Art Bell

[SciFiAuthor]

having problems falling asleep can get frustrating.I get the vibration thing all the time, but just wait it out and go to sleep. Having insomnia, I'll try to get whatever sleep I can.

Funny thing is the silver cord. I've seen it. To some it's profound, to me it's just some anomaly the brain produces when it's not working right and perception is seriously off. It is not spiritual for me, it's just a malfunction.

[deadmeow]

Coaster, I read his first book in highschool, and thought it was interesting, never thought about it again.  Then a decade later I had a spontaneous OBE, and then a friend later on suggested I try to have one.

You have a special gift, you should try to use, even if just for fun.  For me, when I was able to deep meditate, I tried everything I could to induce them, including meditating in bed 3 to 5 hours, slow, slow breathing (tricking my body to think I was asleep), at the threshold or so, I would flash images or colors on my eyelids to make my body think I was going into a dream, just anything I could to get to that state, and you just get to the brink of it so easy. 

[coaster]

Funny thing is the silver cord. I've seen it. To some it's profound, to me it's just some anomaly the brain produces when it's not working right and perception is seriously off. It is not spiritual for me, it's just a malfunction.

I've seen it too. And I agree. I think its odd and kind of silly to say its anything other than that. Fascinating sure, but about as astral as my big toe.

[deadmeow]

I never saw a silver cord, but during my first OBE, I sat up out of my body, (my legs were stuck).  I did feel some gooey stuff between my non-physical back, and my body laying in bed.

In my out of body experiences in the physical world, I was always invisible, even if looking in the mirror.  If I went into an astral plane I had what seemed to be a normal body I could examine.  However, most of my experiences have been in the physical world.

[coaster]

Coaster, I read his first book in highschool, and thought it was interesting, never thought about it again.  Then a decade later I had a spontaneous OBE, and then a friend later on suggested I try to have one.

You have a special gift, you should try to use, even if just for fun.  For me, when I was able to deep meditate, I tried everything I could to induce them, including meditating in bed 3 to 5 hours, slow, slow breathing (tricking my body to think I was asleep), at the threshold or so, I would flash images or colors on my eyelids to make my body think I was going into a dream, just anything I could to get to that state, and you just get to the brink of it so easy.

The other night it happened. After a few nights battling insomnia. Sort of floated out and found myself floating upright above my bed. Then I shook it off and got a decent night sleep. Perhaps one night. I can get into that vibrational state within minutes of laying down, but again, being an insomniac, my brain and body need sleep.

[coaster]

I am not completly closeminded. I'll make it a point to experiment a bit next time it happens. Who knows.

[SciFiAuthor]

I've seen it too. And I agree. I think its odd and kind of silly to say its anything other than that. Fascinating sure, but about as astral as my big toe.

Imagine if we'd have concocted a narrative around it, wrote a book in the 90's and tried to sell it on the interview circuit. Cha Ching! 

[coaster]

I imagine a lot of "alien abductions" occur while people are in this hallucinatory obe state. I think this explains Whitley Strieber's visitors. He suffered from sleep paralysis and hypnopompic and hypnogogic hallucinations. Can be quite frightening if you are not expecting it.

[SciFiAuthor]

I imagine a lot of "alien abductions" occur while people are in this hallucinatory obe state. I think this explains Whitley Strieber's visitors. He suffered from sleep paralysis and hypnopompic and hypnogogic hallucinations. Can be quite frightening if you are not expecting it.

Not sure. Part of me says "novel author that ran out of ideas and went with the crazy to keep the bucks flowing" and the other part says "dude that doesn't know how to separate his hypnogogic dreams from reality". No idea which it is really, but when he bought into the bullshit "static drone" craze I started leaning towards the former. He went all "something wonderful is going to happen!" ripping Kubrick-Clarke off along with Moulton-Howe and now, a few years later, nothing wonderful has happened.

[pate]

...as we transition to a post-human civilization.

Yeah! It feels just right...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Brd1F1dQc

[pate]

...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5K3AKl5qpc

[Meister_000]

. . .

In which time-line or parallel-universe did you pick up your handbook of posting etiquette?  My approximation estimates;
- 8 or 9 contiguous screens of "stuff",  encompassing
- 19 discrete post replies, authored by
- 6 different individuals

and all that combined into one single mass mailing. Content aside, and in all seriousness, where on earth have you personally ever whitnessed such a thing before, and then took same as an acceptable model?

[nooryisawesome]

I imagine a lot of "alien abductions" occur while people are in this hallucinatory obe state. I think this explains Whitley Strieber's visitors. He suffered from sleep paralysis and hypnopompic and hypnogogic hallucinations. Can be quite frightening if you are not expecting it.

You think this would explain the probing aspect? Seems like a stretch.

[coaster]

You think this would explain the probing aspect? Seems like a stretch.

I think being probed by aliens seems like a stretch.

[deadmeow]

There are just too many people reporting abduction experiences.  The first time I heard about it, I read a book on it in the late 80's in highschool, by Budd Hopkins maybe it was.  I initially assumed these were bored housewives or women with low self esteem making up stories, till I read more on it years later. 

If you want to get to more tangible things, you can go to uforeportingcenter.com, Peter Davenport's site, and read hundreds of thousands of eye witness reports of UFO craft in the sky, many including nuts and bolts type solid metalic disc thingies.  They all can't be kooks and liars. 

There are just so many people that have had out of this world experiences, and we have much more information on this today thanks to the internet, but the ridicule factor still keeps most people tight lipped about their experiences. 

[BobGrau]

...Cha Ching Chunga!

[Lt.Uhura]

The either/or divisiveness here regarding empirical science vs metaphysics is familiar territory for me.  As someone who's worked as a nurse in the ER for nearly 4 decades, and championed the use of mind/body practices (yes! also in the ER), I've got a foot in both worlds.  I've done my best to try and bridge the gap.  It hasn't been easy, and I've encountered criticism from both camps...
From the Mind-Body people with whom I've studied:  "Western Medicine is poison!"  And from my own colleagues in the ER:  "Go try your voodoo on that one!" 

...Several years ago I cared for an elderly Native American male who was having an MI ("heart attack".)  Due to his advanced age and other risk factors, the doctors and family agreed he was not a candidate for the Cath Lab. The decision was made to treat him in the ER with medications to help dissolve the clot, and for pain.  Before leaving the room to get more medications I noticed his color was gray, and he looked gravely ill.  I couldn't have been gone more than 5-10 minutes, but returned to find the lights had been dimmed and a native ceremony started by his tribe's medicine man. Feathers and other talismans had been placed around my patient who was now sitting upright in bed, eyes closed, with a look of complete peace.  His color and vital signs were improving.  Meanwhile, his cardiologist stood by quietly writing admit orders while I administered the remaining medications.  The best of both worlds, I thought.

His survival that night would make an interesting case study.  Would he have died without Western Medicine?  How much did the mystical Native practices contribute to his survival?  Does it even matter?? 

Today, the use of Mind-Body practices in Western Medicine are generally accepted as harmless adjunctive, complimentary therapies.  Even those that remain unproven via empirical research are encouraged if patients report benefit, heal faster, get discharged sooner, etc.

[onan]

The either/or divisiveness here regarding empirical science vs metaphysics is familiar territory for me.  As someone who's worked as a nurse in the ER for nearly 4 decades, and championed the use of mind/body practices (yes! also in the ER), I've got a foot in both worlds.  I've done my best to try and bridge the gap.  It hasn't been easy, and I've encountered criticism from both camps...
From the Mind-Body people with whom I've studied:  "Western Medicine is poison!"  And from my own colleagues in the ER:  "Go try your voodoo on that one!" 

...Several years ago I cared for an elderly Native American male who was having an MI ("heart attack".)  Due to his advanced age and other risk factors, the doctors and family agreed he was not a candidate for the Cath Lab. The decision was made to treat him in the ER with medications to help dissolve the clot, and for pain.  Before leaving the room to get more medications I noticed his color was gray, and he looked gravely ill.  I couldn't have been gone more than 5-10 minutes, but returned to find the lights had been dimmed and a native ceremony started by his tribe's medicine man. Feathers and other talismans had been placed around my patient who was now sitting upright in bed, eyes closed, with a look of complete peace.  His color and vital signs were improving.  Meanwhile, his cardiologist stood by quietly writing admit orders while I administered the remaining medications.  The best of both worlds, I thought.

His survival that night would make an interesting case study.  Would he have died without Western Medicine?  How much did the mystical Native practices contribute to his survival?  Does it even matter?? 

Today, the use of Mind-Body practices in Western Medicine are generally accepted as harmless adjunctive, complimentary therapies.  Even those that remain unproven via empirical research are encouraged if patients report benefit, heal faster, get discharged sooner, etc.

Can we at least draw some respectable boundaries? Or are you ok with psychic surgery? Ever tried to speak about alternative realities to a paranoid schizophrenic?

[Lt.Uhura]

Can we at least draw some respectable boundaries? Or are you ok with psychic surgery? Ever tried to speak about alternative realities to a paranoid schizophrenic?

Respectable boundaries?  Out of organized chaos?  Lol.  Yes, I speak to PS patients regularly.  Most recently I tried to convince a patient who was certain he had been poisoned by someone that it wasn't true.  Handed him a copy of his negative urine drug screen.  He suspected the results had been switched, or tampered with.

The real is often surreal in the ER.  As we say, "You can't make this shit up." 

[Chronaut]

Chronaut, I think we do agree. The empirical sciences are certainly useful in cataloguing and describing the more denser realities....so they certainly have a very important purpose. As does all of physical reality, which serves to complete the cycle and act like an engine for advancement. Where I have an issue with science is in it's zealous worship and ability to close the mind to all else. Really, in the timeline of history and learned wisdom science is 'the new kid on the block' and it tries so very hard to convince everyone that it is an old master. I've seen the 'grasping at science' ruin and close many curious minds. Sad, really...there is so very much more to reality.

It does strike me as quite peculiar that we actually have to remind one another that the entire scope of human existence that hasn’t been reduced to particles and energy fields is an enormous and significant subject for investigation and exploration.  I don’t blame science for this weird denial of all things interior though, any more than I blame Jesus for all the murders committed in his name.  It’s a cultural flaw, not an intrinsic flaw in the scientific method.  In fact I think that science will one day help us understand the nature of consciousness and the experience of awakening.  And as that day approaches, I expect we’ll find that the union of physics and metaphysics will liberate humanity in inconceivable new ways.  For example â€" consider the prospect of a technology which could help people witness reality through the eyes of the Buddhas and Christs â€" the transformative power of such an achievement would instantly trigger a staggering global revolution in human consciousness.  I hope that the process of integration begins in earnest soon, because we’re approaching the threshold to the stars, and it would be a crushing defeat to lose all of the progress we’ve made over the last few millennia because we neglected to understand the secret potential of human consciousness â€" our defining attribute.

Perhaps it is a problem to be resolved through post-humanism, as SciFiAuthor suggested.  But I’d like to see an era of humanism first, and see how far that gets us before we start drilling holes in our skulls to become more machine-like.

Conan’s Prayer to Crom

Haha â€" I have no idea why you posted this, but it’s damn fine entertainment ;

Content aside, and in all seriousness, where on earth have you personally ever whitnessed such a thing before, and then took same as an acceptable model?

I figured it’s easier to skip one big message, than wade through a series of messages broken up by each individual commentator.   Eh, it’s still a free country, they say.

[SredniVashtar]

Organized religion at any scale is simply a cult; we can agree on that much.  Your mistake is “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”  If you look at the key figure at the heart of nearly any religion, you’ll find a mystic who experienced a state of full consciousness.  What they had to say is of indispensable value.  Unfortunately, their words are almost always terribly mangled by “followers” who failed to understand their meaning, weaponized them, and then subjugated others for personal gain by cloaking their often murderous acts in stolen words of insight.  It’s appalling.  But they’re two different phenomena;  the experiencer and the following, and it’s erroneous to conflate them.

Or. is it not more likely that you will find a neurotic undergoing a psychotic episode? Even CS Lewis was prepared to admit that if Jesus had not been divine then much of his conduct and preaching was wicked. I don't hear many people talk about Jesus's exhortation to take no thought for the morrow, for example, which was clearly nonsense. I think we can look at religious figures in the light of scientific research and conclude that most of them were experiencing mental crises of some kind - e.g, Joan of Arc, Mohammed, George Fox, Teresa of Avila, and many more - that could have been treated today, in a less priest-ridden environment. There is a tendency, particularly in backward places like Russia, to confuse weird behaviour with some sort of authentic holiness. They might say startling (occasionally insightful) things, but would be better off being given sympathy and understanding rather than having their delusions indulged.

if ten scientists performed the same metaphysical experiment in the same way and under the same conditions, all ten would report independent verification of the phenomenon in question.

Significant use of the 'if' there! I don't know how you could set up an experiment like that in such a way that it would satisfy a sceptic. It's not uncommon for groups of people to experience similar delusions - it's not sufficient reason to believe them on that basis.

Please try to read the above statement as if you were reading someone else’s words, and consider it again with objectivity.  Because it’s very telling.  Barring any evidence either way, you assert that your personal bias “it was a hallucination” is more credible than Art’s testimony “it wasn’t a hallucination.”  Why should we believe you, and not Art?

In all these sorts of things, the onus must be on the 'experiencer' to demonstrate that it has some objective validity. If they can't do that then it must be the default position to doubt it. You have two options here: conclude that the physical laws of the universe, as we understand them, have been suspended in their favour; or, alternatively, that they have made a, perfectly innocent, mistake. Otherwise, what's to stop Obama coming out today and telling us that God told him to nuke France? Is he telling the truth? Is it possibly a delusion? I know which one I would opt for, and so do you if you have any honesty about you.

There is a prevailing model:  the reductionist model that presumes that consciousness is generated by the brain, and wholly confined to the region of the skull.  Great advances have been made working under that assumption, and we now know all kinds of fascinating things about brain structure, neurology, and to a somewhat lesser extent, psychology and brain chemistry.  However, science still hasn’t established the true nature of consciousness, and a very different and ancient model is still in the running:  the animistic concept of consciousness.  Consciousness may be a universal field of some kind, and the brain may be a kind of radio receiver that tunes in to that field, acting as a kind of conduit between the field and physical reality so that we can act within it.  This shouldn’t seem as strange today as it once did - we now know of all kinds of fields pervading the universe; electromagnetic fields, gravitational fields, the recently-confirmed Higgs field, and by most interpretations of quantum mechanics a field of Lorentz-invariant vacuum fluctuations.

No, but we our doing our best to get there, and perhaps we will in the end. I think invoking some of the things you have done here is a bit slippery, to be honest, when using that to justify Metaphysics. This discussion kicked off because RoseGirl arbitrarily claimed authority for all sorts of unprovable assumptions about the physical world which flatly contradicts all that science has established so far, purely because 'she done seen it'. It's not good enough unless you are going to back it up with something, I don't care how many newspapers publish that piffle.

You lost me here â€" I absolutely love logic, science, experimentation, analytical reasoning, and informed debates on just about any subject.  I think that it’s tragic that somehow “mysticism” and “irrationality” have been woven together in our cultural mindset.

Myth and mysticism can be a very useful means to explain difficult concepts in a memorable way. We can talk about something like Indra's Net without having to believe that we are actually living in a spider's web. It betrays a lack of sophistication to believe that all these things are literally true rather than subtle symbology. I think that is pretty clear in the way that some people on here get their feathers ruffled whenever they are challenged on something. People who are the biggest believers of this sort of stuff are terrified of being caught out and need to draw a veil over it to preserve any sort of spurious legitimacy, or they are sunk. Words like 'logic' are like garlic to a vampire in any discussions with them, and they retreat into the sort of childish nonsense we have seen over the last few pages. Frankly, posting a lengthy precis of your accomplishments to justify your views is about as embarrassing as it gets.

[wr250]

frankly this whole discussion belongs in the politics forum. kthnxbia

[onan]

Respectable boundaries?  Out of organized chaos?  Lol.  Yes, I speak to PS patients regularly.  Most recently I tried to convince a patient who was certain he had been poisoned by someone that it wasn't true.  Handed him a copy of his negative urine drug screen.  He suspected the results had been switched, or tampered with.

The real is often surreal in the ER.  As we say, "You can't make this shit up."

I worked in a psychiatric ER for close to three years. I agree it is often surreal. My comment about boundaries was to elicit some practical approach to treatment. In an emergency room, time doesn't allow for therapies that are long in practice. I am quite sure no one is allowed to practice psychic surgery. And if a patient is responding to therapeutic touch, I am pretty certain their stay in the emergency room is shortened dramatically. None of that precludes respecting a patients wishes. But again in an emergency room, at least from my experience, not a great deal of time is spent searching for metaphysical treatments.

[DesertFox]

Frankly a fundamentalist atheist and a fundamentalist believer both tend to be obnoxious...at least those who are pushy about it.  When you get into metaphysics there is no undeniable knowledge that humans are privy to.

[Yorkshire pud]

frankly this whole discussion belongs in the politics forum. kthnxbia

Not enough 'Isn't AB a god?' comments? Hmmm. Maybe.

[wr250]

Not enough 'Isn't AB a god?' comments? Hmmm. Maybe.

all hail Art Bell, and his son MV

[SredniVashtar]

all hail Art Bell, and his son MV

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Falkie...

Amen!

[SredniVashtar]

Did you watch the video? It`s all about science.

Look, science is the best friend of Christianity! It seems every year, more and more, science proves the existence of God. I think it`s rather exciting.

I don't think your boy Schroeder is all that interested in Christianity - I'm sure he could come up with all sorts of flim-flam to prove the parting of the Red Sea, but slightly less commentary on the raising of Lazarus. If you are driven by ideology then you tend to get the results you were expecting, don't you? I except a Muslim scientist would come up with something similar that was hatched out of his peculiar belief system. I don't see that video as anything more than a headline that says, 'Jewish Scientist Proves What He Believed All Along Shock!'.

[PB the Deplorable]

Not enough 'Isn't AB a god?' comments? Hmmm. Maybe.

See what happens around here when Art doesn't do a show for a couple days

[WildCard]

"However, science still hasn’t established the true nature of consciousness,"
-Chronaut

No, but we our doing our best to get there, and perhaps we will in the end.

Some of us. People like B. F. Skinner were content to label it an epiphenomenon and move on. But it's fundamental. It's the context for everything we experience.

"I think, therefore I am", may be the stupidest thing ever said.
Really? You think? Do you also grow your hair and beat your heart? If you're doing it, you should be able to stop, right? For a minute or, at least, a few seconds.

The science on the benefits of meditaion is pretty conclusive. Knowing what we know, it's just primitive that we don't teach pre-schoolers to meditate.

Myth and mysticism can be a very useful means to explain difficult concepts in a memorable way. We can talk about something like Indra's Net without having to believe that we are actually living in a spider's web. It betrays a lack of sophistication to believe that all these things are literally true rather than subtle symbology.

+1