Post: #1

I hadn't seen this before - pretty good.

New Science of Life

Glorious Accident Interview with Rupert Sheldrake

Post: #2

For anyone in London, he is speaking and I will try to go. He has a new book out in January, the "Science Delusion".

Post: #3

He was v good. Some links by Charlton wrt Sheldrake.

Post: #4

extract from "The Sense of Being Stared At".

Since he has done experimets with staring, and being stared at (and peripherally speaks about odours), I do want to ask him about whether he has looked at pheromones. It's just hard to explain the 'none head-snapping effect in just a few words till you have seen it.

Quote:Instead, there are complex patterns of activity in large populations of neurons. These patterns of activity can be detected either through brain imaging techniques, where different parts of the brain 'light up' as a result of the increased activity within them, or by measuring patterns of electrical activity through electrodes placed over the surface of the brain.

The neuroscientist Walter Freeman, at the University of California at Berkeley, has spent many years investigating these patterns of activity, especially in relation to the perception of smells. He and his colleagues have found that these patterns are not fixed, but change in accordance with the animal's experience. "Brain activity patterns are constantly dissolving, reforming, and changing, particularly in relation to one another. When an animal learns to respond to a new odour, there is a shift in all other patterns, even if they are not directly involved with the learning. There are no fixed representations, as there are in computers. There are only meanings".

Freeman argues that these meanings depend on intentions, which are often unconscious. He models the interpretation of meaning in terms of attractors, using the language of dynamics. He proproses that the activity of the brain is modified by meanings and intentions, precisely because it is chaotic, in the sense of chaos theory. "[B]rains are drenched in chaos".

My suggestion is that morphic fields help impose order and pattern on this sensitive chaos, and interact with the brain through their ordering activity. They contain an inherent memory, through morphic resonance. They also project out far beyond the brain through attention and intention.

Post: #5

This reminds me of a thought that's been stirring lately --

What do you suppose might be the long-term effect of prolonged exposure to superhuman quantities of pheromones (such as those all of us are using), both in terms of information processing and in terms of social consciousness?

Post: #6

(11-26-2011 8:59 PM)dbot Wrote:  This reminds me of a thought that's been stirring lately --

What do you suppose might be the long-term effect of prolonged exposure to superhuman quantities of pheromones (such as those all of us are using), both in terms of information processing and in terms of social consciousness?

we simply do not know, and i don't yet personally have so many inspired ideas about this.

tacitus, as you know, emphasized the social and emotional learning lessons an individual might gain from use of mones, and thought that exposure to high doses of mones might modulate his own natural output favourably. he did suggest using ultra-high doses, but only every few days.

when it comnes to the social effects of using high doses of mones, I was reminded of Sheldrake's account of how horses respond to traffic. one does read old accounts and see old films and can realize that there was once a real breakneck danger from horses being terrified by the motor car, with a risk of rider and passenger being thrown. but these days, even a horse that has never seen a motorized vehicle has a much attenuated fear of them.

maybe women are the same. the first time ever in the universe a woman encounters a man wearing 10x, 100x higher than natural doses of mones, what must be going through her head and body! but the more often this takes place, the more habituated the social organism must become to these high doses and outre combinations.

I personally am convinced that extraordinary reactions to mones have become less frequent for me. aging might explain some of it, but I don't think very much. less extraordinary reactions might not be a bad thing, since they were often a nuisance and interesting only for the novelty value.

perhaps also mone use leads even to the representative wearer becoming more attuned to group and interpersonal dynamics - perhaps even to telepathy and energetic flows. should this be so (or at least apply to a significant proportion of wearers) then one might imagine some general raising of social consciousness that might prove very positive given how stuck in overly technological, low body consciousness states we have become.

rising cleanliness led to rising honesty and falling self-deception. the mania for hygiene in the run up to the 1920s was not based upon utterly false foundations. but also less earthiness, less groundedness and maybe contributed to atomisation? does adding back pheromones get the best of both worlds?

Post: #7

When I think about my own level of social consciousness today versus this time last year, which was shortly after my interest in pheromones really heated up, I have to say I'm really amazed at how much I've learned and grown in such a relatively short period.

Now there have been other factors than pheromone use: consistent interaction with people in this community who are mostly totally obsessed with decoding social dynamics (), increased social contact-seeking behavior, and a lot of life stress/learning by necessity.

But my intuition is that by pushing the boundaries of whatever unconscious experiential modules are activated by this stuff, I am accelerating my own progress into a state of social wisdom.

On a biological level, I'm not really sure whether mone use is having an effect on my own pheromone production and output, but I suspect it must be downregulating my reactivity to the natural output of others. This could be seen as negative, since it may interfere with my intuitive (unconscious) social evaluations, but positive in the sense that it effectively frees me from instinctive responses which may be limiting.

Post: #8

(11-26-2011 9:41 PM)dbot Wrote:  When I think about my own level of social consciousness today versus this time last year, which was shortly after my interest in pheromones really heated up, I have to say I'm really amazed at how much I've learned and grown in such a relatively short period.

Now there have been other factors than pheromone use: consistent interaction with people in this community who are mostly totally obsessed with decoding social dynamics (), increased social contact-seeking behavior, and a lot of life stress/learning by necessity.

But my intuition is that by pushing the boundaries of whatever unconscious experiential modules are activated by this stuff, I am accelerating my own progress into a state of social wisdom.

On a biological level, I'm not really sure whether mone use is having an effect on my own pheromone production and output, but I suspect it must be downregulating my reactivity to the natural output of others. This could be seen as negative, since it may interfere with my intuitive (unconscious) social evaluations, but positive in the sense that it effectively frees me from instinctive responses which may be limiting.

Fascinating.

It seems to me that one can see morphic resonance in action - people who start now seem to pick things up very much more quickly than those who started say a decade (or several decades in the case of tacitus) back. The written knowledge base helps somewhat, but possibly that is not the only factor at work.

I suppose we are both still young enough that we would not be the obvious candidates to see a shift in our own natural mone output (whereas tacitus was in his 50s).

I agree that increasing one's behavioural choices is something to aim at.

Quote:consistent interaction with people in this community who are mostly totally obsessed with decoding social dynamics (),

are there any other forums or communities you have found helpful? at one stage, the pua stuff was pretty fascinating but somehow the animating spirit seems to have gone out of that community just as it reached mainstream consciousness.

are you an academic psychologist, or is your focus on seeing patients? have you considered publishing in this area?

Post: #9

I learned a good deal of valuable information from the PUA crowd at PheroTalk, but that info has its limits and can itself become limiting.

I've never managed to find a psychology or occult forum where I felt at ease. I'm working on getting one going myself

My training is in counseling and clinical psychology, but I am involved in some research as well and have some scientific publications and presentations under my belt. There are a number of studies I've got in mind relating the the effects of pheromone compounds on consciousness, but it'll be at least a couple of years before I'm in a position to get them going.

Post: #10