Dualism or idealist monism as the best model for survival after death data

The Spiritual Particle: Speculative Insights into the Intersection of Consciousness, Matter, and the Metaphysical Realm

Douglas C. Youvan

This is an interesting concept, and would seemingly be a key part of whatever mechanism enables immaterial spirit and consciousness to interact with the billions of neurons and synapses of the brain in order to manifest consciousness in the physical, the latter being the statement of the philosophy of mind called interactive dualism. Unfortunately it is just a theoretical construct with no experimental evidence of its existence, so it isn't clear to me how it advances the field.

This is an interesting concept, and would seemingly be a key part of whatever mechanism enables immaterial spirit and consciousness to interact with the billions of neurons and synapses of the brain in order to manifest consciousness in the physical, the latter being the statement of the philosophy of mind called interactive dualism. Unfortunately it is just a theoretical construct with no experimental evidence of its existence, so it isn't clear to me how it advances the field.

Yeah I was really expecting it to get into Eccles' concept of "psychons" which were a very similar idea.

I don't know if an actual particle makes sense, given it isn't completely clear what exactly particles are beyond the measurements they produce.

However this idea of a bridge entity, as part of a consciousness inclusive physics, makes a certain amount of sense. Structure matters, yet at the same time it feels arbitrary that any structure in the physical world has to correlate with consciousness.

My best guess is a Mind(s?) directed set of universes, where different realities have different rules. Souls move between these universes akin to the way a player can shift from video game to another, each having different programmer implemented rules. 

My hope, however, is that things are more meaningful than just mere entertainment given the vast amount of suffering and search for purpose that is contained in merely this one world of ours.

Yeah I was really expecting it to get into Eccles' concept of "psychons" which were a very similar idea.

I don't know if an actual particle makes sense, given it isn't completely clear what exactly particles are beyond the measurements they produce.

However this idea of a bridge entity, as part of a consciousness inclusive physics, makes a certain amount of sense. Structure matters, yet at the same time it feels arbitrary that any structure in the physical world has to correlate with consciousness.

It indeed does when there has never been any identified mechanisms by which consciousness interacts with matter, nor can there logically be, because mechanisms are only within physical-to-physical systems.

For consciousness... vibrational resonance feels like the more appropriate concept, though that can be a supremely vague idea to anyone who hasn't experienced it. I guess it's a sort of... pull towards something, where energies are similar or compatible.

Materialists immediately dismiss such ideas, because it smacks of "woo", but it explains why any medicines or healing techniques of a vibrational nature appear to work. Acupuncture and acupressure work on these principles, I think ~ stimulating certain energies that will invigorate the body to heal. Qi Gong and Tai Chi certainly work by these principles. Herbal medicines may be physical, but even in China are they based on certain principles related to being Yin or Yang, meaning that different bodies will respond differently depending on how they resonate with the specific energies of the herbs.

In terms of physical forms... it might explain why are the NDEr is drawn a specific body when they're sent back ~ they resonate with the residual energies still, being so freshly from that shell. In astral projection OBEs, they speak of a silver cord that connects them to their body, which is sometimes difficult to stretch, allowing to travel further and further, according to Robert Monroe's works.

So... structure... do structures have certain... signatures to them? Does intention matter? Desire? The purpose for which they're made? The mindset of the inventor being imprinted onto the structure in some non-physical manner? Maybe this is how psychometry works, to some degree? Ah, speculation...

My best guess is a Mind(s?) directed set of universes, where different realities have different rules. Souls move between these universes akin to the way a player can shift from video game to another, each having different programmer implemented rules.

I know in my experience that it can be quite simultaneous, though time between each universe does not at flow uniformly... I've been in futures, then pasts, in those universes, and it was seamless. It was very strange. I don't yet understand how it works, nor why. It makes me wonder about free will... perhaps there is still free will, even though there are constraints to the range of free will.

My hope, however, is that things are more meaningful than just mere entertainment given the vast amount of suffering and search for purpose that is contained in merely this one world of ours.

Each life I've observed so far has had different sets of experiences that seem to be teaching different things. It's like... multitasking, I suppose.

I see a lot of general experiences that have nothing to do with entertainment, and more to do with... understanding what this or that means, how to integrate certain ideas, dealing with different sets of circumstances.

The common theme seems to be of having experiences that will teach us one thing or another. Some think that we go to learn, in the sense of a school... I used to think this until I realized that we never learn anything from some experiences, or never seem to. So, it led me to think that the experience comes first, and then we draw a personal lesson out of the experience.

Like... fire. What is it? Oh, it's hot. Oh, it burns. Ouch, my finger is scorched. It blisters. Well, the lesson is obvious ~ fire can be dangerous if approached unwisely. We come into the world with some built-in knowledge and understanding of things ~ instincts. But other things we have to learn about.

So... maybe we come into the world to understand what it is like to be this or that, or to do this or that, not understanding the consequences prior in our ignorance. Maybe we know the theory of something, but not what it is actually like in and of itself. So we come to see what it's actually like.

Imagine... skydiving, or some other daunting activity you've never done, but have curiosity towards. Or maybe some daunting activity you've done, imagining what your mindset was like prior to doing the experience ~ the curiosity towards it.

Often we do things because they're exciting or difficult, because we like to be challenged. Pain is expected, suffering is optional. Mindset seems to be key.

But not all enjoy the consequences of their actions... and that's where some of the biggest personal lessons arise, some of the most powerful motivators for growth. The bigger the fall, the more potential we have for rising higher. Yes, it flips that trope around, but I feel it appropriate.

Half working on intuition here, as I'm in the right mindset for it, apparently. It is what it is. Fleeting, but useful.

/ramble

Uh... yeah, I hope it was half-relevant. Sorry if I went off-topic, heh.

It indeed does when there has never been any identified mechanisms by which consciousness interacts with matter, nor can there logically be, because mechanisms are only within physical-to-physical systems.

For consciousness... vibrational resonance feels like the more appropriate concept, though that can be a supremely vague idea to anyone who hasn't experienced it. I guess it's a sort of... pull towards something, where energies are similar or compatible.

Materialists immediately dismiss such ideas, because it smacks of "woo", but it explains why any medicines or healing techniques of a vibrational nature appear to work. Acupuncture and acupressure work on these principles, I think ~ stimulating certain energies that will invigorate the body to heal. Qi Gong and Tai Chi certainly work by these principles. Herbal medicines may be physical, but even in China are they based on certain principles related to being Yin or Yang, meaning that different bodies will respond differently depending on how they resonate with the specific energies of the herbs.

In terms of physical forms... it might explain why are the NDEr is drawn a specific body when they're sent back ~ they resonate with the residual energies still, being so freshly from that shell. In astral projection OBEs, they speak of a silver cord that connects them to their body, which is sometimes difficult to stretch, allowing to travel further and further, according to Robert Monroe's works.

So... structure... do structures have certain... signatures to them? Does intention matter? Desire? The purpose for which they're made? The mindset of the inventor being imprinted onto the structure in some non-physical manner? Maybe this is how psychometry works, to some degree? Ah, speculation...


I know in my experience that it can be quite simultaneous, though time between each universe does not at flow uniformly... I've been in futures, then pasts, in those universes, and it was seamless. It was very strange. I don't yet understand how it works, nor why. It makes me wonder about free will... perhaps there is still free will, even though there are constraints to the range of free will.


Each life I've observed so far has had different sets of experiences that seem to be teaching different things. It's like... multitasking, I suppose.

I see a lot of general experiences that have nothing to do with entertainment, and more to do with... understanding what this or that means, how to integrate certain ideas, dealing with different sets of circumstances.

The common theme seems to be of having experiences that will teach us one thing or another. Some think that we go to learn, in the sense of a school... I used to think this until I realized that we never learn anything from some experiences, or never seem to. So, it led me to think that the experience comes first, and then we draw a personal lesson out of the experience.

Like... fire. What is it? Oh, it's hot. Oh, it burns. Ouch, my finger is scorched. It blisters. Well, the lesson is obvious ~ fire can be dangerous if approached unwisely. We come into the world with some built-in knowledge and understanding of things ~ instincts. But other things we have to learn about.

So... maybe we come into the world to understand what it is like to be this or that, or to do this or that, not understanding the consequences prior in our ignorance. Maybe we know the theory of something, but not what it is actually like in and of itself. So we come to see what it's actually like.

Imagine... skydiving, or some other daunting activity you've never done, but have curiosity towards. Or maybe some daunting activity you've done, imagining what your mindset was like prior to doing the experience ~ the curiosity towards it.

Often we do things because they're exciting or difficult, because we like to be challenged. Pain is expected, suffering is optional. Mindset seems to be key.

But not all enjoy the consequences of their actions... and that's where some of the biggest personal lessons arise, some of the most powerful motivators for growth. The bigger the fall, the more potential we have for rising higher. Yes, it flips that trope around, but I feel it appropriate.

Half working on intuition here, as I'm in the right mindset for it, apparently. It is what it is. Fleeting, but useful.

/ramble

Uh... yeah, I hope it was half-relevant. Sorry if I went off-topic, heh.

This is an important idealistic general claim. I have to mostly disagree - there are a multitude of relatively common in human life experiences of extreme suffering that only a sanctified saint could perhaps rise above by the mantra mindset that the body may suffer but the mind and soul sits above and does not have to suffer. It's just the state of mind. Sure, in some ultimate sense. But experiencing this state is very rare and against common human nature. Many forms of extreme pain are deeply designed into the human body, are "hard wired" into our brains, so that intense physical pain just IS suffering by automatic instinct.

A few examples of intense pain that the great majority of humans are mostly compelled by their very natures to experience when various misfortunes occur. Ever experience an intractible big kidney stone try and fail to squeeze itself out?  Try rising above that. Bone cancer metastatizing. Losing a precious loved child to accident or disease. 

I think it is too much to expect the ordinary vast majority of humans to somehow miraculously "rise above" such experiences by some sort of trance-like spiritual realization of the truth of things- that they are spiritual beings inhabiting physical bodies and need not fear any real damage whatever the severity. People in general don't work like that, just the occasional rare very spiritual person who has devoted a lifetime to spiritual practices, and even they can fail.

This is an important idealistic general claim. I have to mostly disagree - there are a multitude of relatively common in human life experiences of extreme suffering that only a sanctified saint could perhaps rise above by the mantra mindset that the body may suffer but the mind and soul sits above and does not have to suffer. It's just the state of mind. Sure, in some ultimate sense. But experiencing this state is very rare and against common human nature. Many forms of extreme pain are deeply designed into the human body, are "hard wired" into our brains, so that intense physical pain just IS suffering by automatic instinct.

A few examples of intense pain that the great majority of humans are mostly compelled by their very natures to experience when various misfortunes occur. Ever experience an intractible big kidney stone try and fail to squeeze itself out?  Try rising above that. Bone cancer metastatizing. Losing a precious loved child to accident or disease. 

I think it is too much to expect the ordinary vast majority of humans to somehow miraculously "rise above" such experiences by some sort of trance-like spiritual realization of the truth of things- that they are spiritual beings inhabiting physical bodies and need not fear any real damage whatever the severity. People in general don't work like that, just the occasional rare very spiritual person who has devoted a lifetime to spiritual practices, and even they can fail.

I quite agree.

I think that is only through suffering can we eventually learn that suffering isn't strictly part of the process of feeling pain. It is something we can learn after the fact, if we reflect on the experience. But, if the pain and suffering was traumatic, then that can be rather difficult to let go of. Trauma, we can only truly comprehend after we've properly healed and let go of it.

And often... it is only after we leave this life behind that we can look back and bring a lesson out of that which we could not comprehend due to being in the thick of it.

Souls might be okay with temporary pain, but it sure as hell doesn't feel like that when the incarnate aspect of soul is in the middle of it all... it can feel very much like endless torment in the moment... and that really, really sucks. Been there too many times for comfort.

But maybe that's how one gradually learns... through painful, hard-won experience.

Either, often it seems like many either make peace with their state... or they bitterly never accept it, and suffer. Either way, there is a lesson waiting after the fact... or none at all.

Minds are strange things. We can interpret the exact same experience in vastly different ways, for even the most subtle of factors. Sometimes, it can even be due to advice that we have long since forgotten, but carry the mindset of, nonetheless.

Why can we accept some forms of pain, without suffering, yet other forms of pain we cannot accept? Traumas, beliefs, mindsets, phobias...

For some kidney stones may not even bother them. For some, the death of child may lead not to grief in always the forms we might expect, because we tend to look at it through the lens of we might react.

Maybe I'm waffling, but then, I'm trying to understand the human condition through my own lens.

Maybe we're all correct... maybe none of us are. Maybe some. I don't know. But that seems to be life in general...

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

-Kafka

This quote made me think, what if souls by their very immortal nature become desensitized to the joys and sorrows of life.

Perhaps incarnating into worlds like ours is how souls keep themselves engaged, with mortal lives serving them in the way Kafka wants fiction to serve us.

Of course this still leaves the central question of what immortals work toward, and how can any goal not have been accomplished long ago if souls have already existed for an infinite amount of time?

Attanasio once wrote ->

"Our people have long known of the trinity, Abred, God's struggle to create the world through evolution, Gwynedd, the triumph over evil that our Savior has attained, and Ceugant, the radiant rays of God's love, the Holy Spirit. Each of us is on the spiral journey to the eternity of God, guided by the Holy Spirit. Through every form that can hold life, under water, on earth, in air, we evolve, knowing every severity, every hardship, evil, and suffering until we become worthy of goodness by knowing everything. And that is why we must endure what is painful, my son, for it is not possible to know all without suffering all."

I loved this passage when I read it in my youth, but as I've grown older the more questions I have. Why do we need to suffer everything, and if we commit evils [as part of our journey to God] then what meaning does this world hold?

Is our universe a virtual training ground? Then we awaken to some higher reality with a better understanding and live out our real lives there?

Another option, that I dislike, is for our immortal selves incarnating is a kind of entertainment or even escape from the ennui of immortality. That would make existence too much like a mere video game.

Both options feel like they turn this life into something too close to the fiction Kafka talked about.

-Kafka

This quote made me think, what if souls by their very immortal nature become desensitized to the joys and sorrows of life.

Perhaps incarnating into worlds like ours is how souls keep themselves engaged, with mortal lives serving them in the way Kafka wants fiction to serve us.

Of course this still leaves the central question of what immortals work toward, and how can any goal not have been accomplished long ago if souls have already existed for an infinite amount of time?

Attanasio once wrote ->


I loved this passage when I read it in my youth, but as I've grown older the more questions I have. Why do we need to suffer everything, and if we commit evils [as part of our journey to God] then what meaning does this world hold?

Is our universe a virtual training ground? Then we awaken to some higher reality with a better understanding and live out our real lives there?

Another option, that I dislike, is for our immortal selves incarnating is a kind of entertainment or even escape from the ennui of immortality. That would make existence too much like a mere video game.

Both options feel like they turn this life into something too close to the fiction Kafka talked about.

Just got around to looking at this. It occurs to me that these unpleasant possibilities for the underlying nature of the spiritual/physical system we exist in have been discussed before, and unfortunately look like real possibilities. It has always been hard or impossible to understand the problem of suffering. There are no unflawed theodicies and maybe that is because such a thing is impossible.

However, then we would have to explain the completely different message that many temporary voyagers into higher reality have given to us. I'm thinking for instance of the transcendental experiences of deep NDErs who left their bodies in an OBE and sometimes had a life review, travelled through some sort of interface or tunnel into a spiritual realm where they experienced a transcendentally powerful being of light (or just an immensely powerful spiritual light), and communicated with deceased loved ones. Of course all these features seldom happened in one individual NDE, but they were still real experiences. 

Another example - there were the experiences of transcendental "cosmic consciousness" compiled a long time ago by Bucke.

It seems to me that both of these sorts of transcendental paranormal experiences have in common the perception that the underlying nature of reality is of immense, unfathomable love and light, that somehow, almost unbelievably, it is all ultimately for good. This sounds sappy and naive, but it seems to me to be the definite message.

So, for the Kafka-esque dark possibilities you mention to be the truth there would have to be a massive and complicated program of deception going on perpetrated by the "powers that be", with the purpose of keeping we manipulated humans going along in our lives and following the dictated program.

Such a massive deception, being complicated and involved, would appear to violate the Occam's Razor principle of parsimony of explanations and therefore might not be likely to be the reality of things. Maybe wishful thinking, but it's at least one ray of light.

Just got around to looking at this. It occurs to me that these unpleasant possibilities for the underlying nature of the spiritual/physical system we exist in have been discussed before, and unfortunately look like real possibilities. It has always been hard or impossible to understand the problem of suffering. There are no unflawed theodicies and maybe that is because such a thing is impossible.

However, then we would have to explain the completely different message that many temporary voyagers into higher reality have given to us. I'm thinking for instance of the transcendental experiences of deep NDErs who left their bodies in an OBE and sometimes had a life review, travelled through some sort of interface or tunnel into a spiritual realm where they experienced a transcendentally powerful being of light (or just an immensely powerful spiritual light), and communicated with deceased loved ones. Of course all these features seldom happened in one individual NDE, but they were still real experiences. 

Another example - there were the experiences of transcendental "cosmic consciousness" compiled a long time ago by Bucke.

It seems to me that both of these sorts of transcendental paranormal experiences have in common the perception that the underlying nature of reality is of immense, unfathomable love and light, that somehow, almost unbelievably, it is all ultimately for good. This sounds sappy and naive, but it seems to me to be the definite message.

So, for the Kafka-esque dark possibilities you mention to be the truth there would have to be a massive and complicated program of deception going on perpetrated by the "powers that be", with the purpose of keeping we manipulated humans going along in our lives and following the dictated program.

Such a massive deception, being complicated and involved, would appear to violate the Occam's Razor principle of parsimony of explanations and therefore might not be likely to be the reality of things. Maybe wishful thinking, but it's at least one ray of light.

The biggest problem when it comes to questions like this is it very much comes down to a matter or perspective and the awkward situation that reality might not be something that seems nice to us. 

We as humans might as well be living in a 2d dimension. The 3rd dimension could be visible to us if we could only shift out perspective, but that ability is fundamentally impossible to us. Every so often someone sees that dimension and comes back, trying to describe it and make sense of it using the world they know, but in the end we're quite literally incapable of doing so. And yet here we are with our limited perspective trying to make sense of why souls might reincarnate, why we choose life in the first place, why we have problems of suffering ect ect. How could we ever know? And even more so, what happens if these grand problems we struggle with are utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. What if the grand suffering we experience as humans doesn't matter from a perspective higher than ours? Why would it, it's not like we would still think like humans once we are not longer tied to the world as we know it. 

Skeptics make fun of people who research and believe in this stuff because it's a form of wish fulfillment, because it's all about being afraid of dying, whatever. In the end people are afraid of the unknown and the unknown of what we do and don't know about why and how of survival and how it might very well be impossible for us to ever know is its own special kind of terrifying.

Skeptics make fun of people who research and believe in this stuff because it's a form of wish fulfillment, because it's all about being afraid of dying, whatever. In the end people are afraid of the unknown and the unknown of what we do and don't know about why and how of survival and how it might very well be impossible for us to ever know is its own special kind of terrifying.

Leaving aside the matter of what sceptics do or don't believe, you raise an interesting topic. Fear.

In my view certain specific situations could well be a cause for fear. But to base a world-view upon the concept of fear and being terrified - all the time - is a choice. It isn't an inevitable and only option.

Often it is said that the counterpart to fear is love. If one believes only in fear then one is perhaps losing sight of love, not in some esoteric or other-worldly sense, but simply in a direct, everyday sense.