🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C1813K.F1L@rice.edu> mayer@owlnet.rice.edu (Christopher Francis Mayer) writes:

>
>	Sounds pretty good, but the whole thing just doesn't make sense.  We
>pervceive things physically from the light around us entering our eyes. 
>Hypnosis may alter our perception so that our mind refuses to believe an
>object is there, but it cannot change the physical reality that there IS a
>solid object blocking our line of sight.  The light simply cannot reach our
>eyes even if we don't believe there's anything there.  Now metephysical
>believers can argue against this by saying that our "spirit" can look beyond
>the normal laws of physics and hypnosis can help us get deeper into touch with
>our "spirit", but I somehow doubt this is the case.  But if these stories are
>true, then there are other senses that we have over looked...however, if you
>believe this, I encourage further, first-hand research and experimentation.

        No,  the really metaphysical believers believe that there really isn't
any objective reality.  That is,  if you can remove something entirely from
your world view,  then it's gone entirely for you.  Of course this opens a
whole metaphysical can of worms,  but I have met people who believe things
like this.  Explaining human interactions is usually tricky for this kind of
theory,  but plenty of people such as Ruth Montgomery have tried.

	Remember that we have a fairly good-sized blind spot in our perceptual
field that has probably gone entirely unnoticed by billions of human beings.
The brain uses representational codings that make it easy for it to interpolate
reasonable data into that space so we only notice our blind spot by trying
really hard.  Close your left eye and focus your right eye on the 'x' below
and move your head towards your monitor so you can see this

                           x             o
 
        (Yes,  I just tried it myself.  With my right eye exactly 'over' the
x,  I had to be about an index-finger length away from my 14" monitor to make
the 'o' go away)  Experiments show that the interpolation that the brain does
is actually rather sophisticated,  so that it will continue a line that is
drawn through the blind spot,  etc.  Anyway,  because the brain uses a
internal representaion that is complex -- it separates out forms and colors
and brightness and different submodalities,  it should be very possible for it
to do a good job of filling in a plausable background after deleting the data
of a particular person or whatever you are trying to make invisible.  Trance
logic will prevent a person from recognizing any inconsistencies.  A person
might even use any data from memory to make an excellent guess about what is
being held behind an invisible person.  If there was anything like ESP (or
even heightened nonverbal communications) that could also help fill in the
gap.

                                         
--