EVE General Discussion

Where can I learn about crystals?

I don't know much about crystals....But I can sell you this magnet!

Wear it as a wristband and it will align your blood cells harmoniously

Pluto is still in capricorn.

Well, chopper, you did go to the lengths of calling my values anti-human. Perhaps that's not exactly indicative of you attempting to open the lines of communication.

As for not being wrong, I tried my best not to insert any assertions of fact--leaving the actual debate to people who are interested in debate.

I'm sure you have very strong feelings about capitalism and the follies of the 1970's, but I don't desire to make a rebuttal to an assertion I haven't made, which you haven't indicated.

Telling people they are wrong before they even have a chance to say what they think is not communication.

If anyone else has bothered reading the comments up to this point, notice that no one has actually made any reasonably valid arguments with respect to what I originally said. All I see is mocking, non-sequiturs, hyperbole, straw men, and generic or canned responses representing popular misconceptions.

Yes, it's true, what people said VR would be in the 1980's was to a large extent mistaken, and I am not here to defend the positions of other people. I did not come here to tell you what to think, I am not advocating a specific point of view, or that your point of view is wrong.

Now, if you do not agree with me or do not want people to see this thread, it would be more reasonable to let it fall to the bottom than to continue to bump it with your knee-jerk and insubstantial responses. No one is forcing you to do anything or telling you what to think or do.

You're right. The 70 years of accumulated knowledge of dreams, the portion of the brain that dictates them, their role, and the altered state of conscious involving said dreams is a lie.

Just take all those journal articles written by PhD scientists and burn them. Screw it.

While we're at it, we might as well dismiss all accumulated knowledge of cognitive science in general.

After all, it's just measurements taken from volunteers...

Actually, all research currently cited as proof of lucid dreaming happened around 1980 or later. That is only 30 years of accumulated knowledge. If you have a few links to these journal articles written by PhD scientists(what are they a PhD of?), that would be great. Furthermore, I do not know of a single link between lucid dreaming and any mainstream medical sciences. I cannot find a single article that cites lucid dreaming as a basis for any advancement in the cognitive sciences, excepting, perhaps, forms of hypnotherapy(which, I'm sorry to inform you, is also unproven speculation), so why I would want to throw that away is beyond me. You are, however, right that many scientific studies rely upon volunteers. Perhaps I should have been more clear. The volunteers in the lucid dream studies were individuals who knew they were entering into a study about lucid dreaming. They also reported having experience in lucid dreaming, and they knew that the scientist doing that particular study was trying to prove the existence of lucid dreaming. This, of course, leads to a bias in favor of the study showing proof. If you can provide me with a double blind study in which there was proof of lucid dreaming, I might be more inclined to believe in it.

As for you, Victor, I wonder if you are willing to admit the existence of God(The Christian God) based upon people that have had near death experiences. After all, I'm sure that they would find it absolutely absurd that you do not admit His existence in the face of someone who has had such an experience. There is, of course, the issue that people of all faiths have had near death experiences during which their individual beliefs have been affirmed. Which of them are lying, or have misinterpreted what they saw and heard? You state that my comparison of lucid dreaming to so many other ridiculous beliefs is "not exactly valid scientific method," but they all share the same evidence. Each of those things is reported many times a year, some times many times a day, with the only evidence being the word of the person reporting having experienced it. If your statement of having had lucid dreams somehow proves that lucid dreaming is real, then the statement of another that they were abducted by aliens, moved an object with their mind, had a vision of an event that later came to pass, were able to see across the world to spy on the Russians during the Cold War, saw a ghost or felt power within a crystal skull must also prove these things. If you are unwilling to admit that these examples are just as valid as lucid dreaming, then perhaps you should not expect that I would take your word that you have had such dreams as proof of said dreams being fact.

lol, this whole debate is stupid.

you could just mentally replace "lucid dreams" with "dreams" in my original post and the point i was making is still valid.

namely: you don't have to use drugs to achieve an altered state of consciousness. you can just have a dream. while dreaming, you are scientifically, provably, in an altered state of consciousness.

a lucid dream is simply realizing you are dreaming while you are dreaming. that's all it is. it isn't mysticism. it's a fairly trivial/simple concept.

Yep. People who spend a lot of time on this start their exercises with: "Without altering your mind in any way, notice that..."
The next step beyond lucid dreaming is pellucid dreaming, where you allow dreams to arise and dissipate without controlling them or turning them into a video game of wish fulfilment.
The next step beyond that is to stay aware in dreamless sleep. Down there is timeless and there are no names. It's the realm of experience that gives people the impression that matter arises from consciousness and not the reverse.

Or we could go with schoolboy debating and dictionary definitions to control language, i'm easy.