blog three

It seems to me that our human dreams have similar and enduring themes so the idea of a collective consciousness or the notion that our dreams belong to a community rather than to an individual isn't too much of a stretch. If one were to buy into the notion that the Field is a mass connection or a great forum for communication, then it would be likely that the Amazons have it right: that the dream world is reality (communicated to an individual through the ZPF) and that our "waking consciousness" is the false world of isolation (that we perceive through a limited ability as humans to "see" the whole picture).

The question as to where our memory lies has already been posed in earlier chapters, but extends, naturally, to the question as to where our thoughts lie. This question brought to mind the idea of our souls and where they might lie. Memory, thought, and the idea of the soul or conscience are all abstractions that we believe ourselves to have, but where are they on an anatomical map? The studies on memory and thought have illuminated a fourth abstraction for me to ponder: intentions and their locations (they probably fall under the larger category of thought, which was always assumed to be located in the brain, but if we can will a machine or a person to do something, or even will our thoughts to "see" a certain place, aren't our intentions outside of our bodies altogether?).

Four pages into chapter seven, I was already worried about mind control (and how it could be used for evil). The experiments of Braud and others "proved" that people could change the usual consequences of nature and influence other (though "lower") forms of life. Braud discovered, however, that "awareness occured only in a deep subliminal level" (131). Lazlo noted that "children under five show that they permanently function in alpha mode--the state of altered consciousness in an adult" (138). As per one of my previous posts, isn't there the possibility that we can break into that subliminal level, that as we mature we put "guards" up to keep ourselves isolated and that it is the lowering of these partitions that could allow us access to the field (and use it for whatever purpose we deem worthwhile)? Are children unguarded and therefore more powerful than we (adults) are in their ability to access so much more of this potential information? Is there a reason that innocent children can do this and worldly, experienced adults develop guards?

It was not altogether surprising to me that those "gifted" in some sort of psychic ability could "see" in some of the experiments. Though I do not really buy into this sort of ability personally, I assume there must be some sort of extrasensory tuning in these types or else there wouldn't be study, advertisement, or an industry for their line of work. However, as many of the previous REG experiments noted, with training, even ordinary people could influence the results in favor of the researchers' hypotheses. Essentially, chapter eight did not convert me to believing in psychics and the like, but it did open my mind to the possibility that those people have a natural ability to do things that we all may be able to train ourselves to do.

Jahn's whole, "take time out of it and it all makes sense" (164) simply confuses me. Although McTaggart does an excellent job of trying to break down the notions of time and space into lay terms, the idea of time travel or influencing events (especially those that have already happened) has always tripped me up a little. What I did find fascinating about chapter nine, however, was the idea that "observation by living observers brings things into some sort of set being" (172), which is similar to a concept we'd previously discussed. Not only is the universe in constant activity and communication with us and all its parts, but our observation imposes definitions and limitations of time and space on things. This idea stemmed from the electron state portion of the book and now transfers to our ideas of previously assumed linear forces. If I understood the chapters correctly, the notions of time and space are human inventions; we categorize our perceptions according to these concepts, when in "reality," they exist independently of them.