I don't want to be extreme in pigeonholing BillB. Obviously he has some openness and open mindedness, and realizes that matter in the obvious physical form, is not all there is. That's A LOT more than the average scientist out there who thinks that OBE's, NDE's, etc. are nothing more than imagination, delusion, and/or chemical reactions in the brain.

  So i very much respect and commend that he is more open than the above types. 

But when one begins with a fundamentally limited assumption about the core nature of reality, and that consciousness/awareness comes from matter, it will distort all the rest of one's perceptions and beliefs. 

  Like Max Planck and some other well known physicists that were involved in the pioneering work of quantum physics (people likely with much more respected credentials than our BillB, since that's always so important to such types), i believe that consciousness is primary and matter derivative from same. 

  I do not believe this because of physic's theories and experiments.  In fact, i wasn't aware of Planck's and other folks conclusions until fairly recently.  This was a spiritual truth i intuited a long time ago, and well before i came across Tom Campbell, Bob Monroe, Bruce Moen, etc.  When i started to get those intuitive downloads as a young teen about the deeper nature of reality, such things as the importance of Love, the existence of Oneness, etc also one of the concepts downloaded was that Consciousness was much more than physical and that physical was in a sense an illusion or rather a specific, limited perception.   

  However, the fact that some early pioneering physicists did postulate similar, and it seems that physics is slowly, but surely moving in that direction as a whole, i do find interesting and encouraging. 

    The left brain part of us is important to develop. Without proper left brain development, use, practice, etc, we will lack discrimination, a sense of holistic logic, and/or the ability to explain concepts well and logically to others. 

But, over emphasis on the left brain side of us (very common in men), is one of the strongest hurdles for people to more clearly perceive that which is beyond the physical.

  The reason why there are so many more women than men that are consciously aware of, and accepting of nonphysical and/or spiritual reality, is because they are more intuitive and more empathy attuned as a trend.  They FEEL the truth of these, and accept the validity of such feelings. 

  However, western culture, and especially American culture has been moving in the direction of left brain dominance/polarization.  We have become very imbalanced as a society, intellectualism is put too much on a pedestal at the detriment of such important things like intuition and empathy. 

  All one needs to do is go to a youtube or facebook video that talks about some "alternative" theories or views relating to the nonphysical or spiritual, and the amount of derogatory, extreme, CERTAIN comments from the intellectually polarized to the those open to something more, will quickly show you how far the herd as moved in the direction of left brain polarization where physical matter and our 5 senses is all there is.

 

"Mystical substance" I like that.    Thank God it exists.

I think what I said earlier on this thread applies.  If the Source of everything is real, then even that which is temporary is real for as long as it exists.

It could be that there is no such thing as unreal, not even a dream, since everything makes use of the awareness, creative and mind aspects of being which "DO" exist. What else is there?


1796 wrote on Aug 8^th, 2015 at 11:35pm:

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The film does. I put forward the question in relation to that.

It proposes that the reality we think we are living in is a simulation, an illusion, that the reality around us, even material and space are no more real than in a dream or on an animated computer screen. If that is the case, then what of right and wrong as it pertains to this illusion. Is right and wrong an illusion too?   

Yes, the film stops at asserting that reality as we know it is an illusion, and it does not go on to discuss right and wrong as we know it within that illusion.

So if, as the film makers assert, that reality as we know it is not real, but a sort of illusory dream or simulation, then it naturally follows that what we do right and wrong in this simulation is not real either.

Or if we accept that what is right and wrong is real, then we accept that reality as we know it is real too.

Anyone's thoughts? 

Actually on that light note, I have certainly observed a difference in the temperaments between collectives of coffee drinkers and collectives of tea drinkers. In my country and in my working experience I have observed that in engineering, the trades and on the land, physically active jobs where men work directly with form and structure, tea tends to be the preferred drink, and black of course. In fields such as office work, social science education, community welfare and counselling facilities, where women dominate and the outcome of the work is not so tangible or clearly apparent, coffee has always been the drink of choice, and lots of it too, with milk and sugar. The tea drinkers are jovial, easy going, rational, hard working, and at peace with the world. By comparison the coffee drinkers tend to be irritable, especially if they don't get enough of it, emotional, prone to gossiping, tend to hate society and driven to change the world. Their styles of conflict and expectations of friendship are quite different too.

Of course the drinking of tea or coffee is not the only differentiating variable between the groups, and a correlation, even if it is the only differentiating variable between groups, is still only a correlation, not a cause.

Being a tea drinker I have always been the odd one out when working in welfare related environments, and my colleagues have often pressed me to drink coffee with them. I usually decline and joke that I don't want to take the risk.             

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   I have found through my shamanic journeys that caffeine (which fuels coffee and tea) tends to put me in a solid C1 consciousness. It tends to block out all of my senses that reach beyond the physical thought level. I try to avoid caffeine so as not to get stuck in the physical consciousness only.

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Thank you for this knowledge. I always liked the effects of tea over coffee but didn't know why until now.