Not necessarily true.
What about dreams or astral travel/OBEs.
In these states the brain is not recieving any information from matter at all, or anything from our senses either.

Like slidewinder said, i appreciate the scientific explanations and arguements an science has helped us explain and progress a great deal over the years, but i think its a bit naieve to think that science can explain EVERYTHING.
There are things that we cannot have the capacity to understnad rather like a dog will never understnad algebra

I never said science can explain anything however it has a much better track record than just making up bizarre explanations that can not be tested. Nor do I believe science can explain everything Godel's theorem and the uncertainty principle.

I do not believe in these altered realities for the reasons I stated. There is too much evidence which suggests it is fake. Many drugs do this because of where in the brain they interact. Dreams also involve complex experiences. If your definition of real is any subjective experience than yes they are real but then you are defining the variables and have made it to support your argument. Real in my book means it has a physical correlate that can be interacted with and the interaction has an effect on the future state of the object. The external physical world is real, as novel information can be obtained from it, and our interactions with it influence its future state consistently.

Things in hyperspace are never consistent, you never go back to the same place, you can not change variables consistently, these changes have no influence on the future of hyperspace, the experience is culturally influenced, and they depend on dose.

These compounds alter the functioning of the brain circuits which create your regular reality. You guys do not understand the power of the brain. Everything you experience must go through the brain first. Blind people do not have the experiences because they lack the functioning circuitry. No new information can be obtained from hyperspace. It is not a real place. It is created by the brain when chemicals shift its information processing abilities and activate different circuits.

For our brains to perceive anything real in the physical world not to create experience this was the basis of my argument. Please read my posts I know they are long but I think there is some good info and relevant to your comment. I said just this and used dreams as a prime example of how the brain can create complex episodes of perception independently of sensory input. We can have perceptions of things that do not exist in dreams, and in other altered states. However for something to exist in the external world we need sense organs to perceive it. I said this in response to the idea that hallucinogens somehow allow us to see things that are always present but normally filtered out. I agree that the brain can make up complex experiences on its own that is what hallucinogens do by acting on the consciousness generating circuits.

It can't be stressed enough that these compounds effect our perceptions. Think about what that means. Your perceptions.

There is a real objective reality your brain makes your subjective experience of that reality. When you take hallucinogens you change how that happens normally. The explanation for these experiences doesn't need to be any more complex then that. Although there is an explanation as bufoman has lined out its just not complete yet mechanistically how its all connected (no big deal). Disagreeing with this viewpoint is denying aspects of reality without any evidence other then your personal experiences which don't really mean anything special on this issue.

Perfectly said burnt I was waiting for you to come in.

You don't need hallucinogens...as I pointed out with OUR human ability to focus consciousness.

I also should say I don't view this as a negative way of looking at these experiences. You can still benefit tremendously and learn a lot from them.

Nor do I. I want to know the truth no matter what it is. I think the mechanism of hallucinogens can offer science and society a great deal about the functioning of the human mind. How the molecular activity of the brain becomes conscious perceptions of the mind. This is incredible and much more fascinating than some magical explanation (faith based). Furthermore the brain may use endogenous hallucinogens to generate normal waking consciousness (they likely play a role in this). These may be the tools necessary to answer some of the most central philosophical questions of our species.

In addition to learning a lot about your self you can learn a lot about the functioning of the brain (I have) and how it uses many forms of information to create a single unified perception of reality which contains many unique categories of information.

People need to chart these experiences in an efficient and effective manner. This will help science a great deal. We can then begin to correlate imaging studies, with molecular data, and subjective experience. This will show us where in the brain the neural correlate of consciousness are. Then we can begin to probe these regions for their unique functions.

This argument we're having seems to boil down to are hallucinations real? and what constitutes real? Our physical sense organs - I think - show us elements of the physical world, but only a narrow spectrum. For example other animals can hear frequencies much higher or lower than we can, they see different parts if the electromagnetic spectrum. Granted those things are measurable. But I think there are vast realms of experience that are not at all measurable or testable that may not involve any of our physical sense organ.
Our entire being is also a sense organ. At our core we are conciousness experiencing itself. We are constantly making up our reality anyway.

Our measuring instruments are based on what we know from our physical sense organs. Who is to say that there are not other fields/spectrums of energy that we dont have the sense organs to experience in everyday normal waking conciousness.

Also I think, whether the entities and worlds people experience exist outside of the experience itself does not matter so much. To me it is all experience, and all experience is real and subjective IMO, even that which is called objective and measurable.

I also think there is an obsession with explaining things through brain function and physical interations. To me these are all manifestations of a deeper underlying reality. we can measure stuff and theorise and analyse, and it is all useful and interesting but I think we need to look deeper at the forces that generate our reality, below the surface...

How great to hear about you having such an interesting and life-changing, spiritual experience!! However, how can you be so certain that it was God you were talking to? If one have no or little experience with spirituality, the first mind-blowing encounter with such a entity can easily be mistaken for God. There are vast number of helpers, guiders, spirits, et cetra out there. I do not for one second believe that only "God" (whatever your view of what God is) is able to see the future or the forgotten past.

I share this opinion somewhat. I believe all of reality is just an illusion; a dream that is dreamt by all of us, much like a shared network game. We are all dreaming at the same time, on the same wavelength, and this "reality" we all see, is nothing more than a dream we are all sharing. You can use science that was created within this dream to help you understand certain elements of the working "reality" within this dream, however, you cannot use science to go out beyond this reality, because science is a figment of this reality and bound by it and doesn't exist outside it. Each reality has its own set of "psychical laws" that governs it, and so each reality has its own science to cover it.

You cannot measure anything from another reality. All of our equipment used to measure light, sound, etc., is a figment of this reality, and can't be brought to another reality to measure it. It's impossible. Much like you can't take money from a dream you had and spend it at the local store after waking up from the dream. Science is like that. It's bound to this reality and doesn't exist outside it. Science doesn't work within your dreams, doesn't work within "hyperspace", doesn't work in other realities, etc. Our science only works in this reality.

I'm not sure if I am making myself clear or not.

What we see right now is not real. It's an illusion. It's a projection of our collective consciousnesses. It is just like a dream, only we all share this dream together. Every living thing is dreaming this reality into existence. The most powerful dreamer is God who has more power over reality than any of us has. But we all have God-like power, but it's just very limited.

Does any of this make any sense to anyone else or am I the only one who sees reality this way?

But you are also bound to this other reality. Parallel universes make no difference as there is no interaction.
We can build machines to detect forces that we can not perceive with our sense organs there are numerous examples. If thinks interact with matter we are able to detect them. There maybe things on the quantum levels which we currently lack the quipment for however consiusness is not concerned with this level as it is not necessary for survival and reprodcution of DNA. After all we are just the imagination of the DNA molecule.

I think you guys misunderstand science. Science is just a technique to explain the relationship between events. It is much more effective than making things up. Sure there are limits as all scientists admit. True scientists want to obtain the truth they use the philosophical rules of science for its logic and its track record. Science has to do with observations which are ultimately subjective experiences of the mind. The experiments have to be interpreted by a conscious mind. no one is saying we understand the entire reality or that we ever will be able to. However science gives us information that is relevant to us. Is it an accurate model we do not know we may never know but it allows us to predict things. We use the most effective model we have at the time to build a model of reality. It allows us to predict outcomes, that is it. However hallucinations are one of these outcomes as they involve the interaction of chemicals in the CNS. The brain creates your mind. This is known and our understanding of this process will continue to evolve through science not by people making up nonsense that can not be tested.

There is a relationship between the activity of the CNS and subjective experience. There is no doubt about this. Thus when you introduce chemicals into the CNS (information) you will alter the subjective experience that arises. How hard is this to figure out? DO you guys honestly not believe in any of these relationships? Please explain what is flawed about them? No one claims to know exactly what is going on (except a crazy person) but we know that when you take a chemical that acts on receptors in the brain that you alter its activity altered activity means altered perceptions and an altered world view.

I feel that it has become cliche to diss science but no one seems to be able to articulate why they feel this way.

Look at the difference between the reality of Newtonian physics and the reality of Quantum Mechanics. Now in Quantum Mechanics they deal with virtual particles and particles with no mass, particles with mass made up of particles with no mass and particles that are continually popping in and out of existence. Time can completely stop relative to something else depending on your relative motion and this is measurable and proven. I don't think that perceptual constraints necessarily need to adhere to the Newtonian view of reality and there may be Quantum mechanical explanations that apply. Yes, awareness is a product of the brain but I wouldn't minimize what is possible for the brain to be aware of. I'm not saying that it is a bad thing to be a skeptical inquirer but just because something isn't measurable by current science doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist. I do think that this is an excellent discussion from all points of view.

I agree however we require sense organs to perceive things. I just do not know how hallucinogens could suddenly allow all this information to enter the brain and then consciousness. Furthermore the types of experiences such as rainbow colored transparent egyptian pharohs, celtic knots works, are always existing? It just doesn't make sense. The chemical neuroscience explanation makes a lot more sense. Furthermore as I stated our consciousness is concerned with Newtonian physics this is why QM is so difficult to grasp. The QM realm has little influence over use directly aside from its emergent properties.

I agree that things may exist that science has not detected however I do not think that hallucinogens allow us to perceive them. Furthermore if these things did exist they must not have a very significant immediate influence or interaction with us or we would be able to perceive them, as if they were it would be necessary of our survival to detect them. How and why would a simple chemical molecule allow us to perceive these things. The brain is a computer that is it, if you alter its output (consciousness) alters.

You did not understand what I said at all. Not even a little bit. You seem so bound to "science" that you can not see outside the box. You totally missed the meaning in what I said. Maybe someone else can explain this concept in a "scientific" way so bufoman can understand it better. I can feel I'm going to get very frustrated with this topic because it goes out beyond the scope of "science" and we have people here attempting to explain it away with "science". Consciousness cannot be explained at all with "science", nor can the existence of reality. It's IMPOSSIBLE. We can use science to understand electricity, light waves, gravity, molecules, etc., but not consciousness or to explain reality. Science just can't do it. It's impossible with our current science. I believe it will always be impossible.

You are wrong ron. I am not sure you even understand the topic of discussion (the nature of hallucinations). You can absolutely explain reality and consciousness by science. I am not claiming we have but we will be able to. You do not seem to understand science at all but you have some strange hatred and misunderstanding of it.

I understand what you said perfectly. It is a bunch of stuff you made up that is it. it is your opinion and it can not even be tested. Anyone can do that. It is useless personal beliefs. What makes you think you are correct? Are you god?

See...fighting words.

Thank you bufoman.

[/quote] You did not understand what I said at all. Not even a little bit. You seem so bound to "science" that you can not see outside the box. You totally missed the meaning in what I said. Maybe someone else can explain this concept in a "scientific" way so bufoman can understand it better. I can feel I'm going to get very frustrated with this topic because it goes out beyond the scope of "science" and we have people here attempting to explain it away with "science". Consciousness cannot be explained at all with "science", nor can the existence of reality. It's IMPOSSIBLE. We can use science to understand electricity, light waves, gravity, molecules, etc., but not consciousness or to explain reality. Science just can't do it. It's impossible with our current science. I believe it will always be impossible.
[/quote]


Hey you started it man.