The Sage Age Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Consciousness’

A recent Op-Ed in NewScientist Magazine demonstrates the controversy and struggle faced by all who are trying to understand the implications of recent advancements in neuroscience and its claim to be measuring the source of consciousness.

At this moment, there are two philosophical paradigms vying for dominance. They’ve both around since antiquity and have traded places over and over as the accepted working theory of the time. The first is material realism. The basic tenet is that matter is primary. As that concerns thought energy, it means that the brain is primary and thought is an epiphenomena of the brain. In other words, without a physical processing center, there is no thought.

The other philosophy has gone by many names and is in the process of being renamed again, but the basic tenant is that consciousness is the basis of all. Now, with material realism, quantum physics has shown that energy is as primal as matter, but the focus is still pretty much on matter. With consciousness as the basis of all, both matter and energy are epiphenomenon of it.

These are the two philosophies primarily behind the controversy of advancements in neuroscience being equated with honing  our ability to measure the manifestation of consciousness.

With material realism, the idea is that thought arises from the rapid and parallel processing occurring in the brain that eventually forms a cohesive, coherent thought.

Using the consciousness philosophy as the dominant theory, brain activity is seen as measuring the shadow of thought energy. That energy intersects the physical realm through a physical processing center. Some use the analogy of a radio broadcast to illuminate this idea. The broadcast signal is always present, but unless a receiver is on and tuned to that station, or frequency, it cannot receive the information.

One of the issues that drives the controversy between the two philosophies is the either/or Hellenistic way of thinking that has permeated all of Western culture since the rise of the ancient Greek civilization. With this view, there can only be one way that thought energy occurs. Another issue that fuels the fire is the pop-culture preference for simple answers.

Is it possible that we can reach a compromise and state that thought is a dynamic process that arises in the brain from two sources? Can we both receive and create thought energy simultaneously? That paradigm is easy to accept if you are inclined to view an entity as a function of mind, body, and spirit. It’s not so easy to accept if you are tasked with developing practical applications that pinpoint certain areas of the brain. Advancements in this area are bringing great hope to quadriplegics and amputees with the creation of mind-to-machine interfaces that help them manipulate physical objects and reconnect with the world by some form of interaction.

But, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about these promising experiments. I’ve read articles in e-zines that cater to intuitives espousing them as mind-over-matter. No such thing is happening. That would require some form of telepathy. At all times the subject is hard-wired to the physical thing that it is influencing. Even if no wires are involved, it’s like the difference in a corded phone and a blue tooth on a cell phone. It’s still considered a direct-connect system, not through-the-ether telepathy.

I’ve also read articles that this is some breakthrough in thought because the person using the device has to think differently. No more so than someone who has suffered a stroke has to think differently to learn to walk or talk again. They are simply re-wiring their brain around damaged areas to make new connections that control motor skills.

The only new things we have here are the ability to pinpoint certain areas of the brain with great precision and a better understanding of the true plasticity of the brain. With the rise of dementia, that’s getting a lot of attention these days.

A clear understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of these opinions will help us to better understand them so we won’t confuse the map for the territory. In other words, it will help us get past the novelty of the model and see it for what it promises to become, as well as its limitations.

In the first and second installments of this series, we looked at how REG devices were used to measure both an individual’s focused intent and the focused attention of global consciousness. In Part 3 we discovered why this experimental model is inadequate for studying the effect of energy healing. In this post we’ll explore why controlled experiments rarely display the dramatic results often encountered in real-life situations.

The data gathered in the PEAR, Global Consciousness Project (GPC), and other such studies has shown irrefutable proof that some phenomena is at work that cannot yet be accounted for by physics as it is currently understood. In other words, even with all of the experimental evidence based on quantum theory, we still have an incomplete understanding of reality, scientifically speaking.

These controlled studies often produce results that are only slightly above random. While that may not sound like much to a lay person, it gets the full attention of statisticians. Keep in mind that quantum physics is built entirely on the work of theoretical mathematicians such as Einstein. Statistics matter.

Both the PEAR and GPC data is based on the statistical deviation of a REG device as affected by an individual or group of “senders.” This model is significantly different from an experiment where two individuals are coupled to a common goal.

The bottom line is, a REG device does not care whether it spits out ones or zeros and the sender of the intent will not have their life turned upside down if the target is not reached. A mother with an endangered child both care about the outcome in a very intense way. When real need comes into play everything changes.

Countless books and videos are filled with stories of miraculous recoveries from danger and illness. In scientific terms, such incidents are considered anecdotal at best because there is no way to independently verify what single action brought about the final result.

Dramatic results like these are nearly impossible to reproduce in a lab. Consider this story. There is a car wreck and a bystander sees a baby trapped in one of the cars that is on fire. He rips through the tangled, bent metal as if it was plastic and retrieves the infant just before the car explodes. Even though he produced what seemed like super-human strength in that moment, he would be hard pressed to reproduce it under normal, or controlled conditions.

The sciences of physics and biology write off this scenario as the bystander’s physical reaction to his body being flooded with adrenaline. But, no such explanation exists for when a mother knows that her child has been harmed and needs “rescuing” only to find out later that the child was involved in the car wreck 100 miles away. And, there is no pardon for a one-time-only psychic event such as this in the mother’s life. The expectation is that she can reproduce this connection at will under controlled conditions.

The fact is, need, desire, and intent all play heavily into how our consciousness affects reality. These factors simply do not exist to the same heightened degree during lab experiments. So, in many ways, science is gathering data out of context. This is considered akin to “studying the cadaver.” In other words, biology only made so many gains by studying the anatomy of a cadaver. To advance, at some point they had to begin applying that knowledge to a living system.

The good news is that systems theory is gaining popularity among all branches of science. In ecology, for example, it was no longer enough to study just the animals and/or plants in a region. It became evident that studying how they interacted together was the only way to develop a real understanding of the whole.

With studying focused intent, it is also becoming evident that caring counts and new experiments must accommodate ways to include this fact. We are at a point where we are realizing that simply reading statistics from a baseball game without ever having seen a game is no longer a valid way to study what is happening. The emotional content of the game playing out is a significant factor in the whole endeavor.

The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom, was featured in Publishers Weekly shortly after its debut. Visit www.SageAge.net for more information and to read articles on many of the topics covered in the book.

In the first and second installments of this series, we looked at how REG devices were used to measure both an individual’s focused intent and the focused attention of global consciousness. In today’s post we are going to cover why this experimental model is inadequate for studying the effect of energy healing.

What physics can’t accurately measure, physics can’t study with great precision. That is the limit of physics, but not the limit of reality. One of the most frustrating aspects of setting up experiments to show the effectiveness of energy healing is the ability to accurately assess and measure both the intent of the healer and the affect on the receiver.

The bottom line on this problem comes down to two types of questions, with variations depending on the experiment. Those basic questions are: 1) How do you measure a dose of prayer, and 2) Do you feel better after having received it?
Countless experiments have been conducted over the last forty years in an attempt to set up a controlled environment in which data can be gathered and analyzed to show whether or not energy healing has any real effect.

One of the aspects of a controlled experiment is to compare data between at least one test group that receives the healing that is being studied and a control group that only receives standard care. In all such studies, the statistical norm for the placebo, or power-of-belief effect is known to be established at 35%. This means that a study showing healing among the test group must first discount 35% of the positive results due to the placebo effect. The same 35% must be deducted from the control group. The odd thing about all of this is that to gather statistical data for analysis, a full one-third of those who had positive results in each group must be discounted. That begs the question about priorities. Is the point to heal, by whatever means, or to discount something known to heal? If the placebo effect statistically brings some favorable results, why not include it as standard treatment in addition to any other treatment delivered? After all, it has no ill side effects.

Another statistical bane for these studies is accurately measuring how much better someone feels after receiving treatment. In many cases this measurement is anecdotal, meaning that it is somewhat subjective in nature. If the patient was in pain, for example, they may be asked to assign a number to their pain level both before and after treatment. Considering that everyone’s pain threshold is different, there is no way to absolutely quantify the result stated.

One of the biggest hurdles faced in these types of studies also lies with the significant paradigm difference in allopathic and energetic healing models. In allopathic treatment, for example, a pill is given with the expectation of quickly relieving the physical symptoms and/or affecting remission of the underlying physical cause. Energetic healing primarily deals with the underlying cause, which may be rooted in the psychological or emotional state of the patient. The illness is considered a physical manifestation of an unbalanced energy state and not, in and of itself, the problem.

Energy healing often takes time to bring about a real cure. As most any energy healer can attest, instantaneous healing is atypical. In fact, the first few visits with an energy healer may only result in reframing the mindset of the patient to receive healing, take responsibility for their own health, and become willing to have the root cause surface. This is especially true if they are uneducated in energy work in general and are fully indoctrinated to allopathic expectations of something outside of them, be it a doctor or a drug, bringing about the relief of symptoms.

In effect, energy healing studies are being conducted on a model that does not suit the real conditions in play. In other words, they are comparing apples to oranges while maintaining that fruit is fruit and healing is healing.

In the last installment of this series, we’ll have a look at why controlled studies of energy healing and focused intent do not usually display the dramatic results found in everyday life.

The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom, was featured in Publishers Weekly shortly after its debut. Visit www.SageAge.net for more information and to read articles on many of the topics covered in the book.