But see my comments. She doesn't take PC research seriously. I've seen her mentino it in passing, but she doesn't even attempt to incorporate it into her world view.
She's much like James Austin, who misreads/misquotes the PC research and then fits the misread/misquote into his theories on meditation presented in his books. Literally, his books read like this: Travis' research says xy and therefore... In reality, Travis' research actually says xyz, but Austin misses the last little bit that completely invalidates his interpretation. Of course Travis' own writing style doesn't help. In the abstract of the article on Transcendental experiences during TM, he says: "The subject/object relationship during transcendental experiences is characterized by the absence of time, space, and body sense" He fills in the details in the body, by quoting the Katha Upanishad: "“The Self is without sound, without touch and without form…You will know the Self when your senses are still, your mind is at peace, and your heart is pure.”" He then confuses teh issue again by providing a description of lack of sensory perception, that is accompanied by a graphic listing "no thought" and ends up describing PC as "That leaves the bottom right cell—sense of Self with no mental content," without re-emphasizing that PC is without any kind of perception at all -sensory, thinking, intuition, whatever. It's small wonder that Austin and company get confused. Travis leaves wriggle room so that they can pick and choose whichever description of PC best fits their own pet theory about the state. Of course, if people read articles carefully, they would note the occasional use of references to lack of sense-perception and at least speculate about what was meant, but instead they choose the least disrupting interpretation to use in their books and blog-entries. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : And yet incredibly she has spent a career writing and lecturing on consciousness, including a book all about the "hard" problem in which she interviews consciousness researchers worldwide about their research into that very idea and other ways of understanding the mind. Could it be that she's one step ahead of you? Could it be that this article, which is about the illusion of dualism, has already gone beyond what you are saying? The "illusion" she refers to is the illusion we have that our sense of self is somehow qualitatively different from everything else that is going on in there. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote : She needs first to realize she's making a gigantic cognitive error in saying consciousness and the sense of self are an illusion. She can't possibly get anything else right (including TM pure consciousness research) if she doesn't see that the "illusion" idea is self-refuting. Doesn't really have anything to do with TM; it's just an incredibly stupid mistake about the nature of ordinary waking-state consciousness. As I said, she doesn't see any value in the TM Pure Consciousness research so she doesn't take it into account and consider the implications of a state of alertness in the brain without any content to be alert about. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote : Who has the "false idea" of the persisting self? Who is deluded by this illusion? Susan Blackmore has a new essay about consciousness research on her website. Food for thought: "Consciousness is not some weird and wonderful product of some brain processes but not others. Rather, it is an illusion constructed by a clever brain and body in a complex social world. We can speak, think, refer to ourselves as agents and so build up the false idea of a persisting self that has consciousness and free will." http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25457 http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25457
