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“Milton Erickson, (1901-1980) was an American psychiatrist specializing in medical hypnosis and family therapy. He was founding president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis and a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychopathological Association. He is noted for his approach to the unconscious mind as creative and solution-generating. He is also noted for influencing brief therapy, strategic family therapy, family systems therapy, solution focused brief therapy, and neuro-linguistic programming.”
JEFF ZEIG ON THE HUMANITY OF MILTON H. ERICKSON:
Dr. Zeig is the director of the Milton H. Erickson Foundation in Phoenix, AZ.
Summary from Fora.tv:
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“Scott Eberle and Stan Grof discuss Eberle’s The Final Crossing and Grof’s The Ultimate Journey.
Scott Eberle talks about The Final Crossing. The personal account in this story recalls “the final crossing” of Steven Foster, one of the pioneers of modern-day wilderness rites of passage, from the perspective of the hospice physician who helped ferry him across. Interspersed with Steven and Scott’s story is a historical view of how the rites of passage movement and the hospice movement have converged.
Stan Grof talks about The Ultimate Journey. Grof, author of When the Impossible Happens, offers perspectives on how individuals can enrich and transform the experience of dying in our culture. Grof discusses his own patients’ experiences of death and rebirth in psychedelic therapy, investigates cross-cultural beliefs, paranormal and near-death research, and argues that death is not necessarily the end of consciousness.”
TRANSCRIPT:
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different.
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet.
Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Dr. V.S. Ramachandran is a well-known neurologist. He is currently the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, as well as a professor in the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego.
Ramachandran is best known for his work on neurological conditions such as phantom limbs, autism, neglect, his invention of the mirror box (a tool used to alleviate suffering from those who suffer from phantom limbs), and his more recent work on synesthesia.
For more on the work of V.S. Ramachandran I recommend his video lecture at TED.com and his article printed in Scientific America about synesthesia, entitled “Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes.” (PDF file)
An interview with Australian philosopher and professor David Chalmers discussing his theory of consciousness, the hard problem, and the explanatory gap.
Chalmers also has a wonderful online collection of academic papers, philosophical essays, and scientific articles over at Consc.net/online: a incredible resource for anyone interested in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, or philosophy of mind.
I have also written about my personal thoughts on this subject in some of my articles. In particular I recommend:
1. The Hard Problem Of Consciousness: Is Science In Need Of Another Cognitive Revolution?
2. The Epistemic Gap, Psychology, and The Scientific Method.
3. Thoughts On The Nature of Reality, Experience and Meditation