Do Not Read This if You are Religiously Bound

I am posting this as an explanation to why people think they feel closer to god or some deities when they pray or dream, or even when they die or are dying.

No, this is nothing to do with, there is no soul, as i am a naturalist, i believe the soul must be a physical entity, and it its, it is made up of systems of chemicals, electric fusions, diffusion, frequencies, many subatomic (quantum) reactions and a dense throne we know as the Brain, it is not something that transends physical reality, nothing can be, we have never found anything that can.

Many say when they have a near death situation, or that when someone around them is dying, they report seeing lights, being talked to by god or other deities, feeling like they are going through a wormhole etc. When you drea, you often will report out of this world experiences, as if you are transending reality through your soul, but actually the same explanation goes for NDEs It's all in your head, what really happens is this:
In your brain, there is a small gland, that even animals have (that is why other animals have dreams), called the Pineal Gland (third eye, throne of the soul, has many nicknames), it is known to produce tryptamines, one of these tryptamines is '___' (Dimethyltryptamine). When you dream, levels of '___' increase in your blood, as your pineal gland produces more, and it binds to your receptors, causing a drug trip like state, when you die or are dying, the same thing happens. This is the dream molecule, we have many other drugs in our body, like endocannibinoids, which also cause ambiguous drug expreiences when in certain situations, some even specualte your warm love feeling when you are around lovers to be caused by endorphins.

Now when you are praying, meditating etc., it is actually also a small brain drug influence, caused by endocannabinoids, chemicals structurally related to cannabinoids (the chemicals in marijuana that cause the ecperience). When you are in a relaxed state, these chemicals levels raise in your body, causing a enlightened and euphoric state, giving you wild and imaginative thoughts, just like how you see hippies smoking pot and saying stuff about the cosmic energies, this is the same here.

Why do we interpret it as such, there is a reason, whee your consioussnes lives, it is called the frontal lobe, or what i like to call the "free will zone", where we make our decisions based on experience and what we have been taught, which is kept in the subconsiouss. That is where we have feelings (and we have learnt feelings are caused by chemicals in the body), where our thoughts (which are actually electric flickerings and vibrations) are, etc. When we go through these trips, we relate them to memories, maybe the clergyman saying something about praying, or your father about any deity your family may believe, and bam, we relate it to our relligious beliefs.

There have been several experiments on this.

Edit: All caps title.

[edit on 7-7-2009 by intrepid]

You haven't even began your quest in life. Your opinions change, and you will to. all i can say is, just because you know how something works, doesn't mean it isn't magic.

reply to post by unclekrabz


Have you ever had that really tingling feeling down your neck? I get it at funerals, or watching something really emotional, usually when I know like a million other people are watching too!

I've always wondered about that, if it was something spiritual or something chemical.

Either way I like the mystery, I like the notion it couyld be a shared emotion with humanity, even though you are probably right, it's good to have a little madness!

He who thinks that he knows, knows not, but he who knows that he knows not, knows.
~ Confucius

I would say that there is something that exists outside of our bodies and chemicals. Chemical reactions dont explain intuitions or precognitions. I have these all the time. Last night i was playing a game with my family, and at one point they drew a card and were supposed to draw something for me to guess, and they told me it was a place. As soon as they said "place" but before they had drawn anything, it came to me and i said "grand canyon"....and that was it. As a singular event this doesnt prove anything, however these things occur often in my life, especially when i am reading consciousness expanding books or engaging in lots of meditation.

So it cant be "proved" empirically, however empiricle science does not explain quantum relations either. Intuition exists, its a reality that can be cultivated, and people who experience this KNOW it, in a way that western people cant know because most of their knowledge of life is secondhand, truth learned from books.

I live in new orleans now, and there is little spiritual development here so when i speak of people having "energy" most here have no clue what i mean because they have never experienced anything remotely resembling it. However, while living out west i had opportunity to meet kaballists, shamans, taoist practitioners and tai chi immortals, and i can tell you that people who cultivate energy work have a palpable field around them that you can feel directly. They bring with them an aura of calm and tranquility, and it affects everyone around them. I have had a tai chi master place his hand on my arm, and channel "chi" to me when i skeptically asked how one can know if chi is real. I felt the energy and warmth flow from where he was touching me, down the outside of my arm and back up the inside....this is experiential truth to me. "chemicals" dont explain any of this.

Originally posted by unclekrabz
it is not something that transends physical reality, nothing can be, we have never found anything that can.

I found it interesting that you stated this in the same sentence you referred to quantum reactions, as it lead me to believe you know something about quantum mechanics. Your statements that nothing can transcend physical reality as well as science (I'm assuming that's who the "we" is) has never found anything that can is extremely assumptive.

I think the more accurate statement would be that science has never explained anything that can. To say that we have never found anything that can is assuming that science has explained every phenomenon humanity has observed.

The reason I emphasize quantum physics is because, especially with it being a relatively new field of study, there is a lot that is unexplained. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, for example, has been studied, has been documented, and has been observed to the point were science is pretty confident it is true. However, why? What in the world is going on that we can't, and will never, according to current theories, be able to observe that makes a particle's location and velocity a probability?

Another example would be the transmission of information faster than the speed of light. It's been observed through teleportation experiments. It may be explained through string theory, as the math checks out as long as you factor in Plank's constant as well as 11 dimensions. However, like Newtonian physics, I find it very probable our concepts of the universe still have a lot of growing to do.

To say that nothing can transcend our physical reality is like saying, "What goes up must come down."

What is the special chemical combination that creates consciousness? Where in the universe do we find this "observiminum" element? Is it near the "feelium" element?

I'm not being a smart butt in the above, I realize it can sound like that, but what I am asking is how do you get the feelings and being an observer from chemcials?

Or what electrical signal is the correct one that gives consciousness? etc.

You can talk about how certain areas of the brain cause feelings, how the electrical signals travel through your body to let you know something is touching you. You can talk about how the eyes collect light and turn them into electrical signals that travel to the brain.

But you have said nothing of that which actually observes the image, nothing of that which feels things and so on. If the eyes collect light, turns it into an electrical signal which travels to the back of the brain, and is then converted into the image "you" see, then to what is that image being presented too? Chemcials? and other electrical signals? In which case leads us right back to the start.


What is of the flesh/physical/universe is of that. But that which is spirit, that which observes and feels is eternal and is not of this universe.

Yeah, to further the above posters point, lots of quantum physics now defy our conventional ideology. There is the experiment with the dual slit paper, where photons act as a wave when unobserved, but as particles when observed, which lead some to conclude that consciousness has a measurable effect on subatomic particles, per physicists David Bohm, and Carl Pribram.

Then there is also the experiment where twin photons were split and sent off in different directions, and whenever one changed direction the other did too, at the same time, and in the same manner, which to some signifies a communication between subatomic particles themselves. All incredible and interesting stuff, very thought provoking.

Not sure if this helps but many years ago I had a past life regression.

The man doing this told me that he would take me back in time and live out another life right to the point of death in that life.

What I told him about that death was the same thing that all his subjects told him. The act of dying was the same for everyone.

Yes that can be explained chemically, but then you have to accept the fact that I had lived before, a slightly catch 22 situation.

He also took some subjects into the future, and yes, there is a future but who is to say any of it is true ?

The experience of being regressed felt very real to me and I was a bit disappointed that I was just a 'normal' 'poor' person who died alone and hungry not my ideal life choice!!

I read an interesting article not long ago called "wired for God" talking about this very thing. I would say that the other side of that coin would show that perhaps we were designed to comunicate in this way. The fact that it seems our brains and emotions work so well in this fashion to achieve such "spiritual" states is a testament to intelligent and deliberate design and not mere chance as the evolutionary theory would claim.

reply to post by gandhi



that quote is from true blood.

This is a couple of lines from a book i'm reading called "Beyond the mind". Very clear explanation (i hope) for this thread.

The soul is a psychic bridge that connects the physical brain to the pure mind. As an undissociable energy field it conditions the passage or entry into the mind tunnel of higher forms of thought. Its unconscious memory function represents an infinite amount of registered information or imprints accumulated through long cycles of evolutionary experience. As it allows the development of egoic consciousness through the associative power it generates in the personalized or intellectual mind, it blocks the free and creative or supermental connection with a source of thought untainted by the astral experiential memory.

At death, the soul energy or astral body returns to a parallel plane through the mind tunnel. As it progresses and reaches the astral plane of the mind’s psychic configuration, it takes on a life status that corresponds to the total memory of its physical experience. We have no memory of the mind tunnel since physical dimensional reality is its limiting factor. But, psychic travel or return to nonphysical origins through the mind configuration crystalizes the earthbound memory or imperfect thought manner of which the unconscious personality is formed.

Hopefully, this will answer a few questions readers may have in this thread.

[edit on 7-7-2009 by lagenese]

The brain releases chemicals, for many reasons, mainly to preserve life, or at least to soften the blow when facing a traumatic situation, it's how we evolved.

You are quite right the brain is really chemicals interacting, but when your dead, logically it should shut down, there is no physical need to protect our feelings from death because its to late, or to put it crudely, it wont make any difference in the short or long term.

But the NDE defies what we really know about the mind, that all things must happen for a self perpetuating reason, this is not the case in this instance.

There have been many research studies on NDEs as well.

Life and death are not chemicals. Just because you can't see or measure something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

Just a few generations ago the world was flat.

Humans are just beginning their explorations of existence.

There are many reports of NDE's and OBE's in which real world things and objects are identified, which the individual could have had no awareness of in physical form, which proves that consciousness can and does reside outside of, the body, under certain circumstances. For example a lady who died on the operating table, went out of body, out a window, and noticed a discarded tennis shoe, on the upper ledge of the top floor of the hospital. It was checked out and lo and behold, there was in fact a shoe there, that kind of thing. These occurances shoot holes right through the premise of the OP.

reply to post by unclekrabz


Very interesting post! Have you looked in to Richard Dawkins? He and some of his contemporaries have some pretty interesting thoughts on this and other god/religion related topics.

Cheers

reply to post by unclekrabz


Don't be too hasty saying that there is no soul.

Cognition depends upon biology.

Biology depends upon chemistry.

Chemistry depends upon atomic Mechanics.

And Atomic mechanics depend on Quantum mechanics.

And at that level... OBSERVATION is VERY important to what actually occurs.

You know that your body creates an electromagnetic field because of the electrical current moving through your neurons...

But induction works both ways.

Magnetic fields passing over your neural system create (Induce) current flow.


It's easy to say that cognizance is a byproduct of merely chemical reactions... but this simplistic model of intellect and awareness is not entirely accurate.

There are MANY more factors involved than simple chemistry.

I got three articles that explore this subject more thouroughly for ya.

Recommended Read:

www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

-Edrick

Nothing in science has proven where consciousness originates from. It cannot be measured. No one can say for certain where the thought comes from that triggers the electrical impulses that fire up the good ol' neurons.

If people would only stop assuming their mind can answer all questions, and just take a look inside all would be revealed

Originally posted by inval
If people would only stop assuming their mind can answer all questions, and just take a look inside all would be revealed

There are some questions that "Internal Dialogue" cannot possibly answer.

Tis folly to presume otherwise.

-Edrick