Another Brilliant Thunderf00t Video

NDE After Effects Explored

This is one of the most graphic displays of the beautiful after effects of the NDE. These videos I offer in tribute to the enormous contribution of the NDE to society.

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Ode to a Fledgeling Bubba

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Stewart, Tsakaris, Long

BUBBA- (Definition)- One who retires into a state of permanent lecturing and book writing with no significant work obligations or time constraints who are passionate about  informing people how to,

-Decrease stress

-Improve relationships

-Find meaning in life

-Find the time to do important things in life

– Generate Happiness

– Improve financial wellbeing

The paradox of the Bubba is the complete disconnect from the struggles of their audience. The professional Bubba exudes inner serenity, power, and spiritual authority while lecturing to an audience of overworked frantic people who lead miserable and stressful workaday 9 to 5 lives constantly wondering why they aren’t happy and prosperous stuck in a cage of trading hours for dollars while desperately searching for inner peace between binges of antidepressent medication. They look upwards for guidance towards the Bubba on how to navigate the shit-hole of their own existence. The Bubba meanwhile makes vast sums of money doing very little, with few pressing obligations other than their book deadlines, living a life of vacationing and hobbying  and storytelling.

Many strive for Bubbahood, most fail. To acheive Bubbahood is to have arrived. When people go to seminars on how to meld their personal aspirations with their work life they are really just scheming on how to be a professional Bubba. How to stop everything and tell others how they did it. How to simply collect money in their slippers tapping on a laptop- blessed by God.

Jeff Long is a fledgeling Bubba. His book reached the NY times best sellers list. In this interview on Skeptico, Jeff Long takes a stand for survival. He believes and makes no hesitations about it. Long is certain that we survive death. He is certain that NDEs are precisely what they seem to be. This separates him from the minions of pussies and cowards among his colleagues who dare not take a stand. Long has put it all on the line and offers to debate any reasonable challenger on the NDE. I respect him for it. I think his NDERF research is greatly over-rated and tragically flawed, but his bravery in stepping up to the plate will draw fire and hopefully create new lines of thought and argumnt so we can get to a better understanding of the NDE and whether our lives have some element of cosmic meaning, or are precisely what they seem- Darwinian tragicomic idiot’s tales.

Jeff Long M.D. Not a Shadow of a Doubt

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I met Dr. Long at an IANDS meeting years ago. We had a brief discussion about OBEs in which he pondered why so many people claim to see out of body yet cannot prove it under test conditions.

I read 105 pages of his new book “Evidence of the Afterlife” yesterday. Dr. Long says that there is not a shadow of a doubt in his mind that we survive death. He offers nine points which serve as the chapters of the book to make his case.

Long relies on his NDERF website accounts for detailed statistical analysis. This provides some useful information, but the key flaw to it all is the inevitable embellishment of stories and omissions that can cloud the analysis. For instance, he goes into detail about how the veridical accounts given in his database contain almost no discrepancies. What does this prove? It merely proves that if there were discrepancies, the story tellers were not interested in including them in the accounts. Or the memories of these discrepancies were faded or glossed out over time.

Reading the book I realized how easy it would be to come up with 9 reasons there almost certainly is NOT an afterlife. In the above interview, George Noory and Dr. Long agree that OBE verification is the number 1 piece of evidence for life after death. But one of the skeptics 9 points would be “the inability of OBErs to verify veridical perception in controlled conditions”. Even in my own conversation with Dr. Long, he puzzled over why they could not do it and asked me if I could come up with a simple experiment to prove it.

So his number one reason for believing is already highly suspect. Dr. Long states that he believes OBE’s in non-life threatening states are on a continuum of experience of OBEs in near death states. If one is real then the other should be too. Dr. Long, I would like you to meet my friend Michael Raduga.

Dr. Kevin Nelson on Skeptico

Kevin Nelson

I personally find Alex Tsakiris profoundly annoying. I think he has a naive believer’s mentality, is condescending and gets in over his head. Why doesn’t Alex Tsakaris have a show about how Pam Reynolds NDE started 2 hours before stand still?

I am partial in this debate to Roger Nelson even though I frankly don’t agree with either of them. DOCter Nelson is fond of saying that we have an enormous amount of understanding about consciousness. But what he means is we have a bunch of data about the neural correlates of consciousness and no understanding at all of the actual generation and origin of experience (assuming you are not like Dan Dennett and think there actually is a problem to be solved). One must explain what the correlation is between electromagnetism generated by ion gradients across membranes, and the experience of being aware of your existence and typing such emails to your friends all the time as “why do we even bother to wake up in the morning”. Descartes should have said something like “I am healthy and pain free, yet I often wonder why I bother to exist….. therefore I am.” That would have been far more profound. Unconscious entities don’t ponder why they continue to bother operating. In reality, everyone who thinks for a moment about this puzzle of consciousness must find it absolutely striking. The total failure of AI to form anything resembling a consciousness or a fluid intelligence seems to drive home the point that the complexity and number of interconnections is not what *causes* consciousness to occur. At least, it has mostly convinced me. Wrapping quadrillions of Christmas lights around the planet and turning on the power would do nothing to make the planet conscious, or even on iota closer to becoming conscious. There is a totally missing element. One we have no idea about. It may be generated by the brain, it may not. But the typical non-religious lay person who thinks  they have consciousness all figured out just because there are neural correlates just hasn’t  thought deeply about the problem at all.

The way to argue with science

I’ve pretty much had it listening to global warming deniers and creationists. They aren’t interested looking at the actual facts. They invent their own, and twist everything 180 degrees opposite of what the data imply. They rely on the fact that most people won’t examine any of the evidence themselves, accepting anything thrown into the wind as having an equal likelihood of being true as anything else.  When thoroughly debunked, they just continue spouting the debunked idea as if nothing happened. This video illustrates the phenomenon (which should be named, classified and studied).

Here is how the phenomenon works with the global warming “debate” and the most popular attack piece from denialists.

Integral Porn with Tera Patrick

-I resolved right before the new year to find creative ways to save and make extra money wherever I can find them. So a while ago I was at Border’s books and wandered across this sign, which advertises a book signing by the famous porn star Tera Patrick. I got out the iphone and looked on ebay where a signed copy of this book “Sinner Takes All” sold for $100. So I used a 33% off coupon to buy the book and waited until tonight to have it signed.

Though the initial motivation was entirely just to resell the signed book, I was also interested in meeting Tera Patrick who in my opinion (and apparently thousands of others) was one of the most beautiful women on planet earth in her prime with that perfect mixture of the exotic Thai complexion and athletic slenderness with the height and full features of a Caucasian (she is now an elderly 33 years old and recently retired from porn. She cleverly filmed a ton of porn scenes in a relatively short time span to be released one per month for about 3 years after she has “retired”.)

I ended up reading the book. It was quite poorly written despite being done “with” a real author (possibly Paul Perry under the double pseudonym of Margaret Cho). It was full of lush and captivating sentences such as .I was mad. .That made me pissed. .That really hurt. I almost put it down after 20 pages, but I started becoming truly captivated by her life.

It wasn’t the post boob job layouts inside that kept me reading, where  her cannon balls droop like they’re on the surface of Jupiter (why she wrecked a perfect set of boobs is beyond my understanding). In fact, I find Tera Patrick attractive only in old still photos. I honestly do not find her porn scenes enticing, partly because I have personally donned her the worst actress in the history of porn, as displayed by stunning examples such as this.

As the book went on I amazingly began to empathize with Linda Ann Hopkins(her real name), despite her jaw-dropping shallowness and overt body-based narcissism.

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Life master and veteran of numerous incarnations, Tera Patrick signs books for young masturbators. Taken from my iphone

– As an integral nihilist I find absolutely no value distinction whatsoever between the body narcissism of a porn star and the intellectual mind narcissism of say, a political analyst or a sports enthusiast. As I look around at everyone I know it strikes me that there is no ultimate difference between anything we do and what a porn star does. We all whore ourselves out to the delusion of the human experience because we are simply afraid to grow old and die alone and broke, and because there is simply nothing else to do. I have often said that the only *true* act of integrity any human being would be capable of would be to commit suicide in the prime of their life for no reason whatsoever just as a pure protest against the nature of their existence. Good thing I am not terribly concerned about true integrity like I was as an idealistic kid.

Linda decided she wanted to retire from porn and stay monogamous to her husband. Her company Digital Playground would have none of it because they were making a fortune off Tera Patrick. They sued her for breaking contract. They were able to take her name which prevented her from earning and a lot more. She spent 300k just on legal fees and was so distraught from losing her fortune and namesake she tried to commit suicide.

She picked herself up and created her own company, eventually amassing another fortune. Half of the book details her interesting marriage while being a porn star and how it actually worked out. Then her husband decided to become involved in porn and film only scenes with her. When she finally decided she wanted to truly retire from porn, her husband refused and decided to stay in the industry where he was gaining his own notoriety (He’s tatooed with a beer belly tombstone hanging over a fat 9″ cock). She gave him an ultimatum. After a hundred pages detailing their love affair and happiness the appendix states that she split with her husband. Her publisher gave her the option to rewrite the book before release but she decided against it.

Given the option to meditate, attend a Zen satsang, read a book on spirituality, a book by a porn star, or have a trashy book signed by a famous porn star, I find each of these activities on an even level of purposefulness, which is to say roughly none. I see no value distinction between porn stars and priests, meditation and masturbation, dreaming and doing. None of it matters.

This is all just what people do as they’re standing in line… waiting.

I joked to a friend about what it would mean if reincarnation were true and we got to choose our lives and our bodies. Tera Patrick happened to be the one to snatch up one of the most amazing female bodies in the history of humanity. Was it planned? An accident? Did she incarnate just for the pleasure of fucking? As Robert Monroe might wonder, how long is the waiting line for incarnating into stunning bodies like this? Surely only the advanced souls have seniority. Is there a more meaningful way to live?

The Virtual Reality World

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I have seen the movie Avatar in 3-d twice now. I loved it. It is somewhat cheesy, but so real human beings are, so it makes it more realistic to me. I notice upon leaving the theater that the world looks amazingly brown, lifeless and dull. Each time was sort of a shock to escape such an immersion into a colorful exhilarating world into the bleak haze of traffic lights and peacocking teens wandering aimlessly and cluelessly through the streets and through time.

It never made me depressed though. The movie has made me excited for the future of technology and what seems obvious to me as the coming virtual reality world. The transition will be slow but seamless. It started with story telling around campfires, theater, then the printing press, books, newspapers, magazines and libraries. The computer brought video games and digital animations. The internet was a huge leap. In a tiny splash of time since its invention we now have tiny portable internets, digital readers in our pockets,  access to world knowledge, access to view and create our own public video content with our own computers. We have high quality video cameras in our pockets which can be publicly uploaded in minutes. Within months of Avatar’s release the 3-d T.V. will be made available. There won’t be a point where we can say “this year humanity began to live mostly outside of the sensory perceptions of the earth environment”. It will happen seamlessly. It already is transitioning. Everywhere you go people are not listening to anything but their earbuds picking up satellite feeds. At some point the VR will include kinesthetic and visual and neurologic synchs and there will be little need to actually “go” places. Humanity cannot run fast enough towards creating a heaven on earth through technology, and the response to Avatar illustrates my point.

“On the fan forum site “Avatar Forums,” a topic thread entitled “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible,” has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope. The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their confused feelings about the movie.

“…The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don’t have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed.”

A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site “Naviblue” that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.”Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it,” Mike posted. “I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’ “

“Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.”

“When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning,” Hill wrote on the forum. “It just seems so … meaningless. I still don’t really see any reason to keep … doing things at all. I live in a dying world.” “

It is dying, but it is also being newly created from scratch.

My Amazing (Precog?) Brain Clock

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There have been several occasions over the years where I have awoken right before my alarm clock went off. I can’t remember the last time the alarm woke me up by itself. I often awaken just seconds before the alarm and it has happened so many times that I have declared myself to have an amazing internal clock counting time somewhere in my brain.

But something really amazing happened this morning. I came out of a sleep cycle like I often do about 5:10am. I know this because I reach for my iphone and checked the time to see how much I have left. I cannot see my alarm clock from my vantage point and even if I could the numbers are completely darkened so the time is invisible. I knew I had about 50 minutes left until the buzzer. I went back to sleep, and at some point I realized that it must be time to wake up and I literally counted down laying in bed without any access to a clock, 2…1… and bonk bonk bonk bonk. It was astounding. I did not intentionally count the numbers down waiting for the alarm to go off. Instead it was a dream state and I actually heard myself count down as if observing the internal clock. I simply knew somehow the exact timing of the alarm.

I have always wondered what mechanism can be so accurate in the brain. I am a very punctual person. I am always on time to everything. I hate when others are not on time, and they usually are not. But what if the whole thing somehow taps into the same precognitive effect as the psi app I got results on? Just as the phone makes an obnoxious buzzing when the right box is pressed, the alarm makes an obnoxious and dreadful sound when it goes off, signifying the abrupt end of my sense of peace and personal freedom (always roughly a half hour before my body and mind are biologically prepared to wake up).

A good psi experiment might be to get light sleepers like me and measure their skin conductance right before an alarm goes off during sleep. The alarm could be set at odd unexpected hours for the subjects so they can’t biologically time the incidence.

I must say my countdown was eerily precise. To the quarter second. It quite astonished me.

A fascinating life

Integral nihilism

I love this picture of the post-NDE Kenneth Wilber staring out the window with some unknown reflection in mind.  You can see this and other interesting things on his website.

I find Wilber to be an endlessly fascinating person of almost unparalleled intellectual ability. He can read three books before lunch with a self described “spooky” reading comprehension ability.

Recently Wilber came close to death and wrote extensively about it. Since then I’ve often wondered what he thinks about death and whether he still believes in LAD. Was anything changed by coming to the brink? His body took a tremendous beating and it took him a great effort to recover from a grand mal seizure which triggered, according to Wilber’s own account, multiple classic NDEs.

I wish that Wilber would distance himself from Andrew Cohen. I think Cohen will eventually go down in a blaze of glory and scandal. Despite Wilber’s massive egoic desire to define and confine life and nature into a philosophically elaborate description in order to give meaning to the meaningless cacophony of randomness called life, Kenneth has a level of personal balance that seems immune to serious scandal.