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)
Recently at one of my favorite sites, RealitySandwich.com, I came across a short but interesting article entitled, “Hallucinating In The Dark.” It stated,
“A new study, published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, reveals that participants of normal health could achieve visual hallucinations after only 15 minutes of sensory deprivation. Interestingly, nobody pressed the panic button that was available to end the experiment.”
The article doesn’t describe what type of hallucinations they are. So I will make a comment on two things:
Sensory deprivation is known for causing out-of-body-experiences (OBE) and wake-initiated lucid dreaming (WILD). If that is the case for these hallucinations then they are probably generated in the upper visual cortex regions. The optic nerve and primary cortex will only have limited activity in this process.
However, more than likely we are talking about “geometric hallucinations” which are often due to phosphene, or what I like to call “neural static.” The brain is always firing neurons regardless of the presence of stimuli or not, you can actually detect this activity in your eye if you become aware of it and hold your attention. It is always there. Check out the link for a better explanation.
The idea of using sensory deprivation techniques as a tool for exploring consciousness has fascinated me ever since I first watched Joe Rogan’s explanation of his isolation tank.
I also believe that these exact states can be achieved with meditation, deep sleep hypnosis, and any other mental skill that allows an individual to put their body to sleep while keeping their mind – or more specifically consciousness – intact. The best way to describe it is like slipping into a lucid dream, but it is less expected and it is easier to get overexcited and wake yourself up.
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“Alex Grey (born November 29, 1953) is an American artist specializing in spiritual and psychedelic art (or visionary art) that is sometimes associated with the New Age movement. Grey is a Vajrayana practitioner. His body of work spans a variety of forms including performance art, process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and painting. Grey is a member of the Integral Institute. He is also on the board of advisers for the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and is the Chair of Wisdom University’s Sacred Art Department. He and his wife Allyson Grey are the co-founders of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, a non-profit institution supporting Visionary Culture in New York City.”
“Shinzen talks about how the ten zen ox-herding pictures can be interpreted in two different ways. One shows the stages on the path of enlightenment and the other shows you the process of truly grasping what consciousness is. Shinzen talks about pictures 1 thru. 4 in this first of three parts. Filmed on the second last evening of a 14-day intensive Jan. 9, 2009 at La Casa de Maria Retreat Center in Santa Barbara.”
“Shinzen continues in part two talking about pictures 5 thru. 7. He shares that the last three pictures 8, 9, and 10 tell us the substance, appearance, and ultimate use of enlightenment.”
“Shinzen talks about the “final cause” of enlightenment, and the historical person illustrated in the tenth ox-herding picture, the cloth-bag monk. He shares various examples of how retreat participants will be sharing gifts in the “marketplace” – the final goal of meditation practice.”
Visit Shinzen Young’s YouTube Channel for more videos on zen, vipissana meditation, Buddhism, consciousness, and philosophy of mind.