of the computer, we age very little while the AI agent develops relatively rapidly.

Entities that interact with us are either doing this for fun or for a purpose... and if "for fun" then that which is fun is mimicry or is developed out of an environment of that which is serious. The only difference between fun and seriousness is that seriousness implies irreparable pain and loss.
 
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I'd also be interested to hear feedback on Alex's question at the end of the show:

"What do you make of Nelson's suspicion about love in the extended consciousness realm?"
Hi Nelson. Thanks to you and Alex for an awesome episode. I'm very much looking forward to enjoying the second part.

I'll state my current personal perception matter of factly regarding: What we call "Love"..

Like "consciousness" I'll argue we fail to provide different words for very-different things which we sloppily just label all "love".

Part of it is physical - at base-level can be associated with hormones which deter a species from eating it's children.
Example: I don't have kids yet, therefore I physically don't understand the feeling which would make it near impossible to choose between the life of 1,000 strangers vs my 1 child. But I also expect that I will fully understand that feeling when I do have a child (we're currently working on it).

Part of it is non-physical(again this is my current personal perception) - My favorite term to encapsulate this is "Unconditional-Positive-Regard", and I believe we received this from a non-local source, be it our higher-self, or the universe, or God. Maybe similar to how a Human can train a dog to sit/kennel/behave/shake/etc, but a Dog will never teach a Dog those. Meaning, we humans received it and participate in it, rather than generate it.
 
This is an awesome post! do we have to swallow it whole?

Question: "What do you make of Nelson's suspicion about love in the extended consciousness realm?"

I'm not really saying love is only an epiphenomenon existing uniquely at our level of development, but that Love appears when the conditions are right and that the conditions are right at various repeating fractal scales of reality from top to bottom.

Blown away... Brilliant!

As above, so below... we can assume "the higher powers" also have an axis or a polarity around empathy and predation

Ditto!

but this requires a form of death and birth. If they have attained "tree of life technology" to overcome death, then the lack of a death/birth environment is a kind of limitation upon the set of meaningful choices they can have and so they must revisit a realm that has death in order to be revitalized.

maybe... but don't these terms get rather fuzzy here?

The development of human consciousness and civilization requires this tension between empathetic love and predation. Without a harsh predatory environment, the species weakens physically and mentally. Without empathy, intelligence and group cohesion decreases.

Have you tried thinking about counter examples? and what about counter examples and non-human species?
 
Hi Nelson. Thanks to you and Alex for an awesome episode. I'm very much looking forward to enjoying the second part.

I'll state my current personal perception matter of factly regarding: What we call "Love"..

Like "consciousness" I'll argue we fail to provide different words for very-different things which we sloppily just label all "love".

Part of it is physical - at base-level can be associated with hormones which deter a species from eating it's children.
Example: I don't have kids yet, therefore I physically don't understand the feeling which would make it near impossible to choose between the life of 1,000 strangers vs my 1 child. But I also expect that I will fully understand that feeling when I do have a child (we're currently working on it).

Part of it is non-physical(again this is my current personal perception) - My favorite term to encapsulate this is "Unconditional-Positive-Regard", and I believe we received this from a non-local source, be it our higher-self, or the universe, or God. Maybe similar to how a Human can train a dog to sit/kennel/behave/shake/etc, but a Dog will never teach a Dog those. Meaning, we humans received it and participate in it, rather than generate it.

I think we could generalize more and say that Love is that which unifies or it is that which sacrifices self for the benefit of the other. Empathy is a kind of unification because you are imagining yourself as the other and what the other must be feeling. Love is a kind of hope for the future.

Mammals have excelled in "love" because the success of our offspring requires care and sacrifice. A reptile that hatches out of the egg and immediately goes on its merry way hunting and consuming cannot know love. A wolf or dog that must nurse its young and work together in packs can know love. Among all known species, a human baby is the most delicate and most dependent upon its mother and family and tribe for success and therefore humans know love and empathy better than any other species.
 
Part of it is non-physical(again this is my current personal perception) - My favorite term to encapsulate this is "Unconditional-Positive-Regard", and I believe we received this from a non-local source, be it our higher-self, or the universe, or God. Maybe similar to how a Human can train a dog to sit/kennel/behave/shake/etc, but a Dog will never teach a Dog those. Meaning, we humans received it and participate in it, rather than generate it.

Awesome analogy! we got a new household member:


Image 14.jpg
 
This is an awesome post! do we have to swallow it whole?

Thanks! And of course not! I am always open to hearing my thoughts challenged. :)

maybe... but don't these terms get rather fuzzy here?

I like to say "tree of life technology" in reference to the Genesis origins story where the gods banned Man from the Tree of Life "lest he reach out his hand and live for ever."

Why not be permitted to live forever? The life/death cycle is part of this game that produces interesting structures and experiences. The temporary nature of life and the permanence of death energizes it, focuses it, gives it meaning. Anyone who's ever played a game like Minecraft and then played it again with the cheat codes activated where you get to keep all your stuff after you die and respawn knows that this completely takes the magic and fun out of the game. Real pain and loss is an essential ingredient to grow the tree that bears the fruit we now eat.

Do "the gods" have access to the Tree of Life to live forever? It seems they must if they can prevent us from having it and if they are to test, guide, cultivate us on thousands of year timescales or if they are going to have coherent storylines that weave between star systems, then they must from our perspective "live forever".

And if they live forever this lack of a life/death axis is a kind of limitation upon their possibilities for choice and experience. If they want to experience what we experience they must enter into it and forget and lose and die and hope for the future of their children.

The Genesis account also describes "the gods" placing an arbitrary limit on the lifespans of man... Can you imagine running an AI agent training simulation and tweaking the lifespan of your agents to see how the generational periodicity affects outcomes?

These beings floating in a craft that defy gravity apparently have unlimited energy resources and ability to weave storylines across large timescales. That is why I call it "Tree of Life Technology" because it is a tool that uses energy.

Unlimited free energy is a kind of problem. It is a progress trap. It ruins the whole system of interactions and energy transfers upon which this reality is based.

While we have not achieved totally free energy, our exceedingly cheap energy and ability to use it has created a new set of (first world) problems that are resulting in a kind of collapse... not from the red herring of CO2 in the atmosphere, but a collapse of the fabric of society and the normal set of problems to which we are adapted. Without sufficient challenges we go out and make problems to solve. The human body could be viewed as a solution to a set of environmental problems and that environment has now dramatically changed to one we are not well adapted.

Have you tried thinking about counter examples? and what about counter examples and non-human species?

I haven't had much time... waiting for our 2nd child to be born any day now!
 
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Part of it is physical - at base-level can be associated with hormones which deter a species from eating it's children.
Example: I don't have kids yet, therefore I physically don't understand the feeling which would make it near impossible to choose between the life of 1,000 strangers vs my 1 child. But I also expect that I will fully understand that feeling when I do have a child (we're currently working on it).

Part of it is non-physical(again this is my current personal perception) - My favorite term to encapsulate this is "Unconditional-Positive-Regard", and I believe we received this from a non-local source, be it our higher-self, or the universe, or God. Maybe similar to how a Human can train a dog to sit/kennel/behave/shake/etc, but a Dog will never teach a Dog those. Meaning, we humans received it and participate in it, rather than generate it.
This relates to the discussion we were having about Joanna Kujawa's ideas. I argued there that almost all of sex is non-physical, and I stick to that opinion.

In any case, consciousness seems to be non-physical really.

David
 
I think we could generalize more and say that Love is that which unifies or it is that which sacrifices self for the benefit of the other. Empathy is a kind of unification because you are imagining yourself as the other and what the other must be feeling. Love is a kind of hope for the future.

Mammals have excelled in "love" because the success of our offspring requires care and sacrifice. A reptile that hatches out of the egg and immediately goes on its merry way hunting and consuming cannot know love. A wolf or dog that must nurse its young and work together in packs can know love. Among all known species, a human baby is the most delicate and most dependent upon its mother and family and tribe for success and therefore humans know love and empathy better than any other species.

I'll play contrarian here for the sake of drawing distinction between Higher-Love, and the Love which - I'll attempt to demonstrate here - encompasses all those qualities you mentioned. And to do so, I'll invite you to entertain a semi-dark thought experiment I like to run from time to time, which is...
Imagine that you are alone for 100's of miles with no cellular service. Suddenly you discover with 100% surety that The Entire Universe is scheduled to instantaneously collapse in on itself in exactly 30 minutes, after which The Universe will never reoccur in any dimension, and nothing will be, ever after, ever..
Then contemplate: What type of love remains that matters? I'd speculate that none of the love qualities you mentioned above would matter, but there would be a very certain and specific love which would remain. And if I attempt describing I'd call it something like "gratitude for existence" or "belief that existence is good". Then next contemplate what that love looks like without a universe or matter?
And that's about as close as I can get to imagining landscape of a non-physical plane.... And I like to speculate that that's the type of non-physicality where our higher-selves and God live and transmit non-physical communications to us, such as Love.
 
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Some excerpts from an article:

'Most experiencers develop a sense of timelessness'

'There's no denying that experiencers become quite intuitive afterward. Psychic displays can be commonplace, such as: out-of-body episodes, manifestation of "beings" met in near-death state'

'Energy surges up and down the body happen to many, and can be accompanied by "lights" in the air.'
 
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