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Posted by Alan on February 17, 2002 01:02:12 UTC

Regretably science is in some ways medieval in its attitude. In front of me I have a book, 1939 vintage, called: "Mr. Tomkins In Wonderland" by G. Gamow (professor of theoretical physics at the George Washington University).

On page 32 I find: "but as a matter of fact, this is the fundamental principle of modern physics - never to speak about the things you cannot know. all modern physical theory is based on this principle, whereas the philosophers usually overlook it."

Page 33: "The things which cannot be observed are good only for idle thinking - you have no restrictions in inventing them, and no possibility of checking their existence, or making any use of them".

Now maybe people who think that way would reject modern string theory as idle speculation, as the superstrings are way too small for there to appear much hope of detecting them. So some people describe string theory as a useless theory.

But I disagree with Gamow. Ironically, Dr. Dick seems to overly obey what Gamow wrote, yet also he disobeys it. He obeys it by saying he can ignore un-scientific looking stuff; but then he disregards Gamow by indulging in abstract thinking and apparantly treating "observation" as irrelevant.

I disagree with Gamow because: "..cannot know" he says. "Cannot"? Using such a word amounts to pre-judging the future- who is to say what you might be cabable of knowing one day? Pre-judging the future means using induction- and inductive arguments are not logically valid, philosophers say.

What if Gamow had said "never speak of the things you DO not know"? When you look at the situation honestly; it is impossible to speak of things you do not know. If you can speak of something, you know at least something about it. This is demonstrable by appeal to honesty.

Suppose someone speaks of "dragons on the surface of a planet in galaxy M31". But in honesty; the full sentence must read: "imaginary dragons on the surface of an imaginary planet in galaxy M31".
And of course, the speaker DOES know about these imaginary dragons- as it was they who imagined them, and they who defines them.

Of course if that person makes a CLAIM that the dragons are real and not imagined, you might ask them for evidence. Debating the claim though is still debating something real and known: the real CLAIM that the person made.

My point is that if one is precise and honest, there is always a point at which reality can be distinguished.

I think what Gamow's physics principle really amounts to in practice is "never talk about what is logically excluded from having relevance to physics" - because he refers to Kant reflecting on properties of objects as they "are in themselves", not as they "appear to us".

But even this is presumptious- as it assumes that in logic you cannot know such a thing. True, you would have to be the object itself to fully know what it is to be that object (though you might know a lot by seeing the object via the Creator).
But it's not really an issue: whatever Kant was up to; if one is precise and honest; one has to put in words like "imagined by Kant to be..." and of course you can talk about what Kant imagines.

So maybe Gamow objects to physicists talking about what they imagine. But the history of physics doesn't reflect that. Einstein figured out that the speed of light was a constant without knowing the Michelson-Morely result. Dirac at times went with mathematical equations on grounds they were so beautiful they must be relevant; not on hard evidence. The equations predicting positrons came before the positrons were found in the lab.

My approach is "notice what exists"; the 5 senses are not the only ways of detecting existence. You know if you detect something- detecting a "doubt" or "the sense that something doesn't seems right about something" involves detecting existence of a phenomenon outside the 5 senses.

Since strictly you can only consider what is known (in the broad sense)(because if you didn't know it you couldn't think it); the key to being more scientific is to be more honest and more precise. You can speculate- honesty allows awareness that it IS speculation. A sense that the speculation is correct is something real: a real 'sense that...'. So reality always opens a door on more reality.

Thanks for encouraging my investigation of consciousness. Regarding the literature: " Modern medicine claims it is a disease of aging. The Buddhists claim that it is a screening sound to prevent you from hearing the actual sounds available in the supernatural but which you are not ready to hear, like reading someone else's thoughts. You become enlightened when that noise is diminished."

Modern medicine is a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy. It may well be that as people get older, they get less busy, have more quiet times, thus notice the "transparent sound" more. Modern medicine is regretably a kind of medieval dictatorship. What it doesn't understand it labels "disease", just as in days gone by sailors who talked of "a new country beyong the sea-horizon" might be accused of witchcraft.

The buddist angle is very curious. You see; I have said that humans can be in two different states (or 3, to be precise). As far as I can tell, everyone is in a "spiritually-conscious" state while unborn and for a short time after birth. Everybody apparantly collapses that other-dimension very small soon after birth, in response to a world "that doesn't (spiritually)see them'.

My approach to consciousness research is to explore openly but allowing rigorous-scientific
considerations also. As far as I can see, the "sound" as it is experienced is a feature of human-life in the "wrong" state (the state all adults including me (for now) seem to be in.

I am astonished at what the Buddists have found, as it relates closely to what I figured out. In the "wrong state", it requires effort to recall things. Why? Maybe the effort is not actually in "recalling things", but in selectively recalling things while repressing other things.

One might compare "wrong state" recall to having to rewind a video tape to find the place you want. Whereas "right state" recall is like using a compact-disc: you can jump straight to the track you want without all that rewinding. (Not an exact analogy.)

As far as I can figure, the "sound" is analogous to an express train racing out of control in a cacophony of activity. The "sound" may even be the vibration in regular dimensions of the compactified dimension. When you are in the "right state", the higher-dimension is present throughout your whole body- your whole body would be as a single quantum (like a Bose-Einstein condensate in some ways I guess).

Your every atom would vibrate in the higher dimension, not just a condensed area in your head.
So the sound may well be implicated as a feature of the compactification, repression even, so screening, of a higher dimension. And certainly this repression blocks the natural ability for so-called super-natural awareness and activity (eg. telepathy and teleportation).

I wouldn't say you become enlightened when the sound is diminished; in that it might be diminished by being distracted by everyday noise and activity. But certainly it appears that the sound may be gone, when one is in a fully enlightned "right" state. But as far as I can figure, if any human were in the "right state" in adulthood there would be a dramatic effect on everybody else. (A chain reaction would most likely occur; like when the little boy pointed out that "the emperor has no clothes" in the classic story- everyone stopped kidding themselves at that point. When someone becomes spiritually visible in adulthood; people will re-discover their own spirits- and reclothe their bodies with their spirits (i.e. and reclothe their spirits with their bodies).

If an adult were to reverse the "state-change" (or dimension-compactification) of infancy; I think they would be in a "3rd" state; as they could be overcoming the original "fall-of-man" problem and be fully present 3-in-1 as body, spirit, soul.

OBE's might be explained by a simple analysis of synchronisation issues regarding "data-from-your-body that tells you where you are in space (balance issues)" and "the model of where-you-are-in-space" constructed by your brain. Notice that a data-in-put overload accompanied my skiing OBE.

My older brother went sky-diving but was the only one in his group who didn't have memory-black-out of the dive. Maybe the others had OBE's which they repressed afterwards? OBE's are known to occur in high speed activities (motorcycle racing, etc.). Difficulty in synchronising sense-data-processing-speed versus mental-model-update-speed seems to be involved.

OBE books give instructions on how to get an OBE; and those instructions involve deliberately confusing yourself regarding sense-data versus mental-model. In the event of de-synchronisation; the door is opened to experiencing your bodily-position directly from a higher dimension that over-rides the slowness-problem or confusion in data matching.

That higher-dimension invokes an experience of spiritual consciousness.

-thanks

-dolphin

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