Science and Woo
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Throughout the inner journey, some have reported rainbow bodies, luminaries and other strange spooky stuff.
bioluminescence
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophoton
eye as quantum detector
http://phys.org/news/2009-09-physicists-human-eyes-quantum-effects.html
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-06/3/study-human-eyes-can-see-quantum-entanglement
few photon receptivity
http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-technology-probes-ultimate-limits-of-vision-1.17731
I am very wary of but also find value in both subjective experience and confirmation of for example the bodies electromagnetic field as a biological 'aura'. Part of the science was mentioned in another thread ... Are we through practice, enabling an evolutionary 'sixth sense' that many of us employ, whilst science investigates?
These more subtle awareness areas have been open to mystics, meditators, occultists etc for millennia. Personally I no longer find them spooky as I become aware of how they seem to be following a natural human and biological potential.
At the moment fir me, it is the heart or lotus centered 'empowerment' that seems prevalent. I find that looking too tightly and with expectations of entitlement, freezes their perception. They are subtle.
Any woo or science to share?
Comments
Very cool, thank you for this topic and your links.
Bioluminescence was somehow discovered by Tibetans hundreds of years ago. The category of their herbal remedies called "precious pills", which utilize the electromagnetic qualities of ground-up purified gemstones to restore health, is based on that. German and Austrian researchers investigated the precious pills back in the 80's or so, and discovered how the gemstone material interacted with the bioluminescence of the body's cells. A Tibetan doctor who brought the remedies to their attention referred to bioluminescent cells as "light bodies". Somehow, early Tibetan science was aware of this phenomenon, and devised medicines that would boost the energy of ailing cells.
A discussion of this by the European researchers can be seen in the film, "Knowledge of Healing", that details various aspects of Tibetan medicine. The sources for the statement in your linked article that say that reports that bioluminescence is involved in healing clearly haven't spoken to the researchers in the labs in Germany and Austria.
http://icarusfilms.com/new2004/know.html
I thought the PEAR research is interesting. It explores possible effects of consciousness on physics through human/machine interactions.
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/
This is perhaps more woo than science, but still interesting. A friend of mine has recently been very interested in radionics, which is the science (some would call it pseudoscience) of using electromagnetic waves to treat the human body. It's quite deep, looking at resonant frequencies and different strengths and waveforms. He's gotten himself quite a collection of generating machines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radionics
Some of the most interesting claims about radionics go back to a chap called Royal Rife, who said he found among other things a 'way to devitalise cancer cells'. Interestingly the whole pattern of behaviour of the medical establishment around his work somewhat resembles a conspiracy, in that it was never properly investigated or scientifically debunked.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rife
There may have been vested interests at work, because of course destroying pathogens with electromagnetic waves at certain frequencies is not a sellable medicine in pill-form, and so unlikely to benefit the pharmaceutical establishment...
When I read the latest theories and discoveries in science, I marvel at my ignorance. I am not a dumb guy. I received perfect grades in college physics and calculus. But that only meant I could memorize a bunch of rules and equations. I didn't understand then or now what the deep thinkers were talking about.
Science has reached the point where it requires a person to master a huge amount of knowledge before you have any clue as to what is and isn't nonsense. Even actual scientists who have mastered this knowledge and wrote the books on it struggle to get it right. So what chance do we dabblers have?
To put it in perspective, it wasn't until the 1920s that astronomers discovered some of those faint lights in the night sky were other galaxies. Up until then, we thought our local galaxy was all there is to the universe. Less than a hundred years ago. Now we know there are many billions of galaxies, many of them much larger than our own, but all composed of stars clumped together by gravity. So now we have an accurate picture of the universe?
But in the past 10 years, we were able to measure the mass of the galaxies and discovered they shouldn't exist. The stars in them should be getting flung into the void because there's not enough mass for gravity to hold them together. The missing mass that we still can't see or detect is being called "dark matter" for now. And we discovered something is pushing our universe apart so it's actually speeding up as it expands. We can't figure out what's causing it, so we call it "dark energy" for now.
And I don't have a clue how this could possibly work. I haven't mastered the huge amount of mathematics or knowledge required. This causes me to be suspicious of anyone who does claim to have some unique or unusual knowledge about the workings of the universe, unless they actually are a recognized authority in that field. It's easy to fool ourselves into thinking we understand something so vast and complicated.
I think it is a function of religion to fill the vast unknown with comforting ideas.
I have a friend, probably the smartest guy I know. Valedictorian, PHD from UCLA in astrophysics. I ask him about this stuff all the time and despite working in the field even he says it is hard to keep up.
With the rate of technology gain we have had even in the last 50 years, I can only guess as to what the world of science will look like 50 years from now. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't better not knowing.
Anywho... to Cinorjer's point. It makes me think of one of those scenes from the end of the "Men in Black" movies where the aliens are playing marbles with galaxies. haha
There is so much we don't know that, as the saying goes, "We don't know what we don't know."
Looking out, looking in from discovering that the Universe is even bigger or fuller than we thought to sub-sub-atomic particles to the bozon-hicks (sorry about the spelling), to....
'Auras' are, we are told, the electronic fields (our mini atmospheres) surrounding each individual.
We now know we are each a symbiotic mini mega world of macro and micro organisms, all interdependent upon each other.
The Universe has so much stuff and we have only begun to figure out maybe .0000001% of the apparent (known) stuff.
Life is our most intriguing mystery - we know so little and pretend to know so much.
Such marvelous paradoxes. How wonderful!
Peace to all
@Cinorjer
I remember first seeing the deep field photos from Hubble years ago, and how much it blew my mind to realize that all those specks weren't stars, they were galaxies. It still blows my mind.
I remember going out with the local astronomy club and being shown our neighbour galaxy Andromeda, which was like a small smudge in the telescope eyepiece. Wow!
But how then do we define a recognised authority based on that? I'm not shit stirring, I'm genuinely curious.
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Usually by looking at their career, what they've published and what organizations and universities, etc, they have worked with. In today's world, important new discoveries aren't made by a guy tinkering in his garage. Neither is there a maverick genius scientist that is going to prove the entire scientific world wrong with his brilliant discovery. It just doesn't happen. And the more a person tries to sell you on their genius discovery, the more certain it's hogwash. Real scientists let their work speak for itself.
For instance, the team researching the possibility of the Higgs Boson (God Particle) conducted a year's worth of experiments using the Hadron Collider before announcing their results. I have no doubt this is valid. Contrast that with Prof Wilhelm Reich who claimed to have discovered a new type of energy he called Orgone and insisted he was right in spite of the entire scientific community telling us he was wrong. He built cabinets people could sit in to soak up these Orgone rays that only he could detect.
Not a good example. Reich was a brilliant psychoanalyst who pioneered revolutionary new theory and methods for patient treatment that are still being used today. But in his later years, he went farther and farther out on a limb. So, as to Orgone, he wasn't a scientist, so that theory of his could be dismissed. But that doesn't mean that he was a charlatan all around.
I think you can expect from most scientists to have a decent grasp of the overview of science: physics to the atomic level, astrophysics to black holes and relativity, geophysics to tectonics, biology to bacteria, cell structure and basic genetics, some evolutionary theory, some economics, some psychology, some biosphere science.
But really to get into depth in any one field is a significant amount of work, and to be cutting edge you really need to be employed in that area. There are so many scientists generating so much new data that you need to spend significant time to stay current.
The most important skill is bullshit detection from basic principles, which is not easy while still staying open to new ideas. There are always things coming up at the edges of science, for example a little while ago there was a flurry of articles about the EM drive and the jury is still out on that one despite several university departments and NASA having tried to duplicate the original experiment.
I will agree on that, but it brings up another mistake people make. In Reich's case, as in many others, he had devoted followers who saw him as a genius. Yet being the best psychiatrist in the world doesn't make you a physicist. So you also have to look at what a person's actual education and training is in to see if they know what they're talking about. His case is fascinating both for the strange turn his life took and the many true believers who congregated around him.
Exactly. That's what I meant by saying his Orgone theory could be dismissed, because he was outside his area of expertise on that one. But also, you can see in the dynamic with his followers that there was a tendency to defend him no matter what; there were some aspects of a cultish following. It's too bad, because that sort of thing only provides more fodder for his critics. But he really did pioneer some brilliant concepts and some very helpful techniques. It just goes to show how situations, and people, are often not black-and-white, and require closer scrutiny and thoughtful analysis to arrive at a fair and accurate evaluation.
'Believe me', 'Trust me' and other Trump like sales techniques are no part of the discernment and independent thinking we can choose to employ.
Grown up understanding means taking a hard look at wishful/deluded interpretations and finding something more pragmatic and closer to reality.
Dharma gives us mind training that can be quite methodical and 'scientific'. It is why I don't get a weather forecast from an astrologer but why I do find confirmation of interior states from Buddhist exponents ...