Carol left for a First Watch breakfast with
her friends. You are awaiting Greg to redo the tub and plumbing. – Amorella
0842
hours. It is muggy and it is supposed to rain today. This is a day off from
exercising. Nice. Kim and the boys will be here mid-afternoon.
Mid-afternoon. You are sitting by Half Price
Books waiting for Carol at Kroger’s. Kim and the boys have passed the St.Rt.35
outlet mall and should be here in about forty minutes. A short time ago you
were re-reading the Dewdrop document and are wondering what to dig into first.
You had a couple of ideas that you would like to know more about. This is a
positive sign. We will begin with Dewdrop on this nonfiction project. –
Amorella
1425
hours. I’m not comfortable with nonfiction; it is an observed subjective
personal experiences document.
** **
Experience
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Experience is
the knowledge or mastery of an event or subject gained through involvement in
or exposure to it. Terms in philosophy, such as "empirical knowledge"
or "a posteriori knowledge," are used to refer to knowledge
based on experience. A person with considerable experience in a specific field
can gain a reputation as an expert. The concept of experience generally refers
to know-how or procedural knowledge, rather than propositional knowledge:
on-the-job training rather than book-learning.
The interrogation of
experience has a long tradition in continental philosophy. Experience plays an
important role in the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard. The German term Erfahrung, often translated into English
as "experience", has a slightly different implication, connoting the
coherency of life’s experiences.
Certain religious
traditions (such as Buddhism, Surat Shabd Yoga, mysticism and Pentecostalism)
and educational paradigms with, for example, the conditioning of military
recruit-training (also known as "boot camps"), stress the
experiential nature of human epistemology. This stands in contrast to
alternatives: traditions of dogma, logic or reasoning. Participants in
activities such as tourism, extreme sports and recreational drug-use also tend
to stress the importance of experience.
The history of the word experience aligns it closely with the
concept of experiment.
Types of experience
The word
"experience" may refer, somewhat ambiguously, both to mentally unprocessed
immediately perceived events as well as to the purported wisdom gained in
subsequent reflection on those events or interpretation of them.
Some wisdom-experience
accumulates over a period of time, though one can also experience (and gain
general wisdom-experience from) a single specific momentary event.
One may also
differentiate between (for example) physical, mental, emotional, spiritual,
vicarious and virtual experience(s).
Physical
Physical experience
occurs whenever an object or environment changes. In other words, physical
experiences relate to observables. They need not involve modal properties nor
mental experiences.
Mental
Mental experience
involves the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations
of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination, including all
unconscious cognitive processes. The term can refer, by implication, to a
thought process. Mental experience and its relation to the physical brain form
an area of philosophical debate: some identity theorists originally argued that
the identity of brain and mental states held only for a few sensations. Most
theorists, however, generalized the view to cover all mental experience.
Mathematicians can
exemplify cumulative mental experience in the approaches and skills with which
they work. Mathematical realism, like realism in general, holds that
mathematical entities exist independently of the human mind. Thus humans do not
invent mathematics, but rather discover and experience it, and any other
intelligent beings in the universe would presumably do the same. This point of
view regards only one sort of mathematics as discoverable; it sees triangles,
right angles, and curves, for example, as real entities, not just the creations
of the human mind. Some working mathematicians have espoused mathematical
realism as they see themselves experiencing naturally-occurring objects.
Examples include Paul
Erdos and Kurt Gödel. Gödel believed in an objective mathematical reality that
could be perceived in a manner analogous to sense perception. Certain
principles (for example: for any two objects, there is a collection of objects
consisting of precisely those two objects) could be directly seen to be true,
but some conjectures, like the continuum hypothesis, might prove undecidable
just on the basis of such principles. Gödel suggested that quasi-empirical methodology
such as experience could provide sufficient evidence to be able to reasonably
assume such a conjecture. With experience, there are distinctions depending on
what sort of existence one takes mathematical entities to have, and how we know
about them.
Emotional
Humans can rationalize
falling in (and out) of love as "emotional experience". Societies
which lack institutional arranged marriages can call on emotional experience in
individuals to influence mate-selection. The concept of emotional experience
also appears in the notion of empathy.
Spiritual
Newberg and Newberg
provide a view on spiritual experience. [See conclusion of this posting for more details.]
Religious
Mystics can describe
their visions as "spiritual experiences". However, psychology and
neuropsychology may explain the same experiences in terms of altered states of
consciousness, which may come about accidentally through (for example) very high
fever, infections such as meningitis, sleep deprivation, fasting, oxygen
deprivation, nitrogen narcosis (deep diving), psychosis, temporal-lob epilepsy,
or a traumatic accident.
People can likewise
achieve such experiences more deliberately through recognized mystical
practices such as sensory deprivation or mind-control techniques,
hypnosis, meditation, prayer, or mystical
disciplines such as mantra
meditation, yoga, Sufism, dream yoga, or surat shabda yoga. Some
practices encourage spiritual experiences through the ingestion of psychoactive
drugs such as alcohol and opiates, but more commonly with entheogenic plants
and substances such as cannabis, salvia
divinorum, psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, DXM, ayahuasca, or datura. Another way to induce spiritual
experience through an altered state of consciousness involves psychoacoustics,
binaural beats, or light-and-sound stimulation.
Social
Growing up and living
within a society can foster the development and observation of social
experience.
Social experience
provides individuals with the skills and habits necessary for participating
within their own societies, as a society itself is formed through a plurality of shared
experiences forming norms, customs, values, traditions, social
roles, symbols and languages. Experience plays an important role in experiential
groups.
Virtual
and simulation
Using computer
simulations can enable a person or groups of persons to have virtual
experiences in virtual reality. Role-playing games treat "experience"
(and its acquisition) as an important, measurable, and valuable commodity. Many
role-playing video games, for instance, feature units of measurement used to quantify
or assist a player-character's progression through the game – called experience
points or xp.
Subjective
Subjective experience
can involve a state of individual subjectivity, perception on which one builds
one's own state of reality; a reality based on one’s interaction with one's
environment. The subjective experience depends on one’s
individual ability to process data, to store and internalize it. For example:
our senses collect data, which we then process according to biological programming
(genetics), neurological network-relationships and other variables such as
relativity etc., all of which affect our individual experience of any given
situation in such a way as to render it subjective.
Immediacy of experience
Someone able to
recount an event they witnessed or took part in has “first hand
experience". First hand experience of the "you had to be there"
variety can seem especially valuable and privileged, but it often remains
potentially subject to errors in sense- perception and in personal
interpretation.
Second-hand experience
can offer richer resources: recorded and/or summarised from first-hand
observers or experiencers or from instruments, and potentially expressing
multiple points of view.
Third-hand experience, based on indirect and possibly unreliable
rumour or hearsay, can (even given reliable accounts) potentially stray
perilously close to blind honouring of authority.
Selected and edited from -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience
** **
2104
hours. The above appears to me to give a good description of ‘experience’. I
can accept the premises given in this Wikipedia article on what ‘experience’ is
in terms of this work on the Dewdrop Project. – rho
You had a good time with Kim, Owen and
Brennan today. The five of you had dinner at Dewey’s and dessert at Graeter’s
next door. Earlier you had playtime then after supper Kim, Carol and you had
some discussions while the boys were watching their Netflix shows. Later,
Amorella
2152
hours. Carol sent me to Kroger’s for Children’s Ibuprofen for Owen. Carol and
Kim are talking about their trip to Jamaica in July for Sharon and Guillermo’s wedding.
DewDrop Project is a misnomer, orndorff.
This is not a project or an assignment. Adventure or Discovery is a better word.
Think about it; a word that compliments Dewdrop. By the way, I will be the ‘Control’ in these
observations. – Amorella
2202
hours. Good. I was hoping that you would be the Control because you choose the
proper words better than I do. The Dewdrop Findings, how is this for a title?
Actually, The Dewdrop Discoveries sounds even better.
2234
hours. Below is more material on the “Spiritual” in the Wikipedia article. The
material is from – http://www.pbsDOTorg/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/newberg.html
- Spiritual - Addition to Wikipedia article from PBS and 'Question of God'
- Spiritual - Addition to Wikipedia article from PBS and 'Question of God'
** **
Question of God
A.
Newberg & E. D'Aquili
Can
religion and spirituality be considered purely as "neural blips and fluxes
in brain chemistry"? Using recent advances in brain imaging and
neuropsychological research, co-authors Dr. Andrew Newberg and the late Dr.
Eugene D'Aquili, both of the University of Pennsylvania, explore that question
and arrive at some surprising conclusions about material and spiritual
"reality." This article, adapted for Science & Spirit
magazine from their 1999 book The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of
Religious Experiences, presents an overview of some of their findings.
Wired
for the Ultimate Reality: The Neuropsychology of Religious Experience
It
has now become possible to consider asking questions regarding how complex
behaviors, thoughts, and feelings occur, even when they are associated with
religious and spiritual experience. Our research has been devoted to
elucidating the nature of these experiences by determining their underlying
biological mechanisms. In fact, in our recent book, The Mystical Mind:
Probing the Biology of Religious Experience, we consider these very
questions. Perhaps the most interesting question of all is where exactly a
neuropsychological approach leads us, and where do we go from there.
We
have generally proposed that there are two classes of neuropsychological mechanisms,
which underlie the development of religious experiences and behaviors. These
two classes of mechanisms represent two lines of neurological development
involving the evolution of brain structures that comprise what we have
previously referred to as the causal operator on the one hand and the holistic
operator on the other. "Operators" refer to networks of nerve
tissue in the brain which perform specific functions — in the first case
allowing us to perceive causality and in the second allowing us to perceive
wholeness in the midst of diversity. There is growing evidence that such
overarching functions exist in the brain. In considering these two operators,
we are led to the heart of why human beings use the concept of supersensible
forces or powers (i.e. the concept of a deity) to help control their
environment in such a way as to attain those needs which the culture defines as
fundamental. Furthermore, these operators allow for the movement towards the
fulfillment of human needs in a total, absolute, or transcendent fashion, often
involving holistic states or experiences.
Based
on our model presented in prior works as well as our book, it seems that all
unitary experiences — ranging from mild aesthetic experiences such as watching
a beautiful sunset to the most profound states that may occur only after years
of meditation — may have their basis in neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and the
flux of neurotransmitters. We have even suggested that there is an
aesthetic-religious continuum that is based upon the progressive activation of
the holistic operator such that the more profound the experience, the greater
the sense of unity. Our recent brain imaging studies of Tibetan Buddhist
meditators have begun to provide empirical evidence for the specific mechanisms
involved in this continuum of experiences.
Many
find it deeply disturbing that the experience of God, the sense of the
absolute, the sense of mystery and beauty in the universe, the most profoundly
moving experiences of which humans are capable, might be reducible to specific
brain functions that may even be measurable on advanced brain imaging studies.
However, such a pessimistic interpretation misses a few rather important
points. First of all, our experience of baseline reality (e.g., chairs, tables,
love, hate), indeed of our whole physical and psychological environment, can
also be reduced to neural blips and fluxes of brain chemistry. Thus, one can
never get at what is "really out there" without its being processed,
one way or another, through the brain. So what criteria can we use to evaluate
whether God, other hyperlucid unitary experiences, or our everyday world is
"more real"? Can we use our subjective sense of the absolute
certainty of the objective reality of our everyday world to establish that that
world is "really real"?
To
simplify the issue somewhat, let us for the moment contrast the most extreme
unitary state, what we have called Absolute Unitary Being (AUB), with baseline
reality. AUB refers to the rare state in which there is a complete loss of the
sense of self, loss of the sense of space and time, and everything becomes a
infinite, undifferentiated oneness. Such a state usually occurs only after many
years of meditation. In comparing AUB to baseline reality, there is no question
that AUB wins out as being experienced as "more real." People who
have experienced AUB, and this includes some very learned and previously
materialistically oriented scientists, regard AUB as being more fundamentally
real than baseline reality. Even the memory of it is, for them, more
fundamentally real. Thus, if we use the criterion of the sense of certainty of
the reality of a particular state, AUB wins hands down.
To
further clarify this point, let us compare four characteristics of baseline
reality with the profound experience of various unitary states. Baseline
reality demonstrates the following four fundamental properties:
•
A strong sense of the
reality of what is experienced.
•
Endurance of that
reality through very long periods of time, usually only interrupted by
sleeping.
•
The sense that when
elements in baseline reality disappear from all forms of sensory detection,
they have ceased to be.
•
High cross—subjective
validation both for details of perception and core meaning. In other words,
other people corroborate our perceptions of the world, i.e., reality is a
collective hunch.
•
The
essential characteristics of profound unitary consciousness (i.e., AUB) are the
following:
1
An extremely strong
sense of reality, to the point of its being absolutely compelling under almost
all circumstances.
2
Endurance for short
periods of time relative to the sense of time of baseline reality.
3
A sense of its
underlying persistence and continued existence even when the perception of the
overall state has ended.
4
High cross—subjective
validation for core perceptions. Moderate to low cross—subjective validation
for perceptual details in those states.
We
would maintain that it is impossible to determine whether various unitary
states or baseline reality is more real (i.e. which represents the ultimate
objective reality) without making gratuitous and unsubstantiated assumptions.
Clearly, baseline reality has some significant claim to being ultimate reality.
However, AUB is so compelling that it is very difficult indeed to write off the
assertion of its reality. Actually, for individuals having experienced AUB, it
seems virtually impossible to negate that experience. This being the case, it
is a foolish reductionism indeed which states that, because unitary
consciousness can be understood in terms of neuropsychological processes, it is
therefore derivative from baseline reality. Indeed the reverse argument could
be made just as well. Neuropsychology can give no answer as to which state is
more real, baseline reality or hyperlucid unitary consciousness often
experienced as God. We may be reduced to saying that each is real in its own
way and for its own adaptive ends.
Thus,
the essential characteristic of different states of reality are eventually
reducible only to the strength of the sense of reality, the phantasia
catalyptica of the Stoics, or the Anwesenheit (compelling presence)
of certain modern German philosophers. A vivid sense of reality may be the only
thing that we can use to help determine what is really real until someone
determines a method for going beyond the brain's perception of reality. This
conclusion may not be very epistemologically satisfying, but up to now any
alternative has escaped us.
In
The Mystical Mind, we explore the concept of neurotheology as a way to
help better answer the epistemological question raised above — is AUB or
baseline reality more real? It might ultimately be best to consider both
versions of reality to be complementary, rather than opposed, to each other.
However,
this conclusion also has important implications for religion, theology, and the
scientific study of religious experiences. As a field, the neuroscientific
analysis of religious and spiritual experiences is only in its infancy. Much
more research must be pursued before we can begin to better understand these
complex experiences. However, we are at least able to begin such an exploration
as well as consider the consequences. The result — one hopes — will be a
wonderful journey that will enlighten ourselves as well as the scientific study
of religious experience.
Selected
and edited from - http://www.pbsDOTorg/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/newberg.html
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