View source for 1990-0503-What-Is-Thought-Ohio-State

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[[Category:1990s]]
[[Category:Lectures]]
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== Data ==

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<tr><td style="width:180px;">Title
</td><td>1990-0503-What-Is-Thought-Ohio-State
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Recorded date
</td><td>May 3, 1990
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Location
</td><td>Ohio State University
</td></tr>

<tr><td>No. tapes
</td><td>2 cassettes
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Other recorders audible?
</td><td>Possible - noise may be soda cans
</td></tr>

<tr><td>DVD number
</td><td>2
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Source
</td><td>N
</td></tr>

<tr><td>No. of MP3 files
</td><td>Four: 45 min, 46 min, 44 min, 43 min
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Total time
</td><td>178 minutes
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Transcription status
</td><td>Stub 
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Published in what book?
</td><td>
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Published in what website?
</td><td>
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Remarks
</td><td>
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Audio quality
</td><td>Side 1 - away from microphone half of time; side 2 away most of time
</td></tr>

<tr><td>Identifiable voices
</td><td>Mike Fitz
</td></tr>

</table>

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== Transcription ==

=== File 1 ===

File 1 = 45  minutes

This is going to be informal and we’ll play it by ear.

We put out a flyer with this question.

What everybody is faced with is this thing called truth, and without truth we have no science.

Even in society, legal systems, the family we like to have the truth.

I discovered years ago that the public doesn’t pay too much attention to the truth. It’s a convenience to claim that you’re truthful. Lying to escape a traffic ticket isn’t too bad, but when it comes to the essence of life, we have to find the truth about that.

We don’t have definitions for thought, sanity, the basic factors of psychology.

We depend on sense-based knowledge.

Asks audience to volunteer definition of thought.

Consciousness? We can be conscious but not think.

Dictionary definitions: A cat is something that isn’t other-than-cat.

We don’t know what things are absolutely.

The word subconscious is never defined.

We leap out without establishing a point of reference.

Behaviorism is based on the normal curve. 

We label things in psychology but we don’t explain them. No point of reference for thought, emotion.

We hope that compatibility is sanity. 

Again, back to point of reference. None in subjective science. The standard unit in chemistry used to be the atom, good point of reference until smaller particles studied. Now shifted to force-field.

Good to read book Dancing Wu Li Masters.

Point of reference means we have a sound foundation; something that works. 

In intangibles points of reference not available.

It’s very difficult to question the authorities in religion and philosophy. Part of this is good; we need to admit that we’re stupid. 

Enormous number to books to read. Lots of theory, no method.

I only had myself at first. I read a lot of books, joined a lot of movements.

Found that there’s a particular way that the mind operates at its maximum.

Zen teacher harasses student with koan. They have a system of thinking that has nothing to do with religion.

Watching your thinking, your first conclusion is that you’ve been had; victim of forces. This is a better place to start than with pretense. You see that someday you will be zero and enter the earth.

Description of animals; have you ever experienced awareness, pure knowing? Animals have that.

What do you think? Can you find a point of reference. No available in any of our institutions.

I’m going to give you a concept of thought and I want to get your reaction. I have never found a correct or acceptable description.

=== File 2 ===

File 2 = 46 minutes. 

This realization only happened to me several years after my experience.

I discovered the human mind has three factors, it receives, records and reacts.

Receiving is perception. Recording is memory. Man doesn’t will to receive or to remember. [editor’s note: this is outlined in detail in Santanelli.]

Scientists have discovered that memory is in DNA, in every cell. Refutes the idea that we think with our head.

Reason is reaction to reaction. One of these reactions is visualization. Also called projection. By the way, meditational exercises that use visualization are phony.

Two classes of perception, normal and abnormal.

The mind can see, to perceive independently. We don’t know how this works.

Engineer imagines how he will construct building.

Prophetic dreams.  J.B. Rhine.  People that can see a foretell a persons death. Articulate voices.

Visions of the mental process. Without specific percepts. This is what I call the process observer, in book Psychology of the Observer.

Bishop Pike (James Pike), attempting to contact his deceased son.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Pike

Raymond, Life after Death.

We are caught in a relative dimension; everything has polarity, good-bad, light-darkness, etc. Need a point of reference above to see both points.

Australian aborigines consult with “brother” I other dimension before throwing boomerang to other side of hill where they can’t see.

Ability to witness a mental process.

You might say this is all passive material.

So what is the relation to the synapse? How does it register? 

Thinking and remembering is all the same.

Implication is that the synapse is the point of contact between the brain and a non-physical mind.

My own experience, left the body but was able to see people below on the street.

Moody’s Life After Life, similar account.

Last sense to go is hearing.

Brother in an auto accident, was in army hospital, unconscious, appeared to be dead, witnessed and remembered scene, priest.

Thought is a synaptic process. Everything we experience goes through the synapse and is registered in the memory. It is registered physically, and I believe it registers in a part of us which survives death; we are dual creatures.

From the seminary onward people were advocating belief, not inquiry.

Describes his vision of humanity, massive phoniness.

Determination necessary.

== Tape 2 ==

=== File 3 ===

44 minutes. 

It’s like you take a role in a theater. When you look back, it will seem absurd.

Gurdjieff’s 4 men: instinctive, emotional, rational, philosophic.
The instinctive person, who lives for sex, booze, excitement – the dimension he enters will be so foreign to his experience that he won’t be able to understand it. Example of RR’s acquaintance – blackness only.

Different grades of sensitivity. 

He couldn’t live in a dimension where this world doesn’t exist.

Reference to a magazine which publishes death-experiences.
Some people become terrified. Account of guy in hospital, close to death; tells nurse ‘”don’t let those people get me, the people in room 202.” Nurse checks, find out a lady just died in room 202, died violently.

Q on synapse; what about the voltage carries the thought? 

RR – Don’t know, but that’s where it occurs. 

Another Q on same. 

RR – I believe there’s an indestructible part of man. 

Material in another dimension is different from the material here. 

When I had the out of body experience my body was dead. When you have the experience, no matter how many people you remember, you know that that this experience (the world) does not exist.

[My message is that] you can experience this; otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Try to get a feel for what I’m saying; can’t put the experience in words. T

ransmission is also possible. 

Learned to transmit from Zen teacher. 

Mind-to-mind understanding. When you experience this (mind to mind) you will know it.

Q – maybe there is a reality beyond what you discovered, so that would be considered unreality. RR – There is only reality. You can’t reach this by putting words together, by logic. Other questions on same topic.

RR - It’s not really speak-able, I’m just making an attempt. I can tell you that you find that this world is like a massive dream. But I can’t prove this.

This isn’t something you can prove or disprove by arguing. You have to go there, and then you will know.

Tremendous pain in my head. At first you think about your relative. Then this leaves you. Saw mountain of human beings still living, millions of them. Later found out that I was all alone. Nothing existed. I had wondered what is life and what is death. Now I saw that there was no death.

This world is like a playhouse. What goes on after this I have no idea; but I’m not afraid of dying. There’s a possibility that we’re not supposed to know.

Q – should everyone not be afraid of dying?  RR – sure.

Bardo: There’s a chance that an instinctive person, once he got there, couldn’t comprehend what he might be. 

We have to admit the truth is that we know nothing.

Religions soften up people a little so they don’t fear death.

Common theme (Zen) – We have to develop a certain hunger to understand. Otherwise you just sit back and watch the movie. 

Some people when brought back from death resolve to clean up life. “It’s a good thing you brought me back; was on well to hell.”

It’s nonsense to believe we’re all going to the same place.

You are one with God, a thinking being, but not conscious of your body.

Q on differences between people. RR – You are either a pig in a pigpen or a seeker. Do you want to take your animal nature with you? What would it be not to have your animal nature?

There are various movements. You can’t go the candy-store route either. You have to pick one and stay with it.

The magic of the east is all attributed to the founding guru; handed down.

Kapila – had tremendous power.

Ramana Maharshi. Book by Paul Brunton.

=== File 4 ===

43  minutes - the first 2 minutes of the tape are blank.


Reference to mysterious construction, block house in Florida, power of “vril” in Bulwer-Lytton. [note: Coral Castle in Homestead, Fla., south of Miami]

We are not alone.

We could be in a farm.

To clarify understanding, you don’t approach anything but retreat from error.

Book “Minds in Many Pieces” [Allison & Schwartz] – multiple personalities.

Entities, exorcisms and psychotherapy.

Chemicals. Psychotherapy: making people feel better, living by little clichés.

Group member who has a nervous breakdown, was put in mental hospital and shot full of Stelazine. Asked doctor, what’s your diagnosis? Dr, “we don’t have one.” Prescribing medicine without a diagnosis. Doctor, “We have a drug for every thought.”

Q&A about illusion.

I don’t decree this. It’s something you will find, like waking from a bad dream.

Q about sin, good & evil.

You’re choosing values for your words that may not be proper.

If you eat too much of a certain food you may get sick. So in that’s sense it’s sin, something you should avoid. But not in a theological sense.

Plato’s cave, watching shadow on wall, turn around and see light at mouth of cave.

Religious syndrome is a misconception, that to bee spiritual we have to be goody-goody. 

These are conceptions. 

But in the final analysis we are not responsible for the suffering here. But we can take time for introspection. 

Rather than getting all tied up in guilt. 

We are goats in the barnyard. People don’t stop to think any more than the chicken stops to think about laying eggs. She has food, water, she goes about her life. To keeper she has one value, to produce.

There’s a lot of unnecessary trauma. People are tied up in the thought that they’re going to do everything right. But that may take a fifth of whiskey.

Q&A about sex. You may have to avoid it as a matter of experiment; has worked for thousands of years. 

If you have an intuition you may want to transmute that into focus.

Young people are being assailed by tremendous waves of Pollyanic thinking: love this, love that; simple animal process; masturbating the lion to keep it docile.

Politicians rigging crooked system. 

Every man wants the best for his family. He’s the bull of the family, will do what he has to do.

This is not a spiritual country, believe me.

We’re the same as China. They shoot them in the field, we shoot them in the street.

== end ==
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