."Forum Description: I am interested in discussing an extension of K teachings into a more modern realm of brain structure, neurology and a discussion of thought, self image, conditioning, the "I" as center as they may be related to the scientific studies of the brain...."

Hi phil, Your forum description drew my interest. I have long thought it valid to discuss how K's teachings sit with modern science, particularly brain science. In fact I have discussed this aspect of the teachings (on and off) on another forum for some time.

I think it important because his teachings do have an implicit 'model' of the brain and its workings, though not explicitly presented as such. I think his association with David Bohm helped to clarify some of K's insights and bring them into the domain of science. Their inquiry in The Ending of Time is an example. Bohm sharpens K's sometimes personalized use of words and terms. I also have read Bohm's book Wholeness and the Implicate Order which provides a broad theoretical background which does actually lend scientific support to much of what K said, though other scientists may not agree. Of course Bohm was not a brain scientist as such, but his qualifications in the quantum field do, to me, give his theories weight.

Also, in an attempt to familiarize myself with the current science, I have several books on brain science, some of which I have managed to read, some of which I struggled with and failed to finish but find them useful as reference works . These include:
The Crucible of Consciousness by Zoltan Torey
The Private Life of the Brain by Susan Greenfield
Shadows of the Mind by Walter Penrose
Kinds of Minds by Daniel C Dennet
The Undiscovered Mind by John Horgan
Conversation on Consciousnes by Susan Blackmore
The Feeling that it Happens & Descartes Error both by Antonio Damasio

Nothing I have said above makes me qualified as a brain expert. I mentioned the books and other references to underline my stated interest. Perhaps more relevant is I have a brain of my own (such as it is) which provides a sort of testing ground for the teachings and some of the theories of the scientific experts.

At the moment, on the other forum, two of us are discussing 'intelligence' and its relation to thought. If that subject is of interest to you or others, I could share some of the areas we are exploring. We have no conclusions to offer, only 'thought on', etc. Peter

There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will

...

If you have read the Implicate Order and understood any of it, Edward, your intellect is well beyond mine and you have also read much more and much more modern books in the brain field area.

You have one distinct quality that qualifies you for participating in this forum and that is that you have a " brain of your own." In fact, I would like to make that a prerequisite for anyone who starts his own topic.

Please jump right in with a post about some of the things you have observed. You might have noticed that I am documenting some stuff lately after the criticism I received for making statements about the brain. These documentations are of information I just looked up in my new books, but there is no way I am going back and looking up references from stuff I remember and I would think anyone could do what he wishes on this.

[By the way, I just figured out what causes things to poof away. I just wrote all this on the site itself instead of word and I was reading it for correction but it turned out I was reading it from the bottom repeat version and when I went to click the cursor in to this bottom part....everything poofed away. I think my lesson is to write everything on word and cut and paste.]

This post was last updated by phil K Tue, 23 Jun 2009.

Hi phil,
This new kinfonet multiple-forum initiate seems a good idea, though a bit complicated to negotiate. I suppose it is bound to have teething problems, I know I did when I began my life!. Anyway, I wish its organizers well in their endeavour.

Having introduced myself by citing some of my reading which relate to the title and your forum description, I'm not sure where to go from here.

Would you care to put forward a post on something in the teachings that you feel doesn't sit well with current brain science and thus prompt replies from those who would find this an interesting line of inquiry?

If this is not something you want to do, that's OK with me. I'll still be interested if posts come in with a less restricted interpretion of the forum's intended direction.
edward

There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will

edward morrison wrote:
Would you care to put forward a post on something in the teachings that you feel doesn't sit well with current brain science and thus prompt replies from those who would find this an interesting line of inquiry?

[Just found out something else that doesnt work the way I thought it worked on this site. I quoted you after typing in the box and deciding that I wanted to quote you and when I posted, my post disappeared and there was only your quote].

So here goes again. I think that a topic that might be totally contrary to brain science is K's thoughts on dreaming. I believe K stated, he saw no need for dreaming. I am not sure if he said he didn't dream and was just speculating or not. Maybe someone can make that clear, first.

Brain scientists finds a need for dreaming and the only people who have been tested that dont dream had brain damage or after their corpus collosum was cut, they would report no longer having dreams but they may have still been dreaming but the left brain was not aware of it. Brain science has quite a variety of reasons for dreaming of which I have not studied much but there is a system that turns off the motor stimulus during REM sleep so that you dont move. This would indicate that the brain is aware of dreaming as a state and therefore that it has to be some reason for it if it occurs. I actually woke up once during this state and it is freaky, you are totally paralyzed. Also, the latest theory I saw was that dreams were going over things that might be threatening to us. If this were true, it might be the jumping off point for the discussion as we dont have many tigers to dream about anymore!

This post was last updated by phil K Tue, 23 Jun 2009.

phil King wrote:
Brain scientists finds a need for dreaming and the only people who have been tested that dont dream had brain damage or after their corpus collosum was cut, they would report no longer having dreams but they may have still been dreaming but the left brain was not aware of it.

There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will

I'm aware that K repprted that he didn't dream, but I haven't previously researched the topic dreaming with this in mind.

What you say about the corpus collosum is interesting. This is the bundle of nerves that connect the left and right hemipheres. Zoltan Torey suggests that the self awareness ("Knowing that we know") is brought about by the neural activity across the corpus collosum. He refers to this as 'proprioception'. Apparently, when the left brain is active this activity is felt and associated with causing the thinking/speaking rather than the reverse. I may have mis-interpreted Torey on this. I would need to read the relevant sections again. It is easy to misunderstand Torey because his style is, as I said before, difficult to grasp. His sentences are often jammed with technical words which mean a lot of technical information is packed in which the layperson may not be aware of.
Of course K had not had his corpus collosum severed! I suppose if one was prepared to theorize in favour of K it would be possible to speculate about his main claim to be self-less. Myself I would prefer less speculation and more scientific evidence to either support the K claim or to show that it would not be possible under any circumstances.

The options seem to be that he was lying. That he didn't remember any his dreams. Apparently we don't remember some of our dreams. The ones we do remember are those we either make an effort to remember as soon as we awake, or something happens during the following awakened period that trips a memory of a dream. But there are some that are not accessible even in these circumstances.

I've looked though Susan Greenfield's The Private Life of the Brain but, though there is a lot on the topic of dreaming, there is nothing directly related to the K claim. I will continue to look up the b ooks I have to see if I can find anything that might have bearing on this.

Do you want to continue immediately on this topic or should we look at other aspects of the teachings that allow inquiry a little more leash? edward

There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will

phil King wrote:
Also, the latest theory I saw was that dreams were going over things that might be threatening to us. If this were true, it might be the jumping off point for the discussion as we dont have many tigers to dream about anymore!

Here I am quoting myself, but if the latest theroy and I think it is the latest were correct it would mean that a mind free of conditioned fear would not dream so what we have is a system that is set up for dreaming and for fear but K may have ended fear which would have ended his need to dream. As a human he certainly had both systems and if he made the statement that he didnt dream, he didnt say that he used to dream but that he didnt at the time of making the statement.

Now one could look at my other statements about brain damage and say that maybe the Kundalini process that K went through and the headaches were an actual situation that may have caused brain damage that might have kept him from being able to dream or to perceive he dreamed. We can wait and see if anyone wants to respond to these two ideas. Boy I bet we get some responses and I bet I could already predict the responses.

phil King
Tue, 23 Jun 2009, 11:32pm

phil King wrote:

Here I am quoting myself, but if the latest theroy and I think it is the latest were correct it would mean that a mind free of conditioned fear would not dream so what we have is a system that is set up for dreaming and for fear but K may have ended fear which would have ended his need to dream. As a human he certainly had both systems and if he made the statement that he didnt dream, he didnt say that he used to dream but that he didnt at the time of making the statement.

Now one could look at my other statements about brain damage and say that maybe the Kundalini process that K went through and the headaches were an actual situation that may have caused brain damage that might have kept him from being able to dream or to perceive he dreamed. We can wait and see if anyone wants to respond to these two ideas. Boy I bet we get some responses and I bet I could already predict the responses.

Edward: Sorry I can't get the quote facility to operate properly so I've cut and pasted part of your reply.

What you seem to be saying in the first paragraph is an amplfication of what I was hinting in my post. Is that right? What I was suggesting is that if the corpus collosum needs to be active during sleep in order for dreams to take place, perhaps in K's case it wasn't active. Not because it had been severed surgically, but because the conditioned centre was not active. Is that it? If so we are both speculating that this might have been the reason for his dreamlessness. I agree with you that it would have been interesting if someone had asked if he had dreamed before his transformation.

Another question that might have been put to him is why was he reporting that he didn't dream? I mean he could have reported all kinds of things, such as his left toe ached when he cleaned his car! What I'm getting at is that his stating this about his dreamlessness must have been intended to connect with his teachings in some way for it to be at all a relevant thing to say. Unfortunately we don't seem to have a lot on this except the bare statement that he didn't dream. So we are in the realm of speculation. Interesting speculation nonetheless!

Your second point about brain damage actually entered my thoughts but I didn't allow it to flower into a hypothesis. I'm glad you did.

edward.

There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will

Interesting....the way you stated the corpus callosum here: "What I was suggesting is that if the corpus callosum needs to be active during sleep in order for dreams to take place, perhaps in K's case it wasn't active. Not because it had been severed surgically, but because the conditioned centre was not active. Is that it?" This would indicate that the conditioned center is more the right brain than the left which actually has been one of my theories for years.

I am not sure we can contribute the corpus collosum as more than just a pathway so it cannot in itself been active. You said a couple of posts ago othe following: "What you say about the corpus collosum is interesting. This is the bundle of nerves that connect the left and right hemipheres. Zoltan Torey suggests that the self awareness ("Knowing that we know") is brought about by the neural activity across the corpus collosum. He refers to this as 'proprioception'."

I actually have thought about this myself as a theory of self consciousness and the latest stuff I have read by Norttrander in his book "User Illusion" about libets half second statements, I think may support the theory somewhat. But for K, I would say that the part you so well worded that he must have brought this up about not dreaming because it applied to his teachings has got to be true. What I said was that if one is free of fear and if the correct theory about why one dreams is to work on our fears, then one wouldnt dream. I am not free of fear and I dream so I guess I will have to get back to this theory either once I am free entirely from fear or once I stop dreaming. I will say one thing personal to support the dream theory though and that is I am having the wildest...craziest, rememberable dreams I have had since childhood since I have moved back in with my parents this last year. And I can state that I am having the most stress/fear I have had since childhood.

Isnt it too bad that K couldnt have just said "If one ends fear, one ends dreaming." He would have saved our speculations and the brain researchers a lot of time. Probably though the best statement would have been "If one ends conditioning, one ends dreaming." One of my speculations is that all conditionings even when they are using other emotions still have fear behind them. In my experience, when I end a certain conditioning by seeing the object or the concept behind the conditioning there is a certain element of fear that goes away. I am not sure how this works, though. But the statement goes along with K's goal to set man unconditionally free if you turn it around to say "to free man from conditioning." Also, thought breeds fear is certainly a truth and supported as far as I see by all brain research so far.

This post was last updated by phil K Wed, 24 Jun 2009.

phil King wrote:
I am not sure we can contribute the corpus collosum as more than just a pathway so it cannot in itself been active.

Yes, the corpus collosum is a pathway or trunking of nerves which connect the two hemispheres, left and right. Torey's words are: " The corpus collosum is a dense bundle of nerve fibres that connects the hemispheres. Through it new interhemispheric transactions are created and maintained."

I'm not sure what you mean,phil, by the corpus collosum "cannot in itself" be active. As far as I can gather, the 'transactions' that occur across the corpus collosum cause proprioception. What is 'proprioception'? In Torey's glossary it says " one of the three sources of sensory imputs into the brain. It conveys information about muscle activity and the state of dynamics of the active body"

This means (as I interpret him) that as language manipulates words and concepts two things happen: one, trains of thought are generated, two, accompanying these trains of thought proprioception occurs, ie the feeling that we are doing it. The brain in the process of thinking has to attend to two inputs at the same time, says Torey: the handled content and the handling of content. It is in this oscillation between representations of the thought trains and the feeling brought about by proprioception that self awareness comes about. It would seem that a false sense that there is a separate entity (the self) which is actually doing the thinking whereas this is merely a side effect of the twin process and when thinking/speaking ceases the self also ceases because it is a dependent of the process rather than the active cause of it.

Phil, this is my attempt to put into words Torey's jargon. I may have missed something or misunderstood something, but there it is:-).
edward

There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will

Sorry what I mean to say is that the corpus callosum (I have been mispelling it) cant act on anything. It is not an active part of the brain as is the amygdala..cingular gyrus..hypocampus..etc. It is just a transmitter as far as brain researchers have said. There are different sizes to the corpus callosum though with a reverse effect on the passing of information. The bigger it is the worse the transferring of information. Could be too much information is not a good thing. I just read this in the new Springers book Left Brain/ Right Brain. People who have their corpus callosum's cut dont notice any difference in their lives and neither do scientist until they design certain experiments.

I am not sure that the proprioception you mention has anything to do with the corpus callosum now that you word it the way you do. I dont think any studies on the split brain patients were done where they asked the people if self conscousness changed. I will have to think about all this some more. Right now I am done for the day.

This post was last updated by phil K Thu, 25 Jun 2009.

Well..I came home and read more about the meaning of proprioception and I cant say that Torey was right at all because it seems the word applies to balance and physical states and the brains apparently dont need to communicate at all to have balance etc. because none of the split brain patients had any problems so I dont see how proprioception is a word that even applies to consciousness. My view and speculation has to do with the intereference of the left brain in the state of right brain activities and the fact that maybe self consciousness as we know it is the difference in the fact that the left brain wants to control and have the abilities that the right brain has control over but the left brain which is conceptual cant perform and must "let go" and allow the right brain to do what it can do. This theory comes from years of working with people and almost literally hypnotising them to get them to their performance abilities. I have had incredible success in doing this by breaking down their concepts that left brain thinking has anything to do with right brain performance...sometimes I actually explain it that way and other times I just become their left brains and teach them the performance perceptions without them even knowing what I am doing. Absolutely, all of this is speculative but you cant deny performance and I have seen it happen....want a tennis lesson...lol

phil K wrote:
want a tennis lesson...

the wall always wins

Health care is everyone's job, not just in treating illness but in promoting healthy living. We must take personal responsibility, engaging our minds and hands in meaningful work - all essential components of healthy, secure lifestyles and communities.

lol....boy does it ever...in my case it was the old wooden garage door....I have gone back to that old house from over 50 years ago and the garage is still in tact....guess I should go and ask the people if I could take it on one last time!