[lit-ideas] Re: Bears, oh my!

  • From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 21:45:24 -0500

The article wasn't about drug use or expanded consciousness ( or unexpanded 
consciousness), it was about the causes of Near Death Experiences.  The article 
argues that they're caused by glutamates or endorphins or a-endopsychosin and 
other chemicals produced BY THE BRAIN.  Maybe you might want to read the 
article again.  

Meditation and yoga might well result in mental and physical changes that 
expand (I prefer 'alter') our *awareness*" as you suggest, but they do so by 
causing chemical changes in the brain.  There's no reason to believe that 
ingesting psychotropic drugs won't have the same effect.  Drug use might be 
dangerous to your health and welfare, but to dismiss the ability of certain 
drugs to expand consciousness is just wrong.  It tells me that you haven't yet 
gotten your hands on the right drugs, that's all.  

 
Mike Geary
Memphis

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Andy 
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 8:17 PM
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Bears, oh my!


  This is so 70's.  Not that I have a problem with the 70's mind you (I love 
the less is more approach to life that lasted about five minutes in 1976).  
Drugs to expand consciousness might even be the 60's.  Maybe even Beats.  
Kerouac's big thing was get on the road and find yourself, and do drugs on the 
way.  As far as I'm concerned you can't outrun your head, and that's where all 
the action is.  Unfortunately, most of the action is unconscious.  To think 
that drugs "expand consciousness" is like saying that drinking makes one a 
better driver.  Ingesting cocaine, for example, is like firing a bazooka into 
the brain (Scientific American). It's funny how ideas are recycled over and 
over.  

  The mind/body connection is a different story.  Meditation and yoga can 
result in mental and physical changes that expand *awareness*.  Back in my 
piano playing days I remember one day doing scales and the repetitiveness put 
me into a meditative state (I never was able to recreate it after that), and 
suddenly an insight popped out of my unconsicous and into my awareness.  It 
startled me and I stopped playing.  It's like concentrating on the scales 
relaxed the guard to my unconscious and out flew something.  At the time I 
didn't know what to do with that insight and dealt with it much later.  (That 
incident goes with Dustin Hoffman's sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.)

  Some yogis are able to slow their hearts to suspended animation-like levels.  
But that's not the same as expanding consciousness, at least as I think this 
guy is claiming.



  Mike Geary <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
    >> There's so much we don't know.<<

    At last, we agree.

    You might find this article interesting: "The Ketamine Model of the Near 
Death Experience: A Central Role for the NMDA Receptor" by Karl Jansen.  
http://www.mindspring.com/~scottr/nde/jansen1.html

    It's very readable.  The author prefaces the article with a disclaimer: 'I 
am no longer as opposed to spritual explanations of these phenomena as this 
article would appear to suggest. Over the past two years (it is quite some time 
since I wrote it) I have moved more towards the views put forward by John Lilly 
and Stan Grof. Namely, that drugs and psychological disciplines such as 
meditation and yoga may render certain 'states' more accessible. The 
complication then becomes in defining just what we mean by 'states' and where 
they are located, if indeed location is an appropriate term at all. But the 
apparent emphasis on matter over mind contained within this particular article 
no longer accurately represents my attitudes. My forthcoming book 'Ketamine' 
will consider mystical issues from quite a different perspective, and will give 
a much stronger voice to those who see drugs as just another door to a space, 
and not as actually producing that space'. 

    A disclaimer that I find almost bizarre, but quaintly charming.

    Mike Geary
    Memphis   
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: Andy 
      To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
      Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 10:05 AM
      Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Bears, oh my!


      I'm really running late, but real quick, apparently when John Ashcroft 
was sick in the hospital he was doing very poorly.  He was very ashen, weak.  
Suddenly, he seemed to come back to life, as it were.  His color got better, he 
was alert, and so on.  That sounded like consciousness to me.  I'll get the 
source for you later if you're interested.  Maybe it was just an instanteous 
'remission' or something like that.  But maybe remissions are consciousness 
too.  There's so much we don't know.  



      Andy <min.erva@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
        Mike Geary <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
          >>And, since the near death experiences are so consistent, <<  

          Consistent across all cultures?  


          Andy:  Those that are reported, yes.  Even pre-cultural children.


          Mike:  During a particularly nasty episode, my father had to be 
'Harvey teamed' 13 times before the doctors could decide what was going on.  He 
said he never saw a light, never heard anyone calling him into the light, never 
felt bliss just a tightness in his chest and then good night, Irene, just empty 
darkness.

          Andy:  I do believe it.  Was he actually declared dead for a few 
minutes, as in no life activity at all?  But I do believe that people have had 
the experience as well.  That's why I wonder if it's not something in the 
brain, like a talent, that not everyone has.  That's what Dr. Parnia is 
studying, to determine what and when.  I wonder too, if people who have 
Alzheimer's for example, what happens to them?  It does sound all airy fairy, 
but there's a part of me that says there's really something in it.


          >>if the mind is the brain, and the brain is stopped and 
neurotransmitters aren't flowing, where is the consciousness coming from?<<

          Mike:  Brain activity doesn't stop instantaneously -- not unless you 
blow your brains out.  


          Andy:  But it probably doesn't go on for minutes at a time.  If it 
does, people are still reporting similar experiences across the board.  That 
says something.


          Mike:  I'll bet no one who's blown their brains out has returned to 
recount a 'near death experience.'  


          Andy:  To recount a death experience.


          Mike:  And how would anyone presume to know at what moment a 'near 
death experience' occurred?  Perhaps it occurred in the transitional moment 
between unconsciousness and consciousness and not while out there floating in 
the ether looking for the road to heaven. 



          Andy:  He's not presuming to know.  He's studying people who have 
been declared dead and returned.  This isn't a religious inquiry.


          >>Is there a separate "consciousness energy", in addition to kinetic 
or electrical or potential, that inhabits each living thing?<<

          Mike:  No.  There's only energy.  

          Andy:  Yes, and maybe it's a subclass not yet discovered.


          Mike:  There's no real definition of energy, it's a garbage word.  It 
means, "whatever it is that makes happen the world as we experience it"  


          Andy:  Exactly.  So why not consciousness energy?


          Mike:  Maybe it's all just God.  Move your finger -- there is God.  
Every heartbeat is God's doing.  Every fart, belch, sneeze, wretching, 
shitting, pissing -- all is God.  Fucking too, especially fucking, that takes a 
lot of God.


          Andy:  If it is, it's no God who's interested in this earth or 
anything on it.  Maybe God is just another way of saying energy.


          >>Regarding the actual near death scenario of the light and the bliss 
and all the rest of it, since it's so universal and even children as young as 
two describe it, I wonder if it's not something that's not programmed into our 
brains.<<

          Could be.  Or it could be flood of glutamate, overactivating NMDA 
receptors resulting in neuro ('excito') toxicity.  Who knows besides the Shadow?

          Andy:  Except brain activity was ceased when these experiences that 
the people saw were recounted.  Gotta go.  Talk to you later.


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