Indeed, the placebo effect goes right to the heart of Richs question about good and bad science. I have two passages here about the placebo one brief one just for fun, and an extended commentary by Alan Wallace, elaborating on the challenge that the placebo presents to those in the scientific community who are members of the church of materialism.    more »

This from today's news — I've always felt that the "Placebo Effect" would be a fruitful venue for study of body-mind-spirit interaction. - will moss    more »

Hi Mike, Thank you for the kind words and your support for the school. I, too, have been thinking to do another hike for Auroville. Perhaps next year or the following one. ...   more »

Hi Lakshman, Welcome to new home, hope all is well. Am sending article in a couple days. We found out from the Chicago consulate that there is absolutely no way for Ananta to return to India. I hesistated to break the news to him, but when I finally did he brushed it off lightly and said "well, never mind—I've got the solution: BUDAPEST!" What a spirit—every day he proposes a new & impossible foreign destination, and most cheerfully.   more »

Hi Prapanna, I admire & feel inspired by your recent hike. I don't have your strength & endurance, but I have long thought it would be great one day to organize a walkathon-type activity to raise funds for the Auroville Land project. A gift from the land of America to the land of Auroville. ...   more »

I've been intrigued by the reports of "high-amplitude gamma synchrony" (coherent 40-70 Hz, with bursts of 80-120 Hz) being measured in long-term (15-40 years of meditation training & practice) Tibetan Buddhist meditators. Importantly, one study showed evidence that "the trained Tibetan meditators had baseline increases in gamma synchrony and amplitude, suggesting long-term changes in their brains from years of meditation. One might say they are more highly conscious in a baseline state, achieving even greater intensity of consciousness during meditation." Stuart Hameroff believes this high coherence measured at spatially distant brain locations is a possible indication of quantum effects in the brain.    more »

Almost all scientific research is considered "quantitative". To put it as simply as possible, it means that whatever observations are made - whether it's the chemical make up of a rock or the personality of a native of Niger, somewhere in the course of the experiment you have to operationalize your observations - that is, turn them into numbers. So in my dissertation experiment, the pain levels of the subjects had to be expressed as numbers, their levels of cognitive flexibility, the persistence of pain schemas - etc etc - all ended up being expressed as numbers. Well, on the one hand, the astonishing power of science - particularly physics - lies in this mathematical formalism. The problem is that you lose a tremendous amount of 'reality" when you reduce everything to numbers.    more »

My initial impression is that this is a pretty flaky site. The first clue was its frequent use of sensational superlatives, often an indicator of amateurs at work. (E.g., on the first page: "... Two generations of remarkable research by thousands of Ph.D. level specialists have emerged from Kozyrev?s seed findings. ...") ...    more »

- The idea that quantum phenomena may have been crucial to the evolution of both life and consciousness on Earth is gaining increasing interest. ... - Two of the most frequently cited references are the work of Professor Stuart Hameroff, a research anesthesiologist and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson and the book *Quantum Evolution* by Johnjoe McFadden, Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey in England. ... - Hameroff has extended these ideas to include possible quantum effects in the evolution of consciousness on Earth; e.g., in his paper "Did Consciousness Cause the Cambrian Evolutionary Explosion?" ... - McFadden's "Quantum Evolution" ... proposes that quantum effects can act on the positions of protons in the structure of DNA. Through a quantum computing process via the "multiverse," optimized adaptive mutations may occur. ...    more »

I have no idea if this site is on the level or a bit over the top - the link just came in a letter to the Journal of Consciousness forum. Thought you might be interested. http://ascension2000.com/DivineCosmos/01.htm    more »

Happy Darshan to all. Matthijs has edited the transcript of his talk and the corrected version has now been archived. You can access it at: http://www.sriaurobindocenter-la.com/postaum2005/MatthijsAUM05.doc   more »

Thanks for forwarding this letter! I'm sending it on to my "science skeptics" -- you know, the ones who have some inner opening, but identify themselves as 'scientists' and choke over the least thing that contradicts the dominant paradigm.    more »

I'm still trying to get some time to write about phenomenological research and lucid dreaming. Meanwhile, this letter below from Louis Gidney just appeared on the Journal of Consciousness Studies egroup. The latest issue of JCS is about Rupert Sheldrake's theory that people can tell if someone behind them is staring at them by means of a non-physical field which encompasses both people. There's been conversations on the JCS group for awhile of folks who are either passionately pro or con. I thought Gidney's comments, especially toward the end about the nature of science, might stir some interest among the Post-AUM'ers. ...    more »

- SA/M's ... warnings against an overly mental approach to the world make complete sense to me. Today's policy and economic experts use computer models with hundreds of thousands of interacting nonlinear variables which still can only accurately predict for a couple of years what a given policy intervention would actually do (& that's assuming no exogenous changes). I've come to the conclusion that the only hope is to somehow connect with a deeper wisdom than merely mental processes can achieve, and the only way I know how to do that is through a serious sadhana based on a long-term well-tested spiritual tradition. ...    more »

- ... The real horror is that many of these negative changes are the result of the best of intentions; e.g. the population explosion and accompanying suffering that occurred with the introduction of modern medicine in the East (thus dramatically decreasing the death rate) without also focusing on bringing down the birth rate. And of course the accelerating damage to the Earth's biosphere accompanying the spread of the West's consumerist lifestyles. Aren't most of us in this forum already painfully aware of the negative trends surrounding us? I admit that a real bias of mine for this forum is to focus on the many positive signs that the work done by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is in fact resulting in a discernible evolutionary transformation. ...    more »

... The mind is trying to explain a level or magnitude/complexity of reality that is beyond its grasp. So science has its convenient reductions as does religion. The reality itself is however beyond mind, and not just present temporal mind, but mind period. The new paradigm in physics and biology is therefore becoming more holistic, chaotic, mystical. "Intelligent design" is a kind of metaphorical mental phrase that describes more than it can explain about a mental perception of the nature of physical existence as human consciousness conceives it. It is no more or less "abstract conceptual" than "random mutation" or "natural selection." As SA said, these phrases don't really explain anything. So, along with SA we should seek an "adequate" explanation of the processes of nature. It is more than intelligent design and more than chance, it is the "logic of the infinite." ...    more »

Could you say some more about your point #2: "defining and elaborating the relationship between design and process and its 'more than intelligent' nature?" How could this be expressed in a way that would make sense to IY & ID people, and hopefully even some scientists? ...    more »

"Synchronistically", we could say, or maybe 'Intelligently', I received this cartoon from my sister in the Bay Area the same day as Ron's query about Intelligent Design. So I pass it along, as an example of the way it is viewed by the progressive element in US society. ______________ {Fun Cartoon - copy it if possible, from postaum2005 list}   more »

As some of you know I have returned from my John Muir Trail hike. It was a wonderful journey, complete with lots of snow, some exciting and dangerous river and creek crossings, a serious thunderstorm on the final night out, and many new friends made along the way. ...   more »

Perhaps we could distinguish our position by 1) helping to clarify the difference between creationism and intelligent design thories; and 2) by defining and elaborating the relationship between design and process and its "more than intelligent" nature.    more »

But reading the points listed on the Discovery website, it really does seem that, minus the reactive vituperation of the scientific community, ID actually looks quite compatible and relatively non-conflictive with the IY involution/evolutionary Evolution of Consciousness. Again from my untrained eye, it would seem a fruitful avenue for building bridges. ...   more »

I've just been looking over the website of "The Discovery Institute." Located in Seattle, Washington, USA, they're the main promoters of "the theory of intelligent design" (ID) which they call an alternative to the "neo-Darwinist theory of evolution." They're an activist organization which has been getting a lot of attention in the news lately because of their drive to be included in public school biology classes.

I'm curious about how we (followers of IY) could easily differentiate ourselves from ID. Not knowing much about the details of their approach, other than a brief look at their website, it seems to me that we may risk being thrown into the category of ID by mainstream scientists who consider it merely a front for Creationism. ...   more »

I have 2 more letters on this topic - I want to send a description of how I got involved in phenomenological research - specifically, how I thought it was what I was looking for in terms of a method integrating science and yoga, and how I grew disenchanted with it; the last letter will be on "Insight Dialogue", an integration of mindfulness meditation with Bohm dialogue that is now being practiced in Auroville among many other places. I think it can be used in a way consistent with what Sri Aurobindo writes below.

I've pasted here a quote from the cover page of the first edition of the Arya, which appeared on Sri Aurobindo's birthday, 15 August 1914. (This was just sent by Ron). ...   more »

... Sri Aurobindo and the Mother present their aims and method of their new journal *Arya* ... on the cover page of the first edition, which appeared on Sri Aurobindo's birthday, 15 August 1914.

"1) The systematic study of the highest problems of existence.

"2) The formation of a vast synthesis of knowledge, harmonising the diverse religious traditions of humanity, occidental as well as oriental.

"Its method will be that of realism, at once rational and transcendental, a realism consisting in the unification of intellectual and scientific disciplines with those of intuitive experience." ...    more »

I just came across this article, "Mind May Effect Machines," which I think relates not only to questions re methodology, but also to your "theme re consciousness unfolding on many scales," in this case our lifetimes and moments of experience: ...   more »

I'm back from my John Muir Trail hike. I completed the hike about a week earlier than planned as I was doing about 14-16 miles a day for the last week and half instead of the planned 8-10 miles a day. It was wonderful in the High Sierras this year, but there was a lot of snow, a few dangerous river and creek crossings, and a very serious thunderstorm on my last night out (Thursday). In fact, a Boyscout leader and a boyscout were killed by lightening about four miles from where I was hunkered down trying to keep dry during the storm. ...   more »

Nice, clear explanation J & D. Naturally I like the clinical focus, but I'm biased & proud of it! Non-sequitor to All: anyone who hasn't been able to download my article on Sri Aurobindo & Transpersonal Psychology from the post-Aum site Debashish mentioned, kindly inform me again of continued desire for a hardcopy. ...   more »

I'm making my way toward a specific response to your question about the "research methodology" we're using in our book. I'm not sure how many of the members of this forum are familiar with scientific research, so I thought I'd share some of my (admittedly minimal) research experience, and try to connect it with what we're writing about. My dissertation research was on the use of mindfulness meditation in the treatment of pain. I'll give a little background on how I developed the idea for the dissertation then say something about the methodology. ...    more »