From Brain to Consciousness to Mind--the biological basis

Getting back over here, then. (and I think I'm mostly gonna just stick with this thread for a while, since the work load I have now will hardly even allow me much of that; but don't be surprized if I lose self control...and post elsewhere too, all the while not really being able to afford such non-work time usage) It does appear, xris that there has been some spin put on the results of various studies regarding electromagnetic fields produced by brain areas; one will find such, from time to time in the more 'popular' science media outlets--even Scientific American will occasionally go too far out on thin ice in a few articles, and of course NewScientist does much of the time in a greater number of articles; these are not real journals, per se, and we'll seldom find Sci Am cited, and almost never, NS; UniSci is about at NS level.

Please allow me to kind of walk you through this, xris, in hopes of giving you a better picture. I do believe your work and knowledge of electronics will help out a bit too. As best I can gather, from what you have said over the past 10 or more months, about the concept you hold regarding this EM hypothesis/theory, you tend to see the electromagnetic field as being separable from, and disconnectable from, brain activity. That, (if that is, in fact, the way you are picturing it), is a misconception. I greatly appreciate your willingness to post more seriously in these recent two pages here, and would like to humbly plea that you keep up that spirit of inquiry and logical-based thinking. . . as we carefully go through this.


The place to start at, more conveniently and pragmatically, would be the cellular structure and function itself. It is a fact that all entities we call biological (and we'd best keep in mind that only a certain range of such are called beings, in English, while all can be called organisims, or entities), are made up of physically arranged structures we have termed 'cells.' The more specific cellular entities we'll find in ganglion formations--of which a brain is a superior class/level of structure--will be the neuron. However, since we'll want to focus on this organ we English speakers have labeled 'brain,' we'll have to include some other likely simi-major players as well--the glia cells--but firstly, and especially, let's focus on the neuron. [please keep in mind that this will be a building technique towards the question of what the EM is]

The neuron is a cell which 'body,' so to speak (not specifically the soma, here) is a double layered sack of phospholipid structures; this is called membrane. Like other lipids, these structures will have non-polar (as in poles of a magnet, or battery) chains of carbon atoms bonded to hydrogen atoms--'legs.' There is also--not be be overlooked--the phosophorus atom bonded to three oxygen atoms making a sort of 'phosphate head.' The 'head' is hyrophilic (meaning it is H2O permeable) while the 'legs' are hydrophobic (meaning they are H2O repellent). We can picture a single lipid as kind of resembling an M&M candy character...big round head and kind of long, skinny legs (but without the arms). Then, we can imagine one standing on a mirror, where the exact reflection will be seen in opposition...head down to feet, then, in the mirror reflection, feet up to head...so that we have many thousands of these legged head pairs all crowding together to form the membrane of the 'sack' which is the cell 'body' ( so to speak). Also, it is important to keep in mind that the heads are polar (a certain area will have a natural positive charge due to the elements in the bond, and another area will have a natural negative charge due to those elements in the bond) and the legs are neutral--an even and tightly bonded area.

Thus this phospholipid bilayer creates a membrane through which water-soluble ions cannot pass otherwise, due to the hydophobic legs which make the 'interior' of the membrane. The 'heads' on the outside of the membrane face the extracellular fluid (outside the cell liquid), while the 'heads' on the inside of the cytoplasm (inside the cell liquid). The extracellular fluid is full of a number of ions, of which we will have cations (which carry a natural positive charge) and anions (which carry a natural negative charge). The major players will be the O and H of the basic water, of course, but more so sodium (N+), potassium (K+), calcium (C2+), and chloride (Cl-). As highlighted with the red underlined nuance above, there are basically three ways that ions can cross the phospholipid bilayer, and all of these are embedded protein structures, embedded in the cell's membrane. There is the simple channel, the voltage gated channel, and the pump.

I will further expond on the natural electric charge states and fluxes next, before going into the action potential, local electromagnetic field frequencies, and overall electromagnetic field frequencies; including various points and observations on things like band phases, sychrony and disynchony.

Does this have any connection to philosophy?

Sorry Kaseijin but you are becoming repetitive in your debating . You have adequately informed us of the complex manner in which the brain operates and the various functions of the brain. I know the brain creates this electromagnetic field, the heart also creates a similar field. What is so unusual in the findings of these very eminent scientist, when examining this EM , it appears to operate on a level not previously understood. It appears to be acting like a wireless computer and is acting beyond its apparent effect. We assumed it to be just a result of electrical energy generated by the brain, a consequence. This does not appear to be the whole truth. If this is true, then although the EM is a result of brain activity, it is the essential tool in our conscious ability. Its not then giant step to then say we could be influenced via this EM by all manner of external EM fields. When you examine the various frequencies of the brain, its relationship to other frequencies becomes even stranger. To say we are in tune with nature would not be an exaggeration. Philosophy is not a precise science , it must muse on the impossibilities that arise from possibilities. It can be influenced by the observers experiences and I make no appologise to say I come from a place of impossible possibilities.

I am fully aware of the difficulties of trying to confront the science that defines us as a biological activity and nothing more. We all approach certain subjects from a point of certainty or should I say subjective reasoning, this governs our thoughts and our opposition to opposing subjective reasoning. My self monitoring allows me to accept this weakness in our ability but it also reminds me it is essential. If science claimed everything as proven without scrutiny science would stagnate. I will always claim that my , me will possible live after my mortal frame has ceased, when my biological brain ceases to fire its neurons. I cant prove it but science has not yet won the war, the war of facts that still can not pin point that ability to consider and go beyond the necessities of evolution. If evolution was to make us this aware and self searching it needed a reason and there is no survival reasoning to make us this self monitoring, it goes against natures intentions, not unless we were meant to find our real purpose. This purpose, more than physical needs more than our earthly requirements..Spirituality is not evolution its much, much more.

I see we have the usual problem here, namely, impatience.



Fair dinkum it does; and I just cannot manage to see how one would be clueless as to such fact.



This is just sloppy, xris. The theory which you are making an emotional appeal to has been put down a good long while ago, actually. I was trying to go about showing how that was, but . . . anyway.

It is a fact that the electromagnetic fields which are produced by the flow of ions in the brain, are produced solely by the flow of ions in the brain. There is a very small influence by other things (such as some scalp muscle) when measuring, but the field which is of the brain, is due to the ion movement; stop that, and you diminish the field strength, stop it altogether, and there is no brain electromagnetic field at all.

While your following post is poetic, and has a nice flow, you are mistaken completely in a number of ways. First of all, if you want to keep saying that mere experience makes external reality, then you'd better get down on your knees and ask you lord and savior Jesus Christ to forgive you of your sins, since that is what Alan's experience says is true external reality (meaning not something that simply a scenario created by, and only inside, his brain).

So a person whose brain damage has destroyed their ability to see motion because the cells doing that job have died, will suddenly see motion again, and acknowledge reportable awareness of it because those cells will suddenly come back to life at the death of the rest of the cells of that brain? You must be jokking, right? I hope you don't really believe that.

And self? Well, you can be very fully alive, and the cells in your brain which do the processing, accumulation of, and feed-forwarding-like work of keeping 'yourself' you, can die, and then that 'yourself' will be gone. It can even happen for parts of your body. Certain cell death will give the 'yourself' functions the full and sincere understanding that that arm is not part of it...and the brain will take action to have it removed...I mean, why keep some limb which most clearly is not a part of you, seeminly kind of stuck to you? Really, now. But, a patient with such dead cells so as to cause that, will suddenly once again, be fully whole (limbs and all) simply because ALL the cells which make up the brain will have died? If so, for heaven's sake, let's put all those poor Alzheimer's patients to rest...so they can whole again, and have complete memory function, self knowledge and awareness, and self control over all the bodily functions which are preconscious any way. (yeah, by far most of what the brain does is not a 'state-of-having-onsciousness' thing, and guess that feeling of needed to relieve oneself will properly function once all the cells of the brain will have died)

Both of you guys have made a major error in emotionally buying into misleading pseudo-scientific notions put forward by some, before you had more properly verified other factors which will weigh in. Both of you want to say that only the H. sapiens has this factor we call the state of having consciousness, and that is simply not true.

Both of you want to say a human being does not need any live and active brain cells to be able to do what has most clearly been demonstrated, is only done by live active brain cells. Why? Because you have had a dream? Because you have seen a 'vision?' Because you can control a certain degree of brain function by using a different area of brain function through the self-control act of meditation? Meditation is great, is good...and is very healthy a thing to do, it is being shown quite well. It is also very clearly being shown to be an internal event in brain cell circles (maps, loops, etc.... {that is not single neurons, but nevertheless brain cells...kill those, and you can't meditate anymore})

You know, I can't speak Chinese; can't even understand where one word breaks off, and another one begins, really. Now, do you two want to say that my ability to understand Chinese will suddenly appear once all the cells which make my brain have died? Why, is the vibration of particles carrying a non-physical brother? Or, better yet, how is it going to be explained that by having all my brain cells die, I'm suddenly going to be smelling all these good ole lipid-like particles which are of course, most positively, physical in nature, if the cells which usually do that in my brain have died, leaving that sense almost impossible--yeah, I can only smell one, or kind of two things...that's it...everything smells exactly the same...the beer, the rose, the pizza, and, yes, even the excrement (wow, I'd want to hurry up and die so I smell that pizza and beer again, and KNOW that I smell it)

Come on guys, get real already. When any cell in your brain dies, it doesn't work; and what that cell processing did, or added towards functionally, is finished. When a whole bunch of cells die due to blood stopage--they can't get the food help that they need--or when they go into automatic death programing due to genetic malfunction, the work, function, or aspect of mental property which they worked towards is gone (to the extent of the weight of those now dead and non-working cells). If a person's entire V1~V5 cortical cells in layers 1~6 die, that person will never be able to really see again, regardless of what other cortical by-passing one may try to do. Now how on earth would one want to claim that those cells will suddenly start funcitoning again once all the cells of the brain have died?

OR, do you want to say that there are two brains...one physical and one exact copy which is non-physical? In that case, everything in our known reality is both physical and exactly non-physical, but yet the arrangement of the non-physical has certain properties which never change? That, makes absolutely no sense at all--the non-physical has DNA properties, genetic processes, energy consumption, etc, etc. !!

No, xris, when all the cells which are your brain die in totality, and the various atomic particles are spread out through our environment to be recycled, the very consistency of what the brain which is the conglomerate of those very cellular activites, will no longer be. I even bet that you pretty much experienced just that sort of state last night as you were in deep sleep...so (if we go by experience) you know that that is the state of all the cells in the brain having stopped working, basically.

If I asked you to nominate your favourite of the philosophers mentioned in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, who would it be?

If I were to ask you to nominate your favorite philosopher mentioned in Bernard J. Baars, and Nicole M. Gage's Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness, who would it be?

Obviously an attempt to deny the ground below our feet, is it not? It doesn't matter, jeeprs, just simply does not matter. Statements will have to stand the test of time and knowledge empirically accumulated; period.

Not at all. I signed up to a philosophy forum, to discuss philosophical issues. I have formed the view that you are not actually knowledgeable enough about philosophy to know a philosophical argument when you see one. Therefore all of your arguments, from day one, beg the question: they assume what they set out to prove. There is nothing the matter with this, of course. You are perfectly at liberty to look at the world through the spectacles of biological reductionism. Just know that it has nothing to do with the actual subject of philosophy.

Yet you are mistaken, jeeprs--and by what more specific reason, I know not--when it comes to making claims about certain things like brain, the brain (and other basics of biology), what it means to say a being is in a state of consciousness, what it means to say that a organism which houses a certain level of ganglia complex, has a mind.

If we knew no better, then OK, we could still argue Jung's archetypical imagination, Descartes' pineal functions fantasy, or the Egyptian embalmers' thinking heart, and so on and so forth. Any argument, jeeprs, be it made in the field of philosophical exercise, the field of religious belief system exercise, or the field of scientific exercise (or any other, for that matter) making a positive statement towards the matter of the brain, consciousness, and mind, will have to stand up to testing. And what is pragmatic, logical, and fair, and which stands up to such testing, is what we are most reasonably bound to make every attempt to adhere too. That's all, jeeprs.

For whatever reason you may have joined PhiliForum (which, as I have pointed out in a post above, is no more material for this thread now), you still should make every effort to be realistic.

Now, on what grounds do you reason, and what testable evidence and interpretation do you have, for the claim that the cells in your brain which more directly and specifically see, still see when they have died? How can you demonstrate in the most logically and fairly derived interpreted statement, that the cells in the brain which are sensing the position in space of the head, and preconsciously control the saccadic movement of the eyes, still do so have they have died? Simply to imagine an answer through otherwise groundless and disconnected mental exercises, regardless of how majestic ones philosophical rhetoric may be, is simply not going to cut the icing; much less the cake. You've got to put clearly discernible facts out on the table, jeeprs.

It is very down to earth, black and white a thing, actually. The evidence accumulated--NOT, as I have clearly shown to be the case earlier, simply presumption, preclusion--very fairly and materially proves that mind and consciousness, as defined in the more pragmatic senses, are brain function elements. Environment, genetics, and the passage through time has bearing on the contents of, and functioning properties of, these, but it is the brain that is at work, that makes this centralized event relative to that single brain.

You, jeeprs, however, are denying that. By what means? By some religio-philosophical notion which was dreamed up in the minds of some who lived thousands of years before it was even understood what a neuron was doing? By providing some case studies which are, and borderline psuedo-science on things like reincarnation, NDEs, telepathy, and so on? There are both wishful thinking misinterpretation and willful ignoring in all of these that I've come across... for which reason Dr. Ramachandran also, quite outright said telepathy had been refutted.

ps. you do know that you are essentially making an adulterated application of the phrase, ' bet the question,' right?

KJ, everything you say just makes my argument stronger.

I said: YOU ARE NOT TALKING PHILOSOPHY.

And you aren't. You have never shown the least interest in, aptitude for, or knowledge about the subject of philosophy. All you talk about is brain science.

Prove me wrong. Make a philosophical argument, and if I can't refute it, I will be glad to concede.

I will add, telepathy has not been rebutted. The Duke University studies, and many others, have established the reality of telepathic communications with a degree of certainty that far exceeds that required for clinical trials. But because the phenomenon undermines the basic outlook of materialism, materialists refuse to accept that it could be true. I can't be bothered arguing the case for it - I am not interested in psychics, NDE's or anything like that, for its own sake, but only because it is an example of the blatantly prejudicial way that the scientific mainstream tries to protect the crumbling edifice of materialism.

The same goes for Prof Ian Stevenson's research into children who remember their last lives. When he died, after more than 30 years of research, he had hundreds of carefully annotated cases that had been examined to the highest standards of field research. Had be been examining the breeding cycles of migratory birds or something 'normal' nobody would have thought twice about it. But because what he is researching is 'taboo' he was subject to vilification and castigated by the scientific community for most of his career.

Science is today's religious orthodoxy. Make no mistake.

But somehow or another, jeeprs you're just missing the point. I have never said, nor (as far as I am aware of, or recall) even insinuated that I am making any philosophical argument other than simply applying the terms of the philosophy of pragmatism. Therefore why the push about that?

Now regarding telepathy, the concept is more evidently a misinterpretation of a number of things it seems. The occurrences of events which some wish to call telepathy are never greater than chance...and chance is something that happens. Your earlier arguments for such (on that other thread, which I will eventually touch on here...later, I guess) are in error regarding a number of things, one major one being the workings of brain which amounts to sensory sensing, and then perception, and the biochemical as well as genetic material structures which are required for such to happen...these things do not go floating around in the air, jeepers.

Now all that you had posted on your #98 is wrong, and most of whatever 'philosophically-based' statements you have made since, are more largely incorrect--and the reason that is so is due to the very things I have been trying to make an effort to demonstrate to all, in detail, from the bottom up, and then, once again, from the top down...in order to get off the ground. Lack of patience and understanding of how I'm going about doing that, has consistent gotten in the way.

So, actually, the burden is presently on you to demonstrate how it is that with all the cells in all layers of V1~5's having died, the brain can still cognitively be aware of seeing? Then, the same thing goes for parasympathetic system's cells...the lungs will just keep on breathing by themselves with the signaling from the non-physical cells that are perpetually alive? I don't care what kind of argument one were to make from whatever philosophical discipline, we know for a fact that cells do not go on living once they have died; and that's it!

ps Those studies are flawed, jeeprs, that's why they didn't stick it out (although I do know a number of those in the field of science who tend to disregard such off the bat, without giving it the proper consideration). Again, the test of time along with the accrual of empirical knowledge has shown us that the reincarnation idea you have been appealing to can't work; it's not a matter of looking at just those studies alone, and it's not a matter of just emotionally focusing on a number of works which are emotional sympathetic to the paranormal and mysticism.

If you say so KJ. I don't want to be the guy sticking up for the paranormal. I am just going to concentrate on Buddhist philosophy from now on.

I'm prepared to argue that you have not conclusively made the biological case of conscious ability. I'm still convinced that even though the EM field is created by the brain the consequences of that field gives us reason to believe external influences can effect our conscious ability. Im not saying that the field will carrying on after our death or anything earthly will survive. The contact will die but the sender or the influence will or could survive. You refuse to accept anything ethereal is present in our consciousness but even you have to begrudgingly admit the seat of consciousness is still not certain. Your dismissal of other scientific reasoning is not subtle and makes your subjective beliefs apparent. This pseudoscience of comparison frequencies can be scrutinised and examined so dont dismiss it without questioning it in detail, please. You have not convinced me Kaseijin , you need to do more than give the workings of the brain to alter my beliefs that we are mere flesh and blood. The brain operates within its earthly confines and carries out its function, just as any computer could do when given certain tasks, this does not give the brain control of the conscious ability or the finger of destiny it has no part in. Can you remember my humanoid, placed on mars with no visible means of contact with its master here on Earth. Did it appear in control , in charge of its destiny?

trying to keep my train of thought after all these months...and so many interruptions in that annoying 'real' world....

i seem to remember someone (jeeprs?) referring to experiments by the US army on remote viewing. now that is how a seeing would happen without the brain and optic faculty being involved i think, if it were to be proved possible.

I don't think they performed sufficiently to be ever considered useful. I always see these human attributes as beyond scientific scrutiny. Science works on repeatable experimentation, it fails once and the concept is dismissed. I for one believe my experiences but they are meaningless to the scientific mind. Delusion, misinformed, mad, cranky...unscientific...Maybe but it wont destroy my belief in what I have seen and experienced.

Crazy, irritating, "go read ... ", but unscientific is by far the most hypocrite

As a person I do not have to live up to scientific standards to know I am right.

Didn't Derren Brown do one of these?

This is only true here, in and on this thread (and the forums involved), in that I have not yet carried my presentation of the knowledge aggregate that is firmly in place, to its fullest depth and width. It is close enough to fact, xris, that it is just as well to call it a fact, that the ability and state of conscious is a matter of the excitable cell--so we're not gonna find it in skin cells, nor hair cells, nor toenail cells, and so on. Additionally, due to the definition which is more commonly used (as opposed to the sense in which I use it to better describe cellular activity and states which are of preconsciousness, and not acknowledge cognitively by awareness and accessible memory) even, it is a fact that a non-living structure does not have the capacity for the state of consciousness, nor conscious. (again, unless we change our definition)



Here, xris is the collapse in your position. This clearly signifies a need, like others who have emotional appeal for 'skyhooks,' (a god, a Jesus, a Krishna, a Zeus, etc.), for a cause which matches the human condition of 'will' and 'decision making to achieve goals,' a super-being in, or above and beyond, the universe that life has come to be in and of.

The notion that the brain is like a radio receiver, receiving consciousness and consciousness content, or like a filter (or 'prism') that filters some cosmic consciousness energy into what an individual human (usually human only, for some strange, illogical and ignorant reason), has also been fully dismantled and laid aside as a passing moment of imaginative thought before better and more accurate knowledge had been empirically accumulated.




The seat of consciousness is in the brain, xris, that much is exactly known and proven. It is also very well supported that while the particular actors on this theater stage are many and scattered, there are some very big time players which if we were to remove from being able to act at all, consciousness would be destroyed equally. If you knock out the brainstem cortical activation hub, you'll completely knock out consciousness in all cases. However, that hub's being up and running, in and of itself alone, does not guarantee having a full and normal (for the particular brain) state of having consciousness.

Now as far as something being non-physical (ethereal), such a thing would have to be demonstrable and testable, and a degree of control, or effect caused by such proven. How would you think you could demonstrate something that cannot be sensed at all, which has supposed properties distinct from and above such things as heat energy or molecule motion, gravity or charge attraction? It is simply absurd to entertain the idea that the molecules of the pepper and salt I put on my steak are non-physical, and just as much so to think that the seawater that stings my eyes each summer at the beach, is non-physical. Why, then, is it so easy to entertain the idea the extracellular fluid of our brains, which content is VERY much necessary for the neuronal activity and consciousness state of our brains, and which is essentially VERY much simple salt water, has to be non-physical?

The answer xris, really, is because we humans are slow to get over our need for that 'big brother' to protect us, keep us from harm, and make sure we survive forever and never die. Even when the evidence is pretty much staring us in the face, it's that emotional tag which causes brain executive to loose out.



You'll have to forgive me here, I cannot so precisely see where this is coming from, however (and taking a bit of a shot in the dark at it here) if you are talking about the different frequencies that will be found in the various brain regions and states of activity, rest, sleep, difficult problem solving (as opposed to easy), and so on, then we are not talking about pseudoscience. If you are talking about the link you had provided earlier, the first link especially, and others which dealt more precisely with the theory as it relates to brain and consciousness, then I'll point out that they had put a degree of spin on the information obviously contained in the paper or papers they had looked at. (the first source, UniSci ( or whatever) only cited one paper . . . I have four papers by teams that work with Susan Pockett (who was mentioned by the site) [the most recent being an 'in press' release by those who have subscriptions] and I know those papers DO NOT support the claims of that site's spin.



Firstly, yes, I remember your example, and am aware of the model from which it possibly had come (a model about a remote controlled flying drone) and understand that the attempted statement made by that thought experiment ignores some known facts--as is often in such attempts to demonstrate the 'brain as receiver' fallacy--and thus utterly fails to make any secure statements towards our practical reality.

Then, xris, I am not trying, actually, to convince you (nor jeeprs for that matter); paradigm shifts are things which happen internally, like those 'aha' moments. I am, however, trying to set the facts and close-enough-to-being-factual-to-call-them-fact details straight, and to free the data and study results from a wide spectrum of related factors, from the spin of the theist-based religious belief system adherents, and less careful thinkers.

That point, then brings to mind an interesting thing; and a question (like the others which I want both you and jeeprs to answer honestly). What is the purpose of blood? and why is blood so awfully important for the brain, but is also so dangerous for it that the brain has to protect itself from it with a brain-blood barrier? And for bonus points then, xris, if blood is not just a physical material, then why in the universe have it? If blood is actually a non-physical thing first, then what gives in the meaningless duplication, and why is it so common a factor for higher level organisms? (and you do know that mice have states of consciousness too, right?)

And, just in case here, I'd like you to respond to all the questions I have asked in posts above dated as of today. In the past I tried to present, and you guys always questioned the understood position I have been presenting, and I tried to answer them, but now the tables have been turned. It appears that jeeprs is not willing to try, are you? Would you be willing to have the occipital lobe of your brain totally removed so that you could prove that some something of a being which is you out there in the non-physcial universe could still see without it, and know that it is you, xris, with all your memory and personality and mental vigor, that is still seeing--so that you can be sure that the death of those cells means nothing like being aware of not being able to see how to drive your car to the store?



So Buddhist philosophy (or Vedantic philosophy more specifically, I'd guess) makes no statements about preconscious visual stimuli prompts to premotor neurons so as to cause them to become active thus giving rise to the sensation of wanting to do some in a matter of tens of micro seconds before M1 executes the action...thus causing the apparent consciousness level result to appear as though it was fully an event executed by the state of having consciousness, rather than mostly by totally unaware, non-conscious events...the kind which brain does most of the time anyways? What about the non-conscious control of the eyes? What statements in Buddhist philosophy are raised concerning that knowledge?

salima, meree baheen, the studies and documentaries I've seen on remote viewing have quite fully demonstrated a number of substantial points. One is that the said events are never 100% accurate, another is that they are always inconsistent across efforts to achieve results, and finally, that they are very close to never reproducible--they cannot be done more than once. However, another point is simply regarding information. The essence of what could be considered to be happening, holding, for the moment, that such were possible, is how the information is bound by brain. What it means to mentally visualize a matter, is a different thing that what it means to have ones occipital lobe doing its heavy work all the way up to V5...and projecting it to the prefrontal cortex.

When a person imagines a scene, as a purposeful act in a state of consciousness, or when dreaming, even, a different brain state is employed than when one is receiving signals through LGN through the two pathways...one in consciousness, and the other in non-consciousness. This would be what would be happening in a remote viewing setting. But, there is actually a lot involved in that happening, and it would have to be accounted for too. At the moment, salima chan, it cannot be successfully enough demonstrated that remote viewing is due to any non-physical event at all.

So, xris, you are agreeing that Jesus is waiting for you in heaven? I mean, that has been experienced, you see, and if each and every person's experience is an external reality, then, all of them are external realities...and that means all those alien abductions are true, and my eldest son is a jet fighter pilot . . . that always wins because of seemingly being able to shift the size of his plane? (but boy, did it have me emotionally worried...and I can still clearly remember that emotion created by that dream)

NO, xris, it is simply not the case, perhaps most unfortunately, that simply due of the experience of choking on a piece of food and having a decrease in oxygen supply, thus having an experience, or having a dream which elements of which appear to somewhat well match actual events in the real world, or having visions of a dead relative, makes those brain events actual realities out there in the practical world outside and beyond the mere function of brain. Have you ever wondered why no one has ever reported seeing a ghost dinosaur? They're not in the brain today...and never have been for us H. sapiens, that's why. It's the same thing here, xris, the same thing.