What are the Distal and Proximal Worlds?
There is the outer world of matter, energy, time and space. There is also the inner world of perception also known as the Distal world and the Proximal World.
Distal and Proximal are medical terms. Distal indicates things at a distance. Proximal indicates things that are close. For example your feet are distal from your head. Your nose is proximal to your cheek.
Adapting the meanings, we can say that distal means the outer scientific world, and proximal means the world as we experience it.
Distal = Scientific World
Proximal = Perceived World
If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears the tree fall, did the tree make a sound? In the distal world it did. In the proximal world it did not.
Deepermind and the Distal and Proximal Worlds
Deepermind gives us permission to believe in the perceived world (proximal) world and the scientific world out there (the distal world).
By believing in both, we can much more easily optimization our lives without going off the deep end.
So we can feel saved, in a state of grace while being in the real world. Feeling grace results from blissful inner (proximal)optimization of our lives. Being in the real (distal) world means accepting our senses and believing in scientific methods of knowing.
How do you achieve blissful optimization?
By having faith to believe in truth and love and the will to think and do your best. Grace is the elegance and beauty of the inner life.
This sounds very religious.
Religions are based on achieving grace. Adherers feel the power of grace. Different words and symbols are used such as being "saved" or "enlightened."
The rosary, and other forms of chanting place the will at the highest control point in the mind drowning out mindless mental chatter and music we cannot get out of our head.
Religions also have their downside. Aside from corruption, they often believe in the words themselves. Actually words, properly used, point to things. There are no magical words, only magical meaning. If your are bilingual in Arabic and English you know God means Allah and Allah means God.
Do science and faith conflict?
Science deals with the outer life. Faith deals with the inner life.
Science is based on empirical evidence gather from experimental data. Metaphysics often ignores this. For example in the movie "What the Bleep, What Do We Know" there are many scientific references but it is not scientific. This movie debunks it.
How can science and faith coexist?
There are many faiths in the world and linking these faiths are common truths based on love and peace.
Within the brain there are billions of cells, each do their thing. Yet somehow these cells work together. There has to be some cells at the top of the brain structure.
The mind and the brain overlap, but are separate things. You never see a happy atom, but you need a body to laugh in the physical world.
The mind and brain must be organized so there is cooperation and little conflict.
Each layer in the mind/brain watches the layer beneath it and itself is supervised by the layer above. Thus science exists on one group of layers, and spirituality exists on another group of layers. They share a common model of reality and experience.
The top layers form a pathway towards God.
Is the proximal world our current dream?
Quite true. When we sleep we are not aware of the impressions of the distal world. When we are awake we receive impressions from the distal world. We build a model of this outer world, and this model is our proximal world in our brain. But the proximal world is more importantly our experience. Since it is a model, it varies from person to person. One person may love a certain dish and another person might think it quite foul. Also what we as humans see and hear is probably quite different from what dogs and cats experience. As humans we have, as a whole, similar proximal worlds.
Well, people believe in different things too...?
Our belief systems are part of people's proximal worlds. Some people see things based on numerology and astrology. The trick in being successful is to match both worlds. If something is true, it has to work for us. If astrology could predict the future, then astrologers would be rich.
So all we need to do is believe in science?
Science is limited and always updating itself. We do not have the resources to take scientific measurements for every decision we make. Our brain is a fantastic guesser.
We feel right about making our decisions. We buy a car, and we do not have to be an engineer.
Also in "naked" science there is no right or wrong. Science need ethics. Ethics is based on not doing any harm. Applied science seeks to solve human problems. So we can mix science with "goodness."
Science is limited. We do not have the time and energy to test every possibility. We go with gut feelings. Usually we just pick which clothes to wear in the morning, and just enjoy certain people and certain places.
The Effects of Believing in God and Science
We can keep learning about the world, and still love God. We can find optimization in our lives in the deepest meaning of the word. This means thinking positive thoughts and selecting the most optimum path moment to moment. The choices are based on short and long term strategies for being loved, being joyous and healthy. It means taking care of the body, and the soul. It means being good, without hurting anyone including ourselves.
How can we link from the Distal to the Proximal Worlds?
From the From scientific point of view, are we just dust in the wind?
If we do not believe in the proximal world, then we are just dust in the wind.
You can be as scientific as you like, but you have a big problem.
Consciousness exists. It is the crack in the scientific egg. Consciousness comes first. Without awareness there is no science. Consciousness experiences. We experience the world though our senses and we experience our feelings. Our job is to optimize our feelings so that we feel grace.
So are you promoting a religion or something?
I am promoting all that is good.
So can we define "goodness" in a scientific way?
Goodness comes from a super consciousness, our reference point from on high. It is the pathway to God. By letter God's energy flow down to the consciousness, we know what is good.
It is also good to learn about the scientific world, so we can do more good things. A computer helps us spread the world, for example.
OK, how does this work in practice?
By being nice to ourselves and others. Really nice mind you, most of the time. We need to defend ourselves from harm, but we most start from love and peace, and act mad to help a situation, but not be mad.
How do you answer questions like: Is consciousness is just side effect of the brain working?. It must be material as if you take a sleeping pill, consciousness goes away. The pill is physical and so is the brain.
We are spiritual beings, having an experience on earth. It is our waking dream.
Consciousness must be physical as if you give someone medication, you can take away their consciousness. What do you say about this?
The brain is physical of course. But the experiencer, our true self is also there. So you have two things, the nervous system and the experiencer. They are a mixture, yet separate. It is like mixing salt and water. If you change the brain, you change the soul. If you change the soul, the brain changes.
Animals have consciousness, so do they have a soul?
The soul is the spiritual machinery that enables consciousness. The deeper the consciousness, the more evolved is the soul.
Are we animals and did we evolve from animals?
It is a matter of viewpoint. From the physical window of science we are animals. But from the metaphysical window of consciousness we are spiritual beings.
Thus there are two evolutionary pathways, one that is physical and one that is metaphysical.
Where are you getting these answers?
There are very few truly original thoughts. We all stand on the shoulders of others. For example, the Baha'i's teach about two separate evolutions.
Christians teach about grace and love.
Is any religion perfect?
Religions are inspirited teachings, but they all come from the pen of human beings who can make mistakes.
Can you give an example of what is wrong with a teaching?
The clearest examples is the passage about eating human dung in the Bible (Ezekiel 4:12-13) and drinking human urine in the Bible (II Kings 18:27)? Why in the world does this stay in the Bible? A little editing please.
Do you believe in the Bible?
When the Bible speaks of grace it is perfect. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them (John 4:16).
Do we have life after death?
In science we have the law of conservation of energy. Light is transformed into to heat, for example.
Is not consciousness much more important than light. So when we die our spirit is transformed.
As drops in the ocean of God, we can evaporate and condense into new rain drops. Or we can merge back into the sea and on the beach become drops again. It is a mystery.
If we are part of God, then how can we do wrong?
We have been given free will. If we did not have free will we would be robots. We make our decisions and live with the consequences. A "sin" is a mistake that leads to non-optimization.
What is right?
It is a matter of acting out of love, feeling grace within the heart. It is a matter of taking care of our bodies. It is a matter of optimization of ourselves and the people near us.
So how can I optimize my life?
By being nice instead of mean. By listening to that inner voice that whispers answers.
Is there places where I can be trained to optimize?
We all need a spiritual education. It has to be logical and spiritual and not a bunch of dogma. It takes time to spiritually grow up. Examine many religions by getting involved. Just don't read about it. We are all children and continue to learn.
Do you recommend a church?
There is no perfect church. One of the better ones is the Baha'i Faith. It is modern and has many new insights. Also the Church of Religious Science (aka United Centers for Spiritual Living) known for their healing.
Tell me more about healing?
The prime cause for most of our problems is not optimizing for grace. If you see yourself in the light, as a perfect being, and do not think about negative things you thoughts become a healing.
There are intellectual infirmities and actual injuries and physical limitations. The intellectual infirmities are psychosomatic. Psychosomatic problems and poor decisions that lead to actual physical problems can be avoided by visioning that one is perfect and complete.
You are saying that words can heal?
It is not the actual words that heal, but the meaning behind the words that heal.
Why do you say this?
Words are only pointers to meaning. The word "table" points to something what people in Mexico call a "Mesa."
One has to realize that words are words and not meaning in themselves. You don't eat a menu, but the food.
Why is it important to understand that "words are pointers" is very important?
It is very important. Without know that words are pointers, people can start wars. For example, if some people worship "Allah" and others worship "God", they can fight over just these words.
Also those who do not believe in "God" usually believe in goodness and love. One of the definitions of God is goodness and love.
Any more examples?
The Catholic Church is good in that it teaches love and morals. But it makes words objects in themselves. Latin is particularly impressive.
The writings of Thomas Aquinas are not simply called "The Writings of Thomas Aquinas" but "Summa Theologica".
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is based on our free will and skepticism. The Bible and other holy writings were written for people who did not know about science. Today, many Internet sites want you to believe because its in the Bible or we just say its true. Critical thinking is careful. It works best in the physical world where one can perform experiments.
Bliss
Bliss lies in the perfection of the spirit. It is the feeling of the love of life that lasts over the years. Bliss is based on its own magic, a belief that everything is good; there is a higher way. Behind it all, there has to be a universal path of understanding.
Yes, there has to be a magic, a logic, a knowledge that connects all of us together.
To achieve bliss is to move the heart, to uplift the mind and heart to lofty aspirations. For those who have found bliss, they must reflected it back to fellow men. In bliss, we amplify love, be the peace we aspire, relax into our true purpose.
Consciousness
Fundamental in understanding is consciousness. What is it?
There is no central point in the brain where all the sensory information is focused. There is no internal television set at one location in the brain. We use all the brain as evidenced by fMRI brain scans.
From the viewpoint of experiencing life, we see the world as if it was on an internal screen and we are the little green man inside our brain that watches it.
Yet we do seem to have an internal television set equipped with all our senses. We can turn it black by closing our eyes. If one of the optical nerves is cut, we stop the flow of video information for that portion of the screen.
One of the keys of understanding consciousness is sleep. When we are sleeping during non-REM sleep, the consciousness seems to stop. (People who are awaked during non-REM sleep do not report that they were dreaming).
The Classic Brain-Mind Problem
To solve this problem (as much as we can) lets make an analogy. Think of the consciousness as salt and the brain as water. Saltwater can be separated into salt and water through distillation. After we die we could say that the salt and water separate.
A possible solution to
this problem is to postulate that the large portions of the brain is a
mixture of brain and consciousness (saltwater).
Since the salt is in contact with the water in a very intimate way, the salt can experience what is going on in the brain.
We can postulate that the unconscious area of the brain contains little salt.
During non-REM sleep the salt (consciousness) seems to turn off. Non-REM sleep is thought to be controlled by cholnergic nuclei in the reticular activating system of the brainstem.
The cholnergic nuclei probably send a signal to certain neurons to simply shutdown. Since the neurons are a analogous to saltwater, the salt simply turns off as well.
During formation of the brain, the density of salt slowly increases. Certain cells have salt injected into them, while other cells do not. During pregnancy, the child's consciousness gradually increases. As the child develops certain brain cells are turned on so they interface with consciousness. Thus, sexual desires and drives are turned (salt is added) on during adolescence brain.
An afterlife is possible using this reasoning. When a person dies, the salt separates from the water something like what happens during distillation.
In spilt brain patients the corpus callosum is severed. The corpus callosum is located between the left and right brains and connects the two sides of the brain together allowing communication to take place between them. With corpus callosum removed, the left and right brains seem to have separate experiences. For example, a word on the right side of the visual can be read. If the word placed on the left side, the word is not read, but the left hand can draw the object.
Using this saltwater analogy, it is as if you simply poured some saltwater from one glass to another. Thus two consciousness are created.
The Complexity of the Brain
The brain is very complex. A cactus might be a good visualization of a tiny portion of the human brain. The flowers represent connections to consciousness, and the center of the clusters represent higher level functions and the needles the lower level and basic functions.
A typical healthy human brain contains about 200 billion nerve cells, or neurons, linked to one another via hundreds of trillions (100,000,000,000,000) of tiny contacts called synapses. It is at these synapses that an electrical impulse traveling along one neuron is relayed to another, either enhancing or inhibiting the likelihood that the second nerve will fire an impulse of its own. One neuron may make as many as tens of thousands of synaptic contacts with other neurons. (Stephen Smith, 2010)
Consciousness and the Brain
In consciousness we focus on one thought at a time, one or two feelings at a time. We sense the outer world as one unit with vision, sound, touch and all the other senses woven into one experience. This oneness, this unity of being lies in direct contrast to the hundreds of trillions of synapses.
We can suppose that the brain funnels the big picture of what is going on, the major thought, the impressions of the outer world and by some cosmic leap, this composite becomes our experience.
Little Green Experiencer People
The experiencer, the little green man in our brain watches all this on our internal entertainment center. The eyes acting as camera send video to our internal television set. The ears acting as microphones send audio to our internal speakers.
But the little green man needs all the stuff to experience the entertainment center. So there must be a little green man in the little green man.
Thus we have a infinite number of little green men. One way around this is suppose we have parallel facing mirrors that bounce the experience repeatedly, one mirror inside the other. This would take another dimension where the inside is the outside from another point of view.
Signal Flow
The brain works something like a matrix of computers. In most electrical circuit the signals flow from the left to the right. However, if we have a matrix of computers connected together, the signals can pass in any direction.
Each
computer has two types of information, the program that runs in each
computer and the data that flows through the computers.
The program does something to the data. It might sort it alphabetically for example. The reference is the alphabet. A comes before B. This is a reference. If one of the computers does not sort it correctly, it is considered as wrong.
A very simple way of diagramming the brain (Hunter B. Shirley, 1983) is shown in this PDF file. Below is a simplified table that contains the highlights of the PDF file.
| A | B | C | |
| 1 Input |
Sensory Input |
||
| 2 Memory |
Perception/Sensory Memory |
Cognition/Working Memory Current perception, thoughts Memory chunking |
Long Term Memory Explicit Memory General Knowledge Episoidc Events Semantic |
| 3 Emotion | Emotional Impulse Generator Surprise, Shock, Disgust, Rage, Fear Current Mood |
Working Emotions |
Long Term Emotions |
| 4 Output | Last Decision Gate and Behavioral Output | ||
| 5 Needs |
Maslow Hierarchy of Needs |
||
| 6 Libido | Libido and Other Appetite Drives Urge for sleep Sexual desire Hunger Awakefulness Urge for change |
Our sensory input is used to build a simulation of the world (2A). This information is passed to working memory (2B) and the Emotional Impulse Generator (3A). Long term memory (2C) is used by working memory (2B) and Long Term Emotions and Beliefs (3C). The current Working Emotion(s) (3B) is based on the Emotional Impulses (3A). The current needs is identified by Maslow Hierarchy of Needs (5B). The energy for the needs of the whole system is feed bay Body Energy (6B). The output (behavior) is censored by Behavioral Output (4C) which looks at the Emotions (3) and wisdom and other knowledge within in Long Term Memory (2C).
All this is linked to the experiencer namely us.
Brain Hierarchy
The above diagram is flat. Actually every neuron has a supervisor and supervisors its own neurons, forming billions of neuron networks. Each network has a task, and each network is inspected. The experiencer feels alive and experiences everything that we call consciousness.
With mental illness, the networks promote lessor actors and spilt apart into multiplicity.
The Top of the Brain
The top network is a pathway towards goodness (God) and serves as a superconsciousness or reference for the person.
A reference is needed anytime we use a map. We need to align the map so north is at the top of the page.
Reference Is Essential
In the world of electronics one needs to calibrate their instruments. A multimeter measures voltage, and when it reads one volt, it has to be the same as the standard volt as defined by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (or equivalent in other countries). There are also world-wide standards.
Our References
We too much have references. Using them we can deem what is good and bad. We define who we are and what we should do. Thus Neurological Goodness exits or we would not know what to do next. People who lack a reference do not know right from wrong and are tabled as asocial.
In addition there are some hardwired references such as the fear of falling
The Ultimate
Reference
The concept of God is always expanding as we learn more. For me God made the universe and therefore is extremely smart and kind. By opening a channel to God, we can find peace and wisdom we need to be happy and joyous creatures.
God has many names, such as Allah.
The Second Ultimate Reference
The outer world of nature is the second ultimate reference. This is the scientific world of physical reality. The laws of nature to not change and science continues to discover more about these laws and never has the ultimate answers, but only the best current answers.
All animals must know about the physical world, or they would be quickly become food.
The Power of Scientific Experiment
An experiment is designed to find cause and effect. A hypothesis is tested. This is an idea we think might be true.
Ideally, the subjects or objects of study are divided at random into two lots, the control lot and the lot that will have a independent variable (IV) applied. The two lots otherwise much be balanced so other variables are canceled out. After the treatment has been applied to one lot, the dependent variable (DV) is measured. If the IV effects the DV we can say we have a supported hypothesis.
Some clergy discount science and evolution, but use the fruits of scientific thinking They use tv cameras, cell phones, and computers. Without science we would be back in the middle ages.
The Third Reference
Many people use other people as their reference. They believe television, friends and do not think for themselves. Yet we all must admit we need other people in our lives, and so we find people that believe in what we do and this makes us feel better. We need conformation of who we are.
Yet so much dogma is passed down through generations. Children are brainwashed by their parents. We must pass though a time where we rebel and start to thin for ourselves.
Our Human Limits of Knowledge and Awareness
Someone from another planet would not experience the world the way we do. They probably would have not only different perception, but different emotions as well.
We cannot see radio waves, and no one knew about them until we built the first radio.
There must be many things we have no idea about. Thus we have many limits of what we know.
This applies to emotions as well. For example, a depressed person might never have experienced joy.
And People are Different
Everyone has difference tastes, knowledge and experiences. We have difference sensors concerning how things taste. Some people like chocolate and others hate it. The sensory organs such as the tongue vary from people to people. Some people cannot taste or smell certain chemicals.
Noise in the Brain
Since the brain is a physical thing, like all chemical-electrical systems, it must generate noise. Some of the noise is white noise, like in radio and analog television receivers. There are other types of noise such as “squirrel talk” or “music in our head.”
By chanting and meditation we can get in control brain and stop the squirrel talk and music. This really works.
Electronic and Brain Noise
In the world of electronics, noise is created by the thermal noise in resistors. Heat makes the electrons to dance around. The snow one sees on a analog television set is generated by front end TV tuner.
Since the brain is a physical object, it too probably generates random signals. Random noise can be bad. The hearing circuitry within the brain can generate noise which is experienced as tinnitus. The brain is so vast, that its chemical and electrical activity generates no doubt a lot of noise.
But at a higher level, the brain is wired to generate random signals to help it try various ideas. These random signals are filtered and those that make it through the matrix are very unique and original. This is the source of our creative spirit at a neuron level.
Half Our Brain Cells Die
The brain not only builds, it destroys. By the time we become teenagers, half our brain cells are killed.
Using references at a higher level, if some circuit in the brain is tested by higher level brain circuits and found not to work, it is killed or disconnected. If a circuit is never used, it may be taken off line. In either case, the process is called "apoptosis."
When we learn to play a game, we don't remember our mistakes. The brain with its trillions of synapses must be pruned less it becomes paralyzed with too much information, conflicting decisions and cross purposes.
The pruning allows the brain to get rid of memories which get in the way. It allows us allows us to move away from our first family, forget a true love, and it allows us to erase doubt and confusion. One theory is that autism is caused by the lack of apoptosis.
The Magical Tower
One of the layers in the brain concerns what I call the magical tower.
At the top we look out the window and see far into the horizon of possibilities, into the awe of the clouds. From this prospective the solid ground is a blur and rather uninteresting.
But as we go down to ground floor, we see the rain splashing into puddles, the wind blowing the flowers. We walk on the solid ground of science and logic. We measure and predict and experiment with the physical world and find the equations and natures of how God made the universe.
We can also go down into the basement, and study the queen of all science, mathematics. There is no window here, only logic and the love for the truth.
The bottom layers of the tower lie in the sea of critical thinking, while the upper layers lie in the atmosphere of the divine.
We can cross talk, where one person is a spiritual room at the top and another is in the basement.
All the rooms in the tower must be visited. Science gives insight into the material world. Good metaphysics gives us inspiration and direction. Combine both, and we have health, wealth as well as insight and direction.
Centers in the Brain
The mind not only has layers and references, it has centers also.
The centers are layered and there are references for the centers.
Like a fractal, the brain is centers within centers.
A center in the brain is like a little person, that specializes in one simple task.
Each center, each task, each memory has two components, what it is about and what importance it has. The importance is reflected as a emotion. Thus all the objects in the brain have descriptive and emotional tags.
Critical Thinking 
Using these tags, the upper layers evaluate ideas processed at a lower level.
This thinking about thinking is called meta thinking.
When done correctly it is called "critical thinking." Critical thinking allows us to debunk false beliefs and advertising ploys (Slife, 2005).
In medicine, there is sometimes a problem called "rigorous thinking." Here one pattern of thinking is used when it does not apply.
Rigorous thinking is often confused with critical thinking. Rigorous thinking is based on methodology, and often ignores its underlying assumptions and any alternative views. Using rigorous thinking children are often diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and medicated without using rigorous thinking that would include such things as the free will and personal responsibilities of the children.
The Soul
Consciousness is a phenomena, but
it is not who we are. We are souls using consciousness. We are the
operators of our brain, who direct the brain though consciousness.
If the brain is the computer, we are the operators.
This operator I call the "soul." I know it is old fashion, but I believe that there is a spiritual entity called the soul.
If the reader is not comfortable with the world “soul”, call it "the experiencer," the thing that learns, and witnesses life. It is the thing that enjoys food, sex, love and music.
The soul acts as a reference and director for the brain. The soul determines that something is good or bad or somewhere in between.
The soul may appear on the physical plane as a endless loop. I am that I am and I am that I am. For these reason it probably lives in a higher dimension.
The soul also needs a reference. The soul needs something, a universal standard. To me this is God.
But God gives us free will, and we often make mistakes. Mistakes do not feel good and we can get depressed if we make too many of them, or when we are under stress.
The Gold Standard
For those whose brain and consciousness reach very high, they can get insight of pure gold, namely God. Your eyes open to a deeper understanding. You are no long lost, in any sense.
Evil and Other Bad Things
Evil (life spelled backwards) is the absence of goodness. Like light, you can turn off goodness, but you do not turn on darkness. Evil is the absence of spiritual knowledge. It is also anything that interferes with the reference to God, and attacks goodness. Taking drugs, alcohol, for example, feels good for a short time, but destroys the connection to Reference.
The Mystery and Awe
The other dimensions of the soul are a mystery. What we have explained here, the mono direction, is the mere outline, the first level of understanding. There is so much more to know and experience. If this was not so, we would be done.
Most of us feel and experience that which we cannot explain. There is a power of insight, intuition, and magic. How do you explain love? How do you explain the miracle of birth? How do explain explaining?
The Law of Attraction
As we focus on a marble this marble migrates to the top. This is what is called the Law of Attraction. We become what we think and what we think, we attract into lives.
One of my
best sources of information is Abraham-Hicks.
This channeled information comes from Abraham, a group of non-physical
beings. They communicate through the physical being Esther Hicks who
translates and filters the message.
Another source is the Center for Spiritual Living (also known as the Church of Religious Science) that teaches we are what we think. Another good source is Unity Church.
I also, of course, believe in real science proven by carefully controlled experiments, and the knowledge that comes from careful thought.
More About the Distal and Proximal Worlds
Viewing the world through a distal window, the world is purely that of material and energy, the brain is made up of atoms. Truly we are just dust in the wind.
View the world through a proximal window, whatever we imagine and believe is true. Magic and illusions exist here.
We need to look through both windows.
Many a philosophical disagreement could be resolved by assuming that we live in two different worlds as illustrated by the wood cut L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire by Camille Flammarion (1888) on the right.
The Distal World of Dreams
The dream weaver catcher pictured at the right symbolizes that life is a series of dreams.
All dreams have their reference. We can dream the dream of reality. Here things are contingent on each other. Cause and effect work. The reality dream has consensus. People see much the same through the windows of distal reality.
- Dreams in sleep and waking hallucinations are proximal experiences on non-distal information. If we ignore distal information, the physical world will rain down on our physical body. We walk off a cliff in a dream, but not in reality.
- Since we are always dreaming we could close our eyes and stay in our dream. So we could dream we are someone else. We could dream the physical world away. However doing this we end up in fantasy land.
Reference
A map is useless unless it gives a reference to North.
But we need a goal before we start our journey.
Thus our brain with trillions of neurons must have organization, a reference, a head of this organization.
Without a frame of reference, we are lost, and this is what is called functional insanity.
The Sentence in the Box Paradox
Information is either proximal or distal. The proximal world can and does have conflict. Contradictions such as the statements in the box below can easily coexist in the proximal world.
This sentence contains five words. This sentence contains eight words. Exactly one sentence in this box is true.
The distal world has no conflicts, it is as it is. It does not matter if it is observed or not. There could be anything in the distal world, parallel universes, time travel, who knows.
We detect with our senses only that part of the distal world that we can sense or logically deduce. We may speculate about a parallel universe, but we cannot detect it. It might be in the distal world, but it does not make any difference to us as we cannot know anything about it. If we could sense it we could use it.
The mechanisms to set up the proximal world within the brain are probably part of our animal nature and a product of our DNA. The actual model is based on our experience of first hand and second hard information.
If the proximal world differs from the distal world in important ways, then we are lost in the material universe. Our model is not good enough.
Just because you believe something about the outer world does not make it true. But if you believe in something that is not true, it can be helpful. If you believe that tomorrow will be another wonderful day, we have no way of proving this, but it does make us happier.
A lot of new age theories can be tested. Numerology, healing crystals, and the power of tarot cards are not to be taken seriously as they can be tested and shown that they do not work.
New thought is different. It basically says that you become what you think. Thus if you think positive thoughts, then you will live in a more positive world. There is nothing wrong about that. .
The body sets between the proximal and distal worlds. It serves as a interface. The body responds both to the proximal inner world we experience, and to things outside our knowledge and control in the outer physical distal world.
Believe that you are whole and healthy, the body tends to believe this and acts accordingly. We act accordingly. We go out and exercise. If we are sick, and don't go to the doctor, then we can get sicker. Doctors are part of God too.
Who is Looking at the Proximal World
There is a witness to the proximal world. This is the experiencer of life. This is the I behind the I. Some might call it the soul.
Who is Feeling the Proximal World?
The soul, the witness to the proximal world feels the pleasure and pain that is part of life. The soul has preferences and it likes pleasure from the taste of ice cream, to the feeling of living the examined life. There are practical things to learn how to make our life more juicier and have more depth.
Some Ideas in Having a Better Experience in Life
The experience of the soul can be controlled by the choices we make. To learn how to do this in the best way it is a matter of reprogramming what we believe and what we do. We have to start somehow.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. (The Way of Lao-Tzu, 604 - 531 BC)
We become what we think. (As a Man Thinketh, James Allen, 1971)
Goodness Exists
Goodness exits period. If you don't believe it how can neurons make a discussion on what to do.
Everything time we make a decision, we tap our reference system as to what is good or what is bad. Each neuron in our brain that makes decisions, makes use of a reference so it knows what is best. There are three references in general, goodness, people and reality. So goodness, from the three references filters down.
Everything we do we do because at the time we thought it was the best thing. Sure we make mistakes, but again they seem like mistakes when one neuron judges another. This judgment is a feedback system, and if things don't work, things are changed within the brain.
Hindsight, history is often the best teacher. We and our brain aim to predict well.
Spirit Exists
For those who have ears to hear, spirit exists and this is the source of all goodness.
Behind the universe there is some undefined source that most people call Spirit or God. Since everything has a cause, there must be a first cause to everything. As one studies the complex mechanisms of the simple things in the body such as the clotting of blood, all this could not have happen by chance alone. Some of it is designed by trial and error (Darwinism), and the fittest do survive, but there is also some guidance.
Goodness and love seem to be built into us. Being close to God there is great joy. (The Mind on Fire, Blaise Pascal, 1623)
Different Kinds of Good Feelings
We can feel good by having good food, sex or buying stuff. Some find temporary pleasure with drugs. But the deeper longer lasting joy means being with your higher emotions and with Spirit.
Instead of getting high, be high. (Be Here Now, Baba Ram Dass, 1978)
Things that feel good deep inside are truly good. (The Third Force-Psychology of Abraham Maslow, Frank Goble, 1970)
Beyond all things, everyone wants peace and joy. (Beyond Words, Swami Satchidananda, 1977).
Being Good
If good exists and we showed that it did, right, then we can be part of the this goodness. This means being on the path of goodness.
Always do your best! (One of ... The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz, 1997)
Who I am
The author here is George Norwood. For additional information you might read some of the these books. Currently I am a senior in the field of Cognitive Science at the UTD in Dallas Texas. I am a graduate of most of the courses offered at the Center of Spiritual Living also known as the Church of Religious Science.
Cite: Deepermind.com, George A. Norwood (2010)
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2. Distal and Proximal Worlds (you are here)
4. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
18. Church of Religious
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Cite: Deepermind.com, George A. Norwood (2010)
September 22, 2010
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