我的专业生涯一直是单向的,而且极为学术性,想不到却碰到上门求诊的凯瑟琳,让我经历一场难以置信的经验,整个过程在《前世今生》一书中有详细描述。我毕业于哥伦比亚大学,然后获得耶鲁大学医学院博士学位,在耶鲁大学的附设医院当精神科主治医师。我也曾担任数所大学医学院的教授,并发表四十余篇有关精神药物学,脑部化学,眠障碍,沮丧,焦虑,药物滥用,老人痴呆症等等科学性论文。先前我唯一出版的著作是《胆硷功能生物学》(The Biology of Cholinergic Function),它绝不是一本畅销书,不过对于失眠病患确实有帮助,阅读它必能让患者一觉到天亮。我是左半脑发达的人,具有强迫性人格,而且,对于“不科学”的领域,譬如超心理学,彻底的怀疑。我对于前生,轮回转世的观念一无所悉,也没兴趣了解。
Coast to Coast AM 2004-12-11 Brian Weiss - Past Lives Hour 2
ed2k://|file|Art%20Bell%20-%20Brian%20L.%20Weiss%20-%20Past%20Lives%202%20of%204%20(11.12.2004).mp3|15594336|F311668678DB53CB74231EE030315547|/
Coast to Coast AM 2004-12-11 Brian Weiss - Past Lives Hour 3
ed2k://|file|Art%20Bell%20-%20Brian%20L.%20Weiss%20-%20Past%20Lives%203%20of%204%20(11.12.2004).mp3|15604488|DC64A8110F48966F1CA2ED422D778EB2|/
Coast to Coast AM 2004-12-11 Brian Weiss - Past Lives Hour 4
ed2k://|file|Art%20Bell%20-%20Brian%20L.%20Weiss%20-%20Past%20Lives%204%20of%204%20(11.12.2004).mp3|15531912|B7E8D3B4CBEB0DE3954D6612C9DD074C|/
Brian Weiss 博士的专访,用eMule下载
衲子 发表评论于
In the 1950s, while conducting research into the beliefs of LSD as a psychotherapeutic tool, Stanislav Grof had one female patient who suddenly became convinced she had assumed the identity of a female of a species of prehistoric reptile. During the course of her hallucination, she not only gave a richly detailed deion of what it felt like to be encapsuled in such a form, but noted that the portion of the male of the species's anatomy was a patch of colored scales on the side of its head. What was startling to Grof was that although the woman had no prior knowledge about such things, a conversation with a zoologist later confirmed that in certain species of reptiles colored areas on the head do indeed play an important role as triggers of sexual arousal. The woman's experience was not unique. During the course of his research, Grof encountered examples of patients regressing and identifying with virtually every species on the evolutionary tree (research findings which helped influence the man-into-ape scene in the movie Altered States). Moreover, he found that such experiences frequently contained obscure zoological details which turned out to be accurate.
Regressions into the animal kingdom were not the only puzzling psychological phenomena Grof encountered. He also had patients who appeared to tap into some sort of collective or racial unconscious. Individuals with little or no education suddenly gave detailed deions of Zoroastrian funerary practices and scenes from Hindu mythology. In other categories of experience, individuals gave persuasive accounts of out-of-body journeys, of precognitive glimpses of the future, of regressions into apparent past-life incarnations.
In later research, Grof found the same range of phenomena manifested in therapy sessions which did not involve the use of drugs. Because the common element in such experiences appeared to be the transcending of an individual's consciousness beyond the usual boundaries of ego and/or limitations of space and time, Grof called such manifestations "transpersonal experiences", and in the late '60s he helped found a branch of psychology called "transpersonal psychology" devoted entirely to their study.
Although Grof's newly founded Association of Transpersonal Psychology garnered a rapidly growing group of like-minded professionals and has become a respected branch of psychology, for years neither Grof or any of his colleagues were able to offer a mechanism for explaining the bizarre psychological phenomena they were witnessing. But that has changed with the advent of the holographic paradigm.
As Grof recently noted, if the mind is actually part of a continuum, a labyrinth that is connected not only to every other mind that exists or has existed, but to every atom, organism, and region in the vastness of space and time itself, the fact that it is able to occasionally make forays into the labyrinth and have transpersonal experiences no longer seems so strange.
【1】更多超常的、获得验证的案例 见: Stanislav Grof, The Adventure of Self-Discovery (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 108-9.
【2】Stanislav Grof, Beyond the Brain (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1985), p. 31.
V.M.Janik et al., "Signature whistle shape conveys identity information to bottlenose dolphins," PNAS, May 23, 2006, vol. 103, no. 21, pp.8293-8297.
Abstract
Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) develop individually distinctive signature whistles that they use to maintain group cohesion. Unlike the development of identification signals in most other species, signature whistle development is strongly influenced by vocal learning. This learning ability is maintained throughout life, and dolphins frequently copy each other’s whistles in the wild. It has been hypothesized that signature whistles can be used as referential signals among conspecifics, because captive bottlenose dolphins can be trained to use novel, learned signals to label objects. For this labeling to occur, signature whistles would have to convey identity information independent of the caller’s voice features. However, experimental proof for this hypothesis has been lacking. This study demonstrates that bottlenose dolphins extract identity information from signature whistles even after all voice features have been removed from the signal. Thus, dolphins are the only animals other than humans that have been shown to transmit identity information independent of the caller’s voice or location.
-------------------------------
全文:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/103/21/8293.pdf
(您的学校或课题组必须有订阅PNAS的电子期刊,您才能下载这个pdf文件. 若不然,您只好去泡图书馆了.)
"'Cyclic universe' can explain cosmological constant"
04 May 2006
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn9114&print=true
"Why the Cosmological Constant Is Small and Positive"
Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1126231v1.pdf?ijkey=vlxG9iFtrQZJQ&keytype=ref&siteid=sci
(登载于Science上的专业论文)
Parnia S, Waller DG, Yeates R, Fenwick P (2001) A qualitative and quantitative study of the incidence, features and aetiology of near death experiences in cardiac arrest survivors. Resuscitation. Feb;48(2):149-56.
van Lommel P, van Wees R, Meyers V, Elfferich I. (2001) Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A prospective Study in the Netherlands. Lancet, Dec 15;358(9298):2039-45.
"Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural & spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity" -- Albert Einstein
"科学还原论以允诺的唯物主义态度声称最终必能用神经活动来解释所有的精神世界. 我认为,这极大地贬损了人性之谜. 这种信念应该被归为一种迷信... 我们必须认识到,我们是有灵性的生命,我们的灵魂存在于精神世界,而我们的身体和大脑存在于物质世界."
Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self
by Sir John Eccles p. 241
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Sir John Carew Eccles (January 27, 1903 – May 2, 1997)是澳大利亚的神经生理学家. 由于他对神经突触所作的杰出工作, 他获得了1963年度的诺贝尔医学和生理学奖.
衲子 发表评论于
Penrose对"唯物主义"这个词的态度:
"Well, what I am partly saying is that those words (materialist) are a bit out of date, because the contemporary understanding of material is very different now from the way it used to be. If we consider what matter really is, we now understand it as much more of a mathematical thing. When these catagories 'materialist', 'idealist' etc. were first coined, people thought of matter as a much more defined thing, something which is 'there', and then you combine that with mysterious mind stuff which is floating around, which would be seperate from it. But I think that matter itself is now much more of a mental substance;... So before we have a deeper understanding of what is really going on, to talk about things in these terms is almost certainly limiting and inappropriate." -- Penrose
From the first issue of "The Journal of Consciousness Studies"
对于意识的非局域性与量子力学的联系, 约瑟夫森(超导约瑟夫森结的那个"约瑟夫森", 炸药奖得主, 剑桥大学物理系教授)的这两篇文章讲得很清楚.
"String Theory, Universal Mind, and the Paranormal" ("超弦、宇宙心智、超自然现象")
Brian D. Josephson
http://arxiv.org/html/physics/0312012
"Biological Utilisation of Quantum NonLocality" ("量子非定域性在生物学上的应用")
Brian D. Josephson and Fotini Pallikari-Viras
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/%7Ebdj10/papers/bell.html
更多物理学家对于这个问题的看法:
"Physicists probe the paranormal"("物理学家探察超自然现象")
http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/13/05/8
"Most readers of Physics World will probably dismiss paranormal phenomena as either utter nonsense or not worthy of serious study, but over the years the subject has attracted the interest of a number of eminent physicists..."
衲子 发表评论于
“意识”研究资讯:
亨利 P.施塔朴(理论物理学家, 任职于伯克利加大劳伦斯实验室理论物理组)所写的期刊论文 "为什么经典力学不能自然地容纳意识,而量子力学却可以"
Henry P. Stapp, "Why Classical Mechanics Cannot Naturally Accomodate Consciousness but Quantum Mechanics Can," Psyche, 2(5), May 1995
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-05-stapp.html
Stuart Hameroff 的主页
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/
很详尽地收集了有关量子意识领域的各种资料, 如对该理论所涉及的各方面知识的介绍, 他与合作者们所发表的论文(有些刊登于Physical Reviews和PNAS等一流期刊上),他们与还原论/唯物论/神经元学派(也就是现在的主流)学者们的来来往往的争论记录,一些Powerpoint讲义, 等等.
彭罗斯(R. Penrose 物理学家, 数学家, 高就牛津大学数学学院)所撰
(不过此书没有在线版, 下面提供的只是它在Amazon的网址)
"Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195106466/ref=pd_sxp_f/002-5932499-5756020?v=glance&s=books
及他给别人对于此书的质疑的答复 "超越对阴影的怀疑: 对的评论的答复"
"Beyond the Doubting of a Shadow:
A Reply to Commentaries on Shadows of the Mind," PSYCHE, 2(23), January 1996
http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-23-penrose.html
这是一场新的争论,因为无论自有科幻小说(十九世纪末)还是有电脑(一九四六年)以来,有关机器思维的争论──也就是“拥AI”和“反AI”的争论──实在没有停息过。例如在六、七十年代,便有英国哲学家鲁卡斯(J. R. Lucas)基于数理逻辑(特别是哥得尔 Kurt Goedel 的不完备定理),以及美国哲学家德雷弗斯(Hubert Dreyfus)基于现象学的观点对人工智能作出种种非难。令这一争论在八十年代重新热烈起来的,是一篇发表于一九八0年的文章《心灵、大脑与程序》(”Minds, Brains, and Programs”)。在这篇文章里,美国加州柏克莱大学的哲学家西尔(John R. Searle)首次提出了他那著名的“中文字房实验”(Chinese room experiment)有趣的一点是,这个实验虽然从来没有付诸实践,但它所引起的争论,却比不少真正进行过的实验还要多。
一九八0年的这篇论文,最先发表于专业学术期刊,因此未有引起广泛注意。不久,西尔应剑桥大学邀请主讲著名的“雷夫讲座”(Reith Lectures),其中一讲正以中文字房实验为题。演讲其后结集成书,名为《心灵、大脑与科学》(Minds, Brains, and Science)。透过这本小书,他的论点才开始引起注意。
当然,早在一九八一年,对中文字房理论的反驳已经出现了。“拥AI”的主将霍夫斯塔(Douglas R. Hofstadter)继震撼学术界的奇书《哥德尔、埃舍尔、巴哈:一条永恒的金带》(Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid)之后,与哲学家邓纳(Daniel C. Dennett)合作,出版了可作为前书续篇的选集《心灵的我》(The mind’s I),集中收录了西尔首篇中文字房文章,也刊登了霍氏的反驳文章。霍氏和其他“拥AI”学者对西尔的反驳,大致可称为“系统观”或“层次观”的理论。他们主要的论点是:所谓语法和语义的划分,只是一个层次的问题。在一个较低的操作层次来看,我们可能的确只是看到语法;但从包括整个“字房系统”的高层次来看,我们必然无可避免地要涉及语义。
到了九十年代,著名的通俗科学杂志《科学的美国人》以卷首位置同时刊登了两篇针锋相对的文章,即西尔的《大脑思维是电脑程序吗?》(”Is the Brain’s Mind a Computer Program? ”〉和“拥AI”的丘卓伦夫妇(Paul and Patricia Churchland)的《机器能思想吗?》(”Could a Machine Think?”)。这两篇文章大体上仍集中于上述“语法”“语义”之争,它们可以说是对“西尔论题”争论的总结。
一九五0年英国数学家图林(Alan M. Turing)发表了一篇名为《计算机器与智能》(”Computing Machinery and Intelligence”)的经典文章,揭开了有关强AI命题争论的序幕。虽然电脑在当时只出现了数年,但科学家和哲学家对“电脑能否思维?”这一问题己争论不休。图林有感在进行这项争辩的时候,大家对思维的定义往往各不相同,于是执笔写了这篇文章,提出了,著名的“图林试验”(Turing test),作为判定机器是否拥有思维能力的标准。
像时间起源一样,自我意识可说是宇宙间一个深不可测的谜。千百年来,不少哲人智者都为解开这个谜而费尽思量。在哲学探求中,这便是著名的“心、物问题”以及“自由意志与决定论”这两大课题,同时亦牵涉到本体论中唯物与唯心的古老争论。究竟现代科学的进步,对上述这些问题带来了甚么新的启示呢?这些启示对“强AI”的追求又是好消息抑或坏消息呢?这些都是彭罗斯(Roger Penrose)在他的新作《皇帝的新心灵》(The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics)中企图回答的问题。现任牛津大学Rouse Ball数学讲座教授的彭罗斯,是当代著名的数学家兼物理学家。七十年代,在研究黑洞时空结构的问题上,他曾经提出著名的“彭罗斯图”(Penrose diagrams)这一分析工具。一九八八年,由于他在科学研究上的贡献,曾与著名的物理学家霍金(Stephen Hawking)共同获得吴尔夫奖(Wolf Prize)。