Project Trinity: I-I, SDi, Neurotechnology

Consciousness in a Single Atom?

In this Tricycle web exclusive, scholar B. Allan Wallace responds to George Johnson's New York Times review of the Dalai Lama's new book The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.

[via] Short but good read. Allan takes a more "integral" route in defense of the tetrameshing nature of consciousness.

Scientists have established that specific neural processes are necessary for producing specific conscious mental processes in humans and some other animals. In this way, correlations have been identified between brain and mind processes. Brain processes are detected with the third-person methods of biology, but mental processes are directly observed only by means of the first-person perspectives of individuals introspectively monitoring their own states of consciousness. This evidence proves that certain neural processes are necessary for producing specific mental events in humans, but not that they are sufficient causes of consciousness, nor does this indicate that consciousness itself is a physical phenomenon. Moreover, while many scientists believe that mental phenomena are emergent properties of brain, no one has ever objectively measured any mental event emerging from the brain, so that, too, remains an untested hypothesis that can be taken for the time being only on faith.

Science and Spirit in Search of Common Ground

WIE Unbound interviews Andrew Newberg (via).

"...if I get a brain scan of a Franciscan nun who has the experience of being in the presence of God, I can tell you what her brain is doing during the experience, but I can't tell you whether or not God was really there, and that the experience really represented a true reality. The neuroscience doesn't answer that epistomilogical question, and it is equally valid based on a scan result to say that the Nun created the experience, or that God was there, and this is how the brain responded to the experience."

The nature of the "common ground" seems to be open-ended. As one famous non-dual mystic had declared,

"there is neither creation nor destruction,
neither destiny nor free-will;
neither path nor achievement;
this is the final truth."

Integral Operating System Version 1.0: A Multi-modal Platform for the Soul

For many thousands of readers, Ken Wilber has provided a model that actually makes sense of life and the universe. After spending decades streamlining this model into a concise, accessible form, Ken has finally created the ideal tool for sparking an immediate revolution of mind and spirit—The Integral Operating System. With this multi-modal "platform for the soul," users will learn how to see the world with a whole new level of understanding and philosophical sophistication.

At last, KW's Integral philosophy is getting on the techspeak bandwagon. Integral Operating System is really a cool techno metaphor for describing how AQAL can blow your mind away once you've downloaded its tenets. However, for tech junkies, I think that the OS metapor was already obsolete as soon as it was released. There was a time when I thought that a better tech metapor is Hyper-IOS. But now I think even that is bound for obsolescence very soon. Moving forward, I think that Integral should just stick with the hyperlink metaphor rather than an OS like Windows. It's more hip, not as techie as an operating system, and it is the single most important strand transcluding the Web.

Now some people would argue that hyperlink is an interconnected flatland version since all hyperlinks are created equal. Think again. Yes, the internal representation of hyperlinks are all created equal, but we create the ranking. Thanks to PageRank, Open Source, web services/APIs, and the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, we are becoming the Web's operating system, giving life and intelligence to a Machine with a "perfect search, total recall", and which is always already on.

WIE: Is God All In Your Head?

"Perhaps the most promising and ultimately satisfying theories are the integral ones that acknowledge the essential reality of different levels and dimensions of existence, allowing interiors and exteriors, consciousness and matter, to be seen as different sides of the same event, neither reducible to the other. Where mind and brain are concerned, however, even the most integral theories have thus far been unable to explain how the two interconnect, leaving the mind/body problem a mystery for another day." - WIE: Is God All In Your Head

In the latest issue of What Is Enlightement? -- Who Are You? Science's quest to solve the mystery of consciousness, Craig Hamilton interviewed a number of leading-edge scientists (including parasychologists), and theorists, who are working on the the hardest problems known to man: consciousness and the brain-mind interconnection.

Brain Hacks

Good resources on hacking your brain put together in one neat post. (via)

This entire area of brain hacks is going to continue to accelerate. Imagine competing with someone for a job that has hacked their brain and is significantly more alert, has much more energy, is happier and more optimistic and needs A LOT less sleep than you.

AVS (auditory / visual stimulation) Journals Are Free

Sweet.

All AVS Journals are FREE. Now you can learn what is currently happening in the light and sound community, along with reading about the latest products to hit the market, without having to spend a cent. It is the AVS Journal way of helping you, our website visitors, maximize your understanding of AVS / light and sound technology in the most cost-effective manner possible.

OOBE (Not Out of Brain Experiences)

Why does awareness have to be reduced into the gray matter between our ears? Well, it's a good place to start. (via)

The spatial unity of self and body is challenged by various philosophical considerations and several phenomena, perhaps most notoriously the "out-of-body experience" (OBE) during which one's visual perspective and one's self are experienced to have departed from their habitual position within one's body. Although researchers started examining isolated aspects of the self, the neurocognitive processes of OBEs have not been investigated experimentally to further our understanding of the self. With the use of evoked potential mapping, we show the selective activation of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) at 330-400 ms after stimulus onset when healthy volunteers imagined themselves in the position and visual perspective that generally are reported by people experiencing spontaneous OBEs.
- Journal of Neuroscience

On Living Forever

Aubrey de Grey interview on MIT Technology Review (via).

If there were such objections, they would certainly count in this argument. What does count is that the right to live as long as you choose is the world’s most fundamental right. And this is not something I’m ordaining. This seems to be something that all moral codes, religious or secu­lar, seem to agree on: that the right to life is the most important right.
...
It’s an incremental thing. It’s not a question of how long life should be, but whether the end of life should be hastened by action or inaction.

TIME: The Biology of JOY

In the special issue of TIME on The New Science of Happiness, Richard Davidson hooked up a Tibetan monk with electrodes.

Davidson's excitement is all the more more significant because he's known by colleagues as the king of happiness research.... But even for someone with his experience, watching the brain crackle with activity as a person entered a trancelike state was unprecedented. It made clear, says Davidson, who published the research study in the Proceedings of National Acedemy of Sciences last fall, that happiness isn't just a vague, ineffable feeling; it's a physical state of the brain--one that you can induce deliberately.
....
That raises the chicken-and-egg question of whether the prefrontal cortex creates the sensation of happiness or whether it merely reflects one's more general emotional state. Davidson thinks the answer is both: "We're confident that this part of the brain is a proximal cause of at least certain kinds of happiness." That suggests some people are genetically predisposed to be happy by virtue of their busy prefrontal cortexes, and research in infants confirms it. Davidson measured left prefrontal activity in babies less than a year old and then subjected them to a test in which their mothers left the room breifly. "Some babies will just cry hysterically the instant the mom leaves," he says. "Others are more resilient." it turns out that the babies with the higher left prefrontal activity ar the ones who don't ctry. "We were actually able to predict which infants would cry in response to that brief but significant stress."

In short, as parents know instinctively, some babies are just born happy.

Michael Hutchison On Holosync

There's a thread on Integral Naked where one member posted an interesting e-mail from Michael Hutchison regarding the use of Holosync. (google links were added for convenience.)

I have much to say about the holo sync process, none of it good. Among other things I suggest you look up on internet such words as Beta brain waves head injury brain damage (that would be one search) and also kindling effect brain. Also brain wave hypersynchrony and brain damage. these are just a few the starting points....

A summarized response was posted by another forum member based on his conversation with Centerpointe (creators of Holosync).

....
1. On Hutchison's email: They have heard about Hutchison's comments from a number of people and are mystified since Michael had been a supporter of binaural beat technologies in the past. They are trying to reach him to have a conversation about this.

2. On the matter of "kindling" and "hypersynchronicity": Holosynch has not received a single medical complaint that the use of their tapes caused these type of medical conditions. They are willing to provide a signed letter to vouch for this since there have been a number of insinuations that Holosync know more about this problem than they let on. Also, as a commercial enterprise they would expect an investigation from the FDA if any such concern had been aired by a physician or psychiatrist treating a patient.
....

DISCLOSURE: As a user of Holosync (Level 1 only) I was at first concerned when I've read Mr. Hutchison's e-mail. Ironically, one of the reasons I started experimenting with brain-mind machines was because I've read Mr. Hutchison's classic book, Megabrain. Centerpointe's response seemed sincere and professional, yet I would still like to hear from scientists/neuroscientists who have extensive background on this subject-matter so I can form a more informed opinion.