findingblanks wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:12 pm
Anyway, my point is simply that Bernardo's model would predict that the psychedelic experience would look like some perceptual structure from across a dissociated boundary given the adequate interaction tool.
So, just as 100 years ago we couldn't simply look at a brain to see how a dream can appear across the boundary, today we don't have the adequate tools to translate the psychedelic experience into an image.
But when we do eventually have that tool, it won't invalidate BKs model. This is why I think it isn't his best argument. Because his model also predicts that we very well could eventually find new activity in the body that correlates with psychedelic experience.
I think it would invalidate one of his key arguments.
The way I understand it is there are three core arguments he makes in The Idea of the World.
1- A purely logical, philosophical argument - which to me is very convoluted with multiple assumptions, steps, and branches
2- The QM argument relating to observers - only a small number of physicists say observers in QM have anything to do with consciousness
3- The psychedelic, transformative experience argument
There's no need to be obsessed only with obvious physical correlations. This only reduces Idealism back to gross materialism.
Here's a metaphor. For example, we can imagine that the whole brain has a holistic quantum wavefunction. In normal beta brainwave activity, our experience is closely tied to the way that function decoheres into neuronal activity (please note - activity - not necessarily the atomic structure), thus we experience more or less linear progressions of thoughts as we follow in consciousness the ion trains. We can imagine the holistic wavefunction as potential out of which we experience quite limited part in the decohered patterns. We can think of the physical brain as a scratchboard where we leave marks, streaks, scrapes, that serve to give us support or anchor points, so that we're not lost in the highly dynamic higher order potential. Through psychedelics we may be able to 'zoom out' of the linear firings and become conscious of more holistic parts of the brain wavefunction where we experience the potential itself, a superposition of possible states some of which may be reduced to concrete neuronal firings if we think about them but it's not necessary. This potential doesn't correspond to concrete neuronal firings just as an entanglement within a quantum state doesn't correspond to just one or another particle - these are different levels. There's simply something in the changing chemical makeup within the brain that makes it possible to divert our attention from the linear firings, up into the potential, which is always there anyway.
The key is not to assume that our consciousness is the complete counter-picture of what we perceive with the senses. We need to be more humble and be open that there are processes outside our ego consciousness which support the wave function of the body, and of which we experience consciously only a very limited aperture. Through spiritual development we can gradually organize the dynamic processes within the higher orders of potential such that they achieve certain permanence and stability. This stability then serves as the center around which we can experience our lucid consciousness even without the support of the scratchboard of the brain. The so called 'ego death' in psychedelics, and considered great achievement by many, is nothing else but the proof that our higher order potential is not yet organized and once we lose the support of the brain we also lose self-consciousness, as there's not yet anything within the dynamic flow of the potential that can reflect what we are at that level.
findingblanks wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:12 pm
Anyway, my point is simply that Bernardo's model would predict that the psychedelic experience would look like some perceptual structure from across a dissociated boundary given the adequate interaction tool.
So, just as 100 years ago we couldn't simply look at a brain to see how a dream can appear across the boundary, today we don't have the adequate tools to translate the psychedelic experience into an image.
But when we do eventually have that tool, it won't invalidate BKs model. This is why I think it isn't his best argument. Because his model also predicts that we very well could eventually find new activity in the body that correlates with psychedelic experience.
In the case of ayahuasca, perhaps the tool already exists as it is known that dmt already exists in small amounts in the body., which is why researcher Rick Strassman named it "The Spirit Molecule"
One approach would to see psychedelics as true entheogens than amplify the experience of the spirits within. Materialist science can't accept spirits. Can BK rational spirituality find language to do so that does not sound abstractly mental? I believe this is the challenge.
Be calm - Be clear - See the faults - See the suffering - Give your love
In deep sleep or under anesthesia, there is less activity in the brain too. In those cases, less activity corresponds with less experience. So why are psychedelics exceptions to the rule?
BK's model has psychedelics as having the ability to increase the porosity or permeability of the localised individual dissociative boundary, thus letting in (or giving us access to) nonlocal transpersonal consciousness.
Ben, the "dmt spirit molecule" is already within and rather than seeing the quest as transpersonal it can be seen as getting more deeply personal. From a shamanic pov one can argue for "depth animism" as Santeri does. Can Idealism argue that spirit (consciousness) is both within and without, can it argue that rocks have spirit within as well as existing within spirit? In other words, can Idealism stress or prioritize integration rather than dissociation? This seems to me to be the challenge.
Be calm - Be clear - See the faults - See the suffering - Give your love
Does anybody who agrees with BK's general model (as I do) think there is reason to believe we could not develop a tool that will show brain activity associated with psychedelics?
Ben, the "dmt spirit molecule" is already within and rather than seeing the quest as transpersonal it can be seen as getting more deeply personal. From a shamanic pov one can argue for "depth animism" as Santeri does. Can Idealism argue that spirit (consciousness) is both within and without, can it argue that rocks have spirit within as well as existing within spirit? In other words, can Idealism stress or prioritize integration rather than dissociation? This seems to me to be the challenge.
I hear you, Lou. I'm just reading David Abram's excellent "The Spell of the Sensuous" - you'd love it. Abram might even be your alter.
Ben, the "dmt spirit molecule" is already within and rather than seeing the quest as transpersonal it can be seen as getting more deeply personal. From a shamanic pov one can argue for "depth animism" as Santeri does. Can Idealism argue that spirit (consciousness) is both within and without, can it argue that rocks have spirit within as well as existing within spirit? In other words, can Idealism stress or prioritize integration rather than dissociation? This seems to me to be the challenge.
I hear you, Lou. I'm just reading David Abram's excellent "The Spell of the Sensuous" - you'd love it. Abram might even be your alter.
Ben, it's one of my favorite books and I know that BK has read it because he said he was reading it when I made the suggestion in a comment long ago. "Becoming Animal" is also a fine read but Idealists tend to reject it as a "paean to animism" which is understandable if the mission is to privilege mentation. Perhaps we will need a new "depth animism" to counter possible excesses of "depth psychology"? Sadly, everything can become a damn dogma. I think the either/or privileging by ontology slices both ways, driving a creative dialectic and getting stuck as the novel becomes the normal.
Be calm - Be clear - See the faults - See the suffering - Give your love
Ben Iscatus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:24 pm
I hear you, Lou. I'm just reading David Abram's excellent "The Spell of the Sensuous" - you'd love it. Abram might even be your alter.
Ben Iscatus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 9:01 pm
Wonderful synchronicity, Santeri!
My dance with mathematics, which started from writing a book of poetry, became the question by the poetry book: why are/were only pages numbered (and how?), and how would and could a book "number" also its covers...
