Blog — October, 2007

In answer to the lure and agitation of material sounds, the inner world calls then to the devotee, insistently, with alluring music: the [buzzing] sound of a honey bee, for example, emanating from the muladhara chakra, or coccyx center, when the energy is stimulated at that point to rise upward in the spine; Krishna's flute, the sound emanating from the swadisthana chakra or sacral center; the sweet sound of a harp, emanating from the manipura chakra or lumbar center; the deep bell sound of the anahata chakra, or heart center; the soothing, expansive sound—like soft wind in the trees, or like distant thunder—emanating from the bishudda chakra or cervical center; and above all pranaba, the mighty sound of AUM [or the noise of rushing waters].... (Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, p. 50)

Certain sounds are heard when the awakened kundalini rises up through the chakras: at muladhara one hears the chirping of a cricket.... (Tantra Cosmology)

And yet—

Tinnitus can be perceived in one or both ears or in the head. It is usually described as a ringing noise, but in some patients it takes the form of a high pitched whining, buzzing, hissing, humming, or whistling sound, or as ticking, clicking, roaring, "crickets" or "locusts," tunes, songs, or beeping. It has also been described as a "whooshing" sound, as of wind or waves....

Tinnitus is not itself a disease but a symptom resulting from a range of underlying causes, including ear infections, foreign objects or wax in the ear, and injury from loud noises. Tinnitus ... may also result from an abnormally low level of serotonin activity. (Wikipedia)

Of course, unlike the claimed ability of clairvoyants to see other people's auras, the subjective perception of the purported sounds of the various chakras cannot be put to any sort of double-blind test, to prove its (un)reality. (Yogananda's disciples claimed that, on occasion, they could objectively hear the "buzzing bee" sound of his root chakra, which claim would have been easily testable. As it stands, though, all we have now is that claim, from a group of people who would truly say anything if it made their "Perfect Master" stand out from the crowd of other such frauds.)

Serotonin levels can vary rapidly, even just with one's changing position in a dominance hierarchy, with high levels of serotonin correlating with positions of high status, and dropping when that status is lost. (Cf. David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology, p. 365.) The density of serotonin receptors, by contrast, is much more of a constant (notwithstanding that chronically high serotonin levels—e.g., as produced by the long-term use of prescription antidepressants—can cause such receptors to atrophy).

Further:

[Dr. Lars] Farde and his colleagues ... used PET scans to determine the number of nerve receptors for serotonin located in three areas of subjects' brains. These areas—the dorsal raphe nuclei of the brainstem, the hippocampus, and the neocortex—are usually rich in serotonin receptors. They then assessed whether there was any connection between subjects' scores on the personality trait of self-transcendence and the number of serotonin receptors in their brains.

The investigators found that the number of serotonin receptors correlated significantly and inversely with subjects' scores for self-transcendence—the higher the score on self-transcendence, the fewer the number of receptors in all brain areas scrutinized....

Thus, "the serotonin system may serve as a biological basis for spiritual experiences," the researchers concluded. (Serotonin Receptors May Be Linked to Spirituality)

Plus, consider this:

Many indigenous and shamanistic religions of the Americas, Asia and other continents use entheogenic drugs to make contact with the divine as part of their religious rituals. Most commonly, these are used in shamanistic practice involving healing rituals.

Cannabis is been widely used in India by Hindu gurus and Middle Eastern sufis. Salvia Divinorum and psilocybin mushrooms ("Magic Mushrooms") are used in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. Ayahuasca is used ritually among Amazonian Indians. The "Fly Agaric" (Amanita Muscaria) mushroom has a long shamanistic use in Europe and Russia.... Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) and other Mescaline containing cacti has a widespread use among Mexican and some North American Indians. (Wikipedia)

From Neil Bauman's Ototoxic Drugs Exposed (p. 521-7), we learn that mescal buttons and peyote can cause auditory hallucinations; cannabis (marijuana) can produce both auditory hallucinations and tinnitus; yage (ayahuasca) may induce tinnitus; and fly agaric can cause coordination disorders and dizziness.

So, it could well be that the same low levels of serotonin activity which predispose one to having "spiritual experiences" in general also contribute to one's hearing "inner sounds," all the way up to the "noise of many waters" (i.e., Om) ... particularly when those predispositions are aided by the use of "shamanic" drugs. (Mescaline, psilocybin, and the DMT-containing ayahuasca all make use of the serotonin system/receptors in creating their own effects. Cannabis, too, modulates serotonin levels.)

I didn't have anything to do with this, but I was pleased to find quite accidentally that the PDF of Stripping the Gurus has been posted at Scribd. Along with predictable comments like "I will kill the author for writing against hinduism and revered saints." Yes, some anonymous coward actually posted that, apparently with no trace of irony at all.

So, ask me again why I haven't programmed the functionality for users to leave comments on this blog. (It's a trivial programming task, far less difficult than, say, "manufacturing a tractor" ... or whatever the Bible-thumping yes2faith moron commenting there was trying to say, presumably as a slap against the johndeer gentleman who posted the PDF.)

Behold, I say unto you, what compassion is required for the thankless task of trying to show others that fairy tales aren't real, and that they are wasting their lives as devoted Hansel-and-Gretel-ists or Big-Bad-Wolf-ists. It's like a bodhisattva vow, really. Except, you know, that what you're trying to do for the improvement of the world is real rather than merely imagined. :)

My new Email List.

Because not everyone who finds their way to the home pages for STG or NE ends up reading my blog regularly.

I had grown up seeing auras.

—Rosalyn Bruyere, Wheels Of Light

Most people see auras when they are kids, but it's not verified, therefore, they disregard the phenomena.

—Barbara Ann Brennan

You may recall having seen auras when you were a young child. Perhaps you could see the mood of your family members as waves and shapes of color that changed as they were angry, happy, or sad. Many children see auras around people and material objects, and can keep this ability if they are encouraged (or, rather, if they are not discouraged)....

When I was an infant, all my senses seemed interconnected, most especially vision and hearing. This way of experiencing the world is known as "synesthesia," a Greek word that means "perceiving together." Whenever something made a sudden and surprising noise, such as a metal spoon falling off a table and hitting the floor, I would simultaneously witness a piercing flash of color that accompanied the sound.

—Cynthia Larson

Recall that one of the ways in which people see "auras," beyond mere Imagination Run Amok Syndrome (IARS), is precisely via the neurologically real (but entirely non-paranormal) phenomenon of synesthesia. Thus, from Richard Cytowic's The Man Who Tasted Shapes (p. 47-8):

"Your beeper made me see three red lightning bolts, brilliant red, going up to the left." [Victoria] kept rubbing her head....

"Sharp, shrill sounds always do it," she said, "like your beeper, or ambulance sirens, crashes [e.g., of metal spoons falling onto the floor], screeching tires."

And from later in the same book (p. 245, 253):

The observation that synesthesia is more common in children suggests that in most individuals neonatal connections are pruned sufficiently so that any "anomalous" hyperbinding among modalities never reaches consciousness....

Roger Walsh [!] at the University of California ... finds that synesthesia is one hundred times more common during meditative states compared to baseline prevalence....

With increasing years of experience, the percentage of meditators experiencing synesthesia increases (35 percent vs. 63 percent). Even within the most inexperienced beginners groups, those experiencing synesthesia had twice as much average practice time (17 years) than those who did not experience synesthesia (8 years). Among a third group of adept teachers (who had from 24 to 31 years of practice experience), over half had polymodal experiences and also perceived categories synesthetically—thoughts, emotions, and images felt as a sensation, for example. Further relevant observations for all three groups are that synesthesia was most apparent during meditation, and that some noted the onset of synesthetic experience only after they had taken up the practice of meditation. Walsh concludes that, "Awareness-enhancing techniques such as meditation may unmask an ever-present synesthesia to consciousness"....

The capacity for anomalous binding, which is the essence of synesthesia, is ... latent in all brains.

So, why do you figure that meditation increases one's ability to see auras, then?

Not that someone as overall-perpetually-clueless as Walsh (or his New Age-head wife, Frances Vaughan, who together with Roger introduced kw to the latter's eventual second wife, Treya) or Larson would ever follow through on the logical/debunking import of the synesthesia-aura connection, though. Still, how refreshing it is to see any Wilberite contributing anything intelligent to the debate, however inadvertently that may be done.

Larson again:

It's possible to see auras around photos of people ... and they do change according to the moods of the people (usually the auras in the photos stay the same as the time when the photos were taken).

Geez, could you find a clearer demonstration that what "clairvoyants" such as Larson herself are sensing is not "life fields"—which couldn't possibly exist in mere photographs!—but instead simply an involuntary mental association of certain colors with certain shapes? (Such associations, in synesthesia, do indeed usually stay constant with the passage of time; that has been abundantly verified experimentally [against control subjects who do not experience synesthesia], and provides one of the most solid indications that the subjects in question are not simply making the associations up as they go along.)

From Sir James Frazer's classic compendium of mythology, The Golden Bough:

Another application of the maxim that like produces like is seen in the Chinese belief that the fortunes of a town are deeply affected by its shape, and that they must vary according to the character of the thing which that shape most nearly resembles. Thus it is related that long ago the town of Tsuen-cheu-fu, the outlines of which are like those of a carp, frequently fell a prey to the depredations of the neighbouring city of Yung-chun, which is shaped like a fishing-net, until the inhabitants of the former town conceived the plan of erecting two tall pagodas in their midst....

Some forty years ago the wise men of Shanghai were much exercised to discover the cause of a local rebellion. On careful enquiry they ascertained that the rebellion was due to the shape of a large new temple which had most unfortunately been built in the shape of a tortoise, an animal of the very worst character. The difficulty was serious, the danger was pressing; for to pull down the temple would have been impious, and to let it stand as it was would be to court a succession of similar or worse disasters. However, the genius of the local professors of geomancy, rising to the occasion, triumphantly surmounted the difficulty and obviated the danger. By filling up two wells, which represented the eyes of the tortoise, they at once blinded that disreputable animal and rendered him incapable of doing further mischief.

ROTFLOL. As someone once said, in response to the increasing New Age-ification of his office environment: "Get me the feng shui out of here!"

From Newberg and Waldman's Why We Believe What We Believe (p. 96-7):

[I]n one intriguing study of children's beliefs concerning the Easter bunny, the researchers found that in families where the parents discouraged such beliefs, 47 percent of the children continued to believe that the Easter bunny was real. In families that encouraged such beliefs, 23 percent of the children chose to disbelieve....

[C]hildren between the ages of seven and nine, who were raised by secular parents, preferred a creationist model concerning the universe over an evolutionary one. Not until they reached adolescence did they embrace the evolutionary beliefs of their parents.

Clearly, neither of those phenomena can be reduced to an outcome of the survival value, to children, of blindly believing what their parents tell them. On the contrary, what appears to be happening there is that when the parents' teachings veer too far from what the child's stage of psychological development can accommodate, the child is valuing his or her own experiences (and associated magical/creationist thinking, etc.) over the claims of the parent.

(Children between the ages of seven and nine are typically in Piaget's concrete operational stage of psychological development; by early adolescence [i.e., age 11 to 15], they are in the formal operational stage. One could imagine/grasp a concrete act of creation in the former stage—i.e., "Bob created the heavens and the earth in his workshop, with all the animals and animal crackers, and formed Adam out of clay or play-dough," etc. But to comprehend the principles of the mutation and recombination of genes to form new organisms requires not only abstract thought but precisely the same kind of combinatorial/algorithmic thinking as when one is mixing glasses of clear liquid to create a yellow liquid, and deliberately trying all the combinations rather than doing it haphazardly and concretely, with no capacity yet developed for algorithmic or abstract thinking at that early age.)

So clearly, those children are not simply blindly believing what their parents tell them, when the information in question makes no sense to them. Rather, if the existence of the Easter Bunny makes (magical) sense to them; or if they've already outgrown that magical stage of thinking, and cannot be persuaded even by their parents that such imaginary things exist; or if the existence of the universe makes creationist rather than evolutionary sense to them in their current stage of psychological development; then far from just blindly believing what they are told, they will instead believe what makes sense to them in their own current frame of reference and experience.

All of that is far from being, as Newberg and Waldman selectively interpret it, evidence that "the human brain is inclined to accept the reality of spiritual beliefs, separate from the influence of others." (The 23 percent of children who refused to believe that the Easter Bunny was real, even when their parents were telling them that it was, were certainly not accepting the reality of that belief, even if the 47 percent in the opposite situation were indeed doing so! Did the former kids, then, simply lack that "hard-wiring"? Or were they more likely just ahead of the others in their psychological development? Plus, creationism is not inherently a more "spiritual" belief than is evolution, as we all know from Ken Wilber's childish attempts at inserting Eros into the Kosmos even when there is no need for it.)

Regardless, for many instances in which the child's safety is involved, it is not even necessary for the child to believe that what the parent is telling him is true. Rather, the child simply needs to willingly obey the instructions of the parent, in order to derive the same survival benefit as someone who blindly believed in the parent would gain. (There may be other situations, especially later in life, when mere obedience yields lesser—or greater—survival benefits than does blind belief coupled with obedience.) And evolutionary selection for obedience is not the same thing as selection for blind belief (even if believing makes it easier to obey, and to avoid causing offense to the higher-ups by doing more than just "humoring" them).

As children, we are given a specific language, a particular religion, and a taste of science, and we unconsciously assume that we are learning facts about the world. We are not. We are simply being told what to believe. For the most part this system is practical because a young child cannot perceive many of the dangers hidden in life's activities. Without guidance, children would walk into traffic, eat out of the dog's bowl, or poke their baby sister in the eye. And so our parents use everything at their disposal—threats, wisdom, punishments, rewards—to convince us of certain things. They reinforce these teachings by telling us that bad things will happen if we don't believe: our teeth will fall out (if we don't brush), God will punish us (if we don't pray), the moral fiber of the country will go to hell (if we don't vote for the candidate they support). And they'll enlist others—friends, dentists, politicians, priests—to reiterate these beliefs. (Newberg and Waldman, p. 25)

1. Build a Turing Machine:

Alan Turing ... designed a hypothetical machine whose input symbols and output symbols could correspond, depending on the details of the machine, to any one of a vast number of sensible interpretations....

What can this simple machine do? It can take in symbols standing for a number or a set of numbers, and print out symbols standing for new numbers that are the corresponding value for any mathematical function that can be solved by a step-by-step sequence of operations (addition, multiplication, exponentiation, factoring, and so on—I am being imprecise to convey the importance of Turing's discovery without the technicalities). It can apply the rules of any useful logical system to derive true statements from other statements. It can apply the rules of any grammar to derive well-formed sentences....

Turing showed that rational machines—machines that use the physical properties of symbols to crank out new symbols that make some kind of sense—are buildable, indeed, easily buildable. The computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum once showed how to build one out of a die, some rocks, and a roll of toilet paper. (Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, p. 67-9)

2. Extract your own DNA:

Start out with some cells; a few drops of blood or a tablespoon of spit will do. Crack them open by adding detergent. We use pure sodium dodecyl sulfate in the laboratory, but most drugstore shampoos work nearly as well. Next, remove the proteins by adding table salt until a large cloudy precipitate appears; pour the precipitate through a coffee filter. To the clear filtrate add four parts of vodka and place in the freezer.

Within an hour or so, the DNA will appear as a web of silky white threads. These can be twirled onto a glass rod, such as a martini stirrer, dried with a hair dryer, and dissolved in a glass of water.

That's your DNA. (Dean Hamer, The God Gene, p. 56)

From David Buss's Evolutionary Psychology (first edition, p. 348):

The most reliable indicator of dominance status among chimps is the number of submissive greetings an animal receives from others. Submissive greetings are a short sequence of pant-grunts that are accompanied by a lowering of the body so the submissive male is literally looking up at the dominant male. This lowering is often accomplished while making a series of quick, deep bows. Sometimes the submissive chimp brings objects to greet the dominant chimp, such as a leaf or a stick, which he presents while kissing the feet, neck, or chest of the dominant chimp.

From Chapter 40 of the newer editions of the Autobiography:

[pranam:] Lit., "complete salutation," from Sanskrit root nam, to salute or bow down; and the prefix pra, completely. A pranam salutation is made chiefly before monks and other respected persons.

And this:

"Yoganandaji presented [his own guru, Sri Yukteswar] with some gifts, as is the custom when the disciple returns to his guru."

And this, from the same book:

As I was taking leave [of Swami Pranabananda], touching his feet reverently, he gave me his blessing....

Yep, submissive gestures made before monks ... and "monkeys." "Same diff."

From Margaret Singer's Cults In Our Midst (p. 128-9):

A former follower of Rajneesh demonstrated for me what he termed Hoo meditation, a frequent exercise in that group. He stood with his feet wide apart, his arms above his head, and began to bow at the waist, rapidly with stiff arms, blowing out air as sharply, forcefully, and as fast as he could, turning the heavy puffs into the sound "hoo" while bowing. This was done, he said, until most members fell to the mats on the floor.

I asked several medical doctors to give me a brief explanation of hyperventilation, or overbreathing, so that I could help former cult members understand the effect. The physicians explained that continuous overbreathing, by causing large volumes of air to pass in an out of the lungs, produces a drop in the carbon dioxide level in the bloodstream, which in turn causes the blood to become more alkaline. This is called respiratory alkalosis.

A mild degree of respiratory alkalosis produces dizziness or light-headedness: people feel "high" and experience loss of critical thought and judgment. More prolonged or vigorous overbreathing produces numbness and tingling of the fingers, toes, and lips; sweating; pounding of the heart; ringing in the ears; tremulousness; and feelings of fear, panic, and unreality. Even more vigorous and prolonged overbreathing can cause muscle cramps, including clawlike rigidity of the hands and feet, body cramps, and severe chest pain and tightness.....

By consciously reframing, or relabeling, the effects [of hyperventilation], thus confounding individuals' gut-level reactions that something unpleasant has happened, [spiritual] leaders turn a frightening state into a supposedly positive one, telling neophytes, for example, that they are "becoming blissed out, ... getting or receiving the spirit, ... on the path."

From Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi:

"[Lahiri Mahasaya] touched my forehead. Masses of whirling light appeared; the radiance gradually formed itself into the opal-blue spiritual eye, ringed in gold and centered with a white pentagonal star."

From Kriyananda's The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita (p. 355):

In Jyoti Mudra the fingers are used lightly in such a way as to close the eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth openings, and to direct their energy inward and upward, focusing it in the spiritual eye at the point between the eyebrows.

In the beginning you may not see any light just an empty darkness or a somewhat hazy glow. Keep looking intently, be still, calm but fully concentrated. As and when you see any speck of tight or some colored glow, concentrate gaze steadily. Many colored lights of different shapes and intensities will appear from time to time. Do not waste time in trying to analyze them. Just know that the astral body is made of such colored lights. Regular practice of Jyoti mudra and steady gazing at the eyebrow center will reveal a golden circular light with a blue circle inside it. This is the light of the spiritual eye. Inside the blue circle advanced Yogis see a five pointed white star. This star is the focal point of advance concentration and meditation. Yogis penetrate their consciousness through this star and experience the infinite kingdom of God beyond and its bliss. (Mind: Its Nature)

Using your thumbs, index fingers, middle, ring, and little fingers to close your ears, eyelids, nostrils, and upper and lower lips, take in a slow full breath and hold, pressing very gently against the eyelids on the lower edge of the bony socket (not on the cornea) to release eye tension in a flourish of colors and patterns. Watch them in meditative wonder. This completes the yoni mudra. (Stuart Sovatsky, Eros, Consciousness, and Kundalini, p. 108)

However, we learn from Margaret Singer's Cults In Our Midst (p. 136):

Former members report that in [Maharajji's] Divine Light Mission the lights would be dimmed and the guru would pass among the followers bestowing "divine light" on individuals by pressing on their eyes until the pressure on the optic nerve caused them to see flashes of light. This was reframed as Divine Light.

The same (self-induced) thing was happening in Yogananda's SRF, of course, with physical phenomena and mere overactive imagination being framed as if they were "spiritual experience." And if you don't think that overly active imaginations are capable of generating inner phenomena such as the "spiritual eye," think again:

[T]he core issue for Jim was his belief that he had "spiritual" experiences, such as seeing a golden light emanating from [Frederick] Lenz and filling the room. I explained that hallucinations like these are often the result of easily reproducible hypnotic processes that have very little to do with being spiritual. Jim said, "Prove it." So I was forced to demonstrate this hypnotic effect for him. I asked him to close his eyes and meditate, as he had been doing for months as a student of Lenz. Once I saw his facial muscles relax, I added, "You're going to meditate even deeper than you have ever done before, and I don't want you to open your eyes until you're ready to see an even brighter light emanating from me." We waited less than a minute, and when he opened his eyes, he looked at me and said, "Whoa! That's brighter than the light I saw coming from Lenz!" (Steven Hassan, Releasing the Bonds, p. 63-4)

By the same token, consider David Lane's demonstration of the Kirpal Statistic:

Of the some 80,000 people Kirpal Singh initiated from 1948 to 1974, a majority of them claimed to have had some type of inner experience, ranging from simple visions of blue, green, and red lights to hearing subtle sounds like a bell, conch or a flute to sophisticated encounters with radiant yogis, sages, and mystics....

I tried several meditation experiments with my students which convinced me that Kirpal Singh and other gurus like him were taking undue credit for their disciples' inner experiences. In my trial meditation sessions, I informed my students beforehand about the possibility of seeing inner lights and hearing inner sounds.... I informed them that I knew of an ancient yoga technique that would facilitate their inner voyages. I turned the lights off, instructed them briefly about closing their eyes gently and looking for sparks of light at the proverbial third eye. I told them that I would touch some students on the forehead lightly with my fingers. They meditated for some five minutes. I then proceeded to ask them about their experiences.... To my amazement, since I felt that Kirpal Singh and others were actually transmitting spiritual power, the majority of my students reported seeing light. A few students even claimed to have visions of personages in the middle of the light. Others reported hearing subtle sounds and the like.

All of which, however, still pales in comparison with the hallucinatory experiences of Ram Dass' buddy, Bhagavan Das, as related in his It's Here Now (Are You?) (p. 127, 136):

As the Karmapa sat reading aloud from a Tibetan text, he kept looking at me. I felt as if my body had turned into a giant pot and he was pouring a substance into me. He was filling me with the sounds that were coming from his mouth. These were sacred teachings spoken in a language I couldn't understand. These sounds were turning into deities: hundreds and hundreds of tiny vajra dakinis falling into me from the sky like snowflakes. They each had a little skull cup and a khatvanga (a trident with a skull on top of it). Each had three eyes, and they were naked and had beautiful breasts. Light emanated from their yonis (vaginas)....

Many times I'd be walking around the temple and I would actually see dakinis flying around its pinnacle. I was amazed to see these fairy beings, these miniature goddesses.

How does religion fit into a mind that one might have thought was designed to reject the palpably not true? The common answer—that people take comfort in the thought of a benevolent shepherd, a universal plan, or an afterlife—is unsatisfying, because it only raises the question of why a mind would evolve to find comfort in beliefs it can plainly see are false. A freezing person finds no comfort in believing he is warm; a person face-to-face with a lion is not put at ease by the conviction that it is a rabbit. (Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, p. 554)

On the topic of blind belief and its relation to religion, one cannot do better than Steven Dutch's article, The Single Greatest Misconception About Religion:

Scientists may think they use the term "believe" differently from Biblical literalists, but Biblical literalists do not. They are convinced they "believe" in the same sense as scientists, based upon "reliable empirical evidence and sound arguments." They regard the Bible as an accurate record of real events that are as reliably documented as any historical events or one-time events in the scientific literature. For example, there are no living scientists who observed the Krakatoa eruption of 1883, but we consider the written records of this event reliable. Biblical literalists consider the accounts in the Bible to be equally reliable records of actual observed events....

It is simply not true that religious faith has no counterpart in science. Scientists routinely use their personal experience, subjective appraisal, hunches, and intuition as guides for selecting research directions. Indeed, when the outcome is unknown, as it must be in choosing a fundamentally new direction for research, subjective thinking must dominate, sometimes even a faith-like insistence that there must be a pattern to phenomena. So the subjective decision to interpret the Universe as containing a God is not fundamentally different from the subjective decision that it's worth investing a career in, say, searching for extraterrestrial life.

In addition, Biblical literalists have a vast body of supporting literature analogous to the technical literature in science.

And, regarding "testability" and repeatability in experimentation:

Short of allowing the events in question to happen, there is no way to test, with complete rigor [i.e., in the "scientific method"], many theories of global warming, ozone depletion or nuclear winter. Thus, being untestable does not make an idea false, nor does it mitigate the consequences of making a wrong choice or even of deferring judgment. Even in non-religious areas we may be forced to make a decision in the face of conflicting, incomplete, or even no data. The criticism that religious beliefs are untestable is therefore profoundly irrelevant. Something will happen when we die. We may cease to exist, enter into an afterlife, or be reincarnated, but the inability to communicate across the event horizon does not affect the fact that some outcome will happen and others will not.

Biblical [and Talmudic, and Koranic] literalists regard their beliefs as susceptible to testing in many of the same senses that scientific ideas are testable. Miracles and communications from God are not repeatable on demand, but then neither are earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and meteor impacts. To Biblical literalists, miracles and communications from God are replicable in the sense of showing consistent patterns, the content of the communications is verified (in their eyes) by experience, and the Biblical accounts have survived innumerable failed attempts at refutation (in the view of literalists if not their critics). In short, Biblical literalists consider the Bible to have been as rigorously tested as any scientific literature.

Finally, with regard to the non-role of "democracy" in determining what the truth and facts are:

We often say that science is not democratic because it deals with objective data. Since Biblical literalists also regard their beliefs as based on objective data, they see no requirement to be democratic either. They regard rival belief systems roughly as we regard pseudoscience: sincere erroneous reasoning at best, deliberate fraud at worst. They do not see it as closed-minded or intolerant to claim theirs is the only true religion any more than a geologist sees it as intolerant to claim that one value for the age of the Earth is correct and all others are wrong....

Whatever the epistemological nature of religious belief, Biblical literalists regard their doctrines as facts, so it's a total waste of time to argue that science deals in "facts" whereas religions merely have "belief."

So, scientists/skeptics and "believers" are really not so far apart in terms of faith, intuition, supporting literature, testability, repeatability, the role of "democracy" in their respective non-political worlds, and their possession of established "facts"/data. Consequently, the overly simplified view of religion (or even spiritual woo-woo) as being based in a "blind belief" distinct from anything to be found in science is probably more of a red herring than anything else.

[W]hen the Dalai Lama was asked what he would do if scientific studies invalidated his beliefs, he smiled wryly, saying, "I'd simply change my beliefs!" (Newberg and Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe, p. 172)

Nevertheless, there are indeed real and meaningful differences between the worldviews of skeptics and believers. (The Dalai Lama, for all of his protests, belongs firmly in the latter group: If you license yourself to believe anything which hasn't been conclusively disproved by science, as the Lama does, you are well on the road to thinking that leprechauns are real, even if you are still theoretically open to the possibility of later repudiating that possibility if "scientific studies invalidate it," which they in principle [by "proving a negative," etc.] cannot.) From Newberg and Waldman (p. 243):

Neurological evidence suggests that the brains of believers and skeptics function differently. According to research neurologists at University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, when subjects viewed scrambled words and phrases on a screen, believers were much more likely than skeptics to see words and faces when there were none, but skeptics often didn't see words and faces that were there. However, when skeptics were given the drug L-dopa (used to treat Parkinson's disease) to increase dopamine levels in the brain, they were more likely to interpret scrambled patterns as real words and faces. The researchers concluded that believers use looser criteria for interpreting sensory information, and so are more likely to make unfounded inferences [i.e., to find spurious patterns in it]. These looser criteria may also explain why certain individuals are more inclined to form paranormal beliefs. On the positive side, the researchers also suggested that higher levels of dopamine may be "a prerequisite of creative thinking"....

[T]he study in Zurich suggests that dopamine may play an important role in spiritual experiences, and that religious practitioners may have higher levels of dopamine than nonreligious individuals.

And, from V. S. Ramachandran's A Brief Tour Of Human Consciousness (p. 71):

What artists, poets and novelists all have in common is their skill at forming metaphors, linking seemingly unrelated concepts in their brain [i.e., finding patterns which lack "scientific" or logical significance], as when Macbeth said "Out, out brief candle," talking about life.

Not that that makes it any easier for scientists to let go of their own cherished professional beliefs, though. After all, when Max Planck recognized that new ideas in science become accepted, not for any logical force of persuasion, but simply for their opponents dying out, he was referring, not to any mere religious "believers," but rather to the professional activities of physicists themselves. Not to mention that even the most top-flight of scientists have reacted in ways indistinguishable from the behaviors of blindly-believing cult/religion followers, when their own most-cherished scientific "truths" were called into question: J. Robert Oppenheimer, for one, dismissed David Bohm's Nobel-caliber work as "juvenile deviationism," going so far as to suggest that "if we cannot disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him"—the latter option of which the physics community indeed managed to do very successfully, for nearly half a century (see F. David Peat, Infinite Potential).

Scientists, as human beings, typically avoid those problems only when they don't attach themselves to spurious ideas or patterns in the first place, not for finding it easier than "believers" to publicly admit that they were ever wrong, wrong, wrong. If the scientific method ever compels an entire field of study to change its basic ideas, in a so-called paradigm shift, that is a tribute only to that method, not to any imagined difference between the ways in which scientists believe devoutly in their holy theories and knowledge, versus how religious followers believe in theirs.

From Barbara Ann Brennan's Hands Of Light (p. 81-2):

The best way I have found to start sensing the states of the chakras is to use a pendulum....

To measure the state of the chakra, hold the pendulum on a string about six inches long over the chakra [as the patient lies on his back or stomach] and empty your mind of all bias as to the state of the chakra. (This is the hardest part and requires practice.) Be sure that the pendulum is as close to the body as possible without touching it. Your energy flows into the field of the pendulum to energize it. This combined field of the pendulum and your energy then interacts with the field of the subject, causing the pendulum to move.... It will probably move in a circular pattern, circumscribing an imaginary circle above the body of your subject. It may move back and forth in an elliptical movement or a straight line. It may move erratically. The size and direction of the pendulum movement indicates the amount and direction of energy flowing through the chakra.

Likewise, from Rosalyn Bruyere's Wheels Of Light (p. 73-5):

When used as a pendulum, a prism or crystal is a tool that can corroborate chakra movement. This is because a crystal is an effective energy transmitter. (It is able to rectify the moving electromagnetic field of the chakra into a direct current.) When a crystal is suspended over the chakra of a reclining person, the energy of the spinning chakra will cause the crystal to swing in a corresponding motion.

As James Randi explains, however:

One method of divination uses a pendulum. A weight of any kind, the bob, is suspended at the end of a string or chain: crystals, real or fake, are currently popular. The device is held over a map or other object, and various movements of the bob are interpreted in different ways by different operators....

In this phenomenon, it can always be seen that the subject moves his or her hand to set the pendulum swinging, though this will be vehemently denied. The event is a perfect example of ideomotor reaction.

Ah yes, our old friend from the world of dowsing, the ideomotor effect:

The movement of pointers on Ouija boards, of a facilitator's hands in facilitated communication, of hands and arms in applied kinesiology, and of some behaviors attributed to hypnotic suggestion, are due to ideomotor action. Ray Hyman ... has demonstrated the seductive influence of ideomotor action on medical quackery, where it has produced such appliances as the "Toftness Radiation Detector" (used by chiropractors) and "black boxes" used in medical radiesthesia and radionics (popular with naturopaths to harness "energy" used in diagnosis and healing.)

Yes, Brennan endorses the ineffectual nonsense of radionics, too. "Surprise."

I happened to tune in a bit early to the Fox affiliate carrying the game last night, and saw an infomercial with Jane Seymour pitching the Natural Advantage anti-aging system.

I kept trying to place her (classy, British) accent—where had I heard it before?

And then I realized: She talks just like Richard Dawkins!

Seymour, of course, was a "Bond girl" before starring in "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman."

So I had this idea for a series:

"Dr. Dawkins, Medicine Man."

Richard Dawkins as a New Age quack physician, a la Andrew Weil, Deepak Chopra or Larry Dossey, dispensing useless remedies to his unfortunate patients, against the objections of his staff.

Nurse: "But shouldn't we at least do a series of x-rays and a CAT-scan, doctor?"

Dawkins: "Nonsense, this 30-X homeopathic remedy will do just the trick! We must hurry, though: I'm late for leading the rain dance."

P.S. I just noticed that Sam Harris (yes, the author of The End of Faith; Dawkins himself wrote the preface to the U.K. edition, for Chrissake) has recently guested on Integral Naked. I couldn't let that pass without trying to do something to "enlighten" the man; so I just sent him an email:

Sent: 2007 10 14

Dear Sam,

I have just seen that, earlier this year, you were featured as a guest on Ken Wilber's Integral Naked forum.

I have personally spent much of the past two years debunking Wilber's deeply flawed work, and was consequently very saddened and disturbed to see that someone as intelligent and informed as yourself might be taken in by his ideas.

Numerous former admirers of Wilber have repudiated his work and authoritarian character since the debunking of his ideas began in earnest, in early 2005. Included among those are Frank Visser and Michel Bauwens--both former founding members of the Integral Institute. Chris Cowan (of Spiral Dynamics) has likewise sharply criticized kw's understanding of SD.

If I may, I would encourage you in the strongest possible terms to find the time to read the two primary book-length refutations of Wilber's theories. Both are available online; the first is by Jeff Meyerhoff, at http://www.integralworld.net/meyerhoff-ba-toc.html; the second is by myself, at http://www.normaneinsteinbook.com.

There is also a thread at Richard Dawkins' website, started by a former follower of Wilber, which you might well find interesting: http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=21914.

In addition, you would likely find it very eye-opening to read what Wilber himself has to dismissively say on the unwelcome subject of his critics, including myself: http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/46.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns regarding this topic.

Sincerely,

Geoffrey Falk
Toronto, Ontario

Let's "pray" it does some good. (There's some hope left: At least Harris doesn't list any of kw's books on his Recommended Reading List.) After all, even if Harris may not have been completely suckered in by kw's fraudulent ideas, in lending his name and prestige to Wilber's work he is (at least in that one way) doing more harm than good.

The best explanation of near-death experiences (NDEs) I've found? Woerlee's Darkness, Tunnels, and Light.

Darkness, tunnel, and light experiences are wondrous, seemingly paranormal experiences. Nonetheless, it is evident that they can be explained by the body's responses to oxygen starvation. The combination of tunnel and light experiences can only be explained by oxygen starvation, and nothing else. Other associated experiences, such as darkness and out-of-body experiences, can also be generated by other changes in body function induced by a wide range of different conditions.

Correspondingly, from Matthew Alper's The "God" Part of the Brain:

[I]n the majority of recorded accounts, the first thing most people recall of their experience is a feeling of intense fear and pain that is abruptly replaced by a sense of calm, serenity and bliss. To offer support of a neurophysical model of this phenomenon, D. B. Carr suggested that the aforementioned sensations, in so far as they are experienced during an NDE, might come as the result of a flood release of endogenous opiods (endorphins).

After experiencing this sense of calm or euphoria, the next most often related symptom to occur during an NDE is that of an "out-of-body" experience (OBE). Here, the person describes a sensation of having risen outside of their physical body and, in many cases, even being able to look down at one's own self from above. [Footnote: One hospital, in order to validate claims of "out-of-body" experiences, placed an LED marquee above its patients' beds which displayed a hidden message that could only be read if one were looking down from above. To date, not one person who has claimed to have had an NDE or OBE within that hospital has expressed having seen the hidden message.] (p. 151)

Given that NDEs occur, as the name suggests, when our lives are at stake, it would make sense that the body would release chemicals that induce a state of calm and serenity. For instance, if we are in the process of bleeding to death, the worst thing we can do is to panic which will only increase our heart rates, which would only expedite the rate of blood loss. Rather, it's to our advantage that the body should induce a state of calm and euphoria that will slow our heart rates, thus decreasing the rate of blood loss. This is most likely the adaptive function of an NDE, to calm us in the midst of life-threatening events so as to bolster our chances of survival. (p. 153)

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, as you may know, had some fun inducing his own out-of-the-body experiences back in the '70s. From his "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" (p. 333-4):

I had hallucinations almost every time [in the sensory-deprivation tank], and was able to move further and further outside of my body.... "I" even got out of the room, ultimately, and wandered about, going some distance to locations where things happened that I had seen earlier another day.

I had many types of out-of-body experiences. One time, for example, I could "see" the back of my head, with my hands resting against it. When I moved my fingers, I saw them move, but between the fingers and the thumb I saw the blue sky.

I've been reading Matthew Alper's (2001) The "God" Part of the Brain. From which:

Michael Persinger ... found that "one of the main differences between the nineteen percent of high school students who had religious experiences before their teens, and the rest, was the presence of a head injury or blackout at least once during childhood." (p. 80)

Persinger used a machine called a transcranial magnetic stimulator (a helmet that shoots a concentrated magnetic field at a specific region in the brain) to excite different regions within his own brain.... [W]hen Dr. Persinger used the device to stimulate his own temporal lobe he experienced what he described as his first feelings of "being at union with God." When the device was used on volunteer students in a research study, many reported spiritual and mystical experiences, as well as seeing visions of Jesus, angels, and other spiritual deities (subjects also reported imagery similar to near-death experiences as well as alien encounters and abductions, offering support to the notion that such experiences are also related to temporal lobe sensitivity). (p. 114)

It would be one thing for there to be merely a "psycho-physical parallelism" between supposed higher states of consciousness/reality, and the operation of the physical brain—so that a genuine experience of a higher level of reality would cause some predictable and measurable temporary change in the functioning of the brain. But, as Persinger has shown, you can induce experiences of such "spiritual phenomena" which are felt to be as real as any "natural" mystical experience, even though they are obviously merely imagined. (Or can you really summon Jesus and the angels of heaven just by pressing the "On" button?). And since that is done simply by subjecting the physical brain to some pattern of electromagnetic stimulation, it would take a real, deluded "Wilber" to cling to the belief that any of those phenomena are ontologically real.

In his research, [Dr. Arnold] Sadwin discovered individuals who, after suffering from a head injury, showed distinct changes in their religious attitudes and behaviors. In some cases, he found individuals who, though they were extremely religious prior to their accidents, afterwards were indifferent to religious concerns. On the other hand, Sadwin also came across individuals who, though they were previously non-religious, after experiencing a head injury suddenly became extremely religious, obsessively praying to God and expressing intense religious feelings and urges. (p. 80)

And with regard to drug-induced mystical experiences:

[W]hereas the entheogenic drug mescaline is almost identical in its molecular composition to the neurotransmitter noradrenaline [sic], a molecule of psilocybin, more commonly known as "magic mushrooms," is almost identical in composition to a molecule of the neurotransmitter serotonine [sic]....

[T]he fact that psychedelic drugs have a cross-cultural tendency to stimulate experiences we define as being either spiritual, religious, mystical or transcendental means we must possess some physiological mechanism whose function is to generate this particular type of conscious experience. If we didn't possess such a physical mechanism, there's no way that these drugs could possibly stimulate such experiences in us. In short, the fact that there exists a certain class of drugs—molecules—that can evoke a spiritual experience supports the notion that spiritual consciousness must be physiological in nature. Herein lies the basis for an ethnobotanical argument against the existence of either a spiritual reality or a soul. (p. 129-30)

Yep. Not that that stopped the "mad scientists" (including Huston Smith) from conducting the Good Friday Experiment back in 1962, unconscionably messing up other people's lives for their own transpersonal "believer" research purposes.

Bit of a problem with the following, though:

It is a common claim of individuals in the midst of a meditative or trance-like experience to be impervious, or at least less susceptible, to pain. Whether we've seen this demonstrated by someone lying on a bed of nails or walking across hot coals, the evocation of a meditative or mystical experience seems to make us at least partially immune to physical pain. (p. 126)

Yikes. Both the distribution of pressure in the bed-of-nails demonstration, and firewalking, have long been explained in terms of simple laws of physics.

The theologian Lewis Rambo points out that certain religious groups such as the Evangelical Christians make it part of their practice to target vulnerable individuals. For example, in large urban areas, some churches focus on ministries to those recently divorced as they know that within the first six months after a divorce, a person is more likely to be converted. This practice of seeking out those in crisis is most evident among prison populations, where stress levels are critical and conversions are practically endemic. Another example in which the vulnerable are targeted for conversion is practiced by recovery groups such as Alcoholics, Eaters, Gamblers, and Debtors Anonymous, all of which emphasize—through the use of the renowned "12 step" program—faith in religion and God as primary tools in their effort to combat these addictive behaviors. (p. 143-4)

Heh. I thought only cults were supposed to target the vulnerable for conversion. ("Mainstream religious organizations do not concentrate their search on the lonely and vulnerable"—Margaret Singer, Cults In Our Midst, p. 99.) Who knew? :)

In light of recent discoveries in the neurosciences, there are those who have suggested that if we truly do posses a physiologically-based spiritual function in the brain that perhaps God put it there. My response to this is: What kind of a god would install a device in us that would compel us to believe Him to be so many different things that we'd each be prompted to kill one another in order to prove that our version of Him is the right one? (p. 182)

So then, who really put it there? Why, Eros, of course. :)

I've just finished reading Newberg and d'Aquili's (2001) intriguing book Why God Won't Go Away. From which:

Research reveals that repetitive rhythmic stimulation ... can drive the limbic and autonomic systems, which may eventually alter some very fundamental aspects of the way the brain thinks, feels, and interprets reality. These rhythms can dramatically affect the brain's neurological ability to define the limits of the self. (p. 79)

If those rhythms are fast—in the case of Sufi dancing, for example, or in the frenzied rites of Voudon—the arousal system is driven to higher and higher levels of activation....

As a result, certain brain structures are deprived of the normal supply of neural input on which they depend in order to perform their functions properly.

One such structure is the orientation association area—the part of the brain that helps us distinguish the self from the rest of the world and orients that self in space—which requires a constant stream of sensory information to do its job well. When that stream is interrupted, it has to work with whatever information is available. In neurological parlance, the orientation area becomes deafferented—it is forced to operate on little or no neural input. The likely result of this deafferentation is a softer, less precise definition of the boundaries of the self. This softening of the self, we believe, is responsible for the unitary experiences practitioners of ritual often describe.

They later give similar plausible explanations for the meditative origin of a "subjective sense of absolute spacelessness, which might be interpreted by the mind as a sense of infinite space and eternity; or conversely, as a timeless and spaceless void.... There would be no discrete objects or beings, no sense of space or the passage of time, no line between the self and the rest of the universe. In fact, there would be no subjective self at all; there would only be an absolutely sense of unity—without thought, without words, and without sensation. The mind would exist without ego in a state of pure, undifferentiated awareness." (p. 119)

The same neurobiological mechanism underlying unitary experiences can also be set in motion, in a slightly different manner, by the intense, sustained practice of slow ritual activity such as chanting or contemplative prayer. These slow rhythmic behaviors stimulation the quiescent system, which, when pushed to very high levels, directly activates the inhibitory effects of the hippocampus, with the eventual result of deafferenting the orientation area and, ultimately, of blurring the edges of the brain's sense of self, opening the door to the unitary states that are the primary goal of religious ritual. (p. 86-7)

So far, so good. Newberg and d'Aquili start to stumble, however, when they begin arguing for the reality of mystical experiences, versus psychosis:

[M]ystics and psychotics tend to have very different interpretations of the meaning of their experiences. Psychotics in delusional states often have feelings of religious grandiosity and inflated egotistical importance—they may see themselves, for example, as special emissaries from God, blessed with an important message for the world, or with the spiritual power to heal. Mystical states, on the other hand, usually involve a loss of pride and ego, a quieting of the mind, and an emptying of the self—all of which is required before the mystic can become a suitable vessel for God (p. 110)

Well, by that set of criteria, Ken "Pride and Ego" Wilber, for one, with or without his One Taste realization, would be more of a psychotic than a mystic.

[W]e do not believe that genuine mystical experiences can be explained away as the results of epileptic hallucinations or, for that matter, as the product of other spontaneous hallucinatory states triggered by drugs, illness, physical exhaustion, emotional stress, or sensory deprivation. Hallucinations, no matter what their source, are simply not capable of providing the mind with an experience as convincing as that of mystical spirituality. (p. 111)

And yet, from Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained (p. 90):

Lenin and Stalin were to Russians what De Gaulle was to most Europeans, the stuff of history and ideology. In Gabon the French general became for some time the object of a cult, and Russian dictators were among the higher deities visited by some Siberian shamans in their trances.

You may be sure that the shamans' visions (i.e., hallucinations) of those dictators were felt to be every bit as "real" to the shamans in question, as were their contacts (or even their supposed conscious union) with the Great Reindeer Spirit (or whatever). The same is surely true of Adi Da's visions of "astral moon cannibal slaves," which he presents as being as real as any of his "Higher, Non-Dual Realizations."

[S]ome types of temporal lobe epilepsy can trigger spontaneous hallucinatory events that strongly resemble the experiences described by mystics. According to Saver and Rabin, the effects of epileptic seizures upon the temporal lobe of the brain have been associated with sensations of sudden ecstasy and religious awe; with increased interest in religion and even religious conversions; with out-of-body experiences; with the apprehension of the "unity, harmony, joy, and/or divinity of all reality," and in some cases, with the perceived presence of God. (p. 110)

Hallucinations, of course, also feel real [as mystical experiences do] while they persist, but when hallucinating individuals return to normal consciousness, they immediately recognize the fragmented and dreamlike nature of their hallucinatory interlude, and understand that it was all a mistake of the mind. Mystics, however, can never be persuaded that their experiences were not real. This sense of realness does not fade as they emerge from their mystical states, and it does not dissipate over time. (p. 112)

At least the authors manage to get where they're going without misrepresenting biological evolution or its place in the development of the human brain, though:

Evolution, after all, doesn't plan ahead. It gropes impartially for potential, with no idea where that potential might lead.... We believe, in fact, that the neurological machinery of transcendence may have arisen from the neural circuitry that evolved for mating and sexual experience. (p. 124-5)

[T]he neurological machinery of transcendence can also be set in motion by patterns of thought and behavior not intentionally designed to provoke unitary states. These unintentional unitary experiences would provide a potent foundation for the development of religious faith; in most cases, in fact, they would make the development of religion inevitable. (p. 134)

[T]he strong survival advantages of religious belief make it very likely that evolution would enhance the neurological wiring that makes transcendence possible. This inherited ability to experience spiritual union is the real source of religion's staying power. (p. 139)

The final chapter gets far too much into "believer" territory—earning the back-cover blurb which the book received from the Integral Institute's credulous Larry Dossey—while the chapter preceding that one commits the unpardonable sin of attributing mystical feelings to the late Carl Sagan (p. 154-5):

It seems that even the self-avowed agnostic Carl Sagan was not immune to the "mysterious intuition".... In his novel Contact, his main character, scientist Ellie Arroway, describes a profound personal experience in terms every ancient mystic would recognize:

I had an experience I can't prove. I can't even explain it, but everything I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was part of something wonderful, something that changed me forever; a vision of the Universe that tells us undeniably how tiny, and insignificant, and how rare and precious we all are. A vision that tells us we belong to something that is greater than ourselves. That we are not, that none of us is, alone.

Lee Sannella (a follower of Da) tried to pull the same trick, in his The Visionary Life:

Carl Sagan is full of ... inspiring speculations in his novel Contact.... In fact, in this book his protagonist, a young woman scientist experiences what could be understood as a kundalini arousal. I understood her to represent Sagan's true shakti and his own contact with divinity. He stoutly denied this in his public statements, possibly fearing that any such utterances would damage his image with fellow astrophysicists who are less inclined to expand their universes to include a divine dimension.... I am convinced that one who reads Contact with an open heart together with Miracles of Mind by Russel Targ and Jane Katra would conclude that Carl came to possess a much fuller realization of our humanity than is common.

Sagan's actual regard toward paranormal phenomena, however, as given in his own words (p. 221-2), was as follows:

Typical offerings of pseudoscience and superstition ... are astrology ... ghosts ... multicolored halolike "auras" ... extrasensory perception (ESP), such as telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, and "remote viewing" [e.g., Russell Targ's work] of distant places ... divining rods, dowsing ... the prophecies of Nostradamus ... the notion that more crimes are committed when the Moon is full ... "photography" of past events ... Edgar Cayce ... out-of-body (e.g., near-death) experiences interpreted as real events in the external world; faith-healer fraud ... the emotional lives of geraniums, uncovered by intrepid use of a "lie detector"; water remembering what molecules used to be dissolved in it [i.e., in homeopathy] ... the "hundredth monkey" confusion ... human beings spontaneously bursting into flame and being burned to a crisp ... systematically inept predictions ... Carlos Castaneda [i.e., shamanism in general] and "sorcery"....

P.S. From Boyer, p. 321:

In the actual history of human groups, people have had religious thoughts for cognitive reasons in practical contexts. These thoughts do some work. They produce relevant comments on situations like death or birth or marriage, etc. Metaphysical "religions" that will not dirty their hands with such human purposes and concerns are about as marketable as a car without an engine.

Thus spake a scholar who's obviously never heard of Ken Wilber, much less seen the effects of the real "marketability" of Old Baldy's "impractical" ideas!

Oh, and Alanis Morissette has just guested on Integral Naked. What can you do with these foolish people, if they won't make the simple, minimal effort to inform themselves about the validity of the notions they're endorsing? Not only do they think that their uninformed opinions matter, but they seem bent on leading others down the same pointless path as they've so happily trod.

"Idiocy loves company," I guess.

From Chapter 22 of Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi:

[God] eventually appears to the persistent devotee in whatever form he holds dear. A devout Christian sees Jesus; a Hindu beholds Krishna, or the Goddess Kali, or an expanding Light if his worship takes an impersonal turn.

From Clay Stinson's (1997) Open Letter to Ken Wilber:

[T]he sustained "white light" experience, or "entering into the light" through meditation, is a form of what neuroscientists call cortex disinhibition—the random firing of neurons in the brain. This random firing, in turn, stimulates the visual cortex producing these lights and luminosity's fanatical mystics and zealous meditators talk about. Moreover, the greater the number of neurons firing, the greater is the intensity of the white light. Quantitatively put, with few neurons randomly firing, all one sees during meditation is a small circle of white, to bluish-white, light. With a moderate number of neurons randomly firing, one sees, during meditation, a moderately large circle of light. With all or most of the neurons randomly firing, one sees a circle of light so large, brilliant, and luminous that it literally engulfs the field of vision during the meditation session. The mistake, here, of mystics, meditators, spiritual "masters," and Near Death Experiencers is to identify the "neural noise" or "white light experience" for God, Self, Mind, "mystical realization," satori, etc....

[S]o-called mystics, meditators, and spiritual "Masters" with the "big realizations" are suffering from various species of (i) brain damage, (ii) epilepsy, (iii) psychosis, (iv) schizophrenia, and (v) debilitating depersonalization disorder, or (vi) some combination of these five.

As a measure of how far I've come in the past three years, i.e., since the time when I took parapsychological and mystical claims completely seriously: I agree with everything Stinson wrote in that piece, including its obvious (and valid) "reductionism."

I also really like the "tone" of it. :)

Note also that a "small circle of white light" is effectively a vision of an "internal sun," providing a neurophysiological basis for the "sun symbols" found throughout our world's mythologies, beyond mere exoteric "sun worship."

From Barbara Ann Brennan's classic Hands Of Light:

With the light dim in the room, hold your hand so that the tips of the fingers point toward each other. Hold your hands in front of your face at a distance of about two feet. Make sure there is a plain white wall for a background. Relax your eyes and softly gaze at the space between your fingertips, which should be about one and a half inches apart. Do not look into bright light. Let your eyes relax.... About 95% of the people who try this exercise do see something....

Most people see a haze around the fingers and hands when trying to sense the aura. It looks somewhat like the heat wave over a radiator. It is sometimes seen in various colors, such as a blue tint. Usually, most people see it as colorless in the beginning.

The "artist's rendition" picture is here:

The phenomenon which Brennan describes is real—physically real, that is. It's just the product of light-wave diffraction, and can thus actually be photographed. Zajonc inadvertently gives an example photograph, in his Catching The Light:

That picture was created using laser light, which produces very sharp boundaries in the diffraction around the object blocking the light source; in his case, a human hand. Any other light source—e.g., the light reflecting from a plain white wall in the background—would simply produce a softer boundary around the object. Obviously, there is nothing special about using a "living hand" in the production of that diffraction pattern: an inanimate object such as a book or a pencil would work just as well.

The same is true, of course, of the "auras" which Brennan describes: Hold a pencil up against a white wall, and you will see exactly the same "aura" as you can see around your own hand.

Since those "colorless" or even "blue-tinted" "auras" can be photographed, they are not the product of the micromovement (i.e., the saccades) of our eyes. Rather, the phenomenon really exists in the physical world. There's just nothing at all paranormal about it.

So, Brennan is actually being unduly modest in claiming that only "about 95%" of people can see that supposedly lowest level of the human aura: Everyone with good eyesight can see it.

Susan Blackmore, in her book In Search of the Light, provides another explanation of the existence of such simple "auras," which is complementary to the (original, by Geoff) one given above:

[I]f you hold out your hand against a dark background and look at the space just beside the skin, you will begin to see a faint glow around it. Under some conditions it is possible to see colored halos and other more complex effects. If the fingers of two hands are pointed at each other and gradually brought together there comes a point at which the two auras seem to reach out and combine into one....

[T]he light skin against a dark background provides high contrast and good conditions for after-images. As the eyes move slightly but rapidly about (as they always do), an after-image builds up around the edge of the hand and produces a light blur. Colored after-images can also be formed.

Of course, if we can see these "auras" against both white and black backgrounds, any intermediate level of such contrast (and any background color) would also work, for producing a weighted mix of the aforementioned two visual effects.

There is at least one other contributing factor to at least some people's ability to see (non-paranormal) auras. By Dr. Jamie Wood:

A popular notion is that some people have a magical ability to detect the hidden emotions of others by seeing a colourful "aura" or energy field that they give off. Our study suggests a different interpretation. These colours do not reflect hidden energies being given off by other people, rather they are created entirely in the brain of the beholder....

Synesthesia is a condition found in 1 in 2000 people in which stimulation of one sense produces a response in one or more of the other senses. For example, people with synesthesia may experience shapes with tastes or smells with sounds. It is thought to originate in the brain and some scientists believe it might be caused by a cross-wiring in the brain, for example between centres involved in emotional processing and smell perception....

The ability of some people to see the coloured auras of others has held an important place in folklore and mysticism throughout the ages. Although many people claiming to have such powers could be charlatans, it is also conceivable that others are born with a gift of synesthesia.

Interestingly, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman may have exhibited a mild case of exactly that "gift." From his "What Do You Care What Other People Think?":

When I see equations, I see the letters in colors—I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.

Such an association of colors with numbers is indeed a form of synesthesia, as V. S. Ramachandran noted in his A Brief Tour Of Human Consciousness (p. 18-9):

Synesthesia, which appears to be genetically transmitted, results in a mingling of the senses. For example hearing a particular musical note might invoke a particular color: C sharp is red, F sharp is blue, etc. Visually perceived numbers can produce a similar effect: 5 might always be seen as red, 6 always green, 7 always indigo, 8 always yellow ... Synesthesia is surprisingly common, affecting about one in two hundred [sic] people.

Actress Sharon Stone—she of the Mensa-caliber IQ and exposed vulva—recently guested on Integral Naked.

She has also turned up in at least one long-past edition of Skeptical Inquirer. From which:

Another leading authority on cancer who recently made her findings known was actress Sharon Stone. She gave a talk to the National Press Club in Washington, titled "A Holistic Approach to the War on Cancer." She explained how she had cured herself of lymphoma, a particularly virulent type of cancer, by "a lot of positive thinking and a lot of holistic healing," and most especially by staying away from coffee. "When I stopped drinking coffee, ten days later, I had no tumors in any of my lymph glands," the actress reported. However, Richard Carlson, the president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who was listening to her talk with great incredulity, writes (The Washington Post, July 2, 1995) that Stone's publicist later admitted that the actress never had cancer, which makes one wonder why in the world Stone was giving this talk in the first place, and why she was given this forum.

Between that and her (now ex-) husband getting bitten on the toe by a "dragon," the woman truly does belong in Wilber World. Or thereabouts:

In the early 1990s, Stone became a member of the Church of Scientology. Stone remained with the religion until recently when she converted to Buddhism, after fellow actor Richard Gere introduced her to the Dalai Lama. She is an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church.

During her [2007 Emmy] acceptance speech, [Sally Field] started to make anti-war statements, which the producers quickly censored (she began to say, "If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no go..." after which the Fox producers of the broadcast (it aired uncensored on other countries) to cut to a silent shot of an LCD display ball suspended above the auditorium). Once her speech was concluded, the broadcast returned to the previous time-delayed "live" broadcast. What she said was—"Let's face it. If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no God-damned wars in the first place."

What a stupid, unapologetically sexist thing for her to say! (Margaret Thatcher, anyone? Yes, the Iron Lady was a Christian mother of twins.)

But, um, in general, in spite of the ability of women to start fights/conflicts just as well as men, Field is actually probably right about the war thing. From Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works (p. 515):

[Tooby and Cosmides] predict that men should be more willing to fight when their group is secure in food than when it is hungry, contrary to the protein-shortage hypothesis. The data bear them out. Another implication is that females should never have an interest in starting a war (even if they had weapons or allies that made up for their smaller size). The reason that females never evolved an appetite to band together and raid neighboring villages for husbands is that a woman's reproductive success is rarely limited by the number of available males, so any risk to her life while pursuing additional mates is a sheer loss in expected fitness. (Foraging women do, however, encourage men to fight in defense of the group and to avenge slain family members.) The theory also explains why in modern warfare most people are unwilling to send women into combat and feel morally outraged when women are casualties, even though no ethical argument makes a woman's life more precious than a man's. It is hard to shake the intuition that war is a game that benefits men (which was true for most of our evolutionary history), so they should bear the risks.

I kinda doubt that that's what Ms Field was referring to, though....

Ken Wilber, in his One Taste journals:

[A]nything interior is so utterly, radically, hideously alien to the liberal media that they could hardly discuss the topic [of Jean Houston teaching visualization exercises to Hillary Clinton] without snickering or choking.

Al Franken, in his Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them:

The right-wing media tells us constantly that the problem with the mainstream media is that it has a liberal bias. I don't think it does. But there are other, far more important, biases in the mainstream media than liberal or conservative ones. Most of these biases stem from something called "the profit motive"....

[T]o believe there is a liberal political bias in the mainstream media, you'd have to either not be paying attention or just be very susceptible to repetition.

James Randi, in his Swift newsletter:

Educated mainly in the humanities, thus lacking hard scientific training or savvy, and with the constant goal of finding the "perfect story" always applied to their backs, [the media] snatches at any and all scraps of propaganda that filter down to them from the heights above [i.e., from purported "real psychics"], gratefully embellishing and flavoring them before presenting them to the consumers below, in return for appropriate tribute, of course....

I've mentioned before the fact that the dozens of tests of power-of-prayer that are carried out every year, often at great cost, only produce a fraction of positive results, well within the expected range of error—but those are the results—the only results—that media editors choose to feature.

And from Jacqueline Deval, in her Publicize Your Book!:

The reporter's job ... is to get a good story for their readers. They are looking for angles in everything you say and do.

Geez, but if it just weren't for those "damned liberals," eh, Ken?

Avril Lavigne has done a (rather incredibly lame, scratchy, emotionless) cover of John Lennon's song "Imagine" ("Imagin8er"?), for the Amnesty International Instant Karma Darfur benefit CD.

One of the lines from that song is, of course, "Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can."

Didn't Lavigne and her punk-singer hubby just blow $9.5 million on a house in Bel-Air?

Maybe she meant, "Imagine my possessions...."

I wonder if you can: "8 bedrooms, 10.5 bathrooms, an office, elevator, a high-tech kitchen and a 10-car garage." Not bad for a blond Bel-Airhead.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one....

In his book How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker addresses a number of the widely accepted misconceptions of feminist thought and its "strange bedfellows," refuting them convincingly from an evolutionary psychology perspective. First, from page 57:

Many of us have been puzzled by the takeover of humanities departments by the doctrines of postmodernism, poststructuralism, and deconstructionism, according to which objectivity is impossible, meaning is self-contradictory, and reality is socially constructed. The motives become clearer when we consider typical statements like "Human beings have constructed and used gender—human beings can deconstruct and stop using gender," and "The heterosexual/homosexual binary is not in nature, but is socially constructed, and therefore deconstructable." Reality is denied to categories, knowledge, and the world itself so that reality can be denied to stereotypes of gender, race, and sexual orientation. The doctrine is basically a convoluted way of getting to the conclusion that oppression of women, gays, and minorities is bad. And the dichotomy between "in nature" and "socially constructed" shows a poverty of the imagination, because it omits a third alternative: that some categories are products of a complex mind designed to mesh with what is in nature.

From page 431:

The conventional wisdom of Marxists, academic feminists, and café intellectuals embraces some astonishing claims: that the nuclear family of husband, wife, and children is a historical aberration unknown in centuries past and in the non-Western world; that in primitive tribes marriage is uncommon and people are indiscriminately promiscuous and free of jealousy; that throughout history the bride and groom had no say in their marriage; that romantic love was invented by the troubadours of medieval Provence and consisted of the adulterous love of a knight for a married lady; that children used to be thought of as miniature adults; that in olden times children died so often that mothers were unaffected by the loss; that concern for one's children is a recent invention. These beliefs are false.

[Quantity of sexual partners and other] desires of gay men, like pornography, prostitutes, and attractive young partners, also mirror or exaggerate the desires of heterosexual men. (Incidentally, the fact that men's sexual wants are the same whether they are directed at women or directed at other men refutes the theory that they are instruments for oppressing women....)

[Men as long-term partners] subscribe to the infamous madonna-whore dichotomy, which divides the female sex into loose women, who may be dismissed as easy conquests, and coy women, who are valued as potential wives. This mentality is often called a symptom of misogyny, but it is the optimal genetic strategy for males of any species that invest in their offspring: mate with any female that will let you, but make sure your consort does not mate with any other male....

A bumper sticker from the 1970s [derived from a quote at least popularized, if possibly not originally invented, by Gloria Steinem] read: "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." But at least for women in foraging societies, that would have been an overstatement. When a foraging woman is pregnant, nursing, and bringing up children, she and the children are vulnerable to hunger, protein deficiency, predation, rape, kidnapping, and murder. Any man who fathers her children should be put to good use in feeding and protecting them....

Women with large salaries, postgraduate degrees, prestigious professions, and high self-esteem [who thus do not have to "marry up" in order to get access to the wealth and power typically held more by men] place a greater value on wealth and status in a husband than other women do. So do the leaders of feminist organizations. Poor men place no higher value on wealth or earning power in a wife than other men do....

Luxuriant hair is always pleasing, possibly because it shows not only current health but a record of health in the years before. Malnutrition and disease weaken the hair as it grows from the scalp, leaving a fragile spot in the shaft. Long hair implies a long history of good health....

Why are masculine-looking women less attractive? If a woman's face is masculinized, she probably has too much testosterone in her blood (a symptom of many diseases); if she has too much testosterone, she is likely to be infertile. Another explanation is that prettiness-detectors are really female-face detectors, designed to pick them out from every other object in the world and tuned to minimize the risk of a false alarm to a male face, which is the object most similar to a female face. The more unmanly the face, the louder the detector beeps. Similar engineering could explain why men with unfeminine faces are more handsome. A man with a large, angular jaw, a strong chin, and a prominent forehead and brow is undoubtedly an adult male with normal male hormones....

Aging lengthens and coarsens a woman's facial bones, and so do pregnancies. Therefore a small-jawed, light-boned face is a clue to four reproductive virtues: being female, having the right hormones, being young, not having been pregnant. The equation of youth and beauty is often blamed on America's being obsessed with youth, but by that reasoning every culture is obsessed with you. If anything, contemporary America is less youth-oriented.... Men's looks don't decline as quickly when they age, not because of a double standard in our society but because men's fertility doesn't decline as quickly when they age....

[V]ery fat women and very thin women are judged less attractive (and in fact they are less fertile), but there is a range of weights considered attractive, and shape (waist-to-hip ratio) is more important than size. The hoopla about thinness applies more to women who pose for other women than to women who pose for men. Twiggy and Kate Moss are fashion models, not pinups; Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield were pinups, not fashion models. Weight is a factor mostly in the competition among women for status in an age in which wealthy women are more likely to be slender than poor ones, a reversal of the usual relation....

In a world of five billion people there are bound to be women with wide feet and small heads, men with big ears and scrawny necks, and any other combination of body parts you want to specify. There may be a few thousand women with freakish combinations of small waists, flat abdomens, large firm breasts, and curved but medium-sized hips—optical illusions that send the needles of people's fertility and childlessness gauges into the red. When word gets around that they can parlay their freaky bodies into fame and fortune, they come out of the woodwork, and enhance their gifts with makeup, exercise, and glamour photography. The bodies seen in the beer commercials may be unlike anything seen in history....

Beauty is not, as some feminists have claimed, a conspiracy by men to objectify and oppress women. The really sexist societies drape women in chadors from head to foot. Throughout history the critics of beauty have been powerful men, religious leaders, sometimes older women, and doctors, who can always be counted on to say that the latest beauty craze is hazardous to women's health. The enthusiasts are women themselves. The explanation is simple economics and politics (though not the orthodox feminist analysis—quite insulting to women, incidentally—in which women are dupes who have been brainwashed into striving for something they don't want). Women in open societies want to look good because it gives them an edge in competing for husbands, status, and the attention of powerf